The Gym

by B. P. Kasik

  The personal trainer leaned down and got in his face. His breath reeked of grease and meat and whey protein. “Push that bar up. I’m not gonna help you.”

  Andy panicked. He sucked in as much oxygen as possible. The bar was on the verge of crushing his chest. It was a dead weight pressing down on him. He calculated that he could let it fall to the side and protect himself.

  “I see you thinking about dropping that!” shouted the trainer. “Don’t you dare! You push that weight up now! PRESS THAT BENCH!”

  Andy scrunched his face up and drained his resources, concentrating entirely on his chest and triceps. He pushed. It felt like his wrists were about to bend backwards. But he kept pushing.

  The bar came up. And up. It was halfway there.

  Andy felt triumph flowing through his veins.

  Every millimeter the bar went up increased his confidence. His muscles felt like they were ballooning under his skin. Sweat poured through every pore.

  And after a seeming eternity...the bar was up.

  Andy let loose a triumphant, animalistic grunt. He met the personal trainer’s eyes with a huge grin.

  The personal trainer smiled back at him. And then grabbed the bar and smashed it down on Andy’s neck. His spine was instantly shattered and the light went out of his eyes.

  The personal trainer picked the bar back up, effortlessly, and racked it.

  He grabbed one of Andy’s feet and carried his corpse behind him, laughing and skipping as he went.

  He went around the workout area telling people there would be consequences if they didn’t make enough progress. They all nodded and promised they’d try harder when they noticed the corpse he was dragging around.

  It was good to have motivation.

  Chapter 28

  Ben opened his door to see Jerry looking even sweatier and more disheveled than before.

  Jerry looked up at him. “Sorry for what I’m about to do.”

  “What?”

  And Jerry brought his fists up and around and bashed Ben on the sides of the head.

  Ben screamed and fell backward.

  Jerry walked in and closed the door behind him. He squat down next to Ben.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, except for the pain in my head.”

  “How do you feel about the Gym?”

  “What? Why are you asking me that?”

  “Ben—does the Gym bother you?”

  “No! Stop asking dumb questions.”

  Jerry pinched his lips. “I think I missed,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Again—I apologize in advance.” And he swung his fists up and around, hitting Ben a little lower on the skull, directly above his ears.

  “Ow!” Ben crab-walked backwards. “Dude, what the hell’s wrong with you? Why are you attacking me?”

  Jerry stayed put.

  “How do you feel about the Gym now?”

  “What? I—” A strange look came over Ben’s face. “That place is nuts.”

  Jerry smiled. “Okay. Great.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I’ll explain.”

  Jerry sat on the balcony with Ben. They nursed iced teas and discussed plans. They had no plans.

  Ben shook his head. “I can’t believe I was okay with all that stuff. I feel like my mind was stolen.”

  “It was. But that’s over.”

  “As long as we bash each other in the head every day.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So that guy who punched you is gonna take down the Gym tonight...and you want to join him? Why? How are you going to help him?”

  Jerry frowned. “I guess I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Did you even get his name?”

  “No. I...was just worried about him going in alone.”

  “I don’t see how you can fight that place. We can’t punch everybody. And even if we did—the personal trainer is a monster. He’d take us out immediately.”

  “How do you even know he’ll be there?”

  “C’mon, of course he will.”

  “I know, I know.” Jerry clinked the ice around in his glass. “That guy said a lot of weird stuff to me.”

  “He says weird stuff to everybody. At least he didn’t hurt you.”

  “I feel like he can’t. There’s something between us. He kept saying things about me threatening his job.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about. But we need to stay away from that place.”

  “What do you want to do? Run? Leave the city?”

  “No, I’m just saying we need to be careful.”

  “Careful? They’re hurting people! They destroyed my home!” He lowered his voice. “And they’ve got my ex-wife in their clutches.”

  “Are you gonna bash her in the temporal lobes?”

  “I don’t know. As an employee there, it might be dangerous for her to clearly see what they’re doing.”

  “Good point. Maybe we can use your idea back in the car—see about getting my wife to get us an audience with someone on the City Council.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “But, Jerry…” Ben laughed. “We can’t just go in there with wild allegations. We need proof. We need to show some pattern behavior.”

  “You think I didn’t get on my phone and Google the place on my way over?”

  “Were you looking at your phone as you walked here?”

  “Yes.”

  Ben shook his head. “Very unsafe. Especially for an injured person who needs to watch his step.”

  “Ha-ha. But seriously, I found nothing on the place.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing. I mean, if you search for ‘the Gym,’ that gives you millions of results. Search engines don’t recognize capital letters, so it can’t tell we’re talking about a specific place and not just any reference to a gym.”

  “Okay.”

  “Narrowing it down using ‘Advanced Search’ took a few extra taps, but I pulled it off.”

  “That’s annoying when you don’t immediately find exactly what you want.”

  “You joke, but that’s true. Putting forth a minimal amount of effort felt like a huge annoyance. But yeah, even when I finally found articles and blogs on the Gym, it was all positive.”

  “Wait, all of it?”

  “All of it. There wasn’t a single negative review on Yelp, no critical reviews, nothing that even compared it to any other gyms.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, there were just articles discussing how great and successful they are, hype articles announcing new Gym openings, Gym fan clubs, etc. And their Twitter and Facebook pages are just generic corporate pages where they share articles about health trends and workout advice”

  Ben frowned. “Nothing negative?”

  “Nothing.”

  They sat and quietly shook their glasses.

  “So, what about newspaper articles?”

  “I couldn’t find any.”

  Ben nodded. “Yeah, they’re behind paywalls, or not available online. They wouldn’t show up in a search, either way.”

  “So do we need to, what, go to a library?”

  “I think so. My accounting firm gets interlibrary loans through the local public library at $3 a pop. They’re usually pretty helpful. But for newspaper articles...we probably want to go to the university library. They have the most stuff, online and in microfilm.”

  “Microfilm? Is that the stuff you wrap on a machine like tape and scroll through?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Neat, never seen it in person.”

  “Yeah, we can go there first thing tomorrow morning. But Jerry…”

  “Yeah?”

  “The crazy guy who punched you... though I guess he’s actually the least ‘crazy’ guy in town right now...when he goes out to attack the Gym tonight...”

  “Yeah?”

  “You know he’s gonna go in there alone, right?”

  “No!”
>
  “He didn’t even trust you with his name. He’s not gonna trust you with a kamikaze Gym attack plan.”

  Jerry knew he was right.

  Chapter 29

  The guy’s name was Romeo. He didn’t like admitting that to anyone. Too many “wherefore art thou” jokes over the years.

  And he snuck into the Gym by the employee entrance shortly after midnight. He’d done some advance recon and discovered that door was almost always left unlocked by the construction crew that entered there and stayed overnight on the facility’s top floor.

  He didn’t know what the construction crew was working on. And he didn’t want to know.

  Creeping through the hallways, he slipped into the employee lounge adjacent to the lobby and hid under a table.

  The central air unit hummed faintly away, along with refrigerators in the cafe and lounge. But nothing else. The construction crew on the third floor was far enough away that the sound of their work blurred.

  He listened carefully for any footsteps. After a couple minutes, he felt confident no one would sneak up on him and got up. He stuck to the walls as he moved through the lobby and stayed away from any windows. It wouldn’t help to be spotted by anyone inside OR outside.

  He tiptoed down the main hallway, past the racquetball and squash courts, and ducked under a bench. He checked for silence again.

  Confirmed. No one there.

  He looked into the racquetball court and thought about what he’d seen in the Gym’s racquetball court back in Alexandria. People using limbs as racquets, batting severed heads around the room. Then slamming themselves against the glass, leaving streaks of blood and chunks of brain.

  He thought about all the people he’d killed himself before the Gym lost its grip. He tried not to let that torment him, but the memories were crystal clear. It had been like living in someone else’s body. Trapped, unable to control his own actions.

  He never wanted to feel helpless like that again. The Gym would pay for taking his mind and body away. That personal violation was worse to him than all the horrible things they did.

  He heard a rumbling in the basement.

  Something was down there. It was the power source. He knew it. And he needed to stop it.

  He crawled along the floor to the door and pulled it open.

  He stayed to the side of the wall as he descended the dim steps, even though there was no one in sight or earshot.

  He heard a rumbling in the basement when he reached the last step.

  And he pulled out the grenade.

  Whatever was powering this place was within tossing distance. He’d seen it in dreams. He didn’t want to tell Jerry what it was. He didn’t want to admit that a grenade would probably barely dent it. But it would strike a blow, probably disable it.

  He slowly approached the basement door.

  And the door flew open.

  The personal trainer leaped through it and slammed Romeo to the ground.

  He grabbed the grenade out of his hand and laughed in his face.

  He held Romeo down with one hand and tossed the grenade up and down with the other. He then did a biceps curl with it. “This feels like just about the right weight for you. Gotta start light, build up those muscles before you can handle the heavy stuff!”

  Romeo could barely breathe, let alone speak. The personal trainer was pushing his hand harder and harder on his chest. Romeo felt one of his ribs crack.

  The personal trainer brought the grenade to his face and licked it. “Not bad. But I prefer the iron we got upstairs.”

  Romeo felt a couple more ribs crack under the pressure. His heart constricted. But even worse than the pain was the realization that there was nothing he could do to fight the Gym. It steamrolled over everyone and there was no point in resistance. It got all his friends back in Alexandria, turned him into a monster, and it was spreading like a virus.

  It’s just too strong.

  He took some solace in the knowledge that he’d freed Jerry’s mind, but doubted one man could make much of a difference.

  And just as his lungs began to burst under the weight of his broken, stabbing ribs, he closed his eyes. He was finally free.

  And then the pain stopped.

  He opened his eyes.

  The personal trainer was smiling. “You came all the way down here, it would be silly not to show you what you came to see, right?”

  No, please no.

  And the personal trainer grabbed his long hair and dragged him along the basement floor and through the door.

  He tried to scream, but crackling wheezes were all he could manage between mouthfuls of blood.

  Chapter 30

  Jerry and Ben walked behind the reference librarian, who led them downstairs to their microfilm collection. The library had a nice collection of newspapers from all over the state, going back decades. Some even to the 19th century. But the two of them only needed to see cities where Gyms had opened in the past few years.

  As the reference librarian walked them over to the microfilm readers and showed them how to spool the film and operate the reels, they whispered to each other.

  “So the Gym’s still there. Think your friend decided not to attack last night?”

  Jerry winced. “I’m sure he did.”

  “Do you have any way to contact him?”

  “No, he didn’t give me his number.”

  The librarian quietly showed them how to print from the microfilm, recommending they use the default settings. They thanked her and sat down at the machine.

  They threaded up a reel for the main Harrisonburg newspaper, the Daily News-Record. From what they could tell, that was where the first Gym opened in the state, back in 2006. It was an hour away and Jerry hadn’t heard anything strange about it. He wanted to know how it had been open so long without making waves.

  They skimmed from front page to front page, starting in January. They finally hit pay dirt in an early June issue.

  Ben laughed when he noticed the date. Jerry looked confused, so Ben spelled it out.

  “June 6, 2006. 6,6,6.”

  “Oh. Funny.”

  “Think that’s significant?”

  “No. I think they thought it was a good joke. I think a lot of what they do is just a game for them.”

  “But why? What’s the game?”

  “I don’t know. I think they’re bored. Using and abusing people is just how they pass the day. Think about it—every time they’ve done something crazy or cruel, it was just to amuse themselves.”

  Ben nodded. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I don’t know if it’s supposed to.”

  They skimmed the article and it was a pretty bland puff piece. Who, what, where, when, why. The Gym was opening on route 33 by the Wal-Mart, and people were excited about it because it was something new and different.

  Nothing sinister. Just an exercise facility opening. Could have been anything.

  They scrolled forward from one front page to another for a few weeks, then a few months. Nothing Gym-related. It seemed to be staying under the radar.

  Then it clicked for Jerry. “There won’t be any major news stories about the Gym after the opening.”

  “What?”

  “You get the Daily Progress, right?”

  “The Daily Regress? Of course!”

  Jerry rolled his eyes. That local joke of a nickname was one that got old before he’d heard it—the paper wasn’t that bad. His town was also proud of calling its college “grounds” (NEVER “campus”). And they had a Rio Road that they insisted on calling “Rye-Oh” instead of “Ree-Oh.” Also they loved having opinions about socks and sandals. Every town has its quirks.

  “Yes, that one. How many stories have you read in there about the Gym?”

  Ben paused. “One.”

  “And what did the story say?”

  “It was a puff piece about the opening.”

  “Exactly. The Gym people would do everything they could to appear normal unti
l they decided to strike in a major way.”

  “So you think they were laying low?”

  “I bet they behaved like just another normal gym for years. And the only news they’d make would be small notices in the back of the paper stating that they’re buying up nearby real estate.”

  “Should we look for those stories?”

  “No, that would be incredibly boring. And the stories wouldn’t prove anything. Just tell us what we already know.”

  “I guess we would have heard something down here if it had been reported.”

  “Exactly. If there was anything to report, the Gym’s clearly suppressed it.” He took his fingers off the scrolling button. “This has been a waste of time.”

  Ben rolled back on his chair. “So...what? We’re helpless? The place is just gonna take over our town and destroy us all the way it destroyed Alexandria?”

  Jerry shook his head. “No. I’m just saying we’re not gonna learn anything from the newspaper.”

  “So—again, what can we do?”

  “We’re going to Harrisonburg to see the damage from that Gym in person.”

  Chapter 31

  The treadmills were rolling and the stationary bikes were speeding along. Weights went up and down.

  Sweat was dripping down faces and all over the equipment.

  One man in blue spandex on the chest-press machine roared like a lion on every rep.

  A nearby man in a v-neck t-shirt doing sit-ups on a sky-blue mat looked angrier and angrier with each roar from the other guy. Then he finally stood up and shouted, “Shut up!”

  The roarer continued to push and release the pneumatic bar, growling even louder.

  Then the man in the v-neck grabbed a nearby towel and put a ten-pound barbell on it. He wrapped it up and held it like a primitive mace. He approached the man on the chest-press machine and swung the weight down on his stomach.

  The cracking noise coming from his ribs sounded like gunfire.

  Everyone nearby stopped to watch as the man lifted the weighted towel up for another blow, but the broken and bleeding man in spandex rolled off the machine to dodge.

  He then grabbed a nearby bar from the free weight station. It had no weight on either side, so he held the 45-pound bar like a sword. The man with the weighted towel circled him, then raised his arm with the weapon to strike. Right as his arm reached the top of the arc, the man in spandex shoved the bar forward and impaled him. His pancreas was shoved out of the hole in his back.