Chapter 4

Arriving at the river, both guys found their boat, dived in quickly and ignited the engine. Philip took the steer while Gerald, hands shaking, untied it from the pier. He saw Lucrezia approach, her huge hazel eyes scanning the mob and the harbor.
"What a woman," he thought to himself now that he could get a good look at her. He saw her long, orange-blond hair reaching her knees waving in the breeze, her pretty features and body were magnified beyond imagination by her height of 120 feet. It looked all so surrealistic. Was this a spirit? She looked so alive, so vital. And quite similar to the painting of Pinturicchio, showing her as a saint.

Gerald's mesmerisation ended abrupt when he saw Lucrezia's feet being planted upon a couple of people, covering them in darkness before they disappeared under her soles. She had stopped walking when she reached the shore as well. Some panicked people dove in the Kansas River, others jumped on boats, hoping to survive their encounter with this behemoth.
As the brother's boat's engine roared when it came to life, Lucrezia's hazel eyes wandered in the direction of it, drawn by its noise. She smiled, indicating she had recognized both brothers, much to Gerald's despair, and followed them anew as they drove away. A rumbling engine was something she never heard before, hence it caught her attention over the screams and cries of the people at her feet.

"They use a boat without sail or oars, but travel very fast with it...weird.", Lucrezia thought as she saw the little, water beetle-sized ship drive over the river. It was a strange world she had reappeared in, but she had to focus her attention on these two young men first, before they were able to banish her back to the afterlife.

Gerald and Philip drove full speed down the river, but Lucrezia kept up with them easily. She walked along the shore, eyes fixed on them, not caring what she stepped on. Gerald saw a full-grown pine disappear under her huge foot, its branches and stem cracking. Lucrezia's foot completely covered it, the 200-year-old tree was destroyed in two seconds. As Lucrezia lifted her foot, yellowish wooden splinters imbedded in a footprint were all that remained.
A small fisherman's house made of wood was crushed like a matchbox, it yielded to her enormous sole like a tiny box of plywood to a normal-sized foot. Lucrezia was so swift, the pieces of the small shack were pressed into the ground before they could fly all over the shore.

"We are getting more and more distance," Gerald said, seeing Lucrezia fall behind. "The plan is about to work. We..oh SHIT!" he said, as he saw Lucrezia grow again. She obviously had noticed as well the boat was too fast for her, so she began increasing her height once again. Gerald saw how she shot up, gaining dozens of feet each second now. She rose higher and higher, reaching 200 feet, then 300. At 360 feet, she could slowly gain ground, and stopped growing. Trees that had been as big as her foot a minute ago, were now about the size of small grass blades to her, being torn out of the ground by her toes like nothing, while matchbox-sized holiday houses were smashed by threes or fours in one step.

"How big can she get?" Gerald cried over the roaring engine. "She has grown again, she is three times as big now!"
He was afraid. What if she decided to grow until she could cover the distance in one single step? What if she got tired of this chasing game and grow miles and miles tall, perhaps even bigger than the planet, just to kill Philip and him? "What have we done?", he sobbed.

Lucrezia, 360 feet tall now, stepped into the river, the water barely reaching halfway up her calves. She resumed her pursuit of the two brothers, who were hardly able to match her speed even when driving as fast as the boat could.

A bridge.
Made of solid steel.
Philip drove under it, and Gerald saw Lucrezia loom over it. She could easily step over the small (to her) structure, but she didn't. She simply kept walking as if nothing was there. Her enormous left calf hit the bridge with tremendous force, bending it in a V-shape while it shrieked horribly.
Her other calf tore it from its foundations, taking it with her as if it weighted nothing. Still smiling while looking at Gerald and Philip, Lucrezia took the bridge with her a couple of steps, before it slid down her leg, fell fully into the river and was trampled underneath her feet under the water's surface.
Small boats either smashed against her calves or were thrown aside by the waves her movements caused. Philip witnessed how a fairly large ship, full of tourists, splattered like a snowball against a wall when Lucrezia's enormous leg nonchalantly swung against it. People flew through the air like confetti as the ship shattered into countless pieces. Lucrezia's leg was like an unstoppable moving fortress, it kept moving forward as if nothing but thin air was there. Her calf was at least 12 feet thick, with a smooth surface and more muscles than an average female calf.

Philip drove under another bridge, this one was made of stone, cars and vans driving over it. The motorboat barely missed one of the two thick stone pillars that carried it, as Lucrezia's movement caused waves that affected the speedboat too.
Gerald saw Lucrezia bent down as she reached this bridge, sliding her fingers under it, and tore it out of the water. The entire stone bridge was lifted up by her, the cars and vans on it raining down into the river. Smiling at Gerald, who kept looking at her, Lucrezia crumbled the bridge in her hands like a paper bag, the debris falling down her huge body.

After having crumbled the bridge, she moved towards the boat again. Gerald saw the now enormous muscles of her calves and thighs twitch and ripple like waves themselves as they carried the huge body, never losing distance, never tiring.
"If she is a spirit, she might not need oxygen, so she'll never tire," he thought, awed. He wasn't sure about Lucrezia needing air or not, since he had witnessed her taking breaths. Or had that just been a gesture and not because she actually needed to breathe? He wondered about that and about what would give up first, their speedboat or Lucrezia, who waded through the deep river like a normal person though a stream.

The answer came quicker than Gerald wanted. The gas in the speedboat was running low, it took a lot of fuel to keep driving at full speed. A third bridge, one connected to a fairly large road, appeared in the distance. It was open, as a large ship was sailing over the river, and traffic stood waiting in a line before it. As Philip reached the bridge, driving past the ship, he steered the boat towards the shore.

"Let's go, we can't make it much longer in here," he cried at Gerald. "Not enough fuel."

Jumping ashore, the two brothers ran into a mob of people, who were fleeing for the approaching giantess, hoping to disappear in the masses. Hundreds of people were running, cars were honking, and screams of panic filled their ears once again. As they both looked back, they saw Lucrezia's foot step on the sailing ship. It was pressed down the water, as if it was a toy in a bathtub sunk by a playing child, its masts breaking like toothpicks. Lucrezia's other foot stepped on their speedboat, looking as big as a cockroach to the enormous wet sole, sinking and smashing it without effort, taking a large chunk of ground from the shore with it as well.

"Our boat! Our expensive boat!", Gerald whined. But there was no time for mourning, as Lucrezia continued to follow them on dry land again, her wet feet devouring cars by the dozens with each step, while turning the road's asphalt into a mosaic.

"How much would she weigh now?", Philip wondered, sick. It was the first time he saw her at her new height.

Lucrezia didn't care about the cars, motorcycles, trees and people being crushed under her feet.
She took a few steps, laid down, her body crunching fifty people and twenty cars as she did so, and let her head rest on her elbow. Two guys under her armpit became sick from the sour stench of her sweat, the odor cloying and overpowering. They threw up, then fainted. Lucrezia didn't even notice, nor did she ponder if and why she was able to sweat, being a spirit, since her mind was fixed on something else.

"Where are you, summoners?", she asked. Lucrezia had seen them and knew where they were, but decided to scare them a little before killing them. She had them trapped now, she thought, and enjoying power was something inherent to a Borgia. Using her huge index finger, the size of a large truck, she selected one of the fleeing people and squashed him like a small gnat under it.

"No," Lucrezia said. "That was no summoner."

She repeated the procedure, this time she killed a running guy a few yards in front of Gerald and Philip. She wanted to be sure they saw it.

"No...", Lucrezia repeated, her voice sounding as if she was selecting and testing something.

Another one. They all splattered like overripe berries, Lucrezia could see small red dots where her victims had been.

Gerald and Philip were shocked. They saw two of the three people being killed, nonchalant and quick by a huge finger, like they were vermin. The horrible sight of blood and remains made their stomach churn, as did the sound of bones breaking and organs rupturing.

Lucrezia grabbed a handful of people, not caring if she squeezed them to death in her ultra firm grip. She lifted the people to her eyes, looked at the terror-stricken, blood-covered captives, and said "no" again before she simply dropped them. They fell on the fleeing mob, making sounds like bird droppings hitting the ground. For the people, it was atrocious, seeing and hearing bloody bodies fall down to their deaths, if they weren't dead already.
Lucrezia looked down, picked a person running next to Philip between thumb and index finger, and lifted him to her face. The man screamed and struggled, but the strength of Lucrezia's gigantic fingers could not be beaten. Lucrezia smiled as she looked at her tiny victim. How powerful she was! She could pick up full grown persons like ants, kill them or eat them. This was true power! She was in charge now, and no one could do anything.
"What should I do with this one to scare the two summoners further?", she thought. "Tear him apart? Eat him? No, they can't see that. Tear his limbs off and drop him before the two guys, still alive? Yes, that is nice." Lucrezia looked at the mob again searching for the two brothers before continuing. But she couldn't see them anymore. She startled as she realized she had lost track of them.