Brew

by Bill Braddock

  The bad smell of puke filled the air. Sam spat again. Demetrius considered asking him if he was okay, then backed off and just stood there, wondering if Sam was counting. If so, what would he be counting? The number of times he spat? The bars in the sewer grate? The seconds ticking away? Off in the other direction, the football stadium roared. It was a dull, weird sound. Demetrius thought maybe he’d brew a pot of coffee and sober up enough to do some studying after all.

  Sam wiped his mouth and stood. He apologized for getting sick, and Demetrius told him not to worry about it, and then Sam told him that he had stolen a rifle from one of the farmers and waited in the woods above the road and shot the Monster dead.

  "That’s good," Demetrius said.

  Sam agreed. Then he pronounced himself to be very drunk and apologized again. Demetrius offered him a cigarette. Sam accepted, and Demetrius gave him the rest of the pack. They’d parted ways, Sam stumbling off to his apartment, presumably to pass out, Demetrius heading back to his own, where he caught a nap, waking hours later to chew aspirin, take a shower, and grab some dinner before doing the right thing and heading up to the library to hit the books.

  It had been a long day. And now he was in a life-and-death struggle with a psychotic lunatic.

  Seeing the guy drop from the ceiling onto Brian, Demetrius dove through the closing doors. The heavy statue slammed into the crazy bastard so hard the guy was bowled over and the statue popped from Demetrius’s hands.

  He was too late.

  Even as he’d leapt, he’d seen the shard of glass drawing across Brian’s neck, seen the great gouts of blood jetting free.

  That pissed him off. Brian was bright and tough and brave. He would have made a fine soldier.

  Now he was dead.

  Demetrius hustled onto all fours. The psycho roared with laughter, his mouth draining blood and some kind of green slime.

  Demetrius drilled him. A solid shot. He felt the kid’s nose snap. Punched again. And again. And again.

  Demetrius rocked into a crouch, trying to get where he could kick the son of a bitch. The kid swung around, head tucked beneath more punches. Demetrius grabbed the kid’s ears and kept him turning, yanked him around, picking him half off the ground, then slammed him forward, riding him down, intending to smash his face off the elevator floor. Instead, the kid’s face drove into the old woman’s lap with a sickening, wet schlaatch. Demetrius kneeled on him, pressing the bastard’s face into the intestines, drowning him. The kid thrashed beneath him. His arms patted the floor, searching, searching…

  The elevator stopped. Shit, Demetrius thought. Oh, shit.

  The doors slid open. A girl was screaming. Something hit him, hard over the head and fell to the elevator floor. He looked down. A black square. Ladies Night by Jack Ketchum.

  Shit. A fucking book. Some girl had hit him with a book and run off.

  Jesus. That must have been some shock to her. What had it looked like? One guy holding another guy’s head down in the lap of an old woman…a dead old woman? Excuse us, miss. We’re just shooting the world’s most twisted porn flick.

  Much to his surprise, Demetrius realized he was laughing. It came up and out of him without his permission.

  Keep it together, soldier, he told himself, and then the doors were closing again.

  He let go of the psycho and jumped for the doors. His shoulder slammed into one door; his arm pushed into the other. The doors shuddered to a halt and slid open once more. He backed out as the kid rose to his feet, still laughing, his face a mask of gore. He’d found the glass shard and held it now so tightly that blood dripped from his fist.

  "Fuck you, kid," Demetrius said, and drilled him square in the chest with a kick. It knocked the crazy bastard off his feet, and the doors slid shut.

  Demetrius breathed in slowly through his nostrils, tried to hold his breath, and let it shudder out. Drew in more. Held it. Let it out slowly. Controlled breathing led to control of one’s self.

  Down the shaft, the kid hammered the elevator walls. Come on back up here, and I’ll shove that little glass knife right up your ass.

  No, he told himself. That fight was over. Drive on.

  Thinking of the girl who’d hit him with the book, he called out, "Hello? Miss? Hello? If you can hear me, I’m not one of them."

  There was movement, deep in the stacks, but no one answered. Fuck it. She wasn’t his responsibility. And if he kept calling, somebody else would hear him. Laughter and screaming echoed in the stairwells. It sounded like the street party he and the others had seen from the windows upstairs had moved inside and was working its way upward.

  He had to get out of the library. The kid in the elevator had been easy enough to handle, but what would Demetrius do if three or four of them rushed him at once? Three or four with weapons?

  The stairwells were a definite no-go. The elevators were…inconvenient. He looked around. Nothing. The stacks. Tables. Fire extinguisher and hose again. But he saw no way out. He could hide, of course, but it seemed a mistake, too passive in a moment when remaining passive could cost him his life.

  He continued to scan the room, moving slowly toward the windows, hoping to get a glance down at the campus. The glass was cracked all through, web-work fractures jagging away from what looked very much like bullet holes. He remembered the shooting they’d heard earlier. Then he heard it again, pointed off in some other direction.

  With the glass cracked like that, he could easily blast through it by throwing a chair or table. Then he could jump, try to catch himself in that nearby elm. He looked down. Shit. Too far. Four or five floors, anyway. He wasn’t sure how far he’d come in the elevator. Whatever the case, it was a long drop, and even though that elm looked close, he wasn’t sure he could make it.

  The good news was, there wasn’t much movement on the ground. Plenty of bodies, but very little movement. Off in the distance, he saw flames, one of the big buildings burning, and there, between the buildings, he saw an obvious lunatic come limping into the open. He had something—was that a head?—cradled in his arms as he hitched along on a badly injured leg.

  Bang!

  Another gunshot, and the lunatic dropped. The head-thing rolled a few feet downhill and came to a stop.

  Demetrius spotted the shooter, a dark silhouette, and the wink of the shooter’s glasses atop the chemistry building further down the quad. Looked like he had a tripod and everything, which meant he was probably a police sniper. If so, he’d worked quickly. Campus cops didn’t carry weapons, didn’t even have access, as far as Demetrius knew, so it would almost have to be a town cop or state policeman. Whatever the case, the guy was a hell of a shot. The lunatic, easily a hundred and fifty yards distant and at a pretty good downslope, he’d dropped, one shot, one kill.

  Then Demetrius heard a loud buzz and, looking down, watched as a pair of kids sped uphill past the library on a moped. The shooter tracked them with his rifle but never fired. That was a relief. Looked like he was only capping bad guys.

  So I need to get down on the ground and make it clear I’m one of the good guys.But how?

  Pounding footsteps and screaming echoed nearer in the stairwells.

  Then, looking up and seeing the diamond-shaped "Quiet Zone" sign dangling by a thin wire overhead, the idea hit him.

  He’d rappel. Smash the window and rappel to safety. Surely, the shooter would see that he had his wits about him, thinking like that. All right. So rappelling was the way out. What could he use as rope?

  The hose.

  It was risky, he knew, but the hose was long enough, and he thought it was strong enough. It was a chance he’d have to take.

  He picked up a chair, ran a few steps, and launched the thing. Crash! The window, already cracked and weakened, exploded in a rain of glass.

  He thrilled with success but blanched at the noise he’d made.

  More screaming echoed in the nearer stairwell. Had they heard him? Not now, not when I’ve finally figured a way out.

&
nbsp; He glanced at the hose.

  Pausing, he thought of the others—Eileen, Boyd, and Miranda the Bat-winged Beauty—and weighed the option of returning to them, trying to get them out, too. He took one step toward the fire door and stopped. It sounded like a few dozen psychopaths had formed a conga line in the stairwell. Going back for the others would be insane, suicidal. The thing to do was watch his own ass and get the hell out of this death trap. Nodding to himself, he turned toward the shattered window.

  That was it. He’d get the hose and rappel, and the others would just have to fare for themselves. They had weapons and brains, and they weren’t his responsibility…

  Then he heard movement behind him, turned, and saw the kid standing fifteen feet away, staring at him and grinning green.

  Chapter 17

  The secret passage was something of a legend here at College Heights. Everyone had heard of it, but no one seemed to know if it really existed. Talk to five people, and you were liable to get five different stories: It had been a stop along the Underground Railroad; Students in the honors dorm, one an experienced combat engineer, had mined it shortly after World War II, just to prove they could; It was a fallout shelter, a legacy of the Cold War stocked with survival provisions; It was older than the university itself, the meeting place for a sinister brotherhood of wealthy men who regularly performed ritual sacrifices and eventually founded the university for their own dark purposes.

  These and other theories prevailed. Garrett, however, had told Jessie the truth. Then he showed her.

  They’d only been dating a short while. She’d recently broken up with Steve, a fun guy who unfortunately turned out to be a real asshole. She already knew Garrett and thought he was cute. She liked his rough, grungy look, his brains—even the scholarship kids over at Simmington gathered around him—and his soft intensity. That’s how she thought of him. Soft yet intense, all at the same time. He spoke quietly, moved quietly, and listened intently during the class they shared. When he did speak, during class discussions or out on the quad, he spoke with such confidence, such intensity, that even the fidgety kids sat still and listened.

  They started with walks. Met at the dining hall. Studied. And then, one night by the bike racks in front of her dorm, after a studying session ended early and they’d opted for a walk, this time holding hands as they strolled the campus, he’d put his arms around her, and they’d kissed. By this time, he’d already told her a little about Green and a lot about what it stood for—common sense environmentalism that mandated serious societal change and a much greener common mindset—and she’d already started making small changes in her daily life, tossing aerosol cans, switching off lights to save electricity, doing any small thing she could to save on waste, and a rift was already growing between Jessie and her roommate, Sydney.

  Then, perhaps a week after they’d kissed, she and Garrett ended another studying session early, and she’d gone to bed with him. It was wonderful, Garrett illustrating the same confidence, gentleness and intensity that defined him elsewhere.

  From that point forward, they’d been inseparable.

  Until tonight.

  Tonight, Garrett had gone off with Alan to hack the university website and broadcast Green’s public service announcement. Anyone visiting the site would see the podcast, which would loop continuously until someone at the university figured out how to shut it down, just as the video broadcast, Alan had assured them at the last meeting, would loop continuously on the university television station until someone figured out how to undo his handiwork there.

  Garrett had cut the tension at that point, saying he figured it would take the university techies a while, because everybody would be too busy staring at their toilets to think about anything else.

  Everybody had laughed. Even Jessie, and she’d been jumpy as hell all night, so jumpy she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Garrett could do that, move people, fire them up or cool them down or make them believe that bright green poop was going to be the only effect of the stuff they’d dumped into the Cougar beer brew tanks.

  "We’re not going to hurt them, and we’re not going to smash their shit. We’re going to wake them up!" That’s what Garrett had told them, and they’d all believed him.

  And why not?

  They’d all tried the stuff in a previous meeting, the one where Garrett had introduced his friend, the Mad Chemist, which was what Garrett called him when he and Jessie were alone. The guy was skinny and weird, way too smiley and more than a little creepy, the way he looked Jessie up and down, grinning, when Garrett had introduced them, saying, "Jessie, I want you to meet the smartest guy I know, Haze Biscoe."

  She’d smiled but managed not to laugh, telling "Haze Biscoe" it was a great pleasure to meet him. Garrett had told her about the pseudonym. The Mad Chemist’s name wasn’t Haze or Biscoe. It was Herbert Weston.

  Herbert Weston. She’d never forget the name, not as long as she lived. Garrett wouldn’t shut up about what a genius the guy was and how he was a legend at the honors dorm and how he never really thought he’d get Herbert Weston onboard because everybody knew Herbert Weston hated everybody in the whole world. Going on like that, Herbert Weston, Herbert Weston, Herbert Weston, until Jessie had finally said, "What are you, queer for the guy or something?" and Garrett had shut up for a minute, giving her that funny look he sometimes gave her, and laughing.

  So the night Garrett introduced "Haze Biscoe" to the members of Green, they passed around pitchers of normal-looking, normal-smelling, normal-tasting beer spiked with the chemical Herbert had custom tailored for them, people pouring out glasses, nervous, joking about rat poison and St. Patrick’s Day and saying things like "Hey, I’m not sure I got enough… pass that pitcher back here", and then, the next morning, when Garrett rose and used the toilet and then called Jessie in, she saw that Garrett had been right again. It had worked. The poop was greener than fresh cut grass.

  Later in the morning, she’d used the bathroom, too, and though she refused to let Garrett see the evidence, what came out of her had been just as green as Garrett’s. It was the same for everybody, a total success.

  Still, earlier today, when she realized it was all real, that they really had spiked the beer supply of the town and that her boyfriend, whom she loved more than she ever knew she could love a person, really was, later that very night, going to leave her and go off with Alan to broadcast the message of Green—Wake up, College Heights! Take this day to consider the things you are putting in your body, the pesticides and herbicides, the genetically engineered Franken-foods!—she’d gotten panicky all over again, freaked out and called Greggers and even her old boyfriend, Steve. She didn’t even know why, but maybe it was because Steve was always so chilled out and knew drugs so well and because she knew, even though he never had and never would finish college, Steve was smart, smarter even than Garrett in some ways. However, Steve had neither answered his phone nor returned her messages, and then, when she and Garrett got together just before he left for Alan’s place, she tried to stop him, and, failing there, demanded he take her along.

  Garrett wouldn’t hear of it.

  This was the big time. Police would be involved. Things could get ugly. Very ugly. As things stood, he told her, the cops wouldn’t have anything on Jessie or the other members of Green, just on him and Alan. He’d already told her what this meant, the possibility that he might be sent away, incarcerated, so she cried and told him not to do it, and then they’d both laughed because it was all so cliché, the whole scene, but the laughter hadn’t done much to ease her anxiety. At last, they’d said goodnight, and at that point, she really believed that everything was going to work out, that tomorrow half of College Heights would wake up to green poop in the toilet and by the time word spread about the university site and station, everyone would be more than ready to receive the big broadcast. Garrett would be in a stocking cap and army field jacket, lecturing about the power of consumers and the toll big agribusinesses were having all across t
he third world.

  Yes, she’d really believed it would work.

  But it hadn’t.

  We did this.

  Jessie tried and failed to block the thought.

  Meanwhile, the pounding continued on the outer door.

  She never wanted to leave the tunnel. She was safe here. With all this craziness going on, and regardless of what happened to Garrett or Green or the goddamned environment, she was just glad to be alive, safe in her secret burrow. It was dark and dank and musty and cobwebby, but it reminded her of happier times, times with Garrett. Now, she forced herself to think of those happier times, and she remembered the night not long after Garrett and she had made love for the first time, the night he had brought her here and shown her the legendary tunnel.

  "It really exists?" she’d asked.

  They were in the dining hall, lingering over dinner, their friends having left the table to dump their trays. Garrett smiled at her, polishing an apple on his shirt. "It does."

  The tunnel was no great mystery, he explained, its history available to anyone who cared enough to check the library. Early in the history of the university, the tunnel had served as a rainy-day passageway for scholars and a subterranean shortcut for facility managers and custodians. It had been closed during the eighties as part of a massive asbestos abatement campaign… a campaign so massive, in fact, that university officials early exhausted all funding. With the money gone and no new allotments scheduled, the abatement project ground to a halt, and the university sealed the passage and its asbestos-wrapped pipes forever in 1986.

  She told him she wanted to see it.

  He took her through the Simmington side first, waiting for a moment alone, explaining that only he and two others knew where to find the hidden keys. That first night, she’d been thrilled. A little frightened, sure, and a little skeptical, too, but mostly, she’d just been excited. They were public in their affection now, officially boyfriend and girlfriend, and she’d already joined Green and started changing out her old clothing for things Garrett pointed out to her in earthy shops downtown, environmentally and culturally friendly sweaters and dresses that made Garrett immensely happy and her father, upon receiving her Visa bills, incredibly unhappy. It felt like, in joining with Garrett, she had joined into a world of secrets. This one was satisfactorily tangible. Who hadn’t heard of the mystery tunnel? Well, she, Jessie Knapp, girlfriend of Garrett Fiske, the head of Green, was going to enter the tunnel.