Hell Happened (27 page)

Cheryl rolled over to look at the young man. Her face was wet with tears. Her movement uncovered her left breast to Randy, who, try as he might to not look, saw the well-formed breast. She pulled her tee shirt down swung her legs to the floor. “You’ll keep me from being sent away?” she asked in a whispering voice.

“Yes,” he said, feeling his body react to how close she was moving to him. “Don’t you worry about
it.
I’ll convince dad you’re not a threat to us.”

Cheryl stood up and hugged Randy like he had saved her life. “I won’t do anything to make him not trust me, Ran,” she whispered in his ear. He felt her hard body against his, her arms under his and pushing on his back to her body, pulling him
close
. Her face was buried in his neck and he could feel her eyelashes fluttering. He wondered if his statement about protecting her caused her to cry again. If she was falling for him, he was fine with that so he hugged her back, pulling her as close to him as he could.

Cheryl felt his body respond and released from him when his hand reached the small of her back. She knew Randy was hooked and she was going to keep him on the hook for as long as it took to secure her freedom.

“I hope you’re right, Ran. I was so scared and you’re saving me. I won’t forget it,” she said. He was getting ready to reach for her again so she innocently deflected his advance by going for her breakfast that he’d brought for her. She pretended not to see his reach. “I’m really hungry now. Thank you for bringing me something to eat.”

Randy knew the moment for intimacy had passed, but he looked forward to more intimate time in the future. “You know what would be nice, Ran?” she asked as she sat down on the bed. She crossed her long legs and leaned over just enough to tease Randy, but not allow him to see anything without moving.

“A deserted island with no one but me and you and a shit load of ice cream?” he said, trying to sound witty.

She gave an obligatory smile and giggle.
“Not what I was thinking, but along those same lines.
I haven’t had anything good to drink in months. I sure would like some beer. I used to get so drunk with my
boyfriend,
I’m surprised I didn’t get pregnant already.”

And with that sentence, she dropped the allusion that when she got intoxicated, she would put out. Randy knew he was going to get some of dad’s beer and Cheryl and he were going to party. Randy didn’t have a chance against her. She had him controlled and he didn’t even know it.

Chapter 9

E
ddie
drove to Odenville with the same enthusiasm he had been doing everything lately, with gusto. He was driving his SWAT truck and he was hoping he got a chance to use some of the firepower he and a couple of the other guys riding with him, one of them a machinist, had done to improve the truck’s lethality.

Morbid curiosity drew him to the food store where he’d first shot at another human target. It was the same store where Spec. 4 Terrill Ellison Jackson gave his life for his friends, so that they might live. Time and circumstance prevented them from returning for Terrill’s body, but Jerry had found two pieces of slate on which to engrave the names of Lt. Michael “Mike” Jamison and Spec. 4 Terrill Jackson. He placed them side-by-side on the hill where they’d laid old Mike to rest. Eddie thought it a fitting yet simple memorial to the two men who died after surviving what had killed more of the world.

It had been over a month since that morning he, Jerry and Terrill had gone looking for their missing friends. He put it out of his mind now.

Eddie was more interested in seeing what effects of the storm had east of the shelter. There were chain link fences, signs and all matter of debris on the highway, houses ripped from their foundation, cars smashed and littering fields and entire forests of trees blown down. There were dead carcasses from wildlife, both domestic and wild that had been preyed upon by vultures or other animals.

Most promising, however, was there were no telltale signs that anything had been cleaned up or moved. He slowed as he drove up to the crossing where he and Jerry had crossed the road beside the store itself. The billboard under which they’d hid was gone except for the three telephone-sized poles that had held it up.

The store was damaged extensively. Half the roof appeared to be sagging; the glass in front was all gone. Terrill’s body and all evidence that he’d been there was washed and blown away by the massive hurricane, which was what Eddie had hoped. The building from which vigilantes had shot at Jerry and Terrill was gone completely as well.

While Eddie was sure no one would still be there, a part of him hoped that they were so the fight they’d had before could be resumed – this time however he had six people with guns and his SWAT truck, not just himself with a bolt-action rifle.

The lamp posts in the parking lot had all been snapped off like matchsticks and the area looked so different than the last time he’d been here. He figured this must be what a city hit by a bomb would look like.

Followed by the Ford and its trailer, Eddie directed the truck to park in front of what was left of the food store and illuminate the inside with both the two-million-candlepower spotlights that had been installed.

Danny, who was driving the Ford, followed his instructions and after a careful search called it clear. Eddie drove along the back of the store. The doors were closed in back so there was no way to tell if there were not-
deads
inside waiting to ambush them. The SWAT truck had two thermal imaging guns and he asked Josh, a butcher by trade, and Rusty, a former tattoo artist, to pull them out of their cupboard in the back of the truck.

Eddie had talked to everyone on the foraging crew before they left the shelter about the encounter he’d had with the not-
deads
. “The zombie will kill you,” he told them. “They are not real zombies, they’ve just mutated somehow. They’re stronger than a freaking gorilla and twice as mean. I shot one three times and it was still coming after us. The only reason we’re not dead is because of a brick wall and a big-ass amount of luck.”

“A bullet from this will put it down,” Rusty had said confidently, patting the Smith & Wesson 500 he had holstered on his hip.

“Don’t bet your life on it, and don’t bet my life on it, man,” he said to the tattooed man. “We shot one five or six times at close range with a Desert Eagle and a 30-06, and it still wanted to eat our brains out. It had half its arm missing, a hole you could see through in its chest and part of its neck gone and it didn’t stop that damn thing.”

“So how do we kill them? Blow them to smithereens? I didn’t bring any TNT with me and wouldn’t that
kinda
blow up the whole freaking place? Seems like the hard way to go shopping to me.”

“A good head shot that takes off the brain stem will work. They don’t seem to bleed much, but if you can shoot their legs or arms off, do it. Don’t waste ammo on the gut or chest because that doesn’t seem to stop them very fast. They’ll be eating your face and your eyes will be falling out the hole you just shot in its stomach. You’ll be dead and it will eat your brains before it dies. It won’t care that you killed it and you’ll be dead.

“Also, don’t think these things are like zombies in a movie. They move faster than hell and they will bite the shit out of you first chance they get. Shoot ‘
em
a lot and shoot ‘
em
again and don’t stop shooting until the son from the pits of hell is flopping on the ground like a fresh caught catfish.

“They look like a human on triple doses of steroids, but don’t think their moaning is going to give them away. They come out of nowhere and their huge black eyes see really good in the dark. A bright light will blind them, but they don’t give a shit, they’ll still come after you and snack on your pancreas.

“They gather in groups of two or three, maybe more, in dark places. I don’t know how they survive or why they want to eat us who haven’t been turned into zombies. There’re plenty of slow moving cows and dogs still around they could snack on. If there were any scientists left we could ask them, but we don’t so it’s a mystery, but I know I don’t want to become a
McHuman
for those creepy bastards. I’d rather blow their head off and watch them flop on the ground like a drunken college cheerleader.”

Eddie wasn’t sure of all the “facts” he’d given them and he might have exaggerated some, but he wanted these people to know how dangerous and scary the zombies were.

Eddie parked the SWAT truck and Josh and Rusty climbed out of the
truch
. Eddie followed the two out and directed them to either side of one of the doors.

“Okay, turn ‘
em
on. When I open the door, you,” he pointed to Josh, “go left and you,” to Rusty, “go right.” Both men, AR-15s with 30 round clips in their right hands and thermal imagers in their left, nodded to Eddie. For just a moment, he wondered what the men, both well over 10 years his senior, thought about the 22-year-old giving them orders. The moment passed when he opened the door.

The thermal imagers showed heat signatures in the distant corners of the building, but they weren’t clearly defined. Eddie motioned the men back out of the building and slammed the steel door.

Pulling out his walkie-talkie he called Katie and her crew to the back of the store. When they arrived he laid out his plan. “We need the food in there and they don’t. Let’s go in
in
threes.
One with the spotlight, two with guns.
We shoot anything that moves and we shoot it until it doesn’t move no more.”

“Josh, you and Rusty take the lights. You guys know where you saw the images on the thermal. Katie and I will go for the right side, Danny and
Sade,
you go for the left side. If they start getting to close, say within 10 feet, start screaming your ass off and we’ll all back out. Sound like a plan?”

Although he was asking, it was still the plan they were going with. Josh and Rusty got the hand held spot lights out of the truck. The others made sure they had the safety off on their guns, a round in the chamber and their side arm ready. “Don’t hesitate,” he told them, “because they won’t.”

When everyone was ready, Eddie took the handle of the door in his hand. The spotlights which were held over the head of everyone were on and creating shadows of Katie’s and Sade’s head on the door frame. They’d go in first, followed extremely close by Eddie and Danny and then the spot lights.

Eddie pulled the door open quickly and two zombies were right there waiting for them. Sade was caught by surprise, but Katie started pulling the trigger on her AR-15 like a sewing machine. The zombie was a large, heavily-muscled woman, and Katie had to put six rounds into the damn thing’s head before it stopped reaching for her. It went down and Katie put two more rounds into the thing’s black, greasy hair. She was then being pulled back out the door by someone.

The spotlights didn’t seem to slow the zombies at all. Sade hesitated for a heartbeat and almost died for it. The zombie grabbed his throat and was leaning in for a bite before the Nigerian-born American started shooting. The zombie’s abdomen was being turned into Swiss cheese but the beast had him in a choking death grip.

Danny got his AR in play with surprising speed, pushing Eddie and Katie to the side. He had a dozen rounds into the zombie’s neck and jaw, splattering the two men with zombie flesh, blood and bone as Katie and Eddie backed out.

Grabbing a knife with a 12-inch blade from his hip, Danny sliced through the sinew and tissue of the zombie’s arm as it began to fall, trying to take Sade to the floor in its dying seconds.

Eddie pulled Sade and Danny back out and Rusty slammed the door. They tripped and fell over Rusty.

With the door slammed shut they looked at each other. Both had blood and flesh splattered on them and Sade had dark bruises on his neck.

Sitting on the ground, wiping off the blood and guts Danny looked up at Sade. “What the hell, man? Why’d you hesitate?” Sade looked at Danny. He was still in a little bit of shock. He didn’t know what to say for several moments. “I thought it was Bill Murray. You know, from that zombie movie.”

Danny’s jaw opened and stayed there. Katie rolled her eyes. Eddie knew the reference and started to laugh. “What, you were going to ask him? ‘Bill,
wanna
play golf?’” everyone then started laughing. Maybe they didn’t know the movie, but Bill Murray and the golf reference were so out of place in what they had experienced in the last 15 seconds, it had to be funny.

When they had settled down and the ones who had fallen got back to their feet, Sade deadpanned, “I like to golf,” and everyone broke into laughter again. They moved back to the far side of the SWAT truck and cleaned themselves of the gore.

“I think we need another plan,” Eddie admitted. “They knew we were coming and they were waiting. I thought they would be stupid and didn’t give them credit. Next time we do it different.”

“We got any rope?” asked Danny. “I got a plan.” Eddie climbed inside his truck and brought out a length of repelling rope. Danny cut a piece off. He tied one end to the door handle and walked back to the rear of the truck.

“Eddie, you and Katie go lay over there,” he said pointing to the back of the trailer the Ford was pulling. “Take the light Eddie, and don’t forget to reload, Kate. You went through a lot of ammo. Me, Josh and Rusty will go over here,” he said pointing to an opposite oblique from Eddie and Kate. “Sade’s going to pull the door all the way open from back here, 20 feet from the door.”