Hell Happened (20 page)

Boomer took that moment to come running up, followed by John and Hannah who were enjoying the early morning air and the lack of morning chores usually handed out by their mom. They knew where she was going, but she’d glossed over the danger that they could run into.

Boomer licked at Jerry’s hand, the one Kellie was holding and they both released and wiped off the slobber. He then went for Molly who was walking beside Kellie and knocked the little dog over with his big nose. She got back up and started chasing him, barking happily, leaving Jerry and Kellie and the two kids in good humor.

Mike was in the barn with Tony and Monica, having volunteered to do the chores early so the four going on the trip could sleep in. Tony took every chance he could to get out of the shelter and help where he could, even though it wasn’t much because he was still healing and the crutches were an inconvenience.

They met Jerry and the others as Randy drove the SUV out of the garage and Eddie brought out the big Ford. The guns were already loaded in the vehicles and there wasn’t much reason for a long good-bye, but for some reason, it was becoming one.

Breaking the standing around, Jerry asked everyone to load up. Kellie closed his door as he climbed behind the wheel of the Ford and put his seat belt on. Tia was riding shotgun for him. Eddie was driving the Escalade with Randy in the passenger seat.

He turned to say good bye to Kellie again when her face came in the window to kiss him. She then withdrew as he put the truck in “D” and headed down the drive. Tia spoke, once the truck moving. “She seems to like you.” Jerry thought so too and waved out the window at her and the others. She waved at him with her beautiful smile which he saw in his side mirror.

When they were out of the drive, he focused on road in front of him. There had been a lot of damage from the storm and there was no more department of transportation to clean up the messes.

The two-vehicle convoy was slow. Debris had the road blocked in several places, but
not so much as they couldn’t get to the interstate
. Twice they had to find alternate routes because trees were too large to drive over, the road had been washed away, or in places there was no way to drive around the debris. Jerry had expected to take two hours to get to the RV sales location, but after 30 minutes, they’d only made it as far as the interstate. He called Kellie on the CB and let her know they were running slower than expected. He also told her they hadn’t seen where anyone else had been on the roads and that brought a sigh of relief from everyone who heard.

Driving on the interstate was easier. The storm had moved what cars had been on the four-lane to one side, or off the road completely. There were overhead signs that had been blown down, but driving over them or around them was easy for the two big trucks.

They stopped and checked
a half
dozen semis that had been thrown around, checking the trailers for goods they might need, but it was more effort than what it was worth. All the food was bad and smelled that way. Tia said opening refers would be a bad idea to keep doing. The goods in the other five were damaged beyond use. They decided to stop wasting daylight as they were already nearly two hours into the trip and they had just reached the first Birmingham exit.

The damage was both worse than they thought and much worse than they could have imagined. Birmingham’s skyline was not the one they all knew.  Gone was the mix of southern antiquity and modern skyscrapers. The hurricane and fires had ravaged the city. It’d been a week since the hurricane, but still they saw fires smoldering and belching black smoke.

The two vehicles merged from the 20 to the 459 bypass. The bridges had either collapsed or were so littered with smashed vehicles they were impassable. Jerry, however, was able to lead them off road and onto the bypass without much trouble. From the bypass they could see more of the city and it didn’t look any better from this side. Jerry was sure this city wasn’t the only one that had suffered. He knew there were hundreds of other places that had taken the same or worse type damage. He recalled his dad talking about the damage done to Gadsden back in the late 1970s by Hurricane Frederick.

They passed several places they might want to stop on the return trip if time allowed, but Jerry felt it would be best to find the RV dealership first. Randy tried to convince him to let them stop while he and Tia continued on, but he rejected that idea as well. They were already well behind the schedule he had wanted to follow and were now out of CB range with the shelter. He wanted them all to stay together.

The transition from 259 to 65 south was no easier than the previous interchange. It took the two trucks 20 minutes to get on 65 south and the first three bridges after the interchange were also down. They used the on and off ramps to get around the fallen bridges.

Tia pointed to a ramp exit sign that had been blown over and stuck in the concrete of a bridge abutment, but was still readable. The next exit was the one for which they were searching. It took another 45 minutes before they finally found the RV dealership Monica saw mentioned in the advertisement.

The place was destroyed. There were campers and RVs strewn about and buildings that had been torn apart. Jerry was not feeling good about finding a camper for Tia and her kids.

The four of them walked around the park, looking for anything that could be salvaged. Jerry suggested using the truck to set some of the campers back onto their wheels to see if they could be salvaged and they all kicked the idea around. 

It was Eddie, who’d gone off on his own to relieve himself who came back with an idea.

“Why not use what’s in that building?” he said pointing to a building at the far end of the mess that was partially damaged and barricaded by fallen trees, but not totally so. He’d seen something through the large overhead door that had been knocked off its track, but not off the building.

The four walked up to the building and, using flashlights, they saw something that made Tia smile like she hadn’t in a very long time. Inside the partially destroyed building were a Winnebago motor home and another vehicle. The building had been protected from the harsh weather by another building with a steel frame, what had been the repair shop by the looks of it, and a show room. All three RVs in the showroom were wrecked beyond use, but the luxury Winnebago in the building Eddie noticed looked to be in very good shape.

Everyone had been thinking of an RV that would be pulled by Jerry’s truck’s fifth wheel, no one had thought about getting a rolling house on wheels. Tia took one side of the vehicle, Jerry the other while the boys walked around the outside of the building, looking for a way to get the big motor home out.

Tia opened the door of the home and looked inside. It was clean. There was no damage inside and there was no smell of rotting food or dead animals. It was like the home had been readied for someone, then stored here in the building. She sat in the driver’s seat and Jerry came to the window. “It looks good from out here. There’s no major damage that I can see. Tires are all inflated. If we can get it out and it runs, I don’t see why this wouldn’t be better than a camper.”

“I have to know, Jerry. The keys are in it. I’m going to start it!” Tia said excitedly. Jerry couldn’t see why she shouldn’t so
nodded
to her. She was going to do it anyhow, whether he said yes or no.

She turned the key and the dash lit up. She waited for the diesel’s glow plugs to heat. It started after two turns of the starter. All the gauges came up and the Winnebago idled like it was brand new. The fuel gauges read full. Tia couldn’t quit smiling.

Randy and Eddie came running at the sound of the truck. They decided the expedient way of getting the 13-foot tall, 42-foot-long motor home out of the garage was to pull the overhead door off with the Ford, which took about 10 minutes to accomplish. Jerry offered to drive the Winnebago, but Tia wouldn’t let him. She told him she’d driven semis before and behind the wheel of the behemoth she felt right at home.

With the large overhead door off, Tia to pulled the vehicle into the light. It was better than she’d hoped, bigger than they needed and Jerry was just a little envious.

Eddie was not. He found something else in the garage. Part of the roof had fallen on it, but it wasn’t badly damaged. “Randy, you
gotta
see this!” he hollered.

Randy went to find out what Eddie was
so
excited about as Tia and Jerry looked around inside the Winnebago.

Eddie was grinning like someone who had just found the key to the backdoor of the cathouse. “
Lookie
what I found!” he said and pointed.

It was a three-axel Emergency Response S.W.A.T. truck.

Eddie was almost frothing like a rabid dog. There were no stickers on the truck and it was still flat black from the heavy-duty tires to the periscope air vent on the roof, with no external accessories, except three antennas. It had a heavy-gauge grill guard on the front and gun ports, which were more likely ports for releasing tear gas.

“This thing better freaking run because I’m driving this bad boy home,” Eddie said as they ran for the driver’s door. Eddie climbed in and rummaged for the keys. They were in the console on a plastic key ring from this RV dealership.

Inside, it was unfurnished except for a driver and passenger seat. There were no radios or weapons which Eddie had hoped to find, but he wasn’t upset.

Eddie started the truck. He grinned in the same way Tia had done when her new vehicle had started. Randy climbed in the passenger seat and was looking at the dash video screens when Eddie said “Hang on.” Randy looked up, startled, and Eddie dropped the shifter into gear and stomped on accelerator. He drove through the garage door, laughing all the way. The roof collapsed behind them as they pulled out.

Jerry and Tia had to come see what Eddie had done. There was no reason they needed a SWAT vehicle at the shelter, but Eddie made all sorts of deals, like making sure he got the fuel for it, taking care of it, finding a place to park it so it would be out of the way and rationalizing that it was a vehicle they might need someday. He also found a 75-gallon fuel tank that had been in the garage that was still near full. He and Randy strapped it to the back deck of the SWAT truck.

After giving in to the young man, Jerry told them of a couple of stops he wanted to check out on the way back to the shelter. There was
now
more than enough room to carry stuff in one of the four vehicles.

The clock was still running. They’d been gone now for nearly six hours and out of contact for four.

Headed back the way they’d come, the four-truck convoy was able to move fast, now that they knew what to expect. Jerry pulled off the interstate twice to check out areas that hadn’t seemed to suffer as much damage as others.

They refueled all the trucks from a wrecked tanker truck they found at a Pilot Truck Stop. They all used diesel except the Escalade so it was a simple matter to pull into a Pilot truck stop. Jerry pulled out the manual pump and they pulled fuel right from trailer which was on its side, but not broken open. There was a brief discussion about trying to right the entire rig, find another semi, but their time constraints put that idea to bed for another time.

The doors to the store were open in front and back and there were a trio of torn up bodies near the doors. Zombies were here, but they wouldn’t be out in the bright sunlight and no one wanted to go inside anyhow.

The next stop was a strip mall at the 459 / 20 interchange area. The four vehicles circled the mall and all the doors were closed. Glass had been shattered in the fronts, roofs had been ripped off, but the place didn’t appear to have been ransacked.

From the outside, they could see how much damage the wind and rain from the hurricane had done to the insides of the stores.  None of them had any real hope of finding something they could use, but since they had some time while the other vehicles were fueled, they did look around.

Jerry was able to get several microphones from a Radio Shack, some more AA and AAA batteries, a couple of antennae for Tony and a toy remote control truck for John.

Tia found some goods for her mobile home. She located a nice grill still in the water-soaked box, picked up all the charcoal that hadn’t been too ruined by the weather that were stacked outside of the K-Mart, and two gumball machines that were still filled with M&Ms. She also loaded more clothes for her and her children.

Eddie and Randy found a book store. Most of the contents were ruined, but along one back wall there hundreds of still-dry books, shelves full, which they loaded into the SWAT truck. Mike loved reading and the two boys had become quite fond of the elderly black man. He never got mad at them, only offered advice and never talked down to them.

They loaded back into their respective vehicles and headed east on 20. Jerry tried reaching the shelter on the CB, but got no response. He was sure they must be outside because it was a beautiful day. He’d instructed Kellie to have someone monitor the radio so the convoy could check in every hour. He’d try again in another 20 minutes when they were another 10 miles closer.

Ten miles later Jerry heard why Kellie hadn’t answered his call.

~     
~
     
~

Kellie waved to Jerry, Tia and the boys as they pulled out of the driveway. She watched the dust on the road for more than a mile and she felt alone. It was Mike who came up, not quietly, but not in a way where she felt like he was intruding on her private thoughts.