The Grinding (17 page)

We went around and introduced ourselves. Sorority
Girl’s name was Betsy. The deaf girl was Zora.

Michelle asked for a first aid kit, but they
didn’t have one. I smiled weakly when I realized she was asking for my sake.
She and Betsy decided the best way to fix my head was to duct tape the wounds. While
they clucked over me, Uri watched the monsters out the windows. The beasts skulked
around the call floor, way over on the other side by the dead bodies. None
seemed to yet take notice of the stairs. Perhaps the smell of the other dead
workers masked our scent. If these monsters worked with the Grinder, hopefully
they’d leave before they discovered us. The Grinder itself was closer than
ever, passing right outside. The distant crunch of buildings being smashed
reverberated the lone exterior window to the office.

We could do nothing but huddle and hide.

All the adrenaline, all the emotion of the past
several hours weighed heavily. It felt as if a pair of hands pressed on me,
pushing me deeper and deeper into the floor.

Zora had been staring at me, and it freaked me out
a little. I couldn’t communicate with her, so I just stared back. She signed
something. Betsy translated as she and Michelle tried to clean me up. I was too
tired and in too much pain to bother crying out when they touched sensitive
places. Every part of my head hurt. Sitting down helped somewhat, but what I
really needed was a hospital bed and an IV-full of the best painkillers they
had on tap.

“I know you,” Zora signed as Betsy translated with
a whisper. “You’re the manager at Big Shot Chicken. You’ve worked there for
years. I didn’t recognize you with the purple face.”

I grunted. “That’s right.”

“I stop by before work at least once a week. You
always seem distracted,” she signed. “You’re either playing with that Rubik’s
Cube or staring off into space.”

Surprised, I said, “I don’t remember you.”

“I know,” she signed. “I tried hard for a while to
get you to notice me. I thought you were cute. But the cashier girl finally
told me not to bother, that you were in love.”

Suddenly, I was embarrassed and—what? Taken
aback? I couldn’t bring myself to look at her anymore. It was a strange and
awkward moment, so unexpected that it seemed even more surreal than everything
else happening around us. It might seem weird, but, other than Nif and
Samantha, I couldn’t remember a girl
ever
saying she was interested in me. Nif always had guys hitting on her, sometimes
right in front of me. I’d gotten used to it.

(And Nif, to her credit, would respond with
something like, “Can’t you see I’m with someone, you piece of shit? Even if I
was single, I wouldn’t have anything to do with a rude motherfucker like you,
so get out of my face before I smash it in.”)

So, a girl, interested in me? And I didn’t even
notice? I don’t know why, but it blew my mind, and for a fraction of a moment,
it helped ease the pain I now felt.

“Where is she now, this girl you love?” Zora
asked.

And the pain all came back.

Even though Betsy interpreted my words, I figured
out that Zora wanted me to look directly at her as I spoke, even though she
watched the hand gestures at my left.

“She’s in the Grinder,” I said. I could feel the
monster, just outside, like if I reached out the window and stood on my
tip-toes and let myself fall, it’d be there, ready to catch me. I swallowed
hard.
Concentrate. You need to fight it
.

Patrick looked up from his father’s lap. I thought
he’d been asleep because he’d been so quiet.

“Her name is Nif,” the little boy said. “He’s
given up on her, so we’ve given up on him.” The boy lifted his toy gun. Only it
wasn’t a toy anymore. He pointed it under his father’s chin,
what the fuck―

Ka-boom!
Uri’s face jerked and exploded into a geyser of blood and gore. The picture
window exploded as the bullet ricocheted and tore through. Patrick casually
hopped off his dead father’s lap as the body slid out of the office window and landed
below.

Michelle screamed. Betsy and Zora screamed. I
jumped to my feet, putting my back against the door. I reached into the duffel
and grabbed for my gun. I grasped plastic. The little bastard had switched the
guns. He must’ve taken it while his mother cleaned my wounds.

Betsy backed away to the other side of the room
with Zora, signing rapidly. Patrick leveled the gun at me. Beyond him, I now
held a panoramic view of the calling floor. Two cats leapt through the cubicles
toward us. Another creature, the size of a large saltwater crocodile with a
hammer head slithered along the floor behind them, knocking over cubicle walls like
dominoes with his massive head and tail.

“Patrick,” Michelle screamed at her son. “What did
you do? You were getting better. What did you do?
Uri! Uri!
”

Blood and pieces of brain dripped from the
ceiling.

Patrick leveled his gaze at me. “It would be so
easy,” he said. “You know where she is. You can feel her. Despite turning your
back, she still calls out to you. You don’t deserve her. We have given up on
you, but if you beg, maybe we’ll let you in.”

Behind me, I could feel the
thump, thump
of heavy feet climbing the stairs. The door rocked as
a monster crashed up against it.

“Tell your boss to suck my fat cock,” I said.

Patrick grinned with an expression way too mature
for a four-year-old boy. “You can tell her yourself.” He lowered the gun so it
was pointed at my knee.

Zora smashed Patrick in the back of the head with
the umbrella, and the little boy tumbled away, falling out the same way his
father had.

“Patrick!” Michelle cried. She rushed to the edge
of the room. Behind me, the door rocked again. Zora and I stared at one
another.

“The roof,” I said.

Zora nodded. “The roof,” she repeated out loud,
speaking in that stilted way deaf people do. Betsy was already pulling the
window open.

Michelle sobbed.
Holy sh—
I grabbed for Michelle’s shirt just as a
double-tailed cat leapt through the broken window from the floor below. The
creature’s top half split, and we were surrounded by fifteen hissing and
clawing cats, rolling and smashing against the far wall. The intact bottom half
resembled a two-legged, hairy meatball. It skidded to a stop, rolling up
against the desks, upending them. Up close, I could see the individual animals
more clearly, rats and more cats, twisted and bent to make the whole. The thing
smelled of musk and blood.

As the meatball tried to stand, blind or
disoriented, I didn’t know, the detached cats jumped at me and Michelle. Betsy
was already out the window with Zora just behind. I kicked, and my foot
connected with the closest cat. It flew, howling across the office, hitting
hard into a poster for
Roman Holiday
.

Michelle was screaming. A black, longhaired cat
had clutched onto her face like one of those things in
Alien
. Others crawled up her body, shredding as they went. I
smacked one away with my duffel.

I reached again for Michelle—and missed. She
fell backwards against the one part of the picture window that hadn’t yet broken.
She looked as if she wore a multi-colored, twitching fur coat. She smashed
through the already-cracked window, screaming as she fell to her husband and
son below.

Sickness, pain, fear, it all welled up in me. But I
had to keep going. I jumped over a chair and through the open window, landing
hard on the roof, knocking over a terracotta pot filled with cactus. I turned to
slam shut the window, but a creepy-ass, hairless cat launched itself through
the gap, and onto my neck. It hissed and spit and tore at the duct-tape that
held my skin into place.

I pulled the cat off, its claws raking my face and
jaw as it chomped my hand. I screamed and threw the twisting and hissing ball
of cat against the wall next to the window. Spitting and growling, it recovered
and launched itself right back at me before I could even register the fucking,
burning, oh-my-God-just-kill-me-now pain I was in.

Closed-fisted, I punched it in the head. Shit, it
actually worked. The thing collapsed onto the overturned cactus, either dead or
unconscious.

I still wasn’t in the clear. The window shattered,
and howling animals flooded the rooftop. I turned in time to see the back of
Betsy’s head leap off the distant edge of the roof, and I ran toward her and
Zora.

A corrugated steel awning ringed the front of the
building. I reached the edge just in time to see the women running across the
misty parking lot toward a cluster of ten or so parked cars.

“Hey,” I called. “Wait for me!”

I crashed onto the awning, the duffel bag clutched
to my chest. A glass jar and several syringes were in the bag, and if any of
those broke, I’d be screwed.

I rolled off the awning into the bushes below,
branches cracking and poking me as I fell. I worried about the dry suit. If I
pierced the waterproof fabric, I’d have to start all over, and all of this
would be for nothing.
If cats eat me, all
of this will be for nothing, too
. I jumped from the bushes just as the door
slammed to a Ford Explorer thirty feet away. The engine roared, tires squealed.

“
Wait
,”
I called again.

They weren’t waiting.

I ran. The truck circled around, and for a moment,
I thought they were coming back for me. Instead, the passenger window opened,
and Zora tossed something at me. It landed on the asphalt, and I scooped it up
as the truck screeched out of the lot.

A set of keys. Zora leaned out the window and
pointed to three cars sitting together at the end of the lot before they
disappeared into the fog. I rushed toward the cars.
Which car was it
? I fumbled with the keys—at least twenty of
them.
Who the hell uses this many keys
?

Behind me, an explosion of glass. I hazarded a
look over my shoulder to see the hammer-headed crocodile thing barreling down
the parking lot. Just above it, cats and rats poured off the roof and onto the
awning.

Fuck.
I scrambled
through the keys, and found a double-edged one,
please be for a car…
The animal beasts were nearly on me. I only had
time to try the key of one vehicle.

The key had no markings, like a copy of the original.
I had three choices of cars. Which one would a deaf girl named Zora drive? A
deaf girl named Zora who found me attractive.

My choices were a battered Ford Focus, a red
pickup truck, and a 90’s Cadillac Deville. Had I more than a mere second, I
might’ve been able to puzzle it out. Instead, I chose the Cadillac because it
was the oldest one and most likely to have a key like the one she’d given me.

I ran up to the car, jamming the key into the
door.

I chose poorly.

“Shit.” I pulled the key out of the lock and
turned toward the truck. That’s when I saw the license plate on the Focus.

ZORALUV

I jumped into the bed of the pickup—

CRACK!
The
lizard monster smashed into the side of it. The truck flipped sideways with a
tremendous crunch as I jumped out the other side. I ducked as the truck crashed
over me. It was the bed of the vehicle that saved me, and I crawled where the
bed angled up by the cab. As I crawled, dragging the duffel bag with the strap
across my chest, I remembered I had a giant knife lashed to my leg. I pulled it
free as I emerged into the morning light.

I expected clawing, biting animals, but none of
the small animals had come this far. I could see them, still by the entrance to
the Telesync building. It appeared as if they were reforming back into two of
the cat monsters, but only half of the animals had returned.

The lizard jumped on the upturned truck. It didn’t
have eyes or a mouth, but its shark-like hammerhead swung at me like an ax, and
I jumped back. This close, I still couldn’t tell what manner of small animals
this beast was made of. I had expected lizards or something, but that wasn’t
it. I swung the knife but missed. I angled away, so I’d have a chance to run
for the Ford. I clutched the keys in my left hand.

The monster jumped, and I dived out of the way,
slicing upward with the knife The knife cut through the side of the large beast
much more easily than I expected. Bits of it flew away, detaching as they fell.

Earthworms. That’s what it was made of. They
wriggled on the ground. I ran. Toward the Focus, key extended in my left hand.
Nearby, the cats were almost fully re-formed.

I shoved the key in the lock, and
yes!
I yanked open the door, and jumped
in. I cranked the engine just as the worm monster smashed the side of the car,
turning it 180 degrees, nearly flipping it. I punched the engine, and I took
off across the lot, angling toward the lone exit.

The cats gave chase, but the car moved faster.
After a moment, I was clear.

Blood poured down the side of my head and from my
jaw line. I didn’t even know I had this much blood in me.

I kept seeing the little boy blow the hole through
his father’s face, over and over. How did I miss that he’d been a part of the
Grinder? Michelle and Uri should’ve told me. Of course, they hadn’t. They were
his parents, and they were protecting him. I wondered how it had happened, and
most importantly, how they had gotten him back.

Parents do
strange things to protect their children. Love. It’s the single strongest
instinct a human has
. It’s what my mom’s defense attorney had said during
the closing statements of her trial.

I sped up, driving parallel with the Grinder, oozing
down the street. I needed to get ahead of it, to implement my plan as soon as
possible. At every turn, something new would pop up or attack me, like my face
being torn to shreds by a psychotic cat. I couldn’t handle anymore. I had to
get this finished. I had to save Nif.