I took in a deep breath and wiped the tears from my eyes. Behind me, I could hear the police cars screeching to a halt. I leaned into the window and tried to make my voice as low as possible. “Rachel, can you please meet me downstairs?” Rachel agreed and quickly disappeared back through the awful gray-green dividers that hospitals seem to like so much. Dr Lisheng closed the windows and followed closely behind.
I kept my eyes focused on the front door. Finally Rachel came out, puffing just a little from her run. “Rachel, I’m going to need you to talk to the cops. To tell them I’m not a monster.” Rachel nodded her head. “May I pick you up?” She hesitated a little then nodded again. I scooped her up into my palm and lifted her to chest height.
Turning to face the police, I saw a throng of little forms all lined up behind their cars like soldiers in a trench. At least twenty white cars, most of them smaller than my foot, were evenly spaced along the road leading to the hospital. They had formed a sort of blockade. Flashing red and blue lights danced across my view. It would have been pretty easy if I wanted to get past them, but the show was impressive all the same.
“Ronny? This is going to get out into the general public. They’ll probably try and make you talk about SPRT. This could be bad.” I looked down at my little friend in my palm.
“I know Rachel”
You might be wondering why the SPRT, if they are the good guys, haven’t already gone to the police or the feds. The answer is simple. Crooked SPR cops, or Dominants as they sometimes call themselves, are the ones who shrank most of the shrunken people.
Before my life went all “Twilight Zone” on me, I was a bum. That’s right, I was homeless. The company I worked for was one of the first to go under in the biggest depression my country had seen since the 1930’s. I wasn’t the only one. Unemployment was soaring, jobs were scarce and I was left working shifts at a diner while living out of my car.
It was Jason Anderson, one of Lyndon’s flunkies, who had first arrested me on the charge of vagrancy. He’d arrested some of the other locals before. Some of them came back; I was one who found out what happened to those that didn’t.
It wasn’t just the underlings, either. Judges, politicians, actors, actresses, businessmen and women -- it seemed it had become in vogue to own your own personal village of little people.
It was like the new age slave trade. I remember when I was “borrowed” from the club by one of it’s members. She took me to what they called a meat market. She’d wanted me to pick out a shrunken man as a reward for being good. She, in turn, would get her own reward for donating a SM to the club’s collection.
I was tagged with a plastic collar to indicate I was not for sale, and set loose in a huge glass display case filled with shrunken people. I remember walking through that crowd of six-inch people. Those who were recently shrunk glared at me with the fury of a person who was wrongfully imprisoned. You could tell them from the ones who were being resold. Even if their bodies weren’t mangled or scarred, you could see the light had gone from their eyes.
So you see, the problem was far more widespread than any normal person would think. Provided by the Mafia, and hidden by the world’s rich. Yes, if I was forced to reveal the whereabouts of SPRT HQ, a lot of little people could be in a lot of big trouble.
I crossed my legs on the hill, scanning the row of police. There were a lot of different kinds: Fat, skinny, uniforms, plain-clothes. But they all had the same harsh look on their faces and they all had their weapons trained on the monster. Me. It didn’t look like any of them had weapons that could really hurt me. Pistol, pistol, shotgun, pistol, rifle, bazooka, pistol…Bazooka! I shook my head, closed my eyes in disbelief. No, it was still there when I opened them again.
I’d seen film clips of those things being used on tanks. The rocket popped out of the tube, ignited it’s fuel and a second later a tank was turned into scrap metal. Ok, at my size I could probably handle the small arms fire, but I don’t think my flesh could withstand the same amount of damage as twelve-inch-thick steel. Quickly searching the crowd of cops, I found four more two-man bazooka teams. There were two more in the blockade, and two on the rooftops of buildings opposite the Hospital. It looked like they had me covered pretty well.
It seemed like we sat there looking at each other for ages. An uncomfortable silence built up until it started to feel like a weight on your shoulders. I guess they really didn’t know what to do with me. Hell, I didn’t know what to do with me.
Finally a husky, distorted voice cut through the silence.
“This is Sargent Scorder. Put down the hostage and place your hands over you head.” I smiled down at my “hostage,” who in turn looked up at me. I brought her up closer to my mouth and whispered “Try not to make me sound like too much of an ass, ok.” That earned me a little smile.
“Ma’am if you…. eat her, we will be forced to open fire.”
The loudspeaker drew my attention to a small, extremely thin man in the centre of the blockade. I couldn’t make out his face from here, but he had black hair, and was dressed in a plain white shirt and black pants, which looked like they were three sizes too big for him. A few other people milled around in his general vicinity. Some had mobile phones, and others were shuffling papers about. Guess they were in charge. It seemed like a reasonable request, so I did as he asked. “I’m just here to check up on my boyfriend, he’s hurt.”
I placed Rachel on the ground by my foot, and she immediately raced down toward the man with the loudspeaker. One of the ambulance officers moved up to catch her and cart her off to the van. As she approached, using her momentum, she brought her knee up, connecting solidly with his groin. The poor guy crumpled over like a cheap paper cup as Rachel continued on her mission to try and convince the cops not to blow me away.
She reached Sargent Scorder, who was clearly not impressed with what she’d done with one of his men, and started talking to him. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but from the gestures I could tell that the argument was getting pretty heated. I placed my hands over my head and tried not to look menacing. Now it was time for me to play the waiting game some more.
I’d given up my hostage without harming her, I had surrendered and they had me well covered. Normally, this would be the part where the cops would get me down on the ground, cuff me and cart me off. Unfortunately I was 70 feet tall, and to attempt what I just described would seem pretty pathetic even to them. So, for the next half-hour the small Sargent Scorder juggled between talking to Rachel and to whoever was on the other end of his car phone. Finally he picked up the loudspeaker to talk to me again.
“Miss, we have arranged for you to go to an abandoned warehouse until we can decide what to do with you. You’ll follow the cars, and go only where we go.”
I nodded my head. “Lead the way, I will follow.” Rachel grabbed the microphone from Scorder “I asked at the hospital. They said you could use some of their emergency tents as clothing.”
It sounded good to me. With the wind starting to pick up, I was beginning to get a bit chilly. Rachel went into the hospital, and when she returned, about eight orderlies were carrying three large, off-white pieces of canvas.
I watched with some amusement as Rachel directed the orderlies to tie the two small tents together into something that was to be a makeshift bra. She made sure they tied each end with three ropes so it could withstand my… Umm, Jiggle. It wasn’t for support though; it was just to cover up. The other tent was bigger, and I wrapped it around my self like a sort of nappy. When the little people were finished with my “top” I slipped it over my head and moved myself into it. It was really strange. These tents were about the size of a small carport, and right now all they had in them were my humongous breasts.
It started to give me some perspective of just how big I really was. A car was smaller than my foot, my breasts were the size of carports and my best friend was only a little taller than my middle finger. God, I must have looked like a skyscraper of flesh when I stood!
The cop cars lined themselves up, one on either side, leaving a space in the middle of the road for me to walk. Looking about again, I noticed some of the rocket launcher teams were gone -- probably to the site where I was to stay. Very cautious, I was impressed.
The police escort seemed to move very slowly from my perspective. I walked between the cars one foot over the other, being careful not to step on any of the little vehicles at my feet. I have to say that I now know why it was expressly forbidden for members of SPRT to enter “the sanctuary”. It was basically a huge (even for normal people) warehouse, which served as a whole shrunken world. We had farms, towns, lakes, mountains, forests, gun turrets, power plants, everything in there. And none of the people who rescued us ever got to see inside. There was an area where the giants and shrunken people were allowed to interact, but most of the communications between SP and GNTs were done over the two-way-radio.
As I walked across town people gaped up in awe at me. I had to fight the urge to stop, pick them up and take them with me, be close to them and feel their warm, soft little bodies in my hands. I wanted to talk to them, play with them. I wanted them to be my pets. It was like seeing a little puppy for the first time, not sexual but comforting. It was then that I realized that I had held Rachel every chance I got. She was my friend, and I’d wanted her to be my pet. At least on a subconscious level. I’d have to be careful of that.
Finally, we got to an abandoned portion of the industrial district where there were several disused buildings. Four old warehouses, a big concrete slab where a steel plant used to be and an old coal power plant that looked like it hadn’t been in use since the 1940s. From my perspective, the area was about twelve feet square. I examined one of the warehouses. They all looked pretty much the same. It came up to my crotch when I stood, which meant that if I had to take shelter inside, it’d be pretty cramped. Almost like a tin coffin, really. The roof was an orange patchwork of corrugated iron in various states of decay. Some that obviously hadn’t been replaced since its construction were rusted all the way through. I suppose that could be fixed with a canvas.
I put my hand on the roof and gave it a good shake. Never mind the leaking, I didn’t want it collapsing on me in a thunderstorm. The building gave a high-pitched squeal and shook violently under my hand. Quickly I put up my hands, but the momentum was too much for it to stand. The steel structure, peppered with rust, undermined by poor construction and decades of decay, gave one last elongated groan as it came crashing down in a pile of twisted metal and dust.
The good Sargent wailed over the loudspeaker “What the hell are you doing?”
I put up my hands. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t want the damn thing collapsing on me while I was in there.” The little cop held the side of his head as if fighting an oncoming migraine.
“All right Miss Etherglaid, we’ve got five RPG’s trained on you and 10 extremely twitchy officers manning them, so next time you feel like demolishing one of the city’s buildings could you at least give us some warning.”
Shit, that was the second building I demolished today. Well, at least no one was living in this one. The next building, under closer inspection, had a lot more concrete employed in its construction. This time I just gave it a little nudge with my finger. It didn’t move, so I applied a little more pressure using my palm this time. I could feel the tension in the building begin to increase. Windows cracked. Steel beams moaned in protest as the building began to give. After about thirty seconds I could feel the structure was ready to collapse. Just one more little nudge was all it needed. Slowly I eased back from the building. I could crush it if I wonted to but I’d have to use some strength to do it. It didn’t feel flimsy like the other one had. Looked like this one was going to be where I was sleeping for a while
“Ronny, Ronny!” I looked down by my foot where Rachel was standing. I picked her up from the ground, very slowly and deliberately. Didn’t want any of those itchy trigger fingers to go off.
“So I guess you’ll be off to… Umm…spurt”
“You don’t need to whisper Ronny. They can hear you anyway, and yes I have to report back. See what we can do about your situation.” She looked down, pausing for a moment. “Ronny, if we can’t do something about this….” A smile crept across her face. “I’ll have to teach you how to be a giantess. It’s not that easy, you know. Not to be a gentle one at least.”
Sargent Scorder told me I could demolish anything in this area if I wanted or needed to, and that the men with the bazookas would be watching to be sure I didn’t make any moves to escape.