Dawn of the Brain-Dead Read online

  Dawn of the Brain-Dead Copyright © 2019 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: B07VXRNDVN

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Also Available from D.S. Ritter

  About the Author

  Sam shivered, standing alone in the semi-dark of nighttime downtown Ann Arbor. The streets were quiet and empty, almost lonely. People were scarce, though it wasn’t because of the forces of darkness, but the near-freezing weather. March in Michigan was a fickle thing; Sometimes it was spring and sometimes it was still winter. That morning, it looked like it would be warm, but an hour after she’d gotten to work, an icy wind picked up and the temperature dropped.

  “Looks like it’s still goddamn winter.” As though muttering to herself would get Sam any warmer. Her damn parka was at home, lying in a pile of laundry fresh from the drier.

  Teeth chattering, she dug her hands deeper into the pockets of her light work jacket and bounced on the balls of her feet, her thin tennis shoes providing little protection from the frigid concrete of the parking structure. Traffic had been slow so far, but the shift was still hell on earth. The clock on the bank down the street told her there were another three hours to go.

  The cameras overhead would catch Sam pulling out her phone, but she didn’t care. Her thoughts were more about whether she could deal with discomfort making her evening a never-ending slog, or if she’d cave and ask for help.

  Sam D:

  Dude, weather sucks balls tonight

  The Boyfriend:

  Want me to bring ur parka?

  Damn, she thought, what did I ever do to deserve him?

  “Well, I did save the world. Twice.” Her thumbs hesitated over the keys. Did she want him to waste twenty minutes driving out? Plus, it was late, and cold, and she only had three hours left…

  Sam D:

  No, it’s cool. Thanks

  It felt good to decline the favor, even though she suspected she’d regret it later.

  The Boyfriend:

  Ok Hon love u

  Sam D:

  Love you too

  A black sedan drove up to the gate.

  Sam shoved the phone in her pocket as the man inside felt around, squinting at the door, and pressed a button. Click. The doors locked with a metallic clunk. Click-click. They unlocked. Click. They locked again.

  The driver appeared half-asleep as he mashed whatever buttons he could find until his window rolled down two inches. Pleased with himself, he turned to her and waited. Oh, dear God.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Uhhhh…” he groaned, looking around himself again.

  “Do you—do you have your ticket?” Sam hoped not. There was no way this guy should get on the road, but it was against the rules to say that. Empire Parking didn’t consider drunk drivers a company concern.

  He started patting himself down and Sam tried to come up with a subtle way to call management. Customers leaving a bit tipsy was one thing, but this man was an accident waiting to happen. As she watched, he seemed to forget what he was doing and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes.

  “Excuse me? Sir? Sir!”

  The customer jolted awake and looked at her in glazed confusion. Click-click. He hit the wrong button again, then rolled up the window and fell asleep.

  “Sir! Hello?” Sam knocked, but the guy was totally out. She picked up the radio.

  “Seven-One to HQ.”

  “HQ,. go ahead Seven-One.” Marcus, the night manager, sounded like he was in a good mood for once. That wouldn’t last.

  “HQ, I have a guy asleep in my southern lane.”

  “You said asleep, Seven-One?”

  “Yeah man, asleep. Like, he’s in his car, engine’s on, and I can’t wake him up.”

  “In your lane?”

  “In my lane.”

  “Well, um, okay. I’ll send a manager out there to check it out.”

  “Ten-Four, but I don’t think a manager will do it. Guy seems massively drunk… like, I mean, he’s asleep in my lane.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll call A2PD too. Just hang on a minute.”

  “Ten-Four.”

  With nothing else to do, Sam stood at her post, both hoping and dreading that the guy would wake up, but he was blacked out, even drooling.

  Another handful cars rolled up together, some going to the other lane, but of course, one got in line behind the unconscious customer. Sam waved the car away, but the driver sat there, oblivious. More cars began to fill both lines. The comedy club, situated a street over, had gotten out.

  The line to exit grew and grew, going up to the third floor as the clock ticked down down to someone blowing up and then the honking would start. Not fun in a concrete box.

  A couple of years ago, this kind of thing might have made Sam panic. Now, she only felt frustration.

  She limped things along on one lane, but the customer behind the drunk hadn’t managed to get over and boy, was he getting pissed.

  A police car and an ambulance, neither with their lights on, pulled up next to the structure. Sam sighed with relief. An officer approached, and Matt Cranston rounded the corner. He waved, like this was just another day and not a total cluster. “Hey Sam. What’s up?”

  A huge fucking traffic jam. “That guy is asleep, or fainted or something.” Sam pointed to the offending car.

  “Did you try waking him up?”

  “I knocked on his window. Guy is out cold. Even if I did, do you think he should drive anywhere?”

  The customer behind laid on his horn, long and obnoxious, deafening everyone. The cop gave him a look that said, Don’t make me come over there and then waved waved his partner over, along with an EMT. “Guy’s asleep with his foot on the brake. Car’s in drive.”

  “Sir,” said the EMT, knocking on the driver’s window. “I need you to turn off your car. Sir!”

  “I think his door’s unlocked,” said Sam, standing back to watch the spectacle. Everyone in line was doing the same. To be fair, watching two police officers and an EMT struggle to both wake the man up and shift the sedan into park was something.

  During the struggle, he became conscious again and didn’t seem all that bothered by the police easing him out of his car. Somehow, he stood up, and the men escorted him over to the ambulance.

  Matt got on his phone and asked Marcus to call for a tow truck for the man’s abandoned vehicle, and Sam stepped toward the other exit with a mind to clear all the waiting customers out, when she heard a retching noise. br />
  She looked over just in time to see the drunken man throw up all over the officer holding him up. It was disgusting, but what got her heart pumping and her nausea up was the color. The man’s vomit was black.

  Her skin crawled as she returned to work. What the hell had he been drinking?

  Ten months after she’d closed the deal, Sam still experienced a little thrill pulling up to her house. The old apartment had held more frightening memories than happy ones. How many nights had she woken up in a panic, thinking there was a vampire outside her second-story window? Or that a man possessed by something horrific and ancient might break down her door?

  The lotto ticket John and Smith had left her paid out enough to buy a little starter house in Ypsilanti and pay off a used car that wasn’t an absolute piece of shit, so at least she didn’t have monthly payments to worry about. It was a small two-bedroom in a quiet neighborhood and well, it was home now.

  Sam stepped over the leftover winter slush at the edge of the driveway and let herself in through the kitchen door, taking her damp shoes off before going too far.

  It smelled like popcorn. Nice to see Shane is eating healthy… She found him asleep on their cheap Ikea couch with the TV on, the bowl of popcorn about to fall to the floor. He was thin, getting close to gaunt, and tall enough that his legs were hanging over the arm of the couch comfortably. His auburn hair was growing long. It brushed his nose now. Bending over him, she planted a kiss on his forehead. Shane’s eyes opened, and she snatched the bowl before he could knock it over. “I told you, you don’t have to wait for me,” she said, popping some pieces into her mouth.

  “I know,” he said, sitting up with a stretch and a yawn. “But, I wanted to see you.”

  Sam’s cheeks warmed. They’d started saying “I love you,” three months ago. He’d said it first, and, it had felt strange saying it back. Sam had never been in a relationship that got to that point before, but the words flowed naturally now. The warm feelings she received from him went a long way to heal.

  “Go to bed. Work’ll be hell if you don’t.”

  He smiled at her, the TV’s glow illuminating his teeth. “Work’ll be hell no matter what I do. You coming?”

  “In a minute.” She ruffled his hair with affection. Shane got up, kissed the top of her head and padded toward the bedroom, not bothering to turn on the lights.

  She watched him go, full of warmth bubbling up from inside. It was strange how feeling good about him encouraged feeling good about herself.

  An ad for EVILCorp came on the TV, loud and obtrusive, drawing her out of herself. Sam turned it off, took the popcorn to the kitchen and began looking around for sandwich bags. No point in letting the leftovers get stale. As she was rooting through the pantry, her phone pinged a text alert.

  Heather J:

  Wait so he threw up on the cop?

  Sam D:

  All over him.

  It was totally black.

  Yolanda T:

  That. Is. Nasty.

  She heard Shane moving in the bedroom. “You getting to bed soon, Hon?”

  “I’ll be right there,” she said, scooping the popcorn into the bag and sealing it. For a moment, she thought about leveling with him about what she’d seen that night, but decided against it. They’d been together for eight months, and he practically lived at her house. They shared a lot, but not that. Not yet.

  Sam took a breath and wrote the text she’d hoped she wouldn’t ever have to send again.

  Sam D:

  You think Ann Arbor’s getting weird again?

  “Ready for Hash Bash tomorrow?”

  Grandma Death—Vivian Burke had her blood-shot eyes set on the pack of cigarettes wedged under the edge of the cash register, but was talking to Sam. The buzzing florescent light over their heads washed her pale skin out and gave it a tinge of green. The old woman’s thinning hair feathered away from her head, creating a dingy halo.

  “I guess,” said Sam, rocking on her heels. She stood in the doorway of the tiny booth at Seven-Nine, an open, street-level lot. The change-relief bag tucked under her arm was getting heavier every minute. “You need quarters? Or a break?”

  “I’ll need something later,” croaked the old lady, her thin fingers caressing a cheap Bic lighter laying next to the half-empty pack. “Where’s Steven?”

  “He called off, so they’re having me fill in for an hour until they can get someone else...”

  “Friday night shuffle, huh?”

  Sam shrugged. It wasn't that she didn’t like Vivian, she didn’t even know her. But the woman smelled weird, beyond average old-person weird. Whatever ointments or medications she was using gave off a chemical scent that began to turn Sam’s stomach after a few minutes.

  “When I started here eighteen years ago, they would have fired him. Just. Like. That. That was before the union, you know.”

  “You’ve been working parking for eighteen years?”

  “Yeah. My name’s at the top of the seniority list, ain’t it?”

  Sam shrugged. “I’m so close to the bottom, I never looked. Well, getting into the middle now.”

  “Good for you. Maybe in another ten years, you’ll be at number two.”

  “God, I hope not. You think you’ll still be coming to work here in a decade?”

  “Not going to quit, unless I have to.”

  Sam peered at the elderly lady and couldn’t help imagining a manager finding her dead at the register some day. “You working on Hash Bash?”

  “I tried to get it off, but they wouldn’t let me have it. All hands on deck tomorrow.

  “I hate it. All these damn kids walking around smelling like a hippie flop house with their weird hair and all those holes in their faces...” Vivian sighed. “It didn’t use to be like that in my day. My husband, he always wore a bow tie, even if he wasn’t working... that was class. Kids today though...”

  Not interested in a lecture about the new generation, Sam whipped out her phone and glanced at the clock. “Oh, crap, I better move... see you later, Vivian.”

  “See you.” Grandma Death slid the booth door closed and engaged the lock with finality.

  The cold wind nipped at Sam’s face as she picked her way through the dirty slush to her car. She slid inside and sighed with relief. Whatever Vivian might tell their employer, something about the old lady made Sam suspect she had to be sick. Her eyes seemed almost sticky and the pallor of her skin screamed poor health. And that was Vivian’s business and hers alone, but dealing with her put Sam in the mindset of the morgues she saw on crime TV shows. Grandma Death.

  Putting the notion from her mind, Sam reversed out of the space and headed toward the exit. It was almost time to change over to her usual structure.

  If Sam asked anyone if they were excited about Hash Bash, she would have gotten the same reply; hell no. Nobody who worked in parking looked forward to “events,” the worst being the annual art fair, which closed down five or six downtown streets, flooded the city with tourists who couldn’t give less of a damn and lasted a week. Hash Bash was a close runner-up. It only went on for a day, thank God, but what it lacked in length it made up for in the increase of obnoxious customers. Drunk college students were one thing, but drunken high marijuana enthusiasts from all over the state was a whole different level of awful. And this year promised to be even worse than usual; The Spring Game, a pre-season football match, was happening the same Saturday. It would be a huge pile of suck.

  Sam stood at the gate at Seven-One, wishing parking employees were paid by volume sometimes, when her phone chirped. There was no traffic, what with everyone out to dinner, or pre-gaming, so she checked her messages. Some nights Shane got lonely, sending words of encouragement or sharing something funny he found on the internet. But, this was not a text from Shane:

  [Unknown Number]:

  Watch your back.

  Sam stared at the message, dumb-founded. After more than a year, John was back. But what was this? A threat? A warning?
Either way, it pissed her off.

  Sam D:

  What the absolute fuck?

  “Hey, Sugar, you mind?” Sam jumped a foot in the air, juggling her phone. A customer had pulled up to the gate, but she hadn’t heard him. The car was a silver Tesla, a new model. Sam liked the idea of electric cars and what they could do for the planet, hated them at work. Silent and deadly.

  A man was leaning out the driver’s side window, a ticket perched between two manicured fingers. His hair was dark and slicked back on his head and he wore sunglasses, although it was already dark. His eyebrow arched over the black pool of his shades and something about his mouth struck Sam as predatory, like he might call himself a shark in the mirror before going out. He exuded confidence like his pores exuded European cologne.

  “Having a good night?” asked Sam, plucking the ticket from his grasp.

  The man grinned, showing his white teeth. “My night’s just starting.”

  The machine whirred and Sam relaxed. The guy had prepaid, and in a second the gate would go up. He was putting her on edge, like a hammer that could come down for any reason. A well-designed, expensive hammer, but a hammer nonetheless. “Happy for you.”

  As soon as the way was clear, the car took off, and Sam was not sorry to see it go. The license plate read EVCORP.

  Free for the moment, Sam fished the phone out of her pocket to tell Yolanda about the weird text from John.

  The scream of metal on cement practically made her drop her phone a second time. She shoved it back in her coat and whirled toward the din. The horrible sound was coming from the ramp up from the basement. Hand on her radio, she watched as a sedan pulled up too fast and came to a stop just before it ran into the curb. Sam could see a young woman inside, leaning back against the headrest, ready to doze off or black out.

  “Excuse me,” she said, circling. Sam didn’t want to be anywhere near the front of the vehicle, in case the lady pressed the accelerator. “Ma’am?”