The gang's van, and its cargo of stolen goods and five people, drove east on an abandoned half-overgrown road with no signs.

In the driver's seat, Inches peered ahead at the small strip of road that the headlights would reveal. It was the kind of darkness where the road seemed not to exist beyond the lights, as if the road was continuously being generated out of nothing. Black hillsides blocked their view of the sky.

"How far, Bean?" asked Inches.

"Not far now. Turn right when the road opens up, then we should go uphill... there's a construction site there, and a suburb. Drive through that, then downhill, and you get back to the freeway. You can drop me off among the houses."

"You live there?"

"No, uh... my old folks do."

Inches went silent and focused forward as the road opened up. He slowed down, made a right turn and entered the small dirt track leading uphill. Gradually, the van climbed level with the construction site on the right-hand side of the track. As the van rolled onto the wider dirt road leading away from the site, Inches stepped on the brake and the van slid to a halt.

They just barely glimpsed the thirteen-foot footprint before he shut off the headlights.

In the dark of the van, Inches hissed: "You led us straight to one of'em, motherfu -"

From behind Fred's head came the click of a gun being cocked. Fred opened the side door, leaped out, rolled over the dusty ground. He scrambled for one of the black squares that indicated the future foundation of a house, and crawled over the edge. His feet and hands slipped on crumbling dirt; he slipped down, landed in pile of sand. Gulping for breath, Fred curled up against the cool wall of the pit and waited.

The van's headlights came on, and the van raced away toward the darkened suburb. One could hear the tires bump against imprints left by enormous feet.

Above Fred's head hung a cloudy dark-blue sky; the Moon lay somewhere outside the square walls of the pit. He stood up in the pile of sand and reached for the upper edge of the wall. Straining, holding his breath, his fingertips touched the very edge - but the dirt crumbled, making it impossible to gain a grip and climb up.

"Great... I've buried myself alive."

Fred dug in his pockets and found a Swiss Army knife. He stuck the small blade into the dirt wall and tried to use it as a climbing pick. The blade folded back into the handle when he pulled, and he cut his finger.

"Shit! Shit!"

Putting back the folding-knife in his jacket pocket, Fred came upon the cigarette lighter. He pulled it out and flicked on a large flame. The flame fluttered: there was a draft.

A draft... in a pit? Slowly he turned away from the wall...

"Oh my God."

A seemingly bottomless, pitch-black chasm yawned at his feet. He staggered back against the wall, swaying with sudden vertigo, and nearly lost his grip of the lighter. The huge imprints of giant hands and feet showed where one of the monsters had climbed out of the chasm.

There was a half-crushed Snickers bar in his pockets. Fred tore it open, stuck the candy bar in his mouth, and set the wrapper on fire... then he let the wrapper float down the chasm. The flame drifted down, down, through a winding tunnel with craggy walls, clay giving way to jagged rock... and went out.

But there were no signs of digging tools. How did the giants dig a hole that big and deep without tools? And the pit was clean; where did all the debris go?

Fred snuffed out the flame. Trailing close to the pit walls, he searched for a slope or a ladder. When he came to the place where the giant had climbed up, he found a collapsed section. The imprints of the giant were made of hard-packed dirt, compressed by many tons of living flesh, and carried Fred's weight easily. He stepped in the holes made by toes as if they were a stairwell, and could enter the road.

The area was quiet. No vibrations or rumbles. But wait... Fred cupped a hand to his left ear and listened. A faint, pulsing hum came from the nearby suburb... not the sound of power lines.

The clouds thinned out, and muted moonlight brightened the landscape. A row of power pylons stood further downhill - but those were completely quiet. The strange hum had a pulse like a slow, deep heartbeat...

"Oh no," Fred mumbled. "Not them. You bastards. You're not taking them."

He ran for the suburb.



Inches drove through the dark, quiet neighborhood with the headlights turned off. One of his friends rode shotgun, holding a small submachine gun fitted with a laser-sight, the barrel resting against the open door window.

"Can't we stop and look through the houses for loot?" asked one boy from the back of the van.

"Quiet!" Inches hissed. "Keep your ears peeled. You can hear those big f***ers coming a mile away; make sure they don't step on us though."

The van bounced over objects and debris scattered across the cracked streets, and potholes where large debris had pounded the asphalt. Soon they came to the fork in the road, and drove on downhill to the freeway exit; the rolling hills and valleys lay before them, black shapes devoid of light.

To the far west, a vast orange glow outlined the hills around Los Angeles. Occasional bursts of light rose from the glow, indicating explosions.

"L.A.'s going down," muttered the boy sitting next to Inches. "Looks just like that war on TV, doesn't it?"

"This ain't war, this is crazy," said Inches. The dents in the asphalt followed the road along the same path they were driving. "Get your gats ready. Something's blocking the exit, I can't see what it is. We're stopping here. We scout the area before we drive any further. And no shouting. Could be one of them."

The quartet of young men left the van parked next to a broken lamppost, and walked downhill toward a dark mass that sprawled across the two-lane exit way. Traffic signs lay pointing in all directions, and giant footprints led straight into the roadblock.

The gang members held their pistols and submachine guns pointed forward. Now they could sense a faint, pulsing vibration in the ground. The boys sniffed the air; it stank of gasoline, oil, blood - and sulfur. The clouded sky cleared just enough that they could make out rough details.

The mass that blocked the road consisted of piled-up, wrecked and twisted cars. Some of them had been partly squeezed flat; ripped-out doors, tires and trunk lids lay scattered. The vibrations grew stronger as the gang approached; a draft rose and fell in the same rhythm as the vibrations in the ground.

Inches stopped and held out an arm to halt the others. All four stared at the rising and falling mound of pale flesh, surrounded by the piles of vehicles. A giant was sleeping, on its back, after having stuffed itself. The asphalt was covered by a thin layer of oil, gasoline and gore; walking on it felt like stepping in syrup. No one spoke a word.

The head of the sleeping giant slept with its eyes and lips shut; unidentifiable dark substances had smeared the mouth and chin black. One of the gang members wet himself.

Moving next to Inches, the boy with the submachine gun was shaking so badly he could barely hold his weapon upright. He turned to face Inches, mouth moving wordlessly in silent horror - then he turned and ran back toward the van, and dropped the Uzi.

As the gun clattered against the cracked asphalt, one chambered round went off. The crack of the gunshot echoed over the road. At once the giant stirred. Stacked cars screeched and clanged against the asphalt as the giant shoved them aside. The other two gang members turned and fled without a word.

In a second, Inches dived for the dropped submachine gun and took aim at the giant's eyelids. The giant was just opening them, turning slowly and with a deep rustle from its chest, toward the offending noise.

Trembling, staring up at the impossibly huge, semi-human face, Inches gaped and backed off. He tripped on jutting piece of broken asphalt and fell on his back.

Now the giant sniffed, a steam locomotive's huff-puff, huff-puff... Its eyes peered down at the darkened road but seemed blind to the fleeing figures and the reeling man who lay only fifteen feet from its head. It drew in the scent of human life and grunted. Inches saw the giant's eyes open fully - pupils enlarged, encircled by flecked irises and black veins - and he flicked on the Uzi's laser-sight. The red dot of light found the giant's right eye, and its pupil shrank in a reflex.

"Take this, muthaf***a..."

Inches fired one, two, three momentary bursts of gunfire at the red dot. The giant's right eye rippled for a fraction of a second, then burst open in a cascade of black blood; a shocked hiss of inrushing air came from its opening mouth - then a roar of pain like a sound bang, rolling out across the valley.

Inches winced, but could still aim the red dot at the left eye. The gun burped twice; the other eye exploded and spilled down the giant's left cheek and upper lip.

The roar rose to a pitch, and Inches had to hold his smarting ears; he ran back for the van. Completely blinded, the giant flailed about on its hands and knees, sending car wrecks careening off the shaking road.

Inches, still running, saw the van's headlights light up; the roar had stunned his sense of hearing, and only with his eyes could he perceive that the van was in motion.

"Wait for me... you bitches!"

Behind him, the giant wailed and sniffed on all fours; following the scent of prey it began to crawl up the road, faster and faster. Inches could feel the thumps rattle the teeth in his jaw. He aimed the gun and fired the last few bullets after him; they had no effect.

The van made a clumsy U-turn with its engine roaring, accelerated too fast and drove off the road, into the ditch, where it rolled onto its side. The giant grunted in response to the noise of upturned spinning wheels, and steered in that direction. Inches ran past the upturned van, ignoring the friend who shouted and pounded on the windows from inside.

Whump! Whump! Whump! Whump! The crawling giant, its bleeding face contorted into a gigantic caricature of a crying toddler, reached the van and bashed it with both fists.

The van's engine went silent; giant hands lifted the vehicle into the air - a van now half as its original width, and still all four wheels were intact - and rattled it over its head. Two bodies shook out through the smashed windshield, into the giant's open mouth, and the giant swallowed them. A sickening, grinding noise told the fleeing Inches that his pals were being chewed up.

Something else roared on top of the hillside suburb Inches was running back into. He veered off the road, slid down a grass-covered slope, and landed in a small stream. The giant dropped the flattened van with a crash and continued to sniff around.

Inches lay down in the cold, knee-deep water, gasping and spluttering. From the top of the suburb came a strange wailing sound, deep in bass and long in echo.

"Chhoooo..."

The blinded, crawling giant responded with a wail of its own:

"Fffyyyiiihh..."

It went sniffing, left the cracked road and approached the stream. Inches held his mouth in a desperate attempt to quiet his breathing, and watched the huge shape come closer. The giant crawled down to the edge of the water, hissing and snorting... and the ten feet wide face hung still just above Inches' head.

Inches shut his eyes; the giant's breath stank of death. The jaws opened, and plunged down on the stream...

A sucking, gulping noise came, as the giant started to drink from the stream, only a few feet from where Inches lay. The suction slowly pulled Inches toward the giant's lips; he dug his fingers into the rocks and clay, and dragged himself away from the drinking behemoth.

The stream visibly shrank away, consumed by the thirsty giant, leaving only the muddy, rocky bed... and a shivering, terrified young man. A grotesquely loud, vibrating burp escaped the blind giant and it slowly made its way back to the road, toward the suburb.

Inches sat up, shaking, his arms and clothes stained with mud; the stream had been reduced to a pathetic trickle. He sobbed like a child.

"Oh shit... mother... it's a nightmare..."

Unsteadily, his knees swaying, he raised himself up and watched the giant crawl away. Its legs and feet were not proportioned like human limbs, but much larger and thicker. And the arms seemed long as an orangutan's, except they were hairless.

Inches got out his cell-phone from his jacket; the water had ruined it.

"Shit! Gotta find a phone, call the Army and get them to kill that thing... can't stay out here and get eaten when the sun comes up... you can't smell me now, can you? I'm all muddied up, you're blind... it's gotta work... I've seen Predator. I'm smarter than you. I'm smaller, but smarter..."

He swallowed and began to cautiously walk after the receding giant, who had not noticed him. The fractured blacktop crunched only a little underneath his soft sneakers.



(NEXT)

(PREVIOUS)