Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (28 page)

When the others had arrived, they made sure the fires were put out. Garrick introduced Marissa when she got off the first bus and came running over to Garrick. She had a younger girl in tow that came up to Chuck and Yvonne. She was introduced as Danielle, a friend of Chuck’s. She looked sullen and lost and afraid of everyone, but no one said anything except Chuck, who nodded to her and said “Hey.”

CJ, Jo and the Professor, Chuck and Yvonne and Garrick and Marissa found a place to sit down in the shelter CJ had slept in. Chloe saw the state Danielle was in, so asked her up to her room with Teddy so the others could have some privacy.

Jo started some hot water for coffee while more formal introductions were made.

CJ told of his experiences over the last week or so. While living it, he thought it was the worst situations life could throw at anyone. That was until Jo told of living through the plague, then watching Sacramento fall during the quake.

Garrick told of the horrors at sea and watching the coastline of California fall into the ocean and having to flee to deep water to survive the tsunami.

Chuck told of leaving Folsum ahead of the beasts. He’d edited his past for everyone and his brother hadn’t said a word. According to the people who listened to him now, Chuck had been a farmer, not a career criminal who had been sentenced to life in prison for his part in a robbery that had cost a grocer his life. He told briefly of saving Yvonne and Danielle from a motorcycle gang, but left out the detail of shooting two of the three.

Chuck’s story also told of watching the tsunami come on shore in the darkness two days ago with Yvonne and Danielle. He told about how the water came in a wall and put out all the fires in LA and Pasadena before washing up the side of the side of the mountain.

After surviving the quake and tsunami, they were working their way back to Sacramento because everything south was now unlivable. They hoped to find someone by going back north. They tried nine passes through the mountains, but all had been closed because of the quakes.

“We were spending the night in a furniture store night before last,” Chuck told them, “when we almost got eaten by wild animals. If we hadn’t, we’d have never run into Garrick’s group of people.” Chuck, with color commentary by Yvonne, told how they and Danielle had barely survived the quake and tsunami and ended up in a city that was only partially destroyed. It was getting dark and they needed clean clothes and some sleep.

“Three huge soft beds with comforters,” Yvonne added, “and we had a real nice picnic with guns lying around and flashlights hanging on the wall.” She didn’t tell everyone the part about how scared all of them were and how they all slept in the same bed. She also left out the part about how during the night they’d rearranged themselves with Chuck cuddling Danielle and Yvonne spooning Chuck for mutual comfort.

“In the middle of the night, something tried getting in the front door. It was a pack of wild dogs and they were growling and snapping at each other. We hadn’t thought about finding another way out and thought we were going to have to fight off the dogs with two guns and two flashlights.

“We’d jumped up, flipped the beds and pushed them up as a blockade, when Yvonne saw a stairwell in the back of the store. The first dog got over the beds and we ran like hell up the stairs. Luckily there was a door at the top of the stairs and we slammed it shut.

“The second floor was partially destroyed from the quake and we had to scramble over chairs and shit to get to the windows at the front. We could hear the dogs downstairs and there were more outside. We were pretty well screwed standing there looking out the window in our skivvies.”

Everyone was listening with rapt attention as Chuck told the story. All of them had been through hell the past month, but Chuck’s deep baritone and simmering intensity made the story interesting. CJ thought if Chuck was in sports broadcasting, he’d be the Morgan Freeman of ESPN.

“We’d parked the car out front, but no one could remember if we left the keys in it or if they were still in my pants which were downstairs with the dogs.  After a few minutes, all the dogs out front had gotten into the store, probably eating the food we had worked our asses off to find.

“Since Danielle was the lightest and didn’t have a gun, we decided she’d have to be the one to climb out the window onto the ledge and try to jump down onto the roof of the truck. Me and Yvonne would cover her.”

Chuck told how the younger woman didn’t balk at the suggestion, but then she’d showed hardly any emotion for several days. Chuck held Danielle’s hand and Yvonne held his gun as he lowered her onto the SUV’s roof.  Yvonne gave him his gun back and they waited to see if the dogs inside the store had seen her. They apparently hadn’t, and no one was going to use flashlights to give the dogs the hint that people were escaping.

After waiting a few minutes, Danielle eventually worked her way to the far side of the SUV, slid off the truck, reached for the passenger door and pulled it open. The interior light came on and a bell sounded. Chuck could see with the light that Danielle’s underwear had been skewed during their escape. One bra strap had been torn off and neither of her small breasts were still in their cups. “God I love this more than being in prison,” he’d said to himself, then wondered why he’d think such thoughts at a time like this.

The dogs reacted to the light and sound as well and the first dog came racing out of the store even as Danielle was slamming the door of the truck. If the keys weren’t there, she’d be trapped.

Five or six more dogs were coming from the store and Yvonne cocked her pistol, but Chuck put a hand on her arm and whispered “She’s safe for now. Let’s not let the dogs know we’re up here.”

The light in the truck stayed on for about 20 seconds and Danielle slid into the driver’s seat. Chuck heard the big SUV start up and smiled. Danielle put the truck in drive and started to pull away. “What the hell is that chick doing?” he asked Yvonne as the younger girl pulled away slowly.

“Trust her, dude. She don’t show it, but she’s smarter than both of us put together,” Yvonne whispered back.

Danielle drove around the block with seven dogs chasing after her. She drove back in front of the store and looked up at the two still on the ledge and made a circle with her hand then held up her index her finger. Three more dogs raced out of the store to chase the SUV and Danielle drove just fast enough for the slowest dog in the pack to keep up.

She went down two blocks and turned left and drove until she saw the first dog start to lag behind. She slowed until it caught up then slammed on the brakes. Three dogs ran into the truck’s bumper while two others climbed the hood and barked at her through the windshield.

With the dogs slavering on the windshield, she turned on the wipers and then the sprayer. She laughed at the dogs and teased them until they were worked into a froth.

She then hammered the accelerator and the dogs flew off the truck and she raced away. When she got back in front of the store she slammed on the brakes and threw the passenger door open. Chuck and Yvonne jumped down to the ground and piled inside the truck just as the first dog was coming around the block.

“Hurry! That Dane ain’t giving up!” Danielle called to them.

Chuck pushed on Yvonne’s ass, not waiting to open the back door. All three would ride up front until they were clear of danger. Chuck’s right foot was just leaving the ground when Danielle hit the accelerator again. The door slammed on his foot, but he was able to push the door open enough and get his foot inside. One of the dogs was close enough to get its nose in the door. Chuck heard the dog yelp as he pulled the door closed.

He could also hear the deep bark of the Great Dane that was after them, but it was falling back as Danielle drove straight ahead.

At the first corner, three dogs came running from the side street after them and two fell under the treads. Chuck looked around Yvonne, who was sitting on his lap, to see how Danielle was handling the driving. There were tears running down the young woman’s face, but he didn’t say anything. There was also an intensity of concentration as well as the tears. They were in a fight for their lives and the dogs would have won the fight if they’d stayed in the furniture store.

All three kept checking the rear view mirrors to make sure the dogs stopped following. Yvonne told Danielle to just keep driving for now until they were sure they were in a safer area. Chuck started to breath easier. It was the second time in 10 days or so that something tried to make him a dinner. He wasn’t liking it too well.

Yvonne’s body relaxed on his lap. She had been as tense as he while waiting on the ledge for Danielle to come back. She leaned back onto his right shoulder, her legs across his and put her arm around his neck so she was more comfortable and out of Danielle’s view of the passenger side mirror.

Chuck wasn’t going to complain because the woman wasn’t heavy and her body was warm in the still cold SUV. Yvonne slapped his chest with her right hand. “Hey, none of that, mister. We almost died back there! What in hell is wrong with you?”

Chuck knew in an instant to what she was referring. He couldn’t help himself and how she was positioned on his lap, she couldn’t help but feel the post-action euphoria of surviving yet another close call with death Chuck was experiencing.

Here he was now in the front seat of an SUV with a 24-year-old woman driving, wearing nothing but flowered panties and a bra that was more off than on, a well-shaped 32-year-old woman on his lap, also wearing only panties, but her bra was still on, and him, wearing nothing but white boxers. “Obviously nothing is wrong,” was all he could think to say. Yvonne slapped his chest again, this time not as hard. “Well, just keep it that way, mister.”

Chuck nodded, but couldn’t do anything about the situation until they stopped and found some clothes. He still had his hand around her waist and lying on her flat stomach. He could feel her breathing and he couldn’t think of anything else to think about so he tried valiantly to concentrate on the dark scenery outside the passenger window.

Of course, Chuck edited those details out of the story as he related it to the small crowd who had gathered to listen to his sonorous voice tell of their adventure. He finished the tale with their finding a clothing outlet that had fallen over sideways in the quake, but had been on the side of a hill and hadn’t gotten soaked by the flooding.

He also realized as he took a sip of water before finishing his story, that these people were listening to him, paying attention to what he had to say and not judging him by a past they didn’t know about or the color of his skin. These were all people just like him in a world that was new.  He continued with his story.

Using the headlights of the SUV, they found clothing and threw some more in the back of the SUV in case they had to change in an emergency again. After getting dressed, they were too wide awake to sleep so looked for some food and water and got back on the road toward Sacramento. Chuck took over the driving duties with Yvonne riding shotgun. Danielle sat in the back seat, head down and hands clasped. When she was in the middle of fighting for their lives, there was life in the girl, but when she had to stop and think about what this life was, she went back to being sullen and withdrawn.

They stopped three times during the day, twice for food and once for fuel. Chuck and Yvonne compared some of their personal history, nothing in depth, but enough to get to better know each other. It was something to pass the time. They found some music to listen to at a gas station where they found the fuel.

It was early evening, just as it was getting dark when they were driving on I-5. They saw a bunch of people milling around some school buses. “We weren’t sure who they were and after what we’d been through,” Chuck said, “we weren’t taking any chances.

“I stopped the SUV about a hundred feet from them and kept our brights in their eyes. We scared some of them, but I figured better them than us.

“Now I’d had the shit shocked out of me a dozen times already this month, but nothing shocked me more than to see my little brother walk out of the crowd, bold as hell, in his navy uniform.

“Well I looked at Yvonne. I’d told her about Garrick and some of the shit we’d gone through as kids. When I first ran into her I told her I was headed to San Diego to see if I could find out if he was dead or alive. And then, big as life, there he was in the middle of the road with 150 other survivors. I said to her ‘ Tell me your God done did this,’ and pointed to Garrick.”

“When I was really sure it was him and he was sure it was me, he told me his story of piloting a submarine in the ocean and watching San Diego fall into the ocean and surfing a tsunami and saving Marissa and a bunch of others from that cruise liner and aircraft carrier.

“Hell, I thought I’d been having an adventure, but he was having one better than mine.” the people listening to Chuck laughed. Both men had been to the gates of hell and found some way to keep from walking through the door.

“We had three school buses, three trucks, two cars and our SUV for about 150 people so we parked them close together and spent the night talking and trading stories of what we’d seen.

“We got on the road, headed to Sacramento, early this morning when Yvonne saw this dog tearing ass across the interstate. Since we’d already had a bad experience with dogs, Yvonne wondered what it was that would scare the shit out of a dog to make it run away so quickly. And I ain’t kidding, that dog was running as fast as it could and it was dropping shit out of its ass.” Chuck held up his hand. “Swear to God, that dog had the shit scared out of it.” This elicited another laugh from the crowd.