The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 4

This is the fourth in what will be a five part serialization of my newest novelette, THE HUMANS UNDER THE BED, which will appear in the StrangeHouse Books anthology STRANGE FUCKING STORIES in January. And can be purchased in its entirety in paperback and on Kindle here.

If you're late to the party, you can read parts one, two, and three, before you jump into part four, otherwise what follows will make no sense.

Also, please add this book to your to-read shelves here on Goodreads, and, after the story concludes next week, give it a rating and a review. Thanks.

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“Glory! Glory! Death! Death!” the humans cried. Their chant aligned with their marching: one word for every step. Ahead of the little monsters inside the body of Ring Breasts was a sort of platform, except made of humans. They were all conjoined at the limbs and contorted in such a way as to make a walking stage, allowing the commander of this particular section of the human army to stand over his troops and survey their movement.

The commander was twice the width of a normal human, because it was two humans. Grafted together at the face, shoulder, wrist, hip and ankle, and all encased in an oversized exoskeleton, the commander was both a male and a female.

“Your fathers!” the male head said. “And your fathers' fathers of those fathers of which we speak of!” the female head continued. They finished each other's sentences as though they shared the same brain. The way their heads were grafted together, maybe they did. “Generations of brave people slaved away in the factories beneath our feet full of brave people. They died of burns and smoke and worse things that they died of so that their sons and daughters would live to see THIS moment that is for their sons and daughters! So that the seed of their seed, the blood of their blood could march upon the Great Evil and SLAY the Great Evil in which they came to slay! Rid this once beautiful planet of the cancer that's smothered this beautiful planet's lush, life-giving force for five hundred years of smothering!”

“Destroy! Evil! Destroy! Evil!” the army chanted.

“Look upon the face of that which has a face upon which we look!” the generals said in unison, as the army descended into the valley that lay at the foot of the Overmind.

It stood taller than any mountain in the world. One glorious hunk of putrid flesh. The very worst, most awful thing ever to be dreamed up in the small, dark hours of the most imaginative human mind. The last time mankind looked upon its mighty visage, its mere presence had been enough to send them shrieking back the way they'd come, welcoming the teeth and claws and other horrors that awaited them, just so long as they never had to look at It again.

But these were not those humans. These creatures had somehow escaped the Overmind's wrath and created their own hell. Generation after generation of tortured souls living and dying with but one purpose: To look upon the face of the Overmind once again. Only this time, instead of shrieking madness, there were only howls of joy and chants of doom.

***

The army stopped at the base of the Overmind. They were close enough to the titanic horror that tentacles darted out from the mountain of flesh and snatched several of those humans unfortunate enough to be stationed at the front of the line. They were dragged into slobbering, fanged mouths, violently dismembered, and eaten for their troubles.

Dexy, Willex and Buxtak sat still inside Ring Breasts, doing their best human impression, trying to remain anonymous, knowing that a mistake like last time would mean certain death in front of this legion.

“Every single second that's passed since the Great Evil forced us down into the earth has led up to this second that is passing now!” the generals screamed. “We take the mountain from the Evil, we take the upper world back from the Evil that is the mountain!”

Just then, a spot in the front of the mountain peeled back, revealing a dark chasm. A dozen monsters emerged, the children's mothers among them. They descended the mountain, standing defiantly at the base, directly in front of the legion of millions of mechanically-enhanced humans.

They were all that was left of the monster resistance.

Suddenly, Willex burst from Ring Breasts' stomach, zipping across the heads of the humans in the front line of the army before they could react. “Momma!” she cried.

The little fly-girl slammed into her mother, gripping the larger fly monster made of fly monsters so tightly, she thought she might hug right through her mother's body.

But something was wrong.

“Momma?” Willex said. Blood dripped from her mother's mouth. The little girl looked over at Buxtak's nine-headed hydra-like mother. The eyes of her heads were lifeless. Blood oozed from their noses.

“No,” Willex said in a whisper. She jumped back just as metal hands ripped through the tops of the bodies of all dozen monsters. They tore the hollowed-out monster shells off like costumes, discarding their skins like so much garbage.

The human masquerading as the little monsters' mother stepped forward. Grafted to its head were six mini flesh cannons. “Victory is ours! I have just come from the bowels of the Great Evil from which I have come. It spoke to me! It said, 'it is finished!' We have WON the thing in which we came to WIN!”

The ranks of millions of humans cheered. One huge deafening warbled yell filled the air and hung there for a moment. The humans had indeed won. The Overmind had conceded defeat, and every last living monster had been wiped off the planet.

Except for three little kids. Unfortunately for the humans, one of those little kids was Buxtak the Destroyer of Worlds, the Scourge of Nations.

Buxtak the Invincible.

***

Ring Breasts' body erupted in a violent spray of flesh and metal as Buxtak grew. Tens of thousands of the closest humans to him were smashed in seconds as he continued to grow. The monster bellowed a low, mournful scream for his mother and grew larger still.

Buxtak was now taller even than the Overmind. His eyeball-tipped fingers touched the clouds. He stomped backwards and squashed ten thousand more as the army below him began to scatter. But the monumental beast did not purposefully attack the humans. He cried and he screamed, but his eyes were glazed and unfocused. He stumbled away from the war below, aimless, grieving. Mindless.


***

Dexy wasn't blind when he woke up this time. Dizzy, sure—being knocked unconscious three times in one day was enough to rattle even the hardiest of monsters. And he was in trouble. He blinked the darkness away, only to find himself surrounded by humans. A lot of humans. Lucky for him, they were all paying attention to the hulking behemoth stomping away from them, each step like an earthquake followed by thunder, when Buxtak screamed out for his mother.

Dexy took the opportunity to scramble between the humans' legs. He found cover under the corpses of several newly-squashed people. If they saw him, they'd rip him apart before he could finish what he'd come here for. What he'd seen inside his father's mind. He had to get to Willex, and fast. Before Buxtak made it to the ocean.

***

Willex broke apart again. It was hard to control the minds of millions of tiny fly monsters. But it was harder still to control her emotions. Every part of every one of those millions of tiny monsters wanted to see the gun-headed human dead. Willex imprinted all of her hatred and anger for the human race onto the being that killed her mother.

She flung herself at the human, turning herself into a long, flying tendril aiming for his stretched open grin. She planned to fly down his throat and turn him inside out. But he was fast. He dodged the attack, scooping up bits of monster and human gore off the ground as he did so, jamming the hunks of meat into the openings of the six guns on top of his head.

When she turned in the air to strike a second time, he fired all six shots in quick succession. His aim was good for three hits, blowing huge holes into Willex's flying tendril body, killing thousands of miniature versions of herself. While each death hurt, the little creatures bred just as quickly as they died, mating with each interlocking little fly version of herself, giving birth to two monsters to replace every one that died.

Just as Gun Head reloaded his weapons with gore, the flying tendril dispersed, leaving only a small trail of fly monsters in its wake.

“I want ten flesh cannons brought over here at once to the place that I am wanting flesh cannons. We can't let this one get away to a place which we do not know of. She's much more powerful than her size lets us know how powerful she is. Understand?” Gun Head glanced at the human to the left. “I said, do you understand what I asked about understanding what I said?”

The human turned its head and looked at him. Its eyeballs had been replaced by flies.

***

Dexy heard the screaming. He chanced a quick peek out from under his pile of corpses. He saw Willex fifty or so yards away closer to the base of the mountain. She'd encased another human. She was battling with the one who'd come out of their mother's corpse. She had him pinned to the ground, using a swarm of fly bodies to slowly suffocate him. His legs jerked back and forth helplessly as his entire torso was covered in fly monsters.
Dexy took the chance to scramble out of the corpse pile and take off running toward his sister. Most of the humans were forming flesh cannons and firing at Buxtak who still stomped around in aimless circles.

Most. Not all.

Dexy made it about twenty yards before a huge human with two additional arms grafted onto his hips stepped in his path. The little monster skidded to a halt. He gulped and put his hands out in surrender. “N-Now wait a second. You don't really want to kill me, do you? I'm just a kid!”

The human smiled even wider than his pinned back cheeks forced him to. “Gnarlack wants to kill all Evils, even tiny Evils, which is what Gnarlack has been commanded to kill by his commanders.”

Before the four-armed man could say more, a swarm of fly monsters attacked his head, completely enveloping it before scattering a moment later, leaving nothing but a clean skull to rattle around in its head cage. A second later, blood gushed up from its neck and the whole big human fell on its back.
Willex reformed in front of her little brother. “Why didn't you kill him?” she asked, anger spewing from her voice. Her eyes were narrow slits. “It's over, Dexy. We've lost. All we can do now is kill as many of them as we can before they overwhelm us.” She touched her brother on the shoulder. “It's what mom and dad would want us to do.”

Dexy smiled. “It's not over yet, sis. Fly me up to the top of Buxtak's head. I'll tell you everything.”