Ted died as I watched through his eyes, and
I
Didn’t
Stop
Seeing.
Chapter 27
The fabled tunnel of light stretched before me, dazzling and intoxicating. I almost retreated out of genuine surprise and panic, but at the same time, the sheer beauty of the light drew me in.
We slipped together into the light. Ted’s body became joy. That’s the only way to describe it. Every question, every fear he’d ever had melted away, became irrelevant. I was right there with him, feeling the same thing. His physical body broke into millions of particles as we entered the light.
We swept into the brightness, curving in a fast, upward motion as if on a waterslide in reverse. I could no longer see anything but the white, but I allowed the full sensation in. I ascended, higher and faster, swimming in the joy, the love, and promise of the everlasting.
Like a grain of sand landing on an infinite beach, we alighted. I got the sense this afterlife wasn’t much different than the Grinder itself. Only here, the pain and worries of real life were left behind as you became a part of the whole.
Nif’s turtle pond. It existed after all.
The Grinder was a bastardization of this place, a substitution of joy with pain, of contentment with a deep, clawing anger.
Just as Ted and I melted into the whole, becoming one with the ecstasy, it changed. Like a head-on collision with an unexpected brick wall, it changed.
The Grinder hitched a ride with us. I hadn’t felt her, but she was there, like a tumor emerging on his soul.
In a flash, the joy turned to horror. An incredible pain rose once again, growing and burning. It was as if my very guts were turned to fire and then sprayed outward through my pores. The Grinder manipulated Ted’s soul, turning it from love to hate, from joy to pain until it grew and expanded and exploded with the nuclear power of every atom bomb ever made.
I lost contact then, spinning like a dropped bottle cap into the ether of the network. Once I came to a stop, I was left metaphorically breathless and confused. I’d been thinking this a lot in the past few hours, but it seemed truly appropriate now:
What the fuck?
I searched until I found another soul about to perish, and I held on for the ride, holding back this time so I wouldn’t feel the excruciating pain. This was Wanda Gonzalez, a factory worker, mother of three, devout Catholic. She’d been shot hours ago, and she was about to die. I followed her as she took the same meteoric journey to the promised land.
We experienced the same result. The Grinder joined us. Wanda’s soul was welcomed for a moment, only to react and explode.
Despite holding back, I still felt the same searing pain, the same disorienting fall from heaven.
Terror.
That’s what I felt when I realized what I had just witnessed, twice. I wasn’t going to do that again if I could help it.
At the beginning of this, I told you I knew what the Grinder was, and why the Grinder had come. After hearing her confession, I still hadn’t fully understood the extent of what she wanted to do. She was angry with God, or a god, I didn’t believe in. Even after everything I had seen, I still hadn’t understood.
Until now.
She was using us against heaven. Much in the same way she was tossing corpses at the attacking soldiers, she was using us. She wanted us to be killed by the military.
All of us who became ensnared, we were touched in a way that made us so incompatible with the afterlife, our souls reacted to heaven the same way a cup of water reacts to superheated oil.
Each one of us who died was tearing heaven down, a little piece at a time.
How quickly an unbeliever turns, said my mother’s voice in my mind, startling me. The Grinder. I got the sense she was talking to me, not just talking at me like before, and I ventured a response.
“I don’t believe your lies,” I said out loud into the ether, despite not having a voice. Still, it echoed in my non-existent ears. “I don’t believe you were ever the son of God.”
I was trying to piss her off, but I didn’t get a reaction. She could read my mind, so she already knew what I did—and didn’t—believe.
You were chosen over all the others because you and I are very much alike. But we are not identical, and that difference is the key. You have something I never will.
I didn’t answer.
You have faith. Not in any bastardized, cannibalistic Christian god like so many of your peers. Your faith is in your beloved. Jennifer. Nif. Your blind devotion to her is a thing of curiosity and wonder. It is a true faith, and it is one I cannot replace. Still, it is so easy to manipulate, I can tell you I plan on exploiting this faith you have, and you will allow me to anyway. You worship her like she is the true deity, despite all that she has done. I have looked into you, Adam, and I know you. You would sacrifice anything on the promise of her safe passage.
“I won’t do anything you ask, and I won’t believe a promise you make.”
But you will. You will do anything if I ask it in her name.
“How could I?” I asked. “You’re…you’re killing us, using us because of some psychotic grudge. You’re trying to destroy heaven.”
The Grinder’s voice raged.
That is an untruth. Entrance. Not destruction. That is what I want.
Know this, Adam. Heaven is the truest, but most fragile, grinder of them all. A soul is presented at the so-called gates and tossed into the heavenly grinder. The lever is turned, and the soul is processed through the blades. But the grinder will only handle pure, untainted souls. Just the slightest hint of gristle, and the soul is rejected, tossed into the fire with the rest of the offal.
I am His child, Adam. HIS child. I came to this world, this life at His bidding. I didn’t ask for this. He was my Father. I loved Him. I died for this world. I died for Him. I was rejected, cast into the fire. My soul isn’t pure, because it’s only half human. But my other half is His. Being His son is what caused my damnation. That is all. I did nothing wrong but get born. Can’t you see the foolishness in that? Can’t you see why I would have so much anger?
Some so-called ‘god’ is He. He can change it. He can give the grinder a stouter blade, one strong enough to allow His child into His embrace. He promised me this eternity. He promised me. But I’ve been denied.
Well, Adam. If I am to be denied, then we are all to be denied.
I am touching your fellow man. I am touching their souls, adding a tinge of gristle. You are no longer pure. And now you are getting rejected by my Father, just like I was. He can stop this. All He must do is change the blade. Make the gristle grind. Otherwise, the destruction will continue. He must decide. Does He love you more than He hates me?
I felt sick, despite not having a physical stomach. “What happens to those who are destroyed? Like Ted? All the others who have died?”
I could taste the bitterness of her venom.
They die the true death, at the only hand that can wield such a knife. Yet, their destruction takes a heavy toll each time, and soon, despite my Father’s efforts, heaven’s grinder will stall, the blade will seize, and I will be free to enter.
“I can see why he wouldn’t want you hanging around,” I said. “You’re a bit of an asshole.”
I AM HIS CHILD, she roared, but the voice was no longer that of my mother. It was everybody’s voice, every intact vocal cord within the Grinder speaking at once, crying out both physically and mentally.
Once again I was left alone in the massive city of minds. A tremor reverberated through this pseudo-world, vibrating like the plucked string of an upright bass.
I have to get the hell out of here. I can’t help Nif like this.
How could I?
Before I did anything, I needed to find my body. While I still had free reign to travel the network, I became aware of a semi-circle no-fly zone in the middle of the Grinder’s mass, low to the ground. That was where Nif was, and that was where my body was
as well.
I learned some about the internal structure of the Grinder. No matter what shape it took, its core remained unchanged. The semi-circle core held a diameter of about 40 feet, filled mostly with metal, the first people ensnared, and the Grinder’s brain, which I assumed was attached to Cece. Around the core lurked a secondary defensive ring, much larger and more flexible, but still not as fluid and moving as the rest of the Grinder’s mass, which made up the vast majority of its bulk. This secondary layer was protected from the heat and trauma by a thick outer layer of the fast-growing nervous membrane. Even with everything they’d thrown at it, the military had yet to dent this second layer. In fact, the first injury the Grinder’s inner sanctum had suffered was at my hands when I injected it with Clementine’s secret formula.
I entered minds and looked through eyes, but the interior of the Grinder was sheer black. I had no way to find my body, no way to get my thoughts back into my proper shell.
If ever I had a need for a Deus ex machina, it would be now. If this thing attacked heaven, why didn’t God or whoever stop it? It didn’t make sense to me.
So instead, I had to rely on the United States military.
Just as I finished my exchange with the Grinder, an Apache attack helicopter dropped missiles into the main body before skulking away. Unfortunately for the pilot, Captain Jamal Browne from Fort Hood, Texas, a flesh golem had a position behind the chopper and tossed a USPS mailbox straight into the main rotor.
The helicopter spun out of control. Captain Browne’s initial instinct was to kamikaze into the Grinder. As noble as that was, it was futile. The monster scrambled out of the way, and the Apache crashed hard into the parking lot of the Foothills Mall. A tentacle reached through the destruction and pulled Captain Browne free. His body was ripped in half in the extraction, and he died in a matter of moments, but not before the Grinder was able to garner valuable intelligence as to the current movements of the US military.
This was the first time the Grinder brought someone new into the fold while I was conscious of the effort. I learned everything just as the Grinder did. Most everyone already in the network was from Tucson or were early responders from the military, so they didn’t know much beyond what I already did of the outside world’s reactions to the appearance of the monster.
I learned a lot from Captain Browne. He wasn’t privy to the exact nature of the tumultuous and vehement conflict waging between the brass and the White House, but he did know this: nobody was happy. After an evening of unorganized and disastrous responses to the Grinder, the military was preparing a massive assault against the monster using every available and conventional asset that the Air Force, Army, and Marines were able to bring to bear against the creature. While hastily constructed, the attack was to be a guns blazing, bombs dropping, scorched earth, we’re-the-motherfucking-US-Military full-on assault that would pound the Grinder into the dust.
And it was coming. It was coming now.
Chapter 28
“You don’t like me much, do you?” My father asked me that night, the night before he died.
He had the blankets pulled up over him, and he was just a head and a pair of arms floating on the hospital bed, covered in wires and tubes. The sterile room was cold and oppressive, everything in black, white, and gray. A fitting end, I thought.
Nif had just stormed out. My father had spent some time telling me she was no good for me, with her standing right there, chewing her own lip off to stay quiet. I’d deflected everything he’d said. The man was dying, after all. I knew it. He knew it. Then he called her a whore, and she left.
“You never kept your promises,” I said.
“I got you that bike.”
It took me a moment to realize he was joking. I laughed.
“I’m sorry, Adam,” he said. “I wish I could do and say more. But it’s too late.”
“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “You got bigger things to worry about.”
“She scares me, Adam.”
I paused. “I love her,” I said, finally.
“You were going to be somebody. That day I woke up and found that puzzle sitting on the table, I knew. You were going to grow up to be the man I never was. But this wife of yours. I can see it. She’s going to drag you down.” He clenched his lips, then he said, “She’s just like me.”
“You’re full of shit,” I said, surprised. I felt angry, too. “Nif is as much like you as you’re like Oprah fucking Winfrey.”
He tried to sit up, but he laid back, exhausted. “No. Listen to me. One day you’ll see it, but by then, it’ll be too late.”
I didn’t see it. I still don’t see it, but he was so adamant, I listened.
“I met your mother,” he went on, “when I was vacationing with some friends in Makati, a year before you were born. I don’t think I ever told you this story.”
“You never told me any stories,” I said.
“She was singing at this club. She was so fucking beautiful, Adam. Her voice was like the waves hitting the beach on a clear night. You know what I mean? The most peaceful, calming thing you ever heard.”
I listened in shocked silence. My mom, a singer? I had no idea.
“I had to meet her. Me and my friends waited until the club closed, and I asked her out to dinner. Her English was surprisingly good. She said, ‘If you watch me sing three more nights in a row, I’ll let you take me out to dinner.’ Well, we were due to fly out in two days, and we were going back to Manila in the morning. But she was so enchanting, I just had to do it.”
“So, you stayed behind?” I asked.
“Yeah. They were so mad.” My dad laughed. “I hardly had any money left. I was twenty-two years old, and crazy. But I did it. I went to that club every night for the next three nights, just like she’d asked. At the end of the third night, she came to me afterwards and said, ‘You can now take me to dinner,’ and I told her I couldn’t. If I spent any more money, I wouldn’t be able to get back home. She laughed and took me to her place. She had this postage-stamp apartment. She cooked me dinner, and we talked all night. She told me about how she was going to record an album, maybe move to America to make it big.” He coughed for a long time. “We made you that night. The next day, I went home.”
“Wow,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say. “Wow.”
“Three months later, I got a letter from her. She said she was pregnant, and I was the father. I got so scared. I told your grandfather, and he told me to forget about her.”
I’d never met my grandfather. My dad never talked about him. He’d died when I was three years old.
“But I couldn’t forget about her. I started the process of bringing her to the States. You wouldn’t believe how difficult that was, even though—especially though—she was pregnant with you. But we managed it, just in time for you to be born. We got married, and for a while, everything was perfect.”
“What happened?” I asked, really asking, why did you turn into such an asshole?
“My father was right,” he said. “I’m no good, and he knew it. When he told me to forget about her and to forget about you, he wasn’t saying that to be a dick. He said it to protect you. To protect you from me.”
As he talked, my dad kept jamming the button to release the painkiller into his system, but he still had over twenty minutes left on the delay.
“Once your mother came, I was so happy, so excited to have her, I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid of losing her. She tried to sing for a while, but nothing came of it, and I felt so guilty for letting her down, like it was somehow my fault. She blamed herself at first, but eventually she started to blame me. And she was right. I couldn’t keep a job. I spent all of our money on alcohol. I never helped with you. As the years ticked by, she became withdrawn. She stopped singing. Then she stopped smiling. Sometimes, I’d look at her, and it’d seem like she wasn’t even breathing. She was just sitting there, looking off into space, and I’d think, I did that to her.”
&nbs
p; He turned in his bed, so his eyes met mine. I’d never seen him this intense. “I had killed her long before she killed me.”
The doctors had suspected poisoning at this point, but none of that came out until after he died. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Why didn’t you go to college?” my father asked. “You had the scholarship. I saw the letters. You could’ve gone almost anywhere, on their dime.”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “You didn’t go because this girl of yours didn’t want you to go.”
“That’s not true. She never asked me to stay.” I remembered the conversation I’d had with Nif at The Nomery just a few weeks before. You didn’t leave, and I fucked up your life anyway.
But she hadn’t fucked up my life. No matter how many times people said it, it didn’t make it true.
“That wife of yours, son. She’s no good,” my dad repeated.
In less than eight hours, he was dead. A few days after that, my mom was arrested.
The attack would commence at 11 AM, and was dubbed Operation High Noon.
(The Daylight Saving change had occurred the previous Sunday, and the overzealous dumbass who came up with the “High Noon” title didn’t realize that Arizona existed in its own special time zone. Technically, Arizona was in Mountain Standard time, but the state didn’t observe Daylight Saving. As a result, half the year the state was equal with Pacific Time, the other half with Mountain Standard. Luckily for the military, they operated on GMT, but to the late Captain Jamal Browne, who was originally from Yuma, Arizona, anything regarding Arizona and time zones was a touchy subject. He’d thought the name of the operation was a bad omen. I guess, for him, it was.)
After the operation, the results of the attack would be evaluated. Either way, whether the attack was chalked up as success or not, all military personnel had orders to have their asses more than 75 kilometers from the NEE (Non Earth Entity) by 21:30 GMT, or 2:30 PM local time.
The Grinding Page 21