Free The Grinding by Matt Dinniman Page B

from our
perspective.
    The whole thing looked like a cross section of a
giant lasagna, with the ground beef on top.
    Several human tentacles whipped in the air above
the monstrosity. As we watched in horror, one tentacle picked up a motorcycle
and tossed it like a fastball toward something behind it in the neighborhood.
    As I looked at the beast, I felt a strange tingle
in my chest and head. This was new, something I hadn’t yet felt, not my usual
horror and worry. It was like fingers poking at me, or like an invisible string
went from me to the monstrosity, pulling ever so slightly, urging me, tempting
me to go forward, into the Grinder.
    That was insane, of course, to go into the Grinder
and be used as a top-level meat shield. I bit my lip as I realized I had my
hand on the door handle.
    Randy swore and slammed the Jeep into reverse. The
tires squealed as we backed away. “Get that gun ready!”
    It took me a moment to grasp he’d said that to me,
and I took my hand off the door and clutched the automatic shotgun. I didn’t
know how to shoot it. I guessed a simple trigger pull, but was there more to it?
A safety or anything else special? Even if I figured all that out, where in the
hell would I shoot? All those people… Who was alive? Dead? Who the fuck knew.
    Plus, it was moving on while we headed in reverse.
The monster kept morphing and rolling, now a long train headed north across the
street. It seemed bigger than even after it attacked the stadium, despite the
full-press of the military. It wasn’t very tall at this moment, but it just
kept going and going.
    A Humvee with a mounted machine gun roared past
us. The soldier at the gun fired a stream of bullets that streaked through the
night air like fireflies into the lowest level of the beast.
    The bullets tore through the people, who fell
apart and away. Pieces of the shielding debris from the second level of the
creature cascaded onto the street. Our Jeep swerved as Randy tried to turn us
around, ramming a bus stop with a loud, jarring crunch. He put the Jeep into
drive, and the back wheels spun.
    We were stuck.
    We looked on in horror as the thing turned on the
Humvee. I didn’t see from where it was thrown, but a dark shape smashed into
the front of the military vehicle, flipping it. Two more round missiles
streaked from the top of the beast, one of them overshooting the soldiers and
skidding into the road in front of where we were jammed.
    It was a pig, I think.
    “Come on, come on, come on ,” I said.
    The Jeep’s engine whined, along with Randy. “I’m
trying, damn it.”
    One of the soldiers crawled out of the overturned
truck, and he ran in our direction, dragging his hurt leg. Behind him, the
massive Grinder had stopped. What the…? Its attention was on the guys fleeing from the truck, toward us.
    Terrified, I watched as a tentacle swept down from
above and swiped at the injured soldier. Its reach wasn’t quite long enough,
and the man looked like he might get away.
    He didn’t.
    Another tentacle swung at him, only this time, the
longer and thicker arm broke apart in mid-air, raining people and something
else—big, mean-looking dogs I realized—on the road all around the
soldier. The people and animals rolled and skidded as they hit the ground. Some
didn’t get back up, but about fifteen people and several dogs did.
    The soldier was surrounded. He yelled something at
the people circling around him, but I couldn’t hear. He pulled a pistol from
his side. Someone in the group said something, and the soldier yelled back. The
group of dogs, and one coyote, I saw, moved behind him. The snarling pack
dodged and snapped at him, closing in on one side, opening up on another side.
Why didn’t they full-on attack him? Then I realized what was happening.
    They were herding him toward the Grinder.
    I leaned in toward Randy and Royce. “Should we
help him?” I asked.
    We all snapped at the sound of a gunshot. It was the
soldier. He fired again, at a