Earlier: Fred Bean spoke into his cell phone.

"So am I, Pat... but I appreciate the honesty. At least we can still talk to each other. Well... you take care now."

Patricia said something and hung up in a hurry. Fred blinked back the tears and drew a hand across his tense jaw; it shifted with a little click. He needed a shave. His dark shirt had stains on it.

Fred put the cell-phone back into his pocket and continued to sort trays and plates into their racks. The racks rolled into the dishwashing machine at one end, and came out with clean plates and trays on the other end. From the grills came the sizzle of burgers and pork chops. The Hindu cook, some bright-eyed kid studying computer science, flipped through a schoolbook while he poked at the frying meat.

Suddenly, every plate rack started to rattle loudly. Fred's boss came in from the diner, wiping fleshy hands on her apron.

"Is the dishwasher acting up again?" she bellowed over the rattling noise of a hundred plates.

"No," Fred shouted, and then they both felt the entire kitchen shake from the tremors. Things dropped off tables and shelves and struck the floor.

"Earthquake!" the boss warned, rushing back into the diner. "Everybody out! No pushing!"

Her Pullman-style diner had a dozen customers, mostly commuters on their way home or to the evening shift. Without showing any real panic they milled out through the main entrance followed by Fred, the cook clutching his schoolbooks, and their boss.

On the street, the tremors rumbled even stronger; they came in a pounding, steady rhythm. Traffic was slowing down to a halt. A loud crashing noise shook the city block. One of the diner’s customers pointed down the street and called for attention.

Fred and the others looked in that direction, and his first thought was: Are they shooting a movie?

Three blocks away, a gigantic gray-white humanoid head was crashing through the concrete and asphalt from below ground, tossing cars aside like so many toys. A round torso and two thick arms followed, two massive legs, and the thing crawled onto its feet with a tremendous roar. Pedestrians screamed and ran away from the giant; drivers deserted their vehicles in traffic and fled. Fred stood on the steps to the diner, holding on to a rail to stay upright in the tremors.

He shouted at the boss, who was running away: "Hey, wait! They must be shooting a movie or something..." But she did not or could not hear him over the rumbling and screaming. The giant took a first step, and a huge thud sent vibrations all the way up the street to the diner.

Fred ran around to the back of the diner, where his used car stood parked. He got in and started it up; the engine ran on the first attempt.

"This is a dream... just a dream," he told himself. "Just play along." Backing out from the parking lot, he found that the street traffic had turned into complete chaos. People running everywhere, crashed cars blocking the road... it seemed impossible to drive away without running someone or something over.

He peered ahead, past the rooftops, away from the giant he had seen. A plume of smoke rose from perhaps half a mile away, near the city’s skyscraper district. He saw the image of another giant's head, reflected in the glass wall of an office tower. The tremors were receding, but instead the ground shook with steady, deep thumps. The feet of marching giants.

"Oh no, no, no," he muttered. "It's me, it's got to be me... Delirium... the damn booze..."

Fred opened the glove compartment, pulled out the small bottle and threw it out the side window. He shut his eyes, rubbed the eyelids with his knuckles, took a deep breath... and looked again.

At once, he saw that another giant had walked right up to the office tower, and seemed to be watching the reflection of its own dull, broad face. Deep-set eyes frowned at the glass facade, like a child pulling faces. The giant had to be half as tall as the tower. Without warning, the giant raised two thick, huge fists and punched a large hole through the tower.

Fred's eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped. "Trish... Pat... oh no, no, no..."

He fumbled for the cell-phone and pressed the quick-dial button. While waiting for Pat to answer, he drove through a small opening in the dense street traffic. His car, rusty and worn, scraped another car and the level of honking increased. But he pressed on and followed the stream of vehicles headed out of Los Angeles.

The dial-up signal repeated one, two, three... ten times. When he finally got an answer, Pat's voice sounded hysterical.

"Shit! Shit! Fred? Fred? God, why're you... why did you... it's all screwed up, Fred! Damn car won't start, and that thing is moving downhill... God, how can a living thing be so huge..."

"Thing? What thing?"

"A... a... giant thing... came up from the hill..."

"Pat! Pat! Listen. Is Trish all right?"

"She's right here with me... car won't start..."

Fred had trouble hearing her. Static intruded, carrying the same rhythm as the distant thumping beyond Pat's voice and rapid breathing.

In the background, Fred could pick up little Trish crying... and a low, rumbling growl outside the car.

"I'm on my way to you now, okay? Traffic's almost jammed... I'll come and pick you up in my car. If you can't start up your own... just leave and run for the freeway exit. I'll find you there. Pat?"

The signal broke up; Pat's voice fluttered and disappeared. Fred held up the phone to see the display. It read: NO SIGNAL.

He put the phone on the dashboard and concentrated on getting through traffic. From all directions came the vibrating thumps of huge things walking. Police and fire-engine sirens bleated back and forth; several police cars were stuck among the thousands of cars headed east. Fred switched on the car radio and clicked through channel after channel of static. Glancing at the crossing immediately ahead of him, he noticed that the traffic lights had just stopped working. Afternoon was turning slowly into evening, and no lampposts were working.

The radio's automatic search stopped; a serious male voice spoke through static.

"...is not an exercise, I repeat, not an exercise. Power lines below ground are badly damaged, but emergency repair teams are working to restore connections. The public should stay indoors and not cause more panic.

"About twenty of the large alien creatures have now been sighted all over greater Los Angeles and outlying areas. Similar sightings have been reported from other large cities on the east and west coast. Their origin is unknown, but they seem to be attracted to urban sprawl. The National Guard and has been alerted, and Army gunships have been called in to follow and possibly neutralize the creatures. The Governor of California will make a public announcement..."

Another wave of static swallowed up the channel. Between his teeth, Fred muttered: "If this is another Hollywood publicity stunt, I'll f***ing murder whoever is behind it..."

A large crashing noise, followed by bone-rattling thumps, filled the street. He looked into the rear-view mirror and gasped: the pale, thick legs and feet of a giant, crudely human shape was stomping right through the rows of cars. Glass and metal crunched and squealed underneath the slow, massive feet. Naked white foot-soles, larger than a car, rose and fell back down, red with gore. A car tire appeared to be stuck between two of the giant's knotted, stubby toes.

Vehicles crashed into each other; one bumped into the rear of Fred's car. The lanes of traffic turned into a single gridlocked mass, unable to move forward or backward. He honked the horn, and realized at once the futility of it. The thump... thump... of the giant's feet grew stronger, deeper. Gunshots sounded outside: revolvers, submachine-guns, pump-action shotguns. A giant roared; Fred grimaced and held his ears. Windows shattered along the street, a cascading effect of the roar, spreading down the entire block.

Fred tried to open the car door - another car was jammed against it. He swore, rattled the door handle impotently a few times, and gave up. But the sunroof opened on the first attempt. He crawled up through the open lid and onto the car roof, struggling not to fall in the constant tremors of giant feet.

Ahead the road lay jammed. Behind him, some fifty-sixty feet away, a hundred feet tall naked, obese giant was lumbering ahead, squashing car after car under its immense weight. On the street and from the cars, several men with firearms – at least one of them a cop – fired round upon round at the giant's body.

The bullets seemed to make no wounds at all; the giant snarled and waved its arms in the air, a slow-motion parody of a man brushing off flies. Only gradually did it its attention turn downward, to the tiny figures below. The giant lifted its foot over a police car, and the uniformed officer with the shotgun stopped firing, stood frozen for a moment, and then tried to move past the mass of stuck cars. The foot came down on him and the police car.

The impact caused Fred's car to shudder so violently, he tumbled off it and fell onto the hood of an adjacent vehicle. Others were leaving their cars and trucks behind now, fleeing madly from the towering giant.

Its breathing came very loud and deep, and its rounded hairless chest heaved and sank visibly. Fred rolled off the car hood, clawed at the next car roof, climbed it, and found a foothold on the front of a truck. Vehicle by vehicle, he made his way to the sidewalk and set his feet on the shuddering concrete.

A fleeing crowd almost pushed him over; he was swept along with the tide of people. The crowd was one panicking entity, mindlessly running and pushing eastward. The giant sent another foot crashing into the ground, and the pointless gunfire ceased.

Fred cried out: "Metro station!" as if trying to steer the crowd - or perhaps the crowd was guiding his mind. "Metro station! We gotta jump on a streetcar out of town!" A Metro Blue station, one of the city's few streetcar lines, lay just a block away. The mass of people pulled him along; they could all feel the pounding footsteps of giants nearby.

Someone tore at Fred's shirt sleeve – one anonymous grasping hand in the living mass of feet and hands – and tore off a button. He breathed hard, shoved and pushed so as not to be shoved off his feet. And underneath them, the ground shook. Thump... thump... then a second set of feet, slightly faster: Thump, thump, thump...

Fred saw the elevated track of the Metro Blue, on its concrete pillars; the staircases leading up to the platform were packed with fleeing, screaming people. There was no more space to allow the mob that pressed on from street level. He clawed and shoved his way out of the flow, away from the staircase.

With a collective howl of rage and terror, the street mob pushed into the crowd that occupied the platform and staircases. Men and women were pushed off the stairwell rails and fell on the gridlocked cars below. Young men and women savagely kicked and beat older people who stood in their way, then crawled over their fallen bodies to reach the E-train platform.

Fred glimpsed this as he pushed himself past a fat woman and literally spilled out of the mob, landing on the ground at the foot of the platform stairs. Someone fell from the writhing, shouting mass brawl above, and landed nearly at his feet. It was a little boy, no older than four, and he lay dead on the concrete.

Grimacing, short of breath, Fred ran to the line of vehicles below the elevated train platform, and searched for an escape route. Then he spotted a giant approaching beyond the gridlocked traffic, right across the street. The ground shook with its rapid walk; the bald head peered high above a four-story building; its breathing wheezed ominously. It had teeth, flat and yellow, all visible in the drooling grin that spread across its grey, broad face.

The giant's jaw moved slowly, masticating; it was holding something in its right hand. The hand moved up toward the mouth and shoveled the something in between the rows of teeth.

The crowds fell silent; all stared at the giant. It stopped walking for a moment, chewed with a revolting, crunching noise... and spat out a bloodied, mucus-covered shoe. The shoe bounced off the roof of a car. From the giant's nostrils came an appreciative sniff, and its flecked yellow eyes focused with terrible determination on the train platform right ahead of it.

Another giant roared from the other side of the platform, one block away – the one Fred had tried to escape. The crowd he was in was trapped.



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