Hell Happened (Book 3): Hell Released

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  On the upper level, CJ sat down at the desk and turned on the computer and monitor. Chloe looked out the portal and said all she could see was the overcast sky, while Jo made CJ’s bed. The young boy sat on the floor and played with a small stuffed animal he had with him.

  With the computer running, CJ accessed the program which operated the six external cameras.

  The first camera, which was on the back side of the shelter, above the door, showed the fields they’d walked through the day before. It had a zoom, infra-red and thermal imagery. It was also on a swivel and CJ panned back and forth on its 25-degree range.

  CJ saw desolation. The salt water from the ocean was already turning the fields a dull gray/green with dead or dying plants. CJ remembered something from school about an invading general who salted the land to keep crops from growing on his enemy’s property.

  Looking out, he wondered if anything would grow in this area again, and would the rains dilute the salt out of the land. He was no horticulturist, but he did take classes in botany and land management, courses that he could take and still have time to concentrate on his tennis.

  The thought of his life before the fall brought his mood to the dreariness that matched the outside weather. Three months ago, he was living the life he had dreamed. He had all the necessities to make himself happy -- pretty women asking for his autograph, first-class passage on airplane flights, the best hotel rooms, six hours of tennis everyday and pleasant company every night.

  He had several small sponsors which helped, and the bankroll of his parents. He was one of the lucky ones because he wasn’t one of the top 200 players in the world, but he was closing in before his injuries. He was able to jet set and make the right contacts to set him up for a future career in broadcasting. Many of his closest tennis friends who were still on their way up the ladder, had to take part time jobs, share hotel rooms with others to make it through.

  Now, instead of tending offers for color commentary from ESPN, he was thinking about where his next meal is going to come from. Instead of choosing a restaurant, he was hoping to find food that wasn’t in a foil bag. Where he was handled by coaches and trainers and a publicist, he was now making all his decisions on his own.

  The water that had flowed in this far, the rate of absorption, salinity and saturation levels would have to be checked to determine if cabbage, soybeans, corn or wheat could be planted. He had spent five years in college and despite what many people believed about his level of intelligence, he did pay attention in class, even if he hadn’t been interested. CJ knew each shelter had a complete database of how to survive after the fall of government, a major upheaval that lead to a breakdown of civil services, or an all out nuclear war.

  Chloe was busy looking at the camera view out back of the shelter. She leaned over his shoulder, pretty as she was, he knew everyone could use a toothbrush now and her hair still had the smell of yesterday’s putrid water and decomposing dead animals. It was almost enough to make him wretch. He almost said something before he realized he probably smelled no better.

  She was pointing at something in the far distance. CJ zoomed and it was an animal, the size of a large dog, it was hard to tell with the resolution of the camera, and it was running as fast as it could away from the shelter area. CJ tracked it with the camera until it ran out of the field of view.

  “What else can we see?” she asked.

  CJ opened the computer window for all six cameras to display at once.

  Chloe gasped and CJ sat upright so fast, he pushed the girl back.

  The camera which was positioned on the opposite door, the one that was generally pointed in the direction of the other survival shelters, showed one was being attacked by six of the most horrific creatures of human parodies. The mutants had deformed foreheads, huge eyes, and muscular limbs and were extremely quick.

  To CJ they looked like a bad movie creation. They were tearing at the door handle, trying to break in to the people living inside. CJ hoped the door would hold.

  One of the beasts had climbed onto the side of the shelter with a 12-foot standing leap and latched onto the miniscule finger hold around the exterior of the portal. It was peering through the glass. CJ watched as the beast broke through the exterior glass but it couldn’t puncture the interior glass. Its fist wouldn’t fit through the hole when it punched at the inner glass.

  CJ stood up and raced for the hatch to the first level of his survival shelter. Jo must have thought the same thing at the same time and she was following him as fast as she could. As her head was clearing the hatch, she looked back to Chloe and told her to take Ted to her room and find some game to play on the computer. Chloe understood and nodded.

  CJ raced to the front door while Jo took the back door. The door opened inward and had four steel bars that slid into steel recesses from a center point. The handle for the door, when closed, sat on a steel bar that was buried in the reinforced concrete and was locked from the inside with a second 3/4” round L-shaped spike that was placed over the closed handle and shoved in the wall.

  CJ had closed the doors the previous night, but hadn’t locked them. He hadn’t even given it a thought. When he got to the door, the L-shaped spike was in and keeping the door locked from the inside. He knew he hadn’t done it and he looked at Jo.

  “I am a trucker. We always make sure our doors are locked for the night. I came down and locked them when I checked on the others,” she said with a grim smile. “I hope the other shelters did the same.”

  After checking each door twice, CJ and Jo went back up to his room to check the monitors. Chloe had come down out of CJ’s room with Ted and picked out some of the sweets in storage and two bottles of water. She took him up to her room to play games on her computer and Jo suggested she open the intercom and make sure the hatch door to her room was closed securely.

  Back in CJ’s room, they could see the six beasts were still clambering around the shelter they had chosen to attack, trying desperately to break in. One of the beasts had found a large piece of steel and was beating against the wall of the shelter. Even through the insulation and the reinforced concrete, they could hear the banging of the steel against the exterior of the other shelter.

  CJ didn’t know who was in the other shelter. He knew it wasn’t the professor because his shelter was off to the left of the one they occupied. He hoped those in the other shelters had found the surveillance system on the computers if they had them and didn’t come out to check on what the noise was.

  Just as he thought it, camera three showed movement on the exterior handle of one of the other shelters. It was the one furthest from the other six and had been moved when the flooding had come through, but was still water tight for people to live in it for the night.

  CJ screamed but knew his voice could not be heard.

  A man opened the door and as one, all six creatures attacked the opening door. The creature that had been futility attacking the portal leaped across the open distance and was through the door before the man realized he was even being attacked.

  CJ was glad he couldn’t hear what must be happening in the other shelter. All six of the creatures were inside in less than a couple of heartbeats. The five or six people who were in the shelter never stood a chance.

  Jo whispered, “can they lock themselves in their rooms, maybe?” CJ shook his head. “There’s no lock on the hatches to the second level.” The two stood at the monitors and hoped no one else came out of their shelters.

  “Can we lock them inside somehow?”

  “I doubt it,” CJ told her, unable to stop watching the screen. CJ had enlarged camera three and put the others in the background. “The shelters are made to keep people out, not keep people inside from getting out.

  “What’re we going to do? When they finish with them, they’ll just start back at the other shelters or someone from one of the other shelters will come out and they’ll all be killed.”

  “I don’t know. We need some way to contact everyo
ne and make sure they stay inside and keep their doors locked. I don’t think those creatures can break though the doors or the walls with the concrete bars.”

  A bloody torso was thrown halfway through the door of the other shelter and quickly pulled back inside. The door slammed shut, but the lever that latched the door remained up so the door wasn’t locked, just closed.

  Just when CJ didn’t think he could be shocked to any greater degree, he was shocked again.

  A school bus had come from somewhere and crashed into the door of the shelter at an angle. Three men with rifles jumped from the emergency door of the bus and took aim at the shelter while three others exited the normal door and ran around to the second door of the shelter. One of men produced a length of heavy pipe and stuck it through the handle for the door and two other men held it down.

  CJ understood that with the length of pipe holding the handle down, even the super human strength of the mutants wouldn’t be able to open up that door. He quickly brought up the other cameras and saw an SUV pulling up to the pipe and parking on it. Three more men and a woman got out of the SUV and went to the door where the bus had crashed. The door was still closed. The handle had been moved about an eighth of a turn which kept it closed unless one of the creatures on the inside decided to lift the handle.

  “We have to help them,” CJ heard himself saying. He couldn’t believe he was saying it and couldn’t believe Jo was agreeing with him. They were safe where they were and there was someone else outside fighting with the creatures. They should stay here until the situation resolved itself.

  Something inside CJ told him if he didn’t help and those people who had come to their rescue then he was lost, Jo was lost and so were Chloe and Teddy.

  “Let’s go,” he said, still not believing he was saying it.

  She followed him down the ladder way and to the front door. He unlocked it and cracked it open. He could see the men by the bus. Six of them had military-style rifles pointed at the shelter door.

  A tall black man wearing jeans and work boots, a flannel shirt and leather vest and a shoulder holster with a huge hand gun saw CJ as he looked out. He had a Navy man beside him and the woman who had driven the SUV onto the pipe to hold the other door locked.

  “Come on out,” the big man told him. “We got ‘em boxed in there and they can’t get at you guys anymore.”

  CJ stayed by his door and pointed at the door that was in front of the bus. “That door isn’t locked,” he said, pointing at the handle on the door. “If they open it, they’re going to come at you like an Andy Roddick serve.”

  The two men looked at each other and the taller of the two walked over to something that CJ couldn’t see. He brought back a second long steel pipe and with four men covering him, he and the Navy man put the pipe on the handle and pulled down on it. The handle came down and started to bend, probably because of the damage done by the bus. With three people holding the pipe, the dark woman got on the bus and backed it up. It was steaming and dripping something from underneath, but she was able to deftly move it into a position to keep the pipe from being lifted.

  CJ and Jo finally felt safe enough to come all the way out of the shelter. The Professor and the people in his shelter came out of their hiding as well. Two of the other shelters opened up and people started coming out.

  The three who appeared to be in charge walked over to CJ, Jo and the Professor. It was the Navy man who spoke. “You got any explosives?”

  CJ wasn’t sure what to say. He wondered briefly if there ever came a time in one man’s life that he’d been shocked by events so many times, he couldn’t be shocked any more. The man who asked seemed confident in what he was asking while the other man with him looked like he could have easily broken CJ in two pieces without breaking a sweat.

  “Ah, I’m not sure,” CJ stammered. “Uh, there were people in there.”

  “I’m sorry to say, there ain’t no more,” the taller of the two men said. “Those mutant bastards eat people like we eat bread and butter. I know something about them and they ain’t human and they are killers.”

  “You got them captured. Can’t we just block the doors so they can’t get out?” CJ asked. All the people standing there heard a loud hammering from inside the shelter where at least five people had spent their last night.

  The woman spoke up. She spoke with fierceness and conviction. “You think that shelter will keep those sons of bitches in there forever? You want to bet your life on it? You wanna bet your friends’ lives on it? They get out of there, they’s coming after you too. We didn’t come here to save your guys’ ass so you can pussy out because yer afraid to kill those fu...” The taller black man put his hand on her arm.

  The man in the navy uniform spoke up. “Look....”

  “Clarke Joseph Perry, the Third, but everyone calls me CJ,” he said. “This is Jo, that’s the Professor and these two are Chloe and Teddy. They’re all survivors of Sacramento. My folks owned all this property and one of my friends built these survival shelters.”

  “Okay, CJ. I’ve got almost 150 survivors from Hawaii, the navy and a cruise ship waiting about two miles from here. I was a medic aboard a sub until yesterday and we have no idea what’s happening on land. I’m CPO Garrick Lindsey. This is my brother Chuck and his friend Yvonne. She saw the monkey creatures attacking your shelter and she talked us into coming to your rescue your asses because we sure as shit didn’t want anybody to have to go through what Chuck did.”

  “We didn’t know for sure if there was anyone alive here and if Yvonne hadn’t seen that dog running its ass off to get away from here, we’d’ve never even seen you.”

  “Enough talk,” Chuck said. “What’ve you got that we can use to blow those sons of bitches up with?”

  CJ looked around. The house where Jack and his wife had died was a quarter mile away and more likely washed away from the flood. The workshop where Jack built the interiors for the shelters was also probably gone as well.

  “Gas,” the Professor said. “If we can get gas inside, we can kill them that way”

  “It’s too big to drown them in gas and a waste of...,” Chuck started to say.

  “No,” CJ said, remembering how he and Jack used to shoot tennis balls out of a PVC pipe as kids. “We don’t need a lot Professor,” he said turning to the former elementary school teacher. “How much do you think to fill about 5,000 cubic feet of space with enough fumes to for detonation?”

  The Professor scratched his chin and was thinking. “Why not just fill it with the gas fumes and let them die that way?” asked Jo.

  “You want to guess how long it might take to kill them?” asked Garrick. “You want to risk them getting out before they die?” Jo had nothing to say to that.

  “I’m guessing here, but I think if we can get eight or ten gallons of gas into that shelter, depending on temperature and if they have the air filtration system still running,” the teacher said. “But I don’t want to be the one to light it.”

  “You get me the gas, I’ll get the damn thing to blow up,” Chuck said.

  The hammering from inside the shelter was getting louder and the ferocity was increasing adding urgency to their plan. CJ looked around the shelters. There were a few gas cans but most were empty. Chuck, the Professor and Garrick went to get gas while CJ and Jo went to look for a way of getting the gas inside the shelter that was designed to seal those inside from the outside.

  He remembered the mutant that had broken the window on the other shelter and it gave him an idea. “Jo, can you find me a ladder about 12 to 14 feet long? There should probably be one over in that area of rubble,” he said, pointing to a crumbled concrete building that had been used for quality control testing. “I’m going to find a fence post.”

  Within five minutes the two groups were back at the shelter with the mutants inside. The men with rifles hadn’t stopped covering the doors just in case one of the creatures got free.

  Jo found a metal ladder that was missing tw
o rungs, but it was good enough for CJ to reach the glass portal over the second level. He climbed the ladder and hit the external glass with a ball peen hammer. The glass was thick and cracked on the first hit. On the second it shattered and CJ tossed the hammer down to Jo who was holding the ladder.

  Yvonne handed him up the steel fence post. CJ stuck one end into the hole and jammed it into the interior glass. It took six good hits before he finally broke the interior glass. As soon as the glass broke, something grabbed the steel fence post from his hands and jerked it inward. CJ was almost pulled off the ladder and the pole was ripped out of his hands.

  “Hand me the gas,” he said. Chuck started to hand the first of two cans of gas up to him but then stopped.

  “Your hands are bleeding and you’ll drop it. Get down and I’ll do it.”

  CJ couldn’t argue with his reasoning. He was careful to touch only the sides of the ladder and not the rungs, one because his hands hurt like hell and two so Chuck didn’t slip on his blood when climbing.

  Jo reached for CJ and Chloe was there beside her. CJ’s hands were dripping with blood. Chloe grabbed a hole in her shirt and began tearing. She got two long strips of cloth off with the help of Teddy and handed them to Jo.

  Chuck finished the first can of gas and was starting on the second. “Garrick! You got that fuse made yet?” Chuck called to his brother.

  “Another minute,” Garrick hollered back just as a small piece of the exterior concrete was knocked free by the mutants inside. Given enough time, the creatures could have escaped and the build up of fumes didn’t seem to be slowing them down.

  The navy man was working out of CJ’s view and didn’t know what kind of fuse the man had come up with. Everyone but Chuck and Jo were either standing around or covering the entrance with their rifles.

  “Everyone needs to get under cover, probably back in their shelters. This is going to be a big bomb when it goes off,” the Professor warned. “With that much fuel, it’s really going to go bang.” By now, the other three shelters had opened and people were standing around. The people reversed their movement and headed back inside.