Hell Happened (23 page)

Eddie parked his truck beside the Winnebago and took a few of the extra weapons and cases of ammunition in the shelter and filled the truck. From now on, anyone who threatened the shelter would feel the full wrath of an armed SWAT truck.

The men who had died from Kellie’s blast through the door, and Monica’s well-placed shots were burned with the farm house and the brush that had been cleaned from behind the shelter. No one said any words for them. Eddie’s non-verbal comment spoke volumes. He pissed on the fire and walked away.

No one was sure what to do with the woman they captured. To make sure they could sleep in relative safety, Jerry, Randy and Eddie decided to secure her in the barn that night. She was put in the barn’s office where there was nothing she could damage, but she’d be out of the weather and safe, without being in their way.

Making sure she was secure, Jerry finally took off her gag. She started crying and begging for mercy, but she had been one of those who caused the death of Mike, someone they all loved.

Jerry told her to shut the hell up and that if another word left her mouth, he’d put the gag back in. There was
a fierceness
in his voice he was glad Kellie couldn’t hear.

Jerry put a lock on the outside of the door in case she did get free of the ropes with which Randy and Eddie had tied her, but he was pretty sure in the morning she would be sitting in her own filth, just where they were leaving her now.

They’d deal with her in the morning. The group from the shelter was in mourning and they had no want to deal with the woman.

That night, as everyone went to bed, they reached for comfort. Kellie, who had always gone to bed after Jerry, slipped herself under his covers before he was fully asleep and let him hold her close as she cried. Monica and Tony moved into the spare room that Tia and her kids had vacated. They slept in separate beds, but she held her friend’s hand and they talked about what they’d seen and could have done differently. There was nothing.

Eddie and Randy played video games until the early hours of the following morning, losing themselves in the fantasy world of electronic games.

Despite the sadness of the day, Tia and her kids were happier now that they had their own home and tonight they would sleep in one big bed, even though the Winnebago came with two queen-sized and a single bed.

~     
~
     
~

The following morning when Jerry, Eddie and Randy checked on the woman they’d captured, she told them her name was Cheryl. She claimed she was a victim of circumstance. She said the men had captured her and threatened her and that she was just following them because they made her. Jerry and Eddie didn’t care to hear it and if she could have walked, they would have sent her away.

As it was, she had been hit with buck shot in the leg and arm and couldn’t walk very well as yet.

Neither Kellie nor Monica would have anything to do with the woman and Tony said it would be better just to kill her. Randy had the softest heart and was given the job of caring for her until she was well enough to be sent away. Everyone might hate her, but Tony wanted to kill her where she sat.

Cheryl, as Randy was told, was a 27-year-old former legal clerk. She’d been captured by the vigilantes less than a week after the fall of civilization. She said they beat her, raped her, threatened to kill and tortured her. She had no other way to survive.

Randy listened and didn’t make any comments. He dressed her wounds, there was two pellets he found that had to remove from her leg, and then left her alone to clean the rest of herself. She had to do it from a bucket of warm water he provided. He found clothes for her so she could change into something cleaner than the blood soaked and dirty, stinking clothes she had on. He gave her privacy, but only in the old barn office.

She would ask him questions but he refused to talk to her.

It was Eddie who came up with the idea of a way to keep her controlled during the day when Randy asked for something other than the ropes he had to untie three or four times a day. They used Boomer’s collar and put a combination lock on it to keep Cheryl from taking it off. The collar was attached to chain Randy bolted to one of the walls in the barn’s office after it had been cleaned out. They left her a place to sit, a table to eat from and a bucket to piss and shit in. Randy brought food to her in the morning when the cows were milked and again in the evening. He brought her water when he remembered to and that was the way she began her first week of captivity.

No one wanted the woman on the property, but no one really knew what to do with her. It was out of sight, out of mind for a week for everyone but Randy. Some evenings, during the last meal of the day,
they would discuss what they should do.
Tony’s
opinion stayed the same. Other ideas were floated, but nothing they felt they could do with the morals they had.

The seventh day after Mike’s murder, and no one called it anything but a
murder,
Jerry and Randy were going to make a quick 15-mile trip Birmingham-ward down the interstate to see if they could find some batteries for Jerry’s power grid and few other necessities.

Also, it was a time for father and son to talk away from everyone else.

They had gone three miles on I-20 when they saw a convoy of three vehicles coming at them on the same side of the road. They hadn’t expected to see anyone and were actually within
shooting
distance when Jerry slammed on the brakes.

Both men had their guns out while Jerry called back to the shelter. Eddie, Kellie and Monica could be there in 10 minutes or less with a lot more weaponry. He wouldn’t lead a convoy of three vehicles back to the shelter and he hoped the show of force would be enough to turn them back.

The convoy in front of them stopped. The front truck had a camper on the back and the back two were a
mini van
and full-sized Chevy pulling what looked like a pop-up camper.

People got out of the trucks. They were all armed, but did not look threatening.

The man who appeared to be in charge reached back into his truck and pulled out the microphone for his CB and held it up. He then made a show of holding it to his mouth. Jerry reached in to his truck and turned the CB up louder. He started scanning the channels until he heard the man’s voice.

“We have women and children and we’re sick. We’ve been running for days. We beg you for help. My name is Josh and my daughter is sick. Please I beg of you, help us,” he pleaded over the radio. Jerry wasn’t much of a poker player, but he could tell sincerity when he heard it. When the man finished talking Jerry asked him to put his weapon down. Josh put his weapon on the ground and reached back into his truck and pulled out a little girl who looked like she was dead.

Jerry’s heart might have been hardened by the vigilantes who had killed his friend Mike, but it hadn’t become that hard. He told Randy to cover him and he put his Desert Eagle back in its holster. He reached under the driver’s seat for the first aid kit he always carried and approached the man who was carrying the girl toward him.

Josh kneeled and laid his daughter gently down on the pavement, a few feet in front of Jerry and looked up with pleading eyes. “Please, she’s been sick for days. We don’t know what to do,” he cried.

Honestly, Jerry didn’t either, but he checked to make sure she was alive and breathing. The four others from the three-truck convoy stood where they’d unloaded their vehicles. They showed no threat. There were two older people in the van and two men in the truck pulling the camper who showed themselves.

Jerry heard Eddie’s SWAT truck in the distance and told Josh to not be afraid. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his walkie-talkie.

“Come in, Eddie,” he said to the two-way.

“Yeah, boss, this is us.”

“Get Monica up here between the trucks and hurry,” he told them, while looking at Josh. “She’s the closest thing we have to a medic, and she’s really good,” he said to the man kneeling beside his daughter.

The SWAT truck careened around Jerry’s truck and Jerry was glad to see Josh’s eyes get huge. The big black behemoth did look intimidating. Eddie slammed on the brakes 30 feet from the two in the middle of the highway and Monica came running with her “doctor’s bag” before the truck was fully stopped.

Kellie followed her quickly with her shotgun and Eddie popped out a moment later with his high-powered rifle aimed at the convoy. By then Monica was kneeling beside the little girl. Josh related the symptoms his little girl, Marissa, had shown and Monica surmised some type of poisoning. She picked up the little girl and told Josh to come with her.

Inside Eddie’s truck, Monica started an I.V. drip and told Eddie he’d better drive smoother than a baby’s ass back to the shelter, where she had some medicine she hoped would take care of the very sick little girl.

Eddie looked to Jerry and Jerry felt himself nod.

Jerry’s compassion for others had not been lost and Kellie’s hand on his arm told him he’d made the right decision. She stayed with Jerry as he walked up the highway to talk with the others in the convoy. He found out two others of the eight were showing signs of being sick. He asked if they were willing to follow them back to a safe haven.

There was a great sigh of relief and agreement and everyone but Kellie put their guns away. Josh had trusted Jerry with his little girl, they would trust Jerry too.

It was a five-vehicle convoy back to the shelter. Randy drove Josh’s truck and Kellie rode with Jerry.

The week ended with tally of one loss, the beloved Mike, and 10 more people living on Jerry’s once peaceful farm and one living in the custody of their “jail.”

“This is the Smith Compound calling anyone on this frequency, please come in,” the shortwave transmitter finally spoke after weeks of
Tony’s
tender mercies. “This is the Smith Compound calling anyone on this frequency, please come in, anyone. Someone tell us we’re not alone, over.”

The broadcast had come during the evening meal. Tia had fired up the grill and had cooked steaks for everyone. One of the cows had been put down earlier that week and Josh, who used to be a butcher, was able to cut the animal up in short order. The garden had produced enough potatoes, sweet corn and tomatoes to make a good meal for everyone. The potatoes had done especially good this year which was fine with Jerry. He enjoyed a good baked potato on the grill.

Everyone on the farm was eating together tonight, something Jerry proposed they did every few days.

The lone exception at tonight’s meal was Cheryl, who hadn’t given anyone any problems and looked contrite and scared all the time. She was shackled with a pair of ankle cuffs, provided by the former corrections officer Juan
deJesus
and his wife had in their minivan, during the day and the collar which had a chain bolted to the wall at night.

She was allowed to go wherever she wanted, as long as it was
no where
near any person other than Randy. She was also forbidden anywhere past the barn and garage, and
no where
near where the campers were parked, or in any building except her room in the barn. She ate what Randy brought to her and slept in the barn office on a cot he’d built for her. Jerry hadn’t told her what the penalty might be if she broke a rule, and honestly he didn’t know, but she hadn’t broke one yet. She did nothing but
walk
around and stumble once in a while when her ankle cuffs snagged on something.

~     
~
     
~

Hannah heard the radio first and yelled to Tony who was still on crutches. Tony and Monica raced to the living room and listened for the call again.

“This is the Smith Compound calling anyone on this frequency, please come in, anyone. Someone please answer,” the call came again. It was almost covered by static as the radio had been set for automatic scanning, but Tony worked the dial to clear up the signal. He then looked up at Jerry.

Jerry who’d followed Tony in to the shelter nodded to the young man. “Go ahead, this is your gear.”

Tony picked up the powered microphone. He’d practiced this first conversation many times in his head and now he was going to do it. He lowered his voice an octave before answering, “This is God. What can I do you for?”

There was silence on the radio and Jerry looked down at Tony. His grin was barely suppressed.
“Really?
After all your work, you’re going to pretend to be God?”

Tony shrugged. “You spend all your time on this couch and see how crazy you become.”

“Hello? Hello? Is someone there?” asked the person on the shortwave asked again tentatively.

This time Tony answered the call with a little more decorum. “This is the Saunders Station calling the Smith Compound. Please come in. I repeat
,
this is the Saunders Station calling the Smith Compound. Please come in, over”

“Oh my God!
Are you for real? I mean are you really real?”

“Yes, we are real. My name is Tony and I am part of the Saunders Station. Who am I talking to?”

“This is Keith Bennett and we’re the Smith Compound in Kentucky! Oh my God. I can’t believe I finally got someone.
Pendleton  said
I should quit wasting my time! I can’t wait to tell him there are more people out there. We thought everyone was gone except for the flesh-eaters. How many of
there
are you? Where are you at? Are you close to us? Are there a lot of you? Do you have food? We have some food, but not a lot. Oh my God, I can’t believe this worked!”