Hell happened (Book 2): Hell Revisited

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  They talked more about the 1st Mid-America Defense Force and different situations they might be in and Amanda decided staying here, under the command of Parker, might be the best thing for her now. She was safe, believed in what Parker stood for, and didn’t have to worry about her next meal.

  The conversation lightened up and it was a relaxing evening for everyone.

  When the lieutenant yawned, Parker looked at her watch. “I think you’re right, Stan. We might all want to call it a night. Sergeant Saunders, it was a pleasure having you over. I hope we haven’t overwhelmed you.”

  “No ma’am, not at all. In fact it was a very pleasant evening for me, ma’am,” Amanda said, unsure of the proper protocols for leaving a general’s home after a party. She didn’t want to seem rude, but she also didn’t want it to look like she was waiting for another invitation.

  It was the DeBusks who saved her. The sergeant’s wife, who wore PFC stripes and who had been mostly silent during the evening, took her husband’s arm. “Come on, Robert. You’ve still got to fix our water heater tonight.”

  “Yes, dear,” her new boss said, kissing his wife on the forehead.

  “Still didn’t get that fixed yet?” asked the lieutenant as he and his wife walked with them to the door. Amanda didn’t hear the rest of the story. She had to collect up the bone Chopper had been chewing on all evening. He came when she called, but he left the bone and she was sure it might not be good to leave his bone on the general’s patio.

  The general held the door for her as she came in with her dog and walked with her to the entryway door. Quietly she said to her, “Let’s just you and me get together in a few days, informal and relaxed. You seemed rather unconfortable tonight, dear. Next time you come over, we’ll have hamburgers on the grill on paper plates and we’ll wear jeans and tennis shoes.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Amanda said to her, smiling and feeling comfortable with the informal conversation. “I look forward to it.” She was the last one out, and the general waved to them all, closed her door, not stretching the good bye out any longer.

  The DeBusks lived on the other side of the base and the Nilas lived in the house between the general and Amanda and they made small talk as they walked across the grass. Amanda thanked them again for a good evening and told the lieutenant she’d see him in the morning.

  It felt good to be home. The general had been observant about Amanda feeling out of place and stiff. Chopper went immediately to the back door and Amanda let him out. She’d left one small night light on in the house to find her way. Chopper could do his business in the dark so she left the patio light off. She looked up at the stars and they were clear, just like in Alaska and just like the stars she’d seen from the hill on the farm where her dad told her he had built a windmill for his hole in the ground. She smiled thinking of her dad and his crazy ideas.

  Maybe her dad’s ideas were not so crazy any more.

  Amanda got Chopper’s bowls out and filled them. Chopper lapped up some water and nibbled at his food without enthusiasm. He’d been snuck scraps from the roast Carol had made for everyone at the party.

  When Amanda went inside, he followed. She needed to get some sleep because tomorrow she would become a soldier again. With clean linens on the bed, a short shower and a warm room, Amanda was asleep within minutes of her head hitting the pillow.

  Chopper was her alarm clock, which was fortunate because she’d forgotten to set one. She looked at her watch after having her hand licked, shaking her out of an unusual dream. It was just before six.

  * * *

  War had come to Jerry’s farm.

  Everyone was in position faster than Jerry could have hoped which was good because the four HUMVEEs coming down the road were in a hurry and tore through Nick’s repaired gate and Tony’s high-voltage wire without slowing. The fence sparked and the gates swung on their heavy hinges, opening up for the HUMVEEs.

  Two of Kellie’s cameras went down as the first and second HUMVEE dragged 150 feet of fence off its posts as the drivers came through the main gate nearly side-by-side. Two shots with armor piercing rounds hadn’t stopped the HUMVEEs and the soldiers manning the M-2s seemed surprised someone was shooting in their direction already. They’d been led to believe this would be a total surprise. They started raking the hill to Jerry’s left and several rounds hit very near the bunker where Cleve and Danny were ensconced.

  “Stop shooting. Cease fire,” the public address system for the farm roared with Jerry’s voice over the noise of the HUMVEEs. The shooting stopped.

  “We are peaceful civilians with women and children. We will defend ourselves, but we don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  The second HUMVEE’s gunner heard where the speaker was broadcasting from and shot it to bits. The man on the microphone had said there were women here and the gunner hadn’t had a woman in more than a year. When he started shooting again, so did the first, looking for the bunker that had been shooting at them.

  Buff and Cleve began shooting in earnest and the armor piercing rounds exploded the glass of the first HUMVEE, injuring the driver and causing the vehicle to drive off into the field of sweet corn that had been planted. The guy manning the M-2 was thrown clear and had his legs crushed when he was run over. Jerry could hear the man’s screams from his position high on the hill.

  Two other soldiers in the back seat of the truck were thrown to the floor when the HUMVEE went nose first into the culvert that went under the driveway.

  The third and fourth HUMVEEs raced through the front gate while the second kept Cleve’s bunker busy. They began hammering the garage and barn with their big guns just as they had been ordered to do by Cheryl.

  Danny used his sniper rifle to pick off the gunners when the drivers stopped. Neither gunner was killed, but one was wounded and bleeding, sliding back inside to the relative safety of his HUMVEE and the other ducked inside to keep from being hit by the deadly fire.

  Jerry, from his vantage point, watched as rounds from the two bunkers hit dirt and metal on the three attacking HUMVEES.

  The first HUMVEE that had crashed into the culvert near the end of the drive wasn’t dead yet he soon realized. With everyone’s attention drawn to the other three, one of the soldiers put the first HUMVEE’s machine gun back in action. The sound caught Jerry’s attention and he snapped his view to where new shooting was coming from. Following the tracers, he saw a line of rounds walking its way up to the front of Cleve’s bunker.

  “Get down!” he hollered toward Cleve’s bunker, not bothering with the walkie-talkie. He couldn’t tell if anyone was hurt with the quick look he took over the sandbags. Buff and Nick were still working on trying to disable the third and fourth HUMVEEs.

  The driver of the second HUMVEE that’d come through the gate saw that stopping was a bad idea so began a serpentine drive further into the compound. He wanted to get out of view of where he presumed the snipers were getting shots at him.

  Buff was unable to get a good shot at the engine block or the driver. He shot out a tire and Nick peppered the side of the truck, but it was coming at them quickly. “Down!” Buff hollered at Nick as he saw the truck’s main gun train on their bunker.

  Nick died quickly when he was hit in the face by the attacking soldiers’ machine gun fire. Buff’s voice came over the radio next, his words accompanied by the sound of machine gun fire. “Nick’s gone,” he said sadly. He was breathing heavily.

  Everyone on the farm was listening to the exchange. Jerry was now calling out targets. There was no joy in his voice, just grim determination. They heard his strong voice “Go get ‘em Tia! They’re after Buff!” Tia’s Stryker, already idling, pulled out from behind the camouflaged berm.

  All she had to do was drive the big Stryker, looking through the periscope. The first time she’d ever driven one was when they called her to the depot to drive one back to the shelter.

  Tia stopped the HUMVEE 30 feet to the right and behind Buff’s bunker. Tim, the refugee from Flori
da, manning the machine gun atop the vehicle, was a former fisherman and not familiar with conservation of ammunition. He fed nearly the entire belt of ammo in and around the HUMVEE. It wasn’t professional, but it was loud and the HUMVEE wouldn’t be attacking anymore.

  Jerry watched Tim empty his machine gun and screamed for him to stop, but the man had seen vigilantes or brigands tear through his previous safe haven. He wasn’t going to let it happed again.

  HUMVEEs three and four were circling looking for a place to hide from the snipers during the attack on HUMVEE number two. They heard a different M-2 speaking and saw their number two HUMVEE being torn apart, but not from where the shooting was coming.

  The drivers of the HUMVEEs ordered someone to man the M-2 on their trucks again and kept moving. They hadn’t seen the Stryker, but they knew if they worked together, they could take out the bunkers on either side of the hill behind the barn and garage. Their job of destroying the garage and barn and making sure any vehicles were disabled was complete.

  They hadn’t expected such resistance and hoped the captain would call a retreat or send in a reserve force, but she was busy elsewhere. The third HUMVEE came around the hill just enough to shoot at Buff’s position while the wingman kept steady suppressive fire on Cleve’s position.

  As long as they kept moving in the swerving circle, they were a target too hard to hit and they would eventually get the people in the bunker.

  On the third circling they finally saw the armored vehicle and quickly switched tactics. Instead of circling and weaving an ever larger racetrack, they hugged the buildings, taking pot shots with their heavy guns at the bunkers as they passed between the buildings and skirting the edge of the hill.

  If Tim hadn’t used up his ammunition he might have been able to get off a shot at them. As it was, Tim hollered that he was out of bullets. Tia thought for a heartbeat, and then did the most unexpected action anyone could think of. “I learned to drive in Detroit, you bastards, and that’s my boyfriend you’re shooting at,” Tim heard her say as she took off after the HUMVEEs. Tim was forced to duck back inside the armored truck as Tia maneuvered her Stryker to chase the HUMVEEs and exposed the fighting vehicle to the M-2’s .50 caliber machine guns.

  Something must have jammed on the first HUMVEE’s machine gun, the one in the ditch, because the soldier who stuck his head out of the top was pulling the charging handle. Jerry saw the man clear a round and when it started shooting again it was providing harassing fire whenever they saw one of the farm’s defenders shooting. He changed targets from the bunker Buff was shooting from when he saw what Tim had just done to the second HUMVEE. When the Stryker didn’t fire at the HUMVEEs they knew its .50 cal was out of ammunition and began shooting at it with everything they had.

  “Kayla!” Jerry hollered into his radio. “We need you now!” The two HUMVEEs that had come through the front gate last were blistering the bunkers Jerry and his friends had built, and the one Stryker they had protecting the front of the farm with short, controlled bursts.

  One of the reasons five of the Strykers were positioned on the back side, the south side of the farm was because the 16-ton trucks needed some room to maneuver. The landscape in front of the farm lent itself to being defended by the bunkers that had been designed by the former Marine, Buff.

  Both the bunkers had been dug out by Danny and the forward facing side built up with tree trunks with slots cut in them for the people manning the bunker. The trunks were buried with rocks from the piles Jerry had removed from his fields over the years and covered with Alabama clay before being camouflaged. There was a narrow escape route in the rear of the bunkers and a grenade hole in the floor. If someone tossed a grenade through one of the shooting slots, the person inside the bunker could kick it down the grenade hole, where it would drop down a 4”-inch pipe that was set at an angle. When the grenade went off, the explosion would be absorbed by the ground and directed out the end of the pipe which was aimed to the rear of the bunker.

  Jerry looked over his sandbags. The first HUMVEE, the one leaning nose-first into the ditch and had a screaming man beneath it, had a new gunner shooting at Tia’s Stryker. She was fearless and reckless trying maneuver the Stryker to where she could ram the HUMVEEs. The M-2 on top of her truck was in pieces and two of the eight tires shredded. The rounds were deflected by the armor, but eventually, with the amount of fire being thrown at it, the Stryker would become Tia and Tim’s coffin.

  Jerry was more than 300 yards away from the first HUMVEE and about 200 feet above it. Tia’s Stryker wasn’t maneuverable enough to get a ramming shot, nor had the turn radius to box the HUMVEEs into a corner. Her vehicle was being shot from beneath her and she wouldn’t last another minute unless something was done.

  Neither Cleve nor Buff could shoot without exposing themselves to the HUMVEEs withering fire, so they were forced to keep their heads down.

  Jerry heard Kellie’s plea in his ear. “Someone help her.” Kellie was very fond of Tia and her plaintive cry pushed Jerry to do exactly what Cleve and Buff told him not to do. He got up on one knee, lifted the big L96 to his shoulder, glanced briefly through the scope and took a shot at the HUMVEE in the ditch.

  The shot knocked Jerry on his ass and he fell through the sandbags that were double stacked around his vantage point. He’d been kneeling and wasn’t prepared for the kick, even though he knew the big gun had one.

  The bullet missed his intended target, which was the gunner, but the 23-ounce round traveling at more than 3,000 feet per second tore through the mount of the gun that was shooting at Tia, causing it to fall onto the head of the man whose legs had been crushed. Jerry got off the ground and back to his knees to make sure the first HUMVEE stayed out of the fray. His shoulder ached, but he’d shoot again if he had to.

  Now, only the HUMVEEs Tia was chasing could shoot at her and they were not aiming very well. She had a few more minutes, though her Stryker was still being shot up. He hoped Kayla got the helicopter in the air in time.

  The action and the voices on the walkie-talkies had everyone riveted. They assumed Cheryl was in one of the main attacking vehicles and they were not willing to allow her to escape again or to chase them from the farm. Kayla was now less than a minute from lift off with the helicopter and, Jerry prayed silently, she would put an end to this ass kicking they were taking.

  “Hold out for two more minutes, Tia! Kayla’s coming!” Jerry hollered over the walkie-talkie. Everyone knew it was a risk to use the Apache. Kayla had flown helicopters before and was an accomplished pilot, but it had been years, and never in a flying weapon. The Apache was a state of the art gunship designed for one thing: killing. They never found a helmet for her, so the 30 mm in the nose of the helicopter was able to shoot only straight forward of the Apache.

  If the Apache failed to intimidate the invaders, or if it failed to shoot, the farm would be at a further disadvantage and against trained soldiers.

  A minute could be forever when lives hung in the balance.

  * * *

  Private Sweet had delivered PT uniforms the previous day to Amanda’s new home and she felt like using one this morning. She let Chopper out before changing. By the time she’d stretched and changed, he was ready for the run too.

  It was cooler than previous morning, but the sun was up and bright in her eyes. While running, she made a mental note to replace the sunglasses she’d left in Alaska. There were a few others out running as well. She fell into the back of a squad of six soldiers whose pace matched hers. The soldier who was singing cadence had a good voice and it was comfortingly familiar for her.

  The squad ran a varied course and varying speeds. Chopper kept pace easily. After about 45 minutes the leader of the squad ordered them to a quick time march in front of the lower enlisted men’s barracks. Amanda stayed with the squad as they did warm downs and when the leader dismissed the squad for showers she caught him before he went inside.

  “I’m Sergeant Saunders,” she introduced herself a
s she rubbed Chopper’s ears. He was drooling from the run. “Do you do a run every morning?”

  “Yes, we do sergeant,” the man told her, as he snapped to parade rest.

  “At ease soldier, at ease. Relax. I’m not here for all the lock step. We’re soldiers, but this isn’t basic training.”

  The young man relaxed a little, but Amanda could see he was still very new to the Army. “Do you have a name?” she asked him.

  “Private Pinkston, sergeant.”

  “Well Private Pinkston Sergeant, this is Chopper. He and I like a good run in the morning before breakfast. I enjoyed it and by the looks of him, he did too.”

  “Just Private Pinkston,” he corrected her, not getting the joke until after he’d said it. When he did, he finally smiled and hung his head. “Sorry. We try to start around six every work day. Sometimes we have more, sometimes fewer, but Lt. Nila knows I was a runner in high school. She encourages the soldiers to take part in PT, but the work they do every day is rather intensive, so no one is going to get out of shape if they don’t do PT.

  “And I think the L-T doesn’t want to piss anyone off. We need all the help we can get from everyone.

  “What do you do here, Private Pinkston?”

  “Today I will be transferring more fuel to the storage tanks again. I’ve been doing it for a week now. We’ve got almost 5,000 gallons this week.

  “What about you, sergeant? I saw you come from officer’s country….” Amanda knew immediately why the private stopped his questions. He was thinking she was new here and some officer was trying to impress her by “sharing” his house with her while she got “acclimated.”

  “Oh shit. No, it’s nothing like you’re thinking. Chopper is the reason I’m in officer’s country. He can smell mutants.”

  “Oh! You’re the lady who killed ten mutants and saved 20 people from Canada. We all heard about you yesterday. I really thought you’d be taller.”