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  PRAISE FOR BREW

  "If you're going to chow down on people, you need to wash it down with something delicious. BREW is a deeply satisfying treat of a novel. Scary as hell, deep as the pit, and wickedly enjoyable."

  -Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author

  of FLESH & BONE and ASSASSIN'S CODE

  "BREW is a keg of dark fun and Braddock pops the thing like a shook-up bottle of Bud. It's got brains and it's got heart. The late Richard Laymon would have loved this one. Me? I gulped it right down, with no hangover in the morning."

  -Jack Ketchum, four-time Stoker Award winner and

  author of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and THE LOST

  "Bill Braddock's BREW is a heady mix of high-octane horror, razor-sharp characterization, and full-throttle action. Flesh-eating mayhem has never been so intoxicating!"

  -Tim Waggoner, author of LIKE DEATH

  and THE HARMONY SOCIETY.

  “BREW hits you like an all-night bender, a drunken and horny joyride through College Town, America. And tonight, this college town also happens to be soaked in splatter. So sit back, pop open a cold one, and enjoy the grue of BREW.”

  -Jason Bovberg, author of UNDER THE

  SKIN and THE NAKED DAME

  Bill Braddock

  A PERMUTED PRESS book

  published by arrangement with the author

  published at Smashwords

  ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-148-5

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-149-2

  BREW copyright © 2013

  by Bill Braddock.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Roy Migabon,

  and edited by Travis Franklin.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  To my beautiful wife, Christina, with love and thanks.

  “It’s not easy being green.”

  – Kermit the Frog

  “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

  – Benjamin Franklin

  Part One: Sunday, November 12th

  Doc woke in a strange house, covered in blood.

  Awareness came to him piecemeal: crying in an adjacent room; the bad smells of shit and blood, both smells he knew professionally; the sight of lavender walls, rock and roll posters, and an oversized blue ribbon, its big sunflower head emblazoned "NUMBER ONE KID!" in gold caps, the whole scene blacked with swaths of dark blood.

  A clock lying upside down on the floor read 10:22. The room’s shades were drawn, their edges seamed in sunlight.

  His last clear memory was Saturday night, around 11:00, watching boxing on HBO…not a very good fight, heavyweights. He remembered knocking back a few beers while Janice slept on the adjacent loveseat, looking happy and warm beneath the afghan she’d knitted the previous winter.

  Time had passed. Things had happened. Bad things.

  He was hurt.

  He inventoried the trauma: a dislocated shoulder, a broken nose, separated knuckles, a missing fingernail. His testicles felt like they had been slammed in a car door, and a throbbing pain in his upper left thigh, paired with warm wetness there, told him he had suffered a puncture wound. His head hurt. His mouth was dry and coppery with clotted blood.

  I’ve been in shock, he thought. I’ve suffered horrible injuries, and I’ve been in shock, but now I’m back again, and I need help.

  Doc struggled to his elbows. The room spun, and he vomited. Long, retching heaves brought burning pain—broken ribs, too?—and left him spitting and sweating over a reeking puddle studded with chunks of half-digested meat and…cloth?

  Shreds of cloth in his vomit?

  He shook his head. His brain felt like a discarded squeeze toy.

  Doc managed, with much effort, to stand. The room spun again, then slowed to a wobble. He leaned against an unmade bed with a lacy pink canopy. At his feet lay a toppled nightstand, one corner squashing the fuzzy head of a white teddy bear that stared at the opposite wall, where hung posters familiar to Doc, who had two teenage daughters of his own. Taylor Swift. Justin Bieber. Selena Gomez. Beneath them sat a vanity cluttered in perfume bottles and stuffed animals.

  Doc stood before the vanity mirror. I look like a cougar mauled me. He wore only sneakers and striped boxer shorts stained in blood. The sneakers, a pair of shiny white Nikes leopard-spotted with blood, he’d never before seen. Cuts and scratches, some looking very much like the work of human nails, crosshatched his body. At the center of his upper thigh yawned a serious puncture wound, and a split in his scalp had leaked blood down his face to his mouth, which oozed an emerald green slime.

  What the hell had he gotten into?

  "Help," the voice down the hall cried. "Help me."

  Doc’s professional instincts kicked him in the ass. He staggered out of the room.

  "Help," the voice called again.

  Doc followed the pleas to the end of the hall.

  An injured woman lay weeping on the floor, the room around her trashed, stuff everywhere, things smashed to pieces, blood on the walls here, too. She looked a natural addition to the scene: eyes swollen shut, teeth missing, nose askew, a fan of blood dried beneath it. With one arm she hugged her abdomen, from which a black-dark delta of blood had drained down her shirt and pants; the other arm jutted away, bent in too many places, as if it had three or four elbows rather than one. When she saw Doc, her eyes flared and her screaming peaked.

  "I can help you," Doc said. "I’m a doctor."

  She shook her head and tried to scoot backward. It was an awkward attempt; her legs didn’t seem to be working, and she wouldn’t remove her arm from her stomach. The shattered arm did her no good at all.

  "Settle down," Doc said. "We’re all right, now."

  But as he advanced, she screamed all the louder.

  Then Doc recognized her. She was the jogger from the next cul-de-sac over in his development; the one he admired each morning as she ran past, regardless of the weather, her long legs pumping, her ponytail bobbing, the best-looking woman in the neighborhood, though she didn’t look so good now, coming apart, covered in blood, screaming.

  Doc stood, staring, as dark thoughts rose like swamp gasses from the brackish backwaters of his mind. His eyes focused on her abdomen, just below the floating rib, where several inches of plump, externally herniated intestine shone in the light.

  He licked his lips. What would it taste like?

  Doc staggered backward with a shudder. He shook his head. What the hell was going on here?

  "Please go away!" the woman yelled.

  Doc tried to speak, but found no words and hurried into the hall, through a living room, through a kitchen—all of it looking tornado-struck—forcing his gaze straight ahead, noticing but not wanting to notice the spill of blond hair just visible from behind the puffy recliner. Whatever you do, he warned himself, do not look behind that chair.

  Obeying this command, he limped from the house into a world blindingly bright. Flurries fluttered out of a hard blue sky. Doc stood and squinted. Not flurries, but ash. Ash swirled everywhere, as if a nearby volcano had blown its top…but central Pennsylvania wasn’t exactly rimmed in volcanoes.

  Gunshots snapped Doc into awareness. He couldn’t determine the exact location of the shooting; from the looks of the neighborhood, it could have come from anywhere. Wisps of smoke rose from all directions, and what had been the Tudor on the corner of Cherry and Kimberwick smoldered now, reduced to a wide, black circle. In the near distance, someone s
hrieked. Off in another direction, more gunshots sounded.

  Filled with dread, Doc staggered homeward through drifting ash. Every block unfolded as further epilogue to some untold disaster. Broken windows, burned houses, cars smashed in the street. Doc’s injuries screamed, and his muscles cramped, but he bore on, needing to find Janice and the kids safe at home.

  Halfway down Maple Street lay a man in a purple and green jacket. Doc lurched to a stop but saw at a glance there was no helping this guy; half his head spread across the pavement like a bug smashed across a windshield. The remainder of his head held an improbable smile, as if all this was just one big joke, a pisser of epic proportions.

  Just what the hell was going on?

  A roar sounded, and a military Hummer rounded the corner. Doc stared as the transport drew to the curb and a soldier wearing a gas mask and hazmat gear rose from the top hatch and pointed at him with a machine gun.

  The soldier shouted, gesturing with the rifle.

  Doc blinked.

  Then the words, muffled by the gas mask, unzipped in Doc’s brain: "On the ground!"

  Staring through dark, flat disks, the soldier repeated his command.

  Doc dropped to his knees then slumped forward on the ashy pavement, his face coming to rest mere inches from an empty green bottle. Cougar Beer, the label read over an image of College Heights’ mascot panther, The World’s #1 Microbrew!

  And watching a single flake of ash settle gently onto the beer bottle, Doc conducted yet another futile search of his disrupted memory.

  What the hell had happened Saturday night?

  Part Two: Saturday, November 11th

  Steve opened the arcade door and looked out on the empty streets of College Heights. One more rainy Saturday, half the world sleeping off hangovers, the other half up at the stadium.

  Game Day. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

  Rain pattered on the awning overhead. The cool air smelled of worms and, faintly, cheese steaks. Once the rain stopped, that worm smell would shrink away, and the smell of grease, meat, and onions would hang upon the world heavy as smog. Then the beer smell would return. It always did.

  Good old Cougar Piss, the world’s most successful micro-brew. Tonight, drunks would pack the streets, thirty-five thousand kids and twice as many football fans, everyone staggering around, roaring the College Heights fight song, slopping beer out of plastic cups, breathing beer reek, puking beer in stairwells. The whole town was stained with beer, and after the rain, the sidewalks and brick storefronts would start sweating Cougar Piss all over again.

  Steve closed the door and returned to his elevated kiosk at the center of the arcade. He’d been hanging around College Heights for a long time. Too long. So long, in fact, that the young college girls he still netted from time to time—being the town’s most reliable drug connection did have its fringe benefits, after all—were actually starting to seem young, young enough, in fact, that he was almost considering laying off the whole score-for-a-score game.

  Almost. But not quite.

  There was a lot of almost-but-not-quite in Steve’s life: his unfinished degree, his failed relationships, his myriad plans, none of them realized. Together, these failures constituted a tar pit that threatened to envelop and fossilize him like some vestigial dinosaur too slothful to evolve.

  This town, this life, it was all getting old. Yet here he was. Another year, another fall semester. He couldn’t spend one more beer-stinking spring watching the arcade awnings drip gray rain onto dwindling snow piles spotted in cinders and grime.

  He plopped into his chair and sparked the smokeless one-hitter he always kept in his pocket. That took the edge off a little. Then he lit a cigarette, put on latex gloves, and started cutting sheets of acid into individual hits. A minute later, he looked up as a dozen ratty-ass high school kids came in and bunched up by the pool tables. Then Wolfe came in, looking like shit, as usual, and started playing pinball. Then Greggers called. Steve kept working, snipping hits and smoking cigarettes, the phone pinched between his shoulder and his chin. Colorado was beautiful, Greggers told him. Life was beautiful. How was College Heights?

  Steve took a drag, stuck the cigarette back in the tray, and said, "Come Christmas, I’m getting out of here."

  The high school kids horsed around, showing off for some girls they had with them. They’d keep this shit up a while, smoke and shoot pool and chase each other around, until one of them built up the courage to come ask Steve about scoring some weed. The girls were from the college, freshmen going local with townie skaters. One of them was pretty hot.

  Greggers asked where he was moving.

  "Vermont? Or Ocean City, maybe," Steve said. "Yeah, permanent. Well, semi, anyway." He laughed, ashed his cigarette, and noticed the hot girl eyeing him from the table. One of the skaters must have told her, then. That’s Steve. He’s the guy that can get it for you.

  "What about Colorado?" Greggers said. "Good air, good climbing, good people."

  Steve laughed again, said he didn’t think so. "I’d get lost out there, man. Those mountains, all that sky. I’m an East Coast boy." He snipped another row of tabs into the foil-lined baggie.

  Greggers asked if he’d talked to Jessie lately.

  Steve said, "She went green on me, man, totally green. One day, we’re hanging out at the steakhouse, eating burgers, next day, she’s on soy and sprouts."

  Greggers said he just got a call from her.

  "Oh yeah?" Steve said, not really giving a shit. Jessie was fun for a while—what a rack—but that had been…shit…six months ago? Eight? When a relationship stopped being fun, Steve called it quits and drove on, and at that moment, the girl had no more emotional impact on his life than a mayfly on a windshield.

  This is how he felt about Jessie, nodding and going Oh yeah? and killing some time, watching the hot girl bend over the pool table for a shot. But then Greggers said something interesting.

  "About that green stuff, I think she’s gone militant. I mean, like eco-militant, you know?"

  "For real? Like Greenpeace?"

  "More like Greenwar, man. She’s pretty fired up. Ready to burn a few factories, I think."

  "Didn’t know she had it in her." His focus slid back to the acid, which was white and fluffy, triple-dipped Kodak, for clarity of vision. Nice stuff, he’d heard. Sold like cold beer in the desert.

  Greggers said, "She was talking some crazy shit on the phone just now. Says something big’s going down…today."

  "Like what?"

  "Don’t know. Says I’ll hear about it out here, though."

  "Bullshit. She’s yanking your wang, bro."

  "I don’t know. She might be in trouble. I could tell she wanted to tell me all about it, but then, I don’t know…she just shied off. And you know Jessie. You can’t push her."

  Steve knew, all right. After three months joined at the hip, he knew.

  Greggers said, "I was thinking maybe you could give her a call, though. Like now. Whatever this is, it’s going on soon. Like right away. She mentioned the football game, started talking about the bars, then she just clipped off. I don’t know, man. It sounds crazy, but I think she might be caught up in some kind of terrorism bullshit."

  Steve laughed. "Right…Jessie, a terrorist?" He watched the little hottie lean over the table again. Unfortunately, she had a flannel shirt cinched around her waist, blocking out the prime real estate.

  "Humor me," Greggers said. "Give her a call."

  "I don’t know. We didn’t exactly end on the best of terms." Actually, they’d ended on pretty much the worst of terms, his shit dangling in trees and on the power lines and laying all over the street outside her dorm. He could still see her, framed in the window upstairs, flipping him the bird and spitting at him. Drunk off his ass, he’d laughed, dodging the spit and trying to explain the girl she found him feeling up in the comic book shop. Okay, so that had been a little weird. "I really don’t think it would be a very good idea."

  "Fuck it, man. G
ive her a call. She’s dropping hints, like CNN, saying she hopes she doesn’t end up in prison. I asked her are people getting hurt, she said no, but..."

  "Ah, she gets all wound up. They’ll probably run onto the field naked or shit-bomb Hummers or something."

  "I don’t think so. Look, I gotta go. But listen, I’m asking you, as a favor, give her a call. You got her number?"

  "I think so. Hold on." He opened his little notebook, flipped a few pages and found her name printed in his small, neat handwriting. A couple of numbers were crossed out. He read the clean one into the phone.

  "Yeah, that’s it," Greggers said. "Look, man, call her. You owe me fifty bucks, you know."

  "Fifty bucks?" Steve said, letting a grin seep into his voice.

  "I’ll make it thirty if you call her."

  "Wow. You’re a hell of a guy, Greggers. Colorado’s turning you into a regular people person."

  "No, it’s not. Call her. You’ll see."

  "All right, all right. I’ll try to fit it in."

  They hung up, and Steve went back to the paper, folding each hit into a tiny square of aluminum foil. He checked his voice mail. The cute Asian chick he’d met in the park had called, and Joel the frat pimp had left two messages.

  The hot girl leaned against the wall, smoking a cigarette. Steve took a good look and saw she was more than a little hot. Shiny black hair, bright smile, bright eyes. She smiled a lot and laughed some but not too much—he hated all that loud-ass, look-at-me laughter that came out of so many girls. It always reminded him of barking. Not this girl, though. She was cool. You could see it. A little punk, a little hip hop, and a little something else, something like class or breeding, or maybe just brains. Trashy demure. What was she? Latin? Middle Eastern? Indian?