Hell Happened

by Stenzelbarton, Terry

  “She is safe here, but she’s not welcome, son,” Jerry said. “If it was just me and you, that’d be one thing, but now we have kids here and other people who depend on us. We can’t take the chance of trusting her. Hell, if some people had their way, we’d drop her in the middle of no where and let her fend for herself. There are others who would do worse.” He didn’t tell his son Eddie would gladly stand Cheryl against a wall with a blindfold and a cigarette. Monica’s thoughts weren’t much better toward the woman.

  “Will you at least talk to her again before you send her away?” Randy pleaded.

  Jerry thought about it and could see no harm. He knew he wouldn’t change his mind, but sending her to another encampment might be the best for everyone, and it would let Randy know he was at least willing to listen to his son on important issues with the shelter.

  His decision, however, had been made and there’d be no bad feelings against her at a new place unless she wanted to share her story of what happened here.

  Jerry said he would talk to her again before making a final decision, but made sure Randy knew his mind was probably made up already. The three started the evening chores with the cow herd which had grown to 45 head. Randy wasn’t happy with his dad’s decision, but it was better than just dropping her off somewhere in the middle of no where.

  It wasn’t what he wanted, and that was to tell Cheryl she was free to be part of their clan here. No place else but here would be good for him to build a close relationship with her.

  However, his dad had said he would speak with Cheryl again after their return from the coast, so Randy would use that bit of hope when he spun the decision Jerry made to Cheryl. It might be enough to keep her from panicking and retreating into the curled up ball of tears on the bed.

  ~ ~ ~

  The people on the farm were just finishing chores when Eddie and his foraging crew showed up. They had loaded the vehicles with a lot of canned food to the cheers of everyone. The evening was filled with moving the food into the garage and stories of conquest over the zombies.

  Kellie and Tia’s kids would begin sorting it in the morning.

  Eddie, helping Randy and others unload the SWAT truck, showed his best friend the stash he’d found in the back of the store: two full cases of Bud Light. Randy was pleased because now he wouldn’t have to steal from his dad’s stock of beer. He and Eddie were not drinkers, but Eddie had liberated some beer before the fall of the world from his mom and the two got half-tanked and were giggling and falling down drunk after less than a six pack.

  “I bet I can get Monica drunk and there’s enough here to make her look good too,” Eddie said with a lecherous laugh. “I don’t even want to think about it,” Randy told him and continued to work. He was busy making other plans for an evening with someone who looked a lot more inviting to him than Monica did.

  With both trucks unloaded and re-fueled, everyone moved like a herd to where Tia had set up picnic tables near the garden. Kellie and Mrs. deJesus had prepared the evening meal of southern fried chicken, baked potatoes and okra. Mrs. deJesus had also found the fixings for home made chocolate chip cookies which everyone agreed were the best damn cookies ever to have baked in the history of cookie baking.

  As the kids finished and went off to play, the adults relaxed while Jerry and Juan cleared the dishes into the shelter. Everyone settled down to enjoy cool evening and Jerry took this time to lay out his plan for the rescue mission.

  “I want to take Eddie, of course, with his SWAT truck for defense. I would like him to have Juan with him, and Monica. I’m going to take Rusty and Tony with me in my truck. Tony will operate the radio and try to keep in touch with the ISS commander and Rusty, I hear, is pretty good with the AR-15.”

  “We’ll be leaving at 4 a.m. tomorrow morning, so Randy will be staying here to take care of the farm and finish some work he started today. It’s about a 300 mile drive, so we’ll be gone all day and most of the night. We’ll probably be back the day after tomorrow, but don’t send a rescue team until the day after because I don’t foresee any problems and we’ll be able to defend ourselves pretty well.

  “I also want to make sure every one knows the Russian commander is giving this a 10 percent chance of success. But I think we still have to do our part because it is the right thing to do.

  “On another note, Tia wants take three people in the Escalade to Anniston to pick up another motor home. She and I have talked about this today and she recalls a dealership near the military base there. If she can find one, it will go a long way to housing these people we’re going after in the morning.

  Tia spoke up here to let everyone know she’d already picked her crew for the drive to Anniston. “I’ll be taking Sade, Josh and Nick. Nick is going to be my radio man and Josh has some experience driving straight trucks. Sade, I heard today, is a good golfer, so I had to have him along.”

  The people who heard the story of Sade’s golf comments in the middle of a battle with the zombies laughed. The others would be told about it later.

  Josh’s daughter had fully recovered from the food poisoning as did the others of the three-vehicle convoy so Josh felt safe leaving her on the farm.

  “That leaves Kellie, Mrs. deJesus, Danny and Randy here with the kids. I know it isn’t an ideal, situation, but we’re under some time constraints,” Jerry pointed out.

  It was Mrs. deJesus, no one it seemed could bring themselves to call the grand motherly woman “Margarita,” even her husband, who spoke up. “I was a school teacher for more than 20 years and a principal for another 25, Meester Jerry. I think I can keep this young lady and men and children from tearing up the school while the director is gone.”

  It wasn’t what she said; it was her purposeful lapse into thick Spanish accent that made everyone laugh. Jerry could see why Juan loved her so much. She was easy to like and knew how to keep the tension level down.

  “In that case, unless anyone has any questions, I’m turning in early tonight and I’d suggest the rest of us going to the gulf do so too. It’s a 300-mile drive tomorrow and I figure it’ll take about 10 hours, if the highways south are anything like the highways near Birmingham.

  “Once there, we’ll have a couple of hours to find a boat and get five miles off the coast.” There were a lot more details to the rescue which Tony had written down, but now was not the time to go through it all. Tomorrow, they’d need a lot of things to talk about on the 10-hour drive, so Jerry didn’t go into all the details tonight.

  “Good night everyone,” he said and excused himself. Kellie touched his hand as he left the table. He wanted to get a good shower before going to sleep. It was early for him, the sun having just gone down over the horizon, but he had a knack for forcing himself to sleep when he really needed to.

  Eddie and Monica also went into the shelter to sleep. Juan and his wife got up, but the two were going for a walk, hand in hand, before he retired for the evening.

  Danny headed back to his truck and camper.

  Tia and Sade gathered up Nick and Josh and the four went off to discuss their trip to Anniston. They’d be leaving hours after the rescue crew, and Tia wanted her kids to play themselves to exhaustion tonight.

  ~ ~ ~

  Randy waited until everyone had committed to what they were going to do before getting up from the table. To throw off suspicion, he walked up the path to the antenna on the hill above the shelter. If anyone was watching, it looked like he was going to check on the equipment he’d been working on.

  During his dad’s meeting, he thought for sure all his plans were going to be ruined. He thought for sure his dad was going to take him along for the rescue. When his dad said he would be staying behind, and that half the people currently staying on the farm would be gone for two or maybe three days, a full-blown plan popped into his head.

  He was so excited about the turn of events, he wanted to run to Cheryl and tell her his plan, but instead, he slowly worked his way up the hill, past the antenna and down
the other side to enter the barn through the cattle stalls.

  As he was passing through the barn he had to slap the rump of a couple of cows to get them away from the door which led to the interior. He didn’t bother being quiet because he knew Cheryl would be awake still, probably reading or playing some of the music Randy’d put on an MP3 player for her.

  Cheryl did hear him coming, so she quickly arranged a reception for the young man who was infatuated with her, like so many men before had been. It was so much easier now that she didn’t have to wear those damned leg cuffs at night. Until last night, if she’d needed a change of clothes, she had to wait until Randy came with her food, unlocked the cuffs and wait outside until she changed, then he’d come back in and put the cuffs back on.

  This morning, shortly after he’d brought her breakfast, Randy had put locks on all the doors that led to the outside of the building so she wouldn’t have to wear the cuffs unless she was outside the barn. It had been his idea of giving her “more freedom.” Things were much easier now for her.

  She cracked the door to the interior of the barn just enough to make it look like she’d left it open to allow the air from the small window, too small for her to squeeze through, to create a draft through the room. Her timing was nearly perfect.

  The door which led outside was barred and locked as was the door to the parlor, but if she had to use the bathroom, there was one available between the former office she was living in and the parlor. If she really wanted to escape, she could probably break out if she had some tools, which she didn’t, but Randy told her everything was covered by the cameras and she believed him. She also promised not to escape and he believed her.

  Randy saw the door to her room was cracked opened when he closed the milking parlor door. There was a light on in her room so he was pretty sure she was awake. He walked up to the door to knock before entering and through the opening he could see Cheryl preparing for bed. Her back was to him so she obviously didn’t see or hear his coming in. She was in a pair of powder blue panties and was leaning over her bed, picking up a clean tee shirt. The smooth curve of her back showing the ripple of each bone in her spine, and long legs excited Randy. He caught just a glimpse of a breast again as she picked up the shirt and slipped it over her head, pulling her long dark hair through the head hole and flinging it in back of her.

  Right then, he should have knocked and entered, attached the collar to her and left. He should have just done that and left her secured for the night, like his dad had told him to do.

  Instead, Randy backed away from the door, feeling dirty, like a voyeur. He stepped back very quietly two or three more steps. He thought about some things his dad had taught him. Jerry had tried to instill in his son a moral righteousness. Randy’s dad had never forced the boy to attend church with him, but Randy did go about once a month to make his dad happy. The sermons usually bored him because he felt they didn’t pertain to him. He was living at home with his dad and the amount of sin Randy had in his life amounted to impure thoughts from the pictures he looked up on the internet and little white lies, more exaggerations than lies, he told to Eddie. Randy didn’t give much thought to faith in God, nor if there was a supreme being. He just didn’t care to think about it because he just didn’t have the desire to think about there being a God watching over him and seeing his every thought.

  Right now, he wasn’t thinking about God. He was thinking about what his dad had told him about the right to privacy and the sanctity of that right. He wondered how he’d feel if someone was peering at him through a crack in his door.

  What he’d just done brought a feeling of guilt washing over him. This wasn’t the internet where no one was looking back at him. The pictures he looked at on the internet, he rationalized in an effort to justify himself, were just pictures of women who wanted the attention, who wanted to be looked at. What he’d done – looking through a crack in a door – he’d done to real live woman. What if she’d seen him and screamed? What if she had been embarrassed and told his dad that Randy was spying on her like a common pervert? What if she’d seen him and saw him as the kind of man who preys on frightened women like so many had done before to her? She’d surely reject anything he had to say or any apology he tried to make claiming innocence.

  He recalled the farmhouse, which was now a pile of ash, where he had grown up and less than 200 yards from where he stood right now, there used to be piece of wood that hung in his room. In the wood was carved the sentence “Do what is right, even if no one is looking, because someone is.”

  Randy knew it wasn’t right to peek through a door at a woman, no matter how accidental it had been, no matter what her status was on the farm. There is knowing what is right and doing what is right. The woman trusted him because Randy was a good man who was trying to make her feel safe and welcome here. Sure he had fantasies that she and him would become a couple, that she’d see him for the good man that he was and they’d become like Kellie and his dad, but those were just dreams.

  He was also 22 years old and hormones ran through his body like water rushing down a mountain ravine. Randy, still standing quietly, told himself he was wrong for looking through the crack in the door and promised himself he wouldn’t do it again. He heard Cheryl sit down on her bed. He couldn’t bring himself to move as his morals fought a battle in his head. Minutes later he saw the light turn off.

  He’d missed his chance to talk with her tonight by one or two minutes. If he said anything now that her light was off, she’d know he’d been spying on her and maybe all the trust he’d built up with her would be thrown to the wind. He had frightened himself into not moving a muscle.

  He stood, staring at her door in the near darkness, wondering if he should say something and every second that passed, he knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t.

  He stepped further away from her door, being careful to make no noise. The door to the milking parlor opened and shut quietly. Randy locked the door as silently as he could, but the deadbolt clicked loudly. Hopefully Cheryl had been asleep or if she had heard it would think it was one of the cows. He worked his way out of the barn and back up the hill the way he’d come, still feeling guilty by what he’d seen.

  He forgot to put the collar on her and realized it when he was almost back to the shelter. He kept thinking of her body and how beautiful she was. He knew he could trust her, though, and didn’t go back. If he did, she’d know he didn’t really trust her and he wanted her to.

  Maybe on their “date” she’d remember how much he trusted her.

  ~ ~ ~

  Cheryl’s plans went awry because of the morals Randy’s dad had instilled in him. She’d heard the young man entering the barn when he had slapped one of the cows. He was really just a boy playing at being a man. She’d had to hurry to get undressed and then had to wait again, standing half-naked by the door until she heard the door to the milking parlor unlock. She then ran back to stand by her bed to make it look like she was just now getting ready for bed.

  She timed it perfectly and she knew Randy would see her body through the crack she’d left in the door. She knew he’d watch her and want her. Men were like that. Her body turned men into easily malleable pieces of clay and she would use him just like she’d used others.

  She bent over the bed, her back side pointing straight at the door to give Randy the best view of what she could offer, making a real show of straightening the tee shirt before reaching high over her head, stretching her arms fully toward the ceiling before allowing the shirt to fall gently over her body. She made sure not to turn around and accidentally catch him looking at her. This was an act she’d played out before and she knew when it would be the right time to move forward with allowing him just a sip from her cup, and with the lights on was not it.

  Cheryl pulled the blanket and sheet down on the bed and made her movements clear so Randy, if he was still looking through the gap in the door, would know she was about to get into bed. If he was smart, he would be sneaking quietly
back to the door to the milking parlor to make sure he made enough noise for her to hear him “come in” to her living area. After a moment, she thought maybe he’d back away from the door to give her time to finish “dressing” for bed, so she lay down and picked up a book she wasn’t reading.

  Still Randy didn’t come to the door. She wondered if he was still watching her. She couldn’t look at the door to see because then he’d know she knew he was there. After a few minutes of pretending to read, she decided he was waiting for her to turn out the light, probably hoping to catch her just before she fell asleep, hoping she’d invite him to lay with her for a while, so she “could feel safe” while she fell asleep.

  Cheryl was prepared for that too. She turned off the light and waited. Any minute now she would hear Randy pretend to open and close the door to the milking parlor. He’d then knock gently on her door and ask if she was awake. She’d mumble a fake “who is it?” and Randy would say it is him. She’d tell him to come in but not turn on the light. She’d tell him to sit on the bed and they’d talk for a few minutes and then she’d pull him down to lay with her.

  Of course she was under the covers and he’d lie on top, knowing her body and his were separated by so little cloth. He’d feel her curves against him and that would drive him to want her more. She might even wrap her arm around him and gently caress his neck. She’d say something like “You make me feel so safe.” He’d probably try to kiss her and when he did, she’d allow him a clumsy try and then send him away wanting, telling him that she couldn’t as long as she was still a prisoner.

  He’d either unlock the doors that kept her in this barn at night, or he’d leave her with that stupid collar locked to her neck to sleep alone, knowing she was here, nearly naked, wanting him to help her.

  It would drive the poor unsuspecting Randy to do stupid things. She lay in the darkness waiting for Randy to make up his mind for what seemed to be forever. “Come on you stupid hillbilly, make up your mind!” she thought to herself.