Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (11 page)

The
Stennis
weighed anchor and the flat top and submarine pulled away from the island and deep water before turning toward the mainland.

The people aboard the
Stennis
played games on the three-acre deck of the ship. There was not much work to do except for the sailors and other people who had skills in the mess hall or laundry. Considering the size of the ship, built to house more than 5,000 sailors, there was plenty of room for everyone.

Aboard the
North Carolina
, the morale wasn’t quite as good. Men were getting tense, tempers short and the captain was having a difficult time enforcing military bearing. The people aboard the sub were still living in cramped quarters, eating and sleeping in shifts, while the other survivors were enjoying a nice day, playing volleyball and hitting golf balls off the fan tail of the aircraft carrier.

The carrier also had women, something the sub did not, and while the sub had been at sea for just over 45 days, knowing there were women aboard the
Stennis
did motivate some of the men to speculate how much more fun it would be aboard the carrier.

On the fourth morning at sea, almost halfway to the mainland, the sub had its first major conflagration. Two of the men working in the forward torpedo room got into an altercation with their section chief, and that grew into fights with the mess hall section, throwing food and punches.

Chief of the Boat Bailey had to put seven sailors in lock up and sent three others to see the medical officer, Petty Officer 1st Class Lindsey. Lindsey fixed one broken nose, taped up the ribs on another sailor and put an ice pack on the third sailor’s left eye before sending them back to their bunks.

Commander Finley came down to see Lindsey to talk about the fight. Lindsey had been aboard two other submarines in his career, but had never had to deal with the stress the crew was under now. There were so many unknowns, but they did know most of the populations around the world had died.

The captain asked if Lindsey was still adamant about waiting at least two weeks after the last reported death from the plague, and Lindsey told him again, the longer they waited before opening the sub to the outside environment, the safer they would be. Lindsey told him ideally they should wait at least a month and that 14 days was the absolute minimum the captain should wait.

With the fights breaking out on board, Finley was getting anxious. It had been 10 days since the last reported death and they were now 1,200 miles from Pearl Harbor and 1,400 from San Diego. They’d never be further from land or any people who had died from the plague.

“What do you think are the chances are now of contracting the plague this far away from land?” Finley asked the medical officer.

“I can’t give you figures, captain, but every day we wait, I think, gives us a better chance of no one getting sick,” Garrick told him. “I’m not a doctor or a scientist, but we’re alive now….”

He was cut off by the sound of a gun shot in a compartment not too far away. Both men ran through the hatches and found two sailors had tackled a junior lieutenant. A gun had been knocked from the officer’s hand and further along the corridor was a petty officer with a bullet hole in his chest. Garrick checked to enlisted man’s pulse and then pulled back the eyelids. “He’s dead captain.”

The junior lieutenant was still struggling with the two men, but they had him restrained now. He was screaming about getting out of the sub and getting back to his wife and child.

“I don’t think we can wait any longer, Lindsey,” the captain said. “If I told the crew we were opening hatches in the morning, do you think that’d relieve some of the stress everyone is under?”

Garrick thought about what the captain was saying, and the necessity of why he wanted to do it, but he also knew the longer the crew remained on recycled air, the less chance they had of contracting the plague.

“The crew would act positively to the news, sir, but I don’t think they realize what they’d be risking. Maybe we’d all be safe, but I just don’t know.”

“Well, if I don’t do something soon, we won’t have a crew.”

The captain made the announcement and Garrick could hear the cheers through the boat, but he wasn’t happy with captain’s decision. He knew morale was poor and not going to get any better, but opening the hatches seemed to be a decision based on emotion, not logic.

Garrick spent the rest of the evening cleaning up his cramped office and putting away the supplies and filling out reports no one would ever read. He did them out of rote and carrying out the duties made him feel as normal as possible.

The last thing he did before he retired for the night was write a letter to his brother, Chuck. He knew it would never get delivered, but he wanted to apologize for hanging up when his older brother told him he’d gotten into some trouble. Garrick had looked up to Chuck growing up and didn’t blame him when he’d killed their step dad. When Chuck was arrested for a bar fight, Garrick was on his first tour of duty in the Navy and while he sympathized, there was nothing he could do for his brother.

Garrick focused on setting up a good life for himself and he couldn’t be drawn into the trouble that Chuck seemed to find at every turn. When Chuck said he’d been involved in an armed robbery, it was the last straw for Garrick. He wished his brother the best of luck and hung up on him. It was the last time Garrick had spoken with Chuck. He received a letter from some attorney telling Garrick his brother had been sentenced to life in prison.

Garrick slept fitfully through the night and woke up early enough to be one of the first in line for the breakfast meal. The cooks had done a half-assed job of filling the line, but it was good enough for Garrick.

He finished eating and walked back to his office to complete some paperwork from the previous day. He looked at his watch and it was already 0625 hours. The captain said he’d be opening the hatches at 0700 hours.

If the plague was still out there, Garrick didn’t want to be one of the last ones left alive. He’d rather be one of the first to go. The captain had said the only hatch to be opened would be the one aft of the control room. Garrick reasoned this was because it was the smallest room with an exterior hatch and the pressure hatches could be shut to isolate the room while Garrick checked the air.

Finley had already relaxed all the military training, figuring the sub would never return to sea once they reached their final port. Finley was a good commander, both intelligent and quick witted. He’d showed already that being cautious saved lives, but also found a way to help those still alive on the surface. He was also a realist and he could see his crew was falling apart despite the concessions he made. The junior officer who had killed the petty officer pushed the captain to make the decision to open the hatch and allow his crew to see and interact with those who had survived and were on the
Stennis
. It would reaffirm to his crew that life was still possible.

Garrick, the only enlisted department head, had suggested waiting at least until the sub reached San Diego, but the officers thought their men needed it now. It had been hard on them to not go ashore or open the hatches when docked in Hawaii, but then the memory of the death in the other sub was still fresh.

Almost two weeks had passed since the last death from the plague, and there was no real test to find out if the plague was still in the air outside the sub, but still the captain had insisted Garrick test the air before opening the hatch.

Opening one of the lockers in his impossibly small office, Garrick pulled out the equipment he’d need. He also grabbed his tablet and a pad of paper and headed to the bridge. The captain had asked him to be ready at 0645 hours.

He walked through hatches and listened to the sounds of sub. He had been aboard this sub for more than a year and two cruises. He could tell there was unrest aboard. Voices were louder and sharper. Body language was less military. Sailors were less gentle with equipment.

The control room was below and aft of the sail of the
North Carolina
and Garrick reported to Finley at 0644.

“What’s the status on the
Stennis
?” Finley was asking his executive officer.

“Captain Jansen reports they are ready to increase to 12 knots for the day shift,” the exec told him. “He also reports no deaths on his crew overnight, but one injury to a civilian who fell down a ladder well.”

“Tell him to proceed to 12 knots,” Finley told him then over his shoulder added, “Chief of the Boat, take us to 12 knots and keep us abreast of the
Stennis
.”

Orders were repeated in the time-honored ritual of naval tradition. Garrick felt rather than heard the sub double its speed. It was a gentle increase in speed. He knew the sub could easily keep pace with the flat top, even while they were on the surface. On the screens he could see the
Stennis
’ wash and could tell it was increasing speed as well.

The two boats were still three full day’s sail from San Diego at this speed, but the lieutenant junior grade who was commanding the
Stennis
was just a junior engineer and was not prepared to take the engines up to their rated speed.

When both boats were cruising at 12 knots and the exec reported this to Finley, the captain of the sub turned to Garrick.

“You ready, doc?” he asked.

Garrick patted his air testing equipment bag and nodded. “Yes, sir. As ready as I can be.”

“Here’s how we’re going to do it, doc,” the captain told him. “You’re going into the lockout trunk and put on the MK-10. We’re going to close the hatch to that compartment and over pressurize the chamber below you. You’re going to open the outer hatch and test the outside air. When you’re done, you’re going to close the outer hatch and we’re going to flood the chamber you’re in to remove the outside air, then evacuate the water.”

The MK-10 is whole-body suit and one-man life raft, designed by British company RFD Beaufort Limited. It allows submariners to escape from a sunken submarine. The suit provides protection against hypothermia and has a self-contained air supply for up to an hour. The exec said Garrick could use the MK-10 as protection against the outside air in case he did find some contamination.

“How long are you going to need outside, doc?” the exec asked.

“I’ll need five minutes for this,” he said indicating the test kit slung under his arm. “I’ll need another two to take air samples for the testing equipment in the lab.

“But I just want to reiterate, I won’t be able to tell if the virus is still in the atmosphere because no one knows what it was that killed everyone. All I’ll be able to do is tell if the air is breathable and safe.”

“I know, doc, you’ve told me all this,” the captain said, “but on the one in a million chance that something shows up, I want to make sure we’ve exhausted every avenue of precaution.

“Get to it, doc,” Finley told him.

Garrick climbed the ladder to the lock out trunk and put on the MK-10. When he was ready, he radioed the executive officer and said he was ready. He was given the okay to proceed.

Garrick heard a dull “clump” as the hatch to which he’d just come through was sealed tighter by the over pressure on the opposite side. Now any air that he let inside the chamber when he opened the outer hatch wouldn’t enter the interior of the sub.

He opened the outside hatch with a twist of the wheel. He climbed the ladder and put his back against the hatch and for the first time in 49 days, Garrick saw the sun.

He took his samples and tested the air just as he told the captain he would. He tried not to enjoy being on the hull as much as he did because he knew there were 118 sailors below deck who probably would have sold their soul to be where he was.

On the deck of the
Stennis
, he saw people waving at him. He must have looked quite the sight in his orange outfit and testing equipment, but he waved back.

His equipment told him everything about the air around him, except if whatever it was that killed most of the population of earth was still in the air. He took three vials out of his pack that were filled with sterile water and emptied them and put a stopper on the open end. He’d use these on the more advanced equipment in his compartment, but he was sure they’d tell him the same thing his portable equipment did.

He put everything back in the water-proof bag he’d brought with him and climbed back inside the sub and closed the hatch. The compartment was flooded and Garrick made sure any air bubbles on his body or equipment were wiped off. He then checked the walls and the ladder. He had five minutes to make sure every bit of air that had come from outside was evacuated from the sub before the compartment was drained of water.

When the room was drained again, Garrick took off his suit and took his air samples to his office and checked their quality with high-tech equipment. It took less than two minutes for the machine to report the air appeared safe and free of harmful bacteria, carbon monoxide or dioxide, radiation or any of two dozen other gasses or contaminates the machine tested.

It was a safe as any air outside as far as Garrick or his equipment could tell and he lifted the handset in his office to call and tell the captain as much.