Last Cull (Third Shift Book 2) Read online

  Last Cull

  A Third Shift Novel

  by

  D.S. Ritter

  D.S. Ritter Books

  Last Cull Copyright © 2018 D.S. Ritter

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ASIN: B07GHYY51W

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thank you for reading!

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “HQ to Seven-One. You hear me, Seven-One?”

  Sam stood at the entrance to the parking garage, staring at the clock on the bank tower down the street, willing it to go faster. At eleven o’clock on a Tuesday, downtown was quiet and she’d had nothing to do for the last thirty minutes.

  The night air was unseasonably warm and sweet, scented by the flowers planted around the structure. But, despite the fine weather, Sam found her mind wandering, as it often did, to darker times. It had only been a year since all the pipes in the city had blown, showering the streets in raw sewage. Ann Arbor was a hot mess for months with streets closed for repairs, orange barrels everywhere.

  “HQ to Seven-One. Sam?”

  Coming back from her thoughts, she picked up the radio. “Seven-One here, sorry, HQ.”

  “Finally. Can you get us a car count, please?”

  “Ten-Four.”

  Sam took the stairs down to the lowest level of the parking garage. When she reached the bottom, she waited until the motion detectors picked her up and the lights came on. It had been a while since she’d come to grips with her fears. She wasn’t over being jittery about the dark; the basement made her skin crawl, but she could convince herself there wasn’t anything lurking there. She could go get a car count without carrying a weapon though she jumped at any sudden sounds.

  They had repaired the cistern a few weeks after everything exploded. She checked it every now and again, if only to remind herself that the bottomless void was really gone. Tonight, she walked by, content just to get her count.

  Sam worked her way up the structure, half-level by half-level, counting the cars. It had taken almost the whole year for things to calm down. No more trans-dimensional monsters.

  They‘d never found Joe Huckabee, either. She still had nightmares about him sometimes; his glassy eyes disappearing into the darkness of the void.

  The air became cooler as she walked to the top of the structure. A refreshing breeze reminded her fall was well on its way, despite summer’s heat refusing to fade. She glanced up at the few, faded stars visible though the city’s light pollution. There was no chance they would align against her again, right?

  How many years would it take to feel normal? Was that even a possibility?

  There were seven cars parked on highest floor and she was about to call in her count when she realized one of them was occupied. She watched for a second and spotted two people inside, in various states of undress. The windows were fogging up.

  “Oh, come on,” she grumbled. It wasn’t like she didn’t understand. Sometimes people couldn’t wait to get home. Sometimes people liked the thrill of possibly getting caught. Dealing with these situations was her least favorite part of the job. Nobody appreciated getting interrupted, even if it meant being asked to leave by her and not, say, the police. Still, maybe she’d be able to walk away.

  “Seven-One to HQ.” She called in, raising her voice so they might hear.

  “Go ahead, Seven-One. Got a count for me?”

  “I just found a couple… going at it. How do you want me to handle this?”

  “Going at it?”

  “Having sex in their car.”

  There was an embarrassed radio silence. She assumed Marcus, the night manager, didn’t appreciate her bluntness, but she didn’t have all night.

  “Well, uh, you’re going to have to ask them to leave...”

  Sam groaned. “Ten-Four.”

  “Hey guys,” she said, thumping the trunk of their car, “you can’t really be doing that here, okay?”

  Deeply interested in each other, they didn’t seem to notice her. Sighing, she moved to the driver’s side door, trying not to see what was going on. “Look, I hate to be a jerk about this,” she said, tapping on the window, “but my manager says you have to get out of here.”

  After a moment, she swallowed her embarrassment and peeked into the car, curious if they were listening. The woman had her back to Sam, but she could sort of see the man. The little of his face not buried in her chestnut hair was attractive. He was pale with dark features, and Sam couldn’t help but notice his skin was perfect, like an airbrushed model’s. Like, she’d read about smooth, alabaster skin, but she’d never seen it before. It was almost mesmerizing.

  Without warning, he looked up and her eyes met his. Sam’s blood ran cold. His eyes were black, like a shark‘s, and they focused on her in a way that made her body scream, run. It only took a second to confirm her suspicions; he raised his head from lavishing the woman’s neck and shoulder with attention and blood seeped from his mouth.

  Sam just stared, too shocked to think.

  His face screwed up in an angry grimace and he pushed back into the passenger side door. It didn’t do a thing to stop him. The metal frame inside whined as it buckled outward, shattering the window. With a final, small effort, he popped the door off at the hinge and sent it flying about five feet. Sam jumped when it hit the concrete.

  “What the fuck are you?” she asked, the fact she might die in the next few seconds dawning on her.

  He hissed at her like an angry, wild animal, putting his sharp, blood-stained teeth on display. Then, he turned and took off for the edge of the roof, faster than she’d ever seen anyone move. When he reached the low wall, he vaulted over like it was track and field day. “Oh, shit,” she muttered, watching him fall out of view.

  She stood there for a moment, utterly stunned until she remembered the woman in the car.

  “Ma’am,” she said, looking inside. The woman had slumped over the passenger’s seat, her hair obscuring her face. “Ma’am, are you alive?” It was hard to discern if she was still breathing.

  Sam touched her shoulder with a quivering hand and she seemed to spring back to life, throwing herself into a sitting position like she’d been caught sleeping in church. “Where is he?” she asked, looking around groggily. “And… what happened to my car?” Blood was dripping from two punctures in her throat, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Just one sec, Ma’am,” said Sam, walking toward the edge of the roof. “Try not to move. I’m going to have them call you an ambulance.”

  “Okay, I guess...” she said, puzzled.

&nbs
p; “Seven-One to HQ. Seven-One to HQ.”

  “What’s going on, Seven-One?”

  “Call an ambulance. I’ve got a lady whose hurt and I think we had a jumper.”

  “I’m going to need you to call the office.”

  She put away the radio and took out her cell phone.

  Sam had never seen a dead body before. Her heart was racing as she slowly peered over the wall, into the alley below, dreading what she’d find there. But, there was no body. No guts, no blood, no sign of someone limping off with a pair of broken legs. She felt goosebumps raise all over her skin. “The fuck do we have now?” She muttered under her breath.

  “You got a jumper, Sam? I’m on the phone with the dispatcher.”

  “No, I thought I saw… I don’t know what I saw. I’ve got a woman bleeding in her car though. She’s on the roof, and she’s awake...”

  “So, no jumper?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I don’t see anybody.”

  “You sure? I need an answer, Sam!”

  “I’m– I seriously don’t know.”

  Staring over the edge, a cold sweat crept over her forehead. Something tickled the back of her neck, but when she whipped around, nothing was there.

  Chapter Two

  “Hey, Sam, wait up.”

  Half asleep, Sam paused her trudge toward HQ’s office in Seven-Six and turned around. Pete Stevenson was leaning out of the booth, beckoning. He’d been on third shift when she got hired, but had moved to days, preferring to keep his nights open. From what she knew, he ran with a younger crowd. “What’s up, Pete?”

  “Heard you had a jumper last night.”

  She shrugged. “Nope. I thought I did. Seems like it was an assault or something.”

  “Lady’s pressing charges?”

  “Didn’t seem like it.” In fact, the woman had been more interested in hooking back up with the guy than identifying him in a lineup. The EMT chalked her attitude up to being a pint or two low on blood and riding high on a wave of Jager Bombs.

  “Sounds like the one they found over on University. She was like, totally unconscious though.”

  “Fuck, seriously?”

  “Yeah man, be careful out there.”

  Sam nodded and waved. “You too, man.”

  Though the office windows, she spotted someone new standing at the manager’s desk with Tina Gerardi. He was a young guy, skinny, in his mid-twenties, and dressed in an Empire uniform. The guy nodded when she walked in, and she nodded back.

  Tina, promoted only a few months before, was working dispatch, and on the radio while the new guy was trying to hold a conversation with her at the same time.

  “I just moved in a couple of days ago,” he continued, “Ann Arbor seems like a nice little town. A bit like Ashville. That’s where I was for college.”

  Sam watched Tina nod politely and then fail to hide her exasperation. “Ten-four, Seven-Three. Please inform the guest that if they don’t have payment, we’d be happy to have them re-park, but we don’t let people out for free...”

  “They don’t seem too happy with that answer, HQ.” All three people in the office turned to the big monitors mounted on the wall. One of the screens showed a man in his car at the gate in Seven-Three, going absolutely ballistic.

  “No, they do not,” said the new guy, cheerfully.

  Tina couldn’t avoid rolling her eyes and turned back to her computer. “Let me know if you need help, Seven-Three, we can have a police officer over there in a few minutes.”

  “Ten-four, HQ.”

  Sighing, Tina turned to the pair gathered in front of the desk. “Sam Dejardin, meet Matt Cranston. He’s going to be one of our operations managers. Matt, Sam’s going to be training you today.”

  “How’s it going, Sam?” Matt had all the enthusiasm of a golden retriever, but none of the charm.

  Sam nodded, groaning inside. Nobody had said anything about training that day, or a new manager.

  New managers went though the same field training as all the other employees, so it was odd that none of the other trainers had said anything. Empire Parking was the biggest rumor mill Sam had ever worked in. If there was something juicy, it went around quick. A new manager should have been yesterday’s news.

  Matt quickly turned his attention back to Tina, and Sam wasn’t sure if this was because she was management, and therefore “on his team,” or because Tina was the most attractive woman in the room. She checked her text messages, something she wouldn’t be able to get away with for the rest of the shift.

  Carter E:

  You sure he really jumped?

  Sam D:

  I’m pretty sure

  Right over the wall like it was nothing

  Didn’t hesitate

  Franklin M:

  Thats fucked up

  Heather J:

  What we got vampires now?

  Vampires. Sam thought about that though she hadn’t said it out loud. After facing down a horde of monsters last year, she could believe vampires might be a thing too. At least she knew the best practices for vampires; garlic, stakes, crosses, silver and fire, depending on who you asked.

  Sam D:

  Maybe. Keep an eye out.

  Yolanda T:

  I’m gonna make a badass vampire hunter

  Like Wesley Snipes, but curvy

  Sam sighed. It was good to see the gang still up for a fight. If not for them, the city would probably be overrun with tentacled monsters. Though nobody would ever know, not even Empire Parking. It had only been thanks to luck and the utter chaos of a blackout and near-riot conditions that management had no idea what had really happened. If they had, Sam and her friends would probably have been fired. As it stood, they didn’t seem to mind their secret hero statuses.

  “So,” said Matt, “are we ready to go?”

  Checking their equipment, Sam nodded. “Yep, let’s go.”

  They took separate cars to Seven-One, and she was glad for the last few moments of solitude before eight hours of constant companionship.

  Carter waited for her when they arrived. “Hey,” he said, handing off his bank bag, “who’s the new guy?”

  “New manager,” said Sam quietly. “Did you hear anything?”

  He shrugged. “No, though I figured we might get a new OM. Sucks to be you.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Matt Cranston,” said Matt, walking up and shaking Carter’s hand.

  Carter gripped and grinned, making eye contact with Sam. She shrugged behind Matt’s back.

  When the bank bag had been counted, and the bathroom keys handed over, Carter got in his car and headed back to HQ, leaving Sam and Matt alone at the gates. The initial silence was uncomfortable.

  “You know, this setup is pretty different from the one in Ashville,” said Matt, waving to a customer pulling a ticket.

  “Oh? You worked parking in Ashville?”

  “I was a junior manager for Empire, pretty much straight out of college. But, we didn’t have the automated systems set up when I left, so...”

  “Okay,” said Sam, nodding. This explained a lot. If Matt was already a manger, he wouldn’t need booth training. “Well, before we get busy, let me show you what’s up with these machines.”

  She keyed into the back of the nearest one and showed him the machinery inside. “If a customer puts their credit card in the wrong way, it’s probably going to get stuck,” she said, crouching so he could see. “When that happens, you need to move this little bar up, and pull this tab...”

  A woman in a beige sedan drove into their lane, despite the other one being open with a functioning machine. Typical. Sam closed the machine and stepped forward, ready to serve.

  “Hi,” she said in her best customer service tone, “how are you today?”

  The woman stared at her. “I’m doing all right… how does this work?”

  “This machines take credit and debit cards only. I hope that’s okay,” said Sam, already prepared to apologize for c
ircumstances beyond her control.

  “I already paid,” said the customer, squinting.

  “That’s great,” said Sam. “If you just insert your ticket into the machine, the gate should go right up.”

  She fed the ticket into the machine; the gate went up as promised, and the woman drove away without a backward glance.

  “So, what was that?” asked Matt, watching her go.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You do that for every customer?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah. It keeps things moving.”

  “But, they’re supposed to do it themselves?”

  “Pretty much? But there are so many jams and stuff. Plus,” she motioned to the machine they’d been poking around in, “this one misreads cards and tickets all the time.”

  Matt frowned. “It shouldn’t be doing that. Have you told the office?”

  Sam nodded, keeping the smile she used for customers. “Yeah. And sometimes they send the IT guy, but mostly, when it gets adjusted, it just gets worse.”

  The trainee manager squinted at the machine, and Sam practically saw the wheels turning. “Maybe you guys should write down every time that happens, so we can keep track...”

  “Uh huh,” said Sam, her face a mask of amiability. She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less than note the hundreds of misreads she got a day.

  Matt opened his mouth to say something else, perhaps to fix another problem that was already under control, when his stomach growled, loud. Sam tried to act like she hadn’t noticed. “Just a little hungry,” he laughed. “I’ve been trying that new Liquifyier Diet? Have you heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s great! You get this powder, they call it a super supplement, and you put it in the Liquifier with one of their secret recipes. You make it into a delicious shake, and you have like, one of those a day. It builds muscle and burns fat, and you don’t even have to exercise! Isn’t that amazing?”

  “It really is,” said Sam, not believing a word. “What’s in the super supplement?”