Brew

by Bill Braddock

  The tunnel turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. If the basements here were damp and sour-smelling, this was trebly so. The air was thick and thin all at the same time; thick in its stagnant sootiness, thin in its seeming lack of oxygen. She’d coughed. He’d laughed. She’d laughed. And they’d closed the door and done it, standing up, right there in the tunnel. She remembered opening her eyes after they’d finished, opening her eyes and shrieking at the sight of the brown rat squatting not three feet away, watching them from an asbestos-lined pipe. Her cry scared both the rat and Garrett, who ended up making fun of her about the whole thing.

  "They’re more afraid of you than you are of them," he’d told her.

  "Don’t be so sure about that," she’d said, and then they’d done it again. This time, she’d bent over and pressed her hands against the rough stucco of the wall, and he’d entered her from behind, thrusting away, more intense than gentle. She’d been too distracted by the rat to climax again, but Garrett had, and they’d left the tunnel holding hands, and later he’d shown her the key to the door hidden in the shadowy recesses toward the back of her basement.

  Now she sat in the tunnel, alone here for the first time, key in hand, as some homicidal lunatic sobbed and pounded on the metal door like a two-hundred pound toddler in a temper tantrum.

  She thought of Garrett. Was he all right? Had he made his broadcast? God, she hoped not. If he made that broadcast, this entire whatever-this-was, this craziness, everything that was happening, would be blamed on him. Him and Green. And her, too.

  Garrett had been so sure that everything would work out, and he had assured her she’d be okay, that none of this, no matter how pissed the university and cops got, none of this would come down on her. She’d believed him.

  Now, though, with everything that was happening, with crazy bastards like the big toddler pounding on doors all over town, she definitely would not be okay. This was big news. CNN for sure. And the FBI or ATF or whoever would be in charge on this sort of craziness wouldn’t stop until they had every member of Green rounded up and locked away. They would hit her with conspiracy charges, call her a leader, claim she’d helped to plan everything, and, along with everyone else—for Garrett had insisted everyone have a hand during this stage—she would be charged with dispensing the serum. She wondered if they would come down harder on her since she had dosed food in the dining halls rather than beer at the brewery, as most of the others had. The prosecutor might really play up that angle, dramatizing to the jury how Jessie had ruthlessly poisoned unsuspecting children eating their Saturday lunches. This young girl deserved to be tossed in a hole forever, he’d tell them.

  He’d be right.

  She thought of her family.

  Home. That’s where she wanted to be. Home and safe. And she wanted Garrett there with her, as impossible as that little fantasy might be.

  Was he safe? Knowing he’d go to jail for this, was bad, but the idea of the crazies getting him…

  No. She wouldn’t consider it. Garrett was fine. In trouble, sure, but fine.

  She tried to calm herself, which was no easy task with that psychotic asshole pounding the door and howling, and imagined the door at the other end of the tunnel opening, washing everything with light, Garrett stepping through, here to carry her off to safety. But first, for old times’ sake, she’d turn and put her hands on the rough wall, and he would lift her skirts, and this time they would both climax at the same time, regardless of rats and blubbering maniacs and everything else. But the door did not open. She was alone in the dark and the stink.

  At last, the pounding stopped. She heard the sounds of struggle, a fight in the basement beyond the door. She heard screaming, and then the door shivered beneath renewed pounding, and she knew that there were two people now, the fat kid and someone else, one of them slamming the other against the metal door over and over until at last the pounding stopped and all was quiet.

  She sighed with relief.

  Soon after, however, she wished the pounding would start again. It had been so loud that it had masked the other sounds she now heard, the tunnel sounds: dripping water and squeaking. Lots of squeaking.

  Rats.

  Squeaking came from all directions. She gasped and backed against the wall, her skin seeming to squirm over her arms and legs and back. Oh, how she hated rats, their pink, scrabbling feet and long, hairless tails. Dumpster diners. The bubonic plague. New York babies, dead in the crib, faces chewed to bloody bone.

  Stop! Get control. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.

  That’s what Garrett had told her, but she hadn’t been so sure then, and she certainly wasn’t sure now. She was plenty scared of them, and that squeaking didn’t sound like they were scared of her. Was it getting louder? Closer?

  Definitely.

  This time, she didn’t have Garrett with her, didn’t even have a flashlight. All she had was her lighter. That was it, her only shot at scaring them off.

  As she searched, something brushed her leg. A rat! A rat had touched her!

  "Stay away from me!"

  Shouting was stupid. It could draw the attention of the crazies. She knew this yet she could not abide by it, could not keep from screaming even louder when fur again brushed her bare ankle. Spitting curses, she dug in her purse until her hand closed around the lighter. This would work. All animals feared fire.

  She pushed the fuel feed lever to full and a nearby rat squealed long and strange, sending gooseflesh over her entire body. She thumbed the igniter, and flame illuminated the tunnel around her, the asbestos pipes just inches away, the crumbling stucco of the far wall cracking away in places to reveal old brick, everything washed in flickering shadow, and, of course, the dozens and dozens of rats scampering toward her along the pipes and the walls and the floor…

  Jessie dropped the lighter and screamed, screamed louder than she’d ever screamed before, so loud that the scream became a light inside her head, a light a thousand times brighter than the lighter she’d dropped to the carpet of rats starting now to climb her dress, her legs…

  Green. The rats are green, too.

  In her brief glimpse, she’d seen them clearly, seen them leering at her. Who knew rats could grin? She had seen the green slime oozing like venom from their fangs.

  It was something she couldn’t understand and never would. When they started biting her, she lost all thought, reduced as she was to her pain and her screams and the bright, bright light within her skull, while somewhere a million miles away on the campus above ground, more rats snuffled through dumpsters, feeding as they always had and always would, on the castoff lunches and dinners of university students, including tonight’s special cuisine and the secret ingredient Jessie herself had added.

  Chapter 18

  He was a big kid, face painted blue and white from the football game. Probably a high school football player, Demetrius figured, some big farm kid two or three years into college, still wondering if he’d have made the college team had he only trained a little harder, spent a little less time on the girls.

  He grinned, and it was horrible.

  Christmas, Demetrius thought. Green and red. Green teeth, red everywhere else. This young man looked as if he’d showered in blood. In fact, his jersey was so soaked in the stuff that it more closely resembled the opponents’ maroon and gray than the good old blue and white of home. Utterly absurd. He’s a clown, Demetrius thought, taking in the face paint, the grin, all the colors. A big Christmas clown with a decidedly weird sense of humor. You wake up Christmas morning, he’s swapped out the mistletoe for a human scalp. Ho, ho, ho, kiddies… dare you to check the stocking.

  In one hand, he held what looked like a cabinet handle, just a skinny metal tube bent at both ends. The other hand gripped what Demetrius guessed to be half of a broken mop handle. There wasn’t much to it, not a lot of weight, but it gave the kid a reach advantage.

  Demetrius bent and picked up a knifelike shard of glass. He wished he
had time to strip off his shirt and use it as a makeshift glove, but he didn’t exactly expect the grinning kid to honor a "time out", so he found his best grip and waited for the attack. Play counter puncher, Demetrius told himself. Wait for the charge, duck the stick, and drive the glass home.

  "Easy there, pal," he said.

  The kid charged. Fast.

  Demetrius stepped to his right as the stick lashed out, meeting it with his own hand, a perfect outside block that not only parried the blow but knocked the stick free from the crazy’s hand.

  Only this crazy wasn’t so crazy.

  As the stick spun away, the kid’s other hand punched forward, thudding into Demetrius’s chest. The force of the blow, all that strength and power, combined with the momentum of the charge, was pinched down into the ends of the metal handle.

  It was a hell of a shot.

  For a moment, like any good blow to the heart, it stunned him, took him out of himself, and then he was pitching backward, unable to breathe, feeling like his chest had caved around the punch.

  The kid followed him down, laughing, swinging again. This time the punch glanced off his head, gouging a furrow in his cheek.

  Demetrius clinched. He was on his back, arms wrapped around his attacker. His head was safely tucked in the kid’s chest, and the kid was floundering over him, raging. The kid did a push up, lifting himself and Demetrius effortlessly, and Demetrius let him go, hooking inward with his left hand, driving the smaller shard into the jersey. The first swing got ribs, the second, ribs again.

  The kid, still laughing, dropped a knee into Demetrius’s gut, knocking the air from him again.

  His arm kept moving, though… the body, wanting to live, fighting to survive.

  The glass shard snapped on the kid’s ribs.

  The kid drew back his fist—the empty one—and drilled Demetrius square in the face.

  Light flashed. The punch seemed to blow up the world.

  The kid leaned back again, cocking his fist, and Demetrius lashed up and out, temporarily blinded but hoping for the head.

  He felt what was left of the glass slice through something soft, and lashed out again, and again.

  The weight of the kid left him.

  Demetrius crawled backward.

  The kid was up, standing a few feet back, poking at the ruined pulp of his right eye. It drained through his fingers like an egg yolk. He grunted, poked, then, laughing, scraped the shattered orb into his mouth.

  "That," Demetrius said, struggling to his feet, "is some sick shit." His chest throbbed. One of his ribs ached all the way around to his back, probably broken, and he could feel blood draining from the holes the handle had left. His cheek burned, too, and his nose throbbed, the pain pulsing backward into his head and down his throat, where thickening mucus and coppery-tasting blood gagged him. The nose was definitely broken. Badly.

  He spat.

  So did the kid.

  Demetrius’s spit was red.

  The kid’s was green.

  What to do? The kid was stronger and faster than him. His natural impulse was to play the bullfighter, stay on his toes and look to outmaneuver the kid, counter, counter, counter. But that hadn’t worked so well last time. The kid might have been out of his mind, but he was still fighting smart. The stick had been a diversion. It was the handle that had scored and scored big. A stupid little handle, and it had almost ended him.

  Well, I just have to be more careful.

  Then the kid bent at the water fountain and took a drink.

  For a second, a full, unblinking second, an impossible pause during a fight, Demetrius just stood and stared, incapable of believing the scene. The kid had completely disengaged. He was thirsty. Or didn’t like the taste of his eye. He was getting a drink.

  Luckily, the drink took more than a second. Demetrius whipped his fist into the air and swung it downward with all that he had, chopping a hammer-fist into the back of the kid’s neck. The strike was true. It smacked into the thick muscle there and drove the head and neck forward. The kid made a choking noise, and his legs buckled. He caught himself, leaning on the fountain, left knee on the carpet, right leg jutting out straight, like he was sliding into home.

  Demetrius stomped down on the outstretched leg. The knee cracked, the leg bent unnaturally inward, and the kid howled with rage, whipping his head around and snapping like a dog.

  Demetrius swung his leg again, this time thrusting a powerful front kick that drove the ball of his foot straight into the kid’s blue and white forehead, knocking the kid over.

  What’s blue and white and green and red all over? Some crazy fucker who’s trying to kill me. Ha ha.

  Demetrius left it at that. He didn’t want to kill him; he just wanted to eliminate the threat of him. And with a missing eye and a broken knee, the kid was pretty well out of commission.

  It was impossible, the whole the thing. The drink. The laughter. All of it, everything. None of that mattered now, though. Nothing mattered except survival. He’d felt this sort of urgency before, most recently in the smoking, dust-choked wreckage of a Humvee, small arms biting into the steel around him. He never expected to feel it here, smack dab in the center of Toyland.

  So be it, trooper. Drive on.

  He popped the door to the hose, checked its connection to the standpipe and unraveled it, hurrying to the window.

  Down below, the ground remained clear of mobile crazies.

  He loosened his belt and pushed the hose nozzle up, threading the gap between belt and body. Then he pulled the nozzle around his right side, fed it around his back to his left hand, laid it over itself, and ran the rest of the hose through this channel till he’d spooled a lot of hose onto the ground below and eaten all the slack to the standpipe. It wasn’t much of a harness, but it would have to do. He backed to the window, heels on the edge, and leaned over the drop. The hose stretched yet held. It felt strong.

  With his ass hanging over the void, he thought, Here it goes. Out of the frying pan and into the raging inferno.

  He took a little hop off the ledge and swung back into the wall. The hose held. His lame-ass harness kept him from attempting a normal rappelling bounce. One mistake, and he’d go feet over head and dump all the way to the ground, so he’d have to take it easy. And if things got shaky, he’d just hang from the hose and go hand over hand, like he was back at the confidence course at Knox. And so he walked down the side of the building, wondering what he’d meet on the ground.

  Chapter 19

  Joel pushed up against the vent housing to which he was tethered, waiting for the explosion of the rifle as Herbert tracked the moped with his scope, but the crazy bastard lowered the barrel, and leaned his head to one side without firing. Again Herbert shouldered the rifle and looked through the scope, and again Joel tensed for the explosive noise of the weapon, but then Herbert was lowering the rifle once more, shaking his head and grinning.

  "No shit. It is him." He went to the edge, cupped a hand beside his mouth, and shouted over the quad. "Steve!"

  If I wasn’t cuffed to this thing, Joel thought, eyeing the small of Herbert’s back, I’d kick his sorry ass right off the edge.

  The little moped buzzed on up the hill.

  Herbert turned to Joel. "I know that guy."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah, he’s some kind of major drug dealer around here." He shook his head again, grinning in apparent disbelief, then cupped a hand to his mouth. "Hey, Steve!"

  "Wait," Joel said. "Steve? Tall, dark hair?"

  "You know him?"

  "Sure, yeah, I know him. Fucker owes me a shit load of fuse."

  Herbert squealed with laughter. "Fuse? I made fuse!"

  "You’re his chemist?"

  "Well, yeah, but I don’t just brew batches. I invented fuse."

  "No shit?"

  "No shit whatsoever. Love’s just chemicals, Joel. Empathy, all that ‘I’m okay, you’re okay’ bullshit? It’s all about oxytocin. Block the reuptake of a few neurotr
ansmitters, flood the amygdala with oxytocin, and you can convince a couple of meatheads that they’re soul mates. Love potion #9 ain’t got nothing on fuse."

  "Nice work. What do you charge?"

  "A buck a hit. Not bad for an eight-hour ride, huh?"

  "A buck a hit? Are you serious?" Joel laughed. "Shit, he’s charging ten bucks a hit, and I’m buying in bulk."

  Herbert’s mouth hung wide.

  Hope sparked in Joel. Easy, he told himself. Go easy.

  Herbert said, "That dirty liar told me it was selling for three bucks a pop."

  "Shit, man, he’s fleecing you," Joel said. "After all this is over, make me your man. I’ll push two, three times the inventory and give you half the take."

  Herbert seemed to consider it.

  Joel said, "I get in touch with my people back in Philly, we’ll split fifty grand a month, easy. That’s low ball. Things go well, we’ll make much, much more."

  "No shit?"

  Loosening up, Joel said, "Would I shit my favorite asshole?"

  Laughing, Herbert lifted his pistol. "Watch who you’re calling asshole, buddy."

  Then they both broke into laughter. It was a weird moment.

  Finally, Herbert said, "No shit. That’s a lot of money. I mean, I could live anywhere, do anything. Get a little compound out in the woods, big fence around it, dogs running loose."

  Joel nodded. "Now you’re talking. Shit, play your cards right, you could kidnap a couple of fine-ass chicks—I’m talking tonight—and keep them in your shed out there in the woods. Sex on tap."