The Grinding (9 page)

A thin line of bloody mucous bobbed from the guy’s
nose and descended onto my knee. I tried to scoot away, but I couldn’t.

“But I haven’t touched the thing,” I said. “I’m
not a C-anything.”

“We know,” the beanstalk said. “But we have our
orders. Where we picked you up…the reports say several people in that traffic
jam got out of their cars and ran toward the monster. Not all of them. Just a
few people, but enough to mire the road with abandoned cars. Our orders are to
pick up anyone who might be coming back.”

We turned the corner and pulled into an elementary
school parking lot. I watched as a helicopter took off from the playground.
Several Hummers were parked on the road here. If I had my bearings, we were
less than a quarter mile from where they had picked me up. We’d made a giant
loop.

The tall soldier hopped out and opened the door.
“Come on,” he said, helping me up. I tried to wipe my leg on the seat, but
missed. The other soldiers grabbed Twitchy and half-carried, half-dragged him
toward the double doors of the school as we followed.

I suddenly missed the twins as we were brought
inside. They would’ve been so excited by this. They simultaneously loved and
hated the US government. I wondered if they would’ve been surprised at how
quickly this was set up.

We walked into organized chaos. Somehow the power
was on, but the place looked dark from the outside. Very covert. Hundreds of
masked soldiers filled classrooms, all receiving briefings while
others—soldiers and people in respirator suits—ran about like
extras in a virus-destroys-the-earth movie. The walls of the hallways were
filled with drawings and artwork of the children who went to school here. A lot
of it had fallen from the walls in the bustle, cluttering the floors.

I don’t know why, but that part bothered me, to
see the soldiers walking all over the kids’ work. The soldiers in front of me
continued to drag the passed-out man through the hallway, and a child’s hand
turkey caught on the bottom of his dirty, bloody boot, ripping as it was towed
down the hall.

The twitchy guy was passed off to a group of other
soldiers, and I was turned down another hallway with the two soldiers who had picked
me up. We walked through a zippered plastic wrap entranceway duct-taped to the
wall, and emerged into a plastic tube that ran along the right half of the hallway.

Several older, officer-looking men rushed up and
down the non-plastic tube side of the hallway, all of them talking into
brick-like phones with giant antennae. None of them wore masks. Through the
plastic, I heard things like, “We need more time” and “If it amoebas on us…”
and lots of numbers being thrown about. The officers looked harried and afraid,
which freaked me out. In all those WWII war movies, it was the soldiers who
were harried and afraid, but the officers stood there and chewed on the butts
of their cigars while bullets whizzed by their heads.

I was taken into the cafeteria. The tube snaked
along the wall and then stopped in front of a table on the outside of the
containment. The man sitting there looked like a human bulldog. The older,
leathery man sported a buzz cut and scars up and down his wide, wrinkled face.
He looked like the type of guy who would be typecast as an arch enemy in a
straight-to-video action movie.

“A C-2, already dropped into containment and a
probable Civ,” the beanstalk said.

The man at the table looked me up and down through
the clear plastic.

“Where’d you get the Kevlar?” he asked.

“He also had this,” the other soldier said,
holding up my automatic shotgun. “Plus he’s covered in blood.”

“Are we really going to go over this again? What
would you do?” I asked. “If you weren’t in the military, and you needed to get
to someone you loved?”

The bulldog stared at me for a good twenty
seconds, which is a long time when you’re just standing there. I stared back at
him, though it was easier through the plastic. “He’s probably a Civ,” he said.
“But we better keep him in quarantine just in case.”

My heart skipped a couple beats. “Wait a second…”

“There’s no room,” the tall soldier said. “The
C-1s will tear him up.”

“Then stick him with the C-2s,” the bulldog said.

“Come on,” I said. “What if those guys are
contagious? Look, I gotta get out of here. You can’t keep me like this.”

“If it’s contagious, then you’re already sick,” the
bulldog said. “It’ll just be for a couple hours. Probably.”

They took me back down the hallway. My mind raced.
The kicking and screaming on the inside started to bubble up, but I didn’t dare
fight because I knew I’d be overpowered. So instead, I unleashed a torrent of
cursing that would make even Nif pause.

I was taken out of the plastic-tube section of the
school and into the hallway they had dragged the twitchy guy down. Two armed
guards stood by a pair of double doors, and we went through and outside into
the cold night.

We faced the playground. I saw a group of suited
soldiers setting up a satellite disk thing right over the jungle gym. They
worked silently and efficiently. In the distance, the largest helicopter I’d
ever seen lowered a whole shipping container onto the open playing field.

“You really think it’s a good idea to put your
base and the prisoners in the same place?” I asked.

“No,” the beanstalk said. “No, I don’t.”

We turned, passed another set of guards, and went
through the double doors of a free-standing, red brick building at the edge of
the playground. The sign above read “♫ The Little Theater ♪.”

More armed guards stood in the entrance lobby to
the theater. As we entered, one of the soldiers walked up to us and began
talking. I recognized her voice—the female driver who brought me here.

“Remember the doctor who was just here?” she said,
talking to the beanstalk. “The one who was putting the IV bags in after our
first run? She said she grew up here, went to this school?”

“Yeah. What about her?” the soldier asked.

“She’s gone. She just took off her respirator,
walked out the door, and disappeared. Nobody knows where she went.”

“Fuckin’ A. What the hell is going on?” the
soldier asked.

The driver leaned in. “The nurse says the C-2s
recognized her. Like, all of them. They knew her name, even though they never
saw her face, it being behind the mask and all. They just started talking to
her, telling her ‘Joey’ was safe. It freaked her out.”

“We shouldn’t be here,” the beanstalk said. “This
is insane.”

I had to admit, it was a relief to hear I wasn’t
the only one the drones were bugging. But it was chilling, too. Whatever this
thing was, it could drag away people, not just animals. I imagined this doctor
didn’t walk off on her own free will, and
that
was disturbing. You gotta be reasonably intelligent to be a doctor. The idea of
losing control, of moving and talking like a puppet, doing things one would
never do…that was the stuff of nightmares.

Despite the arrival of the military, the Grinder
grew stronger. It seemed every hour that passed, it gained a new ability. First,
it could attach people to itself. It learned how to manipulate the attached so
they acted like limbs. Then came the drones, and now it was attracting people
and animals to it from afar.

I feared what would come next.

I was brought to a pair of padlocked, black double
doors. More armed guards.

“We’re dropping this one off for observation,” the
beanstalk said.

“He’s not a C-2,” the guard said, looking me up
and down.

“I know.”

“Please don’t do this,” I said.

“I won’t forget you’re in here,” the soldier said.
“Just…stay in the corner or something. I don’t think they’ll bother you.”

“What about his vest?” the guard asked.

“Let him keep it.” He grabbed my wrists and cut,
freeing me from the plastic handcuffs. “He’s not going to be a problem.”

“All right,” the guard said as he unlocked the
door and pulled the chain away. He had one of those I-drive-a-Trans-Am accents.
“But if I catch you banging on this door, or pulling anything, I’ll have you
strapped to a gurney. You understand?”

“Yeah, fuck you too,” I said.

I couldn’t see the guard’s face, but I imagined he
had one of those smirking smiles and a greasy, half-grown mustache, and that he
spent the weekends torturing small animals. He opened the door, revealing
nothing but black.

“Where are the nurses and medics?” the beanstalk
asked, peering into the room. “Why isn’t there any light?”

“After the doctor disappeared, we gave up trying
to help them,” the greasy guard said. “We’re just packin’ and stackin’. It’ll be
awfully crowded in there soon, too. We got a whole busload coming in fifteen.”

“Good luck,” the beanstalk said.

“Wait—” But the guard shoved me into the
room.

The door slammed behind me, followed by the sound
of the heavy chains being snaked and locked around the handles.

“You don’t even know my name,” I finished. How
were they going to remember me, if they didn’t even know who I was?

Darkness blanketed me. All I could hear was quiet,
furtive rustling. I didn’t dare move.

“Fuck,” I whispered.

I waited for my eyes to adjust. Windows…
Damn.
Way too small for escape. And way
too high. They
surrounded the large
room, letting in a meager amount of starlight. Shadows moved and undulated. On
the other side of the room, a red exit sign glowed. I doubted the soldiers were
stupid enough to leave that door unlocked. I was tempted to go check, but as I
looked around at my fellow inmates, it might as well have been across the Grand
Canyon and guarded by velociraptors. I stayed put.

The room smelled of death and oil, which I
recognized all-too-well as the stench of the captured. The Stepford zombie
people. The C-2s.

I could tell we were in the kids’ music classroom.
A small stage with a billowy curtain dominated the far wall. Piles of chairs
sat stacked against the wall with the glowing exit, and rows of xylophones and
drums and baritones and other musical instruments were stacked neatly against
the other wall.

About twenty people wallowed on the floor in the
center of the room. At first I thought they were wrestling. They held onto each
other like a rugby scrum, rolling and twisting. In the dark, I couldn’t see
them too well, but they were people of all shapes, sizes, and ages in various
states of undress and health. They held onto each other tightly and silently,
scrambling against one another, only to fall back or slip and try again.
Oh God…

They were trying to emulate being in the Grinder.

They weren’t the only ones in the room. Several
hospital beds lined the stage, though most were empty, and all the trays and IV
lines were upended. Several people lay on the floor around the room, including
one person by my foot. They all appeared dead or dying. A few leaned up against
the wall, rocking back and forth.

The guy on the floor next to me twitched, and I
backed away. It was the man they had picked up after me. The bearded Circle K
guy.

Across the room, a man pushed at a pile of chairs,
and they went clattering across the floor. He started to write something on the
wall, but I couldn’t see what it was, or what he was using to write with.

I edged my way along the wall until I came to a
xylophone on a wheeled stand. I pushed it forward, careful not to make it clang
and bring attention to myself. I sank to the floor and pulled the instrument
back toward me, which gave me a bit of cover.

I brought my knees to my chest…
I am going to die in this room
.

I should’ve run when I had the chance. They
weren’t even trying to help these people anymore. They were just locking them
up so they couldn’t refuel the Grinder. The moment these C-2s became too much
of a problem, G.I. Joe would kill us all. What would happen if the Grinder
turned in our direction? I had no illusions about the soldiers—they would
run, and we’d be on our own, locked in this room, squished or snagged by the
monster.

A wet sliding sound slurped across the tiled
floor, like a heavy mop raking against Velcro. A whispered groan rose,
insistent, and close.

Someone was on the other side of the xylophone,
and they crawled across the floor toward me. I scrambled to my feet and pushed
the xylophone away. I skittered across the wall toward the door. The instrument
toppled over on the long form in the darkness, clanging. My heart was about to
rip from of my chest.

The person, a large man, looked gravely injured, his
blood-soaked body glistening in the dull starlight. He dragged himself by his
one remaining arm, and a tangled mess of IV tubes and wires trailed behind him.

He raised his head, looking in my direction. His
eyes glowed like a cat. He made another groaning noise.

I looked around the room, and everyone had stopped
moving. The scrum in the middle of the room stopped being a scrum. Instead,
they all crowded together, all looking at me like I was the teacher on the
first day of school.

“Adam,” one of them croaked.

“Adam,” several more of them repeated. They
shuffled, crawled, and lurched toward me in the darkness.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck
.

I turned around and banged hard on the double
doors. “Help! Get me the fuck out of here! Help! Help!”

“Shut up!” came the muffled voice from the other
side.

“Come on!” I yelled. “They’re doing something
weird! Get me the hell out of here!”

A hand touched my leg, and I jumped. Panicked, I
ran along the wall toward the other exit, dodging the reaching hand of another
C-2. I pushed against the double doors of the emergency exit, but as expected,
they didn’t open. I scrambled up onto the stage and clawed my way through the
curtain. Two felt-blocked doorways led to the backstage area, and I tripped
over an IV stand as I rushed through one.

Absolute darkness filled the backstage. I couldn’t
see my own hands. I reached along the wall, looking for a place to hide. My
hands found a light switch, and I flipped it. To my surprise, an overhead
fluorescent light blinked on, filling the small backstage with a dull, yellow
light.

“Adam…Adam…” I could hear them through the
curtains.

Any moment,
shit.

Another door stood vigil on the far wall, and I
assumed it led outside. I reached it in three steps, grabbed the handle, but it
was locked.
Damn!
The room was filled
with large cases for bass drums and other instruments, and a pile of dusty
black music stands lay against the other wall. Other than that, it was empty.

There was no way out.

I picked up a music stand, yanked off the top, and
held it like a club, waiting for them to come into the room.

I could hear them clomping up on the stage. There
were twenty, at least. What was I going to do? If I hit them, they’d feel no
pain. They could overwhelm me in seconds. Despite the cold of the room, sweat
poured down my face, and my slick, quivering hands had trouble grasping onto
the black metal stand.

They came from both sides. Three people shouldered
into the room on the left, and four more on the right. All of them were men,
no,
there was a girl, ten years old or
so.
What the…

Half of her scalp was gone, peeled back and
hanging, a red, purple and white skull cap poking out on her right side. Her
yellow ASU shirt was soaked red with blood. Dark rings hung under her eyes. She
wore ripped jeans and only one shoe.

She stepped further into the room while the others
guarded the door.

“Stay back,” I yelled. My voice cracked.

“Adam,” the girl said. “Don’t be afraid. We don’t
want to harm you.”

“Listen, you little freak job… I will smash your
face if you get any closer.” I meant it, too. I didn’t care if she was just a
little girl. I backed up against the wall. I swung the stand overhead, hoping I
looked more menacing than I felt.

The little girl cocked her head to the side, and a
clump of wet—something—fell from her scalp and splattered on the
floor.

“She called to you,” the girl said. “But you
didn’t come. She loves you, Adam.
We
love you. Nif needs you.”

A man in the doorway staggered forward, clutching
his chest. He fell hard to the floor, dead.

The girl looked at the dead man and looked back at
me.

“You didn’t come. She needs you.”

“Stay back,” I said. My brain reeled as I parsed
what she said. I meant to say something more menacing, but all I could manage
was: “Nif is still alive?”

“Yes,” the girl said. “Nif is alive. Of course she
is alive. She is more alive than she has ever been.”

I felt myself falter. “Can…can you talk to her for
me?”

The girl frowned. “It doesn’t work like that. We
can feel her, but she’s fading. They’re all fading. We need to get back to what
we had, to what we must be.”

What a mind fuck this was, to hear this coming
from such a small child, let alone a child with a massive head wound.

“Look,” I said. “You’re freaking me out. If you’re
not going to attack me or eat me or turn me into…whatever you are, then leave
me alone. I just want to get out of here…and…” I wasn’t going to tell her that
I wanted to save Nif. “I just want to get away.”

“Don’t you want to see her? To feel her? To
know
her?” the girl said. “We can help
you.”

“No offense, kid, but I don’t want your help. Not
if it means I will become like you.”

“Do not worry,” she said, taking another step into
the room. “Nif wants you to know it’s beautiful. She says it’s her turtle pond.
All it’s missing is you.”

My mind went from fucked to gang-raped.

“Turtle pond,” I repeated. “She said that?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “We all feel it’s an apt
description.”

There’s this pet shop in town Nif and I frequented
for our ferret supplies, and they have this side room with dozens of aquariums
and fish of all shapes and sizes. There’s this one
huge
tank tucked in the corner with a not-for-sale Red Eared Slider
that’s always sitting half in, half out the water, perched on this little rock.
Nif liked the turtle, and the pet shop turtle pond. His name was Gustavo, even
though it was a she.