Ela stomped over the continent, unaware of the death and destruction her 20-mile tall body caused. Each footfall cracked the earth, turning idyllic landscapes into barren wasteland. Entire forests disappeared, hills were flattened, cities crushed. The drag her enormous body caused was so terrible, it even sucked huge amounts of dirt from the ground, revealing layers of buried rock formations normally covered with tons of earth hundreds of feet thick. 

Her thick-skinned soles didn't register what she was stepping on, only the occasional rocky hill she dimly noticed. She walked aimlessly around, avoiding the ocean waters on either side of the continent, not knowing what was going on. Dozens of cities and countless villages were obliterated, being reduced to flattened rubble in footprints hundreds of feet deep.

The neutron bomb reached the other atmosphere. On the brim of daylight and eternal night, it turned and flew towards its target. High above, so high even Ela wouldn't be able to reach it, its computerized targeting systems registered the huge head of the giantess. Then it flew with dazzling speed down, towards the behemoth whose own speed was no match for the high-tech propulsion systems. The rocket-propelled "dirty" bomb didn't miss its target. How could it? Ela was not to be missed, huge as she was. 

And then it detonated two miles above her head , not with a bang, but a small "Piff!"

Its usually deadly load was released.

Usually.

Not now.

The huge amounts of radioactivity dousing Ela activated the substance, the altered DNA, with a result no one wanted. She got bigger again.

Ela grew and grew. 25 miles... 30 miles... 40 miles.... Her body eclipsed entire cities before crushing them under her feet, not by walking, but by mere growing.

Skyscrapers in the meantime hardly the size of her pinky toenail collapsed as soon as her huge mass touched them, before being steamrolled by huge feet. Ela's feet slid against the Rocky Mountains, dwarfing the once-impressive range by first sliding over them, then by crushing them as she reached 100 miles. And still she grew.
But the growth lead to the inevitable. Her brain was so huge now, Ela was little more than a vegetable. She didn't register anything anymore. She just stood there, motionless safe her growth. 

Then it happened.

Reaching 150 miles, the now titanic behemoth's brain became so big, the neural network broke down. The neurons couldn't communicate any longer at all. Like a candle running out of wax and oxygen, her brain functions, already at minimum, ceased. Ela died.

She fell backwards, her growth halted at 160 miles since her now dead body didn't respond to the radioactivity anymore, causing an impact that shook the whole world.  

Half of North America cracked open. The shockwave left hardly a building worldwide intact. Huge clouds of smoke and dust were blown in the atmosphere, causing a so-called nuclear winter, one that would last for centuries and cooling down the planet to a degree that hardly made life possible. Only on Ela's gigantic body, microbes would thrive, by decomposing the gigantic amounts of flesh. Microbes that would spread diseases among the few surviving plants, animals and humans. 

Would humanity survive? Would life survive once her body was reduced to a huge skeleton? And would life reemerge, starting evolution all over again? 

No one knew the answer, no one ever would...


THE END