A Knife in the Back by James Noll

In “Beta,” a monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. The cobbler’s son decides to investigate, uncovering a horror that puts him in grave danger. Who will be next? Will it ever end? In “Salvation,” a young girl and her friends discover a Federal soldier lying up against the fence that shelters her village from the outside world. He’s injured and in pain, and tells the girl to go get help. She does, braving the Ring and the terrible beasts that live there. She’ll tell the adults about the soldier, but the kind of help they’ll give him isn’t the kind he wants. In City of Salt, a desperate man searches for salt in a post-apocalyptic city, despite the mutants that lurk the streets, hunting for human flesh. In Prey, an old man with discovers a gruesome new fertilizer for his beloved flowers. And in Raleighs Prep., a novel, Topher, Michael, and Kenneth find a mangled body on the rugby field of their new school. They decide to investigate-- inadvertently unleashing the horror that lurks in the woods that surrounds the campus. These are just a few of the macabre stories found within. Enter-- IF YOU DARE!