Hell Happened (6 page)

As Jerry scanned the fields and distant roads, he couldn’t tell that Kellie wasn’t waiting for the sunrise, but instead she was recalling their first encounter. She had been afraid of him when they had first met in the field behind his shelter.

Her world had fallen apart in more ways than just her personal life. She had been a news junkie and when the first reports of flu that was killing people broke, she followed every story, read every article she could find in newspapers and the internet.

She’d teach during the day, but in the evening her TV was on CNN or MSNBC or Fox News, laptop on the corner table of the sectional in her living room and her dog Molly by her side. To her, it seemed like an avalanche, like the ones she and Warren had seen outside of their rented chalet in Vail, except it wasn’t snow destroying everything in its path, it was the flu.

It hit home for her when her sister’s kids all died within 14 hours of each other. Rich was by their sides and took his own life when the youngest child finally slipped into that long good night. Jennie, who had planned to be with her family when the end game finally played out, never arrived because of wrecked vehicles on the roads and bad
planning
. She’d been a flight attendant and in the wrong city when the airlines were shut down for good. She was driving home when her end came.

When Kellie arrived at her sister’s small house, everything was in order and her brother-in-law and three nephews were lying together in the same room where she’d cried her eyes out to her sister less than a year before.

Her sanity slipped away for days as she cried and screamed and yelled at God for the hell He hath wrought. She got in her car, followed by her dog Molly who she barely even noticed, and drove away. She didn’t want to destroy the last peaceful scene of what had been her family.

Kellie crashed the car on a dirt road outside of the city. She came around a corner too fast and the tears in her eyes, or memories and rage in her mind, made her miss seeing the two cars that had met head on and were in the middle of the road.

The quickness at which she made the decision to accelerate and die right there or hit the brakes and try to avoid the accident scene could have been measure in 10ths of a heartbeat.

She accelerated.

Molly, sensing something, jumped on the floor board from her passenger seat.

She hit the wrecked cars at 42 miles per hour.

The screaming shriek of tearing metal, the hood slamming into the windshield shattering it, the driver’s side front tire exploding and the sound of tires sliding on the hard-packed dirt road were all drowned out by the sounds of eight air-bags deploying.

She sat in the driver’s seat for two full minutes.

She was stunned by what she’d just done.

She couldn’t even die right, she thought to herself.

Molly climbed up from the floor and sat on her lap. Her mutt face stared at her.

She’d wrecked the car.

She didn’t die.

What was wrong with her life that she wouldn’t die?

Molly licked her face once and sat back down on her lap.

Finally getting some grip on whom she was and where she was, she looked down into Molly’s big black eyes. Her black whiskers had dust on them, the brown wiry fur on her ears had gotten damp from some liquid pouring out of the dash, and her little black nose was smudged with some powder from the airbag that’d deployed on the passenger side of the car.

But Molly was happy to see her.

Kellie hugged her dog, the precious and loyal friend she’d received from her sister after the divorce, and extricated herself from the car. She hadn’t been injured, but the car was wrecked.

She started walking in no particular direction and Molly sometimes followed and sometimes led.

The first night she slept in a house she’d come across that didn’t have dead bodies in it. The second night she slept in a Winnebago that was parked in a driveway.

By the third night she was well away from the city. She could have driven any car of her choice, but she had
no where
to go so she and Molly just continued to walk aimlessly. When Molly got hungry, she’d find her some food. When she was thirsty, streams and garden hoses made her happy.

The third night she slept in the foyer of a vacant manufacturing building that was vacant. She would later look back on that night as her luckiest since the fall of the world. The not-
deads
, the mutated humans Kellie had not encountered yet, often took refuge from the sunlight in such buildings.

In the early morning hours, something had frightened Molly to where she jumped on Kellie, waking her. Molly had heard voices from, what Kellie would later find out to be, a vigilant hunting party.

Peering through the blinds, she could see the flashlights of a half-dozen men. They were vulgar and dirty, armed with various weapons. There were no women with them. She watched as the men started to circle the building in which she had taken refuge, and listened to hear if they were going to break in, or they were like her and just looking for a place to sleep.

The broken window also allowed her to hear the men talking. She came to the quick conclusion there was no way she would allow men like these to take her alive. They walked with a swagger, carrying guns and smoking cigarettes. They had the look of thugs, of ruffians and men who would do unspeakable horrors without regard for anyone’s life but their own.

Grabbing up Molly, she found a door that opened deeper into the little factory in which she’d been sleeping. She found a cleaning closet that had a door that locked on the inside. She hid like a frightened little girl. Tears and sobs that might betray her were kept in check.

For five hours she and Molly hid out. She heard the men enter the building and Kellie took pills she’d liberated from a pharmacy from her pocket, ready to swallow them all if they found her. A single
gun shot
echoed in the building and it made her jump. Molly started to growl, but Kellie’s hand placed over her nose quieted the little dog.

Then there was silence. It sounded like the men left, but Kellie remained in the closet for at least an hour to be sure they were gone. She was careful to stretch her stiff muscles before she finally worked up the nerve to unlock the door and look out.

Slowly she made sure there was no one still lurking.

From the light streaming through the opaque windows, the sun had risen and she could see the men who had been here had shot at a community board with pictures of what had probably been the company’s annual picnic.

No one was on the factory floor and she didn’t see anyone from her vantage point. Since she had been sleeping on the foyer’s couch, if the men were still in the building, she figured they’d have taken up residence in the offices with the comfortable furniture and carpeted floors.

Still holding Molly, she crept to the door under the exit sign on the side wall of the factory floor. The door had “fire exit” on it so she was pretty certain she could push it open and head into the woods.

Holding tightly to Molly she tried to push it gently open. A loud click from the latching mechanism announced that the door was unlocked, and the door opened. She slipped through quietly and then allowed the door to close as gently as she could without having a handle on the outside on which to hold.

There was a heavy wooded area behind the small factory and she kept along the side of the building as long as she could, ducking below the one window she passed. She looked around the corner of the end of the building and seeing no one she ran to the tree line. Molly jumped out of her arms as they ran through the woods.

Molly led the way and Kellie followed her. She never knew if the men were still in the building. She never stopped to find out. She’d had her fill of violent men and there was no way she would let herself be taken by them. She put the pills back into her pocket and slowed to a walk behind Molly. She didn’t know how lucky she’d gotten, but, in a startling revelation, she realized she wasn’t ready to die.

She was walking through a field of soybeans later that afternoon when a man waved to her from a quarter a mile away. Hearing a real voice startled her and she was afraid. Molly growled and looked in the man’s direction, but didn’t leave her side.

The man, backed by a younger man and an elderly black gentleman, approached her slowly and carefully, making it clear to her they were armed, but not threatening her.

In the middle of the dozen-acre field, there was no place for her to hide. She berated herself for not staying near the wood line, but it was a cool day for Alabama and the sun was hidden by clouds, making her walk almost enjoyable. The field was not over grown with weeds and thickets and it made walking easy.

Kellie found a comfortable place to sit with her dog and wait for the men to approach. She reached into her pocket and collected up the pills she stored there for the end. If they killed her outright, so be it, but she wasn’t going to be used as a sex slave or punching bag.

The pills in her hand, she waited for the three men to approach her.

Molly, never leaving her side, watched the men get closer, alternately with watching Kellie to see what her owner wanted her to do.

When the men were about 20 paces from her, the leader, a clean-shaven, middle-aged man with a tanned face, a dirty NASCAR baseball hat with the #48 on it, a white tee shirt and faded, but clean jeans stopped the trio. He had what looked to be a military weapon in his hand, but he was holding it by the handle, not like he was ready to shoot someone.

The younger man on his left side looked a lot like the leader, but much heavier and softer. He had a rifle, but it was slung on his back. Kellie thought the man about 17 or 18 years old and not like the men from earlier in the morning. He was smiling at something his dad, she guessed, was saying and his hands were in his shorts’ pockets. He didn’t look like a young man who was out for raping and pillaging.

The other man looked even more out of place. He was a handsome elderly black gentleman that only the south can produce. His hair had streaks of grey and he wore, which really stood out in the bean field, expensive dress shoes, a pair of what looked to be well-tailored dress pants, a powder blue shirt with creases and a vest that was probably made by Armani. He looked more like he belonged in a boardroom with 20 people following his every instruction. He had the air of wisdom and confidence about him, but also projecting strength and control even though he didn’t appear to have a weapon.

“Out for a walk today, ma’am?” the leader of the trio asked as they came to a stop. He had that accent only a true Alabama-native had. He tipped his hat to her as any proper southern gentleman would do, but also kept his hand on the rifle he carried.

Just hours earlier she has been so frightened she almost lost control of her bodily functions.

But here, in the middle of a field, facing what could even be considered a worse threat, she didn’t feel fear.

“I…I…I’m lost,” she stammered. It came out like she was a frightened little girl. “I’m hungry.”

Putting his hat back on after wiping his forehead, the leader told her who he was. “Well, I’m Jerry. This is my son Randy,” he said pointing with his head to the youngest of the trio, “and this is Mr. Fournier, but
he prefers we call him Mike. “We have some food back at our place if you want to share some. It’s pretty good eats and will fill your belly.

“As for you being lost,” he took his hat off again and started pointing, “Odenville is that way, Leeds is that way, Harrisburg is over that way and if you’re headed to Birmingham, go that way until you hit the highway and follow it.”

She thought it odd he didn’t ask her where she was going or what she hoped to find when she got there. He was doing everything he could to make sure she didn’t feel threatened. He slung his rifle over his shoulder. “We’re headed back to our shelter now if you want to follow, just don’t try anything funny
agin
us, and you’ll be safe.” She stood up from where she’d been sitting and picked Molly up.

And promptly started crying.

The three men stood there like she’d hit them with an electric bolt from heaven. It was Mike who finally walked toward her first. “
It’s
okay ma’am,” he said in a smooth and comforting baritone. “No one here is going to hurt you. You’re safe with us and Jerry and his boy here have a good safe place.” He put his arm comfortingly over her shoulder, the way a father does to his crying daughter, and her sobs became stronger and tears gushed down her face.

She didn’t know why, but she knew she was, at least for now, safe from the hell and fear she’d been living with. The pills dropped from her hands and Mike didn’t stoop to pick them up. Instead he re-assured her that she was safe and was welcome to break bread with them.

The four of them walked back to the shelter, Jerry and Randy in the lead, followed by Mike and Kellie. Molly yipped once or twice, but seemed happy around the group once Kellie’s tears had stopped flowing and she could walk without being supported.

~     
~
     
~

It had been three weeks and Kellie never continued her walk. She was welcomed to stay and she slept peacefully for the first time since before the fall.