The Grinding (3 page)

So when the Mexican kid with the fucked-up hand
said, “They’re calling to you,” it freaked me the fuck out. I didn’t know what the
kid meant by it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it as I careened down the
road in Scooter’s truck. Grant Road was impossible to drive where the Grinder
had rolled, so I took Pima, following the spotlight from the helicopter. The
windshield wipers didn’t work, and I had to drive with the rain pounding on the
glass. I blasted the heater. My right hand throbbed with pain where I’d
connected with Scooter’s face, though it wasn’t busted.

Scooter had Operation Ivy’s
Hectic
blaring on the sound system, and I turned it off to listen
to the radio as I drove.

The DJ talked to a breathless kid on his cell,
describing what he’d just seen. The Grinder wasn’t on Grant any more. It had
cut south across a residential area and took out The Loft movie theater on
Speedway, reshaping itself to blast through the entrance and scoop up everybody
within. The way they described it, it was much bigger than when I had last seen
it, and it had grown legs again. It would go right over cars, peeling roofs off
like sardine cans and snagging everyone within. The caller seemed to think it
was a monster covered with people, not
made
of people.

I pulled up to an intersection, and the stoplights
were out. I looked around. It seemed the power was out everywhere.
Christ
. I turned south, but the road was
filled with abandoned and crushed cars. A group of people stood in the middle
of the street.
Oh, yeah, it came
this way
, I thought, and I turned and fought
my way down a residential street to Speedway Boulevard, right where the Grinder
was supposed to be.

Someone else was on the radio. At first, I thought
it was someone who’d been at the scene with the Mexican kid. It wasn’t, but it
was similar. A woman had been knocked off the creature, losing her arm in the
process. She mumbled something about “the Grinder” and got up and tried to run
toward it before she fell over dead.

The next caller did nothing but scream we had to
repent. “It’s the motherfuckin’ rapture,” she cried. “The end of the world.” The
DJ hung up on her.

I continued down Speedway. It was easier to pass
through the destruction with the wider road. The Loft movie theater was razed.
Power lines and smoking, crushed cars filled the street. The creature had
devastated a row of grocery stores and Chinese restaurants. People ran down the
street, and cars sped away from the direction I headed.

I didn’t have to drive much further before I found
it.

I gasped.

It had more than quadrupled in size. The movie
theater and restaurants were what had done it. The Grinder had shaped itself
like a spider, with eight segmented legs each made of scores of people. The
bottom of the creature rose at least ten feet high, with several legs, arms,
and heads dangling in the middle. The damn thing had long surpassed T-Rex size.
It lumbered toward the Sheraton hotel near the University of Arizona campus,
and its top cleared the fourth level.

It casually walked up the side of the building. Human
appendages shattered windows as it crossed over the hotel in a matter of
seconds. It leapt off the building like a cat and crossed the street and
trashed a Taco Bell before turning south down Campbell, cutting into the
University of Arizona campus.

Groups of people in red shirts scattered, and
gunshots rang out. But bullets did nothing to it. Absolutely nothing.

I drove over the median and pulled onto the
sidewalk just outside of the hotel. From the fifth floor, a bloody, naked woman
hung out the window, screaming, reaching toward the Grinder.

“Holy shit,” I said out loud when I realized where
it headed.

Saturday night. The university hosted a home game
tonight. Not just any home game, either. For the first time since I could
remember, the U of A football team didn’t suck ass, and they played their arch
rivals, Arizona State. I’d never been a huge football fan, but even I had
wanted to go to this game. The street vendors had been up for almost two weeks
hawking T-shirts in anticipation.

The game was sold out.

Arizona Stadium capacity: 57,000.

The police by now had figured out where it was
heading and what it wanted. No longer was it the occasional gunshot. The
gunfire transformed into a wall of sound as everyone in the city with a goddamn
gun started shooting at it all at once.

The Grinder tightened into an egg shape, sitting
on top of a packed parking lot off the road. It sat there, as if it was
thinking about what to do. Two lines of police and random people with guns
appeared on either side, one line blocking its approach south toward the
stadium, the other across the street near the remains of the smoldering Taco
Bell.

“Stop!” I screamed at the gunmen.
Nif.
But I knew they had to shoot.

The entire outer layer of the monster was a pulpy,
red mass under the barrage of gunfire. It emboldened those with the guns. They closed
in. Smoke rose from the lines of fire, and they marched like Redcoats toward
the beast.

They shot from person to person. I don’t know why.
Maybe to put them out of their misery, or maybe they were searching for that
one spot that would topple the whole goddamned thing to the ground.

Only they never hit that spot.

In the distance, the stadium loomed like a giant
face over the university’s stark buildings. It still had power, and the stadium
lights blazed. From my vantage, I watched the panic in the stands as they all
surged in fear at the monster. Despite the rain, the place was packed.

Someone had sounded the alarm. Even from a half
mile away, I could see turmoil grow within as the confused masses filed out of
the stadium.

A car flew from the center of the Grinder, landing
on the front line of police officers, scattering them like birds. At first I
wasn’t sure what had happened, but then another car flew out, crashing against
the grass. The Grinder was somehow picking up the cars and hurling them. The
last of the defenders on that side broke as the egg shape unrolled into a long,
low-to-the-ground, centipede-thing the length of four train cars.

It pushed forward, ignoring the gunfire at its
back.

I couldn’t look away. Watching the Grinder move
was like watching one of those Asian contortionist ballets, but with scores of
dancers. It would’ve been intoxicating, under other circumstances. The bloody,
pulpy exterior of the creature constantly recycled. Every part of it remained
in motion as people crawled, rolled, or shifted to reshape and move the beast.

Even the corpses continued to move. A headless
body rose from the back of the centipede shape and crawled onto the back where
most of the bullets now hit.

The monster shambled toward the stadium, raining
blood. It took its time. Had it been injured in the gunfire?

A big-ass yellow bulldozer roared up Speedway,
passing by my position in the parking lot and almost clipping Scooter’s truck.
It blasted through the median, and concrete exploded through the air. The
gunmen stepped away to let it through. They cheered as it rumbled toward the
beast.

The dude driving that thing was either crazy or
had balls of titanium, but he full-steamed toward the monster, cutting through the
grass and the parking lot. He aimed straight for its tail end. The bulldozer
raised the front shovel, and the driver jumped out at the last possible moment.

The damn monster rearranged itself to let the bulldozer
pass. One second it was about to get creamed, and then the back of the
centipede split into several directions while the front rolled out of the way. The
people on it, momentarily detached, rained down onto the creature to form
again. The whole thing happened in a matter of a second.

A head-to-toe tentacle, ten deep, swept from the
body to snatch up the driver of the bulldozer. As the tentacle retracted, the
whole thing formed back into the centipede and continued toward the stadium,
moving quicker this time.

The bulldozer continued on its own, raging across
the grass until it crashed into a wheelchair ramp and then the side of a brick
building. The wall stopped it, but the engine continued to whine. The poor guy
driving must have rigged it to just keep going.

I felt so torn, so helpless. I pushed the truck
further onto the road, keeping a safe distance. The monster had to be stopped.
Of course it had to be stopped. But I also felt so relieved when it escaped. I
just wanted Nif back. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Above, a loud A-10 Warthog cruised low over the
monster, barely visible in the dark and rain. The nearby Davis Monthan Air
Force base was home to a whole shitload of A-10s, powerful military aircraft
designed to kill tanks and other armored targets. They were the perfect
aircraft to deal with this thing. When Scooter said I’d be blown up by the Air
Force, he wasn’t just talking shit. It was a real possibility, and I knew it.

But this one didn’t shoot. Or drop a bomb. Either it
was unarmed or the pilot didn’t want to kill a monster made out of people. He
didn’t do shit except circle for a bit, then head south toward base.

The closer the centipede got to the stadium, the faster
it moved. I watched as it disappeared behind some buildings, then it flew
through the air and attached itself to the back of the massive scoreboard on
the north side of the stadium. It pulled itself over, cascading like a
waterfall into the field still filled with tens of thousands of people.

I didn’t see much of what happened next…but I
heard it. The terror at the roller derby was nothing compared to the uproar at
the stadium, and I was still a quarter mile away.

Again, I was so torn. If only the bulldozer hadn’t
missed. If only the A-10 had been armed with a bomb.

If only Cece had minded her own damn business.

If only… Even now, it hurts to let that fantasy
live in my mind, even for just a flash of a moment.

And when I saw what crawled out of that stadium, I
realized for the first time that there would be no happy ending to this. No
way. This was more than just a fucked-up monster trashing Tucson.

This was the end of the world.

The end of the world.

When I saw that thing emerge over the stadium
walls, back into the streets of Tucson, I knew we were fucked.

I was done. We were done. And by “we” I mean
everybody. You. Me. Everybody.

So, I gave up. I know that’s probably not what you
want to hear, but that’s what I did. I gave up. Just because I’m the narrator
here doesn’t make me a fucking hero. I was done. All I cared about in that
moment was Nif, and she was either dead, or trapped forever. I knew it to be
true. So I backed up the truck and aimed it homeward.

It took a long time to drive home, navigating
around the disabled and destroyed vehicles that littered the street like
crumbs. Even when I got to the part of the city the monster hadn’t yet touched,
it was still bad. People running away. Or goddamn running towards the thing. I
watched in the rear-view mirror of Scooter’s truck as the monstrosity rampaged
through the south side of town, near the airport and the Air Force base. Unable
to bear anymore, I moved the mirror and turned off the radio.

It was almost ten o’clock by the time I got home.
The rain had stopped, and the clouds dispersed to reveal a hazy sky lit by the
half moon and the fires of the burning city.

I didn’t have my house keys, but I got in through
the side window. Inside, the first thing I did was open up Hamlet’s cage and set
him free. The ferret bounded outside. We lived near the edge of town, and I
knew he’d be safer out there than in the house.

I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and I sat
down on the couch.

I waited to die.

When I was a kid, my dad moved us all over the
country following jobs and ridiculous dreams and whatever else struck his
fancy. We ended up in West Virginia for a while when I was ten years old. We
lived in a rickety-clackity trailer on the property behind a plantation-style
house, next to deep, fairy-tale woods that spread for miles and miles. With no
other kids nearby to play with, and a whole summer before me, I spent my days
exploring.

I was a regular Mowgli for a while, swinging from
trees and venturing through endless forest. The only other human I talked to
was the old lady who lived in the main house. She fed me pot pies in her living
room while she obsessively watched QVC.

Sometimes it would rain for days straight, and I’d
run outside in nothing but my underwear and a pair of scuba goggles. I’d stick
my face in the raging creek behind the house and look for frogs and box
turtles. I’d almost been swept away a hundred times, but it was fun for me, and
my parents never noticed I was gone.

After the storms, temporary ponds formed in the
deep woods, lasting two or three weeks until they dried up. I would spend hours
playing with these ponds…building dams, digging holes to connect them, or just
splashing around in them with my Power Rangers.

After one particularly long storm, I found a large
rain pond about two miles into the woods. It was filled with blobby frog egg
sacs. I visited it every day until the sacs hatched, releasing thousands of
teeny-tiny tadpoles into the shrinking pond.

Once I saw the tadpoles swimming around, I started
to worry. How long would it take them to grow legs and hop away? I knew if it didn’t
rain soon, the pond would dry up, and they would die.

I wanted to move them to the creek. For that, I would
need a bucket.

“You can’t do that,” the old lady said when I told
her. “You’ll either hurt them trying to get them into the bucket. Or they’ll
die in the creek; it moves way too fast for such small creatures. That’s why
mama frog laid her eggs in that little pond. It’s best to leave it be and let
nature take its course.”

I didn’t want to leave it be. The closest regular
water supply was that small stream just beyond our house, almost two miles away
from the tadpoles. All the other rain ponds had dried up. Every day I filled
two water jugs with water, trekked the long path to the tadpole pond, and
refilled it to keep them alive.

I fought a losing battle. Some days, I’d make the
trip two or three times, two miles each way. Every day, despite my replenishing
of the pond, it got smaller and smaller.

I prayed for rain.

The clouds came, the sky rumbled, but it didn’t
rain.

One Saturday, my dad woke me early and told me
were going fishing. I had been asking him for a year to take me, so I was
excited to go.

We never went fishing that day. We went to my
dad’s jobsite and spent the morning collecting hunks of metal. Then we drove
fifty miles to a place where my dad argued with a man over how much he’d sell
it to him for. Eventually they agreed on a price, and my dad and the man went
to a bar together. I was left alone in the truck until it was dark, and when my
dad finally came out, he sat in the cab, put the keys in the ignition, and
passed out.

It’d been a hot day, but it was a cold night, and
I spent it shivering in the back of the truck under a blanket that smelled like
oil and dog. I looked up at the dark and cloudy sky and prayed to God that it
would rain, even if it meant me getting wet.

Still, it didn’t rain.

I didn’t make it back to the pond until Sunday
afternoon. I lugged three water jugs out into the woods. It was so hard to
carry them. I had to stop every few hundred feet to rest, and the trip took
twice as long as it usually did.

I got there too late.

The tadpoles were dead. The pond had dried up in
the heat. It was my fault.

I sat in the leaves, staring at the black,
still-muddy hole filled with the dead tadpoles. I could smell the green, mossy
water, but it was all gone. It felt as if an elephant stood on my chest,
crushing me. I wasn’t even sure why I was so upset. I thought frogs were cool
and all, but I didn’t love them. Why did I care so much? I think it was that I felt
responsible for them. I had made the choice to take care of them, and even
though I’d tried my best, I had failed them.

I fashioned a small cross out of some twigs and stuffed
it in the depression made by the pond.

When I got home, the door was locked, and my
parents weren’t home.

As I waited, it started to rain. I know, as
ridiculous and ironic as that sounds, that’s what happened. It rained.

The old lady saw me outside in the downpour and
let me in the big house. She microwaved a pot pie for me, and, as usual, QVC
blared on the TV. I sat at her table, soaking wet, stewing with anger. At first
I had just been sad. I had prayed for rain, and it came, but it came late.

“I hate God,” I said.

Startled, the old lady looked at me for a long
time and then said, “Why is that, hun?”

So I told her. Only, when it came out, I didn’t
stop at the frogs. I kept talking. I hated God because of the father he had
given me, the father who never kept a promise, but continued to make them. I
hated God because I continued to believe everything my dad said. I hated God
for giving me a quiet, wallflower of a mother whom I hardly knew, and who
hardly knew me. I was half Filipino on her side, and I didn’t know anything
about myself or where I came from, and she never cared enough to share.

The old lady laughed, surprising me.

“Your parents love you,” she said. “I can tell.
They’re just not good at showing it. You have to learn to take care of
yourself, and that’s all there is to it.” She stood and took the now-cold pot
pie out of the microwave and plopped it down in front of me.

It was the first time I had ever said anything to
anybody about how my parents treated me. Her answer wasn’t earth-shattering or
profound. Years later, I’d realize it was just an empty answer an uncomfortable
adult gave a child when she didn’t know what to say.

She spent a few minutes watching me eat, then she
continued.

“As for your frogs… Goodness me, Adam. The Lord
doesn’t care about the beasts of this world. They have no souls. Their purpose
here is to keep us alive and humble and happy. These tadpoles you tried to
save… It was noble, but God wouldn’t answer such a prayer. God doesn’t see
them. He doesn’t care if they live or die. How could he? If he did care, why
did he put the puddle there? That would make him unkind, would it not?

“No,” she continued. “He put them there to teach
you a lesson. Maybe a cruel lesson, but it’ll serve a purpose sometime in your
life. When you care for something, I mean really care for something, it
requires sacrifice to do it proper. Now I don’t know what sort of sacrifice you
needed to make to save them tadpoles, but it was more than you were willing to
give.”

It was a deeper answer than what she had said
about my folks. I wasn’t sure I understood it, but it sounded important. It
seemed like she wasn’t talking just about the tadpoles, either. Like she had
given me a puzzle to put together with pieces that didn’t fit.

Either way, her answer made me feel like shit.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation
now as I sat on my couch, mourning Nif. I grabbed one of my Rubik’s Cubes off
the table, and I worked it without even looking.

I did that often, when I needed to think. I owned
over twenty of the cubic puzzles. One was always within reach. Every room of
the house, at work, and in the car. Some people chewed on their fingernails. I
solved Rubik’s Cubes, though it wasn’t a challenge anymore once I learned how
to work it. My keychain even held a mini-cube, a present from Nif. I didn’t like
that one much, but I would never tell Nif.

I could solve any 3x3 cube in under a minute. My
record was about 15 seconds, though I’d gotten lucky that time.

Outside, my neighbors talked in the street. One of
them had a radio, and they listened and cried. Some drove off, screeching into
the night while others talked about it being safer here. Above, aircraft and
helicopters streaked by.

They were too late.

The Grinder was now a full-fledged,
Tokyo-destroying behemoth. It crawled into Arizona Stadium a centipede, a giant
monster. It lurched out a mountain-sized destroyer of hope and faith.

We had power at the house, but out my window, the
majority of the city looked dark. Fires burned everywhere. I turned on the
television—nothing but static. I don’t know how long I sat and stared at
the gray snow. My body felt numb, but my mind churned. I knew where I was, but
I was so lost, it hurt just to look away from the static and think about
anything at all.

A distant explosion rocked the house, knocking a
framed and autographed picture of Pee-wee Herman off the wall. The glass
shattered when it hit the floor. It was Nif’s, and she prized it. A moment
later, the power faltered, but it came back. I stood and picked up the broken
frame, and I stared at the inscription.

Jennifer,

I know you are, but what am I?

Pee-wee Herman

(That’s my name! Don’t wear it out!)

I never liked Pee-wee Herman much, but Nif loved
him. He had been at some celebrity-filled, fundraising event she attended as a
little girl. That’s when she got the picture. She said he was the only one who
was nice to her.

I clutched the broken frame. The corner of the
picture had bent and torn in the fall. Glass had scattered everywhere. When she
sees this, I thought, she’ll be pissed.

That did it. I cried. I cried like a damn baby,
bawling and wiping snot on my sleeve.

I felt ashamed. I had abandoned her. I thought of
the guy driving the tractor that had failed to bring the monster down. At least
he had tried something. I didn’t know who he was, but I bet he had a loved one
caught up in the beast.

The phone rang.

Great. It was probably someone I didn’t want to
talk to. Maybe Nif’s aunt—Cece’s mom. I let it ring out. A minute later,
it rang again. I sighed. She had to be terrified, not knowing what had happened,
where her daughter was. She deserved the truth as horrible as it would be to
tell her.

I picked up the phone and stared at the number on
the caller ID.

The phone clattered to the floor before I realized
I had dropped it. It wasn’t Cece’s mom.

It was Nif’s cell.