Randy swore and slammed the Jeep into reverse. The tires squealed as we backed away. “Get that gun ready!”
It took me a moment to grasp he’d said that to me, and I took my hand off the door and clutched the automatic shotgun. I didn’t know how to shoot it. I guessed a simple trigger pull, but was there more to it? A safety or anything else special? Even if I figured all that out, where in the hell would I shoot? All those people… Who was alive? Dead? Who the fuck knew.
Plus, it was moving on while we headed in reverse. The monster kept morphing and rolling, now a long train headed north across the street. It seemed bigger than even after it attacked the stadium, despite the full-press of the military. It wasn’t very tall at this moment, but it just kept going and going.
A Humvee with a mounted machine gun roared past us. The soldier at the gun fired a stream of bullets that streaked through the night air like fireflies into the lowest level of the beast.
The bullets tore through the people, who fell apart and away. Pieces of the shielding debris from the second level of the creature cascaded onto the street. Our Jeep swerved as Randy tried to turn us around, ramming a bus stop with a loud, jarring crunch. He put the Jeep into drive, and the back wheels spun.
We were stuck.
We looked on in horror as the thing turned on the Humvee. I didn’t see from where it was thrown, but a dark shape smashed into the front of the military vehicle, flipping it. Two more round missiles streaked from the top of the beast, one of them overshooting the soldiers and skidding into the road in front of where we were jammed.
It was a pig, I think.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I said.
The Jeep’s engine whined, along with Randy. “I’m trying, damn it.”
One of the soldiers crawled out of the overturned truck, and he ran in our direction, dragging his hurt leg. Behind him, the massive Grinder had stopped. What the…? Its attention was on the guys fleeing from the truck, toward us.
Terrified, I watched as a tentacle swept down from above and swiped at the injured soldier. Its reach wasn’t quite long enough, and the man looked like he might get away.
He didn’t.
Another tentacle swung at him, only this time, the longer and thicker arm broke apart in mid-air, raining people and something else—big, mean-looking dogs I realized—on the road all around the soldier. The people and animals rolled and skidded as they hit the ground. Some didn’t get back up, but about fifteen people and several dogs did.
The soldier was surrounded. He yelled something at the people circling around him, but I couldn’t hear. He pulled a pistol from his side. Someone in the group said something, and the soldier yelled back. The group of dogs, and one coyote, I saw, moved behind him. The snarling pack dodged and snapped at him, closing in on one side, opening up on another side. Why didn’t they full-on attack him? Then I realized what was happening.
They were herding him toward the Grinder.
I leaned in toward Randy and Royce. “Should we help him?” I asked.
We all snapped at the sound of a gunshot. It was the soldier. He fired again, at a woman stepping toward him, and she went down. The others pounced, and the dogs barked and growled and jumped, acting very dog-like and un-zombie-like, which I thought was strange. All these people, these animals, were no longer connected to the creature, yet they still worked for it, which was scary as hell.
I looked out the back of the Jeep as Randy revved the engine, trying to free us. We were getting nowhere. and the noisy revving made me nervous. “Stop that shit,” I hissed. “You’re attracting attention to us.”
We were too damned scared to get out and jack up the Jeep. We watched as the people threw the soldier onto the ground and violently disarmed him. They dragged him, kicking and screaming back toward the beast, close enough for a tentacle to reach down and pick him up. Like before, he froze the moment the arm came into contact with his face. Some of the human drones and all of the dog ones remained detached.
(Look, I don’t know what else to call them as I explain this shit to you. They weren’t really zombies like how you’d think. I mean, the soldier had shot one, and she’d dropped like a bowling ball. An undead zombie would’ve eaten the bullets and kept coming. This was more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Pod People. Drones, working for a singular entity. So that’s what I’m going with.)
Anyway, the scene was disturbing on a gut level. They were all so systematic, so deliberate in their gruesome tasks. The dog drones pulled the bodies of their fallen human brethren back into the reach of the Grinder. Other human drones swarmed the crashed Humvee, working together to flip it over. They organized and talked with one another. They acted normal. They managed to flip it over, and they pulled out the remaining soldiers, all of whom appeared dead. They knelt and rifled through their bodies, and they took their weapons.
They left the corpses of the other soldiers on the road. One of the drones climbed into the back of the truck and took position at the gun, fiddling with it while the others pushed the vehicle into the waiting mass of the Grinder. A gaping, dripping hole appeared in the side of the Grinder to swallow the truck, and it ate it whole.
“That is some of the most fucked-up shit I’ve ever seen.”
That was Royce. He whispered it, the fear evident in his voice.
I had a more practical question. “Why did they leave the dead soldiers, but keep their own dead?”
“I don’t know, man,” he said. He just shook his head. “Fucked up…”
The Grinder was eerily still. The sound of gunfire rang in the distance, ching-ching-ching, like a thousand blacksmiths working at once. Even in the car, the air smelled of sulfur and oil. I suspected the soldiers in the Humvees acted in concert, and they had attacked from several angles at once. And as we waited, similar scenes were playing out on nearby streets that also flanked the side of the beast. Above, the planes had backed off.
On the street, the dogs still dragged bodies back to the Grinder. Once a body got there, an attached body reached down and touched the corpse. Nothing happened at first, but after a few moments, the dead bodies jerked up and disappeared into the mass, moving in that fast, staccato way I had seen earlier, like they were controlled by a puppeteer in a hurry to take a break for a piss.
The dogs came out again, and they started to pull at another form on the ground, dragging it back.
It was a pig missile. Another one was crashed on the asphalt near the destroyed Humvee, and a third—
“Oh, shit,” I said.
The third remained on the ground—outside my door.
“We gotta run for it,” I said. “They’re headed toward us. They’re going to see or hear or smell us...”
“This was a bad idea,” Royce said. He picked up one of the black duffel bags and put it over his neck. They scooted over and opened the passenger-side door, the one facing away from the Grinder. Randy grabbed the second bag. They stepped outside, and I opened my door to follow. We crouched low behind the disabled Jeep.
They rummaged through one of the bags, each one pulling stuff out. Royce produced a strange, flat machine gun that looked almost fake. I’d never seen anything like it. Randy took a long magazine and slapped it on the top.
“It’s a P90,” Royce said. “Low recoil, fast reload.”
“Where do you get this shit?” I asked.
“Houston,” he said.
“I want you to promise us something,” Randy said.
“What?”
“Don’t let us become part of that thing.”
“Yeah,” Royce said. “We already know what it’s like to have more than one brain in a single body. It’s crowded enough in here, and we don’t share well.”
“So, what do you want me to do? Shoot you?”
“Yes,” Royce said. “If it comes to that, yes.”
I felt a chill, realizing it might come to that. I nodded. I looked around for an escape. My hands trembled as I clutched the shotgun.
To our left, rows of dark houses sat, but there wasn’t an easy way in without jumping a fence. The Grinder had come from that direction, but the houses hadn’t been damaged. Still, it was the best way to go. To our right, we would have to cross several lanes of open road and then navigate our way through a large cluster of commercial buildings and parking garages.
I peered over the hood, and the dogs struggled with the second pig. The distant sound of machine-gun fire rattled the night. I sunk back down.
“There are more Marines on the other side,” Royce said. “It sounds like they’re doing better than these guys did.”
“I think we should just run,” I said. “While it’s distracted. We’ll wait for it to pass, snag an abandoned car, and go around the back.”
“We can’t go very fast,” Randy said. “Not anymore. Not like in high school.”
“Our lungs,” Royce added.
“Well, let’s just go. Keep low, and maybe it won’t see us. Or care. I mean, it had to have seen the Jeep, but it ignored us. It only cares about the soldiers. We’re not a threat.”
“Okay,” Randy said. “Let’s do it.”
I peeked over the hood one last time—straight into the eyes of a growling, slobbering, your-ass-is-mine dog.
This wasn’t just any dog, either. I knew the breed. I had seen a whole special on them a year or so ago on TV. I had nightmares for a month afterward. A Presa Canario. That’s Spanish for big-ass, mean-ass, eats-pit-bulls-as-a-snack mastiff.
I hadn’t heard it come up. Nor did I have time to ponder the coincidence that the dog growling at me at that very moment was the exact breed of dog that most terrified me. All I knew was I had to keep from pissing myself and simultaneously bring the shotgun to bear and pull the trigger, just as the dog leapt onto the hood of the Jeep.
Firing a shotgun is a lot different than firing smaller guns. That’s the only excuse I have for missing a target right in front of me. With a shotgun. I fell backwards at the recoil, my ears ringing, and for a quick moment, I continued to scream, for I thought for sure the dog was on me. I looked up. Oh, thank Christ. It was dead on the hood of the car.
Aloud, I thanked the twins. They had shot it with their machine gun.
They nodded. “We gotta go.”
We took off jogging toward the line of fences. A small, narrow alley offered refuge from the main street, and escape into the next neighborhood over.
I looked over my shoulder. More dogs. Three of them, about 100 meters away, and they booked it right towards us. Behind them, about ten human drones also rushed in our direction.
As we approached the alley, a loud crashing noise filled the night. It came from in front of us. Through the space of the alley, we could see the next street down. I watched as the row of houses tumbled and crumbled as the tail end of the Grinder rolled over them, and right toward us. Both ends converged on another like a giant Pac-man, and we were the dot in the middle.
“Wrong way,” I yelled, and we turned, angling away from the monster and the advance party of dogs and people chasing us. Despite what they said, the twins held their own in terms of speed, running in a kind of strange, side-gallop that allowed them to shoot and run at the same time.
They shot all three dogs, who tumbled forward with the momentum of their unnatural speed. The drones kept coming, all of them twenty-something males. Another burst of the machine gun, and the closest two fell.
I didn’t want to shoot because I didn’t want to fall over again, plus these were people. Real, live people, fucked in the head maybe, but they were still living humans who didn’t know what they were doing.
But most of all, I was afraid.
A deep memory seeped up in me like hairy sewage from a drain. A memory, and a feeling, the same feeling I’d had that day when I froze while Nif stood her ground against the homeless guy.
The memory was of my father’s voice, and the first time I fired a gun: Don’t be a pussy, Adam. If you’re afraid of your own weapon, how are you going to feel when somebody has one, too? He’d jammed his grease-encrusted finger at the paper target of an angry-looking man pointing a gun at me. Now fire, goddamnit.
So I fired, goddamnit. I fired then, and I fired now. I pulled the trigger and fired. And fired. It was an automatic shotgun, after all. It nearly danced out of my grip, but I ran and I yelled and I fired, and I didn’t fall. The whole thing emptied in what seemed like two seconds flat.
But holy shit, man. Holy. Shit.
It did its job.
I didn’t have time to think about what I’d just done, but I did anyway. I’d just turned ten people into beef jerky.
They weren’t real people, I told myself. They want to kill me. This is self-defense. My chest hurt.
We scrambled past the sidewalk and up a steep set of stairs into the covered courtyard surrounded by concrete-laden commercial buildings. Our footsteps echoed as we ran past the silent fountain and out the backside, right into the middle level of a three-level parking garage.
I’d been here once, back when Nif and I had first started dating. We’d come here at three AM so she could show me some moves on her skateboard. We’d been chased away by the security guard. I wondered if he was still here somewhere. Nif wanted to find his car and slash his tires, and I talked her out of it. We compromised by dumping a giant slushy from Circle K on the hood of the only other car we could see. We didn’t even know if it was his car. I felt terrible afterward.
“Wait,” Randy said, falling over themselves, both of them wheezing. “We gotta rest, man.” Royce let the duffel bag clatter off his neck and onto the ground, and Randy did the same.
It took them a minute, but Royce unzipped the bag and pulled out a black, round canister. It was a drum magazine for my shotgun. Between gasps, he walked me through changing it out.
As I fumbled with the gun, the distinctive whoosh of a missile streaked above. The explosion shook the ground, and dust cascaded off the ceiling, causing the twins to cough.
“Adam!” came a loud male voice, coming from behind us. The voice echoed like knives. It came from the courtyard by the fountain. “Come back!”
“We’ll keep you safe,” another voice called. “She’s here. She’s waiting for you. We can protect you.”
“Holy shit,” Royce said, looking up at me between wheezes and coughs.
I felt it again, that ache at my chest. Or was it a tug… It still wasn’t strong enough to overthrow my sense, but it was there, tempting. I realized that this was something with real power. I was afraid to ask the twins if they felt it, too.
“Who? What the hell…?” Randy said. “How does it know you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “But we gotta keep moving.”
The voices continued to call my name. They never came in the garage, but they were out there, calling. Maybe they feared our weapons. Not that our piddly guns were real defense. At any moment, the whole of the Grinder would crash through the buildings behind us, and drop the garage ceiling right on our heads.
We had to move. The twins stood, and I took one of the duffel bags, damn, it was heavy. They grabbed the other, and we continued toward the exit, a set of stairs hopefully leading to the first level and to the courtyard or somewhere outside.
A loud crash, and the sound of ripping and exploding metal came from every direction at once. We half tumbled, half ran down the stairs, and I didn’t dare look back.
We stumbled from the first level and back out into the night. Heat washed over me from behind, and we ran across the gravel and toward the street. I hazarded a look over my shoulder. The entire top level of the parking garage burned, and beyond it, the Grinder towered several hundred feet into the air, having come together like a massive snake ready to strike.
I saw the cause of the explosion. A military jet had crashed into the garage, its uprooted tail piercing up through the flames on the top floor.
Several missiles streaked through the sky, aimed at the center mass of the Grinder, but t
he monster twisted and split just as they were about to impact. They blasted through the hole it had made in itself and detonated in the distance.
I tripped hard over a curb and skidded across the sidewalk into mud. I stood and waited for the twins to catch up.
A low, deep, dinosaur-like bellow filled the night sky as an A-10’s cannon strafed the monster. The rumble came from the plane’s cannon, spinning at an incredible speed. I could feel it in my chest. The deep roar came again as another A-10 whipped by.
The whole top half of the Grinder had transformed into ten or more massive tentacles, waving in the air like a hydra or a colossal squid. It tossed a handful of people into the night, and a low-flying A-10 tried to swerve to miss them, but one of its back engines exploded, and the plane twisted away, leaving a corkscrew of smoke in the night sky. It crashed out of sight.
I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t stop thinking about the people I had shot.
A minivan pulled up on the street about a block away. It screeched to a stop, blocked by a fallen utility pole. A woman jumped out. She screamed something in the direction of the beast and ran out of sight, over the fallen pole and up the road toward Broadway, and the monster.
“Her van,” Randy wheezed. The twins sat on the sidewalk, their arms wrapped around themselves. They didn’t look too good.
“Do you guys have an inhaler or something?” I’d never seen them like this. I was concerned, yeah, but also wondering if I’d have to carry them. If I even could.
“Don’t worry about us,” Randy wheezed. “Get that van.”
“Okay. Let’s go,” I said. But the two wouldn’t stand.
“Get it, and bring it back,” Royce said. “We’ll be okay. Go!”
I hesitated, then ran.
As I raced toward the vehicle, the Grinder continued to fight with the airplanes. It remained in its massively-tall hydra shape, battling amongst the roar of the jets and the rat-a-tat machine-gun fire coming from multiple directions.
It was obvious the military’s response was doing more harm than good, and pretty soon they’d have to kick it up a notch.
The Grinding Page 7