Earlier:

Fred's voice sounded high-pitched and urgent over the phone; static hissed, and the signal weakened in synch with the thumping of the giant's feet.

"I'm on my way to you now, okay? Traffic's almost jammed... I'll come and pick you up in my c...r. If you c... start up your own... just... ... run for the ...way exi... ..."

The signal was cut off.

"Fred! Goddammit, Fred! You gotta help us..."

Trish was bawling, her cheeks puffy and red, and she clutched her little jaw with both hands.

The car still refused to start. Other cars were leaving the neighborhood at high speeds. Many neighbors simply ran down the sloping road, dragging or carrying their children. Older children came on bicycles.

Some idiot neighbor was aiming a camcorder up at the hill, trying to shoot a movie of the giant thing that came stomping downhill toward them. The giant had reached the topmost row of houses, and leaned down on its knees with a heavy groan. Pat could not see what the giant was doing as the houses blocked her view, but one could hear human screams, barking dogs... and the crashing, splintering noise of large things breaking through wood and glass. One by one, the screams were cut off; the dogs stopped barking and howled. The giant appeared to scoop up, then shovel stuff into its open mouth...

She opened the car door and stepped out, leaving the door open.

"Don't move, hon!" Pat shouted, rushing to the car's rear. It was a small Japanese model; she could easily give it a push, then roll it downhill until the engine was forced into motion. Pat dug her jogging shoes into the asphalt and pushed, gasping for air, glancing restlessly uphill. The giant's head and back were visible as a bald, dirty mass above the rooftops, bobbing up and down. A horrible grating, scraping sound came, followed by rumbling breath.

Pat pushed, pushed; the car began to roll and she leaped into the driver's seat, slamming the door behind her. With her feet on the pedals and one hand on the steering wheel, she guided the gently rolling vehicle down the curving road.

"Don't cry, hon, I'll get you out of here... it'll be all right..."

Various items lay scattered and abandoned on the curving slope: an empty baby kart, a dropped bicycle, suitcases, toys, a football... in the rearview mirror she saw the man with the camcorder still standing there, shooting the scene.

The car engine hummed and started working; Pat made a nervous laugh. She reached for and caressed Trish's dark hair.

"See? There's a man making a movie... maybe it's just a movie they're shooting... it was all a trick. You know... not real."

Trish stopped crying. "Like Popeye and the giant?"

Pat breathed faster, blinking tears out of her eyes as she pressed down the gas pedal and increased the speed. "Yeah... like that..."

"Will the giant grind our bones to make bread?"

Pat was dumbfounded; she pulled a handkerchief from the dashboard and urged Trish with a silent gesture to wipe her face.

The noise on the hill was receding; the winding road lay more or less open. A few people were still visible; several old folks stood on their lawns and driveways, pointing and staring uphill. Pat turned a corner, where the road sign pointed to the freeway exit. Just one turn and they were free...

"Hon..."

She gasped and slowed down the car. There had been a pile-up on the exit road. Several wrecked cars - none of them on fire - lay turned and twisted across the asphalt, blocking both lanes. A line of cars stood between Pat and the pile-up, drivers honking and rushing their engines in futile protest.

In the direction of the city center, the sun was turning orange as it sank toward the horizon. Somewhere not too far away, the thumping of other giants sent faint vibrations through the ground. Distant jet aircraft roared through the air, squadrons of them.

Pat stopped her car before it would get stuck in the ever-growing line, made a hair-pin U-turn and drove back uphill.

"There's another exit, I know there is one," she told herself. "We never use it, but it has to be on the other side..."

Little Trish reached for the radio panel, and switched on a channel. Nothing but static.

"Don't touch that!" Pat snapped, blinked, then punched on the Search button. A male voice came on, through heavy static: "...of California has declared a state of martial law. All National Guard and military personnel must immediately report to their bases for duty. Civilians should stay in their homes and not block the phone lines needed by emergency personnel.

"Reports are coming in from all over the state about these unexplained giant humanoids, or 'giants'. The creatures show very little intelligence, and are aggressively carnivorous. They will attack anything living it sees, and must not be approached. Do not use guns or small firearms against these creatures; it only seems to anger them.

"Air Force planes and gunships are on their way to deal with the creatures. No one has yet succeeded in shooting down a giant, but the military is confident that its firepower is sufficient to..."

Pat left the radio on and drove around the lower parts of the suburb, looking for the exit. Another car came speeding around a corner, on a head-on collision course; she swerved aside and drove across the lawns. The other car, tires screeching, lost control, spun sideways into a parked vehicle and stopped dead.

She slowed down. Her car rolled back onto the road, and she drove onto a dirt track, partly overgrown by weeds. Here there were no houses, just dried grassy hillsides, bushes and boulders left over from when the hills had been excavated.

The track led around the hill; she passed a construction-company signpost. Its cheerful text read:

ASHLEY & CROFT CONSTRUCTION CO.
Building the new HOMELAND LANE
Your neighbourhood of tomorrow
Pleasant - safe - affordable!
Call 555-384385 for more info

The track went through a whole street still under development. Large dump trucks and excavators stood parked amongst canvas-covered piles of planks and cement sacks. The future foundations of new houses were marked out with sticks and strings. Oblong squares had been dug out of the earth and rock, waiting to be filled, looking like graves for very large bodies� or future mass graves.

The dirt track became rougher, and came to a stop. Ahead lay a sheer cliff face, where the next hill began. Sweating, her face contorted by grief, Pat turned the steering wheel and turned her small car around.

"Damn, damn, shit! It's all his fault! He wanted us to buy this shit house in this cheapskate suburb... that f***ing drunk and his shitty promises!"

Trish, who had just wiped her face dry and clean, sat staring up at her mother with eyes full of fright. She opened her mouth as if to speak or gasp, but no words came out.

A rumble from the empty construction site and caused their car to shudder. An enormous, grimy fist punched through the bottom of an excavated foundation pit and sent sand and rocks spraying across the road. Mother and daughter shrieked. After the giant fist ascended a bald head, as large as their little car, and a yawning of air rushed to fill the collapsing space underneath the lot. A giant�s scummy, dirty eyes blinked in the clouds of dust as it wriggled itself up from the pit. The first thing they focused on was the car. A pair of eyes wide as car tires glared madly right at Pat, only twenty feet away, and she stepped on the gas pedal. Trailed by dust, the little Japanese car speeded away, the very road cracking up underneath its tires.

"Mom! Mom! Mom!" Trish screamed and would not stop screaming. Pat's breathing quickened into a staccato of whimpering gasps; she leaned over the steering-wheel as if the car were a horse she was riding into a gallop.

The giant's breathing hissed and huffed behind them; a series of noises told them that it was rising onto its feet. Pat's car skidded across gravel, the left front wheel sliding just inches from one of the square pits, but she pulled the car away, back onto the dirt track. The car raced toward the asphalt road; she drove uphill, glancing dazedly at the road, deaf to her daughter's shouts. They were being pursued, the giant's pace increasing: Thump, thump, thump, thump...

"Mom... let's hide somewhere and take a bath! Then the giant can't smell us!"

"Quiet! Shut up!"

"The giant can smell us! Like it did with Popeye! But if we hide and get real clean, he can't smell where we are!"

"I, I... I gotta hide you somewhere... the basement..."

They turned a corner uphill. The new giant continued lumbering downhill, in the direction of the freeway exit, where the concentration of human life was greatest and noisiest. If there were any residents left in the suburb, they had all gone indoors or into hiding. On her own street, the man with the camcorder had disappeared.

Pat drove up her driveway, stopped right by the front porch, carried Trish inside and locked the door.

"Now hush, hon," she whispered to the girl. "Be very quiet... we're going to hide in the basement until the military comes to fix things... okay? You go first. I'll go get all the food I can find, so we can stay a few days."

Trish nodded urgently. Her mother opened the basement door, and cautiously led the girl down the darkened, narrow staircase. The basement, one room and bathroom, still had an unfinished appearance about it. Various items lay stacked in cardboard boxes and plastic bags; a small couch stood in a corner. Pat tried the light switch, but it didn't work; dim light seeped in through the tiny, shuttered window niches. Trish sat down on the edge of the couch; Pat kneeled down and held her little hands.

"I'll get candles, honey. Be right back. Now be a good girl and don't make noise. I love you so very much." She hugged her daughter hard, then released her. "Be right back. Use the... use the bathroom if you gotta go."

Without waiting for Trish to reply, Pat ran up the staircase and shut the door.



Outside, the man with the camcorder had moved uphill. He was standing behind a house corner, aiming the camera lens up at the giant who was digging into a row of houses. The Sony digital hi-definition camera captured the scene well, even in the waning sunlight. The enormous, forward-crouching shape of the giant was leaning on its knees and paw-like knuckles, like a child playing with a dollhouse, scooping out room after room of the wooden houses. The walls and windows crumbled like paper under the giant's torso-thick, pale fingers and blackened, spade-like fingernails.

From the way the giant's jaw moved, it was evident that its fleshy, short neck was almost incapable of turning sideways; instead the eyes bulged outward and rolled watchfully from side to side. Trembling, breathing in short bursts, the man with the camcorder held the Zoom button and got a close-up of the thing's head.

It was methodically picking up people from inside their houses and eating them. As its jaws crunched and masticated, red gore and mucus dribbled down its face and onto the plowed-up lawn; bits of clothing, shoes and the occasional human head landed.

An elderly man was pulled out of a wrecked house, the stubby fingers wrapped around him like a bundle of humongous snakes; their pressure was so great that the old man was unable to speak, and his face turned purple. The giant stuffed the helpless old man into its mouth and its cheeks bulged as the jaws went to work: things inside the mouth snapped, crackled and popped.

The giant reached into a large kitchen window, rummaged around as it sniffed for more food, and tore out a refrigerator. Electric cables snapped as it lifted out the fridge box and held it up to its face, grunting curiously. Like a man cracking a nut, it bit into the fridge door - and the box opened. It emitted a pleased, surprised grunt, almost like human speech: "Fffhumm!"

The giant's dark-grey, slobbering tongue scooped out the contents: milk cartons, steaks, eggs, vegetables, a strawberry pie, a bottle of orange juice, salad dressing, a bag of apples and a sack of potatoes. Then, like a man having sucked out an oyster, he tossed the empty white "shell" aside; the refrigerator clanged onto a driveway and bounced a few feet before landing near the camera man's corner.

A monstrous fart escaped the giant's rump, sending a rumbling sound blast across the street. Noxious gases instantly filled the street. The man who had spied on the giant coughed, choked and dropped his camcorder. Immediately, the giant grunted with anger and turned its body toward the corner of the next house where the camcorder lay exposed. With shaking legs, the man began to run away across the asphalt-covered path which passed along the side of the house.

The giant raised its left arm and fist - a fatty, ape-like extension fifty feet long - and pounded the fist into the corner. Wood and concrete splintered and shattered under the ground-shaking blow, hitting the fleeing man's back; the asphalt under the man's feet cracked and flew upward, like a carpet being yanked. He stumbled and fell on his belly and hands, yelping and screaming.

"Somebody stop it! Help me! Somebody!"

The concrete driveway cracked under the weight of the giant as it stood up, its arms pushing it upright, and took one thirty-feet step. Wham! The foot sank halfway into the soft lawn beside the struggling man, splattering him with dirt and grass. He babbled wordlessly in panic, fighting to get up, and rolled onto his back. Staring upward, he saw the giant's body loom over him, its male genitals hanging down between the massive legs. The giant's penis was as large as the man's entire body, a limp sack of elephantine skin, but it had no testicles. The man covered his face with flailing arms, the sight driving him into complete hysteria.

"Noooo... gaaahh!"

Growling, the giant moved its other foot and stomped on the man below. The impact echoed across the deserted street. When the giant lifted its foot and peered down, the imprint of its sole and toes was fourteen feet long and two feet deep. And in the upper right corner of this imprint lay embedded the shape of a man, partly flattened. His arms had been driven into his skull, like some ruined clay figurine.

The giant leaned down against the house and picked out the crushed remains from the footprint; its breathing was slower and deeper now, its belly visibly fuller, and it began to emit sated, humming grunts.

It sounded remotely like a crude, primitive song.



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