Extermination Days

In The Twilit World, an American man hopes to reunite with a British woman he fell in love with twenty years ago while studying abroad. He finds the UK is less tranquil now thanks to an outbreak of Bovine, a variation of mad cow disease that makes people severely mentally ill-and oftentimes dangerous.

Multiple tales then take place during the redbug invasion of the Pacific Northwest. When the cockroach-like redbug makes contact with a person's skin, death follows within 24 hours. While the air teems with toxic insects, characters must also deal with their personal crises, ranging from unfaithful partners to the failure to become a mother.

And finally, Open Wounds is set in Iran, after the US government has withdrawn all chemical soldiers. During an inspection of a desert palace coated with the residue of the lethal chemical YZ-549, the leader of a post-operation team discovers something still alive-and vengeful-lurking within the contaminated space.

These stories, collected together for the first time, have appeared in literary magazines, including Pulp Metal Magazine, Danse Macabre, The WiFiles, and The Literary Hatchet with some serving as the seeds for Massengill's debut novel, Red Swarm (Montag Press).

(with a cover by Adrian Baldwin)