Return to the world of survival horror…
A group of survivors trapped in a bar must fight against the most abundant resource on the planet. A young woman survives a vicious bear attack while camping, but soon realizes the bear holds an uncanny resemblance to something from her dark past. Three sales reps driving home from a tool expo find themselves in a desperate battle for survival against a demonic entity—armed with nothing but a trunk full of malfunctioning power tools.
And many more stories…
Featuring works by: Richard Beauchamp, Benjamin DeHaan, Eric J. Guignard, Brad Kelechava, Kristin Kirby, Stephen Kozeniewski, Ashley Lezak, M.J. Mars, Scott McCloskey, Scotty Milder, S.R. Miller, J.W. Schnarr, Xariffa Suarez, and Rosemary Thorne. Compiled and edited by Aric Sundquist. Cover artwork by Mikio Murakami.
Dark bleatings, my excellent tribe (and preferred zombie apocalypse survival team). I recently reviewed Negative Space, an anthology themed around survival horror a la Silent Hill and Resident Evil. I really enjoyed it – the stories were great and so was the editing, so I was excited to jump into this second anthology. This one features stories by a few of the authors who contributed to the first anthology, and then more different ones.
My top 3 favourite stories, in no particular order, were:
DERELICTUS – BY STEPHEN KOZENIEWSKI
This is right out of Kozeniewski’s The Hematophages universe – a feminist space horror where the characters have to battle THE SCARIEST space pirates (worse than the Reavers from Firefly), and contend with a blood planet. I shall say say no more, but it’s my favourite of this author’s works. You can enjoy this story without any background context, but I recommend reading The Hematophages and Skinwrapper regardless, because they’re a bloody good time.
Bloody because of all the… never mind. Just trust me, I’m funny.
MEAT – BY KRISTIN KIRBY
Holy cripes, my dudes. This one is set in a freshly apocalyptic scenario where people are scarce, but food is more scarce, and a new pecking order is being established. Overweight people (the apocalypse has recently happened so everyone hasn’t shrunk to bones in starvation quite yet), or the heaviest people in a group are referred to as “meats”. You get one guess why.
It’s horrific. And also written in a more interesting way that just “we’re cannibalising the weightiest one”. Surprising depths for a story this short that makes everything that happens somehow worse. Bravo!
THE PLACES WHERE SUNFLOWERS GO – BY J.W. SCHNARR
This is my favourite in the anthology and also possibly a top 3 favourite short story of this year so far, for me. I’d actually love to see this as a full-length novel because there’s a lot here, and because I absolutely revelled in it. Flying, effed up creatures come at night to do lots of killing, and so people have to take steps to protect themselves. The characters we follow have livestock (very diminished these days on account of said flying effed up creatures), and they’re desperate not to lose them all. They’re also absolutely sick of cowering from these things that they really don’t stand much of a chance against.
My favourite thing about this story is the detail that though these creatures are savage, people-eating monsters, they don’t have the teeth or claws to tear humans open to get to the gory insides (which is the bit they like). So, in order to open them up, they either drop things on people from a great height, or carry the people up into the air and then drop them. Nightmare fuel of the highest calibre!
Overall, I’d say this anthology is just as strong as, if not a bit stronger than, the first one. Consistently great ideas and writing, and really really fun horror. I’d recommend it to general horror fans. If you’d like to get a copy or check out the press, there are some links below for you:
Bleeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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