And Then There Were Giants Read online

  Without thinking better of it, she screamed at the top of her lungs. “TRACY, BEHIND YOU!”

  The policewoman spun in time to catch the lizard-like kreple that had come to investigate the gunshot that it heard. She fired six shots into the creature as it ran towards her with its jaws agape. The bullets did the job and it crumpled lifeless in front of her as she spun this way and that to make sure there weren’t any more.

  After another minute had passed, she checked on the young man. Alysia could see that they were having a conversation but after some time he slumped over and stopped moving. Tracy stood up and brushed back her unruly red curls before running back to the apartment building. When she came back inside and locked the door, she didn’t say anything. Alysia walked back inside and sat in front of her. Tracy looked up at the young girl and shook her head.

  “We gotta get outta here, kid,” she said to Alysia after some time. “That poor guy told me that those murderers were once his friends but they’ve gone crazy.”

  “Why did they shoot him down in the streets like that?”

  “He said that he wouldn’t play along with their anarchy. We’re women and there is no one around to help us right now, Cee. We’re no longer safe in the city.”

  Alysia understood what Tracy was getting at and knew that it was only a matter of time before the men found them. “Isn’t it a little early in the game for people to go full on Viking raider?” Alysia muttered.

  Tracy shrugged and then ejected the clip from her handgun and replaced it. “You’re gonna have to learn how to shoot,” she said to Alysia while flipping the gun around to shove the butt into her hands. “Safety’s on. Let me show you where it is.”

  She then proceeded to give Alysia a quick lesson on guns and their different properties. The lesson went on for a time before she heard a knock at the door and her heart fell to the floor. She put a finger up to her lips to tell Alysia to be quiet, and she tiptoed to the kitchen to collect a shotgun.

  Alysia stood frozen, not knowing what to do, until Tracy pointed to the bedroom and mouthed the words for her to go. Alysia did as she was told. She took the safety off the gun and held it pointing down, thinking it wouldn’t be so difficult to actually shoot it.

  The knocking on the door grew louder and more violent until it flew open and a large man with long brown hair stepped inside with a gun. Tracy deployed the shotgun and the man screamed and fell. A number of other men rushed at her and she jumped over the couch and rolled before firing off a few shots from her handgun. But one of the attackers shot back at her and she slid to the ground with her mouth open.

  Alysia was upset with herself for her delayed reaction but it had all happened so fast that she was in shock. She raised her gun to fire it but couldn’t complete the motion. A few of the men pointed in her direction and then all of a sudden, everything went black.

  Chapter Three

  “Wake her up and bring her over here,” were the first words Alysia heard.

  She had been conscious for a time, but she was working out her options, and she worried that if she opened her eyes for too long, the big men inside of the house would get curious.

  There wasn’t anything good about her captors. First, they were all men—four of them, from what she counted, and one of them was touching her thigh. The one barking the orders was a massive brute, and he called out to them from what appeared to be a bedroom. She gathered that she was in a cabin.

  There were no sounds of helicopters or vehicles fleeing the city, and the walls were wooden, just like the bench she was sitting on. The one with the boundary issues slid his hand up further, and it was so rude and abrupt that she couldn’t help herself. She shot open her eyes and moved his hand away.

  James, her father, had strict rules about her being in a house with men. “Always make sure that there is another girl in there that you know,” he would say, and he had drilled it into her head that a group of men with a vulnerable woman in their vicinity was like a pack of wolves. If only he could see her now.

  She was sitting in between two white men who looked like junkies, and there was a big black one guarding the only door. The leader was dark and disgusting, but she couldn’t tell if it was his complexion or the dirt from staying unwashed for days. The stench that permeated the house made her settle on the latter, and her imagination began to play at time-traveler, showing a future that she wanted no part of.

  Come on, CeeCee. Think, think, think, she thought, as the pervert laughed at her for rejecting his hand. It was in that instant that she remembered her lessons: take out the eyes, the ears, and the balls. It was a mantra that had been drilled into her head by her father.

  The two junkies grabbed her arms and started to drag her into the bedroom but she reacted instantly and somersaulted backwards, forcing them to release their grip. She kicked the closest one in the groin and he collapsed into a heap, but she didn’t wait for the other to react. Knocking his hand away when he reached for her, she threw a finger into his eye – a bloody good strike – and then scrambled for the gun that the first one had dropped.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Alright now, girl, calm on down,” the leader said as he walked to the doorway of the bedroom. He placed his hands above it and leaned forward. “Yo, Vinny we got us a live one here,” he said to the man by the doorway and smiled at her with a wicked glint in his eye. “I saw you in that apartment. You didn’t shoot at us like your girlfriend did. You ain’t got it in you.” And he walked forward and backhanded her across the face in what seemed like a millisecond.

  The big man’s hand echoed painful throbs into her skull and Alysia was dazed and blinded by her tears. She knew what was coming next and she steeled herself to fight back. But a scream that came from Vinny made her look towards the front door.

  Something had broken the door down and pulled him out, and the leader turned away from her to see what it was. He dropped her and ran outside, shouting. A few gunshots went off and she could hear the thumping of someone beating something rapidly. She hopped up and checked the gun. Why was she so afraid to shoot a human being? I am not a murderer, she reminded herself, and then threw the gun down.

  She sprinted outside, making sure that she headed in the opposite direction of the leader. It was dark and the clouds were covering the moon, but she could make out some cloaked figures that moved to intercept her as she fled. They were relentless in their pursuit, and though she got deep into the woods that bordered the cabin, they eventually caught her and threw a bag over her head.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  James Knight was a mystery to everyone he knew. He was a former Navy Seal and had received medals for bravery, but kept it hidden from just about everyone. He was a big, muscular, dark-skinned man, but he was soft-spoken and people compared him to the boxing legend, Mike Tyson. When he was finished serving his country – and turning down a number of opportunities offered to him – he had opened up a dojo, teaching his old discipline of Cuong Nhu to the privileged children of his town.

  He had met Alysia’s mother in a grocery store. It was love at first sight. He was so infatuated with her, in fact, that he had pursued her, won her heart, and then married her quickly so that he could adopt her baby girl. James was a hero and a good person, but he was also good at killing wicked men. It was a skill that he had buried within himself for many years, but with the death of his wife, he knew that he would eventually have to use it again.

  When the kreple had busted into their house and fatally bit his wife, he had beaten it to death with his bare hands. He looked down at his hands as he remembered this and thought about what he would have to do to see his daughter home. Alysia’s sudden silence had kept him worried for a week, and though she was merely mourning and bad at checking in with him, he took it as a sign that she was in danger.

  The hills that rolled through his quiet neighborhood had kreples everywhere. They were like roaches, the way they multiplied, and he hated them more than anything else. He placed a
pistol in the small of his back, and then grabbed a survival knife and strapped it to his leg.

  He went out back to where he had buried his wife and knelt over it to beg her forgiveness. Not even she had known his history – not the details of it, at least – and he always regretted not being able to tell her. Once he had made his peace, he opened the garage and took his heavy ZR hover-bike out unto the road. The kreples tried to ram him as he sped by, but James could ride, and they could do nothing else but chase after him.

  He found the highway quickly and saw that there were many people like him, riding or driving to somewhere else in a hurry. It had been a while since he’d ridden the hover-bike and he wished that for a moment, he could enjoy it, but all he could think about was Alysia and the sinking feeling that she was not okay. He heard a loud scream, if you could call it that, and a large shadow appeared over him as the sound of flapping wings drowned everything else out. James slammed on the brakes while turning his bike and the creature missed him on its descent and grabbed another biker instead.

  “FLYING THINGS, TOO?” he said aloud, and then got back on the road and headed towards the Maryland border. He had only been at it for an hour when he saw the heads of a few giants to the east, and he pushed he hover-bike towards I-95, eager to get off the New Jersey coast.

  It had been early in the morning when James took off to find Alysia, but it was almost noon and he was dodging creatures on the roads of Philadelphia. He was hungry and tired but he knew that he couldn’t stop. Alysia’s face at thirteen years was what remained plastered in his mind, even though she was much older than that and a woman. Thirteen was her best age to him, when she was always with him then, his little warrior in training.

  By the time he rolled into town, it was late in the afternoon. He observed the lay of the land and found the silence disturbing. Where were the kreples, the flying creatures, and the giants? He parked his bike and stepped out into the street, looking up at the high-rises and trying to see if there was any sign of his daughter. He couldn’t find anything, so he rode around on the various streets for a time until he found the dead body of the man.

  James was a master tracker, back when he served, so he checked the body and the nearby buildings. Tracy’s footsteps led him upstairs and he followed them until he found the charnel house that was her apartment.

  A kitten poked his head up from behind Tracy’s body, and James walked over and looked at her, recognizing that she was the friend Alysia had told him about. Tracy was still alive but she had lost a lot of blood. James helped her up and took her to the room, where he looked over her wounds and did what he could to help her.

  “Are you Alysia’s dad?” she asked in a weak voice as James bandaged her shoulder and held her still.

  “Yeah, I’m James Knight,” he said, smiling at her as he walked to the sink to wash his hands.

  “Thank you, James… CeeCee—”

  “They got her? Those punks got my girl?” he asked, and Tracy tried to read the emotions in his face but found that he was too composed to reveal them.

  “I—I think so,” she managed and shook her head in disappointment over what had transpired.

  “Who are these fools and what do they want with Alysia?” he asked, his focus solely on getting enough information to rescue his child.

  “They are thugs, taking advantage of the situation. CeeCee is alive, I’m damn sure of it, but they took her away, and I was too hurt to notice where they took her to.” It was after saying this that Tracy realized that she had left the guns out when they attacked and more than likely, they had taken everything.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  Alysia woke up to a loud noise and the feeling of something burning against her face. She felt binds on her hands and feet and when she opened her eyes, she saw a strange ritual going on. There were a number of men dancing around a bonfire. Some of them she assumed were her kidnappers, but all she could make out were their silhouettes. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t know where she was or why they had taken her so she thought better of it.

  She was no longer in the city and all around she could see trees. The men ran around the fire screaming like banshees and as her vision got better, she noticed they weren’t men, after all. Their ears had points, and their posture held a beastlike quality. Some of them had small horns, and their skin looked charred – black with a bit of red poking out. When she looked at them, they reminded her of barbecue. How funny would it be if gangs of barbecue ribs were my captors? she thought. They were probably upset with the human race for eating them.

  The dancing continued for a long time as Alysia pretended to be unconscious. While she lay near the logs that they had placed behind her, she looked for something that could free her bonds. She was eyeing the poker one of the demon-men had carelessly left near her. She watched them to see how often they looked her way to check on her.

  The six demons that danced and prodded one another as they spun were too engrossed in the ritual to notice her. A few others were either screaming and shouting in their strange tongue, or sitting near the fire, eating. The only person watching her was a smaller demon, one she assumed was a child, but he had gotten bored with his duty and walked into a tent nearby.

  Alysia waited until the dancers had gotten faster and she inched her way through the dirt towards the poker. They had her bound and on her back, so she had to slide along the ground this way. She had only moved about six inches but it tired her out. Her ankle still pinched with pain and the dirt was getting into her hair. She doubled her efforts and knocked the poker down, freezing when she did to make sure no one saw her.

  The ritual was still going on but the little demon had come back out to watch her. He stared in her direction for a long time and she froze, hoping that he wasn’t looking at her. He stood like that for a time and an unbearable itch came to Alysia’s head, making it even harder not to move.

  The itch turned into a burn after a while, as if changing irritation would force Alysia to touch the area. She refused to move but the little demon stood where he was. When five minutes had passed, the demon boy grew tired and plopped down on the ground to watch the adults in their ritual. Alysia spared no time. She grabbed the poker with her bound hands, and then pushed it down between her knees where she wedged it and sawed away at the fabric that kept her bound. She expected that at any minute they would charge her and kick her in the stomach for being a bad prisoner.

  The visual was extremely candid and it seemed so real after a time that she stopped and looked to see what the boy was doing. He was back on his feet and walking towards her. She saw something shiny in his hands and assumed that it was a knife meant to punish her. They had captured her but she was not going to give up. Sitting up to get a better hold on the poker, she quickened her rubbing and the fabric split, freeing her hands. The boy let out a squeal, loud and frightening, and she undid her legs and got to her feet.

  The demons were all looking at her now, but she was not going to let them catch her that night. She took off into the woods and was quite surprised at how good her leg felt. She had expected it to hurt and slow her escape but it felt healed and she took full advantage of it by breaking into a sprint. She was running for her life and afraid to look back at her pursuers but the amount of noise they were making gave her some idea of their proximity.

  She dipped and ducked between trees in the moonlight, and though she feared that she would trip and break her legs, she pushed on. Alysia was outnumbered and her father had always taught her that in those situations, the smart warrior ran.

  The demons were not letting up but she was determined to get away. As she ran, she realized that she was in a park, so when she saw the public restrooms; she dipped into the women’s room and spun around, ready. It was barren but foul, the smell of feces and old urine permeating the air. She held the poker, ready to take on anyone that would dare enter the bathroom.

  A couple of demons burst in, almost running each other over, and
she struck at the first one’s bare foot, spiking him and causing him to bounce away in pain. She spun and nailed the other one in the face, but she didn’t relent, striking him again and again as he stumbled over his fallen comrade.

  When a few more came through the door, Alysia was long gone. She had snuck out the back door after taking out the second demon and now, once again she was on her feet, sprinting. Her pursuers seemed endless as more of them picked up the chase and followed her as she moved towards the main road. When she was about to exit the park’s gates, a couple of kreples made to block her and she fell to her knees in shock.

  “Not now!” she screamed at them.

  They looked at one another briefly and then at her. The demon men were almost upon her and she closed her eyes to accept the pain but all she heard was the sound of bones crunching and more screaming. The kreples were fighting the demon men, and so she got back to her feet and ran out to the street.

  No lights were on in the city as the strange blackout continued. Alysia saw random kreples poking about, looking for food, and people running here and there, and trying to escape them. She looked down at her poker, covered with black blood, and she looked up at the heavens wondering how she had managed to escape. Did it really matter? she asked herself as she looked for high ground and a place to settle down for the night.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  James Knight washed the blood from his hands as he looked over at the bullets that lay in a plate next to the sink. He lifted his eyes to the sleeping woman bandaged up and lying on the couch. He knew that he should leave her and find his daughter but he couldn’t do it. Tracy was hurt and she needed him; he would give her one more day and they would set out for Alysia together.

  He hoped that he had gotten her bullets out without rupturing anything, and he hoped that he had found all of them. It was in this instance that he missed his wife the most. Kendra was an ace when it came to patching people up, and everything he knew he learned from her. He thought about her smooth, mahogany skin and her large brown eyes, and a painful loneliness took over him.