Hell Happened (32 page)

Randy couldn’t help himself and looked at her long legs. She hugged him quickly and kissed his cheek. In his ear she whispered “Maybe tonight I’ll show you how strong these legs are.” She then pushed him away. He was smiling like he’d never smiled before and went to through the door leading to the parlor. Half-way through the door he turned to tell her he’d be back shortly, but she’d already begun to take her tee shirt off. He saw her bare breasts and quickly turned back and left the room before she got it over her head and saw him staring.

Cheryl wondered if he’d try to peek at her body again. She just suspected and timed her tee shirt removal to give him a look. Not only had she hooked the young man like a rainbow trout, she was now reeling him in like a master angler.

Randy went back and unlocked the parlor and started morning chores. He was as happy as he’d been in a long time. He had a “date” tonight. Even if it was with a prisoner and even if it was just a movie in her “cell.” He knew that all day he’d be a happy man.

~     
~
     
~

Jerry and his two-truck convoy had made great time by his reckoning. They’d followed the same route they’d taken to find the motor home for Tia and her girls. Having been that way before, Jerry remembered most of the obstacles and how they worked their way around them.

They made it to I-65 south, passing the exits for Pelham and Alabaster without encountering any real troubles. They’d stopped taking bridges over the local roads when one they were driving on shook uncomfortably when both vehicles were crossing. Now when they came to a bridge, they took the on/off ramp, just like they did when an overpass had fallen onto the highway.

The highway was still littered with debris, wrecked cars, busses and semi-tractor trailer rigs, but not so much that the convoy couldn’t keep up an average speed of 40-50 miles per hour. After two hours on the road, Jerry could see the distant capital of Montgomery.

His CB cracked to life. “Are you there, Jerry?”

Jerry took the microphone from Rusty who was riding in the front seat with him. “I’m here. What’s up?”

“Just heard from the ISS.
Colonel
Rustov
, the commander, said the rescue capsule will begin it’s de-orbit burn at 17:04 our time. There is a 90-second window for the capsule to de-orbit to land within 50 miles east or west of Gulf Shores. How close to shore is an educated guess based on weather conditions and experience.”

“Are you still in touch with him?”

“Negative. We were lucky to get him when we did. He said he’d been trying every time he gets near overhead. He said the rescue capsule has already released from the station and is maneuvering away preparing for de-orbit burn. Scheduled splashdown time is 18:47 local time.

“Okay, Tony. Thanks.”

Juan, who was in the back seat of the Ford had been sleeping, must have awakened at the call. “They are
trusting
we’ll be there to pick them up, Jerry. I trust we’ll be able to be there?”

Jerry looked at the clock and the distance to Montgomery. “We’re making very good time. As long as we don’t run into any trouble, we’ll have three or four hours to get a boat ready and into the Gulf.”

Juan didn’t want Jerry to have any illusions about the possibilities of the capsule landing within easy reach. “The space station is moving at more than 17,000 miles per hour 230 miles above our heads. A little piece of it is going to pull away and slow down enough so gravity will bring it down unpowered.

“Now the astronauts usually have a building full of computers on earth and thousands of men and women helping them land in the target area. The Russians usually land in the desert and I’ve heard they can sometimes wait up to three or four hours for rescue.

“The rescue capsule will float for a while, but it’s not like the Mercury and Apollo capsules that had flotation bags. We’re going to have to get really lucky and so are they,” Juan said solemnly. “I think the Russian commander was being generous with 10 percent chances.”

“Yeah, I thought he might be exaggerating a little. I don’t know if he was giving us hope or giving the other astronauts hope,” Jerry admitted.

Jerry picked up the microphone. “Come in Tony.”

“Goat head, boss.” Tony was enjoying this trip and getting more excited.

“If you reach the commander again, tell him we’ll be there and we’ll do our best.”

“Will do, Jerry.”

Jerry gave the microphone back to Rusty.

“Let’s do our best guys,” he said to his passengers.

~     
~
     
~

Tia and crew made it almost to the Oxford exit before they ran into major obstacles. They had made good time once they got on I-20. There was a lot of debris Tia navigated around. They also encountered the same bridge and overpass issues Jerry and his team were encountering and came up with the same solution. The major issue they ran into had nothing to do with vigilantes or zombies, rather the lack of there being an interstate anymore. They drove past the County Road 109 exit, thinking they had a straight shot to Anniston when they came upon a gully. The gully was 40 feet wide and had taken all of the interstate with it. There was no way the Escalade could navigate through or around the area with the trailer it was hauling.

Tia turned the truck around and headed back to the last exit. She got on County Road 78 and headed east to Anniston
again,
hoping 78 hadn’t been wiped out as well. They saw the same wreckages as they saw on the interstate and the washed out area which had grown to take out the interstate.

They had to drive off the four lane highway to avoid damaged vehicles that had been piled up against a bridge abutment. Tia tried to find the best way around the wreckage but she must have run over something. Just as she was pulling back onto 78
east
, she felt the change in the way the trailer was pulling. Looking in her side mirror and saw the trailer had a flat tire.

Tia had Nick remove the flat tire on the two-axel trailer. The tire they’d leave here, but kept the lug nuts. When he was finished, he threw the jack into the back of the SUV and they were back on the road.

She started off slowly, but after a quarter mile the trailer was tracking fine, even with the missing tire. They would have to get a replacement before loading the trailer, but for now, everything was copacetic.

They knew they were entering the outskirts of the city of Oxford from the GPS, but looking out the windows of the Cadillac SUV, they could have been in any town hit by a Class 5 tornado. Modular homes had been thrown around this area of the city. There were entire walls scattered along the sides and middle of the road. Fire places, furniture, bathtubs and other interior fixtures had been scattered as far as the crew could see.

Tia was avoiding most of the garbage when a large piece of debris caught their eye as they drove by what used to be the sign for shopping mall. It was the picture of a RV painted on a large piece of metal that was embedded into the steel post. They were able to just make out a partial address ….way 78
, 
Anni
….

“That must be it,” Nick said.
“Must be ahead somewhere.”

Tia agreed but she wasn’t pleased with what she’d seen and wasn’t too hopeful. The amount of devastation was unreal even though it was right in front of her.

Entire blocks had been wiped away clean to the foundation. What had been a bustling city was dead and destroyed. No light poles remained upright; very few buildings were still standing and none that were not heavily damaged. Fire had ripped through others.

It was looking like the storm had hit this city as hard as anywhere and exacted revenge for some unknown offense.

Even if the world hadn’t fallen apart, this city would have been declared a disaster and probably rebuilt from scratch. She passed the street which she would have been on if she could have stayed on the interstate. The interchange was destroyed and the Escalade would have been hard pressed to make it into town. “This reminds me of one of the cities I saw as a child in my homeland,” Sade said. “It had been attacked by artillery for days. The only difference is there are no bodies.”

“Probably the vultures or zombies got them. Be glad they did,” Nick told him. “You don’t want to see a month-old dead body.”

They continued driving east on 78 passing hotels and motels that had probably been abandoned even before the hurricane because of the virus that killed everyone. Hotels and motels had been closed, along with most common areas, by presidential decree. It was probably the final act of the president.

The brick and steel buildings didn’t survive any better than anything else in town. They counted five of the motel-type buildings; all had been heavily damaged to the point of being unlivable. Tia’s hope of finding a motor home dropped a little more.

The three men in her SUV were staring open-mouthed at the devastation. They passed what used to be a car dealership that was leveled. Every car still on the lot during the storm had been pushed up against a semi-tractor trailer rig that had been wrapped around concrete pillars in front of another collapsed building. It looked like one of those car recycling depots.

The next parking lot was empty, but at the far end of the lot, a pile of campers were piled up against what appeared to be a long garage.
“Campers!
This must be it!” exclaimed Sade.

“Settle down, Sade. Look at this damage. I bet not one of them are usable, but let’s take a look,” Tia said, slowing to pull into the parking lot.

The four climbed out of the Escalade and stretched. They hadn’t realized how much their bodies had stiffened up in the tense two-hour drive and seeing the horrific damages to what must have been a beautiful city.

After everyone had stretched and gotten a drink of water, Tia asked the group where they wanted to start. Sade spoke up as the others looked around.
“Out back.”

“Why out back?” she asked, tossing her sun glasses back into the SUV. Rain clouds had moved in and the bright sun they’d seen rise two hours earlier was now obscured.

“Because everything out front is down there in a pile of scrap.
Maybe the back was protected some from the storm,” he explained. She nodded, doubting his reasoning but willing to humor the man, and reached back into the SUV and pulled out her shot gun, a 20 gauge with six rounds and one in the chamber. Sade and Jamal had their AR-15s and Nick had opted for a pair of 9mm pistols.

“Stay together, but keep your eyes open,” she said.

They began walking along the side of the building. Fully half of the long L-shaped building had collapsed during the storm and been blown away. They saw bits of brand new motor homes the size of Tia’s that were wrecked and crushed.  They walked around the fallen part of the building and the four of them stopped and stared.

“Jackpot!”
Nick hollered.

“Holy Mother,” said Sade.

“Sweet Jesus,” Josh added.

Tia was speechless.

At the far end of the building were motor homes. All were damaged, some appeared to just have windows knocked out, and others had minor body damaged. But there were at least a dozen of them that looked to be usable.

If they could find keys.
If they had fuel.
If they could get them started.
There were a lot of “ifs” but they were here to get one motor home. Tia was sure they could find at least one that could be drivable.

“Let’s go,” she said to the men. “Let’s find the best one we can for the astronauts.”

For the next hour, the four found three motor homes that were in good enough shape to probably be usable. None of them had keys. Sade said they were probably in the sales office. Despite the amount of damage to the building, finding the sales office was not going to be easy. Every door was locked. The garage doors were too large and the man doors were heavy duty. Even though the building was heavily damaged, there wasn’t an easy way to get in.

Also, no one wanted to be the first in a dark building and they only had regular flashlights, not the spot lights or thermal imagers the SWAT truck had. The reality was, unless they could get some big garage doors open, no one wanted to go inside.

After walking all the way around the building, Tia finally made a decision. “Let’s crash the place,”

The men looked at her. “I’ll drive.” She smiled mischievously.

They went back to the SUV and drove it around back of the building. Tia’s plan was to drive into one of the garage doors that didn’t have a vehicle on the inside. Sade stopped her. “Can’t we pull the door off?” he asked. They’d surveyed every door. The man doors all opened inward and were set in steel frames. The only thing to strap the tie downs to were door handles and they’d come off before the door did. There were no handles on the garage doors. They started looking for other ways into the building without crashing their only vehicle that they know worked.

Near a line of air conditioners and where the building had started to collapse, Nick found a glass man door that had been covered with part of the fallen roof. “Here we go!” he hollered to the other three. They came running and all agreed this was probably the best way into the building.