Marybelle refused to leave the wall.

With every passing hour she watched for any sign that Brock was coming back to the fort. In the distance, the last of the lines were trailing into Circe's mansions, like ants bringing home food. People went into the structure's doors and never came out; their cars were driven around to the back of the abode; she'd seen trucks take trailers of cars off by the dozen -- they'd been living every day.

Since Brock left, the situation in the fort had steadily grown worse. They had their food, and their weapons -- Marybelle clutched a bolt-action rifle to her chest -- but everyone started getting smaller. It was only an inch or two at first, but it didn't stop, and the inches started to add up. Marybelle herself was down to four feet in height, and she was one of the tallest people left in the fort. It was getting to the point where people couldn't lift their guns anymore, and were left with pipes or frying pans or bats -- and it was getting harder for some to even heft those.

When the doors to Circe's mansion did finally open up, Marybelle was stunned by what she saw: it was Circe herself, standing there in a black one-piece outfit like a bodysuit, boots on her feet, her hair pulled up in a loose ponytail. On the ground around the woman an army was marching out from the mansion, their weapons glinting in the failing light of dusk. Circe stood there with her hands on her hips, and then marched along behind her army.

They were coming right for the fort; they had to be.

Marybelle's eyes desperately scanned for Brock, but of course he would have been too small at that distance to make out.

She quickly went over by the gate and rang the fort's warning bell.

"Here they come!" She screamed it out as loud as she could. "Circe's coming! She's on her way with a whole goddamn army!"

Panicked shouts rose up in the fort; other bells clanged as everyone scrambled to arm themselves, and wake up anyone who was asleep, and man the walls.

Marybelle saw, with growing worry, that no one else around her had a gun.

She stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the defenders on the wall, and watched Circe's approach. The giant woman's army spread out across the ruins of what was left of the buildings that surrounded the square; most of them had been demolished by Circe's crews. At the head of the army was another giant, Marybelle saw; a woman she felt she recognized, but it was hard to tell. It was tempting to take a shot at her, but Marybelle didn't want to doom the fort by firing a shot too soon.

For a while, there was nothing but the cool air, and the distant sun sinking down beyond the horizon, and a chilly silence.

Finally, the giant woman took one long step, standing before her army and looking down on the defenders. She must have been a hundred feet tall or more, Marybelle thought with terror.

Circe's lips curled up at the corners. "Brock is dead," she announced loudly, and then she swung one leg forward and kicked down the door to the makeshift fort.

Marybelle gripped her rifle tight to her chest as she watched the larger supporters of Circe's army charge between the giant's legs and toward the opened gate with a chaotic chorus of battle yells.

"Here they come!" Someone cried.

The person next to her nudged her, wide-eyed; the man was nearly half as tall as Marybelle. "Shoot them! Shoot them!" He urged.

Marybelle had never fired a gun before. She held the rifle to her shoulder and aimed down the sights, pulling on the trigger; the rifle drifted upward as she tugged, and she sent a round over the heads of the charging army. With a cry she fought the bolt of the gun, popping out the spent brass and digging in her pocket for another shell.

The cry of the army was full of bloodlust as the first of the soldiers, giants compared to Marybelle's compatriots, charged through the gate and knocked the smaller defenders with ease. They shot them dead with pistols and caved their heads in with bats; they trampled crawling, crying townsfolk beneath their feet as they surged forward.

Marybelle glanced back up at Circe more out of fear than anything else. It was a reflex. She was afraid of Circe in the same way she might worry about a falling tree, hoping that it wouldn't come down right on top of her. Circe wasn't paying her any mind, however, or any of them: the towering woman was half-stripped out of her bodysuit, and playing with a breast with one hand as she pushed the rest of it down with the other.

Marybelle watched the lewd display, mouth agape, rifle clutched back to her chest. She heard her name screamed nearby and quickly turned to see a man she knew getting pushed to the ground by a woman much bigger than him. "Shoot her," the man screamed, and too late Marybelle remembered the rifle she held, and the makeshift weapons most of her smaller comrade's wielded.

The attacker was larger than even Marybelle by half again, and the blond shrank back as the giant swung a steel pole over her head; she brought it down onto the man's head with a squishy thunk and grinned cruelly as his brains splattered up out of his shattered skull. Marybelle was relieved when the woman didn't look over and see her, and instead charged deeper into the fort.

The wall was mostly abandoned already, but Marybelle stayed to finish reloading her rifle. The sounds of battle were all around her; it sounded like one-sided carnage.

Another loud crashing noise drew Marybelle's attention over toward Circe; the giant had just pulled off one of her boots, and was slipping off the other. She tossed it casually forward with a smirk, and Marybelle watched the bus-sized boot slam down onto a group of fleeing defenders and flopped to the side, leaving their crushed, twitching bodies to be trampled by those who retreated, and the attackers who were running the townsfolk down and beating them to the ground.

Marybelle gritted her teeth and aimed up at Circe, who was now completely nude. She gazed along the top of the old rifle, and aimed for the towering woman's head and fired. If she hit or -- or if Circe even noticed the bullet -- the giant made no notice of it, standing there, fondling her tits with one hand and playing with her bared cock with the other, moaning as she watched the carnage down below her. Marybelle's eyes widened at the sight of Circe's colossal penis, but she didn't have more than a second to gawk.

Marybelle slammed the bolt-action lever forward and back and flinched away from the ejecting brass, she was faster reloading the rifle this time, and aimed again for a larger target: Circe's breasts. She squeezed the trigger and the rifle kicked her back and Marybelle looked up at Circe expectantly, hoping for a wound, or even simply a little irritation. Nothing happened.

Circe let out a booming laugh, but not at Marybelle; she didn't notice the woman, who was the last person standing on the walls of the ramshackle fort. No one seemed to see her up there; all of Circe's minions were busy hacking apart anyone who resisted or ran, rounding up those who surrendered, and sometimes chopping them to bits or smashing them into jelly, too. Circe, her tan body a darker brown in the failing sunset, swung a leg forward and Marybelle screamed as the woman's huge foot crashed down right on the wall, sending her tumbling down in a shower of debris. She heard metal whine and wood splinter and stone shatter beneath the giant's foot, and Circe laughed all the same high above. Marybelle cowered in the dirt, the rifle gone from her hands and lost somewhere in the collapses ruin. A little voice inside her told her to be happy she was still alive, but her mouth was wide open in a scream as she clutched her head and shook, curled in a ball, hoping for the nightmare to end.

Screams and shrieks in death and Circe's laughter filled her ears, even as she covered them with her hard-pressed palms.

She looked deeper into the fort just to see a small cluster of defenders cowering together, surrounded by some of Circe's brutal followers. There were people in the cluster she recognized; some were friends, and they were all at least neighbors. One woman in particular, Wendy, was someone who Marybelle played bridge with every month for several years.

All the terrified stragglers were suddenly painted dark in shadow. Then they all disappeared -- along with one member of Circe's gang, even -- disappeared under the giant woman's big brown foot, instantly crushed flat. Circe's too-large foot slid side-to-side, as if she were putting out a cigarette.

"This battle is over," Circe's powerful voice intoned. "Round up whoever is left. Kill whoever won't come. Just because I'm so nice, anyone who comes willingly will have a chance at a fresh start in New Barlomie."

Marybelle watched from the ground as Circe turned and looked around her, scanning the carnage at her feet with a pleased expression. This must be how an ant in the grass feels, the relatively tiny woman mused darkly; then her breath caught in her throat as Circe looked right at her; the giant smirked.

"Well, well, well," Circe tutted, "you survived, did you?"

And this is how I'll die, Marybelle imagined, as Circe turned to face her. One of the giant's legs lifted, and Circe lifted her sole over Marybelle -- another view an ant would see, she thought. Stuck to Circe's debris-strewn sole were bodies and, to Marybelle's horror, she could recognize Wendy's flattened and mangled body. Circe's sole started lowering, and Marybelle closed her eyes and waited for the end.

There was a crash next to her, and the world beneath her shook violently. But she was still alive, and there was no pain. Marybelle didn't want to, but she was forced to open her eyes and look up at Circe's looming form: the giant was stooped over and reaching down for her. Marybelle screamed, squirming in the wreckage that surrounded her, but Circe's giant fingers forced her to curl around the pad of the giant's huge thumb and then all at once she was being hoisted into the air.

Circe's hand rose until Marybelle found herself before the woman's brilliantly glittering eyes. She saw no mercy there, and felt Circe's fingertips squeeze possessively around her. "You were Brock's lover, right? It's hard to tell. All you dumb little white blond bitches look the same. But even still," and Marybelle's eyes widened as she felt herself moving toward the giant's face -- her eyes widened even more when she saw herself steered toward Circe's smirking lips -- and Circe kissed her, pressing her into the warm, supple flesh, "you're forgiven."