This issue opened with a ghost story, followed by an SF story, and this third story in the issue is, as was Kurzawa’s last but one story for Interzone (Dark Gardens) is a horror story.
I could understand sneaking in the odd horror story, except for the fact that Interzone’s sister magazine is ‘Dark Static’, a horror magazine. Does that horror magazine include SF stories I ask myself?
The story is atmospheric, painting a grim picture of a man holed up in a garret, staring out of the building in which he is sheltering. There’s been a conflict, and he’s one of the remaining humans. Someone comes a-knocking at his door and he reluctantly takes up the offer to help, and it’s the nature of that help that the story illustrating chillingly shows (spoiler : the person who helps him is a surgeon, who kills him, slits him from chin to pube and pulls out a lot of him, leaving it in the bathtub, then revivifies him and they head off. But what follow’s is a bit like classic horror story The Monkey’s Paw, except it’ The Dead Man’s Innards that come a-shambling after the The Dead Man. bleagh)
