The Grinding

by Dinniman, Matt

  Captain Browne didn’t know explicitly what that meant, but he had a pretty good idea. So did I. What pissed me off was that it appeared they were planning on doing it no matter what happened.

  It was the worst possible thing that could happen. But it made sense, as much as I hated to admit it. They didn’t know what the Grinder was trying to do. Now that the Grinder had the ability to control people and animals from afar, the only way to be sure would be to nuke everything. Still, why wait so long? Captain Browne had wondered the same thing. He’d asked flat-out, If we’re going to nuke it, why not do it now, before it’s too late?

  The response he received from the Colonel chilled him. The current administration has ordered us not to use nuclear arms on our own soil. The way the Colonel said ‘current’ suggested that in the next few hours, leadership might change. Captain Browne said nothing. He didn’t like how the president was handling the situation, but still… Best to keep his head down and see how it would play out. For all he knew, nuclear arms wouldn’t be used. Maybe they were planning on doing something else, perhaps a top secret weapon, and he was misreading what the Colonel was saying.

  He never got to find out. He’d been sent to harass the Grinder and never made it back.

  Captain Browne had been brought down at 10:40 AM, which meant Operation High Noon would begin at any moment.

  The Grinder was strong, but strong enough to survive an organized, well-planned counter-assault? I doubted it.

  That was what the Grinder wanted. To die and go to heaven. In order to do that, she had to first kill as many people as she could, and use their tainted, gristled souls to bring heaven’s blade to a grinding halt so she could get past it, and get in.

  You are astute, the Grinder whispered in my mind.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I said, shaken. It freaked me out every time she answered my own thoughts.

  I travelled to the very top of the highest hydra tentacle to get a better view. I watched as a flesh golem peeled off the side, emerging like a newborn baby from the Grinder. Then another. I counted ten of them, all the same. Each elephant-sized creature ran on four legs. Square in shape with a massive, metallic claw attached to their backs, they were like organic catapults. They slipped off into various directions, running into the neighborhoods surrounding the Grinder. I tried to touch the minds of those within before one detached, but there was nothing there. These were all reanimated corpses, recycled to make mindless war machines. Other, smaller golems appeared of various shapes, all disappearing into different directions. Mini-grinders, the animals that had the ability to detach and reform, rushed off by the hundreds. Most of the monsters were the big cats, but other shapes peeled off as well.

  I felt…light-headed. It was the only way to describe it, even though I didn’t have a physical head. I wasn’t sure why, but I suspected it was because the Grinder was losing so much mass, getting smaller as more and more pieces broke off and disappeared into the city.

  The Grinder’s side opened like a massive, dripping maw. Thousands upon thousands of birds shot forth. They flew north, east, and west in three distinct groups, a never-ending stream of ink spread across the sky.

  Even as these birds left, more arrived from all directions Most of these were seagulls, but I saw and felt lots of ducks, too. They’d land on the Grinder’s back and sit there for a few moments and then take off again.

  I could feel each one as it absorbed into the fold.

  The military had begun shooting the birds flocking toward Tucson. Animal memories were a strange thing to grasp as the sense of sight was so much less important to them than the other senses. One seagull had been flying for hours, coming from somewhere along the California coast. It’d flown over an interstate, which I guessed was I-8 to San Diego, and a huge, five-mile-long convoy rushed east toward Tucson. The soldiers filled the air with smoke and fire, and three-quarters of the bird’s companions fell before the seagulls figured out to veer from the road.

  The seagull now swelled with a strange, pride-like feeling just after it landed. It and its companions took off again, heading west back toward I-8, this time to seek revenge.

  Below, the Grinder had stopped moving and planted her center right at the intersection, her still-massive bulk spreading like a thick, oblong pancake well into the neighborhoods on each side. Three tentacles raised hundreds of feet into the air, waving back and forth as if to say, bring it.

  Chapter 29

  They brought it.

  Before the previous evening, the only exposure I ever had to the United States military and any of their tactics was through playing Call of Duty, the rantings of Royce and Randy, and a couple air shows from years ago. I knew what A-10s were only because we had them flying over our heads every day. Things like cruise missiles, artillery shells, AC-130 support were only vague concepts to me, things I never knew of or cared much about.

  I didn’t see where the bombs came from. They were either dropped from really high up, or they weren’t bombs at all, but missiles or artillery shot from far away. One moment, I scanned the sky, looking for any sign of the military, and there was nothing. You would never have known it had rained the night before, or that fog had encompassed the city a few hours earlier. It was a beautiful, warm November morning, and the blue sky was only partially obscured by the still-smoldering wreckage of Tucson behind me.

  Then, Holocaust.

  Fire became all I knew. Walls of it, burning so bright, so blistering, so thunderous, melting the outer shell of the Grinder into vibrating ash. This wasn’t a nuclear bomb, but it was pretty fucking close. The three tentacles disintegrated. I died a thousand times over, fleeing deeper and deeper into the monster until I was as close as I could get to the inner core. The fire stampeded over us, sending the entire network into chaos. I sought out the military minds, trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened, but all the minds were gone. I had nowhere to hide except in the ether itself, which had drained from a torrent, to a trickle.

  I thought of the tadpoles, dying in the hot sun as their pond evaporated all around them. My consciousness floundered in the heat, gasping for breath.

  At the last moment, I found a body, a man named Dante Medina. He was inside the second layer of protective nerve bundle. I fled inside his mind. He’d been sitting at the Sonoran hotdog stand outside the roller derby when he’d been picked up. His body was miraculously intact. Just scrapes, bruises, and burns from being used as interior padding. The man was an amateur body builder, addicted to steroids and porn. He worked nights as a male stripper and went by the name of Inferno.

  In the blast, the Grinder had gone from tens of thousands of living minds to a few hundred. Cece’s mom. Jordan, the little girl with the peeled-back scalp. Patrick, the boy who had shot his father. Officer Beefycakes. Gone. Every remaining, living person I could find was cocooned in nerves, most of them roasting alive.

  I didn’t join these lost souls in their doomed journey to the afterlife. I couldn’t bear the thought of their pain. I imagined the very girders of heaven melting and snapping under the pressure.

  You idiots, I screamed in Dante’s mind. This is what she wants.

  Nif, please be okay.

  The Grinder condensed as much as she could, so grievously injured, she couldn’t move. More explosions ripped around us, but I no longer had any exterior eyes. I couldn’t see from where the attacks came, or what manner of craft caused them.

  Your capacity for war is outstanding, the Grinder whispered, joy evident in her voice. Even greater than I imagined.

  “You have to get the hell out of here,” I said. “I don’t know what they just did, but it fucked you up something hardcore.” Despite the protective coating of nerves, Dante’s skin blistered, and he’d soon be dead. A constant hammering had been added to the fire, like a flying tank pounding the side of the Grinder with explosive shells, reaching deeper and deeper with each blast.

  Yet it is not enough, she said.

  “Maybe you shou
ld give up then,” I said, frantic. “If this fucked-up plan isn’t going to work, then nothing will. Run away while you still can.”

  The Grinder didn’t respond. I simmered in Dante’s body. The few that remained died around me, and soon, Dante was the only one left. I knew there were more in the inner core, but I couldn’t get to them, no matter how hard I tried.

  Had Dante been conscious of his pain, he would’ve died an agonizing death, steamed alive, wrapped like a burrito in nerve bundle. I had nowhere else to go, so I stayed with him as he perished.

  Once again I ascended, and the overwhelming joy encompassed me. He became conscious of his ascent long enough to experience the elation for just a moment before it turned, before he exploded like a nuclear bomb against the walls of heaven.

  As we burst into an unimaginable conflagration, I became aware of a voice screaming. The Grinder. Its true voice. It was a male voice, heavy with age and anger and the ultimate pain. He roared in a language I didn’t know, yet I understood. His screams jarred my soul.

  Let me in, he cried. I am your child. Please, Father. Let me in.

  This time, as Dante was rejected from heaven, I felt others taken with him. The walls had been breached, and those that had died long ago, those who had made it to heaven, were ripped from their eternity and plunged with us into the thirsty black. In that brief moment, I knew those who fell with us. Dante’s grandmother, Millicent. Dante’s sister, Vanessa, who had died as an infant. Dante’s father, Raymond who had died just last year in a car accident.

  Why? Dante’s grandmother wondered as her existence disintegrated.

  The Grinder answered her. He betrayed His child. That is why you fall.

  The wave of brimstone swept over me, and once again I was ejected from heaven and sent back down tumbling, whirling, head over heels, like a meteor to earth.

  But this time I had nowhere to land.

  …Except into my own body.

  Every joint screamed as my nervous system rebooted. Gagging, I reached up and scooped a wet, slimy glob of I-don’t-even-want-to-know out of my mouth. I fell to my knees on the hard metal floor and proceeded to vomit stomach acid.

  I’m back.

  A second wave of nausea overwhelmed me as my body adjusted to the abrupt, dizzying disconnection from the dying network.

  I grabbed my neck. It was sore where I had been attached to the Grinder. Tiny little pricklies jutted from my skin, like hard stubble. Searing, stifling heat filled the small space. My head ached. The dry suit hung about my body in tatters. My gloves were gone, but I still wore the Kevlar.

  I blinked, but I could see nothing. Dark forms took shape. Was I in the armored truck? I blindly reached for my flashlight, but I no longer had it. My duffel bag. Gone. The fanny pack, the neural brain goo, gone. The needles Clementine had given me were gone as well. I still had the Rambo knife lashed to my leg, but I had nothing to cut, nothing to kill.

  And it was gone. The tug inside my chest. The tug that kept me connected to her, to Nif. Gone. Along with my heart. A terrible, foreboding feeling overwhelmed me.

  “Nif,” I called into the darkness. “Nif!”

  No answer. My skin prickled with the unbearable heat. The oily smell was replaced with the acrid stench of burnt hair. Earlier, no external sounds had penetrated this deep inside of the Grinder. Now, I could hear everything. Jets roared above, as if, wherever I was, I had very little cover.

  I felt around in the dark, but she wasn’t with me.

  “Where is she, you fucking asshole?” I cried. I banged my fists into a wall, a pulsating, fleshy skin wall, colder than the surrounding metal. This was nerve bundle, I realized. It no longer attached to me as I touched it, but it coated the walls of my prison.

  A weak, yellow light filled the compartment. A bloated, mottled hand lowered from the overhead cabin lamp.

  Cece.

  I was in the truck. We were alone, and I gaped at what she had become.

  Cece was bone-white. Her overextended head and a pair of fat, naked arms floated in a glob of pink, vein-riddled nerve that spread around her like a massive, flowing dress made of flesh. Clumps of stringy hair remained on her lolling head, and her lower jaw hung in her skin, as if internally detached. Her flesh dress spread through into the cab of the large truck and along the interior walls where I now cowered, the tissue forming into tendrils as it connected to the rest of the beast through holes in the steel. With every explosion, the truck rocked, and her open eyes winced with pain.

  “Cece?” I asked. I hesitated, then stepped forward to put my bare hand on her swollen cheek. Everything around us broiled, but her skin felt like ice. “Cece?”

  Her eyes fluttered, and a low moan escaped her. Black drool dripped from her sagging mouth.

  “Ahh-dam,” she groaned.

  “Cece,” I said. “Where’s Nif? Where did she go?”

  “It huuurts,” she said, her words slurred and difficult to understand.

  I shook her head. Her skin felt fragile, waxy, like I could scrape it off with my fingernail. “Look at me,” I said, panic rising.

  Her eyes slowly met mine. “Nif was here.”

  “I know. I saw her. Please, Cece, where did she go?”

  “Gone.” A crackling, fireworks-like sound shook the truck.

  My heart lurched. “What do you mean ‘gone?’”

  “…I could feel her, but now I can’t… Supposed to come back and reform, but... Now…now…” Her eyelids fluttered. She said something indistinguishable.

  “Cece!”

  Her body jerked, and her eyes snapped open. I let go of her face and backed away, surprised. I could tell that I was no longer speaking with Cece.

  “Adam,” she said, much more clearly. “I’m glad you made it back. We are falling apart, and very little is left. If you don’t act quickly, all will be lost.”

  “Where the fuck is she?” I asked.

  “Calm yourself,” she said. The entire truck jolted with another explosion, and it was difficult to breathe. “She is hidden. But the mechanism in which she is protected has been injured. She is in danger.”

  “No shit she’s in danger, asshole. Where is she?”

  “First, you must do as I say, and then I will tell you where she is.”

  If it wasn’t Cece she was talking through, I would have punched her in her face. “No,” I said. “I’m not doing anything for you.”

  “Adam,” Grinder-Cece said. “Listen to me. I’m going to let you go. You’re to find your wife, and you’re to get as far away as you can. I’ll try to protect you until you are free.”

  “What?” I asked. “What’re you talking about?”

  “I told you. I have a special purpose for you. For your beloved. You are going to do it willingly and freely.” The Grinder lifted Cece’s arm and pointed it at me.

  The monster continued. “I knew the moment I absorbed her that she would be the one. Out of every human, you two are the best suited. She is strong. But most of all, she has you—you so hopelessly, blindly devoted to her that you would do anything to keep her safe.” Grinder-Cece laughed. “It amuses me.”

  The Grinder wasn’t making sense. Soon, the heat would become too much, and none of this would matter.

  She continued. “Get to her. Keep her safe. Watch over her until you’re old and wrinkled, and she wakes up one morning to say, ‘Adam. After all this time, you’re still watching over me.’ And make no mistake. That day will come, but only if you try.”

  “Why?” I asked, taking another step back. “What’s in it for you?”

  Grinder-Cece paused, as if debating on whether or not to tell me the truth. The back of my foot brushed up against something soft. It was the duffel bag, covered with pink nerve. I reached down and picked it up. It peeled away easily. The spongy nerve broke apart as I pulled, and the edges of the nerves turned black. All around me, the nerves holding everything in place withered like a time-lapse video of flowers rotting in the sun. I pulled the bag over my shoul
der.

  “Everything I have touched, I have ground to nothing,” she said. Her voice creaked out, slower and weaker. “Everything but what’s caught in my teeth.”

  “Damn it,” I said, sorry I had asked. “Stop spouting bullshit and… Fuck.” The entire truck turned sideways, and I slammed against the passenger side wall. The metal of the door handle burned my arm through the tattered suit, and I jumped in pain.

  “If you want me to live, you gotta let me go right now,” I said, gasping the words. Cece’s body had fallen sideways, and she oozed down the wall, the pink flesh breaking apart as it fell. “Otherwise, we’re both going to fucking die.”

  The side door to the truck, now sideways at my feet, swung open, revealing a hole in the ground below. The sewers.

  “The atom-ripping blast your military plans will kill you and your beloved if you do not flee.” Grinder-Cece smiled. As she did, two of her front teeth fell out. “All that I made will die. All will help to break the blades of heaven. But, alas, this temporary defeat comes too soon. I have damaged my Father’s throne, but it still stands, refusing me entry.”

  A stream of bullets ripped through the armored truck, shredding the steel walls between me and Cece. I clutched my hands to my ears at the incredible sound. Each half-dollar-sized hole punched a penetrating beam of light through. Whatever happened next would finish us off.

  “Fuck,” I said. “Quit whining and tell me where she is.”

  “The Botanical Gardens. Her body is entombed inside what you’ve been calling a flesh golem. The golem was tasked to return and re-absorb, but it has been injured. It is hiding where the butterflies lived, before they became a part of me. You must get there before they find and kill it.” Cece’s right side sloughed off the interior wall, melting like wax. “I have lost control of all that I have left. They move independently. Hurry to your wife. The golem will not give up its prize easily.” Grinder-Cece coughed. “Now leave me. Flee through this passage, which will find you in a safe place.”