Submitted this to a couple sci-fi magazines and it didn't get in. It's a weird story about Casey Casem and worldwide mutations. You might like it!
Casey’s Dead on the Air
By Steve Horton
“Here we go with the top 40 hits of the nation this week on American Top 40. This is Casey Kasem in Hollywood for the week ending July 14, 1973. Now, on with the countdown!”
The grey top of Pete’s 1969 Mustang folded up and behind him. He took a deep breath of the crisp Hollywood Hills night air as the miles peeled away. A little chilly, even for California, but that suited him just fine.
The Allman Brothers wafted through, clear as a bell, and he tapped his steering wheel with Jaimoe’s drum beat. Pete’s road trip was nearly half over, and his serene cabin in Lake Tahoe was mere hours away.
Pete made this trip often, to escape work, family, kids, life. Maybe he’d even start that novel, dust off the old Selectric.
“Casey Kasem, and that was Ramblin’ Man, by the Allman Brothers Band, coming in at #2 with a--”
Silence.
Pete glanced down at his radio and fiddled with the tuner dial a bit. The arrow was right on 101.3, where he liked it. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, nor a bridge overhead.
“With a—”
Bullet, Pete thought. Bullet. Why won’t he finish the sentence? Was Casey having a stroke on-air?
Pete spotted a closed gas station off Ventura and pulled in, idling his car to keep the radio running.
He heard a growl from his speakers, so loud that it made them fuzz out. Pete jumped in his seat.
“Dear God,” said Casey, who never cursed on the air or said the Lord’s name in vain. “What in the HELL—”
Pete’s hand flew over his mouth, frozen in the gas station parking lot with headlights peering out and the engine humming away. The next sound he heard was screaming and tearing of flesh. Pete didn’t know what blood leaving the body by force sounded like, but he guessed it sounded like that. His gorge rose.
Radio station 101.1, the one that played rock & roll 24 hours a day, began hissing static. Instinctively, Pete switched it off.
The hissing continued. Pete looked up at the actual source: a pair of yellow eyes in the grove of trees, just past the deserted parking lot, several dozen yards away.
Pete’s face went cold for the second time in as many minutes.
Then, he put his Mustang in drive with a loud Ka-Chunk. Slammed on the gas toward the eyes.
The yellow eyes rose higher as the beast rose up to its full height. Six, no, seven feet. Its snout was visible now. It looked like an overgrown cat on two legs. A tall one that hissed instead of growled.
It occurred to Pete as he skidded toward the sound and the blood roared in his ears that the impact would be like hitting a 20-point buck head-on.
The roaring was so loud that he barely heard the bellow from the yellow-eyed beast. A pleading, sentient cry that pierced through his Mustang’s bad muffler and loud engine and straight to Pete’s reflexes.
“Stop,” shouted the Beast.
Pete slammed on his brakes and wrenched the wheel to the left. His Mustang groaned in response, the tires screeched, the stainless steel slid and sparked across the parking lot. Pete and his car lurched to a stop in a gust of exhaust and smoke.
Through the haze, Pete stared into the yellow eyes. They looked sad from only a few feet away. He threw his poor, steaming hot Mustang in park and opened the door. Took a step out. Froze.
The Beast stepped forward, the darkness melting away from a yellow eight-foot cat-thing on two legs. It looked frightening, yes, but also frightened. Terrifying, but terrified.
Pete took another step out, his car door an inadequate shield from the mass of fur and claws mere steps away.
“Who are you?” said Pete.
The Beast took another step toward him. Pete flinched a little.
“I don’t know. I’ve forgotten,” said the Beast.
“You were a person before, weren’t you?” The back of Pete’s head itched, and he scratched it without thinking.
“I think I was. It’s been happening all over.”
“All turning into … cats … like you?”
The Beast shook his head. “No. Whatever you were like before, that’s what you are after. Are you a good person, Mr…?”
“Pete Landers.” They were close enough that Pete stuck out a hand and the Beast clasped it briefly. A short laugh at the absurdity escaped Pete’s lips through the disbelief and stress. “My kids think I am. My ex-wife isn’t so sure.”
“Then you will change too,” said the Beast. “You may even like what you become.”
A sudden realization of recent events struck Pete. “The radio…”
The Beast nodded with its whole body. “You heard an attack.”
“I heard Casey Kasem get eviscerated.”
“No doubt this Casey was about to change into something like his true self, and those around him didn’t want that happening. They will kill again.”
Pete was bewildered. “That doesn’t make any sense. Casey’s show isn’t live. It’s previously recorded and sent to radio stations to broadcast. If he had been murdered during recording, they wouldn’t have finished.”
“We need to visit that recording studio,” said the Beast.
Pete stared for a moment at the hulking cat thing, then back at his Mustang. He shrugged.
#
“Okay back there?” said Pete, his complaining Mustang still able to drive and the cat-hulk squished into the barely-there back seat, his head poking into the ragtop, an absurd scene under almost any other circumstances.
“Not in the least,” growled the Beast. “Try to drive faster.”
It being the middle of the night, traffic was much lighter than usual as he turned on to Santa Monica. It took a half hour to get the Beast situated, plus he had to call Information from a phone booth with a vague recollection from something he read about where Casey had recorded. At least they were on their way.
One red light away, he spotted Westlake Recording Studios on the left. Movement in the parking lot. Of course. Pete could see the moving figures very clearly from a block away, their eyes black, their fangs and claws red with blood.
How am I seeing this? Pete thought. Pete glanced up at his sunscreen mirror as he slowed to a turn. And nearly hit the curb.
“My eyes,” said Pete. Huge, almond shaped, yellow.
“Yes,” muffled the Beast from the back seat. “The change is beginning.”
“Why?” said Pete, a question he never thought to ask before.
“I have heard a scientist somewhere didn’t like where the world was headed, and thought that changing everyone would keep us from killing each other,” said the Beast.
“It didn’t work,” said Pete.
“No. People don’t really change. All it did was amplify our best and worst elements.”
Pete put the Mustang in park in the back of the station, away from the movement he spotted, and put the top down. The Beast extricated himself and Pete followed. The back of his neck itched some more. He touched it and felt sharp, coarse quills. Looked at his hand and saw the fingers melding into a hoof. His heart began to pound. The front seat of the Mustang was now a tight squeeze, so he got himself out before he could get stuck.
The Beast put a paw on his shoulder. “Don’t fight it. Relax.”
Pete leaned back in and stared at the mirror and saw a moose-looking thing staring back at him.
“It is done. Do you remember anything before today?” said the Beast.
Pete struggled with his own mind. “Bits and pieces, fading.”
“Unfortunate. Let us concentrate on the task at hand.”
The two beasts peered around the corner of the station façade. More feral beasts with blood on them crawling from the entrance. Pete could smell the dead.
“Follow my lead,” said the Beast. He roared and rushed forward, catching a dog-thing off guard and spilling its kidney into the parking lot, the gutter drinking its blood.
Pete galloped forward, trampling the much smaller fox thing, bones and flesh crunching under his hooves. His jaw snapped around a third, snapping its neck in two.
Though Pete couldn’t remember a lot before right then, he knew he’d never felt more alive.
The Beast grinned a bloody grin. “I see that look. This is what you were meant to be. Inside.”
The inside of the recording studio was like the scene of a massacre. They found Casey Kasem, mid-transformation into a sort of owl, headphones still on his head, slumped over an empty reel-to-reel.
Pete lowered his head and closed his eyes. Casey must have got the recording in the mail days ago as his last act, and the station broadcasted it without listening to it first.
“It was me,” said the Beast from behind him. Pete turned around.
“I was the scientist. I released the agent into the air. I don’t remember doing it, but I read my notes afterward.”
“You,” said Pete.
“Yes,” said the Beast. He lowered his head. “I was tired of the corruption of our politicians, destruction of the environment, endless wars. I wanted it all to stop. But I made it worse.”
“No,” said Pete. “It’s different. More primal. Not worse.”
“What do you mean?” said the Beast.
“We can take the fight to those who would do us all harm. Cleanse the earth of evil, instead of letting it fester. You’ve empowered us to fight back. Don’t be ashamed of what you tried to do.”
The Beast’s eyes were kind.
“Come on,” said Pete. “We have more of these things to fight, and the night is still young.”
Pete hesitated, reached for an unmailed reel-to-reel, mounted it and hit the playback. He wanted to hear that voice one more time.
“Keep your feet on the ground,” Casey said from the speaker, “And keep reaching for the stars.”
With that, the moose-man and cat-man left the Mustang behind and headed into the wild.
END
