The soldiers kept on alternating between running away and firing their weapons. But they couldn't get away. Their enemy would soon be everywhere.
This monster had arrived on their planet just a couple of days ago on some strange metal pod (it was all over the news reports) but now almost the entire continent had been subsumed by it, while the rest of the world was being ravaged by the creatures it had spawned. Balls of flesh covered by eyes and wings that spewed poison and hallucinogens into the air. Insectoid things with metal exoskeleton that cut people to pieces with their sword-like appendages, bringing the bodyparts back to the monster that summoned them to be absorbed, experimented upon or turned into more monsters, each of them more grotesque than the last. By the time the governments of the world figured out what was happening and started coordinating a unified response, it was too late. Like the altered wars in a smaller scale.
The gauss shells and lasers burned and tore pieces off the monster, but that only served to slow it down, if that. Soon, the missing flesh was replaced while any blood they spilt or pieces they cut were simply absorbed by it, recycled and reused. It was of no use now. The nukes had failed. The bioweapons had failed. They were out of time and out of options. They were just delaying the inevitable.
Their futile efforts must have caught the attention of the monster, for a large number of eyes appeared on the wall of flesh and looked at them for a few seconds. Then the gauss shells that had been embedded deeper into its flesh were expelled, launched back at them. An act of mercy, perhaps, an attempt to make them cease their struggling and put them out of their misery. Or simply a chance to gain some enjoyment by torturing the helpless.
"You think destroying my flesh will accomplish something?" the bubbling wall of flesh mocked the retreating soldiers, thousands of human mouths appearing and disappearing on its surface, snapping at them menacingly.
"Whatever you cut, I can just regrow! Because I'm not just an ordinary run-of-the-mill shapeshifting fleshorror! Oh, no. I am a Grate-powered fleshhorror!"