Free Hissers II: Death March by Ryan C. Thomas Page A

Together, they stood up, grabbed their guns and moved to the small window overlooking the pasture between the barn and the farmhouse. There it was, a mass of skulking death. The creature was moving up the walkway toward the house, its gratuitous arms, legs and heads all swiveling about as it searched for something to kill.
    “It’ s rogue,” Olive whispered.
    She was right, it was alone, not the common sight for these things. “Why?” Conner asked.
    “Beats me. Gave up hanging out with its friends? Got lost?”
    “I think all its friends are part of it. I mean, this little area is small and just farms, right? Just a few dozen people. Probably killed every farmer within ten miles and there’s your result.”
    “You might be right , kid. Might be why it’s come back here. It’s all it knows. Either that or it’s trying to follow the sounds of those helicopters off in the distance.”
    “So what do we do?”
    Olive bit her lip. “Let’s just wait and see what it does. Maybe it’ll just go away.”
    “We can’t fight that thing if it gets in here.”
    “Sure we can, that’s why we came in here, remember? That’s why we’re in the loft. We’ve got the high ground, we’ve got the weapons. If it wants us it has to climb and we can knock it down.”
    It was a good strategy, Connor thought. He and Set h had used it themselves in first person shooter video games many times. “But if we make loud noises, gunshots, it’ll bring more.”
    “Not necessarily . If that’s all the residents of this village rolled into one ball of fun then we might be okay to risk it.”
    As they watched, the monster approached the house. Human heads, like eye stalks, maneuvered about looking for prey. It ambled up the fro nt porch and stopped to look into the front picture window. After a moment of scratching lightly against the house’s façade, it merely pushed through the window, shattering the glass, and shoved its way inside.
    It s dim shadow passed back and forth a few times, then disappeared. Connor could just barely hear things breaking inside the house as it moved from room to room.
    “It’s looking for something,” he said. “Like it’s got a something specific in mind.”
    “Food. People. Who knows?”
    They continued to watch but saw no further signs of movement for several minutes. Then, it suddenly appeared on top of the house. It sat there like a gargoyle and looked out over the land, watching, occasionally turning, but mostly looking at the barn and beyond it toward the state road.
    “Ah shit,” Olive said. “It’s waiting for cars to pass by.”
    In the moonlight, Connor could now make out certain faces that formed the creature’s eyes. An old African American man with a white beard. A teenage girl with dyed streaked hair. A small girl with pigtails. A chubby white man who was balding. There were other faces too but that bottom line was they were all dead, and all the type of faces that formed Small Town America.
    “It’s a big one,” he said. “I count about fourteen heads”
    “That we can see,” Olive replied. “Might be more underneath or on top. But yeah, that’ a big one. Might be two of ’em became one.”
    There was a thought Connor had not considered. If the fusing body parts of a dozen undead humans could make thing monstrosity, what was to say a dozen monstrosities couldn’t make a giant beast as big as a dinosaur.
    On top of the house, the hissing creature sat still now on nearly twenty human legs and arms. Off in the distance, another gunshot rang out. The creature appeared unperturbed, but its heads continued to swivel as it kept watch.
    It was another few minutes before it moved again. “Where’s it going now? ” Connor asked. “I didn’t hear any cars.”
    “Me either.”
    The spider monster crawled down the front of the house, its multiple mouths hissing like a ruptured air hose, and crawled onto the front lawn. It continued walking, heading for the barn, coming straight