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.

Ivy, a Los Angeles real estate agent plagued with self-doubts thanks to an overbearing mogul father, is assaulted by two avatars in a metaverse called Rabbit World owned by her husband Orion. Traumatized, she refuses to sell property in Rabbit World, believing the metaverse is unsafe.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Haunted by self-loathing, Ethan Carr quits the Los Angeles Police Department after he accidentally shoots to death an innocent boy on one of his assignments. Years later, he sets up shop as a private investigator and is hired by Richard Herbert to protect him from being assassinated for 24 hours until he meets his son. Herbert is on the lam from his employer US Cyber Command at the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Maryland.

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.

Police investigate the murders of 13-year-old Lucinda Pugh's parents, who died in their beds after somebody soaked them in gasoline and set their house on fire in their hometown of Santa Loma, California. All evidence points to Lucinda as the emotionally ill culprit, despite lack of motivation on her part. When an exorcist attempts to exorcise her, Lucinda reveals that an alien invasion of Earth is imminent, and her parents' murders are just the beginning of a full-fledged assault.

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.

United States Senator John Stockwall of Texas is kidnapped on the doorstep of his house in McLean, Virginia. That's just the beginning of a conspiracy hatched to shake America to its very foundations. The trail of the kidnappers leads Nick McQueen, who is a CIA hit man and a - fugitive from the authorities, to a brutal murder on the casino-lined, neon playgrounds of Las Vegas. The al-Qaeda kidnappers plan to broadcast live on national TV a stage show - managed to humiliate and terrorize the American public.