The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 2

The idea for THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED came to me very quickly. I was driving, letting my mind drift off to that place where ideas live, as I often do, and the thought occurred to me to reverse the roles of people and monsters. I often write about monsters as antagonists, be them malevolent or misunderstood.

But I'd never attempted to create monster protagonists whom the reader would have to identify with, root for, and create an emotional connection to. This has been done in kids cartoons like Ahhh!!! Real Monsters, and movies like Monster's Inc. But as adult fiction? Who knows, everything's been done before, but I wanted to give my Kevin Strange spin on it either way.

I broke tradition, normally I won't start a new project until the one I'm working on is finished. But this idea solidified so quickly and furiously in my brain, I had to get it out while it was fresh. So I booked a hotel room and spent three days writing this story from the very first sentence to the last, in one long session.

THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED is my entry in the STRANGE FUCKING STORIES anthology, to be released in January 2014 by StrangeHouse Books, but I'm serializing it here on Goodreads to promote the upcoming anthology. Here's part 1 in case you missed it. Now, I proudly present to you, THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED, part 2:

***

Big Dex deflected a blow from a pair of humans with spinning buzz saws grafted to their chests using the body of the huge bearded man. The saws shot sparks all over the room as they connected with the gyroscope on his chest, causing an awful, high-pitched squealing noise.

Big Dex's tongue was still embedded into the man's forehead. It stretched across the human's head like a fleshy mohawk before it connected back into Big Dex's mouth another five or six feet away. The bearded human's mouth still hung slack as Big Dex controlled his limbs, having gained complete control of his nervous system. The monster crushed faces and stomped bodies into mush even as he controlled the burly man's reflexes, causing him to smash the two buzz saw-wielding humans with his mace arm (his other having already been sliced off, along with one of his legs). His intestines hung freely from a giant gash in his stomach, and he oozed blood from half a dozen different mortal wounds across his body.

Big Dex figured he could get a few more good kills out of the big man before he'd have to discard him and stab into the mind of another lunatic human. As much fun as he was having felling scores of these savages, he couldn't shake the feeling of dread from the revelations made inside the human's mind. He needed to find his children, and he needed to get them to safety. That's all that mattered.

That's when the machine crawled out of the ground.

It was actually five humans, but they each had machine parts grafted onto their already-modified bodies. A pair of them had their left and right arms removed, respectively. In their place were what looked like cannon barrels cut in half down the center. Another pair was missing either leg in much the same fashion, while the fifth had no lower body at all, just a cylindrical piece of technology grafted onto its trunk that resembled the base of a lightbulb.

The bizarre people began to lock these various pieces into place while servos spun and lights all across the weird machine blinked on and off. The legless human climbed up the half-formed machine and screwed itself into a round opening at the top, completing the unusual piece of machinery.

Big Dex already knew what it was: a weapon. A flesh cannon powerful enough to destroy any monster caught between its crosshairs.

The Overmind had created its monsters to eradicate humans. It made them immune to human weaponry. Guns, bullets, rockets, bombs, were all useless against the hoards of terror. These humans had developed new technology. Big Dex knew because the bearded man knew. He saw the memories of countless millions of experiments over hundreds of years as the beings dwelling below the monster city turned their very bodies into weapons capable of killing monsters.

Big Dex braced himself, grabbing the bearded man around the waist to use as a shield while extracting his tongue from his forehead at the same time. Lights along the sides of the machine all lit up green, and the human screwed into the top of it began to spin. Smoke wafted up off the man's body as he screamed, spun faster and faster, and then, without warning, melted down into the barrel, skin, bones, and all, leaving the metal exoskeleton to fall, discarded off to the side of the machine.

A blast of molten flesh exploded from the barrel. Big Dex ducked behind the bearded man as best he could. The screaming, flailing man, now finally back in control of his own body but held fast by the monster's huge claw, took almost all of the supercharged blast, turning him into a red smear across the monster's scaly chest. Big Dex howled in pain as he looked down to find that his enormous claw had been disintegrated in the blast. The heat of the fleshy plasma had cauterized his mangled stump instantly.
Another legless torso crawled from the hole in the floor.

Ammo, Big Dex thought. They're using their bodies as ammo. And if he didn't act soon, he'd be joining his bearded friend as a splatter on his son's bedroom wall.

But the crazed, vibrating things were relentless. Worse, they didn't seem to give shit number one about their own lives. It was as though they enjoyed sacrificing themselves in droves if it meant the death of even a single monster.
Big Dex couldn't let that happen. He had to find the children.

Before the monster could move, another dozen humans swarmed around his legs, digging their claws and teeth into his scaly flesh, while still others clamped down around his feet at the floor, trying to hold him in place as the next “bullet” screwed itself into the man-machine.

***

Seeing his daddy's hand melted off in the blink of an eye wiped the smile right off Dexy's face. He tried to scream, but Willex put her hand over his mouth.

“Don't,” she whispered. “If they can do that to Dad, what do you think they'll do to us?”

Dexy began to cry again.

Big Dex roared. He kicked the humans clinging to his legs like ticks against the wall, smashing them dead, only to have even more fling themselves onto his body. He cracked skulls and bit clean through exoskeletons, but the droves of animalistic humans proved to be too much for him.

The human bullet atop the flesh cannon spun and the lights along its sides turned green as Big Dex was pulled to the floor by at least fifteen naked, vibrating humans. As the bullet-man spun and melted, Dexy broke free of Willex's grasp and screamed out “Daddy!” just as the flesh cannon fired. Buxtak threw his bulk on top of the smaller monster to keep him from running directly into the bio-blast.

Big Dex's eye met with his son's just as the flesh bullet hit him, pulverizing the huge monster's body, along with those of the humans pinning him to the ground.
The sound of the blast muffled Dexy's cry. The humans—those few remaining alive—shuffled back into the pit from whence they came. The flesh cannon disassembled itself, joining the others in the hole in the floor. After only a moment, the bedroom was quiet once again.

“Daddy!” Dexy screamed again. He pulled himself out from under the larger monster's body and ran to where his father lay. Big Dex was crumpled in a heap, his back to his son. When Dexy rolled him over, the little monster gasped and fell on his butt. Half his father's face, his entire arm and most of his chest were just... gone. Black, burnt flesh was all that remained. Big Dex's eye was open and unfocused, glazed over. Lifeless.

Then the hulking beast coughed and shuddered. His eye focused. “Dexy,” he slurred.

“D-daddy...” the little creature said, voice hitching in his throat. He'd never had a reason to think his father anything but indestructible, a superhero. Seeing him prone and mangled was too much.

“C-come closer, Dexy.” The wounded monster pushed himself—with some difficulty—up onto his elbow and turned his body to face his son.
Dexy did as instructed, his little eye darting to his father's wounds and then back to his face, as though ashamed to look at what the humans had done to his beloved parent.

“I have to...show you... Then you have...to find your...mom and show her. Understand?”

“Sh-show me what?”

Big Dex's tongue split. The forked appendage snaked out. He took hold of it and jammed the end into Dexy's neck.
Then, in that moment, the young monster knew that the humans had their eyes pinned open to keep them from shutting them in the face of the monster race's absolute horror. Knew that the factory which produced the gyroscopic modifications grafted to every human being on the planet lay deep, deep underground and spanned, impossibly, the entire length of the continent. And knew just how many scores of billions of humans were down there building machine bodies and flesh weapons, their only purpose to eradicate the monsters from the face of the Earth or die trying.
Dexy knew everything.

***

When Willex and Buxtak finally chanced a glance around the corner of the rubble, Big Dex was dead. Dexy stood alone, his back to his fallen father.

The little fly-girl buzzed through the air, while the lumbering Buxtak trailed behind her. “I-is he…?”

“Yes,” Dexy said. A scowl adorned his features. He no longer looked like an innocent, scared child. He was calm. Focused. He very much resembled his father in that moment, as though some part of the ages-old monster had transferred into his young son when he opened his mind to his boy. “He's dead. They killed him. And they're out there now, killing everyone else we've ever known. Everyone we love. And they won't stop until they kill every last one of us, or die trying.”

Tears flowed down his sister's face. Her little mandible parts, constantly moving like an ecosystem all their own, licked the liquid all away as she knelt over the body of her dead father. Buxtak put his big hands on her tiny shoulders. “I'm so sorry, Willex.”

Dexy turned to face the other two young monsters. “We have to go. Mom needs to know what she's up against. She needs to know how many of these things there really are. What they plan to do.”

Willex wiped her tears away, only for more to stream down her face. “How do you know what they plan to do?”

“Daddy showed me.”

Buxtak stomped over to the window. Outside, the screams of dying monsters filled the air. As far as the big thing could see, humans slaughtered monsters. “If he couldn't fight them, what chance do we have out there? How do we even know where your mom is?”

“We have to try. Dad thinks Mom and the rest of the night patrol will make their last stand at the base of the Overmind. That's where we're going.”

“Buxtak's right,” Willex said. “We're just kids. If we go outside now, we won't last a minute. Any one of those... things could kill us without effort.”

“You're right,” Dexy conceded.

Buxtak rejoined the smaller creatures by their fallen father. “Best we hide and wait this out.”

“If we wait this out,” Dexy said, turning his attention to the human corpses littered about the room, “there won't be a world for us left out there.” He studied each of them intently before moving on to the next. “But you're right about one thing.” He stopped above one of the humans. Its neck was bent sideways. Its eyes were vacant. When Dexy poked its exposed pupil, the thing let out a cry, but did not move. It was paralyzed from the neck down.

“We do have to hide.”

***

“You're crazy,” Willex said. She hovered over her little brother, all six arms crossed in protest. “This will never work. You're going to get us killed, Dexy!”

The little monster was busy. He was using one of his sharp claws to carefully slice open the human's midsection at the stomach. “We're dead either way, sis.”
The human looked down in horror, screaming gibberish as Dexy peeled back its belly, exposing its vital organs. “Shut him up, will you? If they hear him, they'll swarm back in here and we'll be done for.”

Buxtak had been staring into the chasm in the middle of the bedroom floor. It was vast. The sounds of human screams and machinery echoed off the deep walls. He plodded over to Dexy and put one of his gigantic hands over the human's mouth, muffling his protests as the cyclops monster extracted his stomach and most of his intestines, discarding them onto the floor.

“Won't be needing those anymore, will you?” Dexy said, smirking.

After Dexy pulled out several more handfuls of guts, the human stopped screaming. It was pale and sweaty. It continued to jibber, but did so quietly now. It would die soon. Dexy just hoped it would hold out long enough...

“Ok, get him to his feet,” Dexy instructed.

Taking the human by the shoulders, Buxtak lifted it up and held it in place.

“I don't understand,” Willex said.

“Watch and learn, sis. This is gonna be awesome!” Dexy rubbed his hands together, and then crawled up into the human's flayed open stomach.

Willex watched, disgusted but fascinated. Nothing happened for a few moments, and then suddenly, the human's hand twitched. The thing looked down in horror as it flexed its fingers.

“Ok, now let go,” Dexy yelled from the human's guts, his voice muffled but excited.

Buxtak released his grip on the thing's shoulders. It slumped and fell forward, but at the last second caught itself, steadied and stood upright. It whipped back around to face the young monsters. “This is awesome!” the human said. Its speech was slurred and barely discernible. Blood oozed from its mouth and nose. Even though it smiled, its eyes were still filled with recognition and horror. It was not in control.

Dexy was. Curled up inside the empty guts of the dying human, Dexy had fished his pronged tongue up to the point where the human's neck had broken, and tapped into its spinal cord. He now operated the human's entire nervous system with his own mind.

They now had the perfect cover.

***

“I can't fit in there!” Buxtak said.
Willex poked her head outside the human stomach. Bits of intestine fell out and hit the bone floor with a soft splat. “You can change your size, silly!”

“I've never done that before!” Buxtak said, all ten of his eyeballs wide with fear atop the antler-like hands on his head. “My mom told me never to try that.”
“Why not?” the fly-girl asked.

“I don't know. She never said why. She just said not to meddle with things I wasn't smart enough to understand.”

“Concentrate,” Dexy said, speaking through the human's mouth. “I know you can do it.”

Buxtak sighed. He closed his eyes, balled his hands into fists and strained.
Nothing happened.

“Try again,” Dexy said.
Buxtak stomped around in place, cleared his throat and repeated. Again, nothing happened.

“Oh, brother,” Willex said. “This is a stupid idea.”

Buxtak hung his head in defeat. “Just leave me, guys. I'll stay here till the humans are gone. You don't need me anyway. I'm useless.”

“You're not useless,” Dexy said, grinning madly. “You're the key to my whole plan!”
The big monster looked confused. “How?”

“Don't worry about it. Look, I've got an idea,” Dexy said. He steered the human body over to the mess of steel and flesh that had been people before Big Dex got a hold of them. He rooted around in the pile for several moments before extracting a loop of twisted metal.

“Perfect!”

Dexy wrapped the metal loop around Buxtak's hands. “Now you're our prisoner.”

Buxtak smiled. He wanted to believe their plan would work. Wanted to trust in his little buddy. But inside, he knew they were all doomed.

Click here for part 3