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Authors: Terry Stenzelbarton,Jordan Stenzelbarton

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BOOK: Hell Happened
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He watched as she firmly grasped the foot and the heel, her arms crossed. “Here we go,” she said as she pulled and twisted the foot. He could hear snapping or cracking but when she was finished, the foot was facing straight up, like the other foot and the blue color seemed to be changing to red. Tony moaned and murmured something, but never came fully awake.

“Good job,” Jerry told her.

“He’s not out of the woods. I think I set it right, but we don’t have an X-ray machine or an MRI. There might be bone fragments, torn ligaments, any number of things still wrong with that ankle, but at least now it is facing the right way, and it felt like it set.”

She ran her hand across the top of the foot and felt for a pulse in the ankle. “It feels warmer already and I can feel the pulse better. “For the next 24 hours, let’s put him on the couch with the leg elevated and alternate hot and cold to bring the swelling down. Day after tomorrow the swelling should be down enough and we’ll splint it.”

“What about the blood he was spitting up?” Jerry asked.

“Yeah, I heard what you said about that and was worried he had a perforated stomach or some other internal injuries. But when I looked and listened to his chest and belly area it sounded clear. There’s some congestion in his chest, some rasping, but I don’t know what to do about that and think maybe nothing is the best treatment until he comes out of it. He’d been punched in the stomach, but it didn’t look like critical hits...like he was hit, but not real hard.

“The blood he spit up was from the blood he swallowed when his teeth were knocked out or from his bloody nose. He’s lost two teeth on the left side and it looks like he bit his tongue pretty bad. His cheeks are torn up some and from the bruising it looks like someone punched him in the face.”

“How long do you think he’ll be out of it?”

“I don’t know, Jerry,” Monica said, sounding a little exasperated from his questions. “He needs to be hydrated, but we don’t have that kind of stuff here. He needs to wake up before we give him water. I’ve done all I can do unless you got any ideas.”

Jerry had none and shook his head. She returned to cleaning
Tony’s
body. The smell was terrible and Jerry could tell he was no longer needed so he went to find Randy. It had been a rough day and right now, now that Tony was in good hands, Jerry wanted nothing more than to hug his son. When Monica was ready to move Tony from the stretcher to the couch, she’d call him.

He found his son just climbing down from the antenna, wearing leather gloves and a safety harness. Jerry remembered the first time he’d shown his son how to use the safety equipment and how afraid the
boy had been. Now here he was three years later, showing some initiative and forethought before climbing up the 30-foot antenna.

Randy didn’t see his dad approach so started unbuckling the harness after taking off his gloves. Jerry waited until the harness was off before saying anything.

“Well done, son.”

Randy quickly turned around at the sound of the voice. He and his dad had never been demonstrative, but right then, at that moment in time, with no one else around to see them, Randy wanted nothing more than to hug his dad and have his dad hug him.

“You did good, boy,” Jerry said as his son’s arms wrapped around him. “I knew you could do it.”

“Dad, I was so scared,” his son said, voice cracking a little. “For Tony and Jeff, for Eddie and Terrill, but I don’t know what I’d do if you’d gotten hurt or killed.”

Randy was still a big kid, Jerry realized. At 22-years-old, he was immature and had led a sheltered life, even though he grew up on a farm. Jerry often thought he’d not done a very good job raising the boy like he’d been raised. He wasn’t a strict parent like Jerry’s father had been and allowed his son to find his own path. Looking back, he saw where he made a lot of mistakes, missed a lot of opportunities, failed to teach his son a lot of things.

But at this moment in time, feeling the big bear hug from his “little boy” who stood two inches taller and weighed 60 pounds more, Jerry felt more pride in his son than ever before in his life.

“You did good, son,” he said again, feeling the pressure of his son’s two strong arms. “Now I can’t breathe.” Randy released his dad and the two looked at each other. There was relief in both men’s eyes.

“So dad, what happened?”

“I’ll tell you, but let’s wait until I can get everyone together. Go get Eddie and Mike from the barn. They should have the truck cleaned out soon so give them a hand if they need it.

“We have some planning to do because the shit hit the fan today and I think we need to re-think what we’ve got going here. Have everyone back up to the shelter,” he looked at his watch, “in an hour.”

Randy picked up his harness and headed over the hill to get Eddie and Mike.

Jerry walked over to where the chair was still sitting from this morning, where he and Kellie had watched the sunrise. He sat down and thought about the day’s events and his decision to allow Jeff and Tony to go look for more weapons, then his decision to take Terrill and Eddie to find out what happened to the other two. It seemed everything had happened with spur of the moment decisions, without thinking them through, and now Jeff and Terrill were both dead and Tony was injured.

Maybe he wasn’t the one who should be in charge of his shelter. Maybe he shouldn’t be the one making decisions. Maybe he should just take care of his farm the best he could and let someone else be in charge of making life and death decisions.

The doubts ran through his mind as he sat in the chair, watching the sun pass through the trees and shadows cross over the farm he’d been working for more than 30 years. His life had been simple before the fall. He paid his taxes, paid his bills, went into debt and struggled to get back out every year, watched TV and woke up every morning knowing what work he had to get done before going back to his house in the evening.

With the fall of the world, everything was different. Now his decision to get a loan for a new tractor, something he’d agonized over for weeks last spring, seemed insignificant compared to what was being asked of him now.

Jerry wasn’t a man who wanted to make decisions for anyone other than himself and his family.

~     
~
     
~

In the first days of the catastrophic death tolls world-wide, it had been just Jerry, his son and Eddie on the farm. Eddie showed up the day after his mom died because he had
no where
else to go.

They watched the news reports until network and local television stations went off the air. With the ending of public utilities, they used the power provided by water wheel and two wind turbines to power the shelter. They also worked the farm and twice made trips to get supplies. There had still been people around, very damn few, but civilization as they knew it was done.

They found out what they could, and saw what was happening in their community and around the world so they isolated themselves to the farm. The radio Jerry pulled out of the barn, he put in the living room for the three to listen to at night after the supper dishes were cleaned and put away and the day’s work was done.

Most stations were off the air, but there were still a few they could pick up on the AM band. This is where they heard of stories of the not-
deads
who were eating human flesh. They heard of the vigilantes who were taking over cities, raping and plundering what was left. Millions of dead were rotting in big cities, billions world-wide were left unburied. When the three heard that statistic from some nameless radio announcer, they shuddered. Their mind couldn’t comprehend the enormity of billions. They couldn’t even really grasp what a million dead would be like.

Jerry’s farm was 20 miles from Birmingham, a city with a population of 225,000 people. If the announcer was correct, or even close to what he said, there’d be maybe 200 people left alive, like Jerry, Randy and Eddie, and another 200 of the not-dead zombies.

The three agreed to stay away from the big cities, not only because of the dangers, but the dead bodies would be rotting in the Alabama heat and diseases would be running rampant. Not just the disease that had killed the world, but others from the decaying bodies. There was no longer any organized government or policing force and the announcer said it clearly before he signed off. “It’s every man for
himself
.”

~     
~
     
~

Jerry was pulled out of his reverie when heard voices and looked down the hill and saw Randy, Eddie and Mike walking up the path that led from the barn to the house. Jerry looked at his watch and saw almost an hour had passed since he’d first sat down to contemplate the past 24 hours and last few weeks.

Instead of climbing down through the hatch, he walked down the hill to walk the rest of the way with the others. He had never been a “people person” but right now he wanted to be with his son, his son’s friend, and the very wise former bank executive.

Randy waved to his dad and Eddie, whose smile looked rather ragged, acknowledged his arrival. Mike, who was a bit winded from the walk up the
path
broke the silence. “You got some real good boys here, Jerry.”

“Thanks,” he said as he walked with the little group.
“How you doing, Eddie?”

Eddie, one hand in his pocket, probably playing with the one dollar coin he always seemed to have, hesitated before speaking, something he rarely did. “It’s not like a video game that’s for damn sure.”

“He hasn’t told us what happened, but we got the truck cleaned out and fueled it back up, and unloaded the quads,” Mike said as the silence stretched on for a few paces. “We only have about 100 gallons of diesel fuel left and about 75 of gasoline. We might want to think of finding a way to make our own fuel soon or else start salvaging some. Which means some way to move it and some place to store it.”

Jerry nodded. Again Mike was thinking ahead. Jerry hadn’t thought of making their own fuel, thinking they could get it from the hundreds of cars and trucks and semis sitting around abandoned on the highways, but after today, the less they traveled, the better it might be to stay out of the way of the vigilantes. It was something else he had to think about now.

Again he thought that maybe he should put Mike in charge. The man was a natural leader.

Entering through the front door, they saw Tony on the couch already. He was awake now, talking quietly with Monica. She had laid him out and made a sling which she safety pinned to the back of the couch to keep his right ankle elevated. There was a glass of water half empty beside them.

Kellie was in the kitchen. From the smell, she’d made something for them all to eat. Jerry hadn’t realized it, but more than seven hours had passed since they left this morning and he and Eddie hadn’t eaten anything.

She brought three bowls of soup in for them, one for Eddie and Jerry and the other for Tony. “Sorry if it doesn’t tastes real good. I just opened the cans and put it over heat. I’ll never be the cook Terrill was.”

“Thanks, Kellie,” Jerry said. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

With the mention of Terrill’s name, Jerry began to relate what had happened that day. He didn’t inflate his or Eddie’s role, and neither did he shy away from saying how afraid they’d been. When he told of how Terrill had died, he choked back tears. When he finished, he dipped his spoon into the soup and ate more. No one asked him any questions and Eddie didn’t offer any more to the story.

Tony, having finished his soup, handed the bowl to Monica. Jerry noticed that Monica had taped up three of his fingers on his left hand and cleaned and bandaged all his wounds. He’s had all his clothes removed and was covered from the chest down by one of the blankets Kellie had found for her. It must have come from the cellar because it wasn’t one he had seen before. It had probably been one of Terrill’s which made using it wholly appropriate.

Tony cleared his throat and ran his tongue over the spot where some of his teeth were now missing. He was a very different person than the 21-year-old, weed-smoking, wild kid he’d been two days ago.

His story told why.

“Me and Jeff wanted to just get away from here for a few hours and have some fun,” he began. “We know Mr. Saunders didn’t allow smoking of any kind, so Jeff came up with the story of the gun shop he’d heard about. We knew he would let us go if we said something about it enough.

“We thought he’d let us take the truck, but when he told us we could take his quads we were, like, ‘cool – cross country.’

“We drove to Odenville because Branchville was all burned up. Jeff used to work at a
bodyshop
in Odenville and he said he knew of a place where we could probably get some more weed. We stopped a couple of times to smoke and we were feeling pretty good.” The language made Jerry cringe, but he didn’t want to interrupt Tony.

“We parked the quads behind some building because we saw a truck on the highway and heard some shooting. We were half-baked and we really weren’t thinking clearly. Jeff said he was hungry for something besides the shit,” he stopped there and thought for a moment, “the food Terrill had been making for us. He said he wanted raw hotdogs, cookie dough and taco-flavored chips.”

“We saw the store where you found us and we watched it for a while. It had big front windows and we figured those would keep the zombies from being there. We didn’t see anyone around and the truck that we’d seen before was long gone we’d guessed because we didn’t hear it.

BOOK: Hell Happened
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