3
Shaggy, Scooby and Velma had reached the Colonial Apartments, noted its boarded up appearance and turned back convinced that Nick Danvers had not made it inside. Returning back to their rendezvous spot, they took the long way over to Clinton Street and then up to the main road to avoid crossing in front of the hotel again. This part of town was just as deserted as everything else around them. Restraunts, stores, business and deserted automobiles filled this vast ghost town. Velma's mind was processing everything she saw. Nothing looked like the town had been deserted. It was only as if everyone had just got up and left, but to where? Where would they go? On one level, it seemed as if they were all on one vast movie lot missing characters to fill the city, but on another level, she felt as if something terrible had erased everyone against their will. She began thinking over every TV series or movie about the end of the world. In her ears, she detected distant rumbling as if something in the earth was about to explode.
"Guys, do you hear that?" She tried to figure out what it was.
"Yes, it's my stomach." Shaggy confessed. "Scoob and I haven't eaten in an hour and we're hungry. I mean, we thought we'd found some food, but it tasted horrible, like stale air. It didn't have any taste or any substance to it."
"Like maybe it wasn't real?" Velma started wondering about that, then looked up and noticed Daphne coming toward them wearing a long fur coat, several necklaces and sunglasses while carrying four handled shopping bags filled with dress and shoe boxes. She certainly looked pampered and and she certainly looked over-indulged. She grinned ear to ear to Velma and Shaggy with her pearly white teeth lighting up in the sunlight.
"You've been shopping?" Velma looked her over head to toe.
"Technically," Daphne pulled down her sunglasses as if she were a movie star. "I was looting. I found the most perfect evening dress and then I needed shoes to go with it and then I noticed this coat and I thought..."
"Forget the Home Shopping Network revue..." Shaggy cut her off and held up his hand to stop her. "Where's Fred? Did the ghosts get him?"
"Ghosts?"
"We found this entire hotel filled with ghosts of every sort." Velma explained. "They tried catching us for a change..." Velma looked to Shaggy and Scooby. "But we escaped. I don't know if they wanted to hurt us or not, but... I think we better get out of this world before sunset. I don't think I want to be here when they fill the streets."
"I don't know where Fred is." Daphne looked around and removed her sunglasses. "I thought he had come back here because I never made it to the library."
"We'll check the way you came." Velma became temporary leader as she started heading north up to the city library. "Maybe Fred found Nick or..." They heard a noise from the alley between the Chinese and Italian Restraunts. There was a loud thud of trash cans knocked over and a crash of the falling cans and Fred dashed out with his blue shirt torn and hanging open and his usual perfect coif of blonde hair disturbed. He whirled round and looked partially insane to Shaggy and Velma then regained a trace of his humanity once more.
"Shaggy, Scoob, Velma..." He was excited to see them again, but then he saw Daphne in her long faux mink coat looking at him. At first, he recoiled in fear of what she had done to him, but instead, he decided to forgive and pulled her close.
"Daphne!" Fred was incredulous as he squeezed and hugged her. "You're back to normal!"
"Uh, yeah..." Daphne rolled her eyes confusingly and looked for answers from Velma and Shaggy.
"Please tell me one thing..." Fred held her at arm's length. "Why did you try to eat me?"
"Eat you?" She looked at him and wondered if he was going crazy. "Fred, I don't like going in the bathroom after you."
"Daphne," Fred shook his finger at her. "Just ten minutes ago you were fifty feet tall, doing your best Allison Hayes impression and shaking the Mystery Machine over your head trying to turn me into a small snack. If I hadn't slipped out the back of the Mystery Machine when you put it down on the roof of the bank to rip the driver'sdoor off, I would have gone straight to your hips."
"Did you get anything out of all that rambling?" Daphne looked to Velma.
"Fred," Velma started analytically serious. "I can assure you that there is no physical way for Daphne to become..." The sound of the ground groaned nearby as Velma looked around. Scooby jumped into Shaggy's arms as their heads and eyes turned up over the sixth story roof of the apartment house on the street corner. A large head of red hair barely broke over the top of it as a deserted Cadillac was crushed under a size seventy. Coming around the corner was the source of Fred's confusion. A fifty foot tall Daphne Blake slowly turned her head to them and excitedly grinned her seven foot wide grin.
"Oh boy," Her one ton hands caressed her flawless abdomen. "More people to eat."
"Jinkies!" Velma squealed first. Scooby was gone first. Shaggy screamed next and pushed Fred out of the way to avoid being anyone's main course. Fred scrambled up to his feet with Velma running past him. Daphne just stood where she still trying to figure out what she was seeing. It was herself as a giant; just what was going on around here? Her jaw dropped and her mind slowly realized what she was seeing as her titanic counterpart started reaching to pick her up like a child's toy.
"Wait a second..." Her two hands lightly cupped her bosom. "My boobies aren't that big!" Her feet started stepping back, but then Shaggy reappeared and held up his finger to the titanic redhead to hold her back. Seemingly confusing the gigantic doppelganger long enough, he tossed Daphne up over his shoulder, left behind her shopping bags and quickly began running to catch up to his lead behind Scooby.
"Come back..." Giant Daphne hastened as well as she could, but her weight at this size kept her from running at her full potential. "I'm so hungry..." Electrical lines spanning the street snapped and crackled against her legs. Abandoned cars were crushed under her feet. The asphalt road crunched under her giant weight and left behind footprints an inch deep in her wake.
"This is impossible!" Velma screamed as she ran. "No one can get that big! It's scientifically impossible!"
"Tell her that!" Fred skidded to a stop as Shaggy ran past him carrying Daphne. He saw a utility truck park at the curb outside the water department and pulled a long pipe out of the back. Treating it like a javelin, he stood his ground, took his stance and threw it with all his might trying to convince Daphne's tremendous clone they were not to be eaten. It looked like the long thin PCP pipe would impale in giant Daphne's heart, but it never reached her. It struck and bounced off something in the air and cast off a ripple effect though the air, buildings around them and even the sky and street in a circular motion. Daphne's giant clone meanwhile continued non-stop. She was too large and heavy to be running and could only hasten her walking to catch up with them. She struck the top floor of the museum frustratedly and sent several tons of rock and concrete falling to earth.
"Come back here!" Her bellowing ordered them like a mother screaming at her kids. "I'll swallow, but I won't chew!"
"Guys," Shaggy stood in the steps in the sidewalk down to the subway. "Down here!"
"Since when do we have a subway in town!" Velma descended down into the dark creepy darkness into a subway station. The lights flickered a bit on their arrival, but stayed on. The terminal at the bottom was deserted and the empty pit for the subway was empty. They raced down the length of the boarding area to the far end as their titanic captor reached her long twenty feet arm down the stairway and started feeling around with her long fingers for signs of human life.
"Please..." The giant red-haired beauty cried out. "I'm so hungry!"
"I know how she feels." Shaggy looked to Scooby. Fred had dropped into the pit and had helped Daphne down by him. Velma hopped down too as Shaggy and Scooby joined them. The subway tunnel was dark, but illuminated by random lights. Over their heads, they heard Daphne's giant clone ripping up the street trying to get to them. Her pounding, furious strikes and enraged fits sounded like a war zone above them on the surface, but it gradually subsided as the gang hastened further underground. The tunnels stretched out ahead of them along railroad tracks. Lights showed them the streets they were under while red lights indicated power boxes and conduits.
"This is one weird world..." Fred mumbled under his breath. "Giant women..."
"Ghosts..." Shaggy added.
"And no people..." Velma revealed another observation. Somehow, it all had to add together, but how? The stray newspapers blowing through town suggested this town was full of people only a week ago, but then something must have happened that made everyone into ghosts and maybe a select few into giants. It was almost as if they were in someone's bad dream.
"Velma," Fred sidled up behind her. "Did you see that ripple effect back there? It was almost as if there was a force field in the air."
"Yes," Velma stopped and thought it out. "Let's think of this as another mystery. We have a city without people, food without taste, ghosts..."
"A giant reject from Dude Where's My Car..." Shaggy pointed out the last one.
"Hey, hey," Daphne took offense and tossed aside her fur coat and stolen jewelry. "That was me back there. She was just hungry. I'm sure before she got that big she was just like me: warm, friendly and very attractive so I don't want to hear anything nasty about my other me."
"Daphne, you tried to eat us back there!" Shaggy clarified the matter while Scooby stood on his back legs and folded his arms disgusted with her.
"Guys, guys..." Fred took charge. "I don't think we'll ever find Nick. Let's get as close to the school as possible, return to our world and let the authorities know what we..." Fred heard the rumbling and thundering approach of a subway car coming closer. Quickly lifting Daphne and then Velma on to a deserted platform, he looked up to the light coming toward them and started struggling to join them. Shaggy helped him up as the long train of cars roared up closer and began lurching to a stop like a metallic dinosaur. The windows were black and darkened and the metal shell was rusted and derelict from years of neglect. When the whole train of cars came to a stop and the doors opened up, the gang gazed upon the thin, ghostly passengers traveling the line. It was filled with ghosts sitting in cobwebbed seats and holding on to dingy ceiling straps. A spectral conductor in black had a skull for a head while he stared out to the gang and they stared back to him in petrified shock unable to move.
"Zoinks!" Shaggy couldn't move.
"Need a ride, kids?" The conductor offered the four and their dog.
"No, thank you, sir," Fred stammered. "We're doing just fine."
The skull-faced conductor just nodded his ghastly head, removed his cap and scratched what was left of his hair. The other ghosts and apparitions on board stayed where they were as the doors closed once more and the subway lurched to a stop once more. While it slowly picked up speed, the gang noticed a headless trainman hanging off the back and waving a lantern at them. Letting go with his wrong bony hand, he fell off the train, recollected his dropped lantern and started chasing the subway to get back on it.
"That's something you never see..." Daphne's eye were as large as dinner plates. Shaggy and Scooby fainted next to her.
"Well," Fred stammered scared to death. "At least they were considerate..."