Hell Happened (Book 3): Hell Released

by Terry Stenzelbarton

  Sgt. Erica showed up in uniform and Lt. Jimenez in his sweat suit. Someone had chased him down in their car and brought him to the armory at Russ’ request. Lisa got up and picked up the scraps from Russ’ quick meal and excused herself.

  Russ sat the two down across the table from him. “Erica, Rodrigo, I have a commando mission for you. You’re going to relieve Lt. Col. Pendleton Smith of his command tomorrow and you’re going to do it under my authority as commander of the 1st Great Lakes Protectorate.”

  Chapter 6

  CJ was sweating buckets, but he was winning, and that was important to him. He wanted to feel the familiar comfort of being the best at something. His girlfriend Chloe and Garrick’s girlfriend Marissa were on the other side of the net and were sweating as well.

  Around the tennis court, there were dozens of people sitting on blankets or in lawn chairs. They were cat calling, whistling and making fun of every hit by the players. It wasn’t the usual type of tennis crowd, but CJ liked it better than the crowds he’d played in front of on courts at colleges and universities all over the United States.

  These were people who, like him, had survived the end of the world as they knew it and all sorts of mother-nature induced hell, but still kept living.

  Garrick and Chuck were two of the line judges, as were Jo, Danielle and Yvonne, who had nearly fully recovered from being shot in the ass. From CJ’s point of view, the women were playing favorites, but in return, the Lindsey brothers seemed to be leaning his way and giving him benefit of the doubt on calls.

  The exhibition was the Perry Cooperative’s attempt to return to some normalcy. There had been three-on-three basketball tournaments the previous week and the people seemed to enjoy the return of the familiar.

  Through the week, the Council of Seven, what the group was now called after the murder of the Professor, worked as hard as everyone else to secure and build their new community. Gardens were being tended, fuel and water was found and brought in, more concrete shelters were finished and people were coming to terms with their new lives.

  On weekends, the Council scheduled sporting events and this weekend had been picked to play the opening match of the two-day tennis tournament. Chloe, who had played high school tennis and Marissa, who had played in college, had volunteered to take CJ on.

  Originally, CJ had planned on taking it easy on them, not wanting to show them up because he really liked Chloe and didn’t want to piss her off. That had changed when he found out how good the two really were.

  CJ had won the first set 6-4, but had lost the tie breaker in the second set. The third set was becoming a marathon and CJ was not in the shape he’d been in a year ago.

  The score was tied at four sets apiece with Marissa serving. She had a wicked serve that liked to curve away from him, but he felt he had it figured out.

  Just as Marissa tossed the ball into the air, one of the radio operators came running out of the communications building screaming. Marissa’s serve went wide and the man who was doing the screaming was booed heartily by everyone.

  “You guys aren’t going to believe this!” he was saying. “There’re more people out there! I was just talking to someone from Ft. Carson, Colorado and there are more than 350 people there!”

  The man, who had just been booed to within an inch of his life, heard silence fall. The silence was followed by cheering from everyone with earshot. Word quickly spread and the council members all surrounded the young man who took over for the lieutenant who had been killed on the airstrip a little over a month earlier.

  “Tell us what you found out,” Chuck said straight away. He still hadn’t learned how to be subtle, but he was one of the hardest working men in the cooperative.

  “The man on the radio said he was from Ft. Carson and it was under the command of Gen. Angela Parker. They have doctors and farmers and are the safe haven for anyone wanting to relocate there.”

  Everyone was glad to hear there were others making this new world survivable, but the news was not as earth shattering as the man thought it would be.

  “We have more than 150 people living here in our compound,” CJ said. “I think its great there’s some place else people can go, but we have a good community here and we’re all well-fed, and safe.”

  “I think we should maintain contact with them on a regular basis,” Marissa suggested, “and maybe they can help us with advice or ideas we haven’t thought of.”

  “And if they have real doctors, they’ll be able to help me because I’m just a well-trained medic, not a doctor,” Garrick added. “They can help us from over there. We don’t have to leave what we’ve built here.”

  It seemed to be a consensus on the council that no one wanted to pack up and travel half-way across the United States to live with someone else. They’d been through too much together to want to let it go. This was the home and community they built with their own hands, their own sweat, and their own lives. They were not going to give it up.

  CJ, who did end up with an impressive scar on his face, spoke for the group. “Keep in contact with Parker, but tell her we are doing okay here. Tell her we are survivors of Travis Air Force Base, San Diego Naval Air Station, Hawaii and places around Sacramento and we are willing to share information with her and her community, but we are starting over from right here.”

  The others agreed and went out to the waiting crowd who wanted more information. CJ related what he had just told the radio operator and the crowd, slowly at first, but with more gusto as more people understood what was happening, raised a raucous cheer for their leaders and their cooperative.

  The tennis match resumed, but with the chance to catch his second wind, CJ was easily able to dispatch the two women. The Saturday afternoon featured several other tennis matches followed by picnics and a lot of drinking on the lawns that were growing. Two weeks earlier Jo had found a tractor trailer rig that was found filled with about 10,000 bottles and cans of beer and liquor.

  The mood of the entire compound was lifted from the low it had been feeling with the killing of two of their own by criminals at the airport the previous month. The Council was hearing laughs and seeing inflatable beach balls bounced around. There were cheers for the winners and losers in the sporting events and the hitting of tennis balls all over the enclosure.

  It was a fun afternoon.

  As evening fell and fires were being put out for the night and people were retiring to their concrete shelters, the seven members of the council stayed late to listen to people and their suggestions for improvements and needs.

  Most of the intelligent people had already gone home and just a few of the stragglers and talkers and drunks remained. One of the men, a recent arrival from north of Sacramento had been trying to hit on Yvonne and wasn’t taking no for an answer. They could tell the man had been drinking a lot, and Garrick could see Yvonne was very close to putting the man in his place when comm shack opened and the technician called for the group.

  “Jo’s got problems. Better get ready,” he hollered at them.

  Jo’s problems before had been along the lines of wild animals attacking her rigs filled with food, an event with a large swarm of bees, and her rig falling through a portion of a highway that had been washed out on the underside.

  The new problem was worse.

  “She’s three miles out and says there’re mutants attacking her rig!”

  Everyone jumped at the word “mutant.” There’d been too many deaths already because of the bastard creatures and now Jo was screaming in toward the cooperative’s enclosure in her 18-wheeler.

  Garrick, the senior military man left in California began directing everyone who had weapons to positions around the enclosure. Chuck sent Danielle back to their shelter and told her to close and lock the door and not come out until he came to get her. He and Yvonne were both armed, him with his .500 Smith and Wesson and she with a recovered AR-15, semi-automatic rifle with a scope.

  Danielle took off in a different direction th
an the shelter. There wasn’t time to chase after her. Chuck was one of the leaders of the defense group and six other men and women were depending on him to tell them where set up their defensive position.

  “Where in hell is White Girl going? Son of a bitch! Yvonne! Can’t you get that girl to do anything I ask?” he asked the black woman running beside him. She was too out of breath to answer.

  Some of the other primary defenders, a few of them military, a few of them former hunters, both men and women who practiced shooting regularly, were being directed to specific locations by Garrick.

  “We have about 30 seconds before she gets here and I want everyone who doesn’t have a gun locked into the shelters or the sub,” Garrick was yelling from the communications shack. “Marissa! Where the hell are you?” he was looking around, having lost sight of the woman with whom he had walked through hell.

  From inside the shack he heard her voice on the C.B. radio. It was usually on Channel 14 which is the same channel as the walkie-talkies.

  “I’m moving the kids to the sub. You take care of Jo, we’ll take care of the kids. Tell Chuck I’ve got Danielle with me.” Garrick heard her and ran into the shack, picking up four of the hand-held radios. He’d forgotten about them. He ran back out the door when he heard Jo calling to say she couldn’t shake the two mutants who’d attached themselves to her trailer.

  Garrick saw CJ and Chloe entering the control tower. The wooden tower was one of the engineers’ ideas and it was a three-story mushroom looking structure with a “penthouse” that had a 360-degree view and a powerful spotlight. It was also the command center for the fledgling community.

  Neither of them was armed and neither had learned to use weapons with any real accuracy. They would direct the defenders via radio.

  Garrick was running to meet up with Chuck and Yvonne. He could hear the rig on the broken pavement main road and it was in a real hurry. Jo already knew she wouldn’t be allowed to bring the rig inside the enclosure but Garrick could see she was heading for the main gates.

  One of the commandments set down by the council, one which at the time seemed cruel to anyone outside the compound, was that no mutants could be allowed inside the enclosure. If a party was being chased by mutants, they were to take refuge in the concrete culvert that had one end sealed shut and thick iron gates that could be locked from the inside installed on the other end. The culvert was 250 feet outside the main gate and had been painted bright pink with yellow stripes by the children of the enclosure.

  With the mutants on her rig, Jo didn’t stand a chance of getting to the safety shelter. Everyone had seen the speed at which the mutants could move. Garrick reached the ledge near the top of the enclosure wall where Chuck and Yvonne had taken up position. Both had their weapons aimed at the rig that was coming down the road, dust rolling out from underneath the tires.

  “Will that gate stop her rig?” Chuck asked.

  “Not a chance in hell,” Garrick told him.

  CJ’s voice came over the radio. “Do not let that truck in here.” Both men looked at each other. They knew Jo had saved CJ’s life and it must have been so very hard for him to remind them that his friend would have to be sacrificed for the greater good of the community. “She must have a plan, so don’t start shooting until you absolutely have to. Trust her.”

  “We’re not coming through the gate,” a new voice said on the C.B. Garrick recognized the voice of his fellow sailor who drove the submarine on its final voyage. His name was Vasquez and since the submarine would never return to sea duty, the young man had taken to learning how to drive the big rig with Jo.

  Someone down further on the ledge fired off two rounds.

  “Hold your fire you stupid son of a bitches!” Chuck hollered at the seven or eight people guarding the front gate. “You can’t hit shit moving that fast from this far away and as dark as it is. Don’t be a dumbass and wait until I tell you to shoot or I’ll shoot you right in the goddamn face.”

  The rig got another 75 yards closer while Chuck was hollering. Garrick looked over to his brother. “You wouldn’t really shoot them, would you?”

  Yvonne answered. “Yes he would. Right in the face.”

  Jo’s rig was 600 yards away and everyone could see the mutants on the rig’s trailer. They had pierced the skin of the metal trailer and Jo was swerving enough to keep the god-awful creatures from working too close to the cab on the driver’s side. One was on top of the trailer halfway to the truck. The second was about five feet from the cab.

  “Wish me luck boys,” they heard Jo’s voice over the C.B.

  Everyone watched as Jo cranked on the wheel of the rig 250 feet from the main entrance, just past the safety culvert. They could see both people in front leaning hard to the driver’s side as the rig turned. The big front tires dug into the hard pack as she cranked on the steering wheel and the trailer was the first part of the rig to go up on its left-side duals.

  Jo had given them a broadside side of the mutants and before the creatures could react and attack the compound, Chuck gave the order. “Fire!”

  Yvonne was the first to fire, having already been aiming, cocked and locked. She fired five rounds, two of which hit the fast-moving mutant nearest the cab. Three others had good shots at the creatures, and they heard them bellow guttural soul-rending screams of terror. The beast closest to the cab let go of the trailer and started running directly into the hail of gunfire.

  The mutant’s body was riddled as most of the defenders took aim at the on-rushing mutant. Parts were blown off but it was still struggling toward the wall when two rounds from someone’s heavy-caliber rifle took its head completely off.

  As the first was falling to the ground, twitching in deathly muscle spasms, the rig was continuing its hard turn. It looked like Jo might keep the rig from turning turtle when the front wheel fell into a hole and busted off. The cab’s frame fell and dug in deep. The momentum of the trailer pushed the rear set of duals sideways before the accordion effect lifted the back of the truck off the ground. They heard the fifth wheel pin snap off like a gunshot and the second mutant was thrown forward and off the trailer as the truck tipped over on the driver’s door.

  Through the dust and debris that was thrown up, it was hard to see the mutant, but still there were people shooting at, what they thought was, the horror they all feared. Chuck wished the spotlight from the tower had followed the mutant and not the cab of the truck, but in a way, he could understand. Jo was a very dear friend of both CJ and Chloe, one of whom was probably operating the light.

  More than 150 rounds were expended before the dust settled and they could see the second creature’s body parts had been thoroughly hamburgerized by the gun fire.

  There was several seconds of complete silence when the gunfire stopped.

  It was broken by CJ coming out of the tower. “Help her, assholes!” he was shouting. “Open the damn gates and get someone out there to help her!”

  The shock was broken and everyone who could, scrambled to do something, anything, to help. People poured out of shelters, flashlights were turned on, hammers and metal cutters found their way into hands that could use them. One of their own was in trouble and everyone wanted to help.

  Six hours later, Garrick’s assistant came out of the surgery theater they had scrambled to put together to operate on Jo. It was Garrick’s first major operation and he had sweated his way through it because there was no one else with the skills to try.

  He’d had one assistant at the table and one reader, Marissa with her clear and steady voice, who read instructions from a tablet Garrick had given her, while he operated.

  The rig had rolled onto its side and with both mutants dead, the heavy main gates to the compound were opened and rescuers raced to the truck, while others went for fire extinguishers and stretchers.

  CJ and Garrick could see through the windshield that Vasquez had survived and was still hanging by his seatbelt in the passenger seat. Chuck and Yvonne climbed on top to
open the passenger door and help the man out. He had cuts and bruising, but considering what he’d just gone through, he was rather happy to be alive.

  Jo wasn’t in as good of shape. It took more than 20 minutes to get the big woman through the windshield that had to be pulled out. It was obvious on first inspection both her arms were broken and she probably had internal injuries.

  But what shocked Garrick and scared CJ most was the bullet hole that was bleeding above her right breast. He railed at all the shooters and it took Chuck’s massive hand on his shoulder to calm him down and keep him from saying something someone might take serious offense to.

  “Now is not the time, Mr. Perry,” Chuck said quietly and looking directly into the young man’s eyes. “Let’s save her life before we start blaming someone for killing her.”

  Garrick had Marissa and Chloe clean and sterilize everything in the executive officer’s quarters aboard the submarine and set it up so he could operate as soon as he was able. Jo was losing a lot of blood and would need transfusions so people were lined up to have their blood tested.

  Chuck and Yvonne lined them up and no one argued with them.

  The actual surgery took three and a half hours. When he had found the bullet, he pulled it out and gave it to Marissa to throw away. He didn’t want anyone to know what caliber it was because then people would start throwing accusations and causing more trouble. “No, it’s better if I just say the bullet was too damaged to be identified and it was probably a ricochet. We’ll let everyone learn from this tragic accident,” he told Marissa and the assistant.

  Once the surgery was completed to the best of his ability, he sewed up the wound neatly and applied the dressings. Since Jo would still be under the anesthetic for another couple of hours, he also set and splinted her arms. He had set broken bones before and was sure she’d eventually regain full use of them.

  Garrick never left the woman’s side until she finally came out of the anesthesia. It took a little longer than he’d expected and she struggled with the tube down her throat. When he felt she could finally understand him, he told her he would take it out with her help. “You’re going to exhale long and hard so take a deep breath,” he told her. “You’re going to want to cough and that’s good because you have no blood in your lungs or stomach, but let’s get this out before you start. Ready?”