Hell Happened (Book 3): Hell Released

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  Within two days, the North Carolina had lost contact with the other sub completely. Finley had taken the conservative route and kept his boat underwater and on recycled air for as long as he felt his crew could handle it.

  A message from the Stennis indicated they proposed interdiction with the cruise ship Pride of America. The Pride of America was broadcasting a distress signal and the senior officer still alive aboard the Stennis ordered a course change to intercept, as was the mariner’s respect for all who traveled on the high seas.

  Through the cameras on the AN/BVS-1 telescoping photonics masts located outside the pressure hull of the North Carolina, the equipment that replaced the periscope, those aboard the sub could see the two massive ships move to within several hundred yards of each other. Visual feeds from the masts were displayed on LCD monitors in the command center.

  It was a bad idea for whoever was currently commanding the carrier. There were not enough sailors still alive to affect any type of real rescue, but the history of mariners risking their own lives to save another mariner had been an unwritten law for hundreds of years. The world might be dying, but the unwritten code of the sea was strong with the senior officer aboard the Stennis.

  The Pride of America was a cruise ship under Norwegian registry that had been on the Hawaii circuit. The people aboard had been on various length of cruises, some to Hawaii some on the round trip from the mainland, to Hawaii, then back home.

  The Pride had few crewmen left. The most senior was a 27-year-old concierge, Marissa Lawrence, and she was the one who had called for help. There was also a laundry worker and three room attendants remaining from the crew manifest. There were 48 of the passengers still alive.

  According to the most senior officer still aboard the Stennis, 52 people were taken off the Pride of America in total. When the rescued were aboard, the lieutenant ordered the massive carrier back to five knots to continue the last 100 miles to Pearl Harbor. Two hours later, the lieutenant was dead, as were six of those he’d rescued.

  The last hundred miles to the mouth of Pearl Harbor took 20 hours for the Stennis and the North Carolina. Crewmen from two of the remaining cruisers and one frigate shuttled over to the carrier and the smaller ships were left abandoned after being steered away from the island.

  Those ships were abandoned in favor of the bigger carrier because of the available food supplies if something went wrong and only the carrier had anyone still alive who could operate the engines with any degree of safety.

  The North Carolina sidled up beside the carrier and the 102 people still alive aboard the flat top stood on the deck of the submarine as it shuttled them to the pier where they could get on dry land. The sub never opened it hatches.

  The senior medic aboard, Petty Officer 1st Class Garrick Lindsey, and the captain agreed the best chance those on the sub had, was to wait out the incubation period of the virus. It was as scientific of a solution they could come up with for surviving what had killed more than 7,000 of their brother sailors in the task force.

  No one knew how long it might take. They were working by guesses but the North Carolina was the only vessel of Task Force Stennis to arrive back at Pearl with no deaths due to the virus.

  The Stennis dropped anchor outside the port. The task force which departed Pearl Harbor and San Diego more than a month earlier with 7,451 sailors returned to post with 211 people, 119 of them were sailors aboard the North Carolina.

  ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

  Col. Russ Hammond drove directly to the golf course on the old Ft. Benjamin Harrison military base. The base was a far cry from what it was when he’d been stationed at the base as an instructor at the Defense Information School back in the 1980s.

  The Post Exchange was still here, the gym and the Finance and Accounting Center, along with a few Indiana National Guard units still called his old stomping grounds home, but DINFOS had left along with the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who attended classes there.

  Hammond had returned because there was no other place he felt so at home. Hammond had retired from the United States Army the year before. He had a small house near the base and did consulting work for the government to keep busy and add a few dollars to his pension.

  Before retiring he’d commanded a special unit of civil affairs experts and the government would call him in for especially difficult cases. Russ felt he’d grown too old to be traipsing all over the world with the three dozen other civil affairs specialists he commanded relocating refugees, providing humanitarian aid and laying ground work for future relations. He’d worked for the Army and the United Nations in his career and seen 19 different countries.

  It was time for him to retire when he’d seen enough death and pain in his 62 years of life and 30 years of military service.

  The colonel thought retiring and settling down, do a little fishing and golfing, was the way he was going to finish out a life of service to his country. His wife, who’d looked forward to his retirement as much as he had, was one of the first to die from the great plague. His son had never made it away from West Point. Russ had shed tears for both.

  He was by himself waiting for death. He was sure he would die. There was nothing left in life giving him a reason to go on. All his friends were dead now. With the passing of his wife, he watched as the neighbors too fell to the virus that was killing the population.

  There was nothing he could do to help them and at the end of the third week, there was no one living within at least 25 blocks, the distance he’d walked since the end, of his home.

  Col. Hammond woke in the morning and looked out the front window of his house. The car that had wrecked a week ago against the stop sign at the end of the street was still there. Russ had tried to help the poor victim, but by the time he got to the car, the woman was dead, as were the three children in the back. He buried the four in a common grave in the same cemetery he’d buried his wife.

  Russ didn’t know why he was still breathing.

  Throughout his career in the Army he’d been renowned for being a thoughtful, intelligent and kind man, prone to thinking outside the box and finding ways to accomplish a mission within the structure of the military, or at least within the spirit of military regulations.

  For this catastrophe, Russ had no idea what to do.

  There was nothing for him to do.

  Everyone he loved was gone. All his friends were dead. All the contacts he had in the military were dead. He could dial the phone all day and no one would answer.

  Russ didn’t know why he’d been spared, or for how long he would be, but he wasn’t going to sit in his house where his wife and he had settled down and wait for death to take him.

  In his life, he traveled all over the world, but with retirement he was looking forward to traveling the United States. He and his wife had visited the gulf coast, the Grand Canyon and the locks at Sault Ste. Marie Michigan. They’d made plans to visit the sites in D.C. this year, but those plans went with the plague. He’d been to D.C. dozens of times but had never stopped to see the sights.

  Looking out the front window this morning, Russ decided today he would drive onto Ft. Benjamin Harrison. He had played golf on its course a thousand times and felt the need to surround himself with something familiar.

  Russ was still in good shape for a man of any age. He was adamant about eating well and keeping his body in good shape. Except for letting his slightly graying hair grow to longer than the standard military cut, he still looked like he did in his military portrait. His back was straight and strong on his 6’ 4” frame and he could still run three miles in the morning in less than 25 minutes. His jaw was square and smallish ears which hugged his head. His eyebrows hadn’t begun to curl and while he needed reading glasses, he hadn’t been in the mood to read and didn’t wear them.

  His house was without power, but water still came from the taps and gas to the stove. He heated water and shaved before heading to the course. His face in the mirror showed some age, but it wasn’t an ol
d man’s face staring back, rather more of a weathered and experienced face. He had caps on two of his front teeth that had been knocked out during a fight in Afghanistan, and his nose was imperfect from the rock that had shattered it during riots in South Africa. A scar on his neck was the only thing visible from the bullet that had nearly taken his life in Iraq four years earlier.

  For a 62-year-old man, Russ wasn’t displeased with who looked back at him in the mirror. His wife hadn’t minded either, and from the rumors she passed on, neither were other women.

  He loaded his clubs into his Sierra truck and drove the short distance to the base. Cars were wrecked on the highway, but not so many as he couldn’t drive around. He drove past the main gate and the Finance and Accounting building. It was the first time he’d been on the post since the plague and martial law had been declared.

  He pulled into the parking lot of the 19th Hole, the bar and entertainment building beside the course. There was a nip in the air this early in the spring, but Russ didn’t mind. Some of the places he’d served over the years were much less hospitable.

  The golf carts were still lined up. The electric ones were all dead from lack of charging, but the ranger’s cart started up on the first try. Russ drove over to his truck and loaded his clubs and drove out to the first tee.

  No one had tended the course in more than a month, but this early in the spring, it wasn’t in terrible shape. A few warm up swings and Russ drove his first ball long and straight down the fairway.

  He smiled. It might be a good day.

  Two hours later, Russ was finishing the 17th hole. He was rather pleased with his play, shooting a respectable 85 so far. If he could par the 18th, he’d shoot less than 90 for first time in more than a dozen years.

  He was teeing up for the 18th hole, thinking about how much he wished he had someone to whom to brag. He thought about how his wife had always encouraged his golfing and outdoor activities and even learned to play the game early in their marriage just as he had learned to play her game of tennis.

  Three wags of the club in his address, then a torque on the back swing and Russ, using his three-metal driver hit the ball 200-yards safely down the right side of the fairway, a few feet inside the deeper fringe. From there he’d have a nine iron to the green and if he laid it onto the green well enough, maybe even another birdie putt.

  He jumped and dropped his club when someone applauded his drive.

  He spun and crouched, picking his club back off the ground in case he had to use it as a weapon. He was surprised anyone else was alive, but more surprised that person was on this course watching him play golf and clapping at the drive.

  “Nice shot, mister,” the woman was saying as she stopped clapping.

  “Who…what….why…who…?” Russ stammered looking for the woman who was hiding in some bushes behind his cart. It wasn’t easy to startle Russ, but the woman had.

  It was a situation so unbelievable to him he couldn’t find the right words or the right questions to ask. He didn’t know which to start with.

  “I’ve been following you since you drove onto base,” the woman said. “I was in the accounting center and saw you drive by. You’re one of the few people in this area still alive, but you didn’t act like the other ones I saw, so I thought I’d follow you.”

  “There’re others alive?”

  “Yes, sir, but you don’t want to meet them,” she said as she came out from behind the bushes she had been hiding behind. “The first ones I saw a week ago were six or seven men with guns and they were just shooting up stuff. I saw another group of three guys and a woman, but they had a person was chained to the hood of their truck. I really didn’t want to meet them.

  “Then there’re the mutants on the far side of the base. I saw them two nights ago and they were feeding on some bodies. There were two of them but they were making so much noise, they didn’t hear me. That’s when I went and hid in the accounting center.

  Russ started relaxing some as the woman told her story. He wondered if she were a little crazy. He hadn’t seen anyone or anything like she’d described.

  “When you drove by in your truck by yourself, I thought I’d follow and see what’s up. So far, you’ve played honest golf and my dad told me a man who plays honest golf is an honest man.”

  Russ stood there looking at the woman. She was probably in her early 40s, half a head shorter than Russ; she was fit, but not skinny, with short dark brown hair with a few strands of gray, accenting rather than aging, and curiously vivid green eyes. She was also armed with a standard Army M-16A2 rifle, with the magazine in it. Russ hadn’t thought to arm himself, thinking there was no one from whom he had to defend himself.

  The woman, who had answered his immediate questions with her burst of a story, now answered his next few.

  “I’m Mrs. Lisa Schaeffer. My husband was Maj. Steve Schaeffer. He was assigned to the accounting center for the last three years. He died three weeks ago and I’ve been waiting to die ever since.” She shrugged. “I guess I’m immune from the plague, like you and those others are.”

  When she finally gave him a chance to speak, he did. “I’m Col. Russ Hammond. I was an instructor here back when there was a school over there,” he told her pointing to the east. “My wife, who also died, and I enjoyed golfing so I thought this morning would be a good time to try my luck.”

  “Where’ve you been living? How’ve you survived?” Russ asked the woman who had kept the M16 pointing in his general direction, but hadn’t really aimed it at him.

  “I was living off post, not far from here. I left to come on post after Steve died. We don’t have any power now and I was out looking for food and seeing if there was anyone else still alive who didn’t look threatening. I was going to look around Indianapolis today and was in my husband’s office picking up a photo of him when I saw you drive by.”

  Russ ran his fingers through his hair. This woman had a way of staying sane in the insanity that was all around them. That said something about her. She talked a lot, but maybe it was just nervousness.

  “Well, I’m not going to attack you, Mrs. Schaeffer, so could you please point that thing in another direction,” he said indicating the gun. “I’ve been shot once and it isn’t any fun at all.”

  She smiled, showing a line of teeth that had obviously been seen by a dentist regularly. There were the beginning lines of crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes indicating she smiled a lot. His request actually made her blush a little.

  “Sorry, Col. Hammond, but I didn’t think I could totally trust you until I watched you play golf. Are you going to finish this hole? I’ve been keeping track,” she said pulling out a little piece of paper and a short pencil, “and you’re at 83 so far.”

  “Actually, I had to assess myself a two-stroke penalty because I accidentally grounded my club in that bunker back on 12. I’m at 85. And please, call me Russ. I guess my former military rank doesn’t mean much anymore. I doubt there is any military any more.”

  Lisa made a face, like she wasn’t surprised a man like Russ, who was playing alone, who thought no one was watching him, kept honest track of his own penalties. “Okay, Russ, if you call me Lisa.

  “Can I ride in your cart? I’m a little tired from following you without you seeing me.”

  “Please do, Lisa. Let’s finish this hole and then find us a lunch. I’m starting to get a little hungry.”

  The two survivors got in the cart and found Russ’ ball. His second shot fell short of the green, but rolled close enough so Russ pulled out his putter.

  During the ride, Lisa told Russ of the two other groups of survivors and more about the two mutants she’d seen from a distance. Russ let her talk, not needing to ask many questions because the woman had an eye for detail.

  Russ’s first putt was to within three-feet of the hole. He was lining up to finish his round of 89 when they heard the machine gun fire in the distance.

  Lisa ducked behind the cart and Russ dashed off to
kneel beside her. The gun fire had come from a good distance away, but they weren’t taking any chances. For all the strength and bravado Lisa had showed earlier, the gun fire frightened her and she reached over the cart to get the M16 she’d put between the seats.

  The gun fire went on for a full minute before the silence returned. Russ and Lisa waited a few minutes more to make sure it was finished. Lisa looked at Russ, whose back was against the cart. He appeared to be lost in thought.

  “What’re you thinking?”

  “I’m not really sure. There’s obviously more people alive than you and me on this post this morning. I think maybe we ought to search out where they’re at and see if they are of like mind as you and me or if they are like one of those other groups you saw.”

  Lisa nodded. “Can you finish your game first? I want to know if you’re going to break 90 or choke on the three-foot putt.”

  Russ shook his head, not believing what the woman was saying. “Seriously?” he asked her.

  “Yes sir. I want to know if I hang around with you if you’re going to crack at a little pressure.”

  Russ couldn’t believe this woman. He’d left his putter on the green. He thought about the gun fire he’d just heard. From the sound of it, it was probably a distance away, but it was still gun fire and Russ was real sure he shouldn’t be making a target of himself by walking out on the green.

  Also, there was no reason he needed to prove his integrity or strength of nerve to this woman. What he knew he should do was stop playing around and find something with which to defend himself in case he did run into some bad guys.

  He looked at the green over the hood of the cart. His ball was still there. His putter was lying right beside the ball. He had 88 on his scorecard and if he sank the putt, he’d be happy with the round. It might be the last one he’d ever get a chance to play in his life.