Dirty Rotten Hippies and Other Stories

by Bryan Smith

  Dirty Rotten Hippies and Other Stories copyright © 2019 by Bryan Smith. All rights reserved.

  Grindhouse Press

  PO BOX 521

  Dayton, Ohio 45401

  Grindhouse Press logo and all related artwork copyright © 2019 by Brandon Duncan. All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Matthew Revert © 2019. All rights reserved.

  Grindhouse Press #051

  ISBN-10: 1-941918-48-4

  ISBN-13: 978-1-941918-48-7

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or author.

  Other titles by Bryan Smith

  House of Blood

  Rock and Roll Reform School Zombies

  Darkened

  Highways to Hell

  The Dark Ones

  Some Crazy Fucking Shit That Happened One Day

  The Freakshow

  Soultaker

  Queen of Blood

  Grimm Awakening

  Blood and Whiskey

  The Halloween Bride

  The Diabolical Conspiracy

  Deathbringer

  Strange Ways

  Slowly We Rot

  Surrounded By Bastards

  The Reborn

  Bloodrush

  All Hallow’s Dead

  Christmas Eve on Haunted Hill

  Seven Deadly Tales of Terror

  The Late Night Horror Show

  Go Kill Crazy!

  Wicked Kayla

  Murder Squad

  Last Day

  Depraved

  Depraved 2

  Depraved 3

  68 Kill

  68 Kill Part 2

  Kayla and The Devil (Kayla Monroe: Haunted World Book 1)

  Kayla Undead (Kayla Monroe: Haunted World Book 2)

  The Killing Kind

  The Killing Kind 2

  Dead Stripper Storage

  Kill for Satan!

  “Fuck peace, let's jam.”

  —Matthew Shannon Turbeville, circa about 1990

  You left this world too soon. RIP (Rock in peace).

  CONTENT

  Dirty Rotten Hippies

  Some Crazy Fucking Shit That Happened One Day

  The Restless Corpse

  Chainsaw Sex Maniacs from Mars

  The Thing in The Woods

  A Slasher’s Dilemma

  Pilgrimage

  We Are 138 Golden Elm

  The Barrel

  Seven Deadly Tales of Terror

  Take a Walk

  Date Night

  The Implant

  Highway Stop

  The Doll

  Bloodsucking Nuns for Satan

  South County Madman

  DIRTY ROTTEN HIPPIES

  ONE

  IN GREAT NUMBERS, THEY CAME from far and wide to congregate in the southern countryside for a long weekend of peace, love, and groovy jams. For days in advance, a long parade of vehicles wound its way through the narrow and rutted back lanes, backing up on the interstate and causing traffic delays that dragged on for hours on end. In normal backed-up city traffic, horns would honk endlessly until the logjam cleared, but out here there were few outward displays of impatience or cantankerousness. The hordes on their way to the big outdoor music festival were blissed-out and happy to be there, away from the noise and filth of urban life and away from the vast array of concerns that make so much of modern life such a dreary drag.

  The massive festival featured dozens of acts performing each day across multiple stages on six-hundred and fifty acres of farmland. Thousands of tents dotted the land. Attendees without tents spent the nights outdoors in sleeping bags or simply on the muddy ground itself. Conditions for the weekend were clear, but there’d been rain for several days beforehand. As expected, the drugs that had long been standard at such events circulated widely. Molly, marijuana, LSD, shrooms, etc. All the feel-good drugs. The ones that enhanced pleasure and expanded the senses. Recreational psychoactive substances that connected with the vibe of the event. Drugs that fueled aggression and negative feelings, such as meth and cocaine, were present only in minimal quantities and consumed only by that element not truly in tune with what the festival was all about.

  As the festival got underway, however, something new began to circulate among the gathered masses. This new thing was called “Delight”, and it came in a pill form, delivering sensations of euphoria and intense empathy that initially mirrored the effects of MDMA, aka Molly. Indeed, most who tried the new drug that weekend at first assumed it was MDMA under yet another new name.

  That this was not the case began to become apparent deep into the first night of the festival, in the wee hours of the morning after the last notes of live music performed across the various stages had finished resounding through the countryside. The temporary cessation of performances did not mean the party had come to an end for everyone in attendance. Masses of people stayed up until dawn and even beyond, singing and dancing around bonfires and making even more of a mess of the muddy ground. Scores of people with acoustic guitars led group singalongs. Many present that night experienced a sense of bonding with like-minded human beings so intense it was unparalleled by anything they’d ever experienced. Instead of slowly fading as the hours passed, however, the effect intensified steadily. People clung to each other and wept with joy as their minds were assailed with what felt like fresh revelations about the nature of existence and the true origin of the cosmos. A celebratory sense of all things wondrous and magical held sway over all of it.

  This lasted until the transcendent feelings peaked with a sense of almost unbearable euphoria, at which point the experience began to transform and take a darker turn. Some who’d taken the drug early that day began to perceive an ugly, screaming blackness lurking just beyond the illusory veil of light and love. An endless void seething with horrors almost beyond fathoming, hungry and horribly sentient entities howling madness and rage from the edge of the universe. Beings aching to surge forward and consume them all, consume the entire world.

  Tears of the purest joy became the anguished wailing of the hopeless and the damned. Laughter got louder and louder and finally gave way to screaming. Hundreds and then thousands of people dropped to their knees or flopped to the ground and rolled around in the mud while giving agonized voice to the rot taking root in their souls. Some attendees immediately killed themselves instead of trying to ride out the effects of Delight. Perhaps because they were intensely troubled human beings to begin with and didn’t need much to push them over the edge. This was undoubtedly true in some cases, but others who took this route had been perfectly happy and well-adjusted. The drug broke them, overwhelmed previously strong psyches and twisted them into unrecognizable shapes.

  As dawn neared, most in attendance began to recognize the new and strangely prevalent drug as the likely culprit behind the crushing wave of bad vibes. Not everyone had tried Delight, but the supply was so plentiful the opportunity had been there for virtually all attendees. The unaffected soon found themselves engulfed in a frantic effort to start bringing things under control. The general consensus was that roughly half the festivalgoers had tried Delight at various points throughout the day, some early on and some as recently as just before the drug’s dark side began to reveal itself. The long onset of the worst symptoms filled them with foreboding. Getting a handle on the situation was looking more an
d more like an impossibility. Like it or not—and most of them didn’t—the authorities would have to be brought in. Calls were made. The wait for help started.

  And went on until well after sunrise.

  Other symptoms began to manifest, starting with a vile odor emanating from the orifices of all who’d taken Delight. A stench of rot and death. A graveyard smell originating from within. At the same time, the skin of the affected began to take on a yellow hue that darkened and became purplish within an hour. The sickened complained of unbearably bad headaches that caused them to moan at a high volume. Many of the unaffected had the eerie sense of being surrounded by thousands upon thousands of walking corpses. Speculation ran rampant. The odor of death and ugly external transformations meant the victims were rapidly rotting from the inside out. This in turn had to mean Delight had been deliberately circulated among the festival attendees by an unknown person or group with evil intent. The purported happy party drug was the ultimate Trojan Horse—a disguised delivery system for a powerful and possibly lethal toxin.

  Suspicion turned to certainty shortly afterward as many of the early partakers began to fall over dead in the fields. At that point, it finally dawned on everyone that a tragedy of historic proportions was underway. While many continued their increasingly futile efforts to help the affected, many others gave up and began the process of fleeing the scene. A number of factors complicated things for those taking flight. In many cases, their cars were parked miles from the concert stages. Others trying to leave had their cars boxed in by vehicles belonging to the dead and dying. Still others remained impaired from various substances and had difficulty remembering where they’d parked. As the hopelessness of the situation became increasingly obvious, many opted to abandon their inaccessible vehicles and flee on foot, running as fast as they could in the direction of a little country town not far from the big patch of farmland.

  Even in the midst of panic, many others chose to stay and continue trying to help. To these people, it didn’t matter how hopeless it looked. These were the diehards, the old school hippies (young and actually old) who believed in community and duty to their fellow man.

  They were the first to be devoured when the dead began to rise and walk. And after that first feast, the rotting dead began to follow the living out of the fields and toward the little country town.

  The risen dead moved with surprising swiftness, chasing down and tearing into those trying to flee. It was a bloodbath so vicious and devastating it turned the mud red. By the time it was over, only a lucky few survived, perhaps less than one percent of those attending the festival.

  But they knew they were not safe.

  They ran as fast as they could toward the town.

  Driven by an insatiable, painful hunger and a burning, primitive hatred for the living, the dead followed.

  TWO

  DAN FERGUSON WAS JUST SITTING down to his usual Saturday morning light breakfast when he heard the disturbance from his backyard. The breakfast consisted of a single slice of bacon and a single slice of lightly buttered toast. This was a far cry from the heartier breakfasts he’d enjoyed most of his life, but he was getting up there in years now and he had to think about his health first. Or so the doctor and Helen, his wife of almost forty years, kept telling him. He supposed they were right. Knew it, in fact. Knowing it didn’t stop him from missing the hell out of that daily stack of butter-slathered pancakes and the accompanying piles of bacon and scrambled eggs.

  He savored that once-daily slice of bacon the way he imagined a Russian oligarch might savor a portion of the finest caviar, drawing the process out as long as possible by taking little bites and chewing them slowly. He’d been looking forward to today’s first taste of glorious bacon since almost immediately after awakening, but it was looking like that almost orgasmic experience would have to be delayed a bit because the dog was barking up a storm.

  “Helen!”

  His wife had retreated to the bathroom in their bedroom after setting the plate bearing his breakfast in front of him. She probably had the fan running in there, too, to cover the sounds of her dainty old lady farts and dumps. It was therefore extremely unlikely she could hear him, but he tried summoning her anyway in hopes of not having to check on the commotion out back himself. He called out for her again when she didn’t respond within a few seconds.

  Still nothing.

  Sighing and grumbling, he pushed his chair back from the rickety old breakfast nook table and got shakily to his feet, wincing at the way his knees strained and his old bones creaked. There was a lot he didn’t like about getting old. The slow and inexorable deterioration of the body was probably the worst of it, though. Things that used to come so easily to him were now a struggle. It was the natural order of things. He knew that. Didn’t stop him from being bitter about it, though. In his youth, he’d been a strong man. Tough and imposing. Nobody messed with him back then, not if they were smart.

  Those days were gone.

  He couldn’t just race outside and face down any threat that happened to wander onto his property, whether by accident or intent. Caution was called for in any potentially dicey situation. He grumbled again as he shuffled his way over to the back door and took a peek outside through the window slats.

  He frowned. “What the hell?”

  Tojo, their six-year-old black-and-white border collie mix was straining at the end of his ten-foot lead, which was tethered to a spike planted in the approximate center of the yard. The dog was only “chained up” when they wanted to give him a bit of outside time, but he was mostly an indoor dog, preferring to curl up with them in their living room rather than chase squirrels and rabbits. It was necessary because they didn’t have a fenced-in yard and they didn’t want him running off. They lived off a lightly-traveled road in a rural area, so there was little chance of anything bad happening to him, but better safe than sorry was their motto. Tojo usually spent about an hour outside in the mornings, when Dan and Helen were having their breakfast. Sometimes he barked to let them know he was tired of being outdoors and wanted to come in with them. But his barking in those situations always sounded excited and happy.

  This was different.

  Tojo was in a ferocious frenzy, mixing in a lot of growling with the loudest barks Dan had ever heard out of him. At first Dan was confused as to the source of the dog’s ire, but after a moment of scanning the area around the back of their property, he was able to identify the likely reason. Someone had come out of the expanse of woods some fifty yards distant from the back of their house and was wandering in this direction. Dan had missed the guy at first because he’d been hidden by the toolshed out back.

  Now that he could see him, Dan understood why Tojo had his hackles up. Something was off about the man slowly weaving his way across their yard. He looked drunk or otherwise impaired, wobbling and nearly falling over with every other step. He looked dirty and unkempt in general, with muddy clothes and long, greasy hair that spilled well past his shoulders. The man’s T-shirt was a loud swirl of multiple bright colors. There was a word for that kind of shirt, one he hadn’t heard in a long time and at first he had a hard time summoning it from the recesses of his mind. Memory was another on the long list of things that got trickier to deal with as age advanced. For a moment, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to think of it, but then it came to him.

  The shirt was a tie-dye.

  Another revelation followed shortly on the heels of this one. The scrawny young man in the tie-dye was a hippie who’d wandered over from the music festival. The festival grounds were several miles distant, but this was the only explanation. It was well-known the festival was a hive for illegal drug activity, particularly of the kind that deranged the mind and caused hallucinations. A lot of the locals hated the hippie element that invaded their community for several days every summer for this very reason, but it was tolerated because these people brought so many dollars into an otherwise stagnant local economy.

  Dan had always viewed
the festival with a kind of passive ambivalence. He didn’t much care for the hippies or their music, but he also didn’t harbor unreserved hatred for them the way some of his neighbors did. He had friends who used a lot of hateful and bigoted language when talking about them. Shameful stuff, some of it. Dan was old enough to remember the first wave of beatniks and hippies, along with the quagmire that was the Vietnam War. He hadn’t cared for the extremism on either side of things back then and still felt pretty much the same way now. As long as the peace and love types kept to themselves and didn’t bother him or intrude on his property, he didn’t have a real problem with them.

  This one was now ten feet from Tojo, who was being driven to new levels of frothing frenzy with each step closer the man came. Dan didn’t think the man would hurt his dog, but as always when it came to his buddy, erring on the side of caution was the way to go. The idea of confronting a man so much younger than himself filled him with anxiety and dread, but not coming to the defense of his dog wasn’t an option. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something bad did happen.

  He opened the door and stepped out onto the back stoop. “Hey, you out there! You need to get away from my dog and get off my damn property!”

  The young man’s unkempt long hair stirred in the stiffening breeze as he took another wobbling step toward Tojo. He gave no indication of having heard Dan’s shouted warning. The dog’s loud barks became higher-pitched, like the yips of a much smaller dog. He was scared and was shrinking away from the advancing stranger now instead of straining at his lead.

  Dan sighed.