Hell Happened (Book 3): Hell Released

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  On the surface, the ocean was still choppy and Garrick went up to look at the stars before going to bed. Marissa joined him on the hull. Garrick asked her what they might find in the morning. She shrugged and held onto him as the boat rolled in the choppy seas.

  “It’s going to be bad, that’s all I know.”

  Garrick asked her if she knew someplace he could get some sleep. She told him there was one compartment that was still locked…the captain’s compartment.

  “I couldn’t. This was his boat and he did everything to save us.”

  “I figured that so I had someone pick the lock. We wrapped his body in a white sheet and put him in the torpedo tube. I’m sorry if it was the wrong thing to do, but you’re the captain now and you need some sleep.”

  Garrick didn’t know what to say to her and she avoided making eye contact with him. “I need some sleep too and since I’m your executive officer now, I’m sharing your room.”

  As tired as he was, he didn’t argue but he wondered at what point in the day he’d gotten an executive officer. He stopped by the control room to tell Seaman Rodrigo Vasquez he would have the conn and to wake him at dawn.

  Garrick slept in his uniform and Marissa in the dry clothes she’d found after being rescued. It was narrow but they were able to fit on the lone bed aboard the sub that wasn’t occupied and in a room with a door that closed.

  Both were asleep in minutes and both were still tired when Seaman Vasquez was calling through the door. “Sir! We can see the shore and you better get up here.” Garrick almost knocked Marissa to the floor when he sat up, forgetting where he was and who was with him.

  Both scrambled to put on shoes and get to the conn.

  Shore was still beyond their line of sight and the sun was too far below the horizon but they could see what had caused such excitement in Vasquez. The cameras on the mast were raised to their highest point. At full zoom they could see the flames from shore. The ocean was on fire. “Fuel from the naval base,” Garrick surmised. “The entire base must have been destroyed and fuel washed out into the ocean.”

  Garrick ordered the sub to head north by northeast until they could see dry land but avoiding the fire on the ocean. “We need to get to on land because we can’t survive on this sub for long. Let’s see what we can find today.”

  ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

  Col. Russ Hammond put on an ASU, Army Combat Uniform, for the first time in more than a year. Lisa had chosen well on the size he wore and even cleaned off the threads that were always found on new uniforms. He found the boots, though unusually wide, were not uncomfortable. She’d even put rank on his patrol cap and blouse. There wasn’t a unit patch on his shoulder or a nametag, but there was a reversed United States flag and the U.S. Army tag.

  He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Except for the missing items on his uniform and hair which was too long, he decided he didn’t look terrible.

  He went downstairs thinking about making some coffee, but Lisa had it already brewing. He didn’t know where she found cold milk, but there was some on the table with a box of shredded wheat and a quarter slice of melon.

  “You’re running late, soldier,” Lisa said by way of saying good morning. She already had a cup of coffee and was reading the book she’d taken with her the previous night. She’d also changed into some clean clothes, something she could work in.

  “I am a little out of practice,” he told her. “I bet I don’t get to play golf today.”

  “Probably not. And I bet I don’t get to go shopping.” She sipped from her cup and set her book down.

  “What are our plans?”

  “Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought. I need to find out what assets our people have then see what we can do with them. We need a power source, we need a….”

  “Whoa there, hoss,” she interrupted. “‘Our’ people, ‘what we can do’? I didn’t join no Army. I am a civilian and always will be. I don’t salute no man.”

  “Absolutely, my dear civilian. I’m going to use you as my liaison. I can talk military and pretend there is still a military, but most of the people we find are going to be civilians. We are going to find a lot more civilians than we are military people. We’re going to need everyone to help make a survivable community.”

  “What makes you think I want to be in charge of anything?” she asked him, getting up to refill her and his cups.

  “You pose a valid question, Mrs. Schaeffer,” he said digging deeper into the melon she’d put out for him. “And I’ve been presumptuous in my plans. Would you care to be my assistant?”

  “I might, Colonel Hammond, on three conditions.”

  “And those conditions are?”

  “Condition one is you don’t keep secrets from me or talk down to me.”

  Russ nodded.

  “Condition two is you don’t treat me like a soldier. I’m not one and don’t want to be one.”

  Russ nodded again.

  “And condition three is that I don’t have to move any more dead bodies. I’ll work on any project you need me to, but I had nightmares last night and I don’t want them again. Promise me I’ll never have to move another dead body and I’ll be your liaison from now until the Rapture, if that wasn’t what last month was all about.”

  “I think I can live with those conditions, Mrs. Schaeffer.”

  “And call me Lisa,” she said with a smile.

  The two talked some more about what Russ had planned for the day while Russ finished his breakfast. He was putting his bowl in the sink when he saw Capt. Eldred exiting his house across the road. Russ thought meeting the man outside would be the best way to set the precedent of not visiting someone’s house without an invitation.

  Russ asked Lisa when she’d be ready and she said she was right now and that she had been waiting on him.

  They met Eldred before he even got to their porch.

  The captain saluted when he saw Hammond. “Good morning, sir, ma’am” the younger man said. “I wasn’t sure what time you wanted to start the day.”

  Hammond returned the salute out of reflex. He was about to tell the captain there wasn’t an Army anymore, but then thought better of it. If they were setting up a community, there was going to need to be a police force of some sort. He recalled what Lisa had told him about the men she’d seen shooting at everything and the other group who had a woman in chains strapped across the hood of a car.

  “Good morning, captain. I think, because most of the people we’ll be working with and supporting will be civilians, I think 0800 will be a good starting time every morning. It’s not too early and we won’t need lights to see.”

  “I’ll make sure everyone knows, sir.” The captain said, falling into step with the colonel and Lisa.

  “I think the first thing we need to do is find a meeting place. Does anyone have the keys to the National Guard Armory?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. No one has tried or said anything about it.”

  “Well then, our first order of business is getting in that building and setting up shop. We need a place from which to work that isn’t in our homes.”

  Other people started coming out of their houses. Some of them wore uniforms, others the same clothes they’d had on the previous day. Their moods ran the gamut of depression and dark doom to denial and disinterest. Russ knew it was going to be difficult to get the ball rolling and keep morale high.

  “Good morning everyone,” he said to them. It was just chilly enough he could see his breath and he was glad he’d worn a field jacket. “I know its cold out, so the first thing we’re going to do is break into the armory and turn the heat on. Then we’re going to find out what kind of experience we have in our little group and start making our lives a little more comfortable.”

  That got him a few cheers and everyone broke up and headed for their vehicles.

  When they got to the armory they were not surprised to find out that it was locked up tight. They tested every door and looked for keys in
all the cars that were in the parking lot but didn’t find anything. Russ was just about to order a door be broken into when Sgt. Bare found a window that wasn’t fully closed. It took a little convincing but she got the window open and crawled through.

  She ran through the building to get to the front door and let everyone else in.

  They all found offices and staked their claims for the people who wanted one. Without power, however, the furnaces weren’t working and it was cold in the building. They wouldn’t get any real work done until they had heat.

  Russ sent Eldred and Bare off to see if there were any generators in the armory’s motor pool. He asked a couple of the other soldiers to search the building to make sure there were no bodies.

  He asked Lisa if she and the other civilians would drive next door to the commissary to see how much food was there and if any could be salvaged for a buffet while the heat was turned on in the armor. He sent the Marine Lance Corporal with them, not as security, but as someone who would move any bodies if they found any.

  Just as Lisa was leaving, the captain came running in. “Colonel, you’re not going to believe this, but there’s seven brand new 60 kilowatt generators. You gotta come see this!”

  Russ smiled at his enthusiasm. “Instead of looking at them, why don’t we hook one into the power supply for this building? Did you find a place to put one?”

  “Uh, no sir. I don’t know anything about them. Do you?”

  “I’ve set up a few. Let’s go get some tools,” he said getting up from his desk.

  It took two hours of trial and error and process of elimination, but Russ and Myles eventually got the generator set up, fueled and hooked into the power for the building. Doing houses, like the previous afternoon was one thing, but a 60 kw into a building was a different level of electrical work. Lisa returned from the commissary with some food. She told him a lot of the food could be salvaged because the store was as cold as outside at night. The days hadn’t been so warm that there was much spoilage.

  Russ gave Sgt. Bare the privilege of starting the generator after it was fueled and the oil checked. Russ checked over the wiring with one of the civilians who knew a little bit about electrical wiring in houses. They couldn’t find any faults in the work.

  The generator needed a jump start from one of the HUMVEEs, but once it started, the lights came on in the armory, just like it had in the houses.

  A cheer went up.

  It took a little time to find the furnaces and get them working again. They were still being fed fuel through the gas lines. Russ knew that wouldn’t last long, but for his first morning as commander, he didn’t think they’d done too poorly.

  He called a meeting for noon and asked for everyone to be in the conference room. They’d have lunch together and talk about what projects they should give priority.

  Russ and Lisa went to his office to discuss what she thought he could reasonably expect from the people with whom she’d worked through the morning. She’d taken an office across the hall from him and when she entered the room, the computer was on and all the lights in the ceiling appeared to be working. Russ hadn’t been so lucky. Three of his lights didn’t work and when his computer was powered on, it refused to boot past the post screen. Russ didn’t know much about computers, so that was something else he was going to have to get someone else to work on.

  Lisa had also acquired herself her own transportation so she wouldn’t have to depend on Russ to get around. She had left her car at the accounting center on the other side of the base. She had no emotional attachment to the car she’d left over there, but she had formed one with the 2013 GMC Denali she found in the parking lot of the hospital behind the commissary. The keys had been left in the ignition and she’d found it when they were looking for an open door to the building.

  Russ’ office also had a small refrigerator in the corner and when he opened it, he found it filled with water bottles. Lisa asked him if it was still working and he told her it was. She went to her truck and brought in some lunch meat and bread from the commissary, along with some pears and peaches that still looked to be edible.

  “Most of the bread was showing signs of mold, but there was a rack in back that must have been the most recent delivery before the store closed. We ought to eat it as soon as possible,” she told him and she began preparing sandwiches for them.

  All 14 people were in the conference room at noon. They’d left the head of the table for Russ and a seat next to him for Lisa. Capt. Eldred took the other end of the table with Sgt. Bare to his left. Everybody had brought something to eat and drink.

  There was small talk through the meal. But the moral seemed better than earlier this morning. Maybe it was the warm conference room or the fact that they had electricity, Russ didn’t know, but it was good to see a few smiles around the table, even if the smiles were on faces that had seen the horrors of the end of the world.

  When everyone had finished eating he stood up and walked over to the large dry erase board on the wall. He’d already checked and found a pen that would work. He started writing on the board.

  “Here’s what I think we need to get done over the next week or so,” he told them. He wrote the numeral one on the board and circled it. “Power,” he said and wrote it on the board. “We need to get one of the generators Capt. Eldred found and hook it up for the commissary. Lisa said there’s a lot of food over there that hasn’t spoiled yet and we need to save as much of it as we can. We also need power to run our houses. Right now we’re using six small ones to run six houses, but with the generators we have, we can run two dozen houses on just one. That saves fuel and maintenance time.

  “Soon we’re going to not be getting gas for our stoves and furnaces from the gas lines, so we’re going to have to bring in propane tanks. We should be able to find plenty of them and keep them filled for several years, which should be enough time to set up an alternative source for heating and cooking.

  “Two,” he said, writing it on the board and circling it. “Water. Water is life and right now we’re getting water from a tower, but that’s going to run out eventually. We need to power the filtration system and pumps to fill the tower so we have running water, or we need to sink our own wells. I know very little about the process. Hopefully one of us here knows something about it more or we find someone who does.”

  One of the civilians raised his hand and Russ pointed to him. “I worked with a well driller when I was in high school. If we can find the equipment, I think I could drill you some holes.”

  “Thank you, sir. As a matter of fact, we’ll be discussing all our skills in a few minutes. Right now, I want to give all of you and idea of what we’re looking at for the future.

  “Third is a septic system,” he said as he wrote on the board. “Like everything else this takes power, but it’s also probably the easiest to overcome. All the houses and buildings already have the piping, we’ll probably just reroute it to some far away basin or septic tank. We don’t have many people here now, but I think we can safely say there are more people than us alive. I don’t think the 14 of us can do much damage to the earth by burning and burying our garbage.” That brought nods from everyone.

  “That brings me to number four, security. If there were two mutants, there’s probably more. If there were six thugs shooting every thing, there will be more. Lisa also said there were some who had a woman chained to the hood of their car and that means lawlessness. Now it’s up to you what type of government you’ll want, but right now, you have selected me as your leader. I’ve been a soldier for more than 30 years and I believe the United States, for all its faults, was the best country in the world. We had bad laws and bad politicians and bad business people and racists and bigots and everything else that was wrong, but we also had a constitution I swore to defend. I think we should continue with that tradition, which means we have human and individual rights and someone is going to have to protect them.

  “That means weapons and, as difficult as
this is to say, somewhere to hold prisoners or punish someone. We don’t know yet what kind of person is still out there, but we can’t believe we’ll find good people like us all the time. Where there are good people, there are also those who will want what good people have and try to take it. We have to be prepared for this eventuality.

  He wrote the number “5” and beside it the word “Food.”

  “I don’t think I need to say much more about this. We can salvage what we can, collect all the non-perishables we can and store everything we can. The reason this is down so far on the list is because right now, we can salvage enough non-perishables for a year or so.

  “Eventually, however, we’re going to have to be able to grow and raise our own food. We might as well start now.”

  Russ wrote the number six on the board. “Medicine. We need someone who can fix our boo-boos, stitch our cuts, set our bones or perform surgery if someone’s appendix goes bad. We have a fully stocked hospital down the road, we need someone who can work there and keep us healthy.”

  On the second white board, Russ wrote the number seven twice as big as he’d written all the others and circled it four times. Beside it he wrote “MORE PEOPLE.”

  “This one is self-explanatory. Fourteen people are not enough to start a sustainable community. We might last a few years, but within a generation, two at the outside, problems will crop up we can’t even imagine now. There are 14 of us here and we were all in this area when all the death happened.

  “Indianapolis had a population of more than 800,000 people so there might be a lot more people alive in the area. If we can bring them into our community, we can increase our chances of making a community that will survive.”

  “Why?” said one of the men sitting in the middle of the table. He was wearing a one-piece jump suit with the name “Fred” sewn on the left breast pocket. His hands, calloused and dirty, were clasped in front of him on the table. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few weeks, or showered in at least a few days.

  “Why?” Russ asked him. “Why what?”