Hell Happened

by Stenzelbarton, Terry

  When LaFavre took a week off to work with Doctors Without Borders, Monica was left with little actual work to keep her busy. She was sitting at the reception desk when a patient came in. Dr. Belewa was very busy this week and he and his receptionist were in one of the back examination rooms. She knew the man was one of Belewa’s patients and she took his name and put him down as a walk-in.

  When the man demanded to see the doctor right away, Monica firmly told him to have a seat and said she would page the doctor. She paged Belewa and told him he had a walk in and the doctor told her he would be with his current patient for another 15 minutes.

  Monica passed on the message to the walk-in customer at which time the man pulled out a two-way radio and said “Move in.”

  Seven police officers rushed through the door with a warrant.

  Belewa and his assistant were both handcuffed and led out, along with the “patient” they were seeing at the time. Monica was threatened with arrest if she tried to leave so she sat back down and started crying.

  The officers took the computers and the files and searched every room in the building, taking garbage bags full of drugs and paperwork. When they were finished taking evidence out, a female detective lieutenant questioned her for nearly six hours before telling her she could go home, but they warner her to not leave town.

  Six months later, Belewa and his assistant were serving time for fraud and drug trafficking.

  Dr. LaFavre had his license suspended for failing to report the illegal activities of his partner which he should have known about. LaFavre blamed Monica and any career Monica had believed she had in the medical field died when the news was printed in the newspaper and heard it on the local radio and telivision stations.

  The only thing good that had come out of those years was that she had been able to use what she’d learned to help Tony, and now Tony was helping her.

  ~ ~ ~

  She saw Tony work his way slowly up the hill through the trees and take up a position near the base of the CB tower. Monica now wished she’d given him her rifle. The 9mm didn’t have a lot of range.

  She heard him whisper on her walkie-talkie.

  “There’s five of them. Two women and three men. There seems to be an argument going on,” he told her. “They’re looking around now.”

  “Okay, I’m going inside with Kellie. Did you reach John?”

  “Yeah, he’s on channel three. He heard what they did to Mike and he’s hiding in the tractor tires in the back of the barn. I told him to stay there until one of us tells him to move.”

  Kellie, knowing the vigilantes couldn’t see her started for the doors to the shelter. She called Kellie on channel five to tell her she was coming. She wasn’t even half-way across the clearing when Tony told her the three of the five were coming up the path while two others were starting to go toward the garage.

  Monica turned and ran back to where she had been hiding in the tall grass.

  When she was down and hidden, she called Kellie and told her to lock the door and don’t let anyone in. She saw Tony work his way toward the hatch and Monica cautioned him to stay low.

  The three who went up to the shelter’s entrance did so with a confident swagger. Like they knew they were in charge of the situation. Monica watched as the one started banging on the door hollering at Kellie inside.

  Monica lifted her .22 to her shoulder and looked through the scope, putting the crosshairs on the one beating on the door.

  She pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened. She rolled over and looked at the rifle to make sure she had loaded it and had a round in the chamber. She cursed herself for forgetting to flip the safety off. She rolled back over and pulled the weapon up to her shoulder just in time to see the door explode.

  ~ ~ ~

  Kellie had blockaded the door with the table and the braces Jerry had made to keep the door closed during the hurricane. She didn’t know if it would work, but it was all she had. She heard Tony tell Monica that three were coming up the path and they were all armed. Tony had told her to hide Hannah because of what the man had done to Mike. Kellie couldn’t believe the kind old man had been shot down in cold blood, but this was a world so different than the one she’d lived in all her life.

  Now there were three people coming to her door. She hoped it wasn’t with heavy weapons and she feared for the life of Hannah and John if something were to happen to the adults.

  She tried the CB several more times but there was no answer from Jerry.

  If she hadn’t been so scared she might have cried. She pulled Tony’s couch out from the wall and used it for cover. If they did have heavy weapons, she wondered if the couch’s stuffing would save her.

  She heard the man at the door. He was hollering at her to open up. He told her no one would be hurt, that they were just looking for a safe haven and some food. She didn’t believe him. She heard Tony on her walkie-talkie tell Monica to shoot to kill.

  Tony told his young friend that from his vantage point, he could see the man with a bandolier and he was pulling out one of the hand grenades, but from 250 feet, he would never be able to get a good shot off.

  Monica clicked the mic twice, acknowledging his transmission, but she had a small .22 caliber rifle. It had no real knock-down power and from 200 yards, Monica would have to be very lucky to get all three, and then only if they were stupid enough to stand there and be shot. There were two others who might come after her.

  ~ ~ ~

  Kellie heard the man holler again to open up or he would open the door his way. She wasn’t sure how he knew someone was in the shelter, but she was sure he’d not think twice about blowing the door off.

  It was Tony who said “He’s got a grenade!” over the walkie-talkie.

  Kellie didn’t stop to think anymore. She flipped off the safety of the 20 gauge and from seven feet away shot through the door, pumping four shots through the wood.

  ~ ~ ~

  What Monica saw was the door erupting outward and knocking all three people in front of the door to the ground. One of them stayed down, but the woman, who had been more off to one side, started crawling away, obviously injured.

  Monica saw the one who had the grenades had been slightly protected from the blasts from Kellie’s shotgun. He was gravely wounded, but he was still grabbing for a grenade, probably hoping to throw it through the new hole in the doors.

  Monica looked through her scope and pulled the crosshairs down, just like Eddie had showed her. Three shots later, the man wasn’t reaching for a grenade anymore. He had new holes in his shoulder, his neck and his head.

  ~ ~ ~

  From Tony’s vantage point, he saw the three knocked back and fall to the ground, one man lay still, one man writhing in pain. The woman had been hit peripherally and was crawling toward the truck that was in the drive. He watched as three more shots stopped the writhing man who was reaching for a grenade.

  Tony turned in time to see two other people come running out of the garage, the fat black man who had shot Mike and a heavy-set woman. John apparently hadn’t been found and Tony was glad.

  Too far away to hit anything with his pistol, he none-the-less fired off five rounds, aiming high and hoping one of the rounds would hit something near enough to the two intruders to give them a fear of what they couldn’t see.

  Tony wanted their attention trying to find him, not trying to save their comrades.

  The man and woman lifted their rifles and shot in his direction, but he’d ducked down before they could locate where he was hiding. They jumped in the truck and tore out of the driveway, leaving their three comrades to their own luck.

  Two minutes later Tony, Monica and Kellie had the woman securely tied up and gagged. She was slightly injured but no one cared. They left her lying on the ground.

  Kellie let Hannah, Boomer and Molly out of the cellar. She instructed Hannah to listen for Jerry on the CB and if he called, to call Kellie on the walkie-talkie before answering.

&nb
sp; Hannah, who looked so frightened, said she would do it.

  Boomer was the first reach Mike’s body. The big dog whimpered and licked at Mike’s face. Monica told them the old man had died before he hit the ground with the way the back of his head was missing. All three cried while they wrapped his body in a tarp Monica found in the garage. Then the three went to get both kids. They were scared and clung to Monica and Kellie, tears falling freely.

  Chapter 7

  It was Kellie who heard Jerry calling on the CB. They were 10 miles away and were asking where everyone was. He sounded very happy with how the day had gone.

  Jerry and Eddie both had CBs operating and heard the whole story. Jerry was pissed and slammed his hand on the dash of the Ford. Eddie was pissed too because he’d been good friends with the old banker and he knew Mike had probably given his life to save the kids and the others at the shelter. Eddie’s dad had never been around and while Eddie didn’t think of Mike as a father, he did feel like the gentleman would have been a right fine grandfather to him.

  “They left here about 10 minutes ago in a small black truck. There are two of them, a heavy black man and a heavy white woman. He’s wearing brown clothes and she is wearing yellow and red. Watch out for them,” Kellie warned, relaying to Jerry what Tony had seen.

  Eddie had taken the lead in the convoy. His stout truck was both more powerful and had a better front grill guard than the Ford which would be an asset on the two lane roads. They had exited the highway and were less than a mile from where they would get off Highway 10 and take the back roads to the shelter when Eddie saw the truck.

  The truck was on the side of the road with a man refueling it from a red gas can. Eddie had just come around the curve when the man saw them and dropped the fuel can. He forwent putting the gas cap back on and rushed to get into the truck. The woman in the front seat lowered her rifle out the window and aimed it at Eddie’s oncoming truck.

  Eddie didn’t even duck when her rifle bucked and a star appeared in his windshield. The woman’s aim was good, Eddie had to admit. If the windshield hadn’t been bulletproof, Eddie might have been hit in the face.

  Instead of being dead, he put his right foot to the floor.

  The man had gotten the truck started, but Eddie continued to accelerate. He heard Jerry telling him to not do it over the radio, but Eddie was positive these were the people who killed Mike in cold blood. He wasn’t giving them a chance.

  The little black truck just started moving backward when the 9,000-pound SWAT truck hit it at 73 miles per hour in the right front quarter panel. The big truck’s steering wheel pulled at Eddie’s hands, but he had been expecting this and held on tight.

  Eddie felt satisfaction seeing the airbags deploy in a blink and the man, who had not been belted in, nor had his door completely closed, punted like a spinning rag doll out of the truck and onto the car he’d so recently siphoned gas. The amount of blood coming from the broken body was enough to let Eddie know he was gone.

  The woman who had shot at Eddie was saved from instant death by the airbag and seat belt, but the crushing weight of four and a half tons of SWAT truck pushed the dashboard into her chest and ample belly microseconds later. The heater core and accompanying venting crushed her shins as the little truck began spinning out of the way of the big truck.

  It was the grill guard that ended her thoughts forever as it pushed the quarter panel and windshield support member through her neck and face.

  The woman’s life ended there on the road seconds after her partner.

  Eddie slowed but didn’t stop. In his rearview mirror he saw the damage his truck had done. The little black truck had just started catching fire. He almost smiled before he realized he had just killed two more people. He was pissed that he’d not given it more thought, but also glad he hadn’t given it more thought.

  Those two were responsible for Mike being dead. That he’d been able to kill them made him feel like vengence had been served.

  Mike was one of the good people who had lived through the hell that had happened to the world. The world needed good men like Mike. Those people had taken him.

  “That was for Mike,” he said to Jerry on the CB. “They’re now rotting in hell.” He then turned it off.

  The convoy followed him back to the shelter.

  No one stopped to check on the two people from the truck.

  Randy and Tia who had been bringing up the rear were filled in by walkie-talkie courtesy of Jerry.

  The positive mood everyone in the convoy had carried back with them was now gone and a solemn drive home was something none of them had expected.

  Everyone but the wounded woman who remained tied up and gagged and laying on the ground were graveside when Jerry and Eddie lowered Mike’s body into the hole they’d dug a few feet off the path they took from the garage to the shelter entrance. Kellie fashioned a cross and stuck it at the head of the grave.

  Monica refused to tend to the woman’s injury until Jerry asked her for the third time. She did leave the gag in the woman’s mouth because no one wanted to hear what the woman had to say or her cries when Monica tended to her. She pulled the shot gun pellets out without pain killer and slapped bandages on the wounds. That was all she was going to do.

  Monica did it because she respected Jerry’s authority sake, not because she wanted the woman to live.

  ~ ~ ~

  Tia moved her motor home to the back side of the hill, down from the shelter entrance and hidden from the road. She and the kids moved into the home that evening, not because she wanted to be away from the others, but because everyone needed the space and Tia wanted to talk with her kids about their feelings in private. It would be hardest on John over the next few days. She needed time to be a parent to her children.

  Eddie parked his truck beside the Winnebago and took a few of the extra weapons and cases of ammunition in the shelter and filled the truck. From now on, anyone who threatened the shelter would feel the full wrath of an armed SWAT truck.

  The men who had died from Kellie’s blast through the door, and Monica’s well-placed shots were burned with the farm house and the brush that had been cleaned from behind the shelter. No one said any words for them. Eddie’s non-verbal comment spoke volumes. He pissed on the fire and walked away.

  No one was sure what to do with the woman they captured. To make sure they could sleep in relative safety, Jerry, Randy and Eddie decided to secure her in the barn that night. She was put in the barn’s office where there was nothing she could damage, but she’d be out of the weather and safe, without being in their way.

  Making sure she was secure, Jerry finally took off her gag. She started crying and begging for mercy, but she had been one of those who caused the death of Mike, someone they all loved.

  Jerry told her to shut the hell up and that if another word left her mouth, he’d put the gag back in. There was a fierceness in his voice he was glad Kellie couldn’t hear.

  Jerry put a lock on the outside of the door in case she did get free of the ropes with which Randy and Eddie had tied her, but he was pretty sure in the morning she would be sitting in her own filth, just where they were leaving her now.

  They’d deal with her in the morning. The group from the shelter was in mourning and they had no want to deal with the woman.

  That night, as everyone went to bed, they reached for comfort. Kellie, who had always gone to bed after Jerry, slipped herself under his covers before he was fully asleep and let him hold her close as she cried. Monica and Tony moved into the spare room that Tia and her kids had vacated. They slept in separate beds, but she held her friend’s hand and they talked about what they’d seen and could have done differently. There was nothing.

  Eddie and Randy played video games until the early hours of the following morning, losing themselves in the fantasy world of electronic games.

  Despite the sadness of the day, Tia and her kids were happier now that they had their own home and tonight they would sleep in one b
ig bed, even though the Winnebago came with two queen-sized and a single bed.

  ~ ~ ~

  The following morning when Jerry, Eddie and Randy checked on the woman they’d captured, she told them her name was Cheryl. She claimed she was a victim of circumstance. She said the men had captured her and threatened her and that she was just following them because they made her. Jerry and Eddie didn’t care to hear it and if she could have walked, they would have sent her away.

  As it was, she had been hit with buck shot in the leg and arm and couldn’t walk very well as yet.

  Neither Kellie nor Monica would have anything to do with the woman and Tony said it would be better just to kill her. Randy had the softest heart and was given the job of caring for her until she was well enough to be sent away. Everyone might hate her, but Tony wanted to kill her where she sat.

  Cheryl, as Randy was told, was a 27-year-old former legal clerk. She’d been captured by the vigilantes less than a week after the fall of civilization. She said they beat her, raped her, threatened to kill and tortured her. She had no other way to survive.

  Randy listened and didn’t make any comments. He dressed her wounds, there was two pellets he found that had to remove from her leg, and then left her alone to clean the rest of herself. She had to do it from a bucket of warm water he provided. He found clothes for her so she could change into something cleaner than the blood soaked and dirty, stinking clothes she had on. He gave her privacy, but only in the old barn office.

  She would ask him questions but he refused to talk to her.

  It was Eddie who came up with the idea of a way to keep her controlled during the day when Randy asked for something other than the ropes he had to untie three or four times a day. They used Boomer’s collar and put a combination lock on it to keep Cheryl from taking it off. The collar was attached to chain Randy bolted to one of the walls in the barn’s office after it had been cleaned out. They left her a place to sit, a table to eat from and a bucket to piss and shit in. Randy brought food to her in the morning when the cows were milked and again in the evening. He brought her water when he remembered to and that was the way she began her first week of captivity.