The Grinding by Matt Dinniman Page B

way,” I yelled, and we turned, angling away
from the monster and the advance party of dogs and people chasing us. Despite
what they said, the twins held their own in terms of speed, running in a kind
of strange, side-gallop that allowed them to shoot and run at the same time.
    They shot all three dogs, who tumbled forward with
the momentum of their unnatural speed. The drones kept coming, all of them
twenty-something males. Another burst of the machine gun, and the closest two
fell.
    I didn’t want to shoot because I didn’t want to
fall over again, plus these were people. Real, live people, fucked in the head
maybe, but they were still living humans who didn’t know what they were doing.
    But most of all, I was afraid.
    A deep memory seeped up in me like hairy sewage
from a drain. A memory, and a feeling, the same feeling I’d had that day when I
froze while Nif stood her ground against the homeless guy.
    The memory was of my father’s voice, and the first
time I fired a gun: Don’t be a pussy,
Adam. If you’re afraid of your own weapon, how are you going to feel when
somebody has one, too? He’d jammed his grease-encrusted finger at the paper
target of an angry-looking man pointing a gun at me . Now fire, goddamnit .
    So I fired, goddamnit. I fired then, and I fired
now. I pulled the trigger and fired. And fired. It was an automatic shotgun,
after all. It nearly danced out of my grip, but I ran and I yelled and I fired,
and I didn’t fall. The whole thing emptied in what seemed like two seconds
flat.
    But holy shit, man. Holy. Shit.
    It did its job.
    I didn’t have time to think about what I’d just
done, but I did anyway. I’d just turned ten people into beef jerky.
    They weren’t
real people , I told myself. They want
to kill me . This is self-defense .
My chest hurt.
    We scrambled past the sidewalk and up a steep set
of stairs into the covered courtyard surrounded by concrete-laden commercial
buildings. Our footsteps echoed as we ran past the silent fountain and out the
backside, right into the middle level of a three-level parking garage.
    I’d been here once, back when Nif and I had first
started dating. We’d come here at three AM so she could show me some moves on
her skateboard. We’d been chased away by the security guard. I wondered if he
was still here somewhere. Nif wanted to find his car and slash his tires, and I
talked her out of it. We compromised by dumping a giant slushy from Circle K on
the hood of the only other car we could see. We didn’t even know if it was his
car. I felt terrible afterward.
    “Wait,” Randy said, falling over themselves, both
of them wheezing. “We gotta rest, man.” Royce let the duffel bag clatter off
his neck and onto the ground, and Randy did the same.
    It took them a minute, but Royce unzipped the bag
and pulled out a black, round canister. It was a drum magazine for my shotgun.
Between gasps, he walked me through changing it out.
    As I fumbled with the gun, the distinctive whoosh
of a missile streaked above. The explosion shook the ground, and dust cascaded
off the ceiling, causing the twins to cough.
    “Adam!” came a loud male voice, coming from behind
us. The voice echoed like knives. It came from the courtyard by the fountain.
“Come back!”
    “We’ll keep you safe,” another voice called.
“She’s here. She’s waiting for you. We can protect you.”
    “Holy shit,” Royce said, looking up at me between
wheezes and coughs.
    I felt it again, that ache at my chest. Or was it
a tug… It still wasn’t strong enough to overthrow my sense, but it was there,
tempting. I realized that this was something with real power. I was afraid to
ask the twins if they felt it, too.
    “Who? What the hell…?” Randy said. “How does it
know you?”
    “I don’t know,” I said, “But we gotta keep
moving.”
    The voices continued to call my name. They never
came in the garage, but they were out there, calling. Maybe they feared our
weapons. Not that our