Hell Happened by Terry Stenzelbarton, Jordan Stenzelbarton Page B

pretty bad. His cheeks are torn up some and from the bruising it looks like someone punched him in the face.”
    “How long do you think he’ll be out of it?”
    “I don’t know, Jerry,” Monica said, sounding a little exasperated from his questions. “He needs to be hydrated, but we don’t have that kind of stuff here. He needs to wake up before we give him water. I’ve done all I can do unless you got any ideas.”
    Jerry had none and shook his head. She returned to cleaning Tony’s body. The smell was terrible and Jerry could tell he was no longer needed so he went to find Randy. It had been a rough day and right now, now that Tony was in good hands, Jerry wanted nothing more than to hug his son. When Monica was ready to move Tony from the stretcher to the couch, she’d call him.
    He found his son just climbing down from the antenna, wearing leather gloves and a safety harness. Jerry remembered the first time he’d shown his son how to use the safety equipment and how afraid the boy had been. Now here he was three years later, showing some initiative and forethought before climbing up the 30-foot antenna.
    Randy didn’t see his dad approach so started unbuckling the harness after taking off his gloves. Jerry waited until the harness was off before saying anything.
    “Well done, son.”
    Randy quickly turned around at the sound of the voice. He and his dad had never been demonstrative, but right then, at that moment in time, with no one else around to see them, Randy wanted nothing more than to hug his dad and have his dad hug him.
    “You did good, boy,” Jerry said as his son’s arms wrapped around him. “I knew you could do it.”
    “Dad, I was so scared,” his son said, voice cracking a little. “For Tony and Jeff, for Eddie and Terrill, but I don’t know what I’d do if you’d gotten hurt or killed.”
    Randy was still a big kid, Jerry realized. At 22-years-old, he was immature and had led a sheltered life, even though he grew up on a farm. Jerry often thought he’d not done a very good job raising the boy like he’d been raised. He wasn’t a strict parent like Jerry’s father had been and allowed his son to find his own path. Looking back, he saw where he made a lot of mistakes, missed a lot of opportunities, failed to teach his son a lot of things.
    But at this moment in time, feeling the big bear hug from his “little boy” who stood two inches taller and weighed 60 pounds more, Jerry felt more pride in his son than ever before in his life.
    “You did good, son,” he said again, feeling the pressure of his son’s two strong arms. “Now I can’t breathe.” Randy released his dad and the two looked at each other. There was relief in both men’s eyes.
    “So dad, what happened?”
    “I’ll tell you, but let’s wait until I can get everyone together. Go get Eddie and Mike from the barn. They should have the truck cleaned out soon so give them a hand if they need it.
    “We have some planning to do because the shit hit the fan today and I think we need to re-think what we’ve got going here. Have everyone back up to the shelter,” he looked at his watch, “in an hour.”
    Randy picked up his harness and headed over the hill to get Eddie and Mike.
    Jerry walked over to where the chair was still sitting from this morning, where he and Kellie had watched the sunrise. He sat down and thought about the day’s events and his decision to allow Jeff and Tony to go look for more weapons, then his decision to take Terrill and Eddie to find out what happened to the other two. It seemed everything had happened with spur of the moment decisions, without thinking them through, and now Jeff and Terrill were both dead and Tony was injured.
    Maybe he wasn’t the one who should be in charge of his shelter. Maybe he shouldn’t be the one making decisions. Maybe he should just take care of his farm the best he could and let someone else be in charge of making life and death decisions.
    The doubts