John Hibbard stared down the road, his sunglasses saving him from the snow blindness that normally came from looking out on a snow-covered field at high noon, contemplating exactly what it meant to be an American in the Soviet Union in the year 2013.  Things could have been different.  The Union might have collapsed, maybe around the time the Wall came down, maybe when Clinton and Gorbachev signed the Dreyfus Accord, maybe when terrorists bombed the Kremlin and levelled Moscow with the nuclear bomb the U.S.A.E.C. didn't want to admit had been made in America.  

Made in America.  That didn't even mean anything anymore.  Not the way it did back in '75.  What was America now?  It was hard to say.  American.  The word felt strange on his tongue.  He pulled out his pack of Double Happiness cigarettes and lit up.  The smoke was warmer than the air around him, but in the heart of a Russian winter, that really didn't mean there was necessarily all that much heat.  

John's black Nissan convertible ('why the FUCK,' he thought to himself, 'did I think it was a good idea to drive a convertible through Siberia in the middle of winter, snow tires or not?') had somehow managed to overheat in the coldest place he had ever been.  He'd been stuck on the road here for half an hour, huddled over his hot engine for warmth.  He had tried calling someone for help several times.  Of course there was no cell service out here, between remote Russian villages two hours north of Krasnoyarsk.  There was nothing to do but wait for someone to drive by, not that he expected someone any time soon.  

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The ground shook slightly beneath John's feet.  He looked around, wondered what was going on, tried not to think too much about the possibility of an earthquake adding to his already full plate of misfortune, and took another puff from his Double Happiness.   

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The sound was closer now.  It was coming from behind him, out of the north.  John turned around.  When he saw what had caused the noise, his mouth dropped.  The saliva in his mouth started to freeze as the Russian wind found its way in.  He was too astounded to notice.  "What the fuck?" he said, almost too quietly for him to hear.  What he was seeing was so absurd, so ridiculous, so impossible, that he couldn't even register it.  A giant woman-at least fifty feet tall-was striding toward him.  John could think of nothing to do but stare at her as she came toward him.  She was bundled up for warmth, a heavy fur coat covering every inch of her but her her icy blue eyes.  The only clue to her gender that he could see was the bulge on her chest, where what could only be breasts were restrained by her coat.  

 The shadow of a giant boot engulfed John and his car.  The underside of that boot and the hammer & sickle imprinted on it were the last things John ever saw.  Tons of flesh slammed down on him, crushing him into the snow.  A giant hand reached down and dug through newly displaced slush and ice, digging the mangled body of an American and the remains of a Japanese convertible out of the Russian snow.  

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The noises moved back north.