The Grinding (10 page)

“Do you see that?” she said that first time we saw
Gustavo.

“What?” I asked.

“She’s smiling,” Nif said, and she got a slight,
Mona Lisa smile on her own lips.

“I think that’s heaven, right there,” she said.
“She has everything she wants. She has food, a clean tank, and a rock to sit
on, half in and half out of the water. She doesn’t worry about anything. Her
first memory was probably right here, and she doesn’t even know what it means
to have worry or fear.”

“Sounds kind of boring if you ask me.”

“She doesn’t even know what it’s like to be bored.
Happiness is all she knows.”

Once, I suggested we try to talk the pet shop
owners into letting us buy Gustavo and her tank, and Nif was aghast at the
suggestion.

“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.

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.