I heard the planes again, an occasional, distant high-flying whine in the sky, just not as constant or intense. I hadn’t heard an explosion in almost an hour. Had they lost sight of the monster in the fog? Or had they given up?
Of course they wouldn’t just give up. And I knew whatever came next, it would be bad.
The side of my head throbbed. I slipped into the driver’s seat and turned the key. As I tossed the duffel into the passenger’s seat, I saw a small blue bag sitting on the floor. I picked it up.
I laughed. It was a bank bag from the safe. Dale must have found money in there after all, and he’d slipped it through the cracked window. So he had planned on stealing it. Hippo must have accused him while I talked to Scooter, and Dale reacted out of guilt and anger, smashing in his buddy’s head, because that’s what those guys did. They reacted by fighting. Or maybe Dale had quick reflexes, and he used the distraction of me fighting Scooter to make his move. I’d never know. I threw the bank bag and the gun into the duffel. I doubted I’d have use for either, but one never knew.
I tossed the car into drive, turned up the radio, and headed north.
It was time to save Nif.
Chapter 19
I could feel the Grinder. I followed its path. I turned north on First Avenue, and if it weren’t for the fog, I would’ve had a straight, line-of-site view of the monster. Instead, all I could see along my slow cruise was the hood of the VW and a twenty-foot span of rubble, abandoned cars, and the occasional C-2.
The satellite radio’s coverage had been spotty and unreliable for a while, but now I couldn’t find a station that worked. I didn’t know if it was the fog or what, but I could only get snippets of audio before I’d get an error message on the screen. What I did hear was old news, or crap that didn’t make sense.
“…population of almost 600,000 while Pima County as a whole is closer to 900,000. We’re not seeing anywhere near those numbers, even after we factor in all the refugee groups, including those who are crossing into Mexico. Assuming the monster creature has captured or killed 100,000, that means there is still a huge population…”
“…mythology calls it a chimera, and based on this new photograph, that’s…”
“…the San Diego zoo, which is approximately 360 miles west…”
The road became too difficult to traverse, and I had to take a side street. This was a poor part of town, and that meant fewer people here were able to evacuate. To my right, the houses and trailers were destroyed, every single one of them, like someone had taken a giant potato masher and smashed each one in turn. To my left, the houses remained untouched, though blackened with soot and dust. Groups of people stood in their yards, all looking shell-shocked and afraid.
I passed a group of three people fighting with a young woman. I recognized her as a C-2. They held her down as she tried to get away. She kicked and screamed and bit, just to get back.
As I watched, I thought again of the old lady and the tadpoles, about what she told me that day.
The Lord doesn’t care about the beasts of this world.
The now-familiar snare-drum roll of machine gun fire perforated the fog. I was thankful to hear it. If the military still had soldiers on the ground, I had time.
I moved across the street, passing from a residential area to a more industrial part of town—the type of neighborhood that was fine by day, but you wanted to avoid at night. While low-rent apartment complexes and pay-by-the-hour hotels littered the main road, the deep parts of this area were filled with small junkyards, some commercial, some just houses that ended up that way. There were scrap metal businesses, the occasional mechanic, and several warehouses. Despite the cool November weather, weeds grew waist-high along the road. Every flat, vertical surface was covered in that cursive, impossible-to-read graffiti.
The majority of streets in Tucson ran straight north-south or east-west, but in industrial places like this, they were haphazard. I needed a turn-off before I got mired in the side-street maze. This fog was dark, worse than the night, and the only compass I had was the Grinder itself, separated only by a few small streets. If it turned eastward, I’d be screwed.
More gunshots rang, closer this time, followed by cries and screams. I couldn’t see anybody or anything, and with the fog and twisted streets, I wasn’t sure where it came from. I reached into the duffel and pulled out Scooter’s handgun. I tossed the VW into reverse. I wasn’t so sure the gunfire was military. No matter who it was, I didn’t want to be near it.
Out of the fog they came.
Hundreds of people. Running and screaming and trampling like a stampede of wildebeest. They scattered on either side of the car, blocking me, running west to east toward the Grinder, but they clearly fled something rather than deliberately headed toward the monster. Some jumped on the hood of the car, scrambling over to get away.
People fell, and they were trampled upon.
“Hey,” I yelled out the window. “Don’t go that way. You’re headed into a trap.” Nobody listened. All of them were in a blind panic.
What the hell? Who were these people, and what were they running from? They couldn’t be running from the Grinder. Was it the military? It didn’t feel right. These people were goddamned terrified. Then I remembered where I last saw people this panicked, just a couple hours earlier.
The bugs.
Holy fuck tacos. I already felt the creeping, crawling legs skittering over my arms. I put the car into gear and inched forward, but I couldn’t bring myself to mow anyone down. I rolled up the window, though I knew that wouldn’t do shit against a large swarm. People kept coming, mobs and mobs of them. A few carried bags and suitcases as they fled, but the majority ran empty-handed, or they held tightly onto small children.
The mob thinned, and those who remained were families. Moms and dads struggled with their children. Older people limped past, helped along by the younger. A woman looked over her shoulder as she ran, not paying attention to where she was going. She slammed into the car door, and the screaming child in her arms wailed even louder. The woman picked herself up and continued running.
The fallen littered the street, but most of them were still alive. I felt helpless. I had to get the fuck away. I had driven over corpses earlier, but I couldn’t drive over an innocent person who was still alive. No way. As much as the coward inside of me wanted to, I just couldn’t. I remembered my father, trying to get home one night while driving through a block party. He’d revved the engine and pushed forward, knocking over a little girl holding an ice cream cone. The cops had come that night, and we moved the next day.
A man and a woman kneeled over a little boy, no older than four years old, with an apparent hurt ankle. He sat in the middle of the street, clutching his leg, screaming. In one hand the little boy also held what I thought was a black pistol. The woman spied me and banged on the car’s window.
“Help us, please! They’re coming.”
Gah. Damn it!
“Get in,” I said.
They rushed around to the passenger side and ripped open the door. I tossed my gun back in the bag and pulled it aside to make room. The woman and boy got in the back seat, and the man jumped in the front. The man and the woman were about 35 years old, professional types. I imagined the mom probably drove a Volvo and the guy had a suit-and-tie job with a secretary who picked up his dry cleaning.
“Go,” the guy said. “Go!”
In the back, the boy wailed while the mom rocked him back and forth. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “It’ll be okay.” I looked again at the black gun in the boy’s hand―just a plastic toy. The orange tip on the barrel had been ripped off. That’s not going to do you much good, little man.
I drove around a few more people laying in the street. Once I was clear, I punched it. We drove, following the street, which curved away from the Grinder but toward the unseen threat.
“You’re going the wrong way!” the guy said.
“I know, I know.” I cut across a parki
ng lot for a cab company. I laid on the accelerator and smashed through the padlocked chain-link gate just like they did in the movies. I curved around the parked cabs and broke through the fence on the other side, tires squealing as I righted myself.
“I can’t believe that worked,” I said, continuing to drive north.
“Turn right, turn right!” he cried. I looked over my shoulder, but I still couldn’t see anything.
“I can’t,” I said. I pointed east to where he wanted me to go. Through the fog, just a few streets over it loomed, a black tint to the haze, way too close.
“What is that?” the mom asked.
“It’s the fucking monster,” I said.
“Oh God, oh God,” she said as the child wailed.
To our right, a tall warehouse imploded, dust and wood rocketing away from the crushed structure. I squealed the car to the left as something large smashed into the road where we’d just been.
“Fuck,” I cried.
“You’re headed right for them,” the man said. He reached for the wheel, but I turned right again, pushing him away.
“The motherfucking Grinder is right fucking there,” I said. “Did you not just see what happened? It threw something at us. I’m going the only way I can.”
“They told us it was on the other side of town,” the man said, looking back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Keep going. Go as fast as you can.”
“Who are you people?” I asked. “Where did you all come from? And what the hell is chasing you? Is it the bugs?” I continued north, once again in a residential area. We left the Grinder behind, and I relaxed a little. Trailer parks decayed on both sides of the street. A few people stood on the sidewalks, watching us pass, unaware or uncaring of their proximity to the monster. We were ahead of the Grinder now, which had paused on the street, probably to gobble up the fucking lemmings headed toward it. Despite the man’s plea for speed, I slowed, not wanting to run over anybody. Whatever it was, we were far away enough now, especially with so many others on foot.
“We were all stuck on I-10, headed toward Phoenix,” the man said. He reached over to shake my hand. “Thank you. Thank you for picking us up. I’m Uri, and this is my wife Michelle, and the little guy here is our son, Patrick.”
“I’m Adam,” I said, awkwardly taking his hand as I drove. The man’s handshake felt weaker than I expected, and it was covered with sweat. “Whatever you were running from, it herded you straight toward the Grinder. Most everyone you were with has probably been captured.”
“Oh God,” the woman named Michelle said. She looked at her husband. “Cindy and Paul and McKenzie, did you see if they were headed that way?”
“Our neighbors. Keep going, keep going,” Uri said, seeing I had slowed down. He turned back to his wife. “I didn’t see Paul, but… I saw Cindy. Honey, she didn’t make it. She had McKenzie with her.”
“Why is this happening?” Michelle said, crying and hugging the little boy, whose air-raid wail had lowered, but only slightly. I didn’t blame him. I wanted to scream, too, but I had to keep it together. For myself, for this family in my car. For Nif.
“What was it?” I asked again.
“They tried to quarantine us,” Uri said. “But it started to fall apart. Buses are supposed to pick us up at the I-19 exchange and take us to Tubac. A whole mess of soldiers in chemical suits were set up at Picacho Peak, and they lined the freeway, making sure we didn’t go off road. The cars were gridlocked, so we had to walk. We’ve been walking for hours. A couple people tried to run, and they…they shot them. Then it got foggy, and people were slipping away. We should’ve run when we had the chance.”
“They would’ve shot us, too,” Michelle said.
“Right before you picked us up, something came at us, from the right side of the street. There were hundreds of them.”
“Bugs?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “At least I don’t think so. These were bigger. I…”
“Look out!” Michelle called.
I slammed the brakes as a dark shape jumped off the roof of a building and landed in the street in front of me. Roof tiles scattered around its feet.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
It was distinctively cat-shaped, only it was almost twice as large as the biggest lion I had ever seen. It had no discernible eyes or ears, and dual tails swung behind it, swishing independently like snakes in Medusa’s hair. Michelle and little Patrick screamed while Uri yelled, “Back, back, back!”
What the fuck? Where had this thing come from? There’s more than one monster now? I tossed the gear into reverse and slammed the pedal.
We didn’t get far. Two more of the lion monsters stalked into the street behind me. I screeched to a stop. We were trapped between the creatures.
“I’m going to ram it,” I said, throwing the car back into drive. I was afraid I would drop the damned transmission right out of the Volkswagen.
“Be careful,” Uri said.
I shot forward, and instead of getting out of the way or rearing up like a massive grizzly bear, the black lion thing jumped right at us. I screamed like a little girl.
As it flew, it broke apart into several pieces. Rats. Mice. Cats. A couple raccoon-looking-things I’d seen before, but I didn’t know what they were called. All of them hurled through the air, pissed off and hissing and snarling as they smashed into the windshield, cracking it in two different places.
I understood, then. These were mini-Grinders. They had broken off the main mass, sent to herd people to the monster. If the people tried to escape, then the small mammals that made up the whole were given the pleasure of tearing the people into chowder.
The animals flew over the car or got run over, but a few smaller mice stuck in the reservoir where the windshield wipers were stored―and found passage under the hood.
A single cat still gripped the cracks in the windshield, hissing and spitting and clawing to get in. An old orange tabby, its claws screeching against the glass.
“Do something,” Michelle called.
I slammed the brakes, and the cat went flying. I went forward again, and the car jumped as we splattered the cat across the asphalt. (Just for the record, I felt bad about running over the cat, even though it wanted to eat our livers.)
“That’s what attacked you earlier?” I asked.
Uri nodded. “There were birds, too. And other shapes.”
“We gotta get the hell out of here,” I said. Just as I turned the corner, the engine let out a loud pop, sputtered twice and died. Son of a bitch. Smoke poured from the A/C vent. As I pulled to a stop, Uri screamed and kicked. The mice. Three of them fell from behind the dash and onto his legs. One of them, its fur flaming, screamed like a miniature kamikaze.
“Out,” I said to everyone, grabbing the duffel. I threw the bag over my neck and pushed my seat forward for Michelle and her son to get out. Uri jumped out his side, cursing and stomping the mice and fire.
A huge building with a chain-link fence and a massive, empty parking lot stood to our right. A trailer park spread into the fog on the other side of the street. As I watched, twin monster cats pounced on the roofs of trailers. One collapsed through the roof, breaking apart as it fell. Screams and gunshots filled the park.
We rushed along the fence, running west. Uri held onto the boy, and Michelle ran alongside. Without a car, we were fucked. We came to the end of the street as screams and gunshots surrounded us. The city that had seemed so empty at night was now awake. The creatures forced the hidden from their homes. The mini-monsters stalked through the neighborhoods near the Grinder’s path, herding people like sheep to feed the insatiable monster.
And we were right in the middle of it.
Chapter 20
There was nowhere to run. I could hear commotion coming from every direction, and if there were monster birds, it was only a matter of time before they saw the four of us poking up like bright, shiny worms out of the early-morning dirt.
“We have to fi
nd a place to hide,” I said.
Uri had a thought. “We can go into the sewers. I work for the city, and there’s a pretty big system right under our feet.”
“You want to hide from rats by going in the sewers?” I asked.
“Good point,” he said.
Michelle climbed the chain-link fence. It was only about eight feet high and didn’t have any barbed wire or anything. She made it up and over quickly.
“What’re you doing?” her husband asked.
“I’m making an executive decision,” she said through the links. She gestured to the building within the fence. “We’re hiding here. Now hand me Patrick.”
I didn’t like the idea. We might end up trapped, but it was a hell of a lot better than going underground. And the building was huge.
I heard a loud, high-pitched, glass-tinkling crash. Two cat monster shadows stood over the now-upturned Volkswagen, barely visible through the haze.
“Move it,” I said, jumping on the fence. Uri handed up his son, who no longer screamed but continued to sob. I remembered just how scary the normal world was when I was small. I couldn’t imagine how it must be now, especially with a hurt ankle.
All four of us landed in the gravel and rushed across the large parking lot toward the giant, square building. Tinted glass ringed the exterior of the modern structure. I couldn’t see a sign on the building, but I had a pretty good idea what we’d find within. Tucson had several buildings like this, and they were all the same on the inside: rows and rows of cubicles.
This was a call center. I’d never worked in one, but Nif had spent time in half the call centers in town. She never lasted more than two months. Her M.O. was to get the job, sit through the paid training, and quit a week or so after the real work started. Tucson had so many places like this, I used to joke her strategy would last her through her twenties. She’d get mad when I said that.
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