Showing results by author "Bryan Cassiday" in All Categories

Evildoers run riot across the sun-drenched Southern California landscape in Helter Skelter. Zombies, vampires, and other wicked creatures wreak mayhem and carnage in these shocking horror short stories by Bryan Cassiday. Not all of these tales feature supernatural creatures. Some of the evil creatures are human - perhaps the most terrifying creature of all. These stories defy logic, yet they obey their own inexorable logic of fear.

Virulent pockets of plague, first reported in China, break out worldwide and spread with mind-boggling speed. CIA black ops agent Chad Halverson flies to Los Angeles to visit his brother after receiving a call that his brother has been hospitalized after a car accident. Halverson's Boeing 737 crash-lands in an eerie Los Angeles shrouded with an impenetrable haze of smog. But that is only the tip of the iceberg of Halverson's nightmare.

A PI's routine investigation of infidelity among Hollywood elite uncovers a transnational conspiracy of terror aimed at his client's entire family. Power-broker Hollywood talent manager Lyndon Fox's wife, Deirdre, hires epileptic LA private detective Scott Brody after a previous private detective she assigned to keep tabs on her husband's suspected infidelity is killed in Cabo San Lucas when she and her husband vacation there. As Deirdre's world collapses around her, she must find out the truth about who is responsible before she loses everything—including her life.

Unhinged consists of ten stories that plumb the subterranean depths of the human mind to uncover the horrors that lie within. These stories plunge you into a world of murder, mayhem, and psychosis where anything goes, and your worst nightmare could be lurking around the next corner in the guise of something as innocuous looking as a ventriloquist’s dummy, where even an insane asylum offers no refuge.

In this terrifying psychological thriller with occult overtones, Scott Brody, a Los Angeles PI, is hired by Evelyn Martin to find her missing brother Tyler Keogh, a well-to-do aeronautical engineer and a member of the local Mensa board of directors. As Brody conducts his search, he keeps discovering victims of a serial killer who leaves clues connecting the murders to a hopped-up cult that collects Nazi SS Totenkopf memorabilia and worships Li Grande Zombi, a voodoo snake god.

Finding plague victims inside their compound, survivors of the zombie apocalypse suspect that the zombie plague has mutated and is being spread by spores emitted by infected flesh-eating ghouls. People infected by the spores could be asymptomatic carriers. Meanwhile, at the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, President Cole declares a national emergency under Section 201 of the National Emergencies Act and proclaims himself president for life as he hunkers down in the bunker with what little remains of the US government.

A motley team of warriors on a secret mission organized by the president of the United States take on infected flesh eaters in a nuclear wasteland, risking their lives in a convoy of three specially armored black Chevy Suburbans to obtain a vaccine against the apocalyptic zombie plague that is wiping out the human race.

Prepare for extreme horror. This unique collection of 10 stories features a range of international talent: award-winning authors, masters of horror, rising stars, and fresh new voices in the genre. Take care as you reach into these dark places, for the things here bite, and you may withdraw a hand short of a few fingers.

Brunette bombshell Araceli hires Scott Brody, PI, to find her missing brother Damian, whose life is endangered in the neon-lit playground of Vegas. To save Damian, Brody must contend with mafia leg breakers, feds, a murderous deep state cabal, CIA spooks, and a sicario hit team. Everybody, it seems, wants a piece of Damian, and they'll kill anyone who gets in their way.

The world has turned. Plague-infected, flesh-eating zombies now infest the earth. Black ops agent Chad Halverson of the CIA's top secret National Clandestine Service and a motley band of survivors must do everything they can to survive one more day, even as they try to find out what caused the pandemic.

Seeking sanctuary from the walking dead in Alcatraz prison, Halverson and his band discover that all is not as it seems on the island haven. In fact, they may have more to fear than the walking dead in the person of Alcatraz's reigning Chosen One, the charismatic proponent of law and order Jefferson Bascomb, who believes zombies have the right to a fair trial.

America has been devastated by both plague and the nuclear weapons used to kill off the infected flesh-eating creatures that roamed across the land preying on human beings. National Clandestine Service black ops agent Chad Halverson and dress designer Victoria Brady take refuge in a blast shelter in the Nevada desert when an A-bomb is dropped on Las Vegas at the behest of the president of the United States. Halverson and Victoria are forced to leave the safety of their cement shelter when they run low on water.

The end of America is near. A plague that kills its victims and resurrects them as flesh-eating ghouls has decimated the American population, forcing what's left of the government to take shelter underground in the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center in Virginia. President Cole must decide whether to start nuking his own country in order to save it from the virus that has a hundred percent kill ratio. Whether America survives or not, it will never be the same.

All zombies all the time. Included in The Bus Stops Here and Other Zombie Tales are five zombie short stories by Bryan Cassiday that are together for the first time in one anthology. "The Bus Stops Here" is a brand-new short story that has never before been published. The zombie action is nonstop and lethal. During a zombie apocalypse, everybody is caught up in a Hobbesian world where life is nasty, brutish, and short. Along with graphic zombie mayhem, these tales depict the lengths that individuals will go to to survive.

A distressed young woman falls under the spell of a homicidal maniac and becomes his partner in murder in this disturbing psychological thriller. Pondering suicide sitting on a Malibu dock one night after running away from home, doe-eyed young Mina Deerling meets smooth-talking Gage Catton, who is trying to load his wife’s body wrapped in a blanket onto his boat. When Catton finds out to his shock that his wife is still alive in the blanket, he talks the distraught Mina into helping him finish her off with his knife.

Larry, a college student who is driving through the Mojave Desert to a party in Las Vegas, encounters a bus driver who has other ideas. What starts out as an annoying hit and run turns into something decidedly more deadly, with Larry's life at stake on a desolate stretch of highway.

Seven characters find themselves trapped inside an elevator during a zombie apocalypse. The narrator, the last passenger to occupy the elevator, tells them that his wife, who was murdered by a zombie, told him as she died in his arms that she saw one of the passengers get bitten by a zombie before the person ducked into the elevator, but she died before she could describe the victim to him. The terrified passengers know that the victim will soon turn and attack them. They must determine who it is and kill him or her before it is too late - if they don't kill each other first trying to find out.

After the crass but successful fashion designer Max Reed, who exploits violence in his ads by shooting them at actual murder scenes, is blown up in his penthouse office, police watch a CCTV video of the person who delivered the bomb to Reed’s office and peg private investigator Scott Brody as the killer. The truth is, Brody didn’t know he was delivering a bomb. The local LA mobster Sal Andrasi duped Brody into thinking he was delivering a bowling ball to Reed. In order to clear his name, Brody must find the real killer. Which turns out to be more difficult than it seems.

Struggling horror novelist Bart Dillinger doesn’t accept the official police report that says his girlfriend actress Jackie Merced committed suicide by shooting herself while driving off a cliff. He hires PI Ethan Carr to find out how she really died. Carr discovers secrets Dillinger didn’t know about her which reveal she was more complicated than even he knew. Carr also discovers she belonged to a clandestine club of masked members in Hollywood who like to play games. These members include politicians and other movers and shakers. And the games they like to play are deadly.

An Antarctic ice station comes under attack by a virus from outer space during a subzero blizzard. Venusians subject an Earthling to the torture of having to live over and over again his murder trial for the killing of his friend. An exorcist suspects a child is possessed, but who is doing it and why? Is it a demon or something even more terrifying? A Special Forces soldier with a death wish can't figure out why the government has saved him from his spaceship's crash landing. When he does, it's too late.