The footsteps were accompanied by a deep, churning rumble that sounded like a giant breathing. Jenny stared wide-eyed into the darkness behind her, seeing only a looming shadow that stood bigger and taller than any of the blacked-out hotels overlooking the beach. A shadow with legs, arms, and a head like a dragon’s.

It’s a sea monster, Jenny realized. For real!

Flares shot up like fireworks from the hotel rooftops. Flashes of blood-red light offered glimpses of the gigantic creature emerging from the bay and stomping through the flooded streets. The monster was literally too big to take in all at once. Jenny caught only bits and pieces of the colossal whole.

Three rows of jagged fins running down the creature’s mountainous back.

Two clawed hands with four fingers each.

An endless, spiny tail that looked as long as a train.

Snipers opened fire from the rooftops. Tracer bullets split the darkness, but the giant sea-monster kept striding forward, squashing cars and trucks and small buildings beneath his mighty tread. His mammoth tail swung back and forth behind him, wiping away bars, boutiques, and coffee shops. Smoke from the gunfire added to the confusion, but the furious barrage had no effect on the monster, which seemed to be heading toward the nearby hills, heedless of whatever structures got in his way. He paid no attention to the insignificant men, women, and children frantically running away from him, or even the SWAT teams trying and failing to repel him. Mere humanity seemed beneath his notice.

Fleeing tourists and locals scrambled to get out of the way of the monster’s path of destruction. Jenny’s family ducked into an alley and huddled together, clinging to each other in fear, as the lumbering beast passed them by. They stayed there for what felt like forever until, finally, the giant footsteps seemed to recede into the distance. The deafening gunfire gradually died away as well.

Is it over? Jenny wondered. Please let it be over!

The family waited several more minutes before cautiously venturing out of the alley and looking around. The electricity was still out all over Waikiki, but numerous small fires blazed inside the ruins of trampled buildings. As the smoke from the guns began to clear, blown away by the wind from the ocean, Jenny and the other survivors gaped in astonishment at the cataclysmic view before them.

The monster was gone, heading northwest toward the hills above Honolulu, but he had left a trail of destruction in his wake. A swath of flattened buildings and vehicles, at least three blocks across, stretched from the sea to the jungle beyond. The invincible creature had cleared a path through the heart of Waikiki, crushing everything in his way. A trolley car had been ground into the pavement. A giant footprint was sunk deep into a luxury golf course. Neither tourist traps nor residential neighborhoods had been spared. Palm trees littered the rubble like broken toothpicks.