Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (27 page)

CJ understood that with the length of pipe holding the handle down, even the super human strength of the mutants wouldn’t be able to open up that door. He quickly brought up the other cameras and saw an SUV pulling up to the pipe and parking on it. Three more men and a woman got out of the SUV and went to the door where the bus had crashed. The door was still closed. The handle had been moved about an eighth of a turn which kept it closed unless one of the creatures on the inside decided to lift the handle.

“We have to help them,” CJ heard himself saying. He couldn’t believe he was saying it and couldn’t believe Jo was agreeing with him. They were safe where they were and there was someone else outside fighting with the creatures. They should stay here until the situation resolved itself.

Something inside CJ told him if he didn’t help and those people who had come to their rescue then he was lost, Jo was lost and so were Chloe and Teddy.

“Let’s go,” he said, still not believing he was saying it.

She followed him down the ladder way and to the front door. He unlocked it and cracked it open. He could see the men by the bus. Six of them had military-style rifles pointed at the shelter door.

A tall black man wearing jeans and work boots, a flannel shirt and leather vest and a shoulder holster with a huge hand gun saw CJ as he looked out. He had a Navy man beside him and the woman who had driven the SUV onto the pipe to hold the other door locked.

“Come on out,” the big man told him. “We got ‘em boxed in there and they can’t get at you guys anymore.”

CJ stayed by his door and pointed at the door that was in front of the bus. “That door isn’t locked,” he said, pointing at the handle on the door. “If they open it, they’re going to come at you like an Andy Roddick serve.”

The two men looked at each other and the taller of the two walked over to something that CJ couldn’t see. He brought back a second long steel pipe and with four men covering him, he and the Navy man put the pipe on the handle and pulled down on it. The handle came down and started to bend, probably because of the damage done by the bus. With three people holding the pipe, the dark woman got on the bus and backed it up. It was steaming and dripping something from underneath, but she was able to deftly move it into a position to keep the pipe from being lifted.

CJ and Jo finally felt safe enough to come all the way out of the shelter. The Professor and the people in his shelter came out of their hiding as well.  Two of the other shelters opened up and people started coming out.

The three who appeared to be in charge walked over to CJ, Jo and the Professor. It was the Navy man who spoke. “You got any explosives?”

CJ wasn’t sure what to say. He wondered briefly if there ever came a time in one man’s life that he’d been shocked by events so many times, he couldn’t be shocked any more. The man who asked seemed confident in what he was asking while the other man with him looked like he could have easily broken CJ in two pieces without breaking a sweat.

“Ah, I’m not sure,” CJ stammered. “Uh, there were people in there.”

“I’m sorry to say, there ain’t no more,” the taller of the two men said. “Those mutant bastards eat people like we eat bread and butter. I know something about them and they ain’t human and they are killers.”

“You got them captured. Can’t we just block the doors so they can’t get out?” CJ asked. All the people standing there heard a loud hammering from inside the shelter where at least five people had spent their last night.

The woman spoke up. She spoke with fierceness and conviction. “You think that shelter will keep those sons of bitches in there forever? You want to bet your life on it? You wanna bet your friends’ lives on it? They get out of there, they’s coming after you too. We didn’t come here to save your guys’ ass so you can pussy out because yer afraid to kill those fu...” The taller black man put his hand on her arm.

The man in the navy uniform spoke up. “Look....”

“Clarke Joseph Perry, the Third, but everyone calls me CJ,” he said. “This is Jo, that’s the Professor and these two are Chloe and Teddy. They’re all survivors of Sacramento. My folks owned all this property and one of my friends built these survival shelters.”

“Okay, CJ. I’ve got almost 150 survivors from Hawaii, the navy and a cruise ship waiting about two miles from here. I was a medic aboard a sub until yesterday and we have no idea what’s happening on land. I’m CPO Garrick Lindsey. This is my brother Chuck and his friend Yvonne. She saw the monkey creatures attacking your shelter and she talked us into coming to your rescue your asses because we sure as shit didn’t want anybody to have to go through what Chuck did.”

“We didn’t know for sure if there was anyone alive here and if Yvonne hadn’t seen that dog running its ass off to get away from here, we’d’ve never even seen you.”

“Enough talk,” Chuck said. “What’ve you got that we can use to blow those sons of bitches up with?”

CJ looked around. The house where Jack and his wife had died was a quarter mile away and more likely washed away from the flood. The workshop where Jack built the interiors for the shelters was also probably gone as well.

“Gas,” the Professor said. “If we can get gas inside, we can kill them that way”

“It’s too big to drown them in gas and a waste of...,” Chuck started to say.

“No,” CJ said, remembering how he and Jack used to shoot tennis balls out of a PVC pipe as kids. “We don’t need a lot Professor,” he said turning to the former elementary school teacher. “How much do you think to fill about 5,000 cubic feet of space with enough fumes to for detonation?”

The Professor scratched his chin and was thinking. “Why not just fill it with the gas fumes and let them die that way?” asked Jo.

“You want to guess how long it might take to kill them?” asked Garrick. “You want to risk them getting out before they die?” Jo had nothing to say to that.

“I’m guessing here, but I think if we can get eight or ten gallons of gas into that shelter, depending on temperature and if they have the air filtration system still running,” the teacher said. “But I don’t want to be the one to light it.”

“You get me the gas, I’ll get the damn thing to blow up,” Chuck said.

The hammering from inside the shelter was getting louder and the ferocity was increasing adding urgency to their plan. CJ looked around the shelters. There were a few gas cans but most were empty. Chuck, the Professor and Garrick went to get gas while CJ and Jo went to look for a way of getting the gas inside the shelter that was designed to seal those inside from the outside.

He remembered the mutant that had broken the window on the other shelter and it gave him an idea. “Jo, can you find me a ladder about 12 to 14 feet long? There should probably be one over in that area of rubble,” he said, pointing to a crumbled concrete building that had been used for quality control testing. “I’m going to find a fence post.”

Within five minutes the two groups were back at the shelter with the mutants inside. The men with rifles hadn’t stopped covering the doors just in case one of the creatures got free.

Jo found a metal ladder that was missing two rungs, but it was good enough for CJ to reach the glass portal over the second level. He climbed the ladder and hit the external glass with a ball peen hammer. The glass was thick and cracked on the first hit. On the second it shattered and CJ tossed the hammer down to Jo who was holding the ladder.

Yvonne handed him up the steel fence post. CJ stuck one end into the hole and jammed it into the interior glass. It took six good hits before he finally broke the interior glass. As soon as the glass broke, something grabbed the steel fence post from his hands and jerked it inward. CJ was almost pulled off the ladder and the pole was ripped out of his hands.

“Hand me the gas,” he said. Chuck started to hand the first of two cans of gas up to him but then stopped.

“Your hands are bleeding and you’ll drop it. Get down and I’ll do it.”

CJ couldn’t argue with his reasoning. He was careful to touch only the sides of the ladder and not the rungs, one because his hands hurt like hell and two so Chuck didn’t slip on his blood when climbing.

Jo reached for CJ and Chloe was there beside her. CJ’s hands were dripping with blood. Chloe grabbed a hole in her shirt and began tearing. She got two long strips of cloth off with the help of Teddy and handed them to Jo.

Chuck finished the first can of gas and was starting on the second. “Garrick! You got that fuse made yet?” Chuck called to his brother.

“Another minute,” Garrick hollered back just as a small piece of the exterior concrete was knocked free by the mutants inside. Given enough time, the creatures could have escaped and the build up of fumes didn’t seem to be slowing them down.

The navy man was working out of CJ’s view and didn’t know what kind of fuse the man had come up with. Everyone but Chuck and Jo were either standing around or covering the entrance with their rifles.

“Everyone needs to get under cover, probably back in their shelters. This is going to be a big bomb when it goes off,” the Professor warned. “With that much fuel, it’s really going to go bang.” By now, the other three shelters had opened and people were standing around. The people reversed their movement and headed back inside.

CJ understood immediately. “Everyone! Back into the shelters!” he called even as Jo was tying off the last of his bandage. “Fill up the last two and close and lock the doors! You soldiers go with them. I’ll take these three into our shelter after we light the fuse.”

The sailors knew the civilian was talking about them and everyone retreated except Jo and CJ, who waited for Garrick and Chuck. Chloe took Yvonne’s hand and led her to the shelter. The older woman was reticent, but Chloe was insistent. Teddy had gone ahead when first told to get back into the shelter.

“Fuse!” Chuck called.

“Here!” Garrick said and tossed a stick with a long piece of carpenter’s chalk string attached to it. The string was easily 30 feet long and the end of it had been tied a length of wire which was tightly wrapped around a wad of cloth that had been soaked in gas.

“Ready,” Chuck called to his brother and Garrick nodded to CJ and Jo. “Get going, we’ll be right behind you.” Garrick said to them. The two headed back to the shelter, but continued to look over their shoulders.

Chuck had the stick in his hand and Garrick backed toward the shelter door. When the chalk string was stretched out, Garrick called to his brother. “Lighting it now!” He lit the ball of cloth. CJ now understood that the wire would keep the wad of cloth from burning through the string. “Drop it!”

Chuck dropped the stick into the hole in the shelter and it was immediately grabbed by something inside. The ball of fire was pulled out of Garrick’s hands. Chuck jumped off the ladder and was sprinting toward the door of CJ’s shelter. He passed the burning ball of fire that was being pulled in by something inside the other shelter and everyone was able to get to safety just as the fire was being pulled out of sight.

CJ grabbed for the handle but Chuck’s big hands beat him to it and slammed the bar all the way closed.

The explosion didn’t come. They waited for 30 seconds and Jo asked if the fire might have gone out or maybe the beast inside may have stopped pulling on the rope.

CJ pushed past Jo and ran upstairs where the surveillance system was still on, careful of his hand injuries. The others followed. In his room, they could all see the chalk line on the furthest shelter. It was hanging off the shelter’s exterior wall, not being pulled anymore.

“Shit,” said Chuck. “They stopped....” was all he got out when the chalk line started moving again. They saw the ball of fire was only about half as big as it had been, but it was still burning like an old fashion torch. They saw the end of the line and the beginning of the wire.

The fire was inches from the hole when the explosion came. There was the briefest of flashes before the cameras on the external side of the shelter were destroyed. The shelter itself rocked from the mighty blast, but the thickness of the walls and the sound deadening insulation muffled the sound.

They could hear heavy debris falling onto their shelter and Garrick smiled at his brother. “Good work, bro.” and slapped him on the back. “Shall we go see what kind of damage we have done to this man’s property?”

Chuck and Yvonne both had their guns out and carefully opened the shelter door. There was no need to be careful because even without seeing where the shelter had been, they could tell it had been a complete success.

Everyone started coming out of the shelters and a few of the people were stepping on the small fires that were left over on some of the debris. The school bus and SUV had both been thrown and were burning in the distance. A few people went over to attempt to put out the fires.

CJ couldn’t look anywhere else than where the shelter had been. There was little left of it bigger than a few hundred pound chunks of concrete. On the bigger pieces he could see smears of blood. He looked around and saw body parts, but couldn’t muster an emotion on how to feel. It was what his life had become.

In the distance he saw a convoy of buses, cars and trucks on the road. They were headed this way. “That’s probably the rest of our survivors. They probably saw the explosion and are coming to save us.”

CJ finally cracked a smile. “Maybe this day isn’t going to suck so bad after all.”