Originally published by Cemetery Dance in 2001, Leisure Books’ anthology TRIAGE offers a novella apiece from Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon and Edward Lee, each beginning with the same theme: A guy walks into a business and opens fire, resulting in a senselessly high body count. (What a sad state our country is in when this scenario proves even more relevant than upon its first publication.)
Laymon gets things started with “Triage,” in which an office drone named Sharon is counting down the long, slow crawl to quitting time on a Friday afternoon when she receives a most disturbing phone call: “I’m gonna get you, Sharon. I’m gonna get you NOW.” She doesn’t recognize the voice on the other end, but true to his word, the caller enters the place, emptying his shotgun into her co-workers.
By a mix of luck and ingenuity, she escapes to a bathroom elsewhere in the building to hide, where she meets another tenant willing to help her. Good thing, too, because the gunman is still in pursuit, only now he’s inexplicably stark naked.
As is one of Laymon’s strengths, the story gets underway immediately and continues at a relentless pace. And because one of Laymon’s weaknesses in novels is a tendency to write too much, the under-100 page count works to his advantage (and ours). Yes, he manages to wedge in a bizarro sex sequence in there – in this case, an unnerving rape scene that’s written to titillate rather than repulse. That’s the only strike against “Triage.”
Lee’s “In the Year of Our Lord: 2202″ comes next, and at first glance, it appears to a carbon copy of Laymon’s tale, only set in the distant future and in space; Sharon again is the protagonist, and even some phrases are direct lifts. But stick with it, because it becomes vastly different. For one thing, the shooter is killed right away by Sharon – via a dose of coolant that shatters him like glass.
And thus begins the real story, about a future where the government has been merged back with the church, thereby resulting in a society where sexual urges are eradicated with a pill. Ditto with hunger, meaning no more fecal waste. “Lord” works as sci-fi, as satire and even as a murder mystery. But it works best at the very end, which totally catches you by surprise, and threatens to take the story in yet another outlandish direction, if only it were to continue.
Last but certainly not least is Ketchum’s oddly titled “Sheep Meadow Story.” It differs from the other two in several ways: There’s no Sharon, the tale is told from the shooter’s POV, and the opening scene of carnage is actually just a dream.
From there, it’s a glimpse into the loserish life of Stroup, an editor for a cheapo publishing company who does little more than drink and screw a stable of regular women. Through Ketchum’s colorful prose, however, that makes for a bundle of entertainment, and even though “Sheep Meadow Story” contains the least amount of horror – or any genre, for that matter – of the three, it’s also the best, not to mention wickedly funny, primarily in the incompetent, shitty manuscripts Stroup has to plow through.
For my money, Leisure doesn’t put out enough anthologies. Edited by Matt Johnson, TRIAGE captures all three of these regular Leisure authors at their snappiest, and it’d be nice to see more small-press treasures like this rescued in the future. –Rod Lott
His strong thigh pressed up into her pubis, the sensation of which sent a gust of the most primitive pleasure through her guts. The hard pinpoints of her breasts ached as if bitten. … His hand slid down inside her uniform, down her front, his fingers buried in her sex, which was now overflowing. Her own hand did the same to him, exploring what she’d never explored before. His testes felt like ripe fruit. Next, higher, to the shaft, the whole hot raw thing in her hand. She was squeezing out beads of enigmatic liquid, slicking it back and forth over the strange pulsing rod of flesh.
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF JACK KETCHUM:
• CLOSING TIME AND OTHER STORIES by Jack Ketchum
• THE GIRL NEXT DOOR by Jack Ketchum
• LADIES’ NIGHT by Jack Ketchum
• OFF SEASON by Jack Ketchum
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF RICHARD LAYMON:
• AFTER MIDNIGHT by Richard Laymon
• THE BEAST HOUSE by Richard Laymon
• THE CELLAR by Richard Laymon
• COME OUT TONIGHT by Richard Laymon
• ISLAND by Richard Laymon
• THE LAKE by Richard Laymon
• SAVAGE by Richard Laymon
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I say this as a Laymon fan, but the idea of a shooter being stark naked just seems like standard operating procedure for a Laymon villain. I’m tempted to go through my books and make a list of Laymon bad guys who shed their clothes.