The Grinding (12 page)

I paused to listen.

“Jack, I appreciate the chance to speak,” said the
professor, his voice cutting in and out like he talked through a cell phone.
“Depictions of the entrance of hell, the Hellmouth, were very prevalent in
medieval art. Sometimes it was shown as a dark cave entrance, or a hole in the
ground sucking in sinners, often with red, fiery demons at the entranceway. But
sometimes, the Hellmouth was illustrated as just that—a mouth. Usually
the mouth of a massive sea creature, like a whale or other nondescript sea
entity. Leviathan.”

“Tucson is nowhere near the sea,” interrupted the
interviewer. “But, are you suggesting that this phenomenon is related to the
Christian hell?”

“Well, first off, this hell is almost universal.
We’ll get to that in a minute. Secondly, while Leviathan is portrayed as a sea
monster…”

I flipped the channel. I didn’t give a shit about
its origins, at least not at the moment. I cared about what was really
happening at the moment.

“…to make matters worse, the National Weather
Service has issued a dense fog advisory for the Tucson area which will
certainly hinder…”

“…reports of shooting directly into the surging
crowd…”

“…of Mexico warned the United States against using
nuclear weapons in such close…”

“…rang, and I picked it up, and it was her. She said
she’d been captured by the monster.”

My hand froze on the radio’s controls. I stopped
the car.

“She asked me to come help her.”

I stared at the radio.

Another, female reporter came on. “From far away
as India there are reports of people receiving similar telephone calls from
loved ones ensnared within the Grinder. All the calls are the same. A loved one
calls, tells them they’re trapped, and requests help. The calls don’t last more
than a few moments. The U.S. military has neither confirmed nor denied that
they shut down all cellular and wire-based communications within Tucson after
the first wave of calls were reported. They warned that anyone who receives
such a call should assume it’s ‘an obvious and insidious trap’, that the person
calling them is not doing it out of their own free will.”

So. I hadn’t really talked to Nif. It was a trick
of the Grinder. Designed to get me out of the house and moving toward it. I
felt sick.

Was Nif really trapped inside an armored car,
sequestered and alive somewhere deep within the beast? Or was she gone already,
dead and burned? Was she crushed under the mass of humanity, just another
expendable, replaceable human cog?

A terrible sinking feeling welled up inside my
chest.

Knowing I wasn’t unique, that others had received
a call, changed everything. What little hope I had began to slip away, like
water through my fingers. I wondered how many people who’d received calls were also
scrambling around town, trying to save their loved ones. I wondered how many
had already been caught up or killed.

A pair of dogs ran headlong across the street in
front of my stopped car. I watched them disappear down the street, heading
southeast. I thought of Hamlet, and I felt guilty for leaving the back door
open so he could run free. I’d done it because I was afraid the house would get
destroyed, and he’d be stuck. Instead, I probably got him killed. That seemed
to be the theme of the evening—I couldn’t fix it, so I made it worse. I
wondered if Nif would sense Hamlet if he ended up in the Grinder, if she was
even still alive in there somewhere.

The twins. That was my fault, too. I could picture
their mom and dad. They lived in Douglas, a couple hours away. If I managed to
survive tonight, I’d have to go to them and tell them how their sons died.

I had promised Randy I’d bring the duffel bag to
their girlfriend, even though I doubted the chances of her being able to help. She
probably wasn’t home anyway. But I had promised him, so I had to try. I sighed
and continued on my way.

I drove out of the neighborhood and into a
nightmare.

As I approached the University of Arizona stadium,
this time from the east, I had to cross the path the Grinder took after it had devoured
the crowd at the game. The side of the stadium had cracked, and the road was
torn to shreds. Buildings lay wrecked, and smoke danced into the sky from
several points.

Corpses lay everywhere.

A few cars with their brights on circled the area
just southeast of the stadium. A group of twenty or so people shifted through
the trail of the dead, dropped like crumbs in those moments when the Grinder
had grown exponentially. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it must look like
inside of the stadium.

Just a few hours ago, this was a normal
intersection. All these people were alive and happy, at a football game they
had looked forward to for weeks. Then it ended, just like that. All in a matter
of seconds.

Few people took notice as I drove across the
thoroughfare. I did my best to avoid hitting any of the bodies on the road, but
the Volkswagen lurched over a few arms and legs here and there. Every bump
sickened me.

As I cleared the scene, I continued toward
downtown, staying on the side streets, though they were less linear and more
difficult to traverse. I passed Tucson High School, checking for more soldiers,
though the school appeared dark. Above, airplanes and helicopters continued to
circle the sky.

The Grinder was further away than ever. But I
could still feel its presence. It was on the far east side of town at this
point, close to my house. The radio newscasters had no contact with anybody in
town, but reporters were at both the major roadblocks. The roadblock east
toward New Mexico had degraded into an all-out riot on word that the Grinder
was moving in that general direction. The military presence was heavy, and
several people ended up shot.

Reporters warned that the flood of refugees out of
town could no longer be detained. As the eastern roadblock collapsed, the
northern one toward Phoenix started to buckle as well.

I listened to a tearful account from a girl who
had survived the attack at the stadium. She’d been in the bathroom and somehow avoided
being touched by the Grinder’s human chain. Another claimed to have seen it
from an airplane in final approach to Tucson International, but the plane
diverted to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor just in time to avoid the beast. He said it
looked like a giant, red jellyfish from above, shimmering in the dark as it
crawled across the tarmac.

I numbly navigated onto the main street and turned
toward the industrial section of downtown. Random buildings around town were engulfed
in flames, and I realized that it wasn’t the Grinder, but errant missile
strikes. Half of Congress Street downtown burned, and with despair, I saw the
row of brick buildings that housed The Nomery were destroyed and caved-in.

Nif is going
to be pissed
, I thought.

In that moment, I knew I couldn’t let it go. Let
her
go. My emotions were like a
rollercoaster, moments of utter despair followed by frantic hope. Though all
evidence pointed to her certain death, I still thought of her as alive, and it
tore at me. The uncertainty had become like a tumor in my chest.

I had to know for sure.

In the glowing darkness, I could make out the
silhouette of the strange, silo-like building at the edge of the warehouse
district. I wasn’t sure how to get to it. I turned down a dark street. I didn’t
know if this Clementine girl lived in the entire silo, or if it was divided
into apartments or what. It seemed like a strange place to live, one way or
another.

This area was deserted. A few cars sat on the side
of the road, but I saw no movement or life. As I crested a small hill, I could
see I-10 in the distance, and unmoving lights dotted the interstate.

After a few dead ends and going the wrong way on
several one-way streets, I found my way to the entrance of the tall, stucco
silo sitting just south of a large, empty warehouse with broken windows. The
tall building looked abandoned. It sat ominously behind a tall, wrought iron
fence with an open gate. If the building had windows, I couldn’t see them. The
metal gate stood amongst the tall, dead weeds. I wondered if the twins had been
talking about a different place.

Then I saw the satellite dish on the side of the
building. I stopped the car, and I could hear the distant hum of an engine.
A generator.
Maybe she was home after
all.

I looked at the car’s clock. Almost 4:30 AM.

I grabbed the duffel bag and walked through the
gate to the entrance. Just as I was about to knock, the door swung open. It
swung outwardly, surprising me, and I had to jump back. I stared into the twin
barrels of a shotgun.

The massively-pregnant woman stepped out and
pushed the double barrels against my chest.

“Want to see if your bullet-proof vest can stop a
pair of 12-gauge shells?” she asked. She had a thick, southern-fried accent. I
remembered that voice from the Halloween party, thinking she should’ve been in
a
Gone with the Wind
getup. Behind
her, I could see a dark, curving staircase. Light glowed from the higher level,
and the sound of several mewling and growling cats emanated from within.

“C-Clementine?” I said in surprise. I dropped the
duffel bag, raised my hands, and talked fast. “My name is Adam. I’m a friend of
Royce and Randy. We met at the Halloween party. You were dressed as a badger. I
was a dog. They, the twins…they asked me to come here.”

“What’s the square root of 5,184? Answer or I’ll
blow you clear back to your girly car.”

Oh crap
.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said. “How the hell am I supposed to do that in
my head?”

“That’s the wrong answer,” she said. “It’s 82.”

I didn’t say anything. She took another step
forward. I took a step back.

“Say it,” she said.

“Say what?”

“Say, ‘the square root of 5,184 is 82!’”

“Jesus. Take it easy. The square root of 5,184 is
82.”

“That’s a lie,” she said. “The answer is 72, not
82.”

I should’ve known someone who would date a guy
with two heads would be batshit crazy.

“I swear to God,” I said. “If you fucking kill me
after the night I’ve had, I’ll come back as a ghost and strangle you and your
cats to death.”

She lowered the gun. “You’re not one of them,” she
said. “That was a test. They can do phenomenal calculations in their head, even
after they’ve been detached. They can’t stand incorrect math problems. They
also know ghosts can’t strangle people or cats. Come on in, Adam. I know who
you are.”

My hands shook as I picked up the bag and followed
her up the narrow and steep stairs. A poster of a horse hung on the wall as I
climbed.

When I’d last seen her, she was in a full-body
badger suit, and I hadn’t noticed she was pregnant. I do remember Nif looking
hard at her for a bit, but I just thought it was because she was making out
with some dude while the party raged all around her.

Now that I was thinking about it, what
was
she doing with another guy, if she
was supposedly dating Royce and Randy?

Clementine wasn’t unattractive, but she wasn’t a
swimsuit model either, not that swimsuit models are usually about-to-blow
pregnant. She had dirty blonde hair pulled back into a haphazard ponytail and
that tan, leathery skin you see a lot on science-y chicks who spend tons of time
outdoors. She wore stretch pants and a shirt with three wolves howling at the
moon, extended over her pregnant stomach.

“This is a…bizarre house,” I said absently,
looking up. The interior of the building had been converted into a giant home.
Two stories of lofts ringed the tall ceiling of the silo. Her A/C bill had to
be massive.

We came to the top of the stairs. She pointed me
to an old, tan couch against the wall. I sat down and took in the room before
me.

Royce had called her place an “evil lair.” I could
see why.

The diameter of the room wasn’t that large, but it
was filled with animal cages. They stacked three high in most places, and every
single one contained an animal. Cats, mostly, but I saw a couple small dogs, a
squirrel, and a few guinea pigs. Three Asian-style room dividers stood opposite
of where I sat, and heavy, bright lights hung from the rising stairs, shining
down on whatever was back there. Another divider covered what looked like an
otherwise open bathroom. A small oven and an industrial-sized, double-door
refrigerator sat nearby.

Every animal in every cage was going apeshit. The
whole place smelled like the zoo, and it sounded like two zoos at the same
time. The animals all scratched, clawed, and chewed at their cages.

The round, concave interior ceiling was painted
with an image I’d seen before…a smiling dude hanging upside down by one leg
from a tree.
Ah.
I had seen it on a
tarot card. The Hanged Man.

I couldn’t see above to the top third floor, but I
assumed that’s where she slept. The second floor loft had been converted into a
nursery. A Noah’s ark theme was painted onto the walls around the crib, changing
table, and recliner. An animal mobile hung from the loft above.

I felt guilty, seeing that.

Clementine sat next to me. She leaned the shotgun
across the ottoman. “A gift from R and R,” she said of the gun. She waved at
the animal cages. “They’re not normally this loud. The cats and the dogs
usually run free. Do you want some lemonade? Something harder?”

I could use a real drink, but I needed my senses
about me.

“No thank you,” I said. I had to raise my voice to
be heard over the animals’ din. I paused. “Look, Clementine. I gotta tell you
something.”

“You know,” Clementine said, interrupting. “They
never told you about me because I asked them not to. Not just you, I mean.
Everyone. We kept our relationship secret. It’s not because I wasn’t important.”

“I never said you weren’t important.” With
everything going on, I hadn’t time to think too much about it.

“At the Halloween party,” she continued. She
cradled her stomach with both hands. “That guy on the couch. The gladiator.
Tim. R and R picked him out. He was going to be the baby’s father.”

“Wait…what?” Over the noise, I wasn’t sure I
heard.

“Tim and I…we’re getting married. Or we were. It
was the twins’ idea.”

I didn’t understand, but I could see it was
important to her that I know. She was clearly uncomfortable, and felt like she
had to explain herself.

“They’re dead,” I said. “Royce and Randy. They’re
both dead.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Are they
dead, or are they within the creature?”

“They’re dead. Really dead.”

“Well,” she said, rearranging herself on the
couch. “Well.”

I lifted the heavy duffel bag, and I placed it on
the cushion between us. “They wanted me to bring you this.”

She unzipped the bag and peered inside. “They
called me, you know. Just before the phones went out. They wanted to come get
me. I told them not to. I told them I would take care of myself.” Her lower lip
quivered as she talked. Having to shout the words made everything even more
awkward than it already was.

She pulled the gas mask from the bag and set it aside.
She retrieved the smaller bag and dropped it heavily on the ottoman. Out of
nowhere she produced a huge, Rambo knife and used it to cut the zip tie to
unlock the zipper.

From the small bag, she pulled a single gold
brick. She had to use both hands to get it out.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Is that real?”

She nodded. “A little more than 27 pounds of solid
gold.”

No wonder the bag was so heavy. “What…how much is
that worth?”

“It depends on today’s value of gold, but I guess
it’s around $600,000 or so. Probably more after tonight. R and R have been
worried about the US currency collapsing, so they’ve been putting their money
into gold and bitcoins. I didn’t know they had this just sitting around.”

“Damn,” I said. I had no idea they had that sort
of money. I mean, I guess selling guns could be profitable, plus they made some
serious bank from being on television, but…holy cow. This was more money than
I’d ever seen in one place at one time in my life.

Clementine pulled something else from the bag. A
stuffed elephant.

She placed it down next to the gold bar, and she
stared at it for a long time.

“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”

I told her, starting with the roller derby. I told
her about the stadium. About going to the twins for help and about how they
wanted to come to her for help.

I told her how they died.

I continued, talking about getting captured by the
military. I even told her about Nif, and that tug at my chest, pulling me
toward the Grinder.

She sat quietly as I talked, staring up to the
loft with the crib and clutching onto the stuffed elephant. She squeezed it so
hard her knuckles turned white.

After a moment, she stood.

“Follow me.” She dropped the stuffed animal and
walked behind the divider with the bright lights. I followed.

Behind the screen and under the fast-food warming
lights lay a dead, naked man. An elderly black man, strapped to a table. His
chest was peeled open, like in the movies where they’re giving somebody a heart
transplant. Oh. And he was headless. His head sat upside down on another table,
in a clear, plastic salad bowl. His large, bulging eyes stared at me, as if he
were still alive.

On a third table next to the man lay a small,
pissed-off dog, strapped down. It wore a black muzzle, and it growled and
snapped as we approached.

The whole area smelled like Lysol and shit.

“Well,” I said, taking it in. I looked over my
shoulder, memorizing the path toward the exit. “This is pretty fucked up. Yep.”

“You said you can feel the creature,” Clementine
said. She leaned against the table with the severed head, pushing aside a big
microscope connected to the computer with cables. “I feel it, too. I was on my
way to campus when it happened. I was meeting up with Tim after the game. I got
there in time to see that monster crawl out of the stadium.” She nodded toward
the man. “This guy, apparently, had been attached to the thing for hardly a
couple minutes. He tried to steal my truck. He kept apologizing as I fought
with him. He said he had to ‘get back.’ I stabbed him in the chest with my
knife.”

“What’s up with the dog?” I asked.

“Lieutenant Starbark,” she said. “Tim’s puggle. I
had her with me, and she’s normally the most gentle, submissive dog you’ll ever
know. But right now, she’s more manic than the others.” She paused. “It’s how I
knew Tim was ensnared. She can feel him.”

She looked at me. “I can feel it, too.” She tapped
her chest. “Right here.”

“I want to get her back,” I said. “I was hoping
you could tell me how.”

She shook her head. “The closer you get to that
thing, the stronger that feeling will be. You’ll end up like this dog.”

“But…have you learned
anything
? Anything that will help me?”

She nodded. “Take a look in that microscope.”

I looked through the dual eyeholes. A bunch of
pulsing tributaries filled the round scope like a lightning-filled sky.

“I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

She pushed the microscope aside and hit a few keys
on the keyboard. Several numbers on a 3D graph popped up. She motioned at the
headless corpse on the table. “You were looking at this guy’s skin. Your
nervous system takes up a lot of real estate in your body, but this guy here is
over-packed with neurons, the wires of the system. When I say over-packed, I
mean every square millimeter of space inside of him is filled.”

“So the twins were right,” I said. “They said it
connects to the nervous system and hacks the brain.”

“That’s exactly what it does,” she said. “It first
takes over the existing system, that much is clear, and in a matter of moments,
it appears to fill the body with a secondary, parasitic nervous system that’s
networked into the central brain.”

“But, how can it grow so fast? It barely touches
someone, and
bam
, they stop moving.”

“I don’t know how the nerves grow so fast. The
aliens engineered it that way, and with time, I’ll figure it out. As for
connecting
so fast. That I have figured
out.”

Aliens…?
I wasn’t going to go there. I remembered the twins had said she was a bit whacked
out, and it had cost her the job at the university.

A couple clicks of the mouse, and she showed me
another chart that looked like complete gobbledygook to me. I could tell she
was meant to be a teacher, by the way she reverted into information mode. I
wondered if she felt vindicated, even just a little bit, by the appearance of
the monster.

“A square inch of a normal person’s skin has over
1,000 nerve endings. All it takes is a single nerve to come into contact with a
signal from the monster’s system, and a person’s network is…hacked, as you call
it, at the speed of light. After the connection immobilizes the host, the nerve
cells shore up the connection point and the secondary system invades the body,
growing alongside the existing nervous system. All this takes place in fraction
of a second, allowing the monster to grow exponentially when it encounters a
large crowd.”