Chapter 9

Cala grew. And grew. Once more, her wounds closed as she gained height. She reached 1600 feet and expanded further as her anger grew. Lifting one of her feet, she stomped down on the tanks. Her foot landed with a loud thud, shaking the building next to her and smashing a window here and there. The tanks she trod upon were smashed completely, turned into metal plates thinner than a coin. Cala was now 2000 feet. The remainder of the army stubbornly kept firing, and Cala kept growing. She expanded and expanded. Her feet grew to the size of oil tankers, with toes like train cars. Her legs rose higher and thickened, huge pillars of shiny white meat, which seemed to rise into the very heavens themselves. Her butt became like a mountain, her chest and belly large enough to built a small village on. Cala's head was so high up in the air, if the weather had been cloudy she would have seen nothing but a white mist. But it was still sunny, and she could see everything at her enormous feet.

Professor Bennett had found the commander of the army in the meantime. The soldier blocking him had been distracted by the growing Cala. The man stood looking at the growing girl with an open mouth, in shock and fear, and didn't react at all as prof. Bennett rushed past him. He was too dumbfounded seeing his fellow soldiers being turned to mush as the giantess stomped on them, as if they were lice on a kitchen floor.

The commander of the army was general Cramer. He had ordered to shoot the monster stomping through Denver, but he didn't expect her to grow again. Nor regenerating her wounds. He stood frozen like a dummy, looking at the giantess, when he was approached by prof. Bennett. He had listened with surprise as the scientist explained it all.

"So you are responsible for all this?" he asked in disbelief.

"Not at all. Like I said, it was a set of coincedents. But we can reverse the effect." Prof. Bennett held up the container.

"This is the antidote. Enough to make her shrink. Cala, the giantess, must drink it or we should inject it in her bloodstream. I opt for drinking. Unless you have a needle large enough to pierce her skin into the bloodstream."

Cala, in the meantime, was swatting at the helicopters. Luckily, she was quite clumsy and most of her strikes missed. However, one or two helicopters were hit and exploded in a large fireball.

"Mean! Mean!" she repeated, with an expression of a small kid whose lollipop had just been stolen. She was 4000 feet now and rising. She had turned in the direction of the city's centre and it was obvious she would be walking there soon.

"What do you suggest?" the general softly said, looking up at the still growing giantess from behind his sunglasses.

"We have to lure her away from the city centre first," prof. Bennett said. "By the time she is back to her old size after the antidote is applied it is too late! It takes a while to shrink, and by then she'll have trampled the entire city flat."

The General saw his entire army was trampled. The now 5000 feet tall Cala stomped the buildings, entire skyscrapers where crushed under her feet or were torn out of the ground and thrown away.

"Mean!" Cala sobbed, hurling buildings all around Denver. She had reached one mile and still grew.

"We don't have time! We must nuke her!" the general said.

"No! It'd cause more damage to the city. I have a plan. Steer a helicopter with the antidote aboard to the outskirts of the part she has already destroyed. That way we can keep the damage low. I'll try to talk to her. Give me a megaphone, earmuffs and the best sound enhancer you have, and equip another helicopter with them. She'll recognize my voice and obey. Mind, she doesn't know she is so huge, she'll listen to me!" Prof. Bennett had already told the General about Cala's intellectual state.

The general looked at the professor, then to the already 1,5 mile tall Cala and back to the professor. "All right," he said. "But be quick about it!"

Ten minutes later, two helicopters flew towards Cala. One had professor Bennett aboard. The sound enhancer had been "borrowed" from an abandoned, damaged music store and was being fastened on the machine as it flew towards the giantess. The other helicopter had a missile with the canister for a warhead on board. Cala's growth had halted in the meantime. She stood two miles tall!

Cala, who had smashed the entire army, was about to walk towards the city centre, obviously forgotten she wanted to go to the lab. Entire city blocks vanished under her gargantuan feet, parks and industrial complexes were destroyed within a second. Cala still didn't seem to notice she was much different from the rest of the world. Her brain, extremely large as it had become, was still too simple to grasp the extraordinary situation. But it did grasp the voice she heard. Faint, but there.

"Cala! Cala, my girl. It's me, professor Bennett!"

Cala looked around her. She recognized the voice. It was the smart man.

"Cala here," she said, not seeing anyone.

"Yes. Come Cala. Follow the voice. I have something for you. A surprise."

"Surprise? Me like surprise!" she thundered.

"Yes. Come Cala. You'll get your surprise if you do what I say."

Cala smiled again. Eyes twinkling in pre-joy, she followed the voice that kept telling her she'd get a surprise. Although her 2000 feet long feet trampled large areas, and many still died, she was causing less damage than she would have in Denver's centre.

Cala was lured outside Denver, in a relatively uninhabited area. A small village couldn't be saved, however, and half of it was pressed 150 feet into the ground when the giantess stepped on it, fixed as she was following prof. Bennett's voice.

But it was the last she would destroy. Prof. Bennett told her to stand still, close her eyes and open her mouth.

Cala did, and the helicopter fired the missile, the one with the antidote in Cala's gaping mouth. She swallowed it, thinking it was a piece of candy, and though she hardly tasted anything, she was happy.

The shrinking followed soon after. Luckily, her potent stomach acids had dissolved the metal of the missile, otherwise, Cala would have died as she reached a smaller height. Denver breathed a collective sigh of relief as the girl was taken into custody as soon as she was 5'5 again. It saved her too, as an angry mob from the village and from Denver was already on its way to lynch her.