ZQ Retold Part 2: Creative Title Here (I'm tired, and can't think of a good title)

In the eight minutes or so the three of them had been in the basement, the backyard had been transformed into a warzone. As Caleb said, two windows had been broken, and a table on which snacks had been placed was overturned, littering the grass with potato chips and watermelon. Off in the distance, emergency sirens wailed, and smoke rose.

Tyler pulled a cellphone out of his pocket and jabbed in 911. A moment later, he threw the phone down. “No signal”, he spat. “Let’s-” He was interrupted by a whooping chant. It sounded like “cure a cow, cure a cow”. Abe, Caleb, and Tyler looked towards the source of the chant.

Leather tunics upon their chests.

Red, beady eyes inside their heads

Ten right hands, in each a bow, or a spiked, wooden club.

The Goblin had called his friends.

And he had a lot of friends.

Deep within the brain of every human is the instinct that kept our species alive through the prehistoric years: The urge to survive. As humanity progressed, this instinct became less and less important, until it became nearly superfluous. However, it has not disappeared entirely. Occasionally, when a person feels they are in great danger, the survival instinct will take control.

This was one of those times.

Abe’s eyes darted around the yard, searching for something to use as a weapon. His eyes landed on a shovel. It was lying on a nearby pile of fertilizer bags. He ran to the bags, and grabbed the shovel. He looked over and saw Tyler and Caleb fighting off Goblins with a trowel and a stick against the wall of the house.

He ran over to join them, and swung the shovel toward a Goblin. With an earsplitting crash! it smashed through a window, sending shards of broken glass into the kitchen.

“Abe!” shouted Tyler, as he stabbed his stick into the face of a Goblin. “Look!”, he said, pointing up at something.

A shadow fell over the backyard. The Goblin forces ran as the ground shook. Abe looked up, and saw a giant.

It looked just like the Goblins they were fighting, except it didn’t have a bow, and a toga-like garment replaced a tunic. That, and it was twice the size of the houses that lined the street.

The giant Goblin swung its massive foot towards Abe, snapping the branches of the tree that overlooked the driveway in two. Abe jumped back, and fell into the Jones’ car.

He slid to the ground, and saw the giant looming above him. It raised it’s gargantuan foot high above the car, and stomped down on it.

The car was crushed like a soda can, sending pieces of metal, plastic, and glass flying into the air. Abe watched as a chunk of what had, until two seconds ago, been the car’s door sail over his head and smash against the wall, destroying the fertilizer that Abe had pulled his shovel from. Abe looked over, and saw a Goblin running towards him. He felt around for his shovel, and noticed, with a sinking heart, that he had thrown it away when he jumped away from the giant’s foot. The Goblin pulled back his bowstring and…

...crumpled to the ground.

Abe saw Caleb, his face full of fury, pulling his trowel out of the Goblin’s head. As he did, Abe noticed a dark blue liquid covering the trowel where it had gone into the Goblin’s head.

“Thanks”, Abe said as Caleb pulled him up.

Abe ran to his shovel, and picked it up. Suddenly, he was thrust into shadows, not to mention that special, unique locker-room-when-the-janitor-is-home-sick smell. He looked up, and got his first look at the giant’s foot.

It was slightly bigger that a sedan, and covered with blackened, bulbous warts the size of baseballs. Here and there, bits of metal and plastic were wedged in the foot, probably from when it had destroyed the car. Suddenly, it all came flying towards him.

His mind wild with fear and anger, Abe jumped back. The giant turned it’s gargantuan head down towards him, just in time to see Abe, screaming with fury, stab his shovel into it’s toa.

Abe pulled with all his might on the shovel, but he couldn’t pull it out. Abe looked up into the Goblins massive face. If he had been closer, he might have seen pleasure and realization cross it’s green, warty face.

Before Abe knew it, his feet had left the ground. The shock that jumped into his mind was so great he let go of the shovel without thinking, and plummeted to the ground.

His shoulder was throbbing with pain, and he heard footsteps coming towards him. Not knowing if they were his friends coming to save him, or Goblins coming to finish him off, he jerked his head up, and looked into the worried face of Tyler.

“What was that?”, he shouted into Tyler’s face. Tyler jumped back in surprise.

“You fell. I’ll help you up”

Tyler pulled Abe to his feet. “Get inside. Caleb and I can finish this.”

“What? No! You’ll kill yourselves! You two go in and I’ll finish this.”, Abe exclaimed.

“Abe, you dislocated your shoulder. Do you want to die?”, Tyler retorted.

“No, but you will, if you try to tackle that thing alone”, said Abe, gesturing toward the giant, which had walked across the street and was tearing a tree out of Cy’s lawn.

“Abe, get-”, Tyler was interrupted as the tree plowed into the ground, destroying a small shed in which Tyler’s parents kept gardening supplies. A cloud of dirt rose into the air, obscuring Abe and Tyler’s vision.

Suddenly, a Goblin ran up behind Abe, and knocked him over. Before he knew what happened, the Goblin was pressing a rusty knife against his throat, and hissing at him.

And then, just as fast as the Goblin had attacked, it died.

Abe looked up to see Caleb pulling a garden trowel out of the Goblins back, dripping blue.

“Get inside. If one Goblin almost kills you, there’s no way you can face a giant-”

“Fine!”, Abe shouted. He painfully pushed himself off the ground, and angrily stomped inside.