And Then There Were Giants Read online

  And Then There Were Giants

  Knights and Demons Book 1

  Greg Dragon

  http://gregdragon.com

  Copyright © 2015

  Thirsty Bird Productions

  This is a book of fiction. Names, characters, and situations are of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to people, places, or crimes is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted without the express written consent of the author.

  Chapter One

  “He’s coming to our school; Tavi Michaels is coming to our school!”

  Alysia Knight and Lisa Cheung could not contain their excitement at the prospect. One of the most controversial figures of their generation was coming to the University to give a lecture.

  It was strange that a school as mired in tradition as Ellen Lok University would allow Tavi Michaels to step foot on their campus, but Lisa was a Journalism major, and she had gotten the scoop from a reliable source.

  The two girls planned to be some of the first students Tavi would encounter. Alysia had her trusty camera, and Lisa had her recorder, ready to capture anything that Tavi would say to them. She wondered if the police would escort him or if he would be alone. It was so exciting!

  At the front of the class, their professor had his back turned so he didn't notice that the girls had slipped out. Lisa’s lookout had sent a text to her, saying, “Tavi’s entourage just pulled up,” so the heavyset girl snatched Alysia by the arm and pulled her out of class.

  She was intent on catching the icon before the other students swarmed him. They began to sprint. The University was large and the Journalism class was quite a distance from the entrance.

  As they ran, Alysia thought about Tavi and wondered if he would be willing to take a photograph with her.

  “I can’t believe you took a photograph with that loudmouth anarchist.” She could hear her parents saying. The photo would be worth a lot of money but since Tavi was particular about his image, she would never sell it.

  She was still in mid-thought when a firm tremor threw her and Lisa to the ground. Lisa looked disoriented as her recorder lay broken next to her and she began to panic. A second tremor came, but this time with an explosion, and before they could react, a large man pulled them to their feet. He retrieved their items before pointing back the way they had come.

  “RUN!” He shouted at them before taking off. People were rushing past them and Alysia feared injury if they didn’t join in the escape.

  “Those were explosions. Did Tavi do something at the entrance of the school?” Alysia asked between breaths as they ran from corridor to corridor.

  “He would never do that!” Lisa said. “If anything, someone attacked him, or tried to set him up for failure.” She was not having an easy time running and Alysia felt sorry for her.

  They broke into the center of the school where walkways lay crisscrossed amid a field of grass. The school’s mascot – a centaur rearing back while brandishing a sword and shield – stood defiantly above the herd of people. It stood proud like the last tree standing in a flood, too stubborn to succumb. It was a sight to see but Alysia was more concerned with avoiding the stampede than to take a shot of the glorious centaur.

  Another explosion shook the school, and some of the bricks from the student hall broke off and fell into their midst. The refuse injured a few people, but in the chaos and the panic, no one stopped to help them.

  Everyone seemed intent to get to the rear of the school, even though it dropped off into the sea. This realization gave Alysia pause and she veered away to investigate. Lisa joined a group of students running down the stairs towards the beach, not realizing that her classmate was gone. Alysia needed to see what was causing the explosions so she headed through the library and up to the roof.

  The roof of the University was in the style of an old medieval castle, and it was a running joke that the architect had loved ancient mythology. They had a centaur for a mascot and there were brass sculptures of nymphs all over.

  When she got to the rooftop something whizzed past her, and then one of the taller towers exploded. Loose stones and debris began to fall and Alysia ran to where she could see other people hunkered down behind the battlements. It seemed as if the attack was coming from the sea. What sort of sense would that make? she thought as she ran with her head down.

  Another shot flew above her head and smashed into the stairs, causing the entire building to shake. She wondered if Lisa had made it to the beach and whispered a silent prayer, begging her to be okay. She poked her head up to look over the ocean, her curiosity getting the better of her. What she saw was a scene from out of an old science fiction movie, or one of the adventure books that Lisa was always reading.

  The sky was on fire, its color a bright crimson, broken only by dark clouds that floated over the setting sun. It was near noon, according to her watch, but here was the sun, trying to retreat just like everyone else. Below the fiery sky were four ships, unlike any she had ever seen before.

  “Am I dreaming?” Alysia asked aloud as she saw what the ships were fighting.

  Within the ocean were three giants. These large, ugly, humanoid behemoths were swatting at the ships and shielding themselves from the missiles.

  “Oh my, and then there were giants,” she said, and sat back behind the battlements to think things over. It had to be a dream. Why would there be giants fighting strange ships in the year 2048? What sort of sense did that even make? Why were the ships firing their cannons towards a University where America’s future studied?

  She looked again just to be certain, and a missile took a part of the wall off near where she knelt, causing her to fall back hard and twist her ankle. She crawled towards the hole where the earlier missile had broken up the stairs. She needed to get to the beach with everyone else; lower ground seemed to be the safest.

  Alysia got up, limped to the ruined staircase, and made her way to the bottom. She glanced up at the sky and saw it was overcast, where just an hour before it had been sunny. Dark clouds were forming a mass, as if they gathered to bear witness to the absurdity that the fight in the sea was.

  Going down the stairs took a lot of mental effort, but when she found herself wanting to stop, she thought on the injured students that didn’t have her luck. How could there be giants? Was it all a big mistake, or a part of a bigger prank that got out of hand? Where was Tavi? He had always spoken out against the government, stating that we would destroy ourselves, but did he have the resources to make giants appear? She thought on how silly her questions were and dropped them.

  She reached the sand below the University steps and another missile hit the battlements on the roof. This time, the explosion was epic. Stone took to the air like hail, and the people on the beach were horrified as it fell within their ranks, killing some and injuring even more.

  Alysia watched it happen in horror, thanking the heavens that a large chunk had only fallen next to her and not on top of her. She brought her hands up to her face to scream, then removed the beach from her mind and limped up the hill that led towards the front of the school.

  She didn’t know how much time had passed as she walked, but when she found her car she was alone. Did they all run to the beach? she asked herself. It wouldn't make any sense that out of the thousands of students at the school, none of them would venture to the front. She got inside of her car and started it up, half-expecting that it wouldn't start, but the engine turned over, and it lifted ever so slightly off the ground.

  “Ren, take me home. I want to go home,” she said to the vehicle and then reached down to see how bad her ankle was. It felt swollen and sh
e knew that she had made it worse by walking on it. The car’s dash lit up with pretty neon blue lights and the GPS hovered over the steering wheel. She maneuvered the car through the parking lot and then started down Barrier Avenue.

  Alysia saw bodies strewn about, the evidence of an attack on the city itself. She looked this way and that, trying to figure out the source of the attack. Did it have something to do with the giants in the sea? Nothing seemed to make any sense.

  The houses of the subdivision she drove through belonged to the University and only students lived there. Stella Leibowitz, who used to be Alysia's classmate in high school, stayed in one of them. So when the car slid past her tiny house, Alysia looked for her and saw that the doors were open and the windows broken.

  Since Stella’s car was missing, she hoped she had made it out alive. As she tried to figure out what had caused the mass exodus of the neighborhood, a large, lizard-like creature ran out from behind one of the houses.

  The lizard smashed into her car, causing it to float up into the air and crash down on top of a roof. The impact and fall caused Alysia to black out and when she recovered, she could hear the chorus of sirens for the first time. Everything was dark as she rubbed her eyes and stood up next to her wrecked car.

  She saw helicopters on the horizon, and squad cars and soldiers were off in the distance, trying in vain to fight back against the chaos. On the street below the house, the lizard was walking around. He seemed determined to get at her if she made the mistake of coming down from the rooftop.

  Is that a dinosaur? she asked herself as she looked around, wondering if anyone else was alive to give her a hand.

  There was no one around and the police and the military were not in the neighborhood. She seemed to be alone and with a swollen ankle and a new pain in her side, she didn’t know how she would deal with her lizard friend.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked the creature, and it turned its head as if to get a better look at her through its eye. She asked it again and this time it screamed at her, a blood-curdling roar that made her flinch and slide back closer to her car.

  “I wish I had a gun,” she mumbled, then got to her feet to look in the trunk for a weapon of some sort to chase the creature away. She had thought that it was a dinosaur but the scream it made sounded mechanical. It looked like a tiny Tyrannosaurus Rex, but it had no arms, and its skin consisted of black scales. Can I even hurt it? She wondered, but resumed her efforts to find a weapon to get the creature to leave her alone.

  After some perusing through her now messy trunk, Alysia managed to find a lengthy pipe for refueling her hover-tank. She found a sharp knife that was in the toolbox that her father had given her on her 18th birthday. She used electric tape to attach the knife to the pole, and made it into a crude spear. She stood up and tested it against the car to see if it could withstand a firm thrust. It held true, giving her confidence that it would do the job. She lodged it by the twisted door of her car and then gathered her thoughts as the creature continued to pace.

  Alysia went back into her car to see if she could find her phone. When she found it, she called her mother, praying that there would be an answer and she could let her know that she was okay. After the phone rang a few times, someone answered and the voice on the other end was a whisper.

  “CeeCee?” her mother asked, as if she were trying not to let anyone hear her.

  “Mom, are you okay?” she replied, too excited to contain herself. “Mom, where are you guys? Is everything okay?”

  She could hear some shuffling around in the background and then her father’s voice came on to the call. “Baby girl, you alright?”

  “Yeah Dad, I’m okay. Everything is crazy. Do you know what’s going on?” she asked, afraid to go into detail just in case her parents weren’t aware of the monsters.

  “You mean the demons?”

  “Dad, demons, really?”

  “Yes, demons, baby girl. Horns, wings, straight out of Dungeons and Dragons. Where are you? Did you get hurt? The whole country is under attack by all sorts of supernatural creatures, and me and your mom are in the basement.”

  “I’m surprised to hear that you’re hiding, Dad. This sounds like a dream come true for you. All of that warrior code stuff that you’ve been obsessed with. I pretty much expected you to be on the streets with sword and armor on, saving us all.”

  Her father laughed and she could tell from the slight pause after she spoke that he either had done something, or was thinking about it.

  “Everything within me makes me want to do what you expect me to do, CeeCee, but your mom can’t be left alone. One of those things came in here and, well, she got hurt.”

  “Oh no, Dad! Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, she’ll live,” he said and he laughed again as Alysia heard her mother mock his laughter, annoyed at him for being so light-hearted in the hour of panic.

  “The school got destroyed,” Alysia said, switching back to serious matters.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “I’m in the University condo area, Pleasant Palms, but I had a wreck and some sort of armless dinosaur has me trapped on a rooftop.”

  “Can you fight?”

  “James!” Alysia’s mother yelled at him, annoyed that he would ask her that question.

  But Alysia understood the question. Her father was a fighter and had raised her to be a fighter like himself. She could wait for him to come for her, but he needed to know that if anything were to happen she could defend herself and stay safe, regardless.

  “I made a spear, Dad, a good one… but I twisted up my ankle and I have a pain in my side.”

  “CeeCee, do you need me to come for you?” he asked, and her mother exploded into even more objections.

  “The basement may not be safe, Dad. I think you guys should try to get out of the village. I’ll be okay; I’m your daughter, remember? Just keep me updated on where you are and I’ll find you.”

  “That’s my girl,” she heard him say and then he hung up.

  It was funny to Alysia that their discussion had centered on survival and not on the absurdity of the situation. There were demons, dinosaurs and giants popping up in the world. Those creatures had always been the substance of fantasy books, movies, and games, yet here they were in real life.

  The hour was late and the grumbling in her stomach reminded Alysia that she had not eaten all day. The creature was waging a war of attrition with her, and she was losing due to the pain and hunger that wracked her body. She thought about going to the edge of the roof, hoisting her weapon, and letting it fly into the neck of the creature.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw it strike home and the creature wretch and shudder before falling to the ground—dead. Would it be that simple? She got up and held the spear, balancing it on her palm as if that would tell her whether it would be effective. Next, she grabbed some of the loose rubble that was next to her and threw it at the creature, but that only seemed to annoy it.

  Defeated and frustrated, Alysia went back to the car and sat down. She wished that she had paid attention when her dad had tried to teach her how to service the hover-lift, but it was all so boring. Martial arts was a different thing, however, and she was confident in her ability to fight.

  Should she go down and face the creature—sprained ankle and all—or should she wait until morning? The urge to get home to her parents was getting the better of her, and she again measured the spear to determine what she wanted to do with it. I could use it as a bo-staff, she thought. The pipe was the right height and weight for her to do that.

  Night came and as Alysia worked up the nerve to jump down from the roof and face her stalker, a police car flew slowly down the street. The creature perked up when he heard the sirens and smashed into it as it drove by. The impact caused the car to careen out of control before crashing into another house.

  Before she could think better of it, Alysia ran to the side of the roof and jumped. When she
landed, it felt as if a bolt of hot, painful electricity shot up her leg and she screamed. She clasped her hands over her mouth as soon as she realized her mistake but she had already given away her location.

  The creature, who had been tearing into the wounded police officer, turned when Alysia screamed, and remembered that she was its original prey. Why settle on one body to eat when you could have two, it probably thought, and rushed to the area of the sound. When it rounded the corner to the back of the house, it did not see the wounded girl like it expected. It put its nose to the ground to track her scent but that was where it made its first mistake.

  Alysia jumped from behind the house and brought the pipe down on the creature’s neck with all of her strength. It screamed and recoiled, but she drew the spear back and thrust it towards its eye, striking home. She kept at it, striking and poking any area she saw vulnerable, and before long, it was still—though her heart was beating out of her chest.

  As the adrenaline settled, the pain came back and Alysia fell and held her leg, which was now too sore for her to move. She heard a rustling as she did this and before she could react, another creature, similar to the first, came charging at her. She reached for the spear to protect herself, but she was too slow. She closed her eyes tight but a gunshot brought them open as she saw the police officer standing over the other creature. Her attacker fell, dead from the bullet, and Alysia counted her blessings.

  “Are you okay?” the officer asked, and Alysia turned quickly to look at her.

  It was the same officer that the creature had attacked, and though she stood in place with her gun drawn, Alysia could see that she was bleeding from her side.

  “I’m okay,” Alysia replied and then forced herself to stand and limp over to her spear.

  “Whoa, stay where you are, girl. Identify yourself.”

  “Alysia Knight,” she said, and then froze. How ironic would it be that after surviving the attack of two creatures, I end up shot by the police? she thought.