Barry Porter - Junkyard

"Great hairy things with tails bigger than my leg and glaring red eyes and razor-sharp teeth? I mean, it's like something out of a cheap horror story."

now here's one of those neat surprise packages the trashier end of pulp horror vomits up from time to time. i must've scrutinised the cover for a solid week, and even then had my doubts if Junkyard would qualify as a genuine 'when animals attack' nasty. what are those things supposed to be: werewolves? lesser spawn of Cujo? demons? surely not a colony of huge, steroid-enhanced rats?

It's four years since Nick Jurgen, Larry Santino, Mark Kisbaugh and Ray 'the shrimp' Holscombe constructed their clubhouse in the semi-abandoned junkyard, and while Larry and Mark still hang out there for Friday night beer and porn video orgies, Nick and Ray have more pressing concerns, namely fifteen year old Pauline Martinez who has the greatest pair of legs in the history of the human race. Small-fry Ray is besotted, but Pauline only has eyes for his trendy buddy, tough guy Nick, who has nice hair and wears a leather jacket. Nick wants the Pit to himself this Friday as he needs a secluded spot if he's ever to get lucky with Pauline. Initially angry that Nick, who hardly ever visits, should presume to evict he and Mark from their clubhouse, Larry sees the opportunity for a spot of voyeurism. The Pit stinks of beer and smoke, so it's gonna need an air vent to make it fit for a lady - why not build one in the roof?

Sheriff Martin Peltzer has more pressing concerns than losing his virginity right now. over the past two years, cats, dogs and several local teenagers have vanished from the face of the earth and now this transient, Harry the bum, has gone AWOL. Harry's disappearance he can live with, but the missing kids' parents are continually haranguing him over the phone for answers he can't provide. Little can he know it but now little Mary Hawthorne's lovable scamp of a puppy, 'Pups', has also been snacked on by four enormous, deformed, greasy black entities in Winsome Junkyard ....

Ed Kelton, owner of the junkyard, has been in too much of an alcoholic stupor to give his business any attention of late, and folk tend to have forgotten he exists. It all stems from the night when he saw his three Dobermans, Death, Terror and Beau, torn to pieces by the same monsters who've done for Harry and Pups. Only now has he began to get his act together. He loved those dogs and it's up to him to avenge them. Fortunately, he has an old Viet Vet colleague who'll provide him any firearms he requires on a generous no fee, no questions asked basis. Ed isn't stupid. If he's to descend into the abandoned sewage tunnels that honeycomb the junkyard, he needs to know what he's up against. Off to the library then, to consult back issues of the local rag.

Winsome is surrounded by barren fields and Ed learns that two years ago, wannabe entrepreneur James Thanimore won government backing to introduce a miracle chemical preparation to the soil. Thanimore's attempt to transform Winsome into an agricultural hot-spot backfired when the resulting super-vegetables were deemed too dangerous for human consumption. The crop, along with all evidence of the experiment, was quickly destroyed, the matter hushed up and quickly forgotten.

But not before the local rodent population had filled their bellies of the lethal junkfood.

To add to the fun and games, we've night patrol cop Kevin Gavel, the most promising deputy on Sheriff Peltzer's force, ever ready to offer a kind word to teenage runaways along with a nice meal and lodgings at his secluded farmhouse. Gavel moonlights as a bondage-freak child molester and has been using the junkyard as a handy dumping ground for neatly packaged chunks of missing teen ....

TBC ...