Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (36 page)

CJ was as scared. He’d been afraid of living for the longest time after the fall of civilization, but now he was afraid to die in a hail of gunfire. It wasn’t how he thought his life would play out.

He had to take a piss so bad because he was scared, but there was no way he was going to tell anyone. In the lull, he thought about the left turn his life had taken five months ago. Where he used to think about tennis shoe endorsements and which racket to promote, his thoughts now were filled with community protection, concrete pours, and personnel assignments.

Now, as he lay next to a wounded half-naked black woman, aiming a gun at a hanger door in defense of a half dozen people who he cared deeply for, he wondered if there were anymore surprises God had in store for him. He recalled the morning on the highway when he hollered at God, asking if this was the worst He could do. He was regretting his screaming at God now and was hoping instead for His intercession.

They heard a truck coming in the distance. They didn’t know if it was one of their people or more of their unknown attackers. As the truck got closer, CJ could tell it was a big rig, probably Jo coming for another load that she hadn’t got to the previous day. “We got to warn her somehow,” he said to no one in particular.

“Yea we do,” Chuck agreed. He looked around for way to warn Jo before she got too close. It was CJ who had the idea.

The former tennis player rolled over and found the walkie-talkie the Professor had abandoned on the floor. He grabbed it and before anyone could stop him, he ran as fast as he could out the door and didn’t stop until he reached the backside of the communications van.

Jo had once saved CJ from himself, and now CJ was hopefully saving her.

The machine gun opened up and was tearing into the van, but CJ was crouched and protected by the axle and tires. He was calling on the radio, warning Jo of the danger.

All the glass was blown out and bullets were bouncing off the concrete around CJ, he continued to talk into the radio. The bullets were coming from different angles, but from the same general direction.

One of the ricochets hit the radio in his hand and took a large bite out of his face.

The radio was now useless and CJ was vulnerable where he was, and now he had his hands over his face to stop the blood.

Chuck looked over at Garrick and Yvonne. Both were nursing their wounds.

Marissa’s injury wasn’t as bad and she had a .38 in her hand and was lying next to Yvonne. She’d screamed briefly when CJ was hit, but still remained where she was covering the door.

“Here’s what I’m gonna do,” Chuck told them and explained how he hoped to draw fire away from CJ.

“That’s a bad idea. We need to wait here until Jo brings back help,” the Professor said. “We have a defensible position here and we can wait them out.” Chuck looked over at the old man. He was the only one who wasn’t armed and had the balls to tell him how to defend this position.

“You’re full of shit, Professor. They already killed one of us, wounded four more. CJ is out there taking fire and you want us to sit in here and wait? You’re out of your rabbit-assed mind.”

“For all you know, Jo’s calling for help and they’ll be here in 15 or 20 minutes,” the Professor countered. “I think the best thing is to just wait. They can’t hit CJ if he stays behind that wheel. Look,” he said pointing, “he’s huddled up there and they’ve stopped shooting at him.”

Chuck was already tired of listening to the former teacher. There was a time to act and a time to wait. Waiting would get more people killed.

It was time to act and Chuck did. He got into a crouch and was about ready to move when he thought he better do something else before he ran. He reached over Marissa’s prone body and kissed Yvonne’s nose. “Love you, babydoll,” he said to her.

“I love you too, Bikerman. Watch your ass. They like to shoot at it,” she told him and favored him with her bright smile. To the others he ordered “you all stay here no matter what. None of you try to move outside.”

Chuck peeked around the tug one more time and took off as fast as he’d ever run in his life. He was five long strides out of the door when the shooting started again. Chuck didn’t run in a straight line, but jinked as well as any basketball player who had ever taken the court. None of those shooting at him could get a bead on him.

The Professor, seeing the shooting was tracking Chuck told the others he was going to go help CJ, who might have been blinded by the fragments in his face. Yvonne told him to stay put, but he went anyway.

The professor made it two steps out of the door before being hit multiple times by another shooter. He collapsed face first on the pavement and blood flowed from multiple holes in his body.

“Dumbass smartass,” Yvonne said. “He should have stayed put like Chuck said.”

That was the amount of regret anyone could mount for the man right now. They’d mourn later. They could see CJ preparing to run back inside. His face was still bleeding, but he must have seen some reason for wanting to move from his relative safety.

It was like he was shot out of canon when the shooting stopped. He’d guessed someone was reloading and took off for the hanger. He was nearly to the door before someone started shooting but missed and CJ dove behind the tug.

“Looks like there are five of them,” He said through gasps. “I think Jo’s going for help, but I’m not sure because they got the radio before I told her the full story. But she did turn around and not come here.”

He let Marissa tend to the rip in his face. “Damn,” she said. “They got you good. You’re gonna have a hell of a scar there, CJ.” CJ winced when she touch the flap of skin that was hanging down, but let her bandage his face without fussing.

“I dig scars,” Chloe said over her shoulder.

“Well, your boyfriend’s gonna have a good one under his right eye, but he’ll be okay in a few days. The eye looks okay....” She was interrupted when both Yvonne and Chloe opened up at a shadow on the other side of the wall, opposite the direction from where Chuck headed. A man wearing a ragged army uniform with new bullet holes fell forward into their view and dropped his M16.

“There’s the machine gun we heard,” Yvonne postulated.

“But there’s at least four more still out there,” Chloe said.

They waited in silence. There was no more gunfire.

Everyone was on edge, waiting for any word from outside.

They all jumped when they heard Chuck call to them. “It’s safe to come out now.

“Come on you guys. It’s safe,” he said walking to the door to show them he wasn’t under duress. “We won’t have anymore trouble from these guys.”

Chloe was the first to get up and she helped CJ, whose face was wrapped with a shirt almost to where he was blind, to his feet. Marissa and Garrick helped Yvonne carefully pull her jeans up, making sure she didn’t dislodge the bandage on her ass.

Chuck came to help with Yvonne and she saw there was blood on his hands and shirt.  “Chuck, you’re bleeding,” she said and allowed Garrick to release her and go to his brother.

“Don’t worry babydoll, it’s not mine.” He indicated the nine-inch long knife he had on his belt. “They didn’t even know I’d circled around behind them.

“The last one alive told me they saw us and wanted our women. That’s why they shot at the men. He said he was sorry for hitting ‘the black chick.’ After that, he stopped talking.”

Yvonne was probably the only one who understood what hadn’t been said. Chuck was merciless when someone tried to hurt his women.

Ten minutes later a caravan of heavily-armed men and women showed up. By then, the old teacher’s and Joshua’s bodies had been wrapped in tarps. They’d be buried far from the compound.

Six hours later Danielle landed her plane. When she asked where Chuck and Yvonne were, she heard the entire story of what happened while she was gone from the guy who drove her to the compound. She hurried to Yvonne’s bedside in the submarine, where the older woman was laying on her stomach on the bed with Chuck at her side. She hugged and kissed them both, happy they were both alive. She also asked quickly about CJ’s face, Garrick’s shoulder and Marissa’s leg, as they were also lying in the sickbay with Yvonne.

Assured everyone who was still alive was going to recover, she turned back to her family.

“If this is what happens when I leave you two unsupervised, I’m never leaving you two ever again,” she told them, hugging Yvonne again before sitting down on Chuck’s lap and hugging his neck.

“I can live with that,” Chuck told her.

“Me too,” said Yvonne.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

The first storm hit Ft. Benjamin Harrison in late October. Nine inches of snow fell in the two-day storm and despite the preparations Col. Hammond and the rest of the community had made, they found out how ready they were not.

The temperatures dropped into the teens and many people found they didn’t have proper cold-weather clothing. They’d thought there would still be a long cool autumn, and not the sub-freezing blizzard-like conditions.

Many of the Army trucks they had been using refused to start and Captain Eldred nearly froze his hands setting up a generator for the sole purpose of providing electricity to engine block heaters.

Some of the other people braved the cold to look for snowmobiles, but they were few because the end of the world came when spring was in the air, not winter. Some of the braver people found that quads could pull sleds, providing a fun afternoon if one could stand freezing their asses off.

Salvaging and farming was called for the winter and there was really not much work to be done. People in the community, which grew to more than 330 people, found equipment to move the snow off the streets they used, but there just weren’t that many miles of roads that needed cleaning.

An ice storm moved through in late November which collapsed the roofs on four houses, one of them occupied. One person was injured, but steps were taken to protect everyone else. The ice storm and snow storm also finished off the Kroger and Walmart stores, making them unsafe to enter by anyone.

One of the Mutant Eradication teams reported a higher number of wildlife moving closer to the fenced in community and Russ and Jenny worked out an arrangement so the cattle, chickens, pigs, turkeys and horses she was taking care of were allowed to range inside a second fenced in area outside the one that protected the community. It created some problems and eliminated others. Russ told her it was a learning process.

As the winter settled in for the long haul, boredom began to rear its ugly-short tempered head. Several fights broke out requiring Deputy Doug or Fred being called. People who had been friends had to be moved into separate housing.

Lisa did what she could, creating activities for kids and events for the adults, but still the winter was dragging for everyone. It was made even worse in mid-January when a Nor’easter came through with blizzard conditions for three days. More than 40 inches of snow fell and drifts were found covering building 30 feet tall. The digging out took days.

The low point of the winter was the loss of three men and two women, including Troy the insurance salesman and Lisa’s assistant. The five went out in mid-December looking for ski equipment and baby clothes. They had seen a mall earlier in the year not far off the base proper and wanted to check it out.

When they didn’t return after four hours and couldn’t be reached by walkie-talkie, Sgt. Bare and her team went searching for them.

What they found was a blood bath frozen in the snow and entrance of the building. The five must have encountered at least three of the flesh-eating mutants in the strip mall. It was still snowing pretty heavily when Bare came to the mall, and she found the two 4 by 4s the search party had taken.

She and her squad of seven soldiers spread out and entered the main doors of the mall and saw the carnage. Blood streaked the floors and there were small body parts and shreds of clothing that had been ripped from someone’s body.

At least two people had escaped the original attack and had made it outside, but the blood in the snow told the story. They’d been caught within reaching distance of their trucks and hauled back inside the building.

Bare ordered her team back out of the mall and called Russ.

She told him what she saw and he asked if there were any other buildings close to the mall. There was one small former floral shop, but nothing else on the block.

“We’re gonna burn the goddamn place down. Burn it and whatever is inside to the ground,” he told her after slamming his hand onto the desk. “I’ll come with a few fire trucks, to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.

“You make sure nothing escapes before we get there, but start pouring gas at all the doorways.”

The fire raged and one of the mutants tried escaping but 11 people on scene shot the mutant during its flaming escape attempt. It did not make anyone feel better about the loss of five of their friends, but shooting one of the beasts with more than 300 rounds did let off some pent up anger.

The cinder block building was burned as best they could and none of the fire trucks had to pull any of their hoses off the trucks.

Todd and two others with computer experience designed several games that could be played by multiple people in different homes. Tournaments were held for online tennis, golf, football and other sports. As the winter dragged on, war games became the thing, but Russ could tell people were ready to get outside into the sunlight again.