Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (2 page)

CJ walked outside and stood on his front porch. He saw lights to the west of his house on the building where the migrants processed the grapes which would be turned into wine. He ran over to the building, hoping there had been someone there who had figured out why the power was off and had fixed it.

A stone hurt his foot though the slippers he was still wearing and he cursed loudly. He heard the echo of his voice and wasn’t altogether sure it wasn’t someone else. He stopped and listened. He heard nothing but a light breeze blowing through the buildings.

He walked the rest of the way to the building, staying in the grass and out of the drive where the stones were. There were three lights on the building, all shining brightly over the exits. The door was open but there was silence from within.

Inside he saw half a dozen different areas with lights illuminating stairwells and emergency exits.

“Battery back ups. Shit.” CJ said to an empty building, hearing his own echo. He walked around to make sure no one in the building. It was empty of life. Even the two cats that usually prowled for mice were dead. In anger, he kicked one of the large 55-gallon plastic barrels used for garbage just to hear something.

It took 20 minutes of searching before he was sure there was no one left. He thought one of the offices might have electricity when he saw a light through the blinds, but it was the server room. The computers were still running on the battery back up and according to the screen, there was 72 minutes of power left on the uninterrupted power supply.

CJ was unfamiliar with the Linux operating system he saw when he tapped the keyboard, but recognized the Firefox logo for getting on the internet. When he clicked on it, the page said there was no connection to the internet. CJ slammed his fist onto the keyboard hard enough that several keys popped off. There was nothing left in this building that could help him.

Back outside, he looked across the estate. He saw darkness like he’d never experienced before. The winds through the groves whispered at him and made him afraid. He realized that during his entire life here there had been a background noise, either from the equipment or from the distant interstate.

CJ noticed the silence now and it frightened him. He ran back to his house, feeling he’d be safer there. He heard a creaking sound behind him as he opened his door and realized the light evening wind was moving the porch swing on which his dad had died. CJ started shaking and screamed for it to stop.

Like many times on the court, CJ lashed out.

He started with screaming again. He yelled for anyone to hear him. He said every vulgar word he knew in three languages in hopes of getting some response from anyone who could hear. He screamed until he was sweating. The only response he received was his own echo.

When the silence continued, he started destroying things in his house. He started with his cell phone when he could no longer get a signal. He should have been able to get service. There was a cell tower just a few miles away on a piece of property the Perry’s leased to the telephone company for some exorbitant amount.

He threw his phone at the refrigerator and the $400 piece of technology shattered satisfactorily.

The next thing to go was his laptop. It had a 78 percent charge, but wouldn’t log on to the internet. There was no way for him to see if anyone had received his messages. The laptop took a little more effort to destroy, but it too finally succumbed to his anger.

CJ picked up his tennis bag next. There were seven rackets in the bag. They had cost his parents upwards of $600 each. He picked out the first racket and used it to smash the lamps and put three holes in the drywall. The second and third were broken by hitting the arches between the kitchen and den and the sink island filled with dishes. One more racket destroyed his television and some trophies. Others were thrown as far as CJ could in the house.

And still he continued until he had worn himself to exhaustion. He fell onto his bed crying again.

Night fell on the Perry Estate and CJ couldn’t understand why he was the only one not to die.

When morning came and the sun was high enough in the sky, CJ walked out of his house and looked around the farm. The buildings were the same, the trees were the same, the houses were the same and the nine cars and trucks were still in the parking area.

The only thing different, except for the lack of electricity, was the desecration of his dad’s body. The white comforter had been ripped away. The body had been torn apart and limbs and most of the torso were missing. The body of his mother and other family members had also been pulled from the ground.

CJ started screaming again.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

When guards stopped showing up for work because they were afraid or dead, Manny was still there, his M-4 in hand, passing out food to the criminals left alive and in lockdown of California State Prison at Sacramento. He usually carried just a Taser and pepper spray, but that was when he had backup. Manny was alone to do the job now.

Prisoners died in silence. The access ways to the cells, in the beginning, were raucous with the yelling from prisoners demanding to be let free, but when the lights went out at night, the silence would be broken only by a cough or two, then more silence. The prisoners learned that was the signal that another of their own had succumbed to the death that was sweeping the world.

Every morning, fewer of those incarcerated answered roll call.

Some of the luckier prisoners were the low- and medium-security risk inmates. They were allowed into the yard, by the senior guard captain when the warden and other senior staff died or failed to show up for work.

The most senior corrections officer who came to work told them of the presidential order of martial law. He told them the world was ending and more than half the population of earth had already fallen to the plague.

The few correction officers who still came to work found most of their brethren had decided the people in the prison were no longer worth the effort with the end of the world at hand. They listened to the senior C.O. and opened the cell doors and allowed those left alive, fewer than 100 men, about three percent of the prison’s population before the death, into the yard, locked the doors and left the area.

The maximum security prisoners, those secluded in “The Hole” and those who had been sentenced to life without parole numbered just three.

Nathan Lake, the serial-killer who murdered three families near Stockton, Reo Barris, the psychotic leader of the Arian brotherhood and Chuck Lindsey, a three-strike violator serving out a life sentence for taking part in a robbery gone bad, were the last three in the prison who had their lives controlled in every aspect. They had been brought food served through the door of their cell, showered by themselves once a week in a special area, and spent one hour every three days in the California sun inside a steel and wire cage topped by razor-sharp concertina wire. The cage was 16-feet long by eight-feet wide. The wire fence was 12-feet high and the gate was on both electric and manual lock.

They were not freed with the general population.

Manny was the officer who came for them. He was a dedicated civil servant of the prison institution for nearly 30 years and now that the end of civilization was at hand, he offered each of the men the right to see their world end from outside their cell. He offered to move them to the exercise yard so they didn’t have to end their lives smelling the death that was in the cells around them. All three wanted to be released and Manny had given it some thought, but he was still alive, as was his mother and a niece. He was not going to let them out to terrorize anyone in the time they had left, but did offer them a choice to stay in their cells and die, or move outside. The prison guard had no illusions that his death, and that of his mother and niece, would come as it had the 20 others in his family, but he believed when he died he’d have to face his maker and he didn’t want to have to say he left three men to die in these dark four-by-eight cells.

The first man he moved to one of the 28 outside exercise cages was Lake. Manny gave him very specific orders on where and when to move and backed it up with the semi-automatic rifle. Lake did exactly as he was told because of the M-4 Manny held at the ready and he had no doubt the officer would use it.

Twenty minutes later, Barris was next. He was given the same orders as Manny had given Lake. The C.O. pushed the plastic wrist cuffs that worked like zip ties through the door hole and instructed Barris to put them on behind his back.

As expected, Barris complained loudly about his civil rights, the cruel and unusual punishment, and how the death in the prison was God’s way of getting rid of the “niggers, spics, chinks” and every other race that wasn’t white. Manny, a native of Puerto Rico ignored his ranting.

When he told Manny the cuffs were on, Manny instructed him to back away from the cell door. When he looked through, the cuffs appeared to be on the prisoner, but Barris had put them on in front of him, not in back.

Barris said he couldn’t get them on behind him because of a shoulder injury.

Manny suspected he was lying, but as long as the cuffs were on, it was only 75 yards to the outside exercise cage. Manny told him to turn around and Manny unlocked the cell and backed 15 feet away.

“Alright, Barris, come out of your cell, holding your arms in front of you and turn left,” Manny told him.

Barris said he was coming. The white supremacist coughed a dry wheezing hack, the sign he was coming down with whatever killed all the others. He burst from the cell, only one cuff secured on his wrist. He was throwing a balled up sheet that had been soaked in toilet water at the guard and leaping the rail to the first floor before Manny could get a bead on him. Barris thought the sheet would be a distraction and the jump was only nine feet. He thought he’d get under the walkway before the guard could shoot him.

It was a risk he was willing to take.

He was dead from three bullets before his body landed on the floor.

Manny looked over the rail. He’d expected this from Barris and he’d not lose sleep.

The six-foot-five black man was next. Chuck followed every instruction Manny gave him and when the C.O. closed and locked the gate in the exercise cage, Chuck thanked him and asked for some water before the officer left.

Chuck knew he’d die in this cage, but he didn’t want to do it from dehydration.

Manny looked at the prisoner who was serving a life sentence for accessory to second degree murder. Manny had done what he felt was a good thing for someone who didn’t deserve grace, but something in Chuck’s face or eyes gave him pause.

It took 45 minutes for Manny to find what he was looking for. He brought it back in two paper grocery bags. Motioning Chuck to the far end of the cage and keeping his rifle ready, he opened the gate and pushed the food and water through.

Again Chuck thanked the C.O.

“Inside one of them bags is some medicines. Take six of ‘em when you’re ready and you’ll fall asleep and go real peaceful. I’ve seen the doc use ‘em before,” Manny told him as he backed out and locked the gate. “I can’t let you free, but there’s enough food and water there for a couple of days so you can make peace with your God.”

“I ain’t got no God,” Chuck told him.

Manny shrugged. “There’s also a blanket and a pillow there because I won’t be coming back. Don’t try using them on the wire, because you’ll end up like Lake.” He pointed with the barrel of his weapon at Lake who was caught in the concertina wire around the top of his cage. He was already dead and bleeding out. “He did it when I was dealing with Barris. You’re the only max left, Mr. Lindsey.

“Good luck, son. God’s mercy on your soul,” Manny told him. “Now stick your arms through here and I’ll remove them cuffs.” Manny used a pair of side dikes to nip the plastic cuffs off Chuck’s wrists. He then nodded to the prisoner, slung his weapon over his shoulder and left.

Chuck had been in the prison system long enough to know, no hollering or screaming would do him any good. This would be his final resting place.

He was alone. Not like the alone in his cell where he could hear the sounds of the prison, but alone where he could hear nothing except the dripping of Lake’s blood in the next cage and dry California wind.

This was his fate after a life he hated. Chuck had grown up in a home with an abusive step-father who was a policeman, a mom who couldn’t protect him and a younger brother.

When Chuck was 16 and his brother Garrick was 14, his step-dad had come home, thrown his gun belt and wallet on the kitchen table and proceeded to explain why the death penalty should be expanded to include drug dealers, prostitutes and the “sons-of-bitches who passed me over for promotion again.” They could tell their step-dad had already consumed a few beers before arriving home.

Chuck and his brother sat silently and listened to their step-dad’s rant. They’d heard it before and they both knew if they said anything, his wrath would easily turn to them. His mom sat silently, too. She had a cup in front of her with her “special elixir,” a cheap wine, keeping her calm. More than once she’d felt the back of his step-dad’s hand when she spoke during one of his tantrums.

When his step-dad finished his diatribe, he went to the refrigerator for a beer. He popped the top and finished it in two swallows and reached for another. Both boys continued working on their homework and their mother got up to start preparing the evening meal, hoping he had spent his anger.