Hell Happened (Book 3): Hell Released

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  In the darkness, he heard the two women breathing slow as they were falling off to sleep. He felt Danielle’s cold feet against his legs, but her warm body against his side and Yvonne’s breasts against his ribs as she breathed warm air across his neck. It had been so long since he’d slept with a woman and now there were two curled up beside him, wanting his security.

  “Shit,” he said, barely above a whisper.

  “Oh my God,” Yvonne said.

  “Yup,” Chuck told her. “I gotta piss.”

  ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

  Garrick and Marissa shared the bunk in the captain’s compartment fully clothed.

  Both were at their limit of endurance. Neither had the energy to feel uncomfortable and with all the recent death worldwide and the ships on which they’d been deployed, the re-affirmation of someone else being alive and close, helped both of them sleep.

  Marissa was up first in the morning and showered in the captain’s head before putting on the same clothes she’d worn the day before. Garrick did the same and was dressed by the time she had coffee made for them.

  They avoided talking about sleeping together, there were more important things to think and talk about.

  On their way to the bridge, they stepped around other refugees who had found blankets and were sleeping in the passageway. If this had still been a submarine on maneuvers, it would have been unacceptable and dangerous. With the sinking of the aircraft carrier Stennis and the sub overcrowded with mostly civilians and a few sailors, people were sleeping any place they could find.

  Garrick entered the bridge and Vasquez, who had been left in charge of making sure the boat didn’t run into anything, was asleep in the captain’s chair. There were two new sailors at the helm driving who Garrick didn’t recognize. He placed his hand on Vasquez’s shoulder and the young man was startled awake.

  “”Petty Officer,” he said, wiping sleep from his eyes. “I’m sorry, I was….”

  “Don’t worry about it, Vasquez. No harm, no foul and you got some badly needed sleep. What’s the status of the sub?”

  “We’re still steaming at about five knots on a heading of,” he got up and looked at the digital compass, “on a heading of 345 degrees. We’re keeping a distance of about 15 nautical miles from the flames and debris in the ocean.”

  “Thanks, Vasquez. Now go down to the mess hall, see if you can’t get something to eat then go to the captain’s quarters and get yourself some real sleep. Come back when you’re not tired, not when you wake up.”

  “Thank you, sir. Seaman Recruit Nguyen,” Vasquez pointed to the Asian man sitting at one of the helm stations, “has been on as long as I have and probably needs some sleep too.”

  Garrick walked up to the young man, he didn’t look to be more than 18 years old, and put his hand on his shoulder. “You too, Seaman, breakfast and sleep. When you guys go to the mess hall, send some sailors back up to take your place. I’ll drive for a while Marissa captains the boat.”

  The two men smiled half-heartedly and left the bridge. There were several other people on the bridge, but they were there because of the lack of room, and not contributing to the operation of the submarine U.S.S. North Carolina.

  Garrick sat down at the helm, a station he knew how to operate from his training, but had never operated outside of simulations. Marissa sat in the captain’s chair and looked at the monitors that were focused on the distant flames and black smoke still billowing skyward.

  “Marissa, would you pick up that handset and ask if there is anyone in engineering awake, please?”

  Garrick found there were three sailors working in engineering. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best they could do. They said everything appeared to be working well, but admitted there was too much they didn’t know and they were doing their best with the manuals to keep things from going critical.

  Garrick asked if it would be safe to increase speed and the one on the handset said he couldn’t see any problems or dials in the red.

  Garrick turned the dial to increase the sub’s speed. Garrick knew he needed to get these people on land. Much more time on the sub and fights would begin to break out. Food would soon become an issue as would sleeping arrangements.

  The fires burning 15 miles or so off to starboard were also a detriment to the morale of everyone. From their vantage point, it looked like the Great State of California was on fire. Garrick admitted to himself that even he would feel better if they could see land without the flames and smoke.

  Two new crewmen reported to the bridge and took their place, replacing Garrick and the other young man took the second empty seat. Garrick gave them crash courses on the operation of the equipment, but the sub wasn’t going to dive again if there was anything Garrick could do to avoid it. The boat was on the surface and with the hatches open, as safe as he could make it.

  He moved over to the navigation maps and looked at the coast of California. He had a good idea where they were at by the simple expedient of taking the time they were doing five knots per hour, times the number of hours they had been going in that direction. He knew he could be wildly off, but he wanted to have some idea and it wouldn’t hurt morale if the people aboard didn’t get the impression they were lost.

  Marissa came over and looked over his shoulder. As a concierge aboard the Pride of America, she was well-beyond her skill set. Just to do something, she told him she was going to go find them some more coffee and check on the passengers. “Good idea, on both counts. Thanks,” he told her with sincerity.

  The submarine worked its way along the coast and eventually the fires fell behind them. Late in the afternoon, a cheer went up when they finally saw land on the horizon that wasn’t obscured by smoke. They’d passed by San Louis Obispo, Monterey and Santa Cruz according to what Garrick could figure from the maps and what he could see through the scopes and binoculars. All three cities had been wiped off the face of the earth and Garrick could see no place in all the debris to get the sub close enough to land to safely get all the passengers aboard.

  Early evening came as the sub sailed abreast of San Francisco Bay. The bay looked wider than the maps showed and Garrick realized all of San Francisco was gone. The land from San Francisco to Pacifica had either sunk below the waves or had been washed out into the ocean.

  The sea was choppy, and the depth gauge on the boat registered 72 feet. Garrick scratched his three-day-old beard and called for Marissa to come to the bridge. He had a feeling this was where the sub should head inshore but he wanted someone else’s opinion. If Marissa thought they should continue north and look for lesser damage along the Oregon sea coast, he might be talked into it.

  She entered the bridge looking like she’d worked a full day with the people onboard. Most of them were people from the Stennis and before that the Pride of America and she was the senior crewperson left from the America.

  “Have you seen this?” he asked, pointing to the shore.

  “Yea, looks bad, but things aren’t getting better back there,” she said pointing over her shoulder. “People are on edge. They want to get off this sub and onto land and start looking for surviving family. I can’t say as I blame them.”

  Garrick nodded. “Okay, Vasquez,” he said to the young man who looked much better after a day’s worth of sleep and two good meals. “Keep an eye on the depth level and see how far we can get inland before dark. Keep our speed slow and stop if we get into water shallower than 40 feet. I think I remember our draw being about 30 feet, but let’s give ourselves a margin of error.”

  “Aye, captain,” Vasquez said over his shoulder and began turning the sub. Vasquez began calling him captain earlier in the afternoon and Garrick had been about to tell him to knock it off, but in reality, he was the captain. Someone had to be in charge and by default it was him.

  Marissa left the bridge and came back with sandwiches for everyone working on the bridge. She’d found places on the boat for those not actually working on the bridge and had very politely moved the
m out of Garrick’s way. He had enough concerns without people on his bridge asking him questions he didn’t have answers to.

  Garrick thanked her and all four on the bridge ate at their station as the boat moved inward toward land. It was slow going, but the submarine passed over the Golden Gate Bridge which had fallen into the bay. None of the towers had survived the earthquake and the deck was now underwater on the floor of the bay.

  They sailed by Alcatraz Island and it look like it had been polished clean. Angel Island was the same. Any trees and buildings had been wiped away, leaving a dead island. The Richmond San Rafael Bridge was gone and Garrick ordered the sub to stop for the night in San Pablo Bay. He didn’t want to risk going further inland in the dark without more than just thermal and light amplification. He knew it was safe, but with everyone’s inexperience, he thought it would be better to get another eight hours of sleep before making landfall.

  He called two of the seamen who had not been working through the afternoon and asked them to do nothing but look at things for six hours and make sure no civilians came to the bridge.

  He retired to the captain’s quarters and found a change of clothes. He showered and shaved and put on clean underwear. He thought he would be sleeping alone tonight so crawled into bed and was immediately asleep.

  He was roused, but not wakened when Marissa crawled into bed less than an hour later. She pushed him over and lay back-to-back to Garrick and he heard her whisper “good night” to him. He was too tired to even respond.

  When Garrick awoke, Marissa was already in the shower so he put on the clean uniform Marissa had found for him. She’d also removed his CPO shoulder boards and replaced them with the four braids a captain wears. He didn’t know where she found them and he almost took them off, but they might help the crew’s morale for as long as it took them to find a place to disembark at which point, someone else could be a leader to these people.

  Back on the bridge, Garrick saw it was light enough outside to begin moving again. Vasquez, who had become the default helmsman, put the sub in motion. It was touchy traversing the Carquinez Straight as they had to avoid the fallen bridges. After passing what the maps called Grizzly Bay, Garrick ordered Vasquez to keep to the left because the farther north the sub went, the damaged looked less and he was hoping there were some survivors from Sacramento.

  Early in the afternoon the sub got as far north as Cache Slough before the depth under the keel began getting too shallow. Garrick thought if he could find a place to park and tie up, this would be where everyone would leave the sub. He had Vasquez guide the sub up the canal east of the slough.

  The sub bottomed very gently in silt and Garrick ordered the engines shut down. He called engineering and told them this was as far as the submarine was going, but they were still going to need power.

  He went on deck and looked across at the land. It had been flooded by the tsunami that had given them such a ride days ago, but there was a patch of dry land big enough for everyone to get ashore.

  He ordered food packs and medical kits to be taken ashore and the sub was abandoned. Garrick was the last one out and made sure the reactor was in safe mode and hatches were closed and locked with chains and padlocks he’d found in maintenance. He didn’t think the sub would ever return to sea or that he’d return, but just in case, he slipped the keys into his pocket.

  Garrick took a head count and he had 146 people including himself and Marissa on dry land following the plague, earthquake and tsunami. As he worked his way the 20 feet shore in the raft, Garrick wondered what was in store for them. He didn’t know why these 146 people had survived when billions did not and no matter how he phrased the question, he couldn’t formulate an answer.

  It was what it was and they were where they were because this is where life had brought them.

  “What do we do now?” people were asking him and Garrick didn’t know. He was a medical officer aboard a sub and didn’t know what they should do, but they were looking to him for answers. Marissa, who had been going among the people, came up to his side.

  “Captain, I think we need to go inland and see if we can find some shelter for the night,” she suggested. “It looks like we have a few hours of daylight left and the odor from the lake is making me sick.

  Garrick and Marissa took the lead and headed inland. They walked along the edges of the fields, staying to the high ground and out of the fields which were soggy from water. They saw dead animals and humans in the fields and tried not to think about them.

  After nearly and hour of walking they saw a two-lane road and it made walking easier. They came to a farm that had been damaged by the quake and later by the water from the tsunami. There was nothing left standing except the foundations and some steel.

  They continued their trek inland until they came to a river. On the other side, they saw parts of a town with a few buildings that were not totally destroyed.

  The flood had receded but the water was still flowing near its banks. They walked down stream and found a bridge that was still standing across the river. It was a sturdy bridge, but had lost most of its deck and railings. It was all they had to cross the river and one by one everyone crossed.

  As a group, they walked back north and entered the town. Garrick figured about 90 percent of the structures were destroyed, but one of the sailors called to him. Near a school they found six school buses still on their wheels, protected by a fallen wall of the school and four other buses that had piled up against a pole. They’d obviously been under some water, but not totally submerged.

  Three of the buses started and everyone climbed on board. It was crowded, but they now had transportation and a place of relative safety for the night.

  In the lead bus, Garrick told the driver to head east in hopes of finding Interstate 5, which would take the group to Sacramento.

  It took an hour to drive the broken road, but they reached the highway shortly after dark. They passed through several other improved areas that had been wrecked beyond safe habitation.

  When they reached the highway, they parked for the night. People needed to get out and take care of personal business, get some food and stretch their muscles. They felt they made good progress.

  With everyone settling for the night, finding any place comfortable to sleep, Garrick and Marissa, who had been on different buses got a chance to sit and talk. They were discussing plans on what to do to find food and more permanent shelter when they saw headlights in the distance.

  The vehicle was driving slowly in their direction. Several of the people who were armed took up defensive position. The oncoming vehicle parked a hundred feet away from where the three buses were on the highway. Two people got out of the front of the vehicle; both had what looked to be pistols in their hands.

  Garrick had no weapon but knew at least two people did and were hiding.

  Garrick and Marissa separated themselves from the survivors and walked toward the two people. The lights of the truck were in their eyes. The two people at the truck walked forward.

  The driver of the truck, a big man with a deep voice, looked over to the other person who stayed near the door of the truck. Garrick could tell he was wearing a light denim jacket and sporting a rather angry looking smile. “Tell me your God done did this,” said the man who had gotten out of the driver’s door and was pointing at Garrick.

  ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

  Col. Hammond wished Capt. Eldred a pleasant night and returned his executive officer’s salute. The younger man walked on to his own house. The captain had asked what Russ was going to do with the prisoners and Russ told him that he honestly didn’t know.

  He walked to his own house and sat down on the top step of the porch. Lisa must have seen him because she brought out two bowls of ice cream, chocolate with chocolate syrup. She handed him one. He was more of a vanilla with cherry syrup, but he thanked the woman with whom he shared his new home.

  They sat in silence. The only sound was the tinkling of the spoons against
the side of the glass bowls. They could hear muted voices and music coming from the other houses.

  When they were both finished, Lisa took Russ’ bowl, stacked it in hers and sat them down beside her. She clasped her hands in front of her and propped her elbows onto her knees and put her chin on her hands.

  “My husband, rest his soul, was a fine man and I miss him everyday. All I could think about today when those men showed up was I was going to be seeing him again soon,” she said, looking off into the distance. “I’ll never let myself become that woman who I saw chained to the hood of the truck I saw.”

  Russ could see the woman was shaking. He didn’t know what to say to comfort her. He put his arm around her shoulder and let her talk without interrupting.

  “Those men are terrible people. They killed and tortured and made everyone here feel less safe because they’re alive. They’re worthless and are going to be nothing but trouble to us for as long as they’re alive,” she said. “If I’d had a gun, I think I could have killed them.

  “Now we have them locked up and someone is going to have to feed and water them and do their laundry and take care of them and watch them. That means we have fewer people to make a working community.

  “They’re going to hate being locked up and they’ll be abusive to whoever is watching over them because they are just rotten people. You could see it in their manner.” Lisa and Russ watched the night sky and saw a few shooting stars and listened as the music was turned off at the neighbor’s house.

  “What’re you going to do with them, Russ?” she asked finally.

  “Honestly, Lisa, I do not know,” he admitted. “Legally, because the last order of the president was martial law, I could stand them up against the wall and shoot them. It’d end the discussion and they’d no longer be a problem.”