Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (13 page)

The sub got up to 16 knots, the safest speed the Garrick thought he could move the boat with all the people aboard. They had no one except himself who knew how the air filtration system worked, no one who knew about the septic system’s maintenance, no one who knew much about the mess hall or fire control or any of a dozen other positions on the ship that needed monitoring.

Marissa did what she could and Garrick did what he could and the sub, if the man reading the depth to the ocean floor was correct, crossed the continental shelf just as the sun touched down on the horizon.

Once they had cleared the shelf, Garrick, who had taken to sitting in the captain’s chair because he was near exhaustion, ordered the boat to slow to five knots. He then had the hatches to the hull opened so people could get out of the sub to alleviate the crowding. He made sure an experienced sailor was on the hull to keep anyone from falling over board and that anyone on the hull wore a life vest.

Marissa brought Garrick two sandwiches and some coffee shortly before 2100 hours. He hadn’t even realized how hungry he was and immediately started in on the food, thanking the woman with a mouthful of ham salad and bread.

They were discussing the possibility of the tsunami not happening and how long the boat could stay at sea with who they had aboard when Garrick noticed their speed picking up.

“Hey! I didn’t say to speed up, pilot. What’re you doing?”

“It wasn’t me, sir,” the 22-year-old man said. “Something’s pushing us.”

Garrick watched the speed of the sub increase away from shore. They were more than 50 miles away and it felt like they were in a fast moving river.

“Water rushing from shore,” Marissa said ominously. “Here it comes.”

“Get everyone inside!” Garrick hollered over his shoulder. “Get the hatches closed.”

Less than a minute later, someone told him both hatches which had been open were shut.

“Can we dive this thing?” he asked the helmsman.

“I can probably get us off the surface, sir, using the dive planes, but I don’t know how to blow the ballast tanks or if I did, how to get us back on the surface,” the young sailor told him nervously.

“Okay, do the best you can to get us off the surface,” Garrick ordered. “But make sure you can get us back up.” Turning to Marissa he asked, “how long?” She shrugged. “I think it depends on how big the wave is.”

It was dark out, but the mast cameras had night vision and as the sub sank deeper Garrick strained to see a wave until the sub was too deep even for the cameras on the mast. The speed of the boat increased for almost five minutes. The gauge read almost a mile of water below the boat and the ocean floor. At 90 feet below the surface, the sailor driving the sub leveled off. He was sweating and scared because he wasn’t a submariner. The only one on the
U.S.S. North Carolina
who had the Dolphin Badge of a full-fledged submariner was Garrick Lindsey and he was now sitting in the captain’s chair pretending to be confident.

Garrick felt the sub slow. He could feel the water changing direction, back toward shore. “Full speed ahead!” he hollered to the helmsman. “Everyone hang on to something!”

The submarine bucked and lifted on its undersea roller coaster. Garrick heard people throwing up and screams of pain but there was nothing they could do but ride it out.

The underwater waves, even out in this depth of water, were horrific and Garrick didn’t know if the sub could handle the pounding it was taking. There were noises he’d never heard before and warning lights flashing of which he had no idea what they meant. He didn’t know what to do so he did nothing but hang on for 40 minutes as the boat rode out the waves.

Even at full speed, the boat was pushed back toward shore, but Marissa’s warning had saved them. If they’d been on the shelf at the time, Garrick doubted the submarine would have survived.

When the worst of the bobbing was over, it was nearly midnight. Garrick had been awake for nearly 19 hours. He ordered the boat back to the surface and to head at five knots back toward shore.

On the surface, the ocean was still choppy and Garrick went up to look at the stars before going to bed. Marissa joined him on the hull. Garrick asked her what they might find in the morning. She shrugged and held onto him as the boat rolled in the choppy seas.

“It’s going to be bad, that’s all I know.”

Garrick asked her if she knew someplace he could get some sleep. She told him there was one compartment that was still locked…the captain’s compartment.

“I couldn’t. This was his boat and he did everything to save us.”

“I figured that so I had someone pick the lock. We wrapped his body in a white sheet and put him in the torpedo tube. I’m sorry if it was the wrong thing to do, but you’re the captain now and you need some sleep.”

Garrick didn’t know what to say to her and she avoided making eye contact with him. “I need some sleep too and since I’m your executive officer now, I’m sharing your room.”

As tired as he was, he didn’t argue but he wondered at what point in the day he’d gotten an executive officer. He stopped by the control room to tell Seaman Rodrigo Vasquez he would have the conn and to wake him at dawn.

Garrick slept in his uniform and Marissa in the dry clothes she’d found after being rescued. It was narrow but they were able to fit on the lone bed aboard the sub that wasn’t occupied and in a room with a door that closed.

Both were asleep in minutes and both were still tired when Seaman Vasquez was calling through the door. “Sir! We can see the shore and you better get up here.” Garrick almost knocked Marissa to the floor when he sat up, forgetting where he was and who was with him.

Both scrambled to put on shoes and get to the conn.

Shore was still beyond their line of sight and the sun was too far below the horizon but they could see what had caused such excitement in Vasquez. The cameras on the mast were raised to their highest point. At full zoom they could see the flames from shore. The ocean was on fire. “Fuel from the naval base,” Garrick surmised. “The entire base must have been destroyed and fuel washed out into the ocean.”

Garrick ordered the sub to head north by northeast until they could see dry land but avoiding the fire on the ocean. “We need to get to on land because we can’t survive on this sub for long. Let’s see what we can find today.”

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Col. Russ Hammond put on an ASU, Army Combat Uniform, for the first time in more than a year. Lisa had chosen well on the size he wore and even cleaned off the threads that were always found on new uniforms. He found the boots, though unusually wide, were not uncomfortable. She’d even put rank on his patrol cap and blouse. There wasn’t a unit patch on his shoulder or a nametag, but there was a reversed United States flag and the U.S. Army tag.

He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Except for the missing items on his uniform and hair which was too long, he decided he didn’t look terrible.

He went downstairs thinking about making some coffee, but Lisa had it already brewing. He didn’t know where she found cold milk, but there was some on the table with a box of shredded wheat and a quarter slice of melon.

“You’re running late, soldier,” Lisa said by way of saying good morning. She already had a cup of coffee and was reading the book she’d taken with her the previous night. She’d also changed into some clean clothes, something she could work in.

“I am a little out of practice,” he told her. “I bet I don’t get to play golf today.”

“Probably not. And I bet I don’t get to go shopping.” She sipped from her cup and set her book down.

“What are our plans?”

“Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought. I need to find out what assets our people have then see what we can do with them. We need a power source, we need a….”

“Whoa there, hoss,” she interrupted. “‘Our’ people, ‘what we can do’? I didn’t join no Army. I am a civilian and always will be. I don’t salute no man.”

“Absolutely, my dear civilian. I’m going to use you as my liaison. I can talk military and pretend there is still a military, but most of the people we find are going to be civilians. We are going to find a lot more civilians than we are military people. We’re going to need everyone to help make a survivable community.”

“What makes you think I want to be in charge of anything?” she asked him, getting up to refill her and his cups.

“You pose a valid question, Mrs. Schaeffer,” he said digging deeper into the melon she’d put out for him. “And I’ve been presumptuous in my plans. Would you care to be my assistant?”

“I might, Colonel Hammond, on three conditions.”

“And those conditions are?”

“Condition one is you don’t keep secrets from me or talk down to me.”

Russ nodded.

“Condition two is you don’t treat me like a soldier. I’m not one and don’t want to be one.”

Russ nodded again.

“And condition three is that I don’t have to move any more dead bodies. I’ll work on any project you need me to, but I had nightmares last night and I don’t want them again. Promise me I’ll never have to move another dead body and I’ll be your liaison from now until the Rapture, if that wasn’t what last month was all about.”

“I think I can live with those conditions, Mrs. Schaeffer.”

“And call me Lisa,” she said with a smile.

The two talked some more about what Russ had planned for the day while Russ finished his breakfast. He was putting his bowl in the sink when he saw Capt. Eldred exiting his house across the road. Russ thought meeting the man outside would be the best way to set the precedent of not visiting someone’s house without an invitation.

Russ asked Lisa when she’d be ready and she said she was right now and that she had been waiting on him.

They met Eldred before he even got to their porch.

The captain saluted when he saw Hammond. “Good morning, sir, ma’am” the younger man said. “I wasn’t sure what time you wanted to start the day.”

Hammond returned the salute out of reflex. He was about to tell the captain there wasn’t an Army anymore, but then thought better of it. If they were setting up a community, there was going to need to be a police force of some sort. He recalled what Lisa had told him about the men she’d seen shooting at everything and the other group who had a woman in chains strapped across the hood of a car.

“Good morning, captain. I think, because most of the people we’ll be working with and supporting will be civilians, I think 0800 will be a good starting time every morning. It’s not too early and we won’t need lights to see.”

“I’ll make sure everyone knows, sir.” The captain said, falling into step with the colonel and Lisa.

“I think the first thing we need to do is find a meeting place. Does anyone have the keys to the National Guard Armory?”

“I don’t think so, sir. No one has tried or said anything about it.”

“Well then, our first order of business is getting in that building and setting up shop. We need a place from which to work that isn’t in our homes.”

Other people started coming out of their houses. Some of them wore uniforms, others the same clothes they’d had on the previous day. Their moods ran the gamut of depression and dark doom to denial and disinterest. Russ knew it was going to be difficult to get the ball rolling and keep morale high.

“Good morning everyone,” he said to them. It was just chilly enough he could see his breath and he was glad he’d worn a field jacket. “I know its cold out, so the first thing we’re going to do is break into the armory and turn the heat on. Then we’re going to find out what kind of experience we have in our little group and start making our lives a little more comfortable.”

That got him a few cheers and everyone broke up and headed for their vehicles.

When they got to the armory they were not surprised to find out that it was locked up tight. They tested every door and looked for keys in all the cars that were in the parking lot but didn’t find anything. Russ was just about to order a door be broken into when Sgt. Bare found a window that wasn’t fully closed. It took a little convincing but she got the window open and crawled through.

She ran through the building to get to the front door and let everyone else in.

They all found offices and staked their claims for the people who wanted one. Without power, however, the furnaces weren’t working and it was cold in the building. They wouldn’t get any real work done until they had heat.

Russ sent Eldred and Bare off to see if there were any generators in the armory’s motor pool. He asked a couple of the other soldiers to search the building to make sure there were no bodies.

He asked Lisa if she and the other civilians would drive next door to the commissary to see how much food was there and if any could be salvaged for a buffet while the heat was turned on in the armor. He sent the Marine Lance Corporal with them, not as security, but as someone who would move any bodies if they found any.

Just as Lisa was leaving, the captain came running in. “Colonel, you’re not going to believe this, but there’s seven brand new 60 kilowatt generators. You gotta come see this!”

Russ smiled at his enthusiasm. “Instead of looking at them, why don’t we hook one into the power supply for this building? Did you find a place to put one?”