Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) (4 page)

For the first time, Chuck could see the creature wasn’t as invulnerable. It took several seconds for the creature to track him. Chuck guessed the pills and the cuts had weakened the thing. It finally focused on him again and started at him, moving slower but with intention. It dragged its right arm a little and Chuck could see tendons and muscles hanging, torn from the razor wire.

Chuck watched as it closed on him. It stumbled again and fell face-first at Chuck’s feet. It twitched and groaned and Chuck didn’t wait. He grabbed the Taser and ran for the same area of the cage where the monster had climbed over. He threw the blanket over the top and was half-way over himself when the monster started getting back to its feet.

Chuck jumped and clambered out of the cage. The monster shook its head and came running again. It jumped and was halfway up the fence when it was hit with the first of two shots from the Taser. It was near the top when Chuck shot it again. The monster jerked and fell and Chuck ran, jumping over the low spot in the wire the monster had pulled off the top of the cage. He was through the first gate and saw the monster was after him but had gotten entangle in the razor wire again.

The other prisoners who had been allowed into the yard must have already opened the doors and gates. Chuck jumped in the first vehicle he found with keys, a white 12-passenger van, and drove away from the prison.

Chuck was shaking as he drove.

Six hours ago, Chuck was thinking of taking his own life. An hour ago, he was sleeping, dreaming of something that left him un-rested. Ten minutes ago, some freak of nature was trying to eat him.

Now, he was a free man and he was going to stay that way.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

The Virginia-class, nuclear-powered attack submarine
U.S.S.
North Carolina
settled to a relative stop for the first time in almost two months. The sub drifted gently to one of the many empty piers without the help of a tug or anyone on shore to grab mooring lines.

Everyone aboard the boat had already been informed of the ending of civilization. They’d lived with the knowledge for the past three weeks as their fellow sailors died aboard other ships in the task force. They sent personal e-mails and made phone calls to family members and loved ones when operational security was relaxed and the full extent of the deaths began being known. Many never reached family.

Four of the enlisted and two officers had committed suicide when they found out loved ones had perished. It was horrifying to everyone on board, but the commander and senior non-commissioned officer did what they could to maintain discipline and morale.

The captain of the boat, Commander Phillip Finley, was a 12-year veteran of the United States Navy, but this was his first cruise as commander of a submarine.

It was also to be his last.

It had been 21-days since the boat’s last contact with any other navy ship outside their task force or Commander Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet (COMSUBPAC) when the sub finally pulled into Pearl Harbor, but not for a lack of trying. They’d been on maneuvers when the first deaths began aboard the carrier
U.S.S. John C. Stennis,
the flagship of the carrier group to which they’d been temporarily assigned.

Word spread throughout the fleet and the presidential order for martial law was enacted less than two weeks after the first death from the plague. On the open ocean, the deaths had come just as quickly for the sailors, Marines and civilians aboard.

The U.S. Military Command was on full alert even though there was nothing they could do. Communications throughout the world to military units both on land and at sea was breaking down. All ships were ordered back to port, but the speed at which the deaths happened left ships far at sea in dire straights. The order had come too late for most ships.

Pilots aboard the carrier were catapulted skyward and all but two birds from the
Stennis
Group were able to make landfall in Hawaii. The pilots had been ordered to make regular contact with the group, but after four days, none of the pilots were still alive.

The ships steamed with all haste, but they were more than a thousand miles from Hawaii and it would take the group at least two full days to reach port.

The dying was pervasive and no one on the surface of the earth was safe. More than nine-tenths of the group’s complement was dead when the task force was less than 100 miles from Pearl. Panic had ensued on several ships when senior officers died at their posts. Military discipline aboard the surface ships fell apart. Some crews abandoned their fellow sailors, taking life boats or just jumping overboard for whatever reason.

It was a destroyer that first turned out of the group and headed for destinations unknown, followed later in the day by a fuel tender and a pair of cruisers. Bodies were being tossed off the ships as soon as they died, but as crewmen dropped, others couldn’t perform the jobs needed to keep the vessels on course or at speed.

The admiral in charge of the battle group died in the command center. The captain of the
Stennis
died on the bridge of his ship. The executive officer and a dozen other senior officers of the
Stennis
died over the course of 30 hours. The last message that came from the carrier was a prayer from a Chaplain’s Assistant. “Unto your arms, dear Lord, please take these men of the sea.”

The
Stennis
’ speed dropped to five knots and the three surface ships that had remained in the group closed to within 1,000 yards of the flattop. It was all that was left of the group as it limped the last few hundred miles toward Hawaii.

The other ships still under weigh, continued in their last direction and speed as crews died. Some eventually would run aground and sink; others had the forethought to shut down the propulsion and the ships drifted in the ocean waiting for time to send them to the bottom.

The doctors aboard the ships had no time, nor the equipment to stem the tide of the virus to save the thousands of sailors who had been deployed in the Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles north-northwest of Hawaii and 3,600 miles from the
North Carolina’s
home port of San Diego.

The submarine commander who surfaced his vessel found no decontamination procedure was sufficient to stem to outbreak that killed his crew.

Commander Martinez, the captain of the other submarine in the current deployment, surfaced his boat when what was left of the crew of the
USS Lake Erie
ordered abandon ship. There was an out of control fire and 22 men had to jump ship. Martinez and his crew were able to rescue the sailors before the ship’s stores of munitions exploded, breaking the ship’s keel and sending the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser to the ocean floor.

Martinez’ sub cleared the area with the survivors, but neither crew made it to Hawaii. Finley, his communications officers and enlisted had to listen to the last transmissions from Martinez as his crew started dying within a day of opening its hatches to save the men from the
Lake Erie.
There was nothing anyone could do to help them.

Within two days, the
North Carolina
had lost contact with the other sub completely. Finley had taken the conservative route and kept his boat underwater and on recycled air for as long as he felt his crew could handle it.

A message from the
Stennis
indicated they proposed interdiction with the cruise ship
Pride of America
. The
Pride of America
was broadcasting a distress signal and the senior officer still alive aboard the Stennis ordered a course change to intercept, as was the mariner’s respect for all who traveled on the high seas.

Through the cameras on the AN/BVS-1 telescoping photonics masts located outside the pressure hull of the
North Carolina
, the equipment that replaced the periscope, those aboard the sub could see the two massive ships move to within several hundred yards of each other. Visual feeds from the masts were displayed on LCD monitors in the command center.

It was a bad idea for whoever was currently commanding the carrier. There were not enough sailors still alive to affect any type of real rescue, but the history of mariners risking their own lives to save another mariner had been an unwritten law for hundreds of years. The world might be dying, but the unwritten code of the sea was strong with the senior officer aboard the Stennis.

The
Pride of America
was a cruise ship under Norwegian registry that had been on the Hawaii circuit. The people aboard had been on various length of cruises, some to Hawaii some on the round trip from the mainland, to Hawaii, then back home.

The Pride had few crewmen left. The most senior was a 27-year-old concierge, Marissa Lawrence, and she was the one who had called for help. There was also a laundry worker and three room attendants remaining from the crew manifest. There were 48 of the passengers still alive.

According to the most senior officer still aboard the
Stennis
, 52 people were taken off the
Pride of America
in total. When the rescued were aboard, the lieutenant ordered the massive carrier back to five knots to continue the last 100 miles to Pearl Harbor. Two hours later, the lieutenant was dead, as were six of those he’d rescued.

The last hundred miles to the mouth of Pearl Harbor took 20 hours for the
Stennis
and the
North Carolina
. Crewmen from two of the remaining cruisers and one frigate shuttled over to the carrier and the smaller ships were left abandoned after being steered away from the island.

Those ships were abandoned in favor of the bigger carrier because of the available food supplies if something went wrong and only the carrier had anyone still alive who could operate the engines with any degree of safety.

The
North Carolina
sidled up beside the carrier and the 102 people still alive aboard the flat top stood on the deck of the submarine as it shuttled them to the pier where they could get on dry land. The sub never opened it hatches.

The senior medic aboard, Petty Officer 1st Class Garrick Lindsey, and the captain agreed the best chance those on the sub had, was to wait out the incubation period of the virus. It was as scientific of a solution they could come up with for surviving what had killed more than 7,000 of their brother sailors in the task force.

No one knew how long it might take. They were working by guesses but the
North Carolina
was the only vessel of Task Force
Stennis
to arrive back at Pearl with no deaths due to the virus.

The
Stennis
dropped anchor outside the port. The task force which departed Pearl Harbor and San Diego more than a month earlier with 7,451 sailors returned to post with 211 people, 119 of them were sailors aboard the
North Carolina
.

¤ ¤ ¤ ¤

Col. Russ Hammond drove directly to the golf course on the old Ft. Benjamin Harrison military base. The base was a far cry from what it was when he’d been stationed at the base as an instructor at the Defense Information School back in the 1980s.

The Post Exchange was still here, the gym and the Finance and Accounting Center, along with a few Indiana National Guard units still called his old stomping grounds home, but DINFOS had left along with the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who attended classes there.

Hammond had returned because there was no other place he felt so at home. Hammond had retired from the United States Army the year before. He had a small house near the base and did consulting work for the government to keep busy and add a few dollars to his pension.

Before retiring he’d commanded a special unit of civil affairs experts and the government would call him in for especially difficult cases. Russ felt he’d grown too old to be traipsing all over the world with the three dozen other civil affairs specialists he commanded relocating refugees, providing humanitarian aid and laying ground work for future relations. He’d worked for the Army and the United Nations in his career and seen 19 different countries.

It was time for him to retire when he’d seen enough death and pain in his 62 years of life and 30 years of military service.

The colonel thought retiring and settling down, do a little fishing and golfing, was the way he was going to finish out a life of service to his country. His wife, who’d looked forward to his retirement as much as he had, was one of the first to die from the great plague. His son had never made it away from West Point. Russ had shed tears for both.

He was by himself waiting for death. He was sure he would die. There was nothing left in life giving him a reason to go on. All his friends were dead now. With the passing of his wife, he watched as the neighbors too fell to the virus that was killing the population.

There was nothing he could do to help them and at the end of the third week, there was no one living within at least 25 blocks, the distance he’d walked since the end, of his home.

Col. Hammond woke in the morning and looked out the front window of his house. The car that had wrecked a week ago against the stop sign at the end of the street was still there. Russ had tried to help the poor victim, but by the time he got to the car, the woman was dead, as were the three children in the back. He buried the four in a common grave in the same cemetery he’d buried his wife.