Short Story Monday

#8. Battleground - A hitman returns from his last job, taking out a toy manufacturing mogul. On his way up to his penthouse apartment the desk clerk hands him a large package that has arrived for him. Sure it is a bomb or something equally unpleasant he takes his time before opening it. Eventually he unwraps the paper and finds stenciled on a wooden box the words "G.I. Joe Vietnam Footlocker" with a list of contents. I really enjoyed this one. It made me think of the army men from Toy Story only much more vicious.

#9. Trucks - Here is the one I've been waiting to re-read! A small group of people are under siege at a gas station. They can't get out, the electricity has been cut and they are surrounded by heavy trucks. They try to deal with the situation, try to figure a way of escape and not all of them make it to the end alive. It is rather a cheesy idea, trucks taking over the world, but I loved this story the first time I read and I loved it this time. I'm also very fond of the movie version "Maximun Overdrive".

#10. Sometimes They Come Back - A highschool English teacher has a 'slow learners' course for last period each day. The students of this class are mostly unruly, leather jacket students or not so bright jocks. Three of his students mysteriously die or disappear and the day after each disappearance a new student is transferred into his class. These 'new' students look exactly like the thugs who killed his older brother. Except they were teenagers almost 20 years ago, how could they still be the same age now? And if that isn't bad enough, they know he knows who they are and they've come to settle unfinished business with him. This was the best story I read this weekend. It really creeped me out.

#11. Strawberry Spring - A 'Strawberry Spring' is a lot like an "Indian Summer', a few extra weeks of the nice weather, but with a strawberry spring comes a lot of fog and they usually only happen about every eight years. An unknown narrator tells about a strawberry spring eight years ago when he was a college student. They had a rash of girls murdered on campus that year and the killer was never found. Now eight years later, another girl has been killed. Another good one with a surprise at the end.