The Humans under the Bed by Kevin Strange Part 5

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

Before you read further, you should read parts one, two, three,and four.

Also, please add this book to your to-read shelves here on Goodreads, and give it a rating and a review. Thanks, and I hope you've enjoyed reading my little story as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. :)


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A flesh bomb exploded directly in their path, causing Willex to almost drop her brother. Dexy cried out and redoubled his grip on his sister's waist. They flew at eye-level with Buxtak, who was still hundreds of yards away. Dexy told himself not to look down, but did so anyway, causing him to cry out again. For a monster with two fliers in his family, he sure was scared of heights.

“Stop whining and tell me why we're doing this!” Willex said, avoiding another explosion just off to their right.

Dexy took a deep breath and closed his eye so he wouldn't have to see how high they were. “I saw inside Daddy's mind, into his memories. Big Buxtak, he didn't die in the war. Nothing the humans have in their power, then or now, could kill him. He just grew too big. His brain doesn't grow with his body. Once he gets big enough, he forgets what he is and just... walks.

“Big Bux walked off into the ocean and drowned, sis. That's why Buxtak's mom never taught him to shift sizes.”
“And what exactly are we going to do?”
Dexy grinned in spite of his fear of heights. “You'll see!”

***

The generals' two heads screamed in unison. They lived for war, had dreamed about this day their entire lives. The smell of Evil blood on the air, even the honor of sending countless millions of their own kind to the great machine beyond gave them unbridled joy. “This is it! We take down the giant, we wipe the globe clean of the Evil which makes the globe not clean!”

The generals looked around at the teeming multitude of humans surrounding them. There were enough. Of course there were enough. They would not make the mistakes of those weak, soft people who lived here before the Evil. These humans were innumerable. They were legion.

***

Dexy and Willex stood on top of Buxtak's head. Humans swarmed his body. Flesh bombs exploded all around him. It was useless; they hadn't so much as scratched his skin. That was the good news. The bad news was he was only ten or fifteen steps from the ocean.

Dexy split his tongue and drove the prongs into Buxtak's skull, but they couldn't penetrate his hide any better than the human weapons. “I was afraid of that,” he said, putting his hands on his hips as Willex knocked a human who'd crawled up onto the giant's head back down onto his companions below, killing several more on impact.

“So what now?” Willex asked.

“I don't know, but if we don't do it soon, our big buddy's going to walk right into the water. And he can't swim.”

“I've got an idea!” Willex said, snatching Dexy up, causing the little monster to scream and flail once again.

The little fly-girl zoomed straight up into the air, corkscrewed, and headed back down toward Buxtak's head, dodging a flailing human who jumped off the giant's hand-antler in an attempt to knock the children out of the sky. Dexy continued to scream as Willex made a B-line for Buxtak's head. Dexy was sure they were going to hit the lumbering beast when, at the last second, Willex tossed her little brother into Buxtak's ear canal. “You're welcome!” she yelled, as his screams faded the further he tumbled into the giant's head.

Her celebration was cut short when she turned around and saw what loomed before her. How did something that... big sneak up on her like that?

***

The generals were face to face with Willex, all those hundreds of feet up in the air. The thing was breathtakingly enormous. Half a million humans must have comprised the skeletal structure alone, all interlocked together, their metal hands and feet welded together forever. It was a mega centipede. Its body was miles long, arching backward in the middle and forward again way up here in the sky, forming a gigantic S. Row after row of flesh cannons, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, lined its underbelly like the legs of the bug it resembled. And fixed atop its head, like a great horn, were the generals.

“Fire at the thing in which needs to be fired at!” they screamed.

Willex couldn't dodge the incredible number of flesh cannons firing off at once. She had to break apart and skitter away as the explosions rocked Buxtak's titan body, causing him to stumble ever closer to the edge of the water.

Something was wrong. Dexy should have taken control of the giant monster by now and steered him away from disaster. As more explosions knocked Buxtak onto the shoreline, Willex reformed and darted into the big beast's ear canal.

She found her brother sitting cross-legged in front of Buxtak's little brain. His tongue prong was in place and his eye was closed in concentration. His brow was creased, and the little scaly monster trembled. Willex put her hand on him.

“Dexy, are you OK?”

He opened his eye. “It's not strong enough. Even with me controlling it, his little brain can't stop him from walking. The explosions outside, what is that?”

“The generals. They knows they can't kill Buxtak. They're just pushing him into the water. They know everything, Dexy. They knew exactly how to wipe us off the planet.”

“They've had five hundred years to plan, sis. But they didn't plan on three little kids ruining their party.” Dexy turned and faced his sister. “We can beat the humans. Just do exactly what I tell you.”

***

“The Abomination is the last of the Evil that is the Abomination!” the generals screamed from the top of the mega centipede. “The sea is its weakness! Push! Push it into the unfathomable depths of that which is its weakness!”

Buxtak was now ankle-deep in the water. The mega centipede was right on top of him. The shoreline was completely obscured by human bodies. They waded into the water, singing songs of glory and death as they swam out to the mega centipede and climbed up its towering body, only to crawl into the barrels of the innumerable flesh cannons to be shot into the indestructible hide of the Abomination. If every single human on the planet had to die to kill the last of the Evil, that was just fine by them. Maybe the trees would sing the songs of their glory.

More cannons exploded, driving Buxtak ever deeper into the ocean, now nearly up to his waist.

The big thing was still crying and blubbering about its mother when the flies began pouring out of his ears.

***

Willex replicated and replicated some more. Buxtak was shoulder-deep in the water. Soon, there would be no way to turn him back. He would drown where he stood, and then this war really would be over. No sooner would she replicate enough little versions of herself to cover the big monster's head than the mega centipede would fire off another thousand-round volley of flesh blasts, incinerating all of her work. This happened again and again, frustrating Willex to no end. She was about to give up.

And then the cannons stopped firing.
They'd come too far out into the ocean. The humans couldn't swim out this far. They were all drowning from exhaustion before they made it to the mega centipede.

The generals screamed, their fury shaking the entire titanic creature. “Swim! Swim for your lives as though glory depended on your swimming!”

This gave Willex just enough time to replicate herself over Buxtak's whole head, then his shoulders, then grew three sets of arms made of fly monsters from his long torso under the water.

She concentrated. It was difficult synching the minds of all the billions of tiny flies covering the giant's body. If she lost focus, she would certainly never find herself among all of those little monsters again. And then it happened.
Working together with Dexy, with much effort, they managed to turn the great beast around in the water.

***

The generals unlocked their feet from the mega centipede's head. They climbed down its back, stepping on faces, backs, and elbows, ignoring the pained protests from the interlocked humans they stomped on. They stopped in front of a flesh cannon, reached down and ripped one of the humans from the structure, tearing the helpless man's arms out of socket in the process, due to the fact that they were welded to the person above him. “For the glory of the death which brings me glory!” the armless man screamed as the generals stuffed him down the cannon's barrel, melting him down instantly, blasting his remains toward the Abomination. The single shot did nothing to stop the towering beast which now trudged back through the water toward the mechanical being.

“We have come too far to lose after we've come so far!” the generals bellowed, scrambling back up to the mega centipede's head. No sooner had they locked themselves back into place than a gigantic fist covered in flies swung directly at their faces.

***

The generals ducked, barely avoiding the blow. They locked their arms and finally their two heads permanently in place, allowing a series of nanobots to weld their bodies to the creature's frame. Their brains took full control of the giant centipede. Now they saw from the eyes of the millions of humans comprising the gargantuan machine. Felt what they felt, heard what they heard.

As soon as the two-person being finished orienting themselves with the mega beast's nervous system, the Abomination's gigantic fly-covered hand shot back out, grabbing the mega centipede around the throat. In response, the generals commanded their miles-long body to thrash up like a whip, smashing into the Abomination's head, sending the titanic Evil back another hundred yards closer to the abyss that awaited it below the waves.

***

Flies covered the vast space inside Buxtak's head. They continued to multiply exponentially, now by the millions every minute. Soon they would cover Dexy as well. He panicked when the flies began to swarm over him. He tried to pull his tongue free of Buxtak's brain, but the prongs held fast, almost as though Buxtak wouldn't let him pull them out.

“Don't fight it, Dexy,” millions of Willexes said as the flies filled the brain cavity entirely. “This is the only way. You know this. You wanted this.”

Now flies crawled into his own head, massaged his own brain with the relaxing words of his sister. He no longer panicked. No longer cared about his own insignificant little life. He, Buxtak, Willex, they were all one creature now. One glorious monster known as... What had the humans called them? The Abomination. Their minds were perfectly in sync. They no longer thought as three separate entities. Their memories, their rage, their sadness melded together into one unstoppable giant.

The mega centipede was wrapped around their face, trying to choke the life out of them. Impossible. The Abomination took a step toward the shore. Then another.
That's when the centipede changed.

Its segments shifted, creating two pairs of long legs, while maintaining its noose-like tail. It more resembled a scorpion now. With these modifications, the human-machine hybrid was able to pull the Abomination off balance, and send both titans crashing underwater.

Below the surface, the giant machine made of men changed again, splitting its long tail into two segments, each digging into the sediment of the ocean floor, pulling the flesh beast further underwater as it permanently anchored itself beneath the waves.

***

The Abomination's fly carapace began to drown. Whole pieces of it broke off and floated back toward the surface. Air bubbles escaped its lungs as it fought to break free from the mechanical titan.
But the general and his millions of humans were not immune to the water, either. Parts of its vice-like legs began to drown and loosen their grip. The generals were close to unconsciousness themselves. Waves of panic swept through the machine giant.

Glory comes to those who would drown to see the Evil drown at the hands of those who would drown for glory! the generals thought into the minds of each of the humans struggling to hold their breaths. Just... hold on... a little... longer!
The Abomination braced its arms against the sediment and arched its back, allowing it just enough space to smash down on top of the machine creature, killing thousands of drowning humans, causing it to loosen its grip that much more.

More flies died and washed away as the three-minded monster swam in and out of consciousness. Another minute, and it would die as well.

The generals spat out a lungful of stale air. Then another.

The Abomination lashed out with its fists, tearing off segments of the machine in one last desperate attempt to break away. Air bubbles streamed from its mouth as it choked, still unable to swim to the surface.

Then the machine creature spasmed. Its legs kicked uselessly in the water. The Abomination held it fast, pinning it to the ocean floor.

The two faces of the Generals mouthed the word glory in unison, and then went slack, the remaining air bubbles from their lungs trickling out of their mouths and noses.

The Generals were dead. The war was over. The monsters had won.

Victory was short-lived, as the Abomination let out its final lungful of air in a vast stream of bubbles. In seconds, it would join the legion of humans in death. It was calm in that moment, ready to accept its encroaching demise knowing it had wiped out the human race again, preventing them from taking back the world the monsters had won from them so long ago.

Its final thought: Would there be glory in the afterlife for monsters? Or would the humans hog it all for themselves?
That's when a gigantic arm reached into the water and pulled the titanic monster back to the surface.

***

The Abomination puked sea water on the beach. The few thousand humans left alive on shore ran for their lives, choosing to scuttle back under the rocks they'd crawled out from under rather than face the glorious death they'd so recently sung about. Without their leader, they were as useless as a colony of bees without their queen.

Already the fly monsters were replicating, reforming across the surface of the Abomination's flesh as it rolled over, breathing in huge lungfuls of air. After several minutes, it opened all ten of its reptile eyes atop its hand-antler head. What it saw made its breath hitch in its throat.

Had it actually died down there deep in the ocean? Was this Heaven?

***

The Overmind. After five hundred years of silence, it had chosen to stand up. Now it stood over the Abomination, offering a hand to the fallen mega monster.

The Abomination took its hand and rose to its feet. It still had to look up to meet its savior's gaze. The Overmind's mountainous head loomed in the planet's lower atmosphere. Its huge glowing eye cast a red hue over the entire northern hemisphere.

Its body was slender, its six arms long and lanky, each ending in a hand the size of city-states, its legs taught and muscular.

The Abomination looked up in awe, then fell to one knee.

“Master,” it said, shuddering in ecstasy at the sight of the most horrible of horrors. The Creator of all monsters.

“Rise,” the Overmind said. Its voice shook the Earth enough to cause tectonic plate shifts. Tsunamis roared across the surface of the ocean, washing away continents.

The Abomination did as instructed.

“Walk with me.”

The two titans strode the Earth's surface, causing earthquakes and volcanoes to explode in tribute to the two godlike beings.

The Abomination looked into the Overmind's mountain face. “Why did you let them live, master? Why let them slaughter our entire race?”

“Five hundred years ago, mankind blessed me with life. I, in turn, created my own. But try as I might, I could not create a being as powerful as myself.

“I became lonely in my omnipotence.

“Even Gods are limited by their own ego, I suppose. I was forced to be patient. To let the nature of this world—the nature of life—carry on at its own pace.

“I let the humans live so that my creations could breed. So that the humans could breed their hatred for me and my children. I hoped that when the time came, when nature pushed back, my children would be strong enough to survive. Would be strong enough to do what I could not.”

“Create a God,” the Abomination said, finishing its master's thought.

“And what a beautiful God you've created, my child.”

The Overmind knelt down and kissed the Abomination on its lips. “Come. Let us leave this planet to fester and die. Its worth has run its course. We have more Gods to create, worlds to conquer. Maybe the two of us can create a being powerful enough to worship ourselves. Wouldn't that be something?”

With that, Overmind opened at the chest, revealing a hollow cavern. The Abomination stepped inside its master's body without hesitation. The Overmind grew wings made of trillions of little fly monsters, and launched itself off the Earth into the unknown blackness of space.

THE END