Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (39 page)

Through the dust and debris that was thrown up, it was hard to see the mutant, but still there were people shooting at, what they thought was, the horror they all feared. Chuck wished the spotlight from the tower had followed the mutant and not the cab of the truck, but in a way, he could understand. Jo was a very dear friend of both CJ and Chloe, one of whom was probably operating the light.

More than 150 rounds were expended before the dust settled and they could see the second creature’s body parts had been thoroughly hamburgerized by the gun fire.

There was several seconds of complete silence when the gunfire stopped.

It was broken by CJ coming out of the tower. “Help her, assholes!” he was shouting. “Open the damn gates and get someone out there to help her!”

The shock was broken and everyone who could, scrambled to do something, anything, to help. People poured out of shelters, flashlights were turned on, hammers and metal cutters found their way into hands that could use them. One of their own was in trouble and everyone wanted to help.

Six hours later, Garrick’s assistant came out of the surgery theater they had scrambled to put together to operate on Jo. It was Garrick’s first major operation and he had sweated his way through it because there was no one else with the skills to try.

He’d had one assistant at the table and one reader, Marissa with her clear and steady voice, who read instructions from a tablet Garrick had given her, while he operated.

The rig had rolled onto its side and with both mutants dead, the heavy main gates to the compound were opened and rescuers raced to the truck, while others went for fire extinguishers and stretchers.

CJ and Garrick could see through the windshield that Vasquez had survived and was still hanging by his seatbelt in the passenger seat. Chuck and Yvonne climbed on top to open the passenger door and help the man out. He had cuts and bruising, but considering what he’d just gone through, he was rather happy to be alive.

Jo wasn’t in as good of shape. It took more than 20 minutes to get the big woman through the windshield that had to be pulled out. It was obvious on first inspection both her arms were broken and she probably had internal injuries.

But what shocked Garrick and scared CJ most was the bullet hole that was bleeding above her right breast. He railed at all the shooters and it took Chuck’s massive hand on his shoulder to calm him down and keep him from saying something someone might take serious offense to.

“Now is not the time, Mr. Perry,” Chuck said quietly and looking directly into the young man’s eyes. “Let’s save her life before we start blaming someone for killing her.”

Garrick had Marissa and Chloe clean and sterilize everything in the executive officer’s quarters aboard the submarine and set it up so he could operate as soon as he was able. Jo was losing a lot of blood and would need transfusions so people were lined up to have their blood tested.

Chuck and Yvonne lined them up and no one argued with them.

The actual surgery took three and a half hours. When he had found the bullet, he pulled it out and gave it to Marissa to throw away. He didn’t want anyone to know what caliber it was because then people would start throwing accusations and causing more trouble. “No, it’s better if I just say the bullet was too damaged to be identified and it was probably a ricochet. We’ll let everyone learn from this tragic accident,” he told Marissa and the assistant.

Once the surgery was completed to the best of his ability, he sewed up the wound neatly and applied the dressings. Since Jo would still be under the anesthetic for another couple of hours, he also set and splinted her arms. He had set broken bones before and was sure she’d eventually regain full use of them.

Garrick never left the woman’s side until she finally came out of the anesthesia. It took a little longer than he’d expected and she struggled with the tube down her throat. When he felt she could finally understand him, he told her he would take it out with her help. “You’re going to exhale long and hard so take a deep breath,” he told her. “You’re going to want to cough and that’s good because you have no blood in your lungs or stomach, but let’s get this out before you start. Ready?”

She nodded and took a deep breath. When she started to exhale he pulled smoothly on the tube and it came out. She coughed several times and breathed like she’d been starving for air. When she could finally speak, she rasped through dry lips, “what in hell happened?”

“Mutants attacked your rig,” Garrick told her as he checked her pulse and breathing.

“I know that, Garrick. I ain’t got brain damage. I mean what happened that I ended up here with this bandage on my tit and you looking like I’m at death’s door?”

Garrick smiled. The woman was irascible even when injured. “Your truck rolled over just outside the main gates and when everyone was shooting at the mutant, a ricochet went through the cab of your truck and into your upper right chest.” It was only half a lie, Garrick told himself. The bullet had gone through the cab’s roof, but it hadn’t been a ricochet.

“Shit, shit, shit,” the woman cursed. “Damn, that just sucks.”

“Don’t worry, Jo. We’ve got other rigs. You’ll be back driving in eight to ten weeks.”

“It’s not that, hun. It’s just that I’ve driven more than a million and a half miles and that was my first accident.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Garrick told her. “There were no cops involved.”

“God musta really been watching out for me today,” she said solemnly. Garrick couldn’t disagree. He sat with the woman for another 20 minutes to make sure there were no residual effects from the anesthesia or his surgery. He asked Marissa to find the others and they could have a very brief visit.

When he thought she was up to it, he opened the hatchway and indicated to Marissa to let the others come in, but only three at a time.

Chuck, Yvonne and Danielle were the first through the hatchway. They stayed for only a few minutes and assured Jo a new rig, a better rig, would be found for her and that they were glad she was alive.

CJ and Chloe came in next. Chloe was in tears and took Jo’s hand. They had crossed paths after the plague had killed most everyone, been together when the quake had destroyed Sacramento, watched flood waters rise and fall, leaving a mostly dead California in its wake, and had survived together to watch a community grow from the brink of annihilation.

CJ stood mutely. Jo had saved him on the highway and gave him direction when he was about to step off into the chasm of insanity. The woman became his friend and guided him without him even knowing. She was his hidden strength he didn’t know he had. Without her help, this community might not be here and 250 people might either be dead or living a slow death.

Watching Chloe and her friend, he couldn’t help but shed tears. When Jo saw him, she reached out with her other hand to take his. “The doc says I’m gonna be just fine, CJ. Don’t you fret your pretty little head about Ole Jo.”

“I was so scared for you. I didn’t know how we were going to save you. I couldn’t let your truck inside the gates. And I thought I might have doomed you to die at the hands of the mutants,” CJ sobbed. Chloe took his other hand in her free one. She knew how hard it was for CJ to order that the rig was not allowed to make it through the gate.

“You were damn right to do what you did. I’d’ve given that order myself,” she said flatly. “Even if it was you guys out there because this community is one of this world’s last chances at starting over.”

“I hated to do it, Jo. I hated it more than anything.”

“You did it to save the place, CJ. You did it to save the Perry Compound,” Jo told him, then coughed several times. Some spittle dripped out of her mouth and Chloe wiped it off.

“I don’t want you to die,” CJ whispered through tears.

“I’m not going to die, Pretty Boy. You guys need me. God made you my family. He’s given me a home.”

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

“Gun it!” Myles screamed into the microphone inside his command HUMVEE to the other two drivers in his convoy. The lead vehicle, driven by Deputy Doug immediately picked up speed and Fred slowly accelerated the bus to speeds no one in the right mind would have tried.

Seaman Waters driving the command vehicle with Myles at shotgun kept pace.

“Barry, get up on the machine gun and pop off a few rounds at them. I don’t want them too excited about catching us.”

Barry, one of the young seamen who had come from Illinois with Myles’ new wife DeeDee, smiled wickedly. He’d been picked because he had been at the training base and could follow orders. He also wanted to shoot the M-2 machine gun at something more than paper targets.

Ten minutes earlier, at precisely 1145 hours, Russ had transmitted to Jerry’s farm that a small convoy including a school bus was on its way to pick up the prisoners.  Russ had been very casual on the radio to a man named Tony and told him that the convoy had left about an hour earlier.

Myles had begun to wonder if the Smith Compound had overheard the transmission. They were almost through Louisville and would soon be out of range of the camp the crazy Lt. Col. Smith was running.

That was until they saw two vehicles racing down I-264 in their direction. Myles and his convoy were crossing over the other interstate when he saw them in the distance. They were coming in their direction at high speed and someone on the radio was ordering them to stop under the authority of the United States Army.

Myles was having none of it. He kept their speed constant, telling Doug to keep his speed at about 65 miles per hour to give the chasers a chance to get closer, but when the men in the two trucks started shooting from long distance, Myles didn’t want to give them a chance at a lucky hit.

“We don’t recognize your authority,” Myles said to the man on the radio. “We are under orders of Col. Russell Hammond, commander of the 1st Great Lakes Protectorate of the United States Army.”

Putting the microphone back in its holder he ordered Barry to fire off a few rounds. Barry stood up through the sunroof and pulled back on the charging handle, putting the first round into the chamber and pressed the butterfly trigger on the rear of the machine gun.

Five rounds belched out of the antique M-2 Browning. The basic design for the gun was first introduced early in the 20th Century and tens of thousands of soldiers had manned such a gun through more than a hundreds years of its service. Barry had been familiarized on M-2 for one afternoon more than year ago, but it was a simple design and pressing the butterfly trigger was the easiest thing about it.

The two trailing trucks, still more than two thousand yards behind them, began swerving, but they stayed on pace with the convoy.  The distance was about the effective range of the big .50 caliber, but Barry had no illusions about hitting the trailing trucks. His job was to keep them interested in following and engaged for a few miles, taking them further away from the camp.

Barry knew their primary mission was to pick up the prisoners from the Saunders’ farm in some backwater little town in somewhere Alabama, but the secondary mission was to distract the soldiers and keep their attention long enough so Sgt. Bare and her team could infiltrate and reconnoiter the base. Bare and her team would have 12 hours to complete their mission before rejoining the rest of the contingent three hours before R-hour, the time Lt. Jimenez and his team would infiltrate the camp and terminate Smith’s command.

This part of the mission was the most problematic of the plan Col. Hammond had devised. There were a lot of ifs and a lot of guesses during Russ’ briefing. “If Smith is as deranged as I think he is, and if he tries to stop the convoy going for prisoners, he’ll probably focus his attention in that direction and not our real purpose of removing him from command and giving the people living in that camp the chance to relocate somewhere of their choosing,” Russ had said during the final briefing that morning. “I don’t think he believes what we can put together a viable plan in such a short time, but I know he’ll be preparing for us.”

Russ had looked at the military people. They seemed so young and he knew they were inexperienced, but they volunteered to do this and Russ vowed to make sure they knew all the hazards he could think of. “I’m no psychologist, but between what I heard in his voice and from what Tony at the Saunders’ farm has said, the man is unbalanced. Maybe everything I think is wrong and he has already out thought us,” he said, rubbing his chin. “There’re so many possibilities I can’t think of them all, so Lt. Jimenez and Sgt. Bare will be thinking on their feet and making decisions on what they see with their own eyes and their team’s.

“What I believe is Capt. Eldred must make it look like we are afraid to face the lieutenant colonel’s military. If he thinks we are going to come in force to face him and the tanks and artillery he probably has, we have to think a guerrilla attack. I’m betting right now, he has his big guns covering every square inch of real estate around his camp and guards patrolling 24 hours a day with night vision and spotlights.

“Lt. Jimenez will command a squad of 12 who will officially relieve Smith of his command and take him into custody.

“Sgt. Bare and her team of three commandos will go in first to ascertain the defenses and personnel deployment by the colonel, and then rejoin Jimenez to infiltrate and execute the plan. She will be responsible for forming the attack plan on the scene. There will be no radio contact between them and us until the plan is completed or our team has been forced to retreat.