Chapter 5

"FUCK!" Lucrezia swore. She got up, threw her captive away like a cigarette butt and scanned the mob. No sign of Gerald or Philip.
"FUCKIN' VERMIN! NOW I LOST THEM!", she screamed at the little people in anger. Lucrezia, in her rage, began stomping down on the fleeing mob, crushing and squishing them like cockroaches, while swearing and cursing. People died by the dozen under her trampling feet, cars were pressed into the road, trees broke and crunched as if they were made of thin glass. Being a playful giantess had been terrible for the tinies already, but now, she killed them because she was angry. No one in the mob knew where to run or hide, as Lucrezia's feet covered huge area's of ground and no hiding place could withstand her weight. The people, in their panic, stumbled over each other and fell to the ground before the gargantuan feet of the Renaissance woman pressed them together into bloody lumps of unrecognizable meat.
"FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU ALL!" Lucrezia screamed again. She stomped and stomped again on the inch-high people before her, leaving no one alive. After three minutes, nothing remained of the mob. The shore next to the Kansas River looked as if someone had spilled tomato soup all over the place.  
Lucrezia's anger ebbed away somewhat as she was finished with her killing. She examined the ground closely, looking for Gerald and Philip in the bloody pulp, as she memorized the color of the clothes they were wearing. But she couldn't see the leftovers of the two summoners. So, she thought, she hadn't killed them along with the others. They had gotten away indeed.
Lucrezia scanned the area around her. She lost them all right, but since they were so tiny compared to her, they couldn't have gotten far.
Suddenly, she saw them. They were riding on one of these quick metal horses, as she called them, never having seen a motorcycle before.

"Oh, no, my friends, you don't get away," she muttered, as she still thought they could banish her back to the afterlife, if given enough time. "I want to have my way with the world of the living, even if it is just for an hour. I want to feel power, the power to destroy and inspire fear. And you aren't going to spoil it...". Lucrezia started to follow them again.

Gerald and Philip had indeed seen Lucrezia lift her last catch towards her face. Following a sudden thought, Philip grabbed Gerald by the arm, and directed him away from the street towards an abandoned motorcycle.

"Get on it, and hold tight," he told Gerald. "I've got an idea!"

He started to drive in the opposite direction the mob was fleeing, over the bridge, hoping to be gone before Lucrezia realized they were no longer there. Both brothers were about five miles away when Gerald, looking back every now and then, saw Lucrezia following them again.

"She has seen us! She is after us again!", he cried over the roaring engine.

"We must get to the mountains," Philip cried back, driving like mad. "In the Ozarks, I can shake her off." He knew where he was going and hoped his plan would work.

Lucrezia followed the two brothers, crumbing the bridge to small rocks as she stepped on it. Not caring about the traffic on the other side (a large pile had formed on one roadside in the meantime), she went after the motorcycle. Her bloodied feet crunched vans, trucks and countless cars as well as making craters in the road that were long, wide and deep enough to serve as a small swimming pool or duck pond.

"There!", Philip said, reaching the Ozarks. He drove towards a tunnel leading through one of the larger mountains. The tunnel was long, as he knew, and the mountain itself was easily 1,000 feet high, thrice Lucrezia's height.
 
"We'll drive in there," he cried over his back. "Inside, I'll tell you my plan!"

The mountains themselves slowed Lucrezia down a little, it was to her like walking over dunes made from rock.

Philip drove inside the tunnel, then turned the motorcycle off.

"What are you doing?", Gerald asked.

Philip told Gerald that they would stay in here, inside the tunnel, until the police or military would have taken care of Lucrezia. She could never get in the tunnel, of course. They just had to wait.

"Either we wait for two hours, or they'll take care of her. Inside here, we are safe," he concluded.

"But why is she following us?" Gerald asked.

"Didn't you hear? She thinks we can banish her back to the afterlife. But we can't. Even if we still had the book, we can't. She thinks that if she kills us, no one can harm her and she can do whatever she wants until her time runs out."

"Ah, yes. I remember." Gerald sat down, tired. "I suppose telling her we can't unsummon her won't work, right?" he said.

"No." Philip answered. He was shaking all over. The chase and they terrible deaths he witnessed slowly began to sink in.

The inside of the tunnel was equipped with electric lights, so they didn't need to sit in the dark. A few cars drove past them, towards Lucrezia. Their drivers obviously didn't know what was going on. Philip felt sad seeing them pass by. They would probably end in a few moments under Lucrezia's gargantuan feet, as she was undoubtly approaching the tunnel.
Lucrezia indeed flattened the cars driving towards her. She was vaguely aware of it. The sound of brakes shrieking and metal crunching under her feet hardly entered her consciousness. She was looking at the road on the other side of the mountain, looking for the motorcycle emerging and driving further away, but didn't see one.

"So, you hide in there, smartasses?", she thought, looking at the tunnel. "You think I couldn't get you there, yes? Just you wait!"

Indeed, the tunnel's entrance was as big as Lucrezia's fist, and despite her height of 360 feet, the mountain was too massive for her to be broken down. The tunnel itself was longer than Lucrezia's arm. Hands on her hips, she stood in front of the tunnel's entrance, looking up and down the mountain.

"It is time for more drastic measures," Lucrezia thought, not even feeling a large car smashing into her big toe.

Gerald and Philip had seen Lucrezia standing in front of the tunnel, at least a part of her enormous foot, then saw how she left. Was she going around the mountain and see if she could get them from the other side? Philip made sure he and Gerald stayed in the middle of it.

"Just have patience. The military will bomb her. Yes. Just patience," he thought, over and over again.

"The longer she lingers around here, the less time there'll be for her to cause further destruction, or do whatever she has in mind." Gerald said. "If we wait long enough, she'll disappear and..."

Suddenly, the tunnel darkened. The daylight pouring into both entrances was gone. Gerald and Philip saw two huge fingers, one on each side, sliding inside the tunnel, lit by the electric lights. It took a second before they realized what had happened.

When they did, they both felt sick. Very sick.

"Nooooo...." Gerald whined. "Please, please, noooo...".