Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (12 page)

Two minutes later the captain reported on the all-call that all personnel not on duty would be allowed on the hull of the submarine for recreation. Garrick, who was still behind the closed door of his office, could hear the cheers of the crew.

The mood aboard the sub immediately changed. Morale was higher, laughter could be heard and there was a shift from the depressing talk Garrick had been hearing to positive and uplifting conversation in the mess hall.

Garrick couldn’t help but be affected too. It felt good to get outside and wave at the people on the
Stennis
. He even laughed when some joker took several tries at hitting a golf ball at them. The two boats were less than 300 yards apart, but the man swinging the driver couldn’t seem to hit the ball far enough.

The morning of the third day after opening up the hatch for the crew, Finley was feeling confident the virus or whatever it was that had killed everyone had run it course. Garrick had been tasked with taking blood samples every hour from anyone who had been on the hull of the ship. He would compare them with samples taken before anyone had been allowed to exit the ship.

Nothing was different. Every time Garrick checked, the blood samples were normal and exactly the same as before. At the end of the second day, Garrick began to think that maybe the captain was right.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Joshua Higgens was the first to validate Garrick’s thought that whatever killed the population of the world was still viable.

Higgens was standing abaft of the sail of the
North Carolina
. He was watching three other crewman signaling to some of the women who were aboard the
Stennis
. By nightfall they would be within sight of San Diego and the men on the hull were making sure they weren’t forgotten by the women once landfall was made.

Higgens was smoking one of his hoarded cigarettes. He took long drags on it and looked up at the cloud cover. He was one of the cooks aboard the
North Carolina
and had been involved in the fight three days ago. He told himself as soon as his feet hit dry land, he was leaving all this behind, find himself a car and drive to Detroit to find out what happened to his family.

He took another drag from the cigarette. It made him feel a little light headed after going months without. He’d felt a little sick when he woke up at 0200 hours to begin fixing breakfast for the crew, but not so much that he complained to anyone. Everyone was in too good of a mood to listen to someone feeling a little off their game.

With breakfast complete and his duty shift over for the morning, Higgens asked for and was allowed on the hull.

A third drag on his cigarette and Higgens coughed a little. He thought it was because he was smoking too fast. He didn’t care. It felt good to be out of the sub. He drew in another puff and coughed again.

He flicked the cigarette into the sea.

He dropped dead before the butt hit the water.

The three other men saw Higgens drop. They’d heard the stories of how the people around the world had died and Higgens followed the same pattern.

By the time the two naval vessels were 15 miles from San Diego, Garrick was the only original crewman still alive aboard the
U.S.S. North Carolina
. If there was going to be death aboard the sub, he’d wanted to be the first one to die, but instead he was the last one alive.

Higgens had been the first to die. Garrick and the exec had rushed to the body but there was never a chance at saving the young man. Two hours later, others were found dead in their bunks. There was panic aboard and six sailors dove overboard in an effort to get away from the dying.

By the fifth hour after the first death, three sailors from the
Stennis
who had some experience with piloting had to be ferried over to assist those still alive aboard the sub. Garrick provided what he could with burial services, but there was little he knew how to do. He took blood samples from the dead and checked them under a microscope, but he could see no difference.

Finley took his own life in his room after the three sailors from the
Stennis
arrived. He was wearing his dress uniform and had written an apology and taped it to his chest. Garrick left the commander’s body where he found it and locked the door on his way out.

Both ships had slowed to five knots and had increased separation to allow for the lack of skill of the pilots of both ships. It was mid afternoon when the two were within sight of San Diego. There were four sailors alive aboard the
North Carolina
and Garrick was the most senior. There was talk of abandoning the sub, but Garrick told Jansen aboard the
Stennis
that the captain had wanted the sub to return home and he was going to make it happen.

Both boats slowed to a relative stop six nautical miles from shore. No one on board either ship had ever had to pilot in or near San Diego and Jansen wanted to take every precaution.

Garrick was on the hull of the
North Carolina
, looking at the naval base. He was searching for any movement. People on the deck of the carrier were also looking for life on shore and they had a better vantage point to see San Diego crumble and fall.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Garrick said out loud as he raced to the hatch. “Get us out to sea!” he was hollering to the two sailors who were manning the control deck even as he was pulling the hatch shut. “Go! Go! Go!”

He entered the conn and told the sailors that an earthquake was hitting San Diego and they needed to get as far away from shore as they could. The two sailors, both E-4s could barely keep the sub going in one direction and they were being asked to come about and head out to sea at flank speed.

Garrick grabbed the radio to the
Stennis
. “Jansen, get moving out to sea as fast as you can! There’s an earthquake and there’s going to be a tidal wave. We need as much water under us as we can,” he said over the handset.

“We’ve already seen it and we’re moving as fast as we can but we’re 1,100 feet long. You get your sub moving and we’ll talk when we can.”

Garrick heard the click of the junior lieutenant hanging up on him.

The only outside view Garrick had was on the video monitors from the mast. He didn’t know how to operate all the bells and whistles, but he could zoom in as the sub swung around in a looping circle to head out for deeper water.

The city he could see through the dust was collapsing on itself. From this distance it didn’t look like a lot, but a four-mile wide swath of Port Loma was sliding into the sea.

The sub had made its turn and was headed back out to deeper water when the call came from the
Stennis
. “A tidal wave is coming,” a new voice on the speaker said.

“Who is this?” Garrick asked, picking up the handset.

“This is Marissa Lawrence. Jansen is too busy to talk right now. We’re not going to be able to get turned in time. The wave is going to hit us hard. He told me to tell you good luck.”

No sooner had she finished when the sub lurched forward. If it hadn’t had its stern to the wave, the boat might have rolled, but as it was it only picked up speed. The two sailors driving the boat struggled to keep the sub in line with the direction of the wave. One of them was playing with the controls for the dive planes.

Garrick used the joystick operating the mast to get a look at the
Stennis
. What he saw shocked him. The 1,100-foot long, 97,000 deadweight ton
U.S.S.
Stennis
, pride of the American Pacific Fleet and supreme naval power in the world was listing hard to starboard. It hadn’t been able to complete its turn out to sea before the tidal wave hit it nearly broadside.

Another wave, hit the flat top as Garrick watched. The tilted deck was probably 150 feet above the waterline and the wave slapped the ship hard, tilting and lifting it further onto its side. Equipment that hadn’t been secured was thrown into the ocean. The carrier listed so far, he could see the 66,000-pound propeller spinning, and from this angle, people and unsecured gear were falling into the ocean.

The
Stennis
would not survive the afternoon.

The last communications from the ship came from Marissa who said Jansen was ordering everyone to abandon the ship before it sank.

The
North Carolina
fared better. It steamed directly away from shore and bobbed in the waves. Garrick thought about submerging the boat, but one, he didn’t know how, and two, neither did anyone else. They were doing all they could just to keep the sub from being swamped.

Garrick, seeing people thrown into the sea from the
Stennis
and hearing Marissa say everyone was abandoning the aircraft carrier, couldn’t leave the area without trying to help them.

“All stop,” he ordered.

The two sailors in the compartment with him looked at the Petty Officer like he’d slipped off his nut.

“Do it. We’re not leaving those survivors.”

Another wave hit the sub but it wasn’t as strong as the previous two.

“Can you guys get us close to the
Stennis
without getting us too close?”

The men looked at each other. They were mariners and the people on the carrier were people they’d met and talked to just yesterday. They shrugged.

“After the next wave. Right now, get us moving away and as soon as the wave hits us, turn as hard as you can to port and don’t stop until we’re aimed at the
Stennis
. Then slow down and creep as close as you can without getting too close. We don’t want to wreck ourselves,” Garrick told them.

The sailors held tight to their controls and they felt the rear of the sub lift with the next wave. They increased speed and turned the boat hard. Just as Garrick thought they might get turned completely around to face the next incoming wave, another wave hit the boat and caused it to roll to starboard. Equipment not secured fell across the deck as the sub rocked. They heard the sailor who was back in the engineering section call on the intercom to ask them “What in Sam Hell are you nut jobs doing up there?”

As the sub rolled back to the port, Garrick picked up the phone to engineering and told the petty officer that they were returning to pick up survivors from the
Stennis
. “Well next time tell me when you’re going to roll the boat so I can hang on to something!”

“Sorry about that,” Garrick told him. “It’s my first day as captain.” Garrick wasn’t upset at the man because he was working both engineering and the throttle room by himself.

The
North Carolina
was able to maneuver into the sea-side of the aircraft carrier that was leaning 60 degrees on its side. There were still waves coming from the city that had fallen into the sea, but the on this side of the carrier, the water was relatively smooth.

They picked up 47 people who were in the water by the simple expedient of going up on the hull and throwing a life preserver to them and pulling them aboard.

It took another hour to rescue those who hadn’t abandoned the ship. In all, they rescued 141 of the almost 300 people from the aircraft carrier. One of the last aboard was Marissa Lawrence. She told Garrick that Lt. j.g. Jansen had died when hit by a piece of equipment that had broken free. That’s all she’d tell him about the officer who’d tried so hard to save as many people as he could. Dale Marks from Hawaii was never located.

“We’ve got to get away from here,” she told Garrick after informing him of the death of Jansen. “At least 40 miles away from shore and 50 or 100 would be better she told him.”

“Why? The worst waves have passed.” Garrick told her. “We need to get these people ashore. We only have room for about 120 and we have 144 on board now.”

“No, the waves that hit us before are little. Four miles of land just fell into the ocean and waves were pushed away from the land. In a few hours those waves are going the meet up with the water rushing in to fill the hole that was just made,” Marissa explained.

“I’m no expert, but I think a tsunami is going to come back and come racing up the Continental Shelf and we need to be off it or we’re going to become the world’s biggest surf board and we’ll be slammed into land five miles onto shore.”

Garrick couldn’t argue with the woman because she sounded like she knew what she was talking about and he wasn’t a geologist. It sounded logical.

“How long have we got?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but I do know we better get going as soon as we can.”

Garrick had to look around and over some of the survivors to get the attention of the pilot. “Get us out to deep water as fast as you can sailor. We need to get off the shelf.”

“Aye, captain,” the sailor behind the wheel said. “You better call the engineering guy and tell him.”

The
North Carolina
turned directly away from shore again and sped out toward deep water. Garrick assigned Marissa to getting as many people to the berthing area and mess hall, giving him room to work in the control room with the two sailors who were piloting and navigating as best they could. She even put some of the people in the throttle room much to that sailor’s disgust, but there wasn’t enough room anywhere else.