“Are you crazy?” she said. “How could you even think about it?”
“I don’t understand,” I said, perplexed. “I thought you liked her.”
“She already has her happy turtle pond. If we try to take her away or move her, all we can do is mess it up. All we can do is ruin it for her.”
I never mentioned it again, but now when this little drone girl said “turtle pond,” I knew it came from Nif, and I knew what she meant, how she felt in the Grinder. And for a full second, maybe two, I wanted to feel that, too.
But then I looked at the dead man on the floor and the girl with the gaping, horrific head wound. That beautiful, safe feeling they felt, that Nif felt, was an illusion. Just like the turtle pond was an illusion. It wasn’t heaven—they just didn’t know better. The Grinder had put something into their mind so invasive, so malevolent, it wiped away everything, even pain, and replaced it with a not-so-willful ignorance of everything else they’d ever known.
Randy had once asked me if I’d rather be stupid and happy or intelligent and miserable. I never knew how to answer that question until that moment, standing in the small room, holding a music stand as a weapon, facing a 10-year-old girl and her zombie posse.
I knew I’d rather have my free will. The idea of losing it scared me beyond anything else in the world.
Except losing Nif. That scared me more.
Still, I knew nothing good could come from talking to these people. They weren’t quite like how the soldiers described them, either. I wondered if there were variations to their craziness, like those who’d been attached longer were more likely what they called a C-1, and the ones who were disengaged from the Grinder accidentally were C-2s. Or maybe they were all the same, like ants in colonies with the workers and the fighters and the queen.
“We can help you,” she said again.
“I don’t want your help.”
The girl smiled, and as if on cue, all of them backed out of the room.
“It doesn’t matter. We’re going to help you anyway,” she said. “We’re going to help you reunite with Nif. Just you watch.”
I was left alone in the room with the corpse. My hands shook so hard I dropped the music stand, and it clattered on the floor.
I stood in the corner of the room for several minutes, not knowing what to do or how to react. There was a clock on the wall. It was just after three AM. On a normal night, Nif and I would’ve been asleep. I didn’t work Sundays, and I slept until mid-afternoon if I could get away with it.
A commotion broke out in the main room. I crept forward, exiting the backstage and peeking through the curtain just as the light for the entire room switched on.
“Back, back!” a pair of guards said through the open door, each brandishing their weapons. The C-2s ignored them, though none were near the door. Other soldiers brought in about ten more people, all of whom looked injured and unable to walk on their own. Each person required two or three soldiers to carry them, and they were just laid on the floor like rags.
Some of the people already looked dead and bloated. Others groaned and reached their arms into the air.
With the lights now on, I could see the wall to my left where the man had been writing something. As I feared, he’d used blood as his ink:
Come not within the measure of my wrath.
I didn’t know where that was from, but it seemed familiar.
The girl stood on the floor at the foot of the stage. She turned toward me and said, “It’s best you get down.”
At first I thought she meant Get down off the stage.
What she really meant was Get down because some of the most fucked-up shit you’ve ever seen is about to happen.
“Wha…what the?” one of the soldiers cried, dropping the legs of the body he held.
The other two soldiers, holding the same body, dropped the heavy man and scrambled further into the room. Both of them screamed, wiping at themselves.
I couldn’t see what their problem was. All three soldiers yelled and danced, as if possessed.
“Go, go, go!” another soldier screamed. The soldiers still in the room sprinted toward the double doors. The man they’d dropped blocked the doors open, and the soldiers vaulted him like a hurdle. More screaming erupted from outside the room. Shots rang out.
I glanced around at the C-2s. Had they played a mental trick on the soldiers? Made them think they were being attacked by phantoms? A soldier fell backwards into the room, waving his arms wildly. He tripped over the body in the doorway, and his mask went flying. The young man was no older than 19 or 20, and he clawed at his face with his gloved hands. The C-2s in the room just stood and watched.
Then I saw it.
One of the bodies was that of a fat, almost-naked woman who looked to be about 18 months pregnant. She wore nothing but spandex shorts and a way-too-tight shirt that covered her shoulders and exposed her pale-white and stretch-marked chest and stomach. The whole time she lay there, just twitching like her finger was stuck in a light socket.
In the horror and commotion of the room, I’d only barely registered her presence. My eyes caught her movement, and I stared. Her white stomach extended like one of those Jiffy-Pop popcorn things you put directly on the stovetop. Her skin ripped open with an audible, fabric-tearing sound.
Out came the spiders.
Chapter 14
Thousands and thousands of spiders.
They erupted from her body like a volcano, flooding the floor of the music room. So many of them that I could hear their thousands of little legs skittering and crawling on the tiles. Like a black wave, they swept forth.
They overwhelmed the soldier struggling on the floor. They covered his body in a matter of seconds, a tsunami of black on his head, his hair, and down his face, entering every cavity: nostrils, ears, and mouth. They crawled into the space between his neck and his suit, pouring into him like water. A moment later they ripped through the bottom of his suit, just above his hard leather boots.
The endless wave continued out the woman’s body. I realized she wasn’t that large of a woman, that the Grinder had filled her with the arachnids, stretching her body to its physical limits. The ultimate Trojan horse.
The other fresh bodies twitched and extended. From another man, a black burst of gnats exploded into the air, circling the air like a storm cloud and spreading out as they left the room.
Scorpions. Beetles. Ants. Lots and lots of ants—covered the floor like a carpet, more than I even thought possible, and they poured into the unseen battle outside.
I looked over my shoulder, afraid an army of bugs from the corpse backstage would emerge at any moment. None did. It seemed they all came from the newly-arrived.
From outside, screams and gunfire rose. Screams so urgent, so panicked, it was as if the very gates of hell had opened for all to hear.
I backed away, terrified. I scratched at myself even though no bugs were on me. It seemed the C-2s here didn’t want to harm me. Could I trust the bugs to leave me alone as well?
The bugs ignored the C-2s, and came no further into the room. Outside, shooting and yelling continued to echo. The torrent of insects stopped surging from the bodies, leaving ten or more desiccated shells on the floor.
The C-2s all headed toward the exit. The ones who could run, ran. The others walked, crawled, and lurched for the door. A moment later, an explosion rocked the building, staggering me off my feet. I grabbed onto the curtain, and it ripped as I fell. By the time I hit the ground, the lights in the room had blinked out.
Darkness once again washed over me.
What do I do? I didn’t want to remain in here, not in the pitch black, but I feared going outside. I would get shot. Or eaten by bugs.
Tiny bug feet crawled all over my skin, real or imagined, I didn’t know, and I scratched at myself.
I couldn’t stay here. I felt my way off stage, half sliding, half walking toward the door. I tripped over bodies, including one that wasn’t quite dead and tried
to grab my ankle. I stumbled into the first room, and into a heavy, choking stench of gunpowder. The double doors to the outside lay propped by another shriveled body. Starlight filled this room with dark shadows, soldiers overcome by the bugs.
I stepped over a soldier, and I crunched on a stream of beetles. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. The dead soldier looked like the greasy guard. Looking now at his bug-ridden corpse, I felt bad for thinking so much shit about him. I kicked the surprisingly-light body out of the exterior doorway, and I propped the door open with my shoulder. I peered outside, searching for the guards I had seen earlier.
Holy crap.
Bugs coated every surface and filled the air like fog. An angry hum electrified the night, so loud I could feel it in my teeth. This was more than just a shitload of bugs. This was all the goddamned bugs in the entire world. Where did they come from? The bugs that had hitchhiked inside the people were a tiny fraction of the army before me.
This was a calculated, planned, and precise attack.
The guards had fled, and the soldiers working the satellite dish were gone. Three bodies lay on the ground nearby, like scattered action figures in a blizzard.
Black smoke and red flames gushed into the night air just outside the fence. One of the giant, double-rotor helicopters lay smoldering on its side, the body of the massive helicopter bent at a right angle. The houses all around fiercely burned.
A group of soldiers banded together on the other side of the playground, just past the improvised helipad. They stood back-to-back, shooting wildly into the air. One of them dropped to the ground, and the others fled over the fence. They didn’t make it far. They flailed desperately as the bugs overcame them.
Across the way, the door to the school sat open, and the snare-drum report of gunfire echoed from within, barely audible over the hum. Smoke poured from the building. I thought of the artwork on the walls, of the hand turkeys, all burning up.
I crouched low in the doorway as three suit-wearing soldiers burst outside. Two clutched fire hydrants, and the other held an improvised flamethrower made from what looked like a small propane tank. They were the only soldiers I had seen not panicked by the attack, and it served them well. They walked, determined into the fray, filling the air with blasts from the hydrants followed by puffs of flame. The clouds of bugs dropped all around them.
Waves of ground-crawling insects swarmed over their boots, but the soldiers stomped and ignored them.
Their chemical suits were their downfall. The suits protected them at first, until a scorpion or a wasp or group of ants, anything with stingers or pincers, tore a small hole somewhere in the fabric. Then the gnats, flies, and beetles, temporarily beaten back by the flames, swarmed anew, filling the interior of the suit of the flamethrower guy.
The soldier’s calm, matter-of-fact response was replaced by a screaming, dancing, and accidentally-flamethrowing-the-two-guys-next-to-him response. I bit hard onto my own hand to keep from screaming at the sight of the shuddering and burning soldiers.
A group of escaping C-2s fled across the schoolyard southeast, toward the Grinder. They appeared immune to the wrath of the insects.
I didn’t want to go out there. But I didn’t want to stay inside. I wondered how fast the bees and other insects could fly. Randy would’ve known. He and his brother would’ve found this awesome.
That flamethrower and tank made me nervous. It could blow at any moment, and I’d end up with a face-full of shredded metal if I stayed put. I eyed the flaming pile of soldiers. Bugs or no, I had to run.
I jumped down, and I tore around the back of the building. My shoes smashed bugs by the hundreds. It felt as if I ran upon popcorn. The flying bugs smashed against my face, getting into my hair, eyes, and mouth. Still, I didn’t get stung and bitten into mulch, which I hoped meant the bugs weren’t pursuing me.
Still, they bit some, and buzzed around me as I ran. I wondered how they were being controlled. Could the Grinder control them forever? Or would the bugs eventually stop working as one unit and go back to being normal bugs? With so many concentrated in one space, that sounded just as dangerous.
By the back fence, I found two more guards, and they both lay dead, their bodies and suits swarming with black beetles and ants. The air around us was thick with insects, but it was nothing compared to the cluster-fuck of bugs behind me.
Shit! A bee stung me right in the ear. I slapped the side of my head, flicking it off. I’d never been stung before in my life. Man, I didn’t even know if I was allergic. Either way, it fucking hurt.
Above, three helicopters descended on the school, their massive rotors kicking up swirls of black smoke, and propelling the schoolyard bugs into a flying confusion. It was a smart tactic. Just as the helicopters descended, a large group of soldiers emerged from the school, headed for their Humvees.
I jumped the fence and raced across the street. A charging Humvee almost splattered me, but I kept running. I headed north, fast, hoping the further away I got from the Grinder, the less influence it would have over the bugs.
After a good five minutes of running, I collapsed in a tired heap in an alley between a row of dark houses. My ear throbbed, but it hurt less than before. I thought about all the soldiers eaten alive. Suck it up, I told myself. I thought about how a real attack must’ve felt…the biting jaws…the stingers…and the tiny, piercing legs crawling over skin inside the clothes. I shuddered.
Behind the fence next to me, a dog whined and howled as it scratched at the wrought iron. I looked at the dog, a yellow lab. Nothing vicious about it. It just looked at me and whined, scratching again at the fence.
“You’re safer in there, buddy,” I said.
The dog barked.
I felt a crawling on my leg, and I flipped out, falling over myself to wipe the residual beetles and bugs off. A handful of bugs remained stuck in my shoes, socks, and hair. Thankfully, most were dead. I spent five minutes making sure I was bug-free.
I peed on an overturned grocery cart, said goodbye to the dog, and continued on my way.
I was a few blocks north of 5th Street—only a quarter mile from where the soldiers had originally picked me up. I decided to head back that way to retrieve the bag and get the car with the satellite radio.
Dark palo verde trees lined this neighborhood, and I tried to stay in the inky shadows. The night had become unbearably cold, and I jogged as quietly as I could to keep warm. I kept a wary eye out for any movement.
A body lay in the middle of a yard underneath a tree. I didn’t see it until I almost stepped on it. I yelped and fell on my ass.
“Wait…”
Huh? I stared at the body. It spoke again as I scrambled to my feet.
“Adam, wait…”
I paused. It was a woman, about forty years old. At first I thought she was dark-skinned, but then I saw she was soaked in blood. A trail from where she’d dragged herself in the gravel led from the neighborhood one street over.
Suddenly, a large truck with a loud diesel engine turned onto the street from down the block. Its headlamps illuminated the neighborhood, killing the shadows underneath the trees. Three more people sat nearby, appearing like apparitions. Another dragged himself along the sidewalk across the street.
“You found us,” said the woman on the ground. “You don’t have to run anymore. That’s our ride. It’ll take us home. Home to the Grinder. We’re so glad you came.”
“No way,” I said, backing away. “I’m not going to the Grinder.”
I realized this was some sort of gathering area for the ones detached from the Grinder. Like a damned bus stop back to the monster. Which meant the truck about to pull up next to me could be filled with drones.
Run. I ran around the woman and past the others, none of whom were in any condition to chase.
“That was your last chance, Adam!” she called into the night. “You were spared earlier! Not anymore!”
I turned the corner as the truck’s brakes squealed to a stop. It was an 18
-wheeler with a full trailer behind it. I didn’t dare stop to look.
Chapter 15
I’ve been thinking about this for a while now as I write this down, and I’ve decided I’ve been unfair. Back in my writing class, the teacher was very specific about the definition of a story. A story is about conflict. And conflict—not always, but usually—involves bad shit. This story is no exception to that, so as a result I’m laying out all sorts of bad shit for you to read.
(By now, hopefully, you’re realizing that most of the crap they’ve been piling on you for the past six months is just plain wrong. Operation High Noon and what happened right afterwards is no exception. Fucking government cover-ups. I don’t necessarily disagree with a lot of what they did, but I hate that they don’t have the balls to tell the truth about it. We haven’t gotten quite to that part of the story yet, so I’ll leave it at that for now.)
So now I’m in the middle of telling you about all the terrible crap that happened that night and the next morning—and believe me, it gets fucking worse—and I’m adding some context and back story here and there so some of this shit makes sense. However, I’m starting to realize I’m getting pretty heavy with the bad-stories-about-Nif, and I’ve told you very little about some of the awesome things she had done, about what it was about her that made me fall so hard in love.
I’m thinking that might skew how you see her a little bit, and it’s important that you see her how I saw her. It’s important.
I can’t tell you everything. There is a lot. I could write an entire sappy, boring-ass book about how she once saved this kitten after she found it duct-taped to the road, started an internet campaign to find the asshole who did it, and got his ass arrested, but not before he was tarred, feathered, and anal-raped by a pitchfork-carrying internet posse bent on revenge.
Or I could tell you about her punk rock Smurf collection. She collected the old-school, ‘80s plastic Smurfs and spent hours painting and altering them with an Xacto knife to make little punk rockers with mohawks and chains and pissed-off expressions. She’d photograph them and put them up on eBay, selling them for tons of money. Once, she made the band KISS with Smurfette dancing in a cage. She had a stage set and everything. It took her two months to make it, and she sold the whole set for over a thousand bucks.
The Grinding Page 11