Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (10 page)

Chuck picked up a new toothbrush and toothpaste, toilet paper, some sticks of beef jerky and iced coffee from the freezer on his way outside. He found a secluded spot along side the building between some bushes to take care of personal business first. When he was finished he opened the toothbrush and toothpaste and made his mouth feel cleaner. He put the toiletries in his saddlebag when he was finished, wishing for a shower but knowing he wasn’t getting one.

He drank the coffee and ate the jerky while fueling the bike. The two women came out after a few minutes. Both were cleaned up after the previous day’s hell.

“Morning,” he said to them as he put the siphon back into his saddle bag.

The black woman spoke for both of them. “Mister…”

“Chuck,” he told her.

“Chuck, thank you enough for saving us yesterday. If it’s okay with you we’d like to stick with you for a while.

“I’m Yvonne and this is my friend Danielle,” the younger woman smiled at him, but the sadness and fear in her eyes was still apparent.

Chuck told them of his plan to work his way to San Diego to see if he still had a brother. Yvonne told him she had been living at the woman’s shelter after her husband had tried killing her. When the rest of the world died, she continued to hide in the house.

Danielle, he learned, had been living with her boyfriend when he went on an alcohol-fueled rampage, destroying her car and slapping her around until the cops showed up. He made bail and was stalking her and she had been hiding in several different places when everyone started dying.

She came across Yvonne three days earlier while both were looking for food. They talked and Yvonne told Danielle about the safe house and the importance of staying together.

The only reason Yvonne had come out of the house was to remove the body of another woman who had died days earlier. Chuck recalled seeing a large dumpster out front of the house. That must have been what Dog had seen Yvonne doing.

Chuck nodded but didn’t feel like telling them the entire story of his past. “I was working at a dairy farm. Everyone died and I didn’t think I needed to take care of cows any more so I thought I’d go see if my brother still lived at the navy base.”

“I think we should get on the road and in four or five hours, we can be in San Diego. We’ll find what we can find.”

Yvonne nodded. “I think we’ll find something else to drive. I don’t think my ass would like four hours on your bike.”

“Suit yourself, I like the bike.”

They spent an hour walking around the parking lot looking for a vehicle for Yvonne and Danielle. Many of them wouldn’t start nor had keys. Two of the ones they found had dead bodies in them and no one wanted to drive a car with dead person stink.

Danielle was the one who found the car they’d drive. It was a 2012 Cadillac STS parked by itself behind one of the buildings. It was in like-new condition and the keys were on the visor. When she sat inside and turned the key it started with ease.

She drove it around front where Chuck had parked his bike and got out. Chuck and Yvonne showed up after she honked the horn several times. It’d need gas so Chuck found some gas cans and filled them from other cars around the area. It was near noon before they were ready for the road. Chuck had to fix a few things on his bike and Yvonne wanted to put some extra food and water in the trunk of the Caddy.

When they finally got on the road, Chuck took the lead. He wanted to make it to the north side of Los Angeles before stopping again. The girls were comfortable driving at 65 miles per hour behind him because they had to be more careful of the wrecks on the highway.

Twice before they got to LA, they had to leave the interstate because of blockage. Tractor trailer rigs had wrecked blocking all lanes and the little group had to back track and find a way around.

It was just after 2 p.m. when they stopped north of LA. Chuck pulled off the interstate and wound his way to Dodgers Stadium. When the women got out of the car and asked why, he told them he’d seen the stadium on TV hundreds of times and had always wanted to visit.

They ate a light lunch and took care of some personal needs before getting back on the road. There were more cars littering the highway in this area, but they could still make good time. Chuck re-fueled both his Harley and the Caddy. Yvonne discovered the GPS on the Caddy was still working.

Yvonne showed Chuck and gave him the directions to get back on highway I-5. Chuck started his bike and headed out of the stadium. He got a little turned around with his directions while trying to avoid the wrecked cars. He found himself on an overpass where he had a good view of the Los Angeles skyline. He stopped the bike, intending to check with Yvonne again for directions.

He turned the bike off and put down the kick stand when he felt the first trembler. He’d experienced quakes before and the first shaking didn’t bother him because it was light and short lived.

He walked back to the car and opened the back door so he could look over Yvonne’s shoulder while she zoomed out the GPS so Chuck could get his bearings.

He’d just sat down when the second tremor rocked the car. It was stronger this time and both women looked at Chuck. “Let’s get off this overpass,” he told them when he saw his bike fall over. If the earth was shaking, being on an overpass was one of the worst places to be.

Yvonne dropped the car into drive even before Chuck got his door closed. All three could feel the shaking of the overpass and were glad when they got off the ramp and onto the eight-lane highway.

Yvonne stopped the car and waited for the shaking to stop. They could see the LA skyline in front of them. This late in the afternoon, the fog had burned off and without the exhaust from hundreds of thousands of cars, the factories and people they had a clear view of the city.

The second tremor stopped shaking the car and Yvonne was about to start driving again when they heard the noise and felt the earth start moving. The sound was a low, gut-turning rumble which was felt as much as it was heard. Danielle saw the effects first and pointed at the LA skyline. The buildings, even from this distance, they could tell were moving.

The earthquake then moved into high gear and the car was shaking enough all three felt it move across the highway. Yvonne shut it off and applied the emergency brake, glad they weren’t parked near any other vehicles.

All three watched as the skyscrapers in the city fell in slow motion from the shaking. Both Yvonne and Danielle cried out in horror as two tall building fell together raising a massive dust cloud.

The car they were in dropped on the pavement as the ground moved below them. They could see other vehicles on the highway further ahead of them being thrown around too. A tractor trailer rig hauling fuel dropped to one side from the tilting of the highway and the three of them watched from half a mile away as the flames erupted from it.

Too scared to move, the three stayed in the car. They saw cracks form on the highway and race in their direction. The world shook around them and all three had time to scream out what they thought might be their last words when their car dropped a tire into a crack, but stayed upright. Fortunately only this smaller crack got as far as their car. The bigger one opened up a gap wide enough to swallow a thousand cars about 500 yards to their right.

The shaking went on for what felt like hours but according to the clock on the car’s dash was only 17 minutes. When the major shaking finally ended, the three survivors got out of the car and looked around. The fuel truck blocked most of the road in front of them and the over pass they’d been on blocked the road behind.

The skyline of Los Angeles no longer looked as picturesque as it did in all those pictures everyone had seen. Now it was a cloud of dust and smoke from collapsed buildings. Nothing soared into the sky except the dead city’s heart.

The City of Angels was now the City of Hell.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

The
U.S.S. North Carolina
spent four days moored to the pier while the carrier
Stennis
remained anchored just outside Pearl Harbor Naval Base. The submarine’s captain, Commander Phillip Finley refused to allow any of the hatches to be opened until he was reasonably sure the plague or virus had run its course. C.P.O. Lindsey suggested at least 14 more days, but the communications from shore said that no people had died from the plague in three days.

When the people rescued from the
Stennis
had gone ashore, they had drawn the attention of people on the island who had survived.

Lt. j.g. Davies Jansen, the senior surviving engineer and default captain of the
Stennis
led the group from the hull of the
North Carolina
onto land. They were met by a group of more than 200 survivors from in and around Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Waipahu and the Marine Corps Air Station who had all gathered in the area.

As people started dying, someone had the forethought to broadcast across the entire island a place where the survivors, if there were to be any, could gather. The population of the island was nearly a million before the plague. After the great death there were less than 250 people left alive on the island and 209 were gathered on Hickam Air Force Base.

When the
North Carolina
pulled up to a pier at the west end of Honolulu airport, things were still in disorder; no one had stepped forward and tried to organize any type of long-term survival.

Jansen put together an ad-hoc command group to decide what the survivors would do for their future. He represented the military.

Marissa Lawrence, the 27-year-old concierge from The
Pride of America
represented the survivors from that vessel and Dale Marks represented the survivors from the island. The three talked to the people in their respective groups.

Some had ideas about flying back to the continental United States but they had no pilots for any of the aircraft. Some of the people suggested taking one of the yachts on the island and going back to the states. The problems with that were the 3,600 miles they’d have to travel and none of the yachts they’d come across could handle the 300 people, who would also need food and berths. A few wanted to set up a civilization here on the island.

Someone started a rumor of a giant shark that came ashore and killed survivors which began to ripple though the survivors. Jansen and Lawrence tried to keep a lid on the stories, but someone said they came across a grisly scene in which bodies had been shredded.

It was Marissa who suggested moving everyone back to the
Stennis
, a ship fully provisioned, with plenty of room and an engineer who could turn the engines on and guide the massive ship where it needed to go.

The
Stennis
was actually too big, but Marissa said the big flat top would give everyone plenty of room to move around and there was enough food and utilities so everyone could be comfortable. The
Stennis
would also be an asset back in San Diego, presuming there were survivors there as well.

Pearl Harbor was without power, but the
Stennis
and the
North Carolina
both had nuclear reactors that were working. If they got to San Diego and found survivors, the flat top and submarine could prove useful.

Lt. Jansen and Ms. Lawrence and Marks agreed that the
Stennis
might be their best hope. A storm that moved through on the second day helped convince a few more for the use of the
Stennis
. Hawaii was an island with a limited amount of types of food that could be grown and types of livestock that would thrive. While it might be enough for a year or two, in the long term, the people ashore thought the mainland was a better option.

At the end of the fourth day following the arrival of the two navy boats, a majority of those on shore decided to brave the 3,600 mile trip to the mainland. Jansen would command the
Stennis
and train some engineers and Marissa would organize the people to maintain the ship as best they could.

The morning of the fifth day they radioed the
North Carolina
with their decision and told Finley there had been no deaths from the plague in five days.

Finley gave the okay for the attempt. He, along with 100 percent of his crew wanted to get back to San Diego and he was still the most senior military person available. Many of his crew had relatives in and around the naval base, while others had family or friends in other parts of the Unites States. Living on the island, they would never know if anyone in their families had lived or died.

Most knew the chances were next to none that anyone in their family was still alive, but every one of them wanted to know for sure.

It took three more days while the people on shore were transferred to the
Stennis
. Jansen was in the first group and made preparations with the 14 sailors who had been aboard the
Stennis
, and nine more from the other ships in the original Task Force.

Marissa and Dale put together food packages and other supplies they could find to help make the nine-day cruise. Jansen had figured he could safely pilot the
Stennis
at between 14 and 16 knots during the day, but he’d slow to about eight knots at night. He relayed his thoughts to Finley and the captain of the
North Carolina
agreed.