We’re deep in the guts of Feeding Ground, and I’m happy to report things are squelching along nicely. The new Act 3 is shaping up to be a real butcher’s special—more tension, more blood, and some extremely bad decisions made under duress (my favorite kind). I’ve got four of the final six chapters polished up, and they’re meaner than ever.
To celebrate the carnage, I’m sharing a sneak peek of Chapter One down below—no spoilers, but let’s just say camping on the beach at Saltwick Bay isn’t a great idea.
But that’s not all for the gorehounds. While Feeding Ground is cooking, I put the finishing touches on a revised splatterpunk short story that’s been snapping at my heels for a while now. And by, “a while,” I mean about thirty years, give or take, since I wrote the first draft on a manual typewriter. I found the typescript while going through some old papers, and while it’s been heavily revised the central idea is still there. It’s called Gator Grill, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: blood, bites, and bayou horror at the grand opening of Beauregard’s Gator Grill, Cypress Creek’s newest Cajun hotspot.
Jake Beauregard’s dreaming big—live music, spicy crawfish, and a packed house. The only problem? There are a lot of gators in the creek tonight. Chef Marie Thibodaux warned him the water was bad, cursed even. Locals still whisper about Le Roi des Marais, The Swamp King, a man-eater said to rule the murky depths. But surely that’s just old Cajun superstition, right?
Right?
Gator Grill will be a free download once the layout’s finished, in both PDF and ePub formats—perfect for a late-night bite. Keep an eye out, and bring a bib. This one’s messy.
More soon, blood brothers and sisters. Until then: feed the grind, fear the swamp.
Feeding Ground Chapter 1: Night Tide
The orange dome tent glowed like a Chinese lantern against the darkness of Saltwick Bay, its nylon walls rippling in the sea breeze that carried the smell of rotting kelp and something else—something sharper, more chemical. Inside, Kevin Brennan adjusted his sleeping bag and listened to his girlfriend’s steady breathing beside him.
“Told you this was a mistake,” Michelle had said when they’d pitched the tent that afternoon, wrinkling her nose at the stench from the estuary. “Should’ve stayed at that B&B in Wells.”
But Kevin had insisted. Free camping on the beach, just the two of them, waves lapping ten yards from their tent flap. Romantic, he’d called it. Now, lying awake at half past midnight with the acrid tang of industrial runoff burning his nostrils, he was beginning to think she’d been right.
The tide was coming in. He could hear it hissing across the shingle, each wave reaching a little higher up the beach. The tent pegs would hold—he’d hammered them deep into the sand—but the sound made him restless. Growing up in Birmingham, the closest he’d come to the sea was the canal, and all this natural noise unsettled him.
A scratching sound made him freeze. Something was moving outside the tent.
Probably just a gull, he told himself. Or maybe one of those mangy dogs that roamed the beach looking for dropped chips. But the sound came again—a deliberate scraping, like fingernails on glass.
“Mitch?” He shook his girlfriend’s shoulder gently. “You awake?”
She mumbled something and rolled over, pulling her sleeping bag tight around her shoulders. The scratching stopped.
Kevin held his breath, straining to hear over the whisper of waves. Nothing. Then, just as he began to relax, it started again—but now it was coming from the other side of the tent. Something was circling them.
His heart began to hammer against his ribs. He fumbled for the torch they’d left by the tent flap, his fingers clumsy in the darkness. The scratching grew louder, more insistent, joined by a clicking sound like castanets.
“Michelle!” He shook her harder this time. “Wake up. Something’s outside.”
She sat up, instantly alert. “What? What is it?”
“I don’t know. Listen.”
They both held their breath. The clicking had multiplied—not one source now, but several, surrounding the tent. And underneath it, a new sound that made Kevin’s skin crawl: a wet, bubbling noise like someone gargling with blood.
“Jesus,” Michelle whispered. “What is that?”
Kevin’s thumb found the torch switch. “I’m going to have a look.”
“No!” She grabbed his arm. “Don’t. Just… just leave it. Whatever it is, it’ll go away.”
But even as she spoke, something struck the tent wall near her head. The orange nylon dimpled inward, and she saw the unmistakable outline of claws—but claws far too large for any gull or dog. They scraped downward, leaving white scratches in the waterproof coating.
Kevin thumbed the torch on and played its beam across the tent wall. Shadows moved outside—too many shadows, scuttling with alien purpose. The clicking grew frenzied, and now he could hear something else: a rustling, like autumn leaves, but wet.
“The car,” Michelle breathed. “We need to get to the car.”
Kevin nodded, though his throat felt too dry to speak. The Escort was parked fifty yards away, up the beach near the sea wall. It might as well have been fifty miles.
Something slammed into the tent with enough force to knock them both sideways. The aluminum poles bent but held. Then another impact, and another, as if they were under attack by a rugby team armed with sledgehammers.
“Now!” Kevin shouted. “Run!”
He yanked the tent zip down in one savage motion and burst out into the night air, Michelle close behind him. The torchlight swept across a scene from a nightmare.
The beach was alive with movement. Crabs—but crabs like nothing he’d ever seen in any aquarium or nature documentary. They were the size of dinner plates, their shells gleaming wetly in the torch beam, and their claws were massive, disproportionate things that clicked and snapped with mechanical precision. There were dozens of them, maybe hundreds, emerging from the tide line in a living carpet of chitin and malice.
“Oh God,” Michelle sobbed. “Oh God, oh God—”
The nearest crab reared up on its hind legs, claws spread wide like a boxer’s gloves. Its eyes—tiny black beads on stalks—fixed on the torch beam with unmistakable intelligence. It made a noise, a wet chittering that was immediately answered by a dozen others.
Kevin grabbed Michelle’s hand and ran.
They stumbled across the soft sand, the torch beam dancing wildly as Kevin tried to keep his footing. Behind them, the clicking grew to a crescendo as the crabs gave chase. He could hear them scuttling across the beach, their claws scraping on stone and shell.
“The car!” Michelle screamed. “Where’s the bloody car?”
Kevin swept the torch beam ahead of them and caught the glint of metal. There—the Escort’s blue paintwork gleamed in the darkness. But between them and safety, more crabs were emerging from the water, cutting off their escape route.
A claw caught Michelle’s ankle and she went down hard, screaming. Kevin spun around to see a crab the size of a small dog latched onto her leg, its claws slicing through denim and into flesh. Blood, black in the torchlight, began to flow.
“Get it off!” she shrieked. “Get it off me!”
Kevin kicked at the creature, but it was like kicking a rock. The crab’s grip tightened, and Michelle’s screams reached a pitch that hurt his ears. He grabbed a piece of driftwood and brought it down on the crab’s shell with all his strength. The wood splintered, but the crab barely seemed to notice.
More claws seized him from behind. Pain exploded across his back as razor-sharp edges sliced through his T-shirt and into muscle. He spun around, swinging the remains of the driftwood like a club, but there were too many of them now. They swarmed over him like living armor, claws finding every gap, every vulnerable spot.
Michelle’s screams had stopped. When Kevin looked back, she was gone, buried beneath a writhing mass of shells and blood-smeared claws. Only her hand was visible, fingers splayed against the sand, already growing still.
The torch fell from Kevin’s nerveless fingers and went out. In the sudden darkness, the clicking and chittering seemed to grow louder, more excited. He opened his mouth to scream, but a claw found his throat first.
The tide continued to rise, washing away the blood and the torn fragments of orange nylon. By dawn, there was nothing left on the beach but a few scattered pieces of camping equipment and the faint tracks of something with many legs, leading back into the sea.
The crabs had fed well. And they were still hungry.