Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (34 page)

“We figure this a 1,600-mile journey for those going, and another 1,600 miles to get back here. It won’t be easy as we have all seen the amount of destruction to highways and cities, but with proper preparation, we believe we can be there within a week to help them.”

The people seemed to accept that the plan had been made and the Council would choose the best people to go on the rescue mission. A few people were clapping, but that too settled down when one of the lieutenant’s men came running out of the comm shack. The man called out for Joshua and the lieutenant waved him over. There was a quick conversation and Joshua read from a piece of paper the other man had written on.

Everyone waited expectantly for Joshua to explain what the excitement was about.

Finally the air force officer spoke. He directed his comments to the council, but everyone heard him very well. “If it takes a week to get there, we might be wasting our time. Two more people have died from something in the food or water. Earl says six more are sick and everyone there is scared.”

There was silence.

The Council members looked at each other. There were suggestions of sending out several groups with food, some trying a direct route in an effort to get to West Wendover quicker, but Chuck had told them, it would most likely be a waste of time and effort and probably put their people at risk. He told them of the nine times he, Yvonne and Danielle had tried to cross over the mountain range to the east, and several salvage crews had found the same thing, that the passes through the mountains were non-existent.

The crowd was waiting for a decision from the Council. 

“I can’t see what else we can do,” CJ said. “We can only do what we can do.” The Professor suggested sending a team south to try to get across the mountains that way, even after what Chuck said. “We have to try!” the former teacher said emphatically.

“Look, old man,” Chuck said through clenched teeth. “I want to help them as much as anyone, but we can’t magically open up the passes through the mountain and I don’t think we should be risking 10 people to save 20. Like the man said, ‘we can only do what we can do’ and what we can do is send groups north and try to work our way to them.” Chuck did not care much for the Professor. The two had butted heads numerous times during meetings. Chuck was usually the one who wanted to get into action while the professor was usually suggesting thinking things through and studying a problem.

“We’ll ask for volunteers then. Fill up six or eight trucks with food and water and send them out,” the older man suggested.

“We already tried going over the mountains and we saw a mushroom cloud south of Los Angeles. Do you want some of our people to risk going down there? Many of those volunteers don’t know what kind mess is really out there. They’ll do stupid things and die.”

The Professor didn’t have a comeback, but a comment by Chloe, who had turned 18 years old over the summer made an innocent comment which led to an idea, which led to an answer from a most unusual heroine.

“It’s a shame we can’t go over the mountains,” the young woman said.

“Well, we don’t have any planes and we don’t have any pilots, so that idea is a non-starter,” Garrick said.

“That’s not exactly true. I’m a pilot.”

There was silence in the council. So seldom did she say anything, Danielle was often overlooked.

“I learned to fly when I was 17. I got my license for daytime flight at 18 and was going to join the air force before...well, before things went bad for me.”

“No shit?” Chuck asked, surprised at the young woman’s statement. “You can really fly?”

She smiled at him. “Yea, I can really fly. You find me a small plane and I’ll find a way to get supplies to those survivors, even if I have to drop them out a window of the plane.”

The meeting broke up quickly as CJ announced they had a plan, but needed to hurry to put it into action. He did ask the leaders of the salvage teams to meet him and the rest of the council at the foot of the bridge.

Two hours later, four trucks were leaving the compound for the Sacramento Executive Airport. Chuck and Danielle had left right away to see if the airport still had any planes, and if they could find fuel if there were planes, and if the runway was still usable.

Most of what Chuck and Danielle found was collapsed buildings, including the tower for the little airport. They had just about given up finding anything when they came across a building in the center of a dozen others that hadn’t been totally destroyed.

They used their truck to pull open the doors and inside was a Cherokee Six, single propeller airplane. Danielle told Chuck the Cherokee was made by Piper and was a very reliable and sturdy plane. The model they found had fixed landing gear and probably a 300-horsepower engine. She crawled into the plane and pulled out its logs. After reading for a few minutes, she told him the plane had just passed its annual inspection shortly before the fall of civilization and was waiting for its owner to pick it up.

“If we can find clean fuel for this plane, I know I can fly it. It’s a lot like the one I took my tests on,” she said confidently.

While Danielle inspected the plane for herself, Chuck went to look for fuel. He found a fuel truck in the maintenance shop that was still three-quarters full and drove it over to the hanger.

“It’ll handle six passengers and has a range of about 800 miles. I’ll need to get fuel when I’m there, but according to the map, there’s a pretty good sized municipal airport just east of the town, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Just to be safe we’re going to put three five-gallon cans on board in case we can’t find any, I’ll be able to get back here.”

“Isn’t that a little dangerous?” Chuck asked as he started fueling the airplane like Danielle showed him.

“What isn’t?” she said after a moment’s thought.

After the plane was thoroughly checked out, the two drove the runway she’d take off on. There were cracks which Danielle marked with black paint she’d found. The debris which had accumulated was cleaned off by the people who came in the other trucks with the supplies she’d carry.

It had taken almost an hour and the flight time from the airport to West Wendover was about three and a half hours.  Danielle looked at her watch. It was almost 2 p.m. which would mean she could be in West Wendover by 6 p.m. if she left soon.

Chuck had not seen this side of Danielle. He’d seen her drive like a maniac, sit sullen for hours, lose herself in her own mind, but now she appeared to be focused on helping strangers by flying a plane she’d never flown across a mountain range.

Life had returned to Danielle.

With the plane fueled and loaded with enough food and water, she went over what she planned to do with the rest of the Council. “I’m going to fly there and land as close as I can to the town. Josh has already checked and set the frequency so I can talk to you here most of the way there, but I probably won’t because I’m going to need to concentrate.

“When I land, first I’ll pass out the medicine, food and water and then refuel. If I can’t find any, I’ll fuel up with what I’m taking with me and pick up the six sick people and bring them back here tonight. I want to be on the ground for as little time as possible, so see if those on that end can have fuel and the sick people ready when I get there.” Joshua nodded to her and got on his radio to tell his people back at the compound to get started.

“When I get back here, I’ll be low on fuel and probably won’t be able to circle around, so you guys are going to have to light the runway for me.” She looked at the people who were her closest friends. There was still surprise in their faces that she, the silent friend of Chuck and Yvonne, was going to take such a huge risk.

“Daylight’s wasting,” she said and headed for the plane which had been pulled out of the hanger. Chuck and Yvonne went with her while the others went back to their trucks to clear the area.

Chuck took one of her hands and Yvonne the other as they walked. There wasn’t anything left to say. Chucked opened the pilot’s door for her and Danielle hugged and kissed Yvonne first, then Chuck. He whispered in her ear. “Take care of yourself, White Girl. I love you.” She whispered back that she loved him too and got in the plane.

Twenty minutes later she was safely in the air and headed to West Wendover. She was buffeted by winds over the mountains, but the flight went as planned. She had a few moments of fear when switching tanks. She ran the wing-tip tanks dry and fumbled with the switches under her seat to access the wing-root tanks. She was glad she’d read through the manual before leaving Sacramento.

She kept her cruising speed at 135 knots, or about 155 miles per hour.  She flew over Lake Tahoe then Carson City, Nevada and saw nothing but desolation. The city had caught fire some time in the past and it had destroyed the north half of the city. The southern part of the city looked like it had been blown up without the bomb craters. She didn’t see any life in the city and regained some of the altitude she’d lost going down for a look and reported back to Joshua what she’d seen.

Her direction and GPS were pretty good and she arrived over Wendover in just under four hours. Her fuel state was good and she reported to the lieutenant that she could land on the highway north of the airport because the runways were under water.

She located a stretch with no power lines or any other obstructions and took two practice runs to make sure.

Her landing wasn’t perfect...she bounced twice...but she got the plane down without damage. An ambulance with people in it drove up to meet her as she shut the plane’s motor off.

She got out of the plane and went around the other side to begin unloading supplies. The ambulance stopped and a man got out of the driver’s side and another out of the passenger side. The man who got out of the passenger door went to the back of the ambulance while the driver came up to her and introduced himself as Earl. He hugged her and thanked her for coming and she could tell he hadn’t showered in a long time.

“Joshua told you what I need. I can’t wait and I need to get you people back to our compound,” she told him.

“Yea,” Earl said. “The fuel truck is on its way here. We thought you’d land on the other side of town in West Wendover and we parked one we found over there. This is Wendover, but he’ll be here by the time we get our sick people on your plane. There’s only four who are still alive of the sick ones, so we’re sending a woman with you who is pregnant too.”

Danielle saw the man who had gone back to the ambulance bring the woman and two of the sick people with him. In the distance, she heard at least two more vehicles.

The woman was very pregnant and Danielle hoped she didn’t go into labor on the flight. The two sick people were a young man of about 16 and an older woman. She got them situated and belted in by the time the fuel truck and other sick people arrived.

The second man was putting the supplies Danielle had brought with her into the ambulance. He also removed the spare gas cans which Danielle wouldn’t need.

With her five passengers belted in and the plane re-fueled, the sun was going down over the mountains and she wanted to be in the air before losing too much more light.  She had two men help her turn the plane around so it was facing back the way she landed.

“I’ll be back tomorrow with more food and water,” she told Earl as she climbed back into the plane. “If we’re this quick on the turn around, we’ll be able to get all of you back to our compound where you’ll be safe.”

“We’ll be here and thank you so much. You’re such a brave woman and you’re saving all our lives.”

Danielle hoped she could save them. She would be landing at night by the time she got back to the Perry Compound and while she knew how to land the plane in the daytime, nighttime was something she hadn’t done except once, and that wasn’t really a night landing, just a lowlight / dusk landing.

The plane was more sluggish taking off this time with about 300 more pounds on board than when she took off to fly to West Wendover. The plane was slower getting up to speed with a stronger headwind, but eventually it reached takeoff speed and she pulled back on the yoke.

She did a slow climb of 500 feet per minute to save the passengers from unnecessary jostling and made a slow turn to return to Sacramento. She saw the flooding of the salt flats and from this height it looked like it was only a few feet deep. She flew over the town and saw what Earl had described. All the casinos had been destroyed and there were burned out buildings everywhere. The gas stations were rubble as was the main grocery store.  She wondered briefly how they had survived almost nine months before concentrating on gaining altitude to get over the mountains.

The flight back was smoother than the flight to West Wendover, but still two of the patients threw up. The smell was horrible and Danielle had to increase the airflow from her vent wide open to keep from gagging. The pregnant woman slept most of the way, which was good because Danielle was concentrating and rehearsing her upcoming landing.

She saw the lights to the field when she came over the last mountain range. Joshua had told her what to expect, but it was nice to see close to 50 vehicles lined up on each side of the runway with their headlights on.

Her first try at lining up the landing was aborted when the wind from the ocean spoiled her approach. Rather than force a landing, she pulled up and swung around for another try. The plane’s tail was being buffeted, but Danielle was able to get lined up and her landing this time didn’t include bouncing.