Up to this morning, Peter Hansen’s time in the military hadn’t been all that bad.  After getting through basic training, he had been assigned as a specialist on a high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS). Being primarily an anti-aircraft weapon, it wasn’t currently being used in the mid-east conflicts, which kept Peter safely stateside.  Instead, he had been sent down to Arizona’s Yuma Proving Ground where he regularly tested samples of rockets from the factory.  The warm winter and spring had been quite the pleasant novelty for the native Minnesotan, though the onset of the Arizonan summer was proving quite formidable. 

There was a shipment delay in the next sample of rockets to be tested, and Peter was looking to having one, maybe two days off and possibly using them to take a trip either to Phoenix or San Diego.

He was headed to Phoenix as it turned out, but now as part of a combat convoy with the most bizarre mission imaginable.  Everything was slap-dash.  The mission brief was clearly thrown together with some practically pornographic pictures of this naked big-busted dark-haired beauty in the desert who the brass stated straight-faced was two-miles tall and was headed to Phoenix.  Their mission:  Protect Phoenix.  Details to be determined.

The whole thing seemed like it had to be a hoax, but here he was, in a convoy just entering the I-10 East onramp along with just about every ordinance Yuma had, which was a lot.  Riding shotgun in the Lockheed HIMARS, Peter’s immediate battle was with spotty cellphone coverage as he blazed through his smartphone looking for more images and info on their unbelievable target.  What he did know is that she defeated the Airforce, and there were rumors that before that, Fort Huachuca had been sent to engage and had gone dark.

Peter was still sifting through images of the giant woman when Cliff, his driver pointed ahead.  Long before they would see the skyline of Phoenix, there was this vertical figure on the eastern horizon.  Somewhat backlit by the morning sun, the image became more clearly human, and female as it moved.  As they continued and her image became clearer, convoy vehicles were noticeably waving from side to side in their lanes and the radio cracked with orders for the drivers to keep their eyes off the giant woman and on the road.  They were difficult orders to keep, but the wavering diminished. 

~~

Downtown Phoenix just a short northwest stroll away. Almost there!  But it was impossible to ignore that almost right between her and downtown was Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, and my, don’t they look busy?

Just a short time ago they weren’t busy at all.  With two airliners destroyed in mid-air and another one missing, not to mention dozens of destroyed military aircraft all attributed to the giant woman, an immediate decision was made to close down the Phoenix, Tucson, and Phoenix-Mesa airports.  All incoming flights were redirected elsewhere and all departures were suspended.

The departure decision was not well thought of at Sky Harbor. Not surprisingly, a whole lot of people wanted to leave the area as fast as possible, and they weren’t happy about losing the fastest option.  In addition, the airlines were anxious to remove their multi-million-dollar assets from the area.

About the time Wanda was shitting on a church, a compromise was made.  Since all the harmed aircraft were above or near the giant woman at the time, no flights in her direction would be allowed. All flights would either be west-bound or keep a 200-mile minimum distance from the giantess before heading in any other direction. Fortunately, all of three Sky Harbor’s runways were situated east-west and the winds favored a western take off anyway.  Furthermore, with no arrivals taking up runway space, the speed of departures could be accelerated.

The word was out.  Planes would leave Phoenix as fast as safely possible.  Empty seats would be filled with anyone willing to hop on.  People abandoned their reservations and ran to any plane ready to go. The “cattle-call” boarding system of Southwest Airlines which has its hub in Phoenix and accounted for almost half its flights, actually facilitated quick boarding.  As soon as a plane’s cabin was filled the doors would shut and they would go, luggage be damned.

As Wanda planted her right foot down on the I-10 freeway again.  It was now over 14 lanes wide and headed south toward Tucson at this point.  She gazed at the airport as one small aircraft had just lifted off the shortest of the three runways.  Another full-size airliner was a quarter of the way down the nearest long runway and a third on the northern-most runway was just starting.  They were only the fourth through sixth flights to depart since the shutdown.  At first, she marveled at the novelty of watching tiny planes taking off from a perspective of two miles high. As she noticed the long line of planes awaiting take-off, she realized with her presence, this wouldn’t be just normal airport activity.  These were escape flights, filled with people fleeing her terror.  She didn’t like the idea of Phoenix residents getting away from what she had in store for them.  No, not one bit.

Wanda eyed the two planes as they took to the air. They were still less than knee high to her, and if she started running now, she could catch them.  But the idea of running seemed to convey a sense of desperation and she didn’t want that.  She wanted everything she did to appear effortless.  She could use her recently enhanced telekinesis to bring them back, but decided not to play that card just yet.  Why the style of her destruction mattered so much to her, she couldn’t say, but it did.

So, she let those two planes get away, but they would be the last.  On the short runway, a private Gulfstream similar to one her company leased was already on its way.  Two airliners had just started, apparently deciding to take a chance, since they were surely aware of her proximity.

Wanda hurried her step just a bit, causing her feet to come down even harder than usual on an airport-related business park, taking out multiple buildings at a time without Wanda even noticing.  She approached the runways at approximately a 45-degree angle, which just before reaching the airport, had her following directly along the I-10, yet again; her right foot taking out almost 1,600 feet of the freeway in just one step.  The short runway was the closest with a Gulfstream already in the air, but not far enough that a foot at the end of a mile-long left leg couldn’t extend over the it and push it right down into the ground.  It didn’t even explode, just became a two-dimensional white shape embedded in a vastly larger foot print upon what had just been the southeast junction of the I-10 and I-17 freeways.

With that, Wanda planted her right foot at the end of the longer runway and turned her head to her right to stare down the airliner speeding toward her on it.  It had built up enough speed to lift the nose in the air, when her sudden appearance caused to the pilot to panic and abort the takeoff.  The plane was doing its best to scrub its speed as it rolled toward her foot.

Another airliner was rushing down the north runway, which was on the other side of the terminals and thus about 3,000 feet north and parallel to the runway she was now blocking.  The pilot either thought that she was far enough away that he could get by her, or he was past the point of aborting.  In any case, Wanda only had to pivot on her right foot to bring her left down on the end of the north runway, resulting in only a slightly wider than normal stance with her hands on her hips in a classic defiant pose.

The aircraft had barely left the ground before it started banking north.  Wanda, who as Winetta had earned a pilot’s license, took note of the plane’s hazardous take-off in which the starboard wing just barely missed the ground in their effort to escape her.  Which wasn’t going to happen as Wanda bent at the waist, to reach for it.  She slid her right foot forward to compensate for the weight shift, slamming and obliterating the other airliner that had also tried so valiantly to avoid her.

Wanda’s attention remained on the plane banking north. Matching its trajectory with her hand, she extended her left fore and index fingers so that the front of the fuselage poked between them and the front of the wings forced themselves against the pads of her fingertips. Seeing nothing but the pink skin of the fingers on either side, the pilot panicked and went full throttle. 

“Sorry, that was a very dangerous take-off. You go to the back of the line.”  With a swivel of her wrist, Wanda aimed her catch directly at the back of the line of eight planes pointing away from her that had been waiting on the adjacent taxiway.  She flipped up her fingers up and let the plane go.  Before anyone had a chance to react, the battered but fully throttled aircraft smashed directly into the rear of the plane at the end of the line, causing a massive chain reaction, multiple explosions, and unparalleled chaos.

~~

Peter continued to watch her every move as they approached the city.  He watched her take down the private jet with her foot, witnessing her aggression with his own eyes for the first time, and now saw the black plume of smoke before her, but couldn’t see its source. Nor could he see her upper body unless he held his head out the window. Even when she dropped down to her knees, it was hard to see all of her. But they felt the impact of that movement, even all the way across the city.

Their instructions were to stay on I-10 and head south on 7th street where they would be positioned make their stand to protect the Phoenix downtown.  The more he took in her size, the more futile it seemed, but he knew they had to try.  ‘Perhaps “They had to try” would be inscribed on their memorial.’ he thought morosely.

~~

Thick black plumes of smoke were rising from various points of the cluster of mangled aircraft on the north runway and the eastern-most terminal where two of the planes had been pushed into.

Wanda took another step before dropping her knees on the north and south tarmacs, positioning the terminals, control tower and even parking between her legs.  The impact of those knees made her steps feel mild in comparison.  Everyone in the entire airport and surrounding area was thrown off their feet, the floor to ceiling glass at the gates shattered and massive cracks spread from her knees across the tarmac and surrounding areas.

The 326-foot-tall cylindrical air control tower got the worst of it.  Losing all its glass and swaying precariously from side to side would have been bad enough for its occupants, but now they were directly in front of Wanda’s most intimate body part. It was almost as long as the tower was tall, but started from a much higher position so that the tower personnel found themselves staring directly at her vaginal entrance.  Such positioning was entirely intentional by Wanda, who found she had to rest her butt on the ground rather than her heels in order to get things low enough.  The fact that her butt had to crush an entire multi-story parking garage to get to the ground in the process was no impediment at all.  It did make quite a difference to all those expecting to flee the airport by its western exit, not to mention those who parked their car there.

Wanda originally thought the tower was going to be her focus of attention, but while it may be among the tallest control towers in in the US, it didn’t even reach the length or girth of her pinky finger and she soon found more interest in all the aircraft looking as they did like suckling pigs around the terminals.  She gently picked one up between her left thumb and fore finger. Unfortunately, it was likely empty at this point. She transferred it to her other hand so that she now held it as if it were a tiny paper airplane.  And then she threw it like one.  As expected, it glided through the air pretty nicely before arching down somewhere in east Mesa and signaled its reconnection to the ground with a nice orange fireball.  Before her was a nice collection of tiny little bombs.

That got her mind working. She had just halted any escape from Phoenix by air.  People shouldn’t be able to escape by land either. Not easily anyway.  So, with that thought, she started picking up planes with left hand and set them down in her open right palm. 

Simply because it was there, she nudged her crotch up, forward, and down, effectively inserting and engulfing the control tower, which quickly broke from its foundation. Over half of the tower personnel were thrown through the large broken windows directly into the lining of her vagina where they wallowed helplessly as they were crushed one by one by the shifting position of the structure.

When she had almost a dozen planes parked in her hand, she stood up, taking the control tower with her.  Not that she noticed as her eyes followed the lines of the freeways, to identify the main escape arteries.  She had already blocked the 60 East, I-17 east and I-10 South with her footsteps, so she turned to looked to the north and west.

Her first target was obvious.  The I-10 was the main route west, while the I-17, which connected with the I-10 again west of downtown, was the main route north.  She reached for a plane, one with its engines on the wings so she could grasp it from the fuselage aft of the wings with her left thumb and forefinger. Her left breast was a convenient enough place to nudge the nose of the aircraft against, so her hand could pivot under the plane to put it in the paper airplane position like the last one. 

Mindful to keep her right palm steady, she tossed the airplane toward the I-10 and I-17 junction.  The plane overshot its target and plunged into some residential area.  It was like throwing darts, and even with her superb coordination, it would take a little trial and error to master the weight of a plane and its gliding characteristics, both of which were going to change from model to model.

Wanda decided to cheat instead.  After she threw the next plane, she used her telekinesis to guide it in a nice arch right down on top of the freeway interchange. It first scraped a top-level overpass on-ramp on its bottom before crashing head-on into jammed up westbound lanes of the I-10, breaking apart to send debris down on another pair of ramps before landing on the ground level bumper-to bumper covered lanes of the I-17.  Bright fireballs of fire broke out from all three lower levels. 

~~

Again, Wanda’s simple act of standing was felt through series of bumps and vibration on their highway north of downtown.  Peter observed her picking something out of her open palm, with the other hand.  His eyes bugged when he saw a small private jet, which she then tossed forward as though it were a paper airplane.  Once free of her hand he saw it wasn’t a small jet at all but a full-size airliner.  It flew in a smooth descending arc behind them until the view of it was blocked by their vehicle.  Rear view visibility wasn’t exactly a HIMARS strong point. 

She threw another one, and at this point, the freeway had angled to the right just enough that Peter saw the plane crash directly into the freeway junction behind them, creating another explosion.

 “Shit! She’s throwing airplanes at us!”  Outbound traffic was immediately brought to a halt from the crash, as was the inbound traffic west of the interchange which consisted solely of the last third of their convoy.  They would now have to find an alternative way into town, leaving Pete and Cliff and the rest of their convoy to engage her with significantly less firepower.

The damage seemed pretty comprehensive from Wanda’s perspective, but just to make sure, she sent another plane just a little farther west on the I-10 past where I-17’s two on-ramps fed into it.  That is when it occurred to her that as tempting as the interchanges were as targets, better vehicle blockage was achieved by targeting just outbound of them.

Consequently, the next two planes crashed on the 60 West, just past where it met the I-17.  The I-17 was hit just past its junction with the 101 and she followed the 101 loop clockwise until the 51, 87, freeways and two connections with the 202 all had airliners crash down on them in spectacular fashion in key locations spreading fire and debris all around.  She bent down to grab a few more planes which soon made fiery arrivals on other outer freeways.  If the Phoenicians wanted to leave, they were going to have to do it by city streets and to complicate that endeavor, her walking had taken down several utility lines causing the area traffic signals to go dark.  But there were more planes at her feet, so…

~~

“Jeff you’ve got to come home!” Clair cried.  “She’s so huge!  Can you see her?...yes, the airport!  I’m looking right at her…from the balcony.  Oh God! She’s throwing airplanes!...No, big airliners, Boeing 737s or 7-whatever-7s, those kinds of planes. She’s tossing them like they’re tiny paper airplanes and they’re crashing all around the city!  Do you think, they’re full of people?  What if she throws one at our building?  Shit Jeff! I’m so scared!  Please come home!”

Elena briefly diverted her eyes from the giant woman to look over at her friend Claire speaking desperately with her husband on the phone.  Elena just concluded a similar conversation with her own husband.

Claire’s next response came with a raised voice Elena had never hear before from her usually soft-spoken and deferential neighbor.  “How can the hospital need you?  You’re a fucking Dermatologist!  She’s squashing people, not giving them heat rashes!” 

Claire thought her last point was a good one, despite the “fucking Dermatologist” part.  She hated profanity and yet she just let two samples of it fly.  Extraordinary circumstances. 

Jeff was unphased and calmly explained to Claire how all medical personal were needed regardless of specialty.  He then told her to stay where she was, assuring her that she was in the safest place she could be.  Claire didn’t even respond before he said he was needed, told her he loved her, and disconnected.

“He’s not coming” Claire confided to Elena wiping a tear from her eye.

“Yeah, I got that” replied Elena.  “At least he has a good reason, helping people and shit!  Miguel ain’t coming either.  Says he has to protect the shop!  How the hell is going to do that? Not like anything’s gonna make a difference if she steps on it.

“Oh God Elena, don’t say that!”  The “shop” was one of Phoenix’ most successful tuner shops which Elena’s husband owned. Claire didn’t really get the appeal of Miguel’s business, though Jeff did buy some fancy aftermarket wheels from him for their Volvo.

“It’s true though, right?  Elena continued.  “Look down at the giant bitch’s feet!  You’re either stepped on or you’re not!”  Currently ‘the giant bitch’s feet’ were mostly on the airport tarmac, but the point was taken.  Each of those feet had trodden on blocks of homes and businesses at a time.  “Ain’t nothing he can do about it!  That’s some bullshit right there, man!  Then Elena turned to Claire and smiled, “Maybe both of them just want to jack-off to her without us around!”

Even now, Elena could be counted on to make Claire smile with her outrageous comments. And she wasn’t done yet.  “I mean her boobies make mine look small, right?”

Claire figured that had to be the first time the word “small” and a reference to Elena’s breasts had occurred the same sentence.  Elena and Miguel met was when he selected the Latina bombshell as the primary model for his shop’s annual calendar where she garnished the shop’s prouder projects in various states of minimal attire.  Today, she was wearing one of her seemingly endless supply of halter tops, displaying her assets almost as much as in that calendar.

The boob comment needed a reply.  “And mine non-existent.” said Claire, who’s 5’10” figure defined the term “willowy blond”.

“Yours are always non-existent” Elena returned with a smile, calling Claire on her self-depreciation.

“I bet Miguel’s looking at those boobs, and getting himself some ideas.”  Elena continued harping on her husband’s carnal side.  “If he don’t get squashed, he’s probably going to have me get another job.

“Job” didn’t mean employment, it meant boob-job, Claire knew, and until today, bigger “boobs” on Elena would have been difficult to picture.  Aside from that, Claire hated this talk of Miguel getting stepped on, and thus added.  “At least his shop is on the west side of town.”

“Yeah, she’ll get to us before him!”

Claire didn’t take that as casually as it was given, and suddenly felt scared again.  It didn’t help that building shook again signaling that the woman was on the move.  This time she was heading north.  Jeff’s hospital was in that direction.  They could actually see the ripples in the ground radiate outward from each footfall until they flowed under the building making it shimmy.

“Do you think she can hurt us?  On the 31st floor? Claire asked timidly.

“Hell yeah!” Elena replied far less timidly.  “The news says she’s two miles tall!”

Claire didn’t really know how to process that.  She couldn’t pull up a two-mile tall anything for reference.

“I mean just look at her!” exclaimed Elena as she pointed, and reminding Claire that the giant woman herself was all the reference she needed.  “She can stomp on this building like it was a beer can!”  The statement was unsettling enough without either woman knowing that relative to the giant woman, their 34-story high-rise was only half the height of a beer can.  The statement was all the more alarming now that the giant woman had turned left and was walking directly toward them.  The tremors from her steps amplified noticeably creating cracks in her big windows.

~~

Before leaving the airport, Wanda bent down and reached for the remaining planes around the terminals as well as the few that had been lined up on the taxiways on the south runways and were still busy evacuating passengers. 

Nowhere near as careful as the first time, she now just gathered the trinkets in clusters until there were about a dozen in each hand.  She swept her right hand in front of her causing a scatter-shot of the airliners in a loose arch around the south and east sides of the city.  With her left she did the same, depositing exploding aircraft randomly north and west of town.  It wouldn’t be impossible to get out of the city, but it was going to be damn hard, and take a very, very long time.

~~

The soldiers from Yuma soon saw that they weren’t the only target.  The planes were crashing, exploding, and sending up huge pillars of black smoke all around the city. From their perspective, they couldn’t see the strategy behind it.  They just knew it scared the hell out of them.

They reached the exit for 7th street, which was a main artery into the east side of downtown and led directly to Chase Stadium.  It was 7-8 lanes wide going south, and they had all of them for their use thanks to thorough work of blocking it off by their forward men.  Only the giant woman’s feet and ankles were visible behind the skyscrapers and through their windshield and they soon had to turn their attention to their fellow soldiers directing them into position.  It was on 7th street itself, in the middle of the block, a few blocks north of Chase Stadium with some modern-architecture 15 and 20-story high-rises, and the accompanying 8-level parking structure just behind them.  There was a sprawling 2-story prep school in front of them.  This was clearly where downtown’s eastern-most skyscrapers began, and Peter couldn’t help but wonder if they were really there to protect the city’s people, or the expensive real estate. 

Tanks and rocket launchers filled street to the left and right as well as in the school parking lot and football field front of them.  It looked like the towed cannons were being directed to the top of the parking structure.  At this point, Peter and Cliff’s training took over as they prepared the HIMARS for battle.