Five Strips of Flesh

By Christopher Cox

Five new tales from horror writer Christopher R. Cox.

Suicyclone

“The SuiCyclone was another fast coaster- technically the third in the park. Six riders at a time would be lifted up to the first peak, 1,670 feet up in the air, before rocketing 1,600 feet towards the ground at 200 miles per hour. Just 70 feet above the treetops, it would level out and hit seven tight invasions, each one smaller than the last. By the end of the three-minute ride, each rider would be dead.”

Ollie didn’t understand how the ride worked. But then again, he didn’t need to. He worked in the body pit- more formally known as the remains recover area at the end of the ride- and his job was to prepare the riders for a dignified burial.

Sometimes, not every rider is ready to be get off.

The North Bay Bridge Club

Three friends, each with a different reason for leaving their small home towns. They only need to make it as far as the next town over, but life has other plans.

Dahmer Flu

This is the original short story, later expanded into the full-length novel of the same name.

Humanity’s bitter end was bloody and violent. In those final days, the air was filled with the smell of decay and the moans of the undead; it wasn't long before society crumbled entirely.

Bradley Harris lost everything then. All he had left was his family, and he would do anything he had to do to keep his pregnant wife and two children alive. Whether on foot or on the road, they’ll keep pressing north, hoping to get above the snow line and wait out the apocalypse.

The only problem is there’s no end in sight.

This terrifying tale explores what happens when a family is forced to adapt to a changing world, or die trying. And when disaster strikes, they begin to wonder- can the living be worse than the undead?

Shadows

Death is a shadow. An ever-present, timeless force that lurks just outside of our vision. Always nearby, always waiting.

When one of the many shadows becomes aware of itself, it finds that it can not only take the dead- it can also kill.

Unlike most, Dante Inferno Quinn can see that shadow. When it takes someone closest to him, he’s powerless to stop it. Finding it again becomes an obsession, and he’ll do anything to prove to his wife that their child didn’t just die, but that their son was murdered.

Anything.

The Judas Goat

Brett and Ella were the last two residents of Fairview. Everyone else left in the evacuations. Everyone else was now dead. That didn’t stop them from coming back home.

Determined to survive, the pair holds their own by scavenging the surrounding towns. Forced further and further out, each trip becomes more dangerous than the last.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christopher Cox
• Release date: Sep 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370264346

Christopher Cox

Christopher Cox has written about politics, business, books, and science for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Harper’s, Wired, and Slate. In 2020, he was named a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a visiting scholar at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He was formerly the chief editor of Harper’s Magazine and executive editor of GQ, where he worked on stories that won the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN Literary Award for Journalism, and multiple National Magazine Awards. Cox was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and went to college at Harvard University and graduate school at the University of Cambridge. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Georgia, and their two daughters, Carson and Alice.

Book preview

Five Strips of Flesh

by

Christopher Cox

Five Strips of Flesh

Published by Christopher Cox at Smashwords

Copyright 2017 Christopher Cox

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Tell me—after my head is chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.

—Peter Kurten, German serial killer. Died 1931

Reality is more terrifying than anything we can ever invent.

Contents

Suicyclone

The North Bay Bridge Club

Dahmer Flu

Shadows

The Judas Goat

Suicyclone

There were only two rules at Frontier Family Funland: Treat every guest like they’re the only guest, and no one cries. Ever.

Of course, the second rule only applied to the staff. The guests could cry as much as they wanted to, if they felt the need. But if they ever saw the staff do it, they wouldn’t want to come back next time.

There were two main sections in the park. The original was built by Alfred Voss in 1974. It had two fast coasters- The Last Run and The Apocalypse. It had a couple tamer ones for the younger crowd, too. But mostly there were circular rides, like the Twister and Lasso. They could pack in a good amount of fun without taking up too much precious space. That real estate was needed for the concession stands and souvenir shops. Those were the real moneymakers of the park.

There was a children's section, too: Little Buckaroos. Nothing went very fast in the kid's area; even The Stampede, the frontier-themed merry go round, operated at a more of a leisurely pace than the name would suggest. And every hour on the hour there was a Wild West shootout between the cowboys (the good guys in white) and the bandits (who, to keep things simple, wore black). In the land of the Little Buckaroos, the heroes always won.

They added the other section a few years after Voss died, once the laws changed to allow it. Seeing an opportunity, the new owners bought the neighboring lot and built just one ride: the SuiCyclone.

The SuiCyclone was another fast coaster- technically the third in the park. Six riders at a time would be lifted up to the first peak, 1,670 feet up in the air, before rocketing 1,600 feet towards the ground at 200 miles per hour. Just 70 feet above the treetops, it would level out and hit seven tight invasions, each one smaller than the last. By the end of the three-minute ride, each one would be dead.

That last part, of course, was what they paid for. It was advertised on television and in print as being ‘a fun final ride,’ but it was the quick exit and lack of pain that attracted most of the guests.

It’s the g-forces, Todd had explained during training. He could tell Ollie didn’t really understand, so he tried again. Cuts off the oxygen to the brain. They black out and they don’t wake up again. Do you understand?

Ollie had nodded, but he didn’t understand. Even after a year at the park, he still didn’t know how the ride actually worked. But that wasn’t really his job. His job was very simple, and he took a great deal of pride in doing it well.

In the morning, before the ride opened, maintenance and upkeep. He’d give the sign at the station entrance a fresh coat of paint whether it needed it or not. Big, bright letters welcoming riders to the SuiCyclone. There was a picture on it, too- a silhouette of the coaster ending in a bright, colorful rendition of what Ollie assumed to be heaven. There were people in that afterlife, and they were all smiling. Ollie liked the sign and the message it presented, and he kept it as pristine as possible for the guests’ last ride.

Once the ride started running for the day, he’d move over to the body pit. That’s not what they called it in front of the guests, of course. That much was drilled into them from day one. As far as guests knew, those that cared to ask, it was the ‘Remains Recovery Area’- a covered building at the end of the final track where the deceased were removed from the cars and prepared for pickup.

Remember, Ollie, Todd had said as another train pulled into the shack. These are people. Real people. They have loved ones that care about them, so we should, too. The least we can do is treat them with some dignity.

He told Ollie that same thing more than once. It seemed to be important to him, so it became important to Ollie.

Ollie thought for a long moment. Death wasn’t as scary to him as it used to be; it was something that one could acclimate to, given enough time. But he still didn’t really understand it.

Todd?

Yes, Ollie?

Todd waited. He knew that Ollie would need a few moments to gather his thoughts. He never rushed him; Ollie was self-conscious enough without yet another person pressing him.

Why do people do it? Come here, I mean.

Todd stopped what he was doing. He had a habit of giving everyone his fullest attention, no matter what else he was doing at the time. To the SuiCyclone?

Yes, Ollie nodded. Here to die. Why?

Todd thought for a moment. They all have their reasons, I suppose. Some of them are dying already, and they want to go out on their own terms. Others, maybe they’re just ready to go for one reason or another. It’s not my place to judge; I just try to do right by them when they do.

Ollie missed Todd. He still remembered the feeling of dream, when he saw him standing in line one day. He knew he had been sick, but he hadn’t realized just how sick he really was.

Hey, Todd, Ollie said. Employees weren’t supposed to talk to guests in line, but this seemed a little bit different. He figured that if he was wrong, Todd would let him know. he was on his lunch break, anyway, so the work would still get done.

Hey, Ollie.

Going for a ride, huh?

Yeah, Todd replied absently. Going for a ride.

Another car took off. The line moved a little bit closer, and Ollie followed Todd’s place in it. Alex is working. She’ll take real good care of you. Alex was the floater. She covered the pit when one of the workers went to lunch. Ollie liked it when she was working. She seemed to really care.

Todd nodded. That’s good. The line moved up again. Closer.

They made small talk until Todd reached the queue. Ollie was sad to see him go, but he did his best to hide that fact. He did what he always did: he remembered that sign and its promise of heaven. It helped.

Goodbye, Todd, he said. He forced a smile.

Bye, Ollie.

Ollie watched as his friend shuffled onto the car and was carefully strapped in by the somber, polite attendant, but he turned around before the car rocketed off towards the first rise. He couldn’t watch the rest. He already knew what would happen. He was just glad Todd waited for his break to do it.

As the days passed by, Ollie tried to remember that his friend was in a better place; tried to imagine him with the smiling people on the sign. It didn’t help much, but it helped a little.

Jackson Valence was hired on just a few days after Todd took his final ride. It wasn’t easy to find someone willing to work the pit and the bosses weren’t terribly picky anyway, so they ended up with the short, squat albino from southern California. All in all, he was an ugly man. Not just physically- he couldn’t help that and it would have been unfair to hold it against him. But he was ugly inside.

Hey Opie, Jackson called one day from the rear of the train.

Ollie, he corrected.

Like I give a shit. Help me out with this fat fuck before the next train comes.

Ollie didn’t rush. He never rushed. He was in the middle of moving a young woman over to an available slab. She couldn’t have been more than twenty; he wondered what had been wrong with her.

And so it went, ride after ride. Ollie would carefully remove the deceased from the car and lay them reverently on the slab, while Ollie would pull them free by whatever appendage he could grab and swear at them when they weren’t easy enough to move.

Often it would happen that the departed would void their bowels or the contents of their stomach at the moment of death; the stench could grow to the point of unbearable in the poorly-insulated room. Ollie didn’t blame the dead for that. It may have taken a while to overcome his gag reflex, but it was a necessary part of the job and something the riders certainly couldn’t help. Jackson, however, seemed to take personal offense at it.

Goddamn, they shouldn’t let these assholes eat before they get on. But what do they care? They don’t have to clean up after themselves, do they Opie?

Ollie sighed. He had given up on correcting Jackson. It was a lot easier to just ignore him.

Jackson snorted, and transitioned from complaining to Ollie to muttering under his breath. Ollie couldn’t tell if Jackson was complaining about the bodies or about him, but he didn’t really care. He had passengers to remove, then seats to wipe down and bodily fluids to spray out.

Hello, Sir, he whispered to the next passenger. He whispered because he was tired of Jackson’s cruel words when he could hear what he was saying. The dead can’t hear you, Jackson would say, but that didn’t matter to Ollie. I hope you had a good ride. I’ll take good care of your body, okay?

He reached in and unbuckled the man. He was a large man, and Ollie’s back was already sore from picking up Jackson’s slack.

The man groaned. It wasn’t loud, but it was definitely a groan.

Ollie recoiled, instinctively pushing himself away from the sound. His mind flipped over itself as he tried to make sense of what he had heard. He hardly noticed when he backed into Jackson, who dropped the body he had been dragging towards the slab.

Goddamn it, retard. Be careful, Jackson grumbled.

Jackson bent over to pick up the body again, but Ollie hardly noticed. He had far more pressing things on his mind. He leaned in close; maybe it was just his imagination. Maybe it was just the last bit of air being forced out of the lungs. Any number of things could cause what he had heard. Surely it wasn’t that.

A quick look to make sure Jackson wasn’t watching. He wasn’t, he was busy. A soft tap on the man’s shoulder. He didn’t move. A quiet moment to listen for breathing. It was hard to hear over Jackson’s angry swearing, but there was nothing.

Excuse me? Sir? Ollie whispered. Are you alive?

Another groan. The man’s eyelids fluttered. It wasn’t much, but there was some life left in him. That wasn’t good; that wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. But occasionally, very rarely it did. If the attendant didn’t properly manage the weight of the train or if one of the passengers were particularly hardy, sometimes it happened. It just hadn’t ever happened to Ollie.

He wished Todd were there. He would take care of everything. But, he reminded himself, Todd wasn’t there. And there was a protocol for such things. He took pride in knowing every single protocol for every single contingency. This one was simple: stabilize the guest’s neck (they were guests once again, because they were still alive) to prevent further injury. Hit the buzzer