The Grinding Read Free Page B

monster kept
moving, showering the street with severed limbs and bloody clothes and tattered
roller skates.
    The ball hovered in the middle of the dark street
for a few moments, tightened, and spewed dark blood from its top like a whale.
The blood misted in the streetlights. The creature rolled west down Grant Road,
picking up speed, leaving a crushed truck in its wake. The top was ripped off,
the driver gone. A trail of body parts and gore smeared the street in its wake.
    To my left, a lone police officer popped off his
gun, to no effect. I ran toward the road, passed through the cactus hedge, and
stopped at the curb. I stepped on something in the dark, and I fell, catching
myself on a bus stop pole. I looked down, and saw a human hand, red and twisted
like a dead spider, smashed into the curb.
    The monster was a couple hundred yards away,
careening toward the intersection. It blasted through, rolling over more
vehicles.
    The top of the beast hit a low-lying traffic
light, and body parts sprayed into the night. Two of the ejected chunks looked
like full people. They flew and landed hard in the middle of the road.
    Before I even knew what I was doing, I ran toward
them.
    As I ran, the monster continued to roll down the
road, going faster than I was. It swerved toward a Sonoran hotdog truck, packed
with the Saturday night crowd. People screamed and scattered as it approached,
but it caught at least another dozen victims before it veered back onto the
road and rolled west.
    I cried as I raced toward the intersection. With
all the blood, all the body parts on the road, how could anything be alive?
    The first person I came upon was a girl, and she
was dead. She lay face down in the road, her head bent at an obscene angle. Her
left leg was missing, and her arms bent backwards and up. But just past her was
a kid I recognized, though I didn’t know his name. He was alive. He was a
Mexican kid, maybe seventeen or eighteen, wearing nothing but jeans soaked
black with blood. He’d been sitting near us in the stands, cheering for a girl
on the Bruisers. The kid sat up in the middle of the road. His right hand was a
bloody stump, and the only finger that remained was his thumb. He gazed west
toward where the monster had gone.
    I wanted him to be okay. I needed him to be okay. If he could become a part of that thing, be
ripped off, and then be normal again afterwards, I would know Nif still had a
chance.
    “Hey,” I said, running up. The rain was pouring
hard now, slapping into the street, causing the blood to run and pool toward
the side of the road. Sirens blared from every direction, and to the west, a
loud crash filled the night. More people came running from across the street,
survivors of the attack on the hotdog truck.
    They surrounded the guy in the middle of the road.
    “Hey,” I said again, not wanting to touch him.
“Are you okay?” Blood seeped from his hand. He didn’t acknowledge me, and my
heart sank.
    A Mexican woman stepped forward and wrapped his
hand in a cloth. She talked softly to him in Spanish. More people stepped
forward to help, or talk about what they’d just seen. Others wailed.
    I stood, numb, watching the boy as he gazed
unwavering toward where the beast had gone. A man gave the boy his coat.
    The boy tried to stand, but people kept him down.
    “I have to get back,” he said, his voice a
whisper. He had a thick Spanish accent, and I wasn’t sure I heard him right.
Around me, the crowd grew quiet. The night air filled with his ragged
breathing, sirens, and the light clapping of the rain.
    I pushed forward, my heart racing. He’s okay .
    “What? What did you say?” I asked.
    “I saw them,” he said, still looking west. Muddy
tears or rain ran down his face. He tapped his chest with his bloodied hand. “ Papa . They wanted me to stay.”
    “Don’t worry, man, okay? We’ll get you some help.”
    He turned toward me, moving in slow motion. The
entire side of his face was cut up, like it had