Hell Revisited (Hell happened) Read online

  They were now resting in the Prevost as well. It would take weeks for their bodies to re-adjust to earth’s gravity, but at least they were home on earth and not dying a slow death in space. That was what they’d asked for and what Jerry and his team had provided.

  The rhythmic hum of the tour bus lulled Jerry close to sleep. He was on the cusp between awake and asleep. His mind was drifting though everything that had transpired since people around the globe started dying.

  The plague, or virus or Act of God and what caused it was still a mystery. There was speculation it was started by terrorists, or renegade microbiologists or even the strange meteor storm that had crossed paths with earth.

  On some days it had been reported millions were dying, even tens of millions. There was panic from some, but it was quelled with the swift deaths of more than six billion world-wide.

  No inoculation had time to be developed. No social standing, no amount of money or devout belief in a Creator helped. No one knew what started the virus and the scientists who could have determined what caused it were all dead now. It might be years or never before the real cause was ever found.

  Earth’s population was dead…most of them.

  Jerry was the leader of a small band of people who survived the end of the world, along with his son Randy. Eddie, Monica, Rusty and Tony survived. Juan and his wife Margarita, Kellie, Josh and his daughter Marissa, Tia and her two children John and Hannah, twin 12-year-olds Tara and Sara, Danny, Nick and his friend Sade, Katie and Jamal all survived and found their way to Jerry’s shelter and farm.

  They lived there now in the ad-hoc self-sustaining shelter Jerry had begun building years before the fall of civilization and finished as the world died around him.

  Jerry was glad there were other compounds or camps like his. Tony had made contact with the Smith Compound in Kentucky, run by a former military officer. Jerry was sure there were others and when he got the astronauts back to the farm, Tony could take the time to find them.

  Jerry thought about the people who didn’t die, the ones who had become some sort of monster. Randy had called them zombies even though they weren’t dead. They were not-deads who lived off the flesh of people who were still alive or recently killed. No one knew why they survived, how they were turned into monsters or what motivated them.

  Jerry and his son had fought off a pair of the zombies and survived only because of luck and the shotguns they had with them. On another occasion, it was a brick wall and two hand guns wielded by Randy and Eddie that had saved Monica when they were caught unaware in a pharmacy.

  Fortunately the zombies lived, if that was what it could be called, in darkened buildings and avoided the light of day.

  The zombies were what they were -- another part of this post-apocalyptic world.

  Jerry thought about the vigilantes too. The laws from before no longer applied. There were some roving bands of vigilantes or brigands who raided settlements like Jerry’s looking for food or women or weapons. They were ruthless and lawless and dangerous.

  Jerry’s farm had survived one terrible attack, but it had cost the life of Mike, a dear man who had been a bank executive before the fall of civilization. Mike had been helping Tia’s son with a project when the farm was attacked. Mike had been shot in the head and died in the driveway of the farm.

  Kellie, the middle-aged woman who had taken over the supplies and maintenance of the shelter itself, had killed one of the vigilantes when she shot through the door of the shelter. Monica killed another with her .22 rifle and Eddie had killed two when he ran over their escape vehicle with his SWAT truck.

  The one vigilante captured was now being held in confinement until they could find some place they could release her without fear of her retaliating against the farm, or turning her over to the soldiers at the military installation with whom they’d made contact. She’d been wounded and there were questions about her guilt and complicity, but Jerry had already decided she had to go. She was bad for the farm. He didn’t believe her story about being a victim.

  For everything that was different with the world of yesterday, Jerry was happy that he had the safe haven of his shelter and farm. He was happy his son had survived and was right now probably sleeping peacefully in the room of the shelter he shared with his friend Eddie.

  Everything wasn’t right with the world, but it was right enough considering how bad it could be.

  * * *

  Cheryl’s escape from the farm and captivity left an ugly scene in the shelter. There were no vehicles left on the farm except tractors, quads, Josh’s truck with the camper on the back, and Tia’s motorhome. None of them could catch Cheryl in the minivan. If there had been something to drive, someone would have chased her and caught her and probably killed her on the spot.

  The woman had been captured when she and her younger brother had attacked the farm with three others, hoping to take over the place and set it up as a base of operations. Their plan had gone awry when Kellie had killed her brother by shooting through the oak doors of the shelter.

  The other man with her had been wounded while reaching for a grenade. Monica had shot him dead. Cheryl had been hit in her left leg and shoulder by parts of the door and was trying to make it back to their truck when the two others who had killed Mike drove off, abandoning her.

  Cheryl later learned Eddie had driven his SWAT into them on the highway, killing them both. Cheryl was cheered to hear that story from Randy, but not for the reason he thought. She was glad they were dead so they couldn’t tell anyone she was the leader of their group. Randy was led to believe she was happy because they had taken part in her capture and torture.

  Cheryl had escaped from custody, a collar with a padlock chained to a wall in the barn, and leg irons. She’d cultivated a friendship built on lies with Jerry’s son. She flirted with him and teased him with her body, a knack she’d honed while in college and serving in the Army. She knew she was pretty and she used it on the hormonally-charged Randy. With Jerry gone to the gulf and another team away from the farm searching for motorhomes for the astronauts, she realized it was her best chance to escape.

  Randy had just delivered to her “cell” in the barn a TV and DVD for a “date” with her when she bashed him on the head with a piece of steel pipe she’d stashed. He dropped face first onto the floor and blood started flowing from his mouth. She hated Randy, knowing he was only being nice to her in hopes of getting sex, so she kicked him in the groin just for the pleasure of it. When he didn’t grunt, she guessed he was dead. He’d been “courting” her, allowing her out of her cell, not putting the leg irons or collar on her so she was free to leave her cell.

  What she needed was weapons and she knew the layout of the farm and shelter because Randy had laid it all out for her in an effort to impress her. Now was the time to use what she’d learned.

  In the time she had, she attacked the people in the shelter, shooting Kellie and Danny, before escaping in the deJesus’ minivan. She left believing Randy, Kellie and Danny were probably dead and was rather pleased with the look of horror on the old women and children. She laughed at the memory of her kicking Kellie’s little dog out of her way. The dog flew across the floor yelping loudly.

  * * *

  Amanda Saunders pulled onto the airport runway and turned her HUMVEE off. She wanted to make sure there was a lot of space between where she was and where anyone else might be. She was still struggling with this morning’s shock. She would never forget the look of fear on her young friend’s face after being shot. She would never forget the fear she felt while running away.

  What she wanted to do more than ever right now was to break down and cry.

  Everything was wrong. Nothing was normal. Amanda was sure she’d make it through the night, but it wouldn’t be a night at the Holiday Inn. It wouldn’t even be as comfortable her bed back at Fort Wainwright, but it was better than being dead or on a base with her dead friends and co-workers.

  She’d watched the news li
ke everyone else. She’d seen the newsmen talking about the end of the world. She, along with three others in the day room saw the president order martial law. The order came a day after the post commander and most of the command staff had died. Her first sergeant, company commander and boyfriend died that day.

  The pressure of going crazy was nearly overwhelming. The only thing that kept her on the right side of the canyon of insanity was a desire to return home to Alabama.

  She always found the Army’s wisdom at sending a soldier, born and raised in the south, to the middle of Alaska, a bit questionable. She’d requested Ft. Rucker, a helicopter post in Alabama, so she could be close to her dad and brother, or Ft. Lewis in Washington so she could be close to her mom and her new husband.

  Somehow the Army didn’t seem to care too much about these requests because she was assigned to Ft. Wainwright in the middle of the cold freaking state of Alaska. It didn’t seem fair, but then that was the Army. She had been assigned to Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 52nd Aviation Regiment, known as the “Flying Dragons.” She learned a lot from her platoon sergeant and leader in the two and a half years she’d been stationed there. She’d received orders sending her back to the continental United States for more advanced training when the end came.

  As she got comfortable in the HUMVEE, preparing for another long night she started singing the song sung to her when she was a little girl by the man she had called daddy. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.…”

  The song got her crying, something she did not do very often, but now had done twice today. She missed her dad, and if someone were to pull the braid in her dark blond hair and force her, she’d even admit to missing her older brother Randy. She also missed her mom who had divorced her dad after Amanda had joined the Army. And she missed the days when they all lived together on the farm and her worst worry was if she would pass calculus.

  She hadn’t heard from any of them since the end of the world came. She didn’t know why she survived, or the other three from the fort, but they did. It had been horrible. It had been worse than horrible and Amanda didn’t know if staying alive had been worth it.

  All the friends she’d made, her boyfriend, co-workers, had all died, from the lowest private on base to the commanding general of the post. No one but herself, Capt. Jim Poitra from accounting, Spec. 4 Roy Johnson the cook and Pvt. 2 Shep Sheppard a soldier straight out of Military Police training, had survived.

  The end came swiftly on post. It took less than a week from the first death until half the soldiers on post were dead. By the end of the second week, no one was even trying to bury the dead because there were so many. Civilians from Fairbanks had tried to get on post, thinking maybe the military had some secret way to save them, but there was none.

  Amanda and her roommate, Sgt. Shauna Lawrence, had no real belief they would survive. Both sent emails to their parents, telling them how afraid they were and how much they missed them. They tried calling, but no calls were going through.

  Shauna died that night, quietly in her sleep, just a few feet away from where Amanda dreamed of Alabama. Amanda didn’t know if her mom and dad had gotten her emails, but she hoped they had.

  Nine days later, everyone who was going to die of the virus on post was dead. It had taken 25 days from start to finish.

  Amanda didn’t want to be around the dead. As machinery stopped working, the cold temperatures would delay the decomposition of the bodies that were outside, but not the ones inside of buildings. Soon the animals of Alaska would come and there were too many bodies for Amanda to bury by herself. She decided to leave.

  Trained as a helicopter mechanic, Amanda thought about taking one of the many UH-60s that were on base. The helicopter had a range of more than 800 miles without spare fuel tanks which was well within the distance to Anchorage.

  She was not a pilot, but was she was a crackerjack mechanic on Blackhawks and she might have risked it if had been just herself. She’d learned to fly a little from her boyfriend and knew how the collective and cyclic worked to move the helicopter in flight. He’d allowed her to do it several times under his close direction and supervision. She felt she could fly to Anchorage and land and was willing to do it just to get away from all these dead people. She knew it would be a risk because there were mountains to fly around, but if she flew a few hundred feet above the highway, she thought she could navigate there in two or three hours. From that altitude, she’d also avoid the higher winds the pilots were always complaining about.

  Ft. Wainwright was a large military base and she’d spent half a day driving around trying to find someone else but had failed. She stopped trying. She even stopped believing someone else had survived. She was living in a dream from which she couldn’t wake. She was afraid and on the verge of doing something just to wake up from the nightmare.

  There was no reason she could see that she was alive and no one else. The only thing that kept her from checking to see if she was in some relentless dream by killing herself, was her dad’s collection of books she’d read growing up. There were too many science fiction stories where the good guy was the one to live, only to go crazy.

  Amanda vowed not to go crazy.

  Once she had made up her mind to fly a helicopter to Anchorage in hopes of finding someone else alive, she started filling her company commander’s HUMVEE with her cold weather gear. The man had died at his desk, in the middle of the day.

  She wanted to make sure she was ready in case her flying wasn’t as good as she pictured it in her mind. She’d already survived one auto-rotation when the bird she was in lost power. Chief Warrant 2 John Jackson had auto-rotated them to a survivable landing. It was a minute in hell as she heard the helicopter engine stutter and stop. The pilot used language usually reserved for drunken bar fights. She felt her stomach protest as the bird went into freefall and the pilot frantically nosed the Blackhawk forward to keep air moving over the blades. He flared at the last moment to a jarring landing, but at least they were alive.

  She was relieved to be in one piece after the landing, but she was more relieved she wasn’t Jackson’s mechanic. Jackson was one of the senior pilots and ripped into his maintenance crew like a drill sergeant with three ex-wives. A fuel line that had been checked by a private and inspected by a specialist and signed off by a sergeant had become fouled.

  Amanda had been in the bird at the invitation of the co-pilot who was also her most recent boyfriend. While officially, they were on a check-flight for the Blackhawk, Amanda knew it was the pilots’ way of looking around for new camping grounds. She would be going with them on a hunting trip in two weeks and they were looking for movement of the elk herds. They never made the trip after the auto-rotation landing. The regiment commander had found out and he was not pleased.

  Amanda had watched and listened as Jackson landed the bird and thought, if she flew to Anchorage and ran into trouble, she could do what he’d done.

  She never got that far. She was loading the HUMVEE when she saw another soldier walking between the barracks. At first she wasn’t sure she was just imagining him. He was walking in no particular direction, stumbling once in a while. She hollered at him to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. “Hey!” she hollered. “Hey you!”

  Pvt. 2 Sheppard took four more steps before stopping. He looked around, not sure if he were imagining her voice. When he saw her, he wasn’t even sure she was real despite her standing 30 feet from him.

  “Hey soldier. Are you real?” she called to him, stuffing her sleeping bag into the back seat of the HUMVEE and walking slowly over to him. Something told her his mind had already cracked. His boot laces were untied and dragging in the mud, his uniform was wrinkled and field jacket unzipped and he wore no headgear.

  “Are you real?” he asked her in return. He had the same southern accent she had. She placed him from someplace other than Alabama, but she didn’t know why. His very dark skin was smooth, causing the whites of
his eyes to stand out in stark contrast. By the number of veins she could see in his eyes, it looked like the kid hadn’t slept in too many hours.

  Even though she was just shy of 21, the young man looked too young to be in the Army and too afraid to be left by himself.

  * * *

  When 12-year-old Marissa came in to the shelter of Jerry’s farm, she told them the minivan and Cheryl was gone. Boomer, the large Bull Mastiff who was Tia’s pet, had taken chase. Marissa said she heard a gunshot but the big brown dog was still chasing the van when it was leaving the drive. He’d be back eventually.

  As it was, once Cheryl left the shelter, Katie and Mrs. deJesus ran for Danny and Kellie. Both had first aid training and ordered 13-year-old John to find towels and the other girls who were eating supper with them when Cheryl broke in, to get the first aid kit Kellie kept by the cellar door.

  Jamal, the tall, dark, lanky 16-year-old Cajun raced up the stairwell to latch and lock the hatch door. The hatch was the second exit from the shelter and was at the top of a spiral staircase that led to the bedrooms. It was how Cheryl had gotten away without having to go through the shelter’s doors and having to face the very protective dog.

  Katie gently pulled Danny off Kellie’s body as he was finally regaining consciousness.

  Mrs. deJesus took care of Kellie who seemed to be going into shock.

  “Both injuries are superficial on him. Nothing broke. He’s lucky,” Katie said to Mrs. deJesus as she bandaged Danny’s wounds. His head, two inches above his left ear, had been grazed by the 9mm bullet. The hair and skin were ripped off and she could see the bone, but it wasn’t cracked. It was bleeding like all head wounds do. She put gauze over the wound and wrapped his head with a towel.

  “Hand me that superglue there,” Katie, who had learned first aid as a girl scout and worked for a summer at a veteran’s home where she listened to stories from Viet Nam, ordered one of the twins. Their names were Tara and Sara and they were identical. She was in no mood to try and guess which was which now. She finished cleaning the arm just below the elbow. She saw muscle, but the wound was not too bad. The bullet had taken a lot of skin and very little muscle, but hadn’t severed any major blood vessel. It had already started clotting. She used the superglue to hold the skin together, added a large band-aid and wrapped the arm in a clean towel, using a safety pin to keep it in place.