Dark horse/'därk '?hôrs/noun1. a candidate or competitor about whom little is known but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds."a dark-horse candidate"Join us for a monthly tour of writers who give as good as they get. From hard science-fiction to stark, melancholic apocalypses; from Lovecraftian horror to zombies and horror comedy; from whimsical interludes to tales of unlikely compassion--whatever it is, if it's weird, it's here. So grab a seat before the starting gun fires, pour yourself a glass of strange wine, and get ready for the running of the dark horses. In this issue:QUESTIONS A MAN OUGHT NOT TO ASKElizabeth BroadbentSTRANGE WATERSteve CarrHOLY MOUNTAINC. J. ScuffinsTHE DEVIL'S TRIANGLEWayne Kyle SpitzerMAKE IT A DOUBLEWarren BenedettoTHE UNSCARED CROWCody NowackSTRONGMAN SAFARIMark MellonTHE GECKO KINGSam FletcherBIRTH STORYTaryn Martinez

Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction | August 2022 | No. 7 - Dark Horses Magazine, #7

Welcome to the Big Empty, the world after the Flashback ... a world in which most the population has vanished and where dinosaurs roam freely. You can survive here, if you're lucky, and if you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time--which is everywhere and all the time. But what you'll never do is remain the same--for this is a world whose very purpose is to change you: for better or for worse. So take a deep dive into these loosely connected tales of the Dinosaur Apocalypse (each of which can be read individually or as a part of the greater saga): tales of wonder and terror, death and survival, blood ... and beauty. Do it today ... before the apocalypse comes.* * *"You're a fool, Nick Callahan. A fool. But I suppose you already knew that." I allowed my hand to drop before plunking down in the fir needles and just staring into space. "There was nothing. I saw nothing. It-it was like he didn't even exist." She sat down next to me and exhaled, tiredly. "He's an animal-what did you expect?" She picked up my glove and offered it to me, but I didn't take it. "You said it yourself; it's like they see memories. The eyes. I don't imagine a dog has a particularly long one. Do you?" I sighed. All I knew for certain was that I felt numb and more than a little tired. "I don't know. I don't know what I expected. Or what I was looking for. An incident, maybe. Some kind of clue." She laid her head on my shoulder and stared at nothing, same as me. "What kind? A clue to what?" "That's just it-I don't know. A clue to what might wake him up, I guess. Something I could say. Something that was important to him." "His butt was important to him, " she said. "A source of endless fascination." I had to smile. That's when it happened. That's when he yelped, ever so slightly, and his paw twitched. I looked at Lisa and she looked back. And then my hand was on him and we were running-Puck and I-down cobblestone lanes lined with streetlamps and through pools of foggy light; through tides of rusted Maple leaves, which leapt and swirled as we passed. "What is it?" I heard Lisa say, her voice growing smaller, more distant. "What do you see?" I turned to look at Puck as we ran and saw his tongue loll and his eyes shift-as though he wanted to look behind himself-behind us-but didn't dare. "Fear, " I said. "Confusion." An image entered my mind of a dug passage beneath the rear wall of the T. J. Maxx; of the turkey-like thing crawling through it with Puck hot on its heels. "He escaped from beneath the wall and now he's lost somewhere in the fog. And he's terrified . but of what I don't know. It's almost like-wait a minute. Wait a minute." I looked behind him-having heard something huffing and snorting-and saw a fully-grown therapod dinosaur (colored orange and black, like a Gila monster) bounding after us in the dark, gaining rapidly. "There's something coming-some kind of predator. An allosaur, I think. Whatever it is, it's closing, and I mean fast."

A Survivor's Guide to the Dinosaur Apocalypse, Episode Seven: "'Dog' is a Palindrome" - A Survivor's Guide to the Dinosaur Apocalypse, #7

Bloodthirsty reindeer, velociraptors on a red-eye flight to Houston, a demonic house-cat, bat creatures from the clouds of Jupiter, a town besieged by carnosaurs, an inhuman defender, a ring of unimaginable power, a mother and her son on the run from prehistoric terror, a murdered thing whose memory will not die--these are just some of the forces you'll encounter in this compendium of the monstrous. But beware: The natural (and the supernatural) world are red in tooth in claw ...

Tooth and Claw: A Bestiary

First came the time-storm, which erased half the population. Then came the Dinosaur Apocalypse . How did it all begin? Well, that depends on where you were and who you ask. In some places it started with the weather-which quickly became unstable and began behaving in impossible ways. In still others it started with the lights in the sky, which shifted and pulsed and could not be explained. Elsewhere it started with the disappearances: one here, a few there, but increasing in occurrence until fully three quarters of the population had vanished. Either way, there is one thing on which everyone agrees-it didn't take long for the prehistoric flora and fauna to start showing up (often appearing right where someone was standing, in which case the two were fused, spliced, amalgamated). It didn't take long for the great Time-displacement called the Flashback-which was brief but had aftershocks, like an earthquake-to change the face of the earth. Nor for the stories, some long and others short, some from before the maelstrom (and resulting societal collapse) and others after, to be recorded. Welcome to the Lost Country. From "The Primeval World": I stood abruptly and raised the back of my hand-but was restrained by Linda, who had inserted herself between us. "That's enough! Please-Chris. Enough. She's not going to tell us." She backed me away from the girl. "But I have an idea . if you want to hear it." I yanked away from her and began pacing, furious at the stranger but really angry with myself-for losing my cool in front of my crush, whom I'd liked since the moment we'd met (at the Coke machine in the Community Room, about a month before the Flashback). And for sending them-Penny and Fred-to the food mart in the first place, ostensibly to save time but really just so I could be with Linda. "I-I'm sorry. Jesus. It's just that-" She came to me and put a finger to my lips. "Shhh. Forget it. All right?" I tried to look away but she forced me to look at her. "All right? Listen. We know which direction they went. So . why don't we just-take Valerie here-and go looking for them?" She turned to face the young woman. "She'll point us in the right direction-won't you, Little Miss Sunshine?" She glared at her menacingly. "If she ever wants to see home again." And she was right, of course; I knew it and the girl knew it. And so I reconfigured her bonds so she could travel and we doused ourselves in rex urine- including Valerie (for who knew how far we'd have to go or how long we'd be exposed to potential predators), and we headed out; walking up South Union Avenue toward the capitol even as Compies watched from the undergrowth and I thought I saw a face: simian yet strangely human, animal, and yet somehow not-peeking at us briefly from between two fronds. Staring at us, passively, almost meditatively, like a great ape behind glass; or a manatee through green, hazy water.

The Lost Country, Episode Three: “The Primeval World” - The Lost Country, #3

Dark horse/'därk '?hôrs/noun1. a candidate or competitor about whom little is known but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds."a dark-horse candidate"Join us for a monthly tour of writers who give as good as they get. From hard science-fiction to stark, melancholic apocalypses; from Lovecraftian horror to zombies and horror comedy; from whimsical interludes to tales of unlikely compassion--whatever it is, if it's weird, it's here. So grab a seat before the starting gun fires, pour yourself a glass of strange wine, and get ready for the running of the dark horses. In this issue:BAGGAGEBrian HoganCROWDIDDLYStephan McquigganETERNALSheldon WoodburyTHE WINE-DARK EARTHWayne Kyle SpitzerKALEIDOSCOPET. K. HowellNIGHT SWIMMINGMatthew FriesTHE SHADOW BOXFrederick PangbourneTHE BAT AND THE CRESCENT MOONBill LinkTHE WOMAN AND THE MAZEDC MalleryTO CATCH A GODDaniel Lidman

Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction No. 9 | October 2022 - Dark Horses Magazine, #9

They both felt it at the same time, even as the train lurched forward and the cars jolted thunderously-a tremor in the very fabric of things, like a ripple in a foam of potentiality which contained in it the threads of all their possible futures. Something, somewhere, had just happened-something directly related to their current endeavor of delivering the bomb to Barley and detonating it amidst the Enemy. communicated Ank, still smarting from his struggle to climb onto the flatcar with the added weight of the weapon."You felt it too? Like one door closed and another had opened, but with disastrous consequences, for us all ." Williams looked at him, rattled and bewildered. "Ank, how could we know that?""Ank, don't."Williams leaned forward until they were almost nose to nose. "Our friendly engineer, in case you haven't noticed, is clearly insane!"And then Williams was leaning over the side using one of Ank's spikes for a handhold while simultaneously yelling at the engineer, who poked his head out the engine's side window, his long, gray hair flying, and shouted, "You want speed, you got it, ha-ha! The world, she's a comin' back, yesiree!" He sounded the horn suddenly and Williams covered an ear, even as his hat blew off and fluttered away behind them. "The New World Special is back in service-and it's taking its passengers to the Promised Land! Ha-ha!"

A Dinosaur Is A Man's Best Friend: "The Demon and the Avatar" - A Dinosaur Is A Man's Best Friend (A Serialized Novel), #9

That's when I really noticed it, the fact that the landscape immediately around the car had changed; that it had-reverted, somehow. I can only describe what I saw, which was that none of the vehicles at the light could have been newer than a '66, and that the light itself looked decidedly retro, decidedly quaint, at least compared to the one only a block away. More, the storefronts alongside had changed, so that a Kinney Shoe Store now stood where a Taco Bell had just been, and a Woolworth had replaced an Indy Food Mart. Likewise, the pedestrians had changed-yoga pants giving way to miniskirts, athletic shoes giving way to go-go boots and winklepickers, short hair giving way to long. And it was as I observed these things that I noticed something else-the Stingray's reflection in the Woolworth's front windows, or rather, the reflection of something which was not the Stingray but which stood-hovered-in its place: a long, translucent, green-black thing, like an enormous wine decanter, only laid on its side, which glowed slightly from within its bulbous body and seemed to warp the very air around it, to bend it, to curl it like burnt paper.

The Devil Drives a '66 (And Other Stories)

And then we waited, watching the trucks with their billowing flags slowly move along the ridge, watching them go. Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show / With some smart-ass New York Jew / The Jew laughed at Lester Maddox / And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too . I heard gunshots-nothing major, just some idiot in the Tucker train shooting at the sky. So I went to the park and I took some paper along / And that's where I made this song . And then it started, the Apache firing two Hellfire missiles which hit a group of pickups at the start of the train and instantly blew them to pieces, glass and shrapnel flying, a body tumbling in the air. We talk real funny down here / We drink too much, we laugh too loud / We're too dumb to make it in no northern town . Two more missiles fired, this time at the other end of the train, blowing pickups and blue flags into the air, sending a cab higher than anything else-like the turrets of those Iraqi tanks in the first Gulf War-hurling a Rugged Terrain tire along the ridge, which eventually rolled down the hill. We're keeping the niggers down . More missiles, like scaled-up bottle rockets: hitting the column like hammers, making fireballs of King Cabs and beds of people; spitting from the chopper's hardpoints like fireworks, like flairs, incinerating skin and catching hair on fire, I knew, and didn't care, obliterating pennants and banners. We're rednecks, we're rednecks / We don't know our ass from a hole in the ground . Until he'd finally fired everything: Hellfires and Hydras, Stingers and Spikes, all of them hissing and screaming, finding their targets; all of them lighting the ridge up like the Fourth of July, or maybe the volcano at The Mirage, in Las Vegas, each making our world safer and saner and more secure-more righteous, more lost. Each bringing smoke and silence and peace-like the lights in the sky themselves-to the war-torn hills of Earth.

The Once and Future Kings

First came the time-storm, which erased half the population. Then came the dinosaur apocalypse. How did it all begin? That depends on where you were and who you ask. In some places it started with the weather-which quickly became unstable and began behaving in impossible ways. In still others it started with the lights in the sky, which shifted and pulsed and could not be explained. Elsewhere it started with the disappearances: one here, a few there, but increasing in occurrence until fully three quarters of the population had vanished. Either way, there is one thing on which everyone agrees-it didn't take long for the prehistoric flora and fauna to start showing up (often appearing right where someone was standing, in which case the two were fused, spliced, amalgamated). It didn't take long for the great Time-displacement called the Flashback-which was brief but had aftershocks, like an earthquake-to change the face of the earth. Nor for the stories, some long and others short, some from before the maelstrom (and resulting societal collapse) and others after, to be recorded. Welcome to the world of the Flashback, a world in which man's cities have become overgrown jungles and extinct animals wander the ruins. You can survive here, if you're lucky, and if you're not in the wrong place at the wrong time--which is everywhere, all the time. But what you'll never do is remain the same, for this is a world whose very purpose is to challenge you, for better or for worse. It is a world where frightened commuters will do battle with murderous bikers even as primordial monsters close in, and others will take refuge in an underground theme park only to find their worst enemy is themselves. Where ordinary people-ne'er-do-wells on a cross-country motorcycle trip, a woman on a redeye flight to Hell, a sensitive boy stricken with visions of what's to come--will find themselves in extraordinary situations, and a gunslinger and his telekinetic ankylosaurus will embark on a dangerous quest. A world where travelers will be trapped with an unravelling President of the United States and a band of survivors will face roving packs of monsters and men in post-apocalyptic Seattle; where rioting teenagers will face deadly predators (as well as their own demons) while ransacking the nation's capital; where a Native-American warrior will seek to bury his past--and offer an elegy for all the Earth--in what remains of Las Vegas. In short, it is a world where anything can and will happen. So take a deep dive into these loosely connected tales of the Dinosaur Apocalypse (each of which can be read individually or as a part of the greater saga): tales of wonder and terror, death and survival, blood and beauty. Do it today, before the apocalypse comes.

Dark Horses: The Magazine of Weird Fiction | August 2022 | No. 7 - Dark Horses Magazine, #7

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