The Grinding

by Dinniman, Matt

  It’s not a strategy, she’d say. I just want a job that doesn’t make me want to vomit blood.

  Several emergency exits dotted the walls, but there was no way in on this side except through a window. I didn’t waste time. I picked up a big-ass rock from the landscaping and hurled it like a shot-put. The big window broke on the first try. I kicked some glass free, and we stepped over the threshold into a cluttered office.

  A computer monitor peeked up through all the paper. A white board contained a chart listing several names and all sorts of random numbers, and glamour shots of a very large woman wearing a rhinestone cowboy hat ringed the wall. A windowless door to the rest of the building was closed.

  “This is the Telesync building,” Uri said, whispering. It seemed appropriate to whisper. Even little Patrick had quieted. I peered out through the hole in the window, but I didn’t see any cats coming our way. “They do directory 411 service. They also do 711 relay for the deaf. I knew a guy who worked here a couple years ago. This place is usually open 24 hours. They must’ve sent them all home.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think when Godzilla’s fucked-up little brother starts trashing…”

  I didn’t see the hawk until its talons were about three inches from my eyeballs. Cut off in mid-sentence, I half ducked, half fell backwards as the shrieking bird flew into the office. It missed my eyes by millimeters, but the razor talons shredded my forehead.

  And I thought being hit in the head with a baseball bat had hurt. Fuck.

  The hawk didn’t have time to stop its forward momentum, and it careened into the far wall of the office, crashing into a Glamour Shot. The hawk collapsed in a hail of glass, dead.

  Blood poured off my head. I held my hand to the wound, and hot blood seeped between my fingers. I hurt like hell, the side of my head still tender from my earlier beating at the hands of Scooter’s bat squad. I’m gonna die because a bird clawed my head.

  “Come on,” Michelle said as she opened the windowless door. It led to a dark hallway.

  I sucked up the pain and followed everybody, stomping the dead hawk as I passed.

  A sound like an enormous flag whipping in the wind filled the office, and I turned in time as a ball of shrieking, knife-taloned birds torpedoed the window. The dark mass shone purple as hundreds of birds rearranged themselves to fit through the opening.

  I slammed the door and backed away, cursing myself for not locking it. It was too late now. The animals worked for the Grinder, but had they gained any sort of intelligence? Normal birds wouldn’t know how to open a door handle. But I didn’t know if the Grinder had super-brained the things, and right now they were grouping and planning attack vectors and shit like that. I didn’t want to stick around to find out. The door shuddered as hundreds of birds slammed into it. The blood continued to flow, covering my eyes. I felt light-headed.

  Despite the pain, I clasped my hand over my stinging forehead and followed the others down a long, straight hallway filled with offices. Half the office doors were open, and I didn’t think to close them until I’d already passed several. We pushed through a pair of double doors into a large employee break room. Uri put Patrick in a chair, so he and Michelle could move the refrigerator to block the doors.

  I collapsed in the chair next to the little boy. I felt dizzy, like that one time Nif and I had gotten fucked up on Jack and did the bumper boats at Golf ‘N Stuff. A janitor’s cart stood nearby with a large garbage can, piles of cleaning supplies, and loads of rags. I slid a rag off the handle and wrapped it around my head. I pulled the knot tight. I could feel my pulse in my head. It stung hard.

  “You need a Band-Aid,” Patrick said looking me up and down. It was the first time I heard the child speak.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I do.”

  “It’ll stop soon,” he said. He clutched onto his plastic gun, and he banged it on the table. I remembered I had the real thing in my bag, and just an hour earlier it had accidently blown someone’s head off.

  I watched Michelle and Uri struggle with the soda machine. “That’s not going to do anything,” I said as they tried to slide it next to the fridge for more of a blockade. “The doors open out. Besides,” I pointed at the second set of doors over my shoulder, “there’s more ways than one to get in here.”

  They looked at each other and then me.

  “We have to do something,” Uri said.

  A loud crash came from the other side of the barricade.

  “They’re in,” Michelle said. Uri scooped Patrick up, and they rushed out the second set of doors. I followed, stumbling as I ran.

  We entered the main room. The call floor. I’d never seen one of these places first hand, and it was just as horrifying as I imagined. The Cubicle Jungle, Nif called it. The Soul Freezer. We ran down the dark center aisle, but there was nowhere to hide. We could crouch in a single cubicle, but the rats or cats or birds would surely sniff us out. With all the bruising and blood, I knew I smelled like a cut of filet mignon to the small mammals.

  I tried to imagine what it’d be like, to be overwhelmed with biting rats and clawing birds. Earlier, I had watched the soldiers beset with bugs. I didn’t know which was worse. Bugs, small animals, or birds. I didn’t want to find out.

  We turned a corner, and more cubicles spread out. Behind us, a massive boom followed by a loud, wet fizzing cracked through the silence.

  “That was the soda machine,” I said as we ran.

  We came to the far wall, with more doors leading off in different directions. Two of the doors were bathrooms. No way. A perfect place to get cornered. I guessed one set of doors led out to the main lobby, which was likely a room with lots of glass with a view outside. Coming in this building was a bad idea.

  Uri started trying doors, but they were all locked.

  I caught movement at the corner of my vision. A set of stairs climbed the wall to our left, and it led to a small, dark-windowed office that overlooked the call floor. I guessed that was where the general manager worked so he or she could survey the hordes of workers. The door at the top of the stairs was cracked open―and two people peered out at us. Women, both about my age. One waved at us as the other pulled her back into the room.

  Before I had the chance to ponder the risks of accepting refuge from a pair of strangers, I’d already bound halfway up the stairs. I felt imminent exhaustion coming on, and I just didn’t have the energy to run any more. I didn’t tell the other two I’d decided to go up. I wasn’t even sure if they’d seen the two girls. Still, Uri and Michelle ran behind me, clomping up the hollow-sounding steps into the raised office.

  I pushed into the room, and held the door for the other three to follow. I slammed it closed right after them. I locked the door this time, and turned, collapsing against it as I slid to the floor. Once my butt hit the ground, it pretty much told me it wasn’t getting back up anytime soon.

  The two girls crouched in the back of the room, hugging each other in terror. One held onto a closed, black umbrella, like a weapon between themselves and me. I had to be a gruesome sight. I wore a black and blue body suit covered in oil and blood, half of my face probably looked like an eggplant on a bad day, and I had a grimy doo rag around my head, which still seeped blood. In fact, I bet two seconds after they caught our attention, they took one look at me and thought, oh fuck, what have we done?

  “It’s okay,” I whispered. “This isn’t how I always look.”

  One of the girls looked at the other, who gestured at me and repeated what I’d said. It took me a moment to realize one woman was deaf, and the other had translated with sign language. Uri had said this call center partially focused on 711 relay, which was for deaf people to communicate with people who didn’t have a TTY machine. I guess it made sense that they’d have a deaf person or two working here. I remembered now that Nif had once applied at either this place or one like this, but she couldn’t type the required 75 words a minute to get hired.

  The deaf girl signed, and the other t
ranslated. “What are you doing here? This is private property.”

  If I wasn’t so terrified of making any noise, I would’ve laughed.

  Michelle answered. “Please. They’re chasing after us. We have to be quiet. They’re down there right now.” Uri had let go of Patrick, and the boy was now wrapped tight around his mother, his face buried in her chest.

  Outside, I could feel the Grinder a mere quarter mile away. It had resumed its passage north, moving up First Avenue. If it didn’t veer off again, it would miss this building, but only barely. Once it was gone, I hoped the other monsters would go with it.

  I surveyed the long, thin office, about ten feet wide and thirty feet long. The way we came in was the only door, at the end of the rectangle. The long side facing the calling floor featured dark, tinted glass, top to bottom. On the opposite wall, a lone window looked out onto the roof of the building. From my vantage, I could see a small, tended garden out there, cactus and winter flowers in pots, which meant the window could open and provide escape if it had to.

  I placed bets it would have to.

  Two desks faced each other in the middle of the room, probably the girls’ workspace. The deaf one, maybe a manager, and the other, her translator. Unlike the other office, this one was clean. Each desk held a computer monitor and keyboard. That was it. On the wall by the roof-access window were several old-movie posters. Breakfast at Tiffany’s was the only one I’d heard of. The Nun’s Story, Wait Until Dark, Funny Face were some of the others that seemed vaguely familiar.

  The dark-haired, deaf one was pretty in a pinched-face, giraffe-y sort of way. She had to be six feet tall and was a tangle of arms and legs. Her translator had blonde, perfectly-straight hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. The only sign that she’d had a rough night were her round, saggy eyes. She looked like a sorority girl, the kind I imagined who would’ve owned the Volkswagen I’d just abandoned.

  Below, a crash broke the silence. I knew it must be the cubicle walls falling over. I couldn’t see out the tinted picture window from where I sat, but Uri leaned against the glass, looking. He pointed to something, and his wife nodded. The boy stuffed his plastic gun into his pants and scrambled into his father’s lap. He clutched onto his father like a little monkey.

  “Three monsters,” Michelle said. “Two cat ones and a lizard thing. I don’t see any birds. They’re still way in the back, kicking around cubicle walls.”

  The two girls leaned out to look, and the deaf one gasped.

  “What are those things,” Sorority Girl asked, signing as she talked. “We thought there was just one, giant monster.”

  “Animals are breaking off the main monster and forming smaller ones now,” I said.

  “Hey,” Uri said.

  His next words chilled me.

  “There’s a bunch of people down there. What… Are they dead?”

  Sorority Girl talked, whispering and crying the words. “Several of us were hiding out in the building, and soldiers came in. They told us we had to go outside, and when one of us refused, they started shooting.”

  “Those might not be real soldiers,” I said. Then again, after what I had seen and heard earlier, it grew difficult to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad.

  We went around and introduced ourselves. Sorority Girl’s name was Betsy. The deaf girl was Zora.

  Michelle asked for a first aid kit, but they didn’t have one. I smiled weakly when I realized she was asking for my sake. She and Betsy decided the best way to fix my head was to duct tape the wounds. While they clucked over me, Uri watched the monsters out the windows. The beasts skulked around the call floor, way over on the other side by the dead bodies. None seemed to yet take notice of the stairs. Perhaps the smell of the other dead workers masked our scent. If these monsters worked with the Grinder, hopefully they’d leave before they discovered us. The Grinder itself was closer than ever, passing right outside. The distant crunch of buildings being smashed reverberated the lone exterior window to the office.

  We could do nothing but huddle and hide.

  Chapter 21

  All the adrenaline, all the emotion of the past several hours weighed heavily. It felt as if a pair of hands pressed on me, pushing me deeper and deeper into the floor.

  Zora had been staring at me, and it freaked me out a little. I couldn’t communicate with her, so I just stared back. She signed something. Betsy translated as she and Michelle tried to clean me up. I was too tired and in too much pain to bother crying out when they touched sensitive places. Every part of my head hurt. Sitting down helped somewhat, but what I really needed was a hospital bed and an IV-full of the best painkillers they had on tap.

  “I know you,” Zora signed as Betsy translated with a whisper. “You’re the manager at Big Shot Chicken. You’ve worked there for years. I didn’t recognize you with the purple face.”

  I grunted. “That’s right.”

  “I stop by before work at least once a week. You always seem distracted,” she signed. “You’re either playing with that Rubik’s Cube or staring off into space.”

  Surprised, I said, “I don’t remember you.”

  “I know,” she signed. “I tried hard for a while to get you to notice me. I thought you were cute. But the cashier girl finally told me not to bother, that you were in love.”

  Suddenly, I was embarrassed and—what? Taken aback? I couldn’t bring myself to look at her anymore. It was a strange and awkward moment, so unexpected that it seemed even more surreal than everything else happening around us. It might seem weird, but, other than Nif and Samantha, I couldn’t remember a girl ever saying she was interested in me. Nif always had guys hitting on her, sometimes right in front of me. I’d gotten used to it.

  (And Nif, to her credit, would respond with something like, “Can’t you see I’m with someone, you piece of shit? Even if I was single, I wouldn’t have anything to do with a rude motherfucker like you, so get out of my face before I smash it in.”)

  So, a girl, interested in me? And I didn’t even notice? I don’t know why, but it blew my mind, and for a fraction of a moment, it helped ease the pain I now felt.

  “Where is she now, this girl you love?” Zora asked.

  And the pain all came back.

  Even though Betsy interpreted my words, I figured out that Zora wanted me to look directly at her as I spoke, even though she watched the hand gestures at my left.

  “She’s in the Grinder,” I said. I could feel the monster, just outside, like if I reached out the window and stood on my tip-toes and let myself fall, it’d be there, ready to catch me. I swallowed hard. Concentrate. You need to fight it.

  Patrick looked up from his father’s lap. I thought he’d been asleep because he’d been so quiet.

  “Her name is Nif,” the little boy said. “He’s given up on her, so we’ve given up on him.” The boy lifted his toy gun. Only it wasn’t a toy anymore. He pointed it under his father’s chin, what the fuck―

  Ka-boom! Uri’s face jerked and exploded into a geyser of blood and gore. The picture window exploded as the bullet ricocheted and tore through. Patrick casually hopped off his dead father’s lap as the body slid out of the office window and landed below.

  Michelle screamed. Betsy and Zora screamed. I jumped to my feet, putting my back against the door. I reached into the duffel and grabbed for my gun. I grasped plastic. The little bastard had switched the guns. He must’ve taken it while his mother cleaned my wounds.

  Betsy backed away to the other side of the room with Zora, signing rapidly. Patrick leveled the gun at me. Beyond him, I now held a panoramic view of the calling floor. Two cats leapt through the cubicles toward us. Another creature, the size of a large saltwater crocodile with a hammer head slithered along the floor behind them, knocking over cubicle walls like dominoes with his massive head and tail.

  “Patrick,” Michelle screamed at her son. “What did you do? You were getting better. What did you do? Uri! Uri!”

  Bl
ood and pieces of brain dripped from the ceiling.

  Patrick leveled his gaze at me. “It would be so easy,” he said. “You know where she is. You can feel her. Despite turning your back, she still calls out to you. You don’t deserve her. We have given up on you, but if you beg, maybe we’ll let you in.”

  Behind me, I could feel the thump, thump of heavy feet climbing the stairs. The door rocked as a monster crashed up against it.

  “Tell your boss to suck my fat cock,” I said.

  Patrick grinned with an expression way too mature for a four-year-old boy. “You can tell her yourself.” He lowered the gun so it was pointed at my knee.

  Zora smashed Patrick in the back of the head with the umbrella, and the little boy tumbled away, falling out the same way his father had.

  “Patrick!” Michelle cried. She rushed to the edge of the room. Behind me, the door rocked again. Zora and I stared at one another.

  “The roof,” I said.

  Zora nodded. “The roof,” she repeated out loud, speaking in that stilted way deaf people do. Betsy was already pulling the window open.

  Michelle sobbed. Holy sh— I grabbed for Michelle’s shirt just as a double-tailed cat leapt through the broken window from the floor below. The creature’s top half split, and we were surrounded by fifteen hissing and clawing cats, rolling and smashing against the far wall. The intact bottom half resembled a two-legged, hairy meatball. It skidded to a stop, rolling up against the desks, upending them. Up close, I could see the individual animals more clearly, rats and more cats, twisted and bent to make the whole. The thing smelled of musk and blood.

  As the meatball tried to stand, blind or disoriented, I didn’t know, the detached cats jumped at me and Michelle. Betsy was already out the window with Zora just behind. I kicked, and my foot connected with the closest cat. It flew, howling across the office, hitting hard into a poster for Roman Holiday.

  Michelle was screaming. A black, longhaired cat had clutched onto her face like one of those things in Alien. Others crawled up her body, shredding as they went. I smacked one away with my duffel.