Hell Happened (Book 3): Hell Released

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  The gym could only hold 50 people for the work outs and more than 100 people were taking part, so Erica broke the people into a beginner / kids group and a more advanced group. As she taught, she learned to keep ahead of her class’ accomplishments. By the time warm spring winds began melting snow, Bare and a dozen other soldiers had studied and practiced Special Forces techniques, Navy Seal training and Urban Infiltration and felt they could, if called upon, perform the tasks of an elite military unit.

  Different people were finding different ways to cope with the harsh winter. Fred’s fun was building snowmen and shooting them. After the first time he did it, he scared the bejeezus out of nearly everyone and Russ made him do it outside the housing encampment with the other people who were into shooting helpless snowmen.

  Not everyone worked on improving themselves. Four men and one woman drank themselves to death over the winter, one woman hung herself and a man shot himself in his depression.

  The radio station was popular through the winter with people creating their own “specialty shows” which aired in the afternoon and were voted on for popularity. Lisa and Russ, as leaders of the community had an entry that did well, but both knew they were getting a lot of “friend” votes.

  The ham radio antenna was damaged in the ice storm and it took until late March before a new antenna could be erected. When contact was finally re-established with the outside world, Keith from the Smith Camp near Ft. Knox wove a tale to Russ about how things had gone from bad to worse.

  He told about how Lt. Col. Smith, the commander of the base, had burned the surrounding towns to keep the “zombies” at bay. Storms pushed through late in the year which destroyed crops in the field and the winter had hit them hard as well.

  Keith said living in the Smith Camp was bleak, but survivable and gave Russ the frequencies for trying to contact the Saunders Compound in Alabama, Ft. Carson in Colorado and a couple of others the man in Kentucky had reached on his equipment.

  Russ also had several conversations over the ham radio with Lt. Col. Pendelton Smith. He didn’t like the man’s personality or his command style, but he was in no position to do anything about it. He was more concerned with flooding of the quickly melting snow, getting the farm prepared for planting, getting a working hospital going and building on the other projects discussed over the winter.

  Russ wasn’t so shortsighted or proud as to cut off all contact between the two communities. The more people they could locate, the better the genetic pool for long-term growth of humanity and there’d be a wider supply of skills and knowledge.

  During one conversation, Lisa was listening in. Russ had asked her along to get her opinion and when Russ was explaining how Ft. Ben Harrison’s community protected themselves from zombie attacks. The lieutenant colonel all but told Russ he should mind his own business and that he would run his camp and Russ could run his the way he wanted to.

  “That man is a menace to those people,” Lisa told him. “You can hear it in his voice he needs to be in total control.”

  “Yea, I think so too,” Russ admitted. “But really, there isn’t much we can do about it. They’re 175 miles south of here and got their own problems. We can let them know we can take their people, but I don’t think the Smith wants to give up his authority.”

  “No, from the sounds of it, he sounds like a lot of the people my husband worked for,” she said. They’d long passed the time when either felt jealousy when the other spoke of their late spouse. “He sounds like he is trying to control his people instead of leading them.”

  “Well, we can’t help them from here, but maybe there’s a way we can let his people chose if they want to stay where they are or migrate here.”

  Lisa rubbed Russ’ shoulders lovingly as Russ pulled on the goatee he was growing. “I think Capt. Eldred, Sgt. Bare and Lt. Jimenez need to be in on this. Maybe we need to think about mounting a real military operation.”

  It didn’t happen overnight. Winter still spit out a few more weeks of biting cold and Russ’ priorities were his community as opposed to Lt. Col. Smith’s, but the mission to Ft. Knox was something he concerned himself with.

  Once a week, so as not to arouse suspicion in the community, the four most senior military people stayed late at the armory, ostensibly to discuss the mutant issue and better protecting the community. Only the four, and Lisa and Erica’s squad knew what was really going on behind the closed doors.

  The secrecy was not because Russ didn’t trust the community’s people, although some of them were rather shifty, it was to keep too many people from trying to get involved. This was a military operation against another military installation and Lisa was all the civilian oversight he wanted.

  When spring finally came in earnest, people in the community were finally getting a real dose of reality. The previous year, tools, toys, food and equipment they needed could be found with relative ease. Now, almost a year after the end of the world as they knew it came to an end, buildings were collapsed, animals had invaded, fires had ripped through entire blocks, and now the earth was taking back what had once been civilization.

  There were no public works departments to clear roads, mow the tall grass or clean up fallen tree limbs. The community around where they had survived the winter was still in pretty good shape, but houses had to be repaired and finding matching shingles for the roof wasn’t always an option, repairing a broken window became more than running to the hardware store and people were learning that survival was work.

  They had food, less of it fresh anymore, but enough to make it through the summer. Farm animals were still being rounded up and they had plenty of fresh meat, which everyone appreciated. As the spring progressed more fences were erected to keep the 100-plus head of cattle corralled, the dozen horses that’d been rescued, a large pen of pigs, chickens by the score and others the community had found.

  Children as young as 15 were learning to use the farm equipment to turn ground for the garden Jennie had planned, while others were transplanting apple, peach and plum trees nearer to the community.

  On the first day nice enough for a barbecue, nearly everyone was in the streets, meeting the spring weather with defiance after surviving some of the worst winter weather anyone had ever experienced.

  Lisa suggested naming the community something special, in recognition of the starting point and a radio contest was held. Names like “New Eden” “Utopia” and “New Home” were offered, but it was the name “Great Lakes Protectorate” that took the balloting by more than 30 votes. It seemed the people no longer wanted to live within borders defined on a map, and calling their new home a protectorate made people believe they were protecting all who came to live there, whether they were from the former United States, Canada, Mexico or any other place on the earth.

  Russ was pleased when the sign was painted and put at the entrance to the housing area. Lisa Schaeffer was listed as “Mayor” and she rolled her eyes when she saw it. “Pfft. I was never elected,” she told Russ. “I was just sleeping with the senior Army guy.”

  Through the spring, Russ did less and less managing as the community seemed to find its equilibrium. Several people stepped up as advisers in different areas of building a more self-sustaining community so Russ was able to focus instead on his projects and left running the community to others. While still nominally in charge under martial law, civilian government was making a comeback.

  One of Russ’ pet projects was getting in touch with other communities in the United States besides Lt. Col. Smith in Kentucky. In the early summer, he was finally able to contact Fort Carson and Maj. Gen. Angela Parker. Her community was even larger than his, with more than 350 people living under the protection of the 1st Mid-American Army.

  He spoke with her about once a week after that via ham radio to discuss mutual defense and how each had settled different issues from food to energy, housing and refugees.

  Twice during the summer, his communications people made contact with a farm in Ala
bama. The farm had a dozen or so people living in a hole in the ground and several motor homes. Asked if they wanted to be rescued, the young man on the radio told a fanciful tale about saving astronauts, surviving a double hurricane and saving damsels in distress.

  When Russ heard Zach tell him about his conversation with Tony from the Saunders farm, he believed whoever had survived down south had also suffered a little bit of reality slippage, so they didn’t try to hard to keep in contact with the farm in Alabama.

  That was until they heard from Jerry Saunders.

  Zach called Russ one evening as he and Lisa were setting down to supper with some of the team leaders. He said Jerry was on the radio and wanted to speak with the senior military man. Russ almost told him to call Capt. Eldred and let him handle it, but Eldred and his new wife DeeDee were honeymooning for three more days.

  He looked at Lisa and said maybe it was something important and she nodded. He kissed her on the forehead as he left.

  At the radio station, Zach had the headphones and microphone ready for the colonel.

  Half and hour later, Russ was sure he was going to meet Jerry Saunders and his friends one day, and shake all of their hands. Russ knew the people in his community had been through hell, but when hell happened in the deep south, they did it right. Jerry told the colonel about how Cheryl had been part of the murder of Mike, the attempted murder of his Jerry’s son and two others in the shelter, how she escaped and returned with platoon of men and weapons in an attempt to take over the farm and kill Jerry.

  Jerry said a man named Keith had been killed at Smith’s camp when he warned Jerry’s farm of the impending attack, and spoke of the two friends who had been killed when the seven heavily armed HUMVEEs attacked the farm.

  Russ’ understanding was the lieutenant colonel had authorized a military strike against a civilian target.

  He promised Mr. Saunders two things before losing contact on the short wave. One was that he’d send a bus and some soldiers down to Alabama to take the prisoners off their hands and that he’d relieve Lt. Col. Smith of his command.

  When he was relating to Lisa later that night about what Jerry had told him Russ said “What kind of person who calls himself an officer in the United States Army would send a platoon of heavily-armed soldiers against a civilian farm? He had his communications officer killed for sure and two people on the farm were killed along with four of the soldiers.”

  “But Smith won’t willingly let go of his base, Russ,” Lisa told him. “And do we really have the right to take it from him?”

  He liked that she said “we” and not “you.” She wanted him to know she was behind him on whatever decision he made.

  “I believe I can take his command from him. If he is unfit for command, then he has no right calling himself a commander of a military garrison. I am going to call him and ask him to come up here to explain what happened. If he refuses, we’ll go get him. We’re still in America and I still out rank him.”

  “Good. As long as we have the right to do it, I’d like nothing better than to have the guy in front of us when he tries to explain how he could allow armed soldiers to attack peaceful American survivors,” Lisa said.

  “Not so peaceful, I think. They found military equipment, including an Apache helicopter and six Strykers to defend themselves. They surprised their attackers and won the day.

  “Now I think I have to have a conversation with Lt. Col. Smith.”

  As expected, the Smith told Russ that the operation was classified and suggested the colonel should mind his own community’s business. Even when Russ told him he was sending a bus to Alabama to bring the prisoners back to Ft. Ben Harrison for a military trial, Smith told Hammond the soldiers were under his command and he would deal with them as he saw fit.

  Russ knew the time for talk was over. During his 30-year Army enlistment, he’d filled half a dozen positions beside that of commander of a civil affairs detachment. He’d been a company commander of a cavalry troop, instructor at officer’s candidate school, assistant battalion commander and positions as a division staff officer.

  But Russ started his military career as a platoon leader in an infantry company. He’d never been in combat even though he served during both Gulf Wars, and he knew how to attack an entrenched position.

  He asked Capt. Eldred to join him at the armory even though it was getting late in the afternoon and Eldred was still supposedly on his honeymoon. When the young captain arrived, Col. Hammond explained his thoughts to his XO. He could see the young captain was ready to take on the mission, but Hammond knew Myles was not ready for such an assignment of relieving an officer of his command...especially when that officer had tanks at his disposal.

  Myles was a good staff officer, not a combat soldier.

  Myles would plan and execute the pick up of the prisoners from the Saunders farm. He and his team would be driving past Louisville, KY, to get to the Alabama farm at an appointed time. There was little chance a three-vehicle convoy, especially a noisy one, would go un-noticed, but that was what Hammond wanted.

  “Capt. Eldred, you’ll take a large yellow school bus escorted by two very loud, very heavily armed Army trucks. I want you driving through the Louisville area in the afternoon tomorrow. I want any lookouts Lt. Col. Smith has out to see you going right by his camp.

  Maybe Myles wasn’t a combat soldier, but he did understand what his real role in the mission was. He was the diversion. Smith’s camp would hear the small convoy sent to pick up the prisoners from the Saunders’ farm and Smith might even try to intercept it, giving him prisoners with whom to barter.

  Russ wouldn’t give Smith time to roadblock the convoy, arranging the call to Jerry just 15 minutes prior to the convoy passing through Louisville. Smith would have time to dispatch a team to confirm that the convoy was passing through, but not get any heavy weapons, Russ hoped, into position to attack the convoy.

  “Myles,” Russ said to the younger man gravely. “You are the key to us pulling this off. Your timing must be perfect and nothing can go wrong.” Myles nodded. He knew he wasn’t going to be part of the gun play, and in his gut, he really didn’t mind, but he would be responsible for distracting a madman’s attention long enough for the rest of the plan to be put into action.

  “I’ll bring Deputy Doug and Seaman Waters as drivers of the two trucks and Fred as the driver of the bus,” Myles said, making notes on his tablet.

  “Good choices. I want you passing through Louisville at precisely 1500 hours tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be calling Mr. Saunders at 1445 hours to tell him you’re on your way.” Myles nodded and pulled up a map on the computer. “I am betting Lt. Col. Smith will hear that call.”

  “We’ll leave here at 1200 hours and adjust our speed so we make your schedule.”

  “While you and your team are drawing their attention, Sgt. Bare and her commando squad will be getting into position to take Lt. Col. Smith’s command from him. I’ve given her 12 hours to observe the Smith compound’s defenses before meeting up with Lt. Jimenez’ squad and beginning the primary mission.

  “Myles,” Russ said to the captain, touching his arm to make sure the captain looked up and listened to his next words. “I’m putting you on the front line. Lt. Col. Smith has already shown he is able to send soldiers to kill innocent people. He’s deranged and right now feeling rather paranoid. He may give orders for your squad to be attacked in force, but I think we are way ahead of him in our thinking.

  “They’ll have 15 minutes to prepare for you, so don’t expect anything heavier than machine guns on wheeled vehicles, but it’ll be imperative you do not stop and engage. Make sure your drivers do not stop for any reason around Louisville.”

  “I understand sir. I’ll make sure they know,” the captain said earnestly. “Once we get in the area, no one stops until we get to Nashville, where we’ll camp for the night. That’ll give us time to find a safe place to sun is still up,” he said as he wrote notes on his tablet.

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sp; “Waters will be my driver, Fred on the bus and Doug will lead. Each truck will have two others, one as shotgun and one as a gunner. Fred will also have three men with him with high-powered rifles and squad automatic weapons. That’ll make us look like a tempting target, but we’ll be able to defend ourselves against the force you expect against us.

  “Good,” Russ told him. “We’ll talk again in the morning and I need to talk with Bare and Jimenez.”

  Myles stood up, a look of intense concentration on his face. “I’ll see if they’re here and send them in. I’ll be in my office most of the night if you need me sir,” he said as he left the room.

  “Thanks, captain, and sorry about ruining your honeymoon.”

  “You don’t need to apologize to me, sir, but if I were you, I’d avoid my wife for a week or two. Some of the words she used to describe you were rather colorful.” He closed the door on his way out of Russ’ office.

  Russ ran his hands through his graying hair. Lisa knocked softly and told him Jimenez had been on a run and Bare was on her way over. She had made two sandwiches for him and he briefed her on what he planned between bites.

  “It sounds like a good plan,” she told him as she poured him another cup of coffee. “I’m not a soldier, but it looks like you’re making sure there is very little chance anyone gets hurt or killed.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Russ told her. “These are my friends I am sending into harm’s way while I set back here on my ass.”

  “It’s hard for you to not be going, but Erica has been training for this and Jimenez is a very smart young man who you put in charge of the other platoon. It’s their job and they’re going to do it because they are soldiers. You have to be here to send the message to the Saunders’ farm. Then you’re going to have to wait like commanders have done throughout history.

  “And those are my people too. They are part of our community and I’m they’re ‘mayor.’ I’ll be sitting right here with you.”