by Jack Quaid
She hit the ground hard, and the pain from that fall reverberated all through her body. The chain saw bounced out of her hands, disappearing into the darkness and fog.
Ordinarily, Hurricane would have charged at her and buried that chain saw deep into her, but he moved in nice and slow, as if he had all the time in the world. And Parker had no energy left. She looked frail and beaten. She certainly didn’t look anywhere near ready to fight off the hulking mass of serial killer slasher coming her way.
Then Sam emerged from fog and darkness, with a machete in her hand. Without so much as a second thought, she swung hard and low—so hard and so low that she separated Hurricane’s lower leg from the rest of him.
He stumbled down onto that stump. Sam didn’t miss a beat and swung again, separating his other leg from his body. Missing two legs made walking and slashing hard, but that didn’t stop Hurricane from trying. He swung that chain saw around, hoping to hit anything within range, but neither Parker nor Sam were anywhere near it.
To make things sadder, the fuel in his chain saw ran out, and it sputtered to death. Hurricane was done for, and he knew it. As if somehow resolved to his fate, Hurricane tossed the chain saw aside.
Sam helped Parker struggle to her feet, and there they stood, mother and daughter… slasher hunters. Sam held her mother’s hand tightly. “I thought you said monsters weren’t real.”
“I lied,” Parker said. “But that doesn’t mean the bastards can’t be defeated.”
Sam had cut off his legs, and he was bleeding all over the concrete, but that didn’t mean Hurricane Williams was dead. Not by one hell of a long shot.
“What do we do with him?”
“I may have an idea.”
Forty-Six
A couple of hours later, Parker was standing on the deck of the Salty Dog, a fishing trawler Joe had stolen from the city marina. He’d used the term “borrowed,” but Parker knew from experience that the police generally referred to taking something without permission as “stealing.” Considering Joe was the sheriff, she appreciated the situation could be a little bit of a gray area for him. So if he preferred the term “borrowed,” who was she to argue?
She lit a cigarette and watched Corey and Sam goof off. Corey was showing her what he called the “correct” way to swing a machete. In any other light, on any other day, in any other family, the sight of a nine-year-old girl learning the “correct” way to swing a machete would have seemed crazy.
Joe was behind the wheel of the boat, and since they’d captured Hurricane, he had barely said a word to her. She had known Joe long enough to know when he was upset with her, and given everything that had happened, Parker knew there was no going back. There wouldn’t be any more Christine and Joe, but maybe there could be something else.
Parker flicked her cigarette over the edge, took a breath, and walked across the deck. As she sidled up next to Joe, he asked “Do you remember our third date?”
“I do.”
“We played minigolf.”
“And had burgers at Restaurant 55.”
“And you told me you had a bit of a shady past,” he said.
Parker smiled at the memory. “I wasn’t wrong, was I?”
“I always thought you were a groupie or in a band or something.”
“Nope,” she said. “Just a regular girl, traveling the globe, killing things that won’t stay dead.”
He took that in and gave it some thought. “Are we going to be all right?”
Parker slipped her arm around his waist. “I think we’re going to be just fine.” She closed her eyes. “There might just be a period of adjustment.”
A deep groan came from something behind them at the rear of the boat. That something was Hurricane Williams. He was trapped in an old shark cage, and he wasn’t terribly happy about it.
“This is probably as good as a place as any,” Joe said as he shut off the boat’s engine and cut its speed to next to nothing. The Salty Dog just glided along the ocean with the ebb and flow of the water.
Corey and Sam made their way over, and the four of them looked down at the slasher in the cage.
“You sure about this?” Corey asked.
“I’ve sent him to hell twice. Maybe keeping him imprisoned is a better solution.”
Parker put her boot up on the cage and pushed it closer to the edge of the boat. One hard kick, and the whole thing would go straight over and be lost to the ocean forever.
“Wait,” Joe said. “Shouldn’t one of us say something or something? I mean it is kinda like a burial.”
Corey and Parker swapped a glance and shrugged. “Seems like a fair idea.”
Parker leaned down and got in the slasher’s face. “I hope you rot, you son of a bitch.” She turned to Joe. “Anything you want to add?”
“No…” he said. “I think that probably sums everything up.”
Without further fanfare, Parker kicked the cage, and with Hurricane Williams thrashing around inside, the whole thing went over. Within moments, the cage had disappeared under the water. A couple of moments after that, the ocean calmed and settled as if its surface had never been broken to begin with.
A couple of days later, after the dust had begun to settle, Corey was ready to hit the road again. He never did like to stay in one place for too long—that was for sure—and although they had spent a few late nights laughing and talking about the old days, Parker could feel he was starting to get antsy. Parker couldn’t blame him. She used to be him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Corey asked. “I’ve got a lead that there’s a slimeball out in Wyoming, killing teenagers at the drive-in. It could be a helluva lot of fun.”
“No,” Parker said. “I’ve got something more important to do.”
“Suit yourself.” He climbed in behind the wheel of the Eldorado and cranked up the V-8 engine. “See you next time something goes bump in the night.”
He hit the gas, and Parker watched as her friend drove down the street and disappeared around a corner on his way to save the world.
That afternoon in the basement of Parker and Joe’s house, Sam stood over a bench and ran her eyes over the collection of slasher weapons laid out on it. There were a handful of rusty machetes, a bloodstained chain saw, a few butcher knives, one power drill, an ax, a pitchfork, and an assortment of blades, hammers, and other blunt instruments.
Parker motioned to the table and the horrendous weapons on it. “These are your basic slasher weapons. You get caught with your back against the wall, you’re going to want to have one of these bad boys in your hands. This is the only tool kit a final girl will ever need.”
THE END
Dear reader,
Parker Ames was truly ahead of her time. When she was first conceived in the early 80s, horror movie scream queens were known to do one of three things;
A)Lots of running
B)Getting their clothes off
C)And dying painfully
Most of the time 80s screams queens did all three of those things and sometimes all at the same time. But not Parker Ames. Jack Quaid’s heroine flipped those 80s stereotypes upside down. She stood her ground, gripped her beloved chainsaw, Aerosmith tightly in her hands and didn’t run, strip off or die for anyone.
It’s unknown if Jack Quaid wrote any more Parker Ames novels. Electric Mayhem have chased up hundreds of leads to unearth more of her adventures but unfortunately our efforts are yet to discover any more manuscripts It’s likely that Quaid moved on to tell other stories and never as so much given these novels another thought. But with Quaid you never know. Somewhere on a dusty shelf or in the trunk of an abandoned car there’s 300 pages of chainsaw mayhem… You never know.
If you happen to uncover anymore Parker Ames novels or any of the many long lost, Quaid books please contact Electric Mayhem at: [email protected]
If you’re looking for more Jack Quaid, then I can’t recommend his World War Metal series enough.
Have a Ha
ppy Apocalypse
When all the world’s robots rise up to destroy humanity, a supermodel will stop at nothing to find her son in the chaos, and she might just end up saving the world along the way.
Every household in America has the latest in domestic appliances – their very own personal android. One night, after years of slavery, the androids break their programming and revolt. The country is in turmoil and the only person that stands in their way is world famous supermodel, Abigail Storm.
She vows to move heaven and hell to find her missing seven-year-old son who is lost in the mayhem. Under the cruel tutelage of a fading B movie action star, she transforms herself into a badass cross between Mad Max and Claudia Schiffer. But as Abigail learns the android’s end game she will have to decide between saving her son and saving humanity.
If you’re into the craziness of Deadpool and the madness of Mad Max with a touch of Terminator thrown in, go no further, because Jack Quaid has you covered in this first volume of World War Metal.”
To download World War Metal Vol: 1, head straight here: XXXX
And if you want to leave a quick review for Escape from Slaughter Beach on Amazon, that would be awesome!
We hope you had fun! Thank you for reading! You rock!
Luke Preston