I’ve been a fan of creepypastas (internet horror stories) for years and have always wanted to write one myself. I’m also a big fan of the song “Meat” by Poppy, which inspired this story. I wrote the first draft in summer of 2022 and revisited it in May of 2023. I posted half of it to the R/NoSleep subreddit on May 30, 2023 under the title, “I’m From a Future Where Aliens Farm Humans for Meat” since over there you need a title that stands out.
It was removed four days later for being more sci-fi than horror, which was fair.
This is the complete story, although I’m a little sad the few people who read the first part will never see the conclusion.
As for Lew Kyle, he took on a life of his own very early in the history of Law Bringer and this story was actually my first time writing him. Like with “DP” this story is not meant to be taken too seriously. The only thing canon about it is that Kyle did something similar to what he does in this story somewhere in the "Law Bringer" universe, but I hope you can enjoy it all the same.
I’m writing this in the present year, but this isn’t my time. I’m from a dark and terrible future, but I’ve been given the chance to write this warning to you. I’m hoping it will help you survive what’s coming.
First a little about me, I’m from the south born and raised. Due to some complicated family drama, I ended up the twenty-four-year-old guardian of my younger sister Teri who was fourteen in 2033, right before…well I’ll get to that soon enough. But either way, the two of us lived in a small house on the outskirts of a tiny town off the beaten path. I worked hard back then to take care of my sister while she focused on her school. It was an OK life if rough at times. We couldn’t have known what was coming, no one could. They were coming.
I know it sounds unbelievable, but it happened or will happen I should say. Aliens invaded every corner of the planet and World War 3 began overnight. Of course, it didn’t go well for us humans. In the space of about a month the narrative of, “We’ll send these aliens back from where they came from,” collapsed and humanity ended up in a losing running battle as the aliens’ robot armies overran city after city, country after country.
One morning, a couple of weeks into it my sister and I were eating at the kitchen table. The schools had been closed even though the battles were going down on the other side of the state. We both saw the news on our screens, but I tried telling my little sister everything was going to be OK, although even back then I didn’t believe it.
The planet was divided into free land and occupied zones, the latter run by the aliens. No one knew what went on in the zones since no reports or news got out of them, but even then, I knew it couldn’t be anything good. I had no idea how right I was, but I would find out.
Our family homestead ended up behind enemy lines. I decided we’d hunker down and see how things went. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen since no one was going to save us…at least not yet. Unfortunately, as our supplies dwindled and the fighting got closer, I told my sister we needed to make a run for it. We didn’t make it.
After being captured by some drone scouts while trekking through the wilderness we ended up in an empty field outside of a burning city in a mob of thousands of people. The aliens divided us humans up into groups and then loaded those groups into trucks. A drone pulled my sister away from me. I started a scene to keep her with me, but all I had to show for it was a mark on my cheek.
Next, I ended up in the back of a windowless truck. Light peeked in through the canvas at the back allowing us ragged prisoners to look at each other, but no one dared speak a word. The brakes squealed. Some people fell out of their seats from the force. The tension in the back thickened until the gray canvas parted revealing the front of an elongated beige alien head, its beady red eyes examining us. He swept aside the canvas cover to reveal several drones around him. The alien spoke in a series of harsh snarls and growls, which I later found out amounted to their language. The wild swings and gestures with his long skeletal arms gave us the message to get out as soon as possible.
This alien was freakishly tall at least nine feet about average for their species. He had beige colored skin and a freakishly long head with sunken red eyes and big teeth jutting out of its mouth. I hopped out and joined the group forming in the grass on the side of the road. Another guy hesitated at the sight of the drop. The alien grabbed his arm and yanked him off. The man landed with a thud and then floundered in the dirt as the thing screeched at him.
The drones hovered around my group. One of them said to us in a deep voice, “The meat will finish the journey on foot.”
The skies above were gray as we trudged towards our destination off in the distance. Chain link fences hanging on wooden poles surrounding drab metal buildings. This was one of dozens of the aliens’ camps spread across the planet. We passed another truck in front of the one we got here in. Smoke bellowed out from under the hood as robots climbed all over it.
Closer to the gate some commotion erupted. One guy made a break for it. There was a huge field to the right and at the end of it a forest. There was no way he was going to make it on foot.
“Halt meat! Halt!” a drone said while holding up a metal hand. Our group waited to see if the man would get his freedom. One of the aliens screeched and stepped away from the caravan. The man raced across the wide field. The alien raised its weapon. One of his friends, colored a pale shade of white got behind him and watched from over his shoulder. The runner closed in on the tree line. The gun fired. He dropped in the mud a few feet from his destination. The alien lifted its gun in triumph. His pale friend put a hand on his shoulder and opened his mouth into what I guess was a smile.
We got moving again. I passed through the gates into the yard as eyes from the watchtowers bore down on me and my fellow prisoners. There was no tour, we went straight into the building in front of us. The smell hit me first, blood and other fluids hung in the air as a permanent musk that burned my nose and eyes. The screams of humans and the thumping of heavy machinery in the distant parts of the building mixed together and assaulted my ears.
I didn’t see anything that day. The drones herded us into an enclosed area completely walled off and lit with the same low red lighting as the rest of the place. In the middle of the room were pens made of sharp wire reaching up toward the ceiling. Ten or so of us squeezed into one pen and the doors closed behind us and were tied off with heavy chains. For weeks, although it felt like months (it was hard to keep track) most of my time was spent there. My days consisted of waking up surrounded by ten random people, being escorted through the maze of hallways to the feeding area, and ending up back where we started. Sometimes the same pen, sometimes a different one and usually with a new group of faces. The aliens feed as blue slop, which tasted bad and I would later learn had a very undesirable ingredient. For a month this was my life until the big night.
I sat on the cold floor with a sea of legs around me (it was my turn to sit) and then the heavy doors at the front of the room creaked slowly. The aliens didn’t bother us at night (one of our few comforts) so thoughts of fear and worry erupted in my mind. Clamoring traveled my way from the pens closer to the door. I pushed my way to the wires so I could face the hallway. Figures in the dark moved around the cages. A bearded man in fatigues holding a rifle approached, “Keep it down, we’re here to bust you out,” he said in a harsh whisper.
Another man came over with huge bolt cutters. The chain clasped around the door fell with a metallic thud.
I went with the flow as we all spilled out into the area around the cages. Our rescuers were part of a resistance group and one of them ordered us to stay put. No one argued. Some of the resistance members went to work on the other locks while others remained in the growing crowd of escapees.
Among these armed saviors I spotted a familiar face, one I never thought I’d see again.
“Kyle!” I said wading through the crowd toward the tall muscular man armed to the teeth. He wore the same discount vigilante outfit like when I first met him the longest month before. I should have mentioned this earlier, but about a month before the aliens arrived, this guy Lew Kyle saved me and my sister from being mugged in a parking lot. He said he was an intergalactic vigilante or something. I thought he was crazy. Back then, I didn’t think aliens existed. Boy was I wrong. In my defense Kyle passed as human if an extremely athletic one.
He glared at me with squinted eyes, but then they widened with recognition,
“Oh, hey dork, good to see you. I thought you’d be dead by now.”
“Wait, why would I be dead?” I said.
“Well, you know, between the global war, Mad Max savages, and being put on the aliens’ menu, it was a distinct possibility.”
“There are Mad Max savages?”
“Not anymore,” he said, tapping his massive gun.
“I thought you said you were leaving the planet?”
“I was until the aliens made getting off a bit of a mess so I fell in with these guys. They’re not the best soldiers, but don’t worry, stick close to me and I’ll get you out alive.”
He shoved me aside and fired into the rafters. Bullets clanged as they ricocheted off metal. A second later the limp mechanical body of a drone hung over the railing of a catwalk above us.
Several of my fellow prisoners got off the ground and removed their hands from their ears, while the rest remained crouched. A resistance member glared at the man holding the machine gun.
“Think they heard that?” Kyle said.
Alarms blared and the lights came on.
“Well,” Kyle said while pulling something out of his vest, “since our covers’ blown might us well do this.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You’ll see, but first let’s get out of here.”
The group of soldiers led us out of the holding room and into the hallway. I stuck close to the mighty Kyle confident he’d keep his word. Halfway on our trip the walls shook as a huge explosion roared in the distance in the direction of the front gate.
“What was that?” I said resuming my pace.
Kyle smiled, “Nothing, I just rammed a truck loaded with explosives through the front door.” The group turned down a hall I hadn’t visited before. There were two doors at the end.
“Get ready to run,” Kyle said.
Resistance members shoved the gates open. Prisoners flowed out the narrow exit and then scattered. I was in the middle of the crowd, but even in the dim moonlight one quick glance let me know we had come out the side exit meaning the vast field the unfortunate runner tried to cross the day I arrived lay between all of us and the fence along the woods.
A floodlight pierced the darkness and lit up a gaggle of ragged people running across the field of dead grass. I traced the searching beam to one of the guard towers. More spotlights coming from all sides of us lit up the field. The dozen or more of them showed hundreds of humans sweeping the field. Some guy tumbled beside me and I saw he had a weird dart sticking out of his back. He contorted on the ground as everyone ran around him. No one had time to help the wounded.
My trigger-happy friend halted and I followed his lead. He fired in the direction of a building to our left. Aliens, drones, and spotlights congregated on its roof. His gunfire added to the deafening chaos and more resistance fighters joined the chorus of gunfire. Bullets whizzed by, hundreds of voices screamed, alarms wailed, and electro darts flew through the night sky in blue streaks.
“Keep going! I’m right behind you!” He shouted at the top of his lungs his gun going off the whole time.
I raced to catch up with the front of the group. I was still a good way from the fence by the woods, but I saw soldiers milled around a hole in the fence through which my fellow captives streamed through. They worked under a spotlight until it vanished. Probably hit by a bullet. Either way, I had gotten a quick glance of the way to freedom. Though, it wouldn’t be my way.
Bullets ripped through the crowd of people to my right. Dirt kicked up, people dropped and either flailed on the ground screaming or else lay still. Resistance soldiers rushed past me. A few seconds later the gunfire intensified and then died. I spared a glance in their direction. One of the roaming lights passed over a pile of mangled bodies.
“Kyle! If we don’t take out that technical we’re blown!” A man said to the vigilante or at least that’s what he told me. I was going the opposite direction when Kyle got his mission. I didn’t get much further though. I felt a sharp pain in my back like someone stabbed me with a giant needle. I tumbled as electricity flowed through my body. My muscles wouldn’t obey me so I was left on the ground as legs stomped past me. I couldn’t see well from the angle I landed in, but I could hear just fine.
“Hounds! The Hounds!” someone shouted.
I rolled over with a struggle and something drew my attention. I craned my neck and saw the huge figure of Kyle a short distance away. Two soldiers had their arms wrapped around him. They were practically pulling him off the battlefield.
“I’ll come back for you! I promise!”
He left my limited field of vision and soon the steady stream of running legs dwindled and then ended. One of the hounds followed them with all eight of its legs thundering along the ground. Silver fur coated its body and it was the size of a small elephant. A wave of drones and aliens followed the beast. They surged across the field of trampled grass to continue the pursuit into the woods. I wouldn’t see any of it; my part in the night’s events was over. Except for one last thing…
One of the aliens halted next to me. He towered over me more than usual and we shared glances. He carried a weird baton in one hand with blue sparks flying off it. The thing jabbed me in the stomach as I lay there helpless. I cried out, but he responded by driving the weapon deeper into my flesh. I stayed there on the ground staring at the grinning face of the alien lit up by the blue light of the prod.
This is getting long. I’ll continue in another post, but for now watch the skies.
****
I trudged the path leading to the camp’s front gate. This was a new camp, but I honestly couldn’t tell. These aliens built all these places the same plus the same gray sky hung overhead. I hadn’t seen the sun since the beginning of all this.
As soon as I walked through the steel doors the optic lens of a drone examined us from the control booth.
In an ugly hallway with grimy walls a man behind me stumbled. Someone next to him tugged his arm, but he stayed down. An alien overseer advanced on them in a second. He shoved the man aside and kicked the other in the stomach. My blank stare kept ahead, I left the screaming and shouting behind.
The cycle returned and I reached my lowest point. One day during our march to the meal area a drone directed us down a different hallway. I thought this was the end. Left meant blue goo, but right meant the slaughter area and the end.
Aliens each manned a table arranged in two neat rows. We walked behind them, as they worked with giant knives. Blood pooled below the tables and a very human arm rested on top of one.
A shrill cry ranged out and persisted. It ended, but another guy continued his. Our robot guards halted us. A butcher gripped its long bony hand and howled in a terrible voice. A finger bled on the floor. Another alien walked over and berated the clumsy worker.
Death march resumed, machines and screaming rang louder here. I kept my eyes down. I didn’t want to see what was coming.
Nothing happened. The noise faded and then ceased as we entered the eating area from a different route. I never learned why it happened. Maybe a pipe burst along our normal path or something.
A few days later, as I slumped along the wire the usual night chatter grew into a commotion. Word passed to us of a huge heavily armed man looking for someone.
I pressed against the wire careful to avoid being cut.
“Kyle?”
“There you are dork.” The vigilante approached my pen. He dressed in his normal gear, except a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder instead of a machine gun.
“What are you doing here?”
“I promised I’d come back for you,” he said and then produced a large flashlight from one of his many pockets.
“Might want to step back.”
The device burned through the chains. We all poured out and then surrounded our savior.
“Let’s get going,” he said. The other pens didn’t like that.
“What about the rest of us?” someone said.
“You can’t just leave us!” another said.
“Everyone shut up,” Kyle said in a raised tone. “I promise you all will be free soon enough, but I can’t take you all right now. Just stay quiet or no one will make it out”
A man with a gray beard poking out the cage spoke up. “Why should we be quiet?”
Kyle pulled the man up to the wire and whipped out a pistol. He pointed it to the man’s forehead.
“Because if you don’t shut up you definitely won’t survive this.”
We moved through the hallways bathed in red light. Alarms came alive and blared all around. Now we raced.
“Took them longer to find out than I thought,” he said.
The vigilante stopped us at a corner. The front doors stood around it along with a growing number of guards.
He chucked a couple of grenades their way. I covered my ears. The blast shook the place.
He moved in pistols drawn. We crept behind him. Robot and alien parts littered the area. Inside the nearby control booth, a drone pressed buttons in a steady manner. The rocket launcher came around and blew the booth and occupant to bits. Kyle dropped the launcher and strolled over to smoking wreckage. The drone hung over the shattered window frame. He reached in and searched for the button.
The doors creaked open.
“You guys coming?”
Bulky vigilante as our shield, we marched into the yard. Flashlights shined on us, as if the early morning light wasn’t enough. The lights on us increased with each step.
Dozens of drones and aliens aimed weapons and demanded our surrender. Hounds screeched as their handlers restrained them.
Our hero strolled forward and then halted in the middle of the yard. We all stopped with him.
“This is your plan?” I asked.
“Nope, just got to prepare the most dramatic entrance possible.”
A chalk white alien lumbered toward us. Its eyes bulged even the one with the scar slashed across it. They bored at Kyle who remained unfazed.
Blue light descended from the heavens and created a pillar between us and the overseer. It disappeared and left behind a small blue blob. The thing straightened and then slid along the grass. Anger left the alien’s scarred face, but I couldn’t tell what replaced it. It just wasn’t happy.
No one or nothing else moved as a machine inside the blob projected a language I didn’t understand. I also didn’t understand the growls and shrieks the overseer shot back at him.
“What is happening?”
“The blue blob is with basically the space U.N. He’s trying to explain that since you guys are intelligent that makes this whole invasion a big no, no. According to the rules, you gotta beat the greatest warrior of a planet in a one-on-one fight first and then you can do whatever you want to the people on it.”
“He’s explaining all that to him?”
“Actually, he’s still stuck at the part of you guys being intelligent. Not everyone gets that part.”
I tried to wrap my head around it. A blob shorter than my teenage sister Teri and wearing a sash stood in front of several towering aliens.
“What human could defeat those things?”
“It doesn’t have to be a native just a citizen.” He pulled a passport from his vest.
“Good thing I convinced one of your governments to give me this. Fight is pending, but until then everyone has to stop what they’re doing, which is why I had to bust you out tonight. I couldn’t let you stay in this nightmare place.”
“But, we’re not out.”
“If we’re this close to the diplomat we are. Don’t worry, I arranged for a resistance cell to pick you up so all you have to worry about is having a good seat to watch me win.”
It all happened the way it said. Down the road, the resistance picked us up and Kyle walked off in the other direction. With his back to me, the mysterious figure moved on alone. I never saw him alive again.
One trip through war torn country later and I reached a mountain with a resistance camp located under it. Hundreds had lived like mole people here for months. The mood was high, probably because of the upcoming fight and hopeful liberation. Some voices of despair hung around, but I’m not surprised people were skeptical. Especially of someone like Kyle.
A month later, the day came. I found myself in a natural cavern converted into a meeting area. A hundred or more people packed in to stare at a giant TV mounted on the wall. Apparently, the space U.N. took this all very seriously and a professional camera crew stood on scene.
Hardly anyone gathered in the stadium. A few human politicians and several of the Etyemeks sat on opposite ends above the dead grass. The blue ambassador got things going. Kyle stepped onto the field, his rugged vigilante glory on full display. In place of guns, he wielded brass knuckles. Nasty and imposing to be sure, but I didn’t want the fate of my species to depend on his hand-to-hand combat skills. Especially after I saw his opponent.
Many gasps escaped as the feed switched to Kyle’s foe.
This alien came in a pale shade like many of the others I had grown to hate from my time in the slaughterhouses. The resemblance ended there.
He hunched forward and leaned on his right arm, which was larger than his other. Everything was larger about him. Muscles bulged all over the normally skeletal frame of these aliens. Spikes jutted out from the big forearm and elbow. His name scrolled along the bottom of the screen, but history remembers him as The Champion.
People around me muttered their worries, but I kept silent. I didn’t doubt the aliens had picked their best warrior, I just hoped Kyle was better.
On the field, the two squared off. The alien charged and swiped with his big arm. Kyle slid under the spikes and got in a solid punch at his ribs. Annoyed, he swung again. Kyle dodged and socked his face. The vigilante leapt back to avoid the return blow. Dirt and grass flew as the downward punch cratered the spot Kyle occupied a second before. Powerful blows lashed out and around, but Kyle slipped away each time. He jabbed the alien in the knees, elbows, and face as each opportunity arose. One punch sent a long-angled tooth through the air. The champion showed no other damage as the minutes passed.
The alien howled and then made a mad rush. Kyle fell back against the flurry of blows, but one backhand smacked him. He flew and landed far away from his foe. Rolling to a stop, the man hunched over on his knees and didn’t stand again.
I remember my own tension, but I ignored the movements and words of everyone around me. I know I held my breath as our planet’s last hope writhed on the ground.
The alien lumbered over. He picked himself up then collapsed again. The champion reached him. He loomed over the downed man and raised his big arm. A long spike hovered ready to pierce the man’s heart.
Kyle sprang. He flung dirt at the alien’s face. The spike came down. It hit the ground. The vigilante kicked the champion’s leg, it bent at an awkward angle with a sickening crack. Another punch at the other leg’s knee popped the bone right out. He staggered half-blind. Kyle’s uppercut knocked the hulk of muscle on his back. The vigilante pounced. He punched the wounded alien again and again. Green blood oozed out as his skull split.
Humans across the world held back cheers. No one knew if it was over, despite the punishment Kyle delivered, we didn’t know how much these aliens could take.
Those cheers died as the beating went on. Fifteen times Kyle punched as he sat atop the alien champion. The last few connected with a squelching noise.
Finally, Kyle straightened. He panted and stared off into space. The sun returned to the skies.
Below him, a featureless pulp couldn’t stare back. He shrugged and leapt off the corpse.
The camp cheered as our hero raised his arms high above his head. Resistance members hushed us. The blue blob filled the screen as he made the announcement heard across the universe,
“Earth is hereby declared the winner of the hero’s challenge and under the KC-Kelee Treaty, The Consortium’s invasion is found illegal. They will remove themselves from the planet as soon as possible, never to return.”
Of course, the camp threw a huge party, but I sulked around the edges. My sister was still out there. Over the last month I had asked around if anyone could find her, but no one could see the alien’s records. Or knew if they kept any.
I had to wait until the daunting task of getting everyone home (assuming it was still standing) got underway to find out she made it too.
Teri ended up in a camp a couple of states over and went through the same stuff I did. It took a while for her to open up to me about her time in the camp, but it messed her up too.
In the spring, we returned to our little house in the middle of nowhere. Except for a broken front window, it had been passed over thank God.
Inside, I found a note:
“Dear [NAME REDACTED],
I’m sorry I couldn’t give you this in person and also for the broken window, but I didn’t have a key. The gift I left should cover it.
I hope you had a good seat for the show and enjoy having your planet back. I got business on other worlds because like I said the night we met. It’s a big universe out there.
Have a nice life, your friend Lewis Kyle.
P.S. If you’re not [not my real full name] then please pass this to the next house over outside.”
The gift turned out to be a few gold bars. I don’t know where he got them, but I’m sure it was on the up-and-up. Either way, it was more than enough to get the two of us back on our feet. I haven’t seen Kyle since, although he’s gotten statues made of and movies made about him. The planet still doesn’t get many off-worlders, but some of those who do come badmouth him as a remorseless killer or something. I don’t doubt the stories are true, but the Kyle I knew was different. He’s done a lot of things in the universe, some good some bad, but around here he’ll always be our hero.
It’s been many years since these events took place and I’ve written about them plenty of times or at least I will. The only reason I’m allowed to write this is because no one in my time thinks anyone important will believe this story. I guess I should be glad since the story does have a happy ending. But if history doesn’t repeat itself then remember you might not always have a hero in life to save the day. 2033 is getting closer and you might need to figure out how to save yourself or everyone.
Good luck.
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