Hell Happened (26 page)

Randy followed a minute later, coming to get breakfast for him and Cheryl, who did not come in. Jerry assumed she was still in the barn.

When everyone was settled, Jerry stopped Randy from taking Cheryl her breakfast for a few minutes and cleared his throat. “We’re going through our store of food pretty quick. The garden food isn’t going to get us through the winter. I think we have enough people now to start raiding some of the stores in town for canned food and anything else that we can find.

“I think we need to arm everyone who can shoot a gun and go into Odenville or Trussville and get whatever we can. Any volunteers?” he asked, knowing the closest city to them, Moody, had been effectively wiped off the face of the earth.

Everyone in the room except Monica and Kellie volunteered. The clan they’d formed was ready to do something more than exist and if it was going to, everyone was going to have to pitch in.

“I don’t want you thinking this is going to be easy,” Jerry told them. “Some of you haven’t encountered the vigilantes or the zombies out there. One is vicious and the other
are
killers. The vigilantes will shoot to wound and then use you to draw out zombies. The zombies hide in the dark, but when they come out, they’re almost unstoppable. They’re super strong and eat flesh while you’re still alive. It can’t be a good way to die.”

“Monica here was lucky that Randy and Eddie had big guns when they grabbed at her, but even then, the zombies were hit four or five times and still didn’t die right away.” The looks on everyone’s faces were less excited than before.

It was Nick, one of the five men who came in the most recent convoy who spoke up. “I don’t care if they’re vigilantes or zombies. I’ll kill every one of them. My family is all dead. My kids, my wife, my dad and my friends….all of them are dead. But this place is better than being alone so I’ll defend it,” he said with complete conviction.

There were agreements around the room.

Jerry looked at Monica, who had not raised her hand. He wondered if she were afraid to go foraging. “Sorry boss,” she said, mimicking Eddie. “
Me
and Tony are going to set you up a security system so we know if anyone tries to sneak up on us. He’s got some good ideas we were going to show you this morning, but since you brought this up, I figured you’d want to know what we’re up to.”

She started to bring out a note pad her and Tony had been using. Jerry held up a hand. “Let’s decide how we want to do the run to Odenville first. I don’t want to send everyone.

“Eddie, you’ll go for sure since you know the area.” Eddie smiled. “Take your truck with two others as protection.

“Danny, why don’t you drive my truck with a trailer and someone for protection? That makes five going, three always holding guns. You should be able to clear a building, but don’t take any chances. If you get a chance to get more
diesel
fuel, great, but don’t risk yourselves. We have one full reserve and the other is mostly full.” Rusty, Josh and Sade were also chosen to go foraging.

“It’d be best to leave in the morning so you can scout around the location for vigilantes. Look for tracks around any place you go in to. Be real careful of the hurricane damage because you might go into a building and have it collapse on top of you if you touch anything.

“We also need seeds if you can find any. We’ll start growing as much as the gardens will let us and the weather allows.”

Katie, the other woman besides Mrs.
deJesus
that was part of the most recent convoy, was a middle-aged woman whose face showed the loss of her world. She raised her hand. She talked little, but always helped where she could. “I ran a Christmas tree nursery with my family in Arkansas. I can help.”

Jerry, seeing an opportunity to engage the woman in something other than her thoughts, nodded to her. “Thanks Katie. You’re now our head gardener. Make sure the people going on the foraging trip know what seeds we can use best.

“Bullshit. I’m going too,” the woman said, surprising everyone with her intensity. Jerry would not stop her from going after that declaration.

There was some more housekeeping details Jerry went over with everyone and then the group broke up into smaller groups outside the shelter. Jerry and Kellie finally got around to having their first meal of the day. He hadn’t realized how much time had gone by until Tony began calling for the International Space Station again.

Jerry had work to do on the farm, but he couldn’t bring himself to go outside yet. He had to learn more about what the ISS wanted with them.

Tony spoke with headphones on to better hear the station. Jerry, Kellie, Monica and the others listened as he spoke with the man in the stars. After a few moments, he pulled one of the headphones off. “Commander
Rustov
, I think his name is, said he is sure the emergency escape ship can land in the Gulf of Mexico. He said they are very accurate with landing the ship and if we can have a boat ready off
Gulf Shores, Alabama
tomorrow evening, they will try for there.

“The commander said they can land an hour before dark, in the orbit they are in, and land close enough to us to make it feasible.”

Jerry knew where Gulf Shores was and told Tony to tell the Russian space station commander that they could be there and they would find a big enough boat to rescue his crew. He made sure Tony wrote down the details for everything, from the time of day they should expect the rescue ship to come down, how far out from shore to be, to how to open the ship up when it landed. Jerry told Tony that he needed to be the expert on everything and make sure the people going on the rescue knew as much as they could and have all the tools they needed.

Juan, who had been silent through most of the morning, spoke up. “I’m really not going to be much good doing any heavy work around the farm, but
me
and my wife know a lot about boating and navigation. Maybe we can help?”

Jerry smiled at the elderly Mexican. “Sir, you will do just fine. You’re now in charge of the rescue. But just so you know, I want to go with you.”

Juan smiled back. “I thought you might. But anyone going better not
get
easily seasick. I’m sure we’ll be going out past the breakers and it’ll be rough. And that hurricane hit pretty hard. It isn’t going to be easy finding a boat, so we better get started. There are a lot of unknowns and two days isn’t a lot of time. I say we should leave very early in the morning tomorrow.”

“Okay, very early tomorrow morning, we’ll leave. You find out how many need to go to make this happen and we’ll let everyone else know.”The meeting broke up and everyone began their personal chores before really starting on the day’s work.

~     
~
     
~

Monica answered the CB when the call came in. Eddie and his crew were leaving the drive now for Odenville and foraging and were making the radio check. She would be their contact while on the road. Jerry heard the tone of Eddie’s voice and knew while he didn’t want anyone getting hurt, the five men and one woman wouldn’t mind a fire fight with zombies and there was no way in hell a vigilante group would get the drop on them.

He turned to speak with Tony who was working on some RJ45 connectors for a computer network he was building, “Is there any way we can keep in touch with you and the space station all the way to the coast?”

“I don’t know. Let me and Monica work on it while we’re sitting here,” he said and started pulling out electronic manuals.

That left Randy with whom Jerry needed to talk. He’d give his son, who’d left with
Cheryls
breakfast, until lunch time to digest what Cheryl had said this morning. He was sure he knew what
Kellie’d
say, but decided he better ask her in case he was wrong. He looked at her and she saw his eyes dart for the door. She nodded and they both got up to go for a walk and to talk privately.

Once they got outside, they saw Tia and her four kids in the garden, pulling weeds and harvesting the ripe vegetables. Tia, who seemed able to drive anything with wheels had fixed the garden tractor and pulled it around back with the small, two-wheeled trailer for the kids. The other new arrivals were working with her, knowing the garden would be providing them with food over the winter to come. Jerry and Kellie made toward the antenna on the far hill, in an effort to disguise that they were talking about something as serious as banishment. Once they were out of earshot of everyone, Jerry finally asked the question he thought he knew the answer to.

He believed Kellie would side with Cheryl as a former victim herself and Jerry would have both her and Randy on one side and himself undecided. Kellie surprised him one more time.

“I don’t believe her. I think she is a lying piece of shit,” she said vehemently, “and I think she is trying to play you and Randy. If you’re asking me, send her away as soon as possible before she hurts someone, because she will. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something wrong with her story and I don’t believe her, not for one minute.”

Jerry stopped in the middle of the field. Kellie walked a few feet more. The woman who had become Jerry’s closest confidant and friend over the last three months because of her compassion and
thoughtfulness and willingness to give everyone a fair chance, just told him she wanted the woman in the barn sent away. Jerry didn’t know how much truth there was to Cheryl’s story of how she had been captured and raped and possibly tortured, but even if it was only half true and Cheryl had been exaggerating and embellishing in hopes of not being sent away, he could probably forgive her for that. It was a ferocity he hadn’t seen in her before.

Kellie turned around and looked at Jerry.

“I’m sorry, Jerry. I just don’t believe her,” Kellie said with grim intensity.

Jerry looked at her. He knew Randy had spent a lot of time over the past 10 days with Cheryl and he hadn’t once said anything about Cheryl trying to get away. If her story hadn’t jived with what she’s told his son, he was sure Randy would have said something. He wasn’t experienced with abused women and didn’t know how they acted or should act. Maybe Kellie was right about Cheryl and their prisoner was just making something up to save herself.

He didn’t know which side to come down on.

“Maybe it was that she said everything exactly right to evoke the greatest sympathy response from you and Randy. Maybe it’s because of the way she dresses. I know Randy took her a lot of clothes, but she chose what to wear. Maybe it’s because when she was captured by Monica, she was wearing Army boots and now she wears tennis shoes,” Kellie explained, not giving him proof, just justifying her feelings about something being wrong. Jerry knew Kellie had a degree in something and as a teacher, she had a lot of psychology, so he didn’t dismiss what Kellie was saying, but it was still just circumstantial.

Maybe what would be best for everyone would be to put her some place where she wouldn’t be a danger to anyone, like an island.

A light seemed to go off in Jerry’s head. “I have an idea that might allow all of us to sleep at night.”

Randy knocked on Cheryl’s door. When she didn’t respond he knocked again. The door opened a crack. He looked through the crack in the door and Cheryl was lying on her bed.

“If you’ve come to send me away, just shoot me now while I’m not looking,” she
said,
a tremble in her voice and not looking to see who was at the door. “I’m not going to go anywhere by myself. I won’t let you do that to me again. Just kill me and put me out of my misery.” Her body was curled into a fetal position, turned away from the door so only her back was to him.

Randy entered the room and sat Cheryl’s breakfast on the chair his dad had so recently sat in.

Randy could only see her trembling and heard what sounded like sobs. Her long dark hair had been brushed and left to hang, like she did every morning and how he liked seeing it. She must have done it before her conversation with his dad and Kellie.

The tee shirt she had slid up on her torso and showed off her slender form. She had light olive colored skin and from where he was standing, he saw she was not wearing a bra. With her knees folded up and her arms holding them tightly, Randy could see the shorts she was wearing hugging tightly to the curve of her hips. He could see the uppermost tan lines on the back of her legs from where she had bikini tan lines on her incredibly long, well-tanned legs.

For a 22-year-old man, here was a drowning woman and he wanted to save her. She was drowning in sorrow and he was a life preserver.

“No one is going to hurt you,” he said with authority. “Not while I’m in charge.”

“But you’re not in charge,” she said, no longer sobbing. “That woman, Kellie is, and I can tell she doesn’t like me.” She planted the first wedge between Randy and his father. Now she planted another.
“She’s very pretty and I can tell your dad loves her and will do anything she says.” She let her voice crack a little for effect.

Randy didn’t realize he was being played by an expert. “No, I am in charge of you. My dad trusts me and I believe you’re a victim. I’m going to tell him you can be trusted. He’ll listen to me over Kellie. All you have to do is make sure you don’t do anything that will cause him not to trust you.”