The Grinding by Matt Dinniman Page A

stepped outside, and I opened my door to follow.
We crouched low behind the disabled Jeep.
    They rummaged through one of the bags, each one
pulling stuff out. Royce produced a strange, flat machine gun that looked
almost fake. I’d never seen anything like it. Randy took a long magazine and
slapped it on the top.
    “It’s a P90,” Royce said. “Low recoil, fast
reload.”
    “Where do you get this shit?” I asked.
    “Houston,” he said.
    “I want you to promise us something,” Randy said.
    “What?”
    “Don’t let us become part of that thing.”
    “Yeah,” Royce said. “We already know what it’s
like to have more than one brain in a single body. It’s crowded enough in here,
and we don’t share well.”
    “So, what do you want me to do? Shoot you?”
    “Yes,” Royce said. “If it comes to that, yes.”
    I felt a chill, realizing it might come to that. I
nodded. I looked around for an escape. My hands trembled as I clutched the
shotgun.
    To our left, rows of dark houses sat, but there
wasn’t an easy way in without jumping a fence. The Grinder had come from that
direction, but the houses hadn’t been damaged. Still, it was the best way to
go. To our right, we would have to cross several lanes of open road and then
navigate our way through a large cluster of commercial buildings and parking
garages.
    I peered over the hood, and the dogs struggled
with the second pig. The distant sound of machine-gun fire rattled the night. I
sunk back down.
    “There are more Marines on the other side,” Royce
said. “It sounds like they’re doing better than these guys did.”
    “I think we should just run,” I said. “While it’s
distracted. We’ll wait for it to pass, snag an abandoned car, and go around the
back.”
    “We can’t go very fast,” Randy said. “Not anymore.
Not like in high school.”
    “Our lungs,” Royce added.
    “Well, let’s just go. Keep low, and maybe it won’t
see us. Or care. I mean, it had to have seen the Jeep, but it ignored us. It
only cares about the soldiers. We’re not a threat.”
    “Okay,” Randy said. “Let’s do it.”
    I peeked over the hood one last time—straight
into the eyes of a growling, slobbering, your-ass-is-mine dog.
    This wasn’t just any dog, either. I knew the breed.
I had seen a whole special on them a year or so ago on TV. I had nightmares for
a month afterward. A Presa Canario. That’s Spanish for big-ass, mean-ass, eats-pit-bulls-as-a-snack
mastiff.
    I hadn’t heard it come up. Nor did I have time to ponder
the coincidence that the dog growling at me at that very moment was the exact
breed of dog that most terrified me. All I knew was I had to keep from pissing
myself and simultaneously bring the shotgun to bear and pull the trigger, just
as the dog leapt onto the hood of the Jeep.
    Firing a shotgun is a lot different than firing smaller
guns. That’s the only excuse I have for missing a target right in front of me.
With a shotgun. I fell backwards at the recoil, my ears ringing, and for a
quick moment, I continued to scream, for I thought for sure the dog was on me.
I looked up. Oh, thank Christ. It was
dead on the hood of the car.
    Aloud, I thanked the twins. They had shot it with
their machine gun.
    They nodded. “We gotta go.”
    We took off jogging toward the line of fences. A
small, narrow alley offered refuge from the main street, and escape into the
next neighborhood over.
    I looked over my shoulder. More dogs. Three of
them, about 100 meters away, and they booked it right towards us. Behind them,
about ten human drones also rushed in our direction.
    As we approached the alley, a loud crashing noise
filled the night. It came from in front of us. Through the space of the alley,
we could see the next street down. I watched as the row of houses tumbled and
crumbled as the tail end of the Grinder rolled over them, and right toward us.
Both ends converged on another like a giant Pac-man, and we were the dot in the
middle.
    “Wrong