Brew

by Bill Braddock

  "Fuck," she said aloud, as the steam burned her face, her neck, her arm. It was not a reaction to the pain. Pain meant little now; this was something deeper, a channel of memory worm-holing from her little-girl ears up through the years into her young-woman mouth. "Fuck," she said. "Fuck, fuck."

  On the other side of the car, her feet carried her over the sidewalk onto campus, heading uphill, following Short Ridge. She did not feel tired. Left, right, left, right. She watched with little interest as one of the big campus loop buses hurtled down Short Ridge and smacked into a group of people. Just before the bus hit, she heard it rev higher and saw the pedestrians leap into the grille of the bus and bounce off hard, flying in all directions, some of them going ten or twenty feet before hitting and tumbling and lying still.

  The bus itself jagged to the right, hitting the curb, then slammed with a loud bang into a tree not thirty feet from Liz. It rebounded off the tree with a shattering of glass, and something—no, someone—tumbled through the air and hit the ground beside her. She looked at the bus, the hole in the driver’s side windshield, then looked at the ground before her at the broken boy there, growling, twitching, his face all blood and breakage and green slime. "Fuck," she said. Then, stepping over the ejected driver, her feet carried her uphill past the stalled bus.

  They carried her off the path, across a grassy yard hummocked with the dead. They carried her up another path, over another big lawn, and across a street, where sat a BMW polka-dotted with bullet holes and surrounded with bodies. Her feet followed a long path beneath tall elms, wove around bodies, turned left at the library, and carried her into the shadowy parking lot behind the chemistry building, where her hand opened the back door of a large car.

  "Fuck," Liz said.

  Then she lay down, closed the door, curled into a fetal position, and went to sleep.

  Chapter 28

  Heidi was gone. She’d disappeared while Steve and Cat were fighting the fork-wielding maniac. For his part, Steve felt relieved. Good riddance to a pain in the ass, to an anchor.

  Cat wasn’t so complacent. They looped the block. Cat called softly into the dark spaces between houses. "Heidi?" With every call, Steve felt like wincing. If it were up to him, they’d tiptoe their way straight out of town and count themselves lucky to be free of Heidi. But he kept this to himself. It was Cat’s roommate. Her friend, her decision.

  Finally, as they paused at an intersection, Cat said, "She’ll just have to watch out for herself."

  Steve nodded. "The sooner we get out of town, the better."

  "Am I a bitch, leaving her like this?"

  Steve laughed. "You’re not the bitch in this equation. She is. And remember: she ditched you. She’s the one that ran. And she ran when you needed her."

  Cat didn’t say anything. They started west again, heading deeper into the residential district, away from the insanity of downtown. A few blocks on, Cat said, "We’re not really friends."

  "You and Heidi?"

  "Right. Or the others. I mean, I picked the place up on sublet. I moved here after the semester had already started, saw their ad in the paper, and gave them a call. It was cheap, I had my own room."

  "I wish I could have seen it," he said.

  "On our first date? What kind of girl do you think I am?" He could hear the grin in her voice.

  "The kind I’d like to hang out with, if she’s into it, after all this apocalyptic bullshit is over."

  "Sounds good to me," she said, and slipped her hand into his.

  They walked, holding hands, neither of them feeling the need to do much talking. It was nice here, in the middle of this insanity, both of them hurt, just to walk side by side through these dim, residential streets, as if deaf to the sounds several blocks away in town. The moon shown large and bright overhead, giving no heat, and a cool breeze sighed past, rattling leaves along the pavement. At the corner stood a long, low building, either an old workshop or garage, perhaps both, abandoned now. Weeds, grass, and sumac saplings rose on all sides, and vines scaled the old block walls, looking in the stark moonlight like heavy black cracks in the masonry. There were four bay doors, the white paint flaking, a few of the small glass panels broken.

  Cat squeezed his hand. "This place gives me the creeps," she said. "That’s stupid, I know," she said, and laughed. Then the laugh died away, and she stopped at the corner and stared at the old building with an emptiness that reminded Steve of her expression earlier that night, while she waited outside the Chinese restaurant.

  "Not so weird," Steve said. "Most people get spooked around an old place."

  She nodded. "When I was little, this one neighbor of mine, Mr. Cartwright, he had this junk heap in back of his house, and he was always working on stuff, mowers, appliances, cars, everything. He had all this stuff in his yard, just sitting there. Scrap metal, engine blocks, old refrigerators. Mr. Cartwright never cut the grass. Never. All those machines and parts, I don’t think the guy even had a mower. So his grass grew up, all around the cars and the junk heap. In the summer, his property line was like a green wall, and in the winter, when the grass died, and the snow weighed down all those brown weeds, you could see all the stuff, driers and old TV sets, like the bones of the summer thing. Gave me the creeps, you know?"

  "Kid with a good imagination, she could envision all sorts of stuff hiding in the grass. Snakes, rusty nails."

  "Isn’t that the truth? But you know what? It wasn’t the snakes that scared me. Not really. It was the cars. And the other stuff, just sitting out there. I always thought, what’s in those cars? And I’d picture stuff that the owners had left in there, you know? Just stupid stuff. Air fresheners, stuff like that. Napkins or straws in the glove compartments. Just stuff, you know? Stuff that had been theirs. It just didn’t seem right. It was like the end of the world or something." She laughed. "God, I can really talk, huh? You must think I’m an idiot."

  "Not hardly," Steve said.

  She huddled up against him. "Getting cold."

  They stood and stared at the crumbling structure. Steve held her close, careful not to brush the places were the crazy had cut her arm. His gut throbbed. It felt like he had been stabbed with a barbecue fork, which, of course, made some kind of sense since he had been. Shit. A barbecue fork.

  He offered her a cigarette. They smoked and stared, and he put his arm around her shoulders again. She was small and warm. He could feel the nub of her clavicle and the wiry muscle of her shoulder. He took a good drag off the cigarette, thought of packing a bowl, and decided to hold off. He watched a lone rag of cloud drift across the moon.

  "Did I scare you yet?" she asked. "All that stuff about the grass, you must think I’m crazy."

  "Only a little," he said, and grinned.

  "A little scared or a little crazy?"

  "I’ll leave that to mystery," Steve said.

  They laughed, and it was good and easy, and they were very close.

  Steve said, "Places like this, they don’t sit well." He pointed at the crumbling building with his cigarette. "Paint’s peeling, wood’s going soft, the walls are disappearing beneath all those vines. Entropy. The center does not hold. Time marches on. A place like this, seems like the living world should have the decency to clean it up or knock it down, something. As is, it’s a constant reminder that everything must go to dust. We never get younger, and they never put Humpty Dumpty together again."

  "That," she said, "is some depressing bullshit, Steve."

  They laughed. Then Steve said, "It’s not all bad. This guy I know, his name’s Greggers, he used to talk about this stuff all the time." He felt himself grinning. "Greggers is the biggest slob you could ever meet, right? I mean open trash bags on the floor, a free range Guinea pig, rotten food left out, awful. One day, we’re getting baked over at his place, and I say, ‘Hey, Greggers, why don’t you ever pick up your shit?’ And Greggers, he points at me and says ‘Entropy’. Then he goes off on this theory of his, how order is an illusion, always imperfect, becaus
e space-time, for us, was always forward rolling, you know? The second law of thermo-dynamics, I think, says, things will always move from order to disorder. So he starts quoting that and saying how you can always knock a baseball through a window, but the pieces will never fly up and reform into a window and pitch the ball back to you."

  "Be pretty scary if it did."

  "Hell, yeah. So Greggers—I wish you could see him. He has this long stringy hair and these big eyes like they’re going to pop out of his head—he starts going off about how we can never do anything without expending force. That takes energy, and we, ourselves, become disordered. So his point was, these real neat freaks…" He paused, smirking at her grin, sure she was going to remind him of his tea towels. "These neat freaks, they’re insane. They’re working daily against the laws of the universe. The stuff they set up, it’s only temporary; every spotless room’s an illusion. Sooner or later, it’s just going to get messy again. And every time they put it back, they have to use force, so they change themselves, on the level of energy potential or whatever. So his point was it was only smart to put away certain things, like milk back in a fridge, and to clean certain things, like some dish you needed right then, and the trick was to find some kind of hazy equilibrium and live there. Those neat freaks—and yeah, he was lumping me in with them because I was always giving him shit about his place—the way they were always cleaning and setting stuff up, and the way the stuff would always just keep on getting dusty and out of place, they were just like Sisyphus."

  "That’s the Greek guy, right? The one with the stone?"

  "Right. Doomed to spend eternity rolling this boulder up a hill. And every time he gets right up to the edge—"

  "He loses control and has to start over," she said. "That’s the way I used to feel at the diner, working a Friday lunch, when one of the girls calls in sick."

  "Right." He pitched his cigarette to the pavement, laughing. "Now I’m the crazy one, right? Rambling like that?"

  "Only a little," she said, and smiled. She squared with him, put her hands on his hips, and looked into his eyes. "You’re a neat guy, Steve. Most guys, most people, you just can’t talk to them. All my life, I’d have thoughts, I’d tell somebody, and they’d look at me like I was nuts."

  "Or spare the subtle approach and flat out tell you."

  She nodded. "Especially girlfriends. They’d look me dead in the eyes, pause, and say, ‘You’re really weird,’ then give a fake little laugh and change the subject. God, I hate that."

  "Understandable. Another smoke?"

  "No thanks. They’re bad for you, I hear."

  "That’s what they keep telling me." He grinned. "How about a bowl?"

  She shook her head. "This is nice, I mean, it’s quiet, but I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the crazy shit, do you?"

  "I doubt it." He started to pull his cigarettes from his shirt pocket

  She stopped him. "Wait." Then, taking his head in her hands, she drew him to her, and they kissed. It was slow and patient and good, and Steve could smell her, could taste her, and liked her very much, liked her nearness very much.

  When she stepped back, she said, "That was nice. You’re a good kisser."

  Steve went back to his cigarettes. Tucking one into the corner of his mouth, he said, "That’s another thing they keep telling me."

  She rolled her eyes. "I’ll bet. You got a girlfriend?"

  "Nope." He flipped open his lighter and got his smoke going. "You got a boyfriend?"

  "Not anymore."

  It was a weird answer, loaded. Steve let it go. "How about a last name? You got one of those?"

  "Baca."

  Steve laughed. "Vaca? As in Catalina Cow?"

  She smirked. "Very funny. It’s with a ‘B’."

  "All right, Miss Baca, you want to walk?"

  They started walking, again holding hands. It was a stupid thing to do, holding hands, considering the night’s events, but it felt good, and Steve was willing to take the risk. On various occasions, they hid as people ran past, once out in the street, and twice on the opposite sidewalk. Steve didn't know whether these passersby were crazies or normal people, and he wasn’t about to ask. At last, they reached Ackerman Avenue.

  Normally the main thoroughfare marking the westernmost edge of downtown College Heights, Ackerman had transformed into a river of death. Unlike the streets at the heart of town, Ackerman remained open. Crazies roared by in a car freckled with bullet holes. Steve watched as a mini-van cut across three lanes to flatten a kid trying to dodge his way west. The kid thudded, the van shuddered then continued, and Steve saw the struck pedestrian pinwheel briefly overhead before a pack of racing cars bumped over him.

  "And you want to cross this?" Cat said. "Hurt, no less?"

  "That’s right," Steve said.

  Just uphill, an overturned sedan hissed feebly, its dead driver hanging like a tongue from the yawning door.

  Steve eyed the road ahead. Four lanes, no real divider. A wide stretch of pavement. Still, the way he saw it, they had to push on. "Staying on this side of Ackerman is suicide. Every other asshole is drooling green. We just have to time it and sprint. That’s all."

  "Can you sprint, hurt like that?"

  "Sure. You?"

  "I guess. Shit. This is fucking crazy, Steve. Are you sure?"

  Behind them, blocks distant yet close enough to make them both jump, a gunshot roared. Steve raised his brows.

  "Okay," Cat said. "Shit." She cast a long glance at Ackerman. Four hundred yards downhill, a station wagon did smoking donuts in the middle of the road.

  Steve crouched down and grabbed a pair of egg-sized rocks off the ground. He tucked one in his pocket, shifted the field hockey stick to his left hand, cinched his pack, and took another look. An overturned Jeep lay near the median. A pickup truck flashed past, heading south. It zipped past the station wagon, which straightened and gave chase. At the moment, the road was empty.

  "Let’s go," he said, and they started across.

  When they were halfway to the overturned Jeep, headlights appeared. It was a car, and it barreled uphill, straight at them.

  Steve threw the rock. It bounced off the hood, the car jerked left, and for a fleeting second, Steve held out hope that the driver had lost control and was going to crash, but then the car turned sharply, and it was coming straight at him again.

  Steve sprinted toward the overturned Jeep, the roar of the oncoming car loud in his ears. Just as he surged behind the Jeep, the world exploded in thunder, light, and a shower of sparks. The Jeep spun away, clipping Steve and tossing him over the median. Steve jumped up and sprinted to where Cat stood on the other side of Ackerman.

  Behind him, an engine fought to turn over, growling but not catching. Cat coaxed him into the shadowy hedges, where Steve collapsed, hurting, and caught his breath. He’d made it. He was alive.

  A moment later, the car that had almost killed him—it was big and green and old, maybe a Gran Torino, Steve thought—drove past slowly, huffing steam as it headed uphill. As it passed the spot where Steve had disappeared into the hedges, the driver shouted, "Why don’t you try it again, huh? Why don’t you come out here and give it another try, you bastards?"

  Then he drove away up the hill.

  Steve and Cat looked at each other.

  Cat spoke first. "He…that driver…"

  Steve nodded. "He spoke."

  "But that means he’s not one of them."

  Again, Steve nodded. "Just some psychotic asshole killing people while he can get away with it."

  Cat shuddered. He put his arm around her. She squeezed against him. It hurt his gut, but he didn’t say anything. Then she said, "You’re leaking," and following her gaze, he saw that his backpack had torn. Even as he held it up weed filtered out onto the ground. How much product had he lost? Not much. Most of his stash, he’d left in Cat’s couch. But how much money?

  He unzipped the bag. "Shit."

  "What?" Cat asked.

  H
e showed her. The bag was all but empty. What remained, he stuffed into the pockets of his pants. At his feet sat a rumpled twenty. Behind him, bills fluttered in the breeze, strewn back along his wake like breadcrumbs leading into a dark forest. After a long stare, he said, "Let’s go," and turned westward. No way was he crossing that road again, not even for a couple grand. He could always make more money.

  They pushed on.

  The neighborhoods past Ackerman were mostly calm. On one quiet street, a fat grey cat blinked at them majestically from the hood of a parked car, and a little further along, they heard soft piano music tinkling from an adjacent avenue. Behind them, however, the sounds of chaos continued; and even here, west of Ackerman, they passed bodies, crashed cars, and a burning house. No firemen were in attendance.

  They needed rest. He and Cat were both hurting, he was losing blood, and Cat feared infection. They weighed their options, considered knocking on the door of a well-lit home, and decided against it. Lights or no lights, crazies could still answer the door, and, as Cat pointed out, more people on this end of town, the older residents, would have firearms. They didn’t want some stressed out home defender blasting them off the porch. So in the end they opted for a small, dark house on a narrow, dark street.

  They passed through a gap in the hedge and entered a rectangular yard hemmed in the same, tall shrubbery backing to a large brick home in good repair. Nothing sagged or peeled. No trash or bottles or paper plates littered the grass. No wading pools, no keg buckets. Brick and black shutters. Bright white rail atop a small balcony upon which sat two black metal chairs and a matching table, small and circular. No bottles on the table. No College Heights flags sagging from the rail. Obviously not a student rental.

  They crossed the yard, Steve noting the ornamental trees and, closer to the house, clumped flora, pruned and tied against impending autumn, black mulch couched heavy. Up stone steps with clear joints to the screened-in porch, solid, the screening taut, no sag, no holes, the skeletal studs all straight and sturdy looking, everything ship-shape. Steve rapped his knuckles on the screen door. It rattled in its jam. No reply issued from within. Upon the shadowy porch sat wicker furniture with striped cushions, all of it cheery and light, a low glass table, potted plants, hanging baskets.