Albert Knox was ideally suited to evading capture. Midnight black fur from head to toe allowed him to mingle with shadows. Strong claws carried him into the trees when the ground became treacherous. He had the training, he had the instincts, but most of all he had the smarts to keep to himself. People were so damnably social that they could not resist seeking out one another's company even in an age when so much as a whispered "hello" could reach a keen ear two hundred feet up. They would start by gathering in pairs, then there would be threes and fours, until inevitably there would be enough of them in one place to attract the attention of the giants, and once that happened, you might as well just gnaw open an artery. In fact, you would be better off doing that.

Loneliness, therefore, became a part of life, because life itself depended on it. There were times when Knox could hear voices in the distance, usually far off, but sometimes close enough that he could make out what they were saying. With giants constantly looming on every horizon it was nothing short of suicide to utter even the smallest sound, and not being one to suffer idiots gladly, Knox would always steal away in the opposite direction from the voices until he found silence again. Silence was survival, and that made it his best and only friend. That was why he found one day the sudden din of many voices raised at once so startling.

Knox froze, ears canted. Is that a ball game? Ridiculous, but it sounded just like someone had scored quite a spectacular goal and the crowd was going wild, and Knox wanted nothing at all to do with that. Stupid bastards, he grumbled to himself. He tried to judge the direction from which the noise was coming; the deep woods and hills were bouncing the sound all over the place, however, and he had no idea which way to go to escape it. Make the wrong choice and he might come face to toe with someone who had also heard the senseless racket. Alert, tense, he dropped to all fours and began to creep through the brush, his head turning side to side in an effort to pinpoint the source of the cheering. Just as he pushed his way through a tangle of bushes the ground suddenly disappeared from beneath him.

Knox flailed. He felt his claws bite into wood and hoisted himself back up, then turned to stare breathlessly down from the rim of a deep and winding gorge. After he managed to settle his racing pulse he discovered that he had stumbled upon something quite rare: an old stretch of highway that was more or less intact, snaking its way through the mountains. Almost every bit of evidence of the civilization Knox had known had been plowed under soon after the giants arrived. If he had not been so pissed off at having nearly plunged to his death he might even have taken a moment to reminisce.

The clamoring voices were clearer now, and he realized that they were not cheering, but very much the opposite. Knox melted into the scrubby bushes at the rim of the gorge and watched, grim and motionless, as the owners of the voices staggered into view. It had been a long time since he had seen such a display, but not long enough for his liking. The people that scrambled along the crumbling roadway were naked, filthy, wild-eyed, and screaming so hard that some of them were spitting blood. It was hard to tell the ones that had been captives for a while from those who were freshly caught and still sane enough to know what was happening. He had already guessed, too, what was chasing them even before the giant emerged from behind the hillside: a fucking flat-tooth. All giants were cruel, but for some reason this type was more vicious than any other. Lean and tall, with towering ears making him appear taller still, this particular giant seemed not quite fully grown, and that meant that he was the worst of all. Giant adults would typically just kill people outright; the younger ones, though, took a terrible delight in torturing those they caught.

While the giant strolled at a lazy pace, the people who fled before him were in frantic retreat, all helplessly constrained to the narrow ribbon of pavement by the sheer walls rising above. Knox flattened his ears when the giant spoke in a voice that drowned out the screams from below. As the echoes crashed off of the rock walls they briefly spurred the fleeing mob onward, but then the tiny figures faltered, stumbled, wailing in dismay, when a veritable mirror image of the first giant emerged from behind a hill and blocked their escape. Knox noted with disgust that the newcomer sported an anklet strung with little skulls, an accessory that had become popular among the giant youth; he noted also that he himself seemed to have scored an unwanted seat on the fifty-yard line for the game for which all those people had been collected. That game was coming swiftly to the kickoff as the smirking giants closed the distance between themselves. Knox knew exactly what was about to happen and had no desire to watch, but he dared not budge lest he find himself a part of the action.

The giants slowed their approach until they were at arm's length from one another. Shit, Knox thought, these fuckers are big. Indeed, the walls of the gorge rose only to the titans' waists and the people below barely to their ankles. Their long feet fell with heavy booms and soon corralled the captives into a dense, squawking mass that writhed and twisted like a pile of worms on a hotplate. After an agonizing pause one of the giants nodded to the other and spoke in thundering words that were unintelligible to tiny ears. Slowly, deliberately, the two sat themselves down, legs splayed and resting their toes against the rock walls to ensure that the trap stayed closed. The one with the anklet made the first move, reaching down to pluck a kicking figure from the group, only to toss it aside after a brief scrutiny and reach for another. Satisfied with this one, he pinched the little thing's head between two fingers and simply twisted it off. The limp torso was discarded over the giant's shoulder while the head went into the pocket of his shorts, no doubt to become just another bauble later on.

Knox would have given anything right then for a rocket launcher.

The people were howling and yammering and pissing themselves in terror while the giants whispered and giggled and leered down at them with the sort of vile glee that only teenagers can muster. After a momentary exchange punctuated with evil grins the two slid themselves backward, their rumps grinding up the ancient pavement and plowing it into piles of rubble beneath their eagerly-twitching tails. Carefully mirroring one another's movements they laid their lengthy feet sideways across the width of the roadway, and then slowly, like the walls of some B-movie villain's trap, they began to slide the soles toward one another. Knox closed his eyes against the sight of the crowd being pressed tighter and tighter against each other, but he could not close his ears against the voices shrieking first in fear and then in agony, of bones cracking and crunching, of something like a hundred water balloons being squeezed too hard all at the same time.

Regrettably, Knox did not wait long enough before opening his eyes. The giants' feet had met, leaving a tangle of pelts and innards squeezed up and draped over the insteps. The feet soon parted with a grotesque sucking sound, leaving long red strings trailing between, but the game was far from over. For the halftime show those who had escaped the first round were batted by colossal fingers back onto the playing field so that the brutal sport could continue. Knox grimaced in revulsion when he noticed that both of the giants' shorts were bulging in front. You sick fucks.

The end of Round Two saw only a handful of squalling figures left, darting this way and that, their eyes popping so wide that Knox could see the whites even from up high. The prize, it seemed, for having survived to this point was to suffer the most indescribable torments the giants could dream up. For the next fifteen minutes the rock walls echoed with the most awful screaming as the winners were pulled apart, disemboweled, impaled, and worse. One hapless victor died with his head crammed completely into another's rear while the big boys laughed up a storm.

The final scream ended with a moist cracking noise, and then the only sound was the booming of the giants' voices as they praised each others' handiwork. Both were panting as they stood up; both had erections which each seemed very determined not to notice in the other. One reached out to flick a loop of entrail off of his buddy's chest, then turned suddenly and lowered his head, and his gaze fell squarely upon Knox. A massive foot rose up high, the underside caked with fur and ground meat. Whole limbs were wedged between the toes, and it was coming down fast.

Millions of years of instinct pleaded with Knox to cut and run while ten years of gruesome experience warned him to stay put. He would be dead either way -- better to make it quick. He steeled himself for the impact, but it never came, and he realized that he could still see sunlight past the innermost toe. He dared not flinch -- I am a shadow, just a shadow -- while the mighty foot landed beside him, so close that some of the thick strands of fur brushed against his leg. The bushes at the edge of the cliff crackled as the giant's foot pressed them to the earth and then dragged downward, scrubbing the gore away and leaving it dripping from the leaves.

The giants wandered off, chatting and giggling while each tried to adjust his shorts without the other noticing. Knox watched them disappear into the surrounding hills, then with his stomach churning he inched away the remains that blanketed the nearby foliage. It was not the first time that he had witnessed such a massacre, but never before had he been so close to the action, and it left him fighting to hold his breakfast down. Even though the giants were out of sight he knew that he was far from safe. Those tall ears of theirs could probably pick up the sound of someone retching from miles away.

A black bird landed and began to pick at the meat. It was joined by another, then another, and soon a whole flock. They ignored Knox, perhaps having been fooled themselves into thinking that he was only a shadow. Knox could have reached out and grabbed as many as he wanted for lunch, but something was whispering in his head, urging him to keep still, and he had not survived this many years since the coming of the giants by ignoring those nagging little doubts. He stayed put, hardly daring to breathe, and watched the hillside behind which the giants had vanished for any sign that they might be returning with more toys.

Suddenly the birds exploded into flight. Startled, Knox shrank back into the foliage and peered at what seemed at first to be a pillar of fire rising from the valley below, but one which moved on two enormous legs. This one was taller than the other two, older, and female. She was clad in a brilliant yellow sun dress that lay upon equally bright orange fur that together made her look like something that would step forth if the gates of Hell ever opened.

And maybe they had. She was coming closer.

Knox once again became a shadow. He held his breath.

Her tread was unexpectedly light, even dainty, so much so that the earth beneath Knox barely trembled. She made her way along the gorge and halted at the sight of the carnage that had been left behind. Knox watched her stoop to peer at the mangled flesh at which a few tiny birds were still defiantly pecking, and watched as she poked with one finger at the corpses, turning them over, separating them from one another, seemingly fascinated by them. After that brief investigation she turned and leaned her muzzle close to the mess that the younger giant had scraped off of his foot. Her whiskers brushed unnervingly against Knox's arm. Her breath blew softly over his face.

Just a shadow here, he whispered to himself. Move along, now.

Her gaze drifted across the gory scene and then settled upon Knox. She paused, squinted, tilted her head, and then her eyes widened.

Only a shadow, Knox gritted.

A hand as black as he was rose up, blotting out the sky, and rushed down toward him.

Just a ... "Fuck!"

In an instant Knox was up and running while behind him the bushes snapped and splintered. Something brushed against his back and briefly snagged the tip of his tail. He jerked free, clawing through the brush with one hand while fumbling for his knife with the other. A dark wall of fur and leather thudded down to block his escape. He guessed that the giant would expect him to dart around her hand, so instead he threw himself headlong into it. He led with the knife, plunging it into the tip of a finger and giving it a savage twist, then readied himself to leaps forward the moment that the hand jerked away.

Only it didn't. It remained rock steady even as blood spilled out onto Knox's hand, and the fraction of a second that Knox stood bewildered was all the time it took for him to be caught. Long fingers snapped around his torso and squeezed the startled cry from his lungs. The knife was jerked from his grasp, and with nothing left but the weapons nature had given him he kicked with all his might and twisted his head from side to side, raking and gnashing but catching nothing but fur. This one apparently knew just how to hold onto someone his size. No doubt she had gotten loads of practice. "Come on, you bitch!" he wheezed. "Let's get this shit over with!"

Her face loomed before him, her delicate nosepad just a few tantalizing inches out of reach of his slashing claws. In each of her eyes Knox saw the reflection of his own furious expression while she in contrast appeared annoyingly serene and pleased with her catch. One of the fingers that gripped him extended just long enough for her to pluck the knife from its tip.

Knox glowered at her. "How about giving that back, Sweetheart?" he spat. "You aren't so big that I can't carve you up like a fucking turkey."

His defiance appeared to amuse her. She rumbled an incomprehensible word and smiled, which only made Knox angrier. He resumed his kicking and pounded with his fists at the side of her thumb. "Let me go, you cunt!" he roared, and was shocked when in response she began to lower him down. The vast yellow expanse of her dress swept by, yard after yard. For a moment he thought that she might actually set him free, but it quickly became apparent that she had other plans for him. It was not the ground he saw beneath him when he looked down, but rather the shadowy interior of the bag that hung open at her hip. Before he could spit out the curse that was forming on his lips he was falling, the darkness swallowing him as the flap above slapped shut.

To be continued...

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