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Moab
She valiantly tries to fight back and claw at his eyes, but he pushes her arms away and starts punching her in the face. Her two front teeth snap off at the gum line and the cartilage in her nose splinters. Mercifully, by that time she is knocked out. Ahmad pulls up hard on the knife handle and works the blade free. Instantly her left lung collapses. The other tourists are screaming and shouting but are too petrified to intervene. Ahmad starts sawing away at her neck. Bright scarlet gore spurts out across the sand from a severed carotid artery. Next, there is a high-pitched wheezing sound, as air escapes from her transected trachea. Ahmad shows a bit of frustration as the blade keeps getting hung-up on sinew and cervical vertebra. He continues to saw and hack through the meat and bone.
134 pages, Paperback
Published September 4, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 11, 2018
Gross and violent and biblical and all that. I had a blast. Seriously, this is a cool story and it’s well put together. I’m glad I picked this up.
October 10, 2017
MOAB by R.D. Cervo is one hell of a wild ride from beginning to end, and if you're not prepared for what awaits, you are going to be in for one big impact to your senses. And if you are prepared, it's still going to be a very strong experience that will still be felt long after you've read it.
For those who have read R.D. Cervo's epic "Kali on a Rampage", then imagine all the madness, carnage, and violence from that but now heightened to a whole new degree of crazy, nasty, and gory. Nothing is held back as the author goes right at you in the very first chapter where a young woman is mutilated by a knife, her head slowly severed off, and then the detached head is promptly orally violated by her crazed attacker. That starting point is just a sample of what is to come in the following chapters, and although you may think it couldn't get more savage than the first death in the story, it really does, it gets a whole lot more messy. Sex and violence merge together many times in the most vivid detail that paints a clear and disturbing picture in one's minds eye on many occasions.
The story is original and demented, as an ancient deity that has been imprisoned on Earth for endless centuries is finally freed due to our own arrogance as a species, our constant wars, massacres, and pollution that is destroying humanity as a whole and the planet we live on, a fitting message that we are own catalysts for our own destruction which is personified in the form of Gulla, a being who has existed since the dawn of creation and thrives off death and chaos. Back in the era of Sodom and Gomorrah, he was scattered into atoms at the bottom of the ocean and forced to remain locked away there, since then, he has been waiting, scanning our society over the many passing years, learning our languages, understanding our culture, and finding the keys to our Armageddon through our many ways of causing mass destruction, example Gulla knows every launch code for every nuke across the globe and can launch them at will if he wants. But he doesn't want to wipe us out just yet, after being in captivity for such a long time, first he wants to have some fun by using his devastating powers to make us suffer. Gulla himself is a psychotic and deadly entity, imposing and intimidating with dashes of dark humour. He is one with all the molecules of every living thing on the planet and can warp them to its own will, for example, one character has the DNA cells for cancer dormant in his genes, in a horrifying moment, Gulla activates those cells and accelerates them to give him an overwhelming case of rectal cancer. And in a homage to Scanners, he can give people a brain aneurysm which causes the heads to explode. Gulla is truly a terrifying and sadistic figure in horror, taking immense glee out of every last individual he kills and holds our planet in the palm of his hands which he can annihilate whenever he seems fit.
MOAB is a splatter story taken to the rawest essence of the extreme. The red stuff, the white stuff, and the sticky stuff are not shied away from. If you love gore and mayhem, and visceral horror, then this is the book for you, it is a gruesome, shocking, and powerful read that isn't for the faint of heart.
And just like Kali on a Rampage, once you've read MOAB, the graphic images of horror will be with you in your subconscious forever.
And take great heed of the message the story is telling, if you don't want our world to be destroyed, it's time to stop our selfish mistreatment towards the planet, animals, nature, and ourselves. An end to war, greed, pollution, ego, and madness is the key to our salvation. If not, Gulla will be coming.
For those who have read R.D. Cervo's epic "Kali on a Rampage", then imagine all the madness, carnage, and violence from that but now heightened to a whole new degree of crazy, nasty, and gory. Nothing is held back as the author goes right at you in the very first chapter where a young woman is mutilated by a knife, her head slowly severed off, and then the detached head is promptly orally violated by her crazed attacker. That starting point is just a sample of what is to come in the following chapters, and although you may think it couldn't get more savage than the first death in the story, it really does, it gets a whole lot more messy. Sex and violence merge together many times in the most vivid detail that paints a clear and disturbing picture in one's minds eye on many occasions.
The story is original and demented, as an ancient deity that has been imprisoned on Earth for endless centuries is finally freed due to our own arrogance as a species, our constant wars, massacres, and pollution that is destroying humanity as a whole and the planet we live on, a fitting message that we are own catalysts for our own destruction which is personified in the form of Gulla, a being who has existed since the dawn of creation and thrives off death and chaos. Back in the era of Sodom and Gomorrah, he was scattered into atoms at the bottom of the ocean and forced to remain locked away there, since then, he has been waiting, scanning our society over the many passing years, learning our languages, understanding our culture, and finding the keys to our Armageddon through our many ways of causing mass destruction, example Gulla knows every launch code for every nuke across the globe and can launch them at will if he wants. But he doesn't want to wipe us out just yet, after being in captivity for such a long time, first he wants to have some fun by using his devastating powers to make us suffer. Gulla himself is a psychotic and deadly entity, imposing and intimidating with dashes of dark humour. He is one with all the molecules of every living thing on the planet and can warp them to its own will, for example, one character has the DNA cells for cancer dormant in his genes, in a horrifying moment, Gulla activates those cells and accelerates them to give him an overwhelming case of rectal cancer. And in a homage to Scanners, he can give people a brain aneurysm which causes the heads to explode. Gulla is truly a terrifying and sadistic figure in horror, taking immense glee out of every last individual he kills and holds our planet in the palm of his hands which he can annihilate whenever he seems fit.
MOAB is a splatter story taken to the rawest essence of the extreme. The red stuff, the white stuff, and the sticky stuff are not shied away from. If you love gore and mayhem, and visceral horror, then this is the book for you, it is a gruesome, shocking, and powerful read that isn't for the faint of heart.
And just like Kali on a Rampage, once you've read MOAB, the graphic images of horror will be with you in your subconscious forever.
And take great heed of the message the story is telling, if you don't want our world to be destroyed, it's time to stop our selfish mistreatment towards the planet, animals, nature, and ourselves. An end to war, greed, pollution, ego, and madness is the key to our salvation. If not, Gulla will be coming.
November 28, 2017
I don't usually read these kinds of books.
This book left me in a trance. Read in one sitting. Great pacing. Intense AF. Great writing. This book doesn't hold back at all and it pays off.
This book left me in a trance. Read in one sitting. Great pacing. Intense AF. Great writing. This book doesn't hold back at all and it pays off.
January 11, 2019
It’s always a thrill to discover a new writer with solid chops who’s doing something different in the horror genre. MOAB starts off in the present day Middle East with what appears to be a savage terrorist attack on the shores of the Dead Sea. Things soon take a supernatural left turn however, all the way back to a primitive cult and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Although the overall story is one of an ancient entity unleashed in the modern world, the bulk of it takes place in the past with a highly inventive reworking of the Biblical story of Lot’s wife. Cervo’s imagination is as powerful as it is depraved, evoking early Clive Barker in all its gruesome glory. Novellas might be the perfect length for a horror story but they often sag in the middle. This is not the case here due to Cervo’s keen sense of pacing. The story grabbed my attention from the start and held it until the end. I was also impressed by his ability to pull no punches without becoming gratuitous. This kind of story demands a certain level of sexual violence and degradation that other writers would either shy away from or wallow in in a crude attempt to shock. Cervo does neither. Everything that happens serves the story and advances the plot no matter how graphic it gets.
My only real criticism is that at times the story is somewhat overwritten and hampered by the odd typo, missing word, and occasional slip into cliché and redundancy, ‘ruby and crimson,’ ‘like a rag doll,’ ‘tough as nails’ etc. The internal dialogue becomes a bit contrived towards the end and there are a few unintentional tense changes and awkward sentence structures. To my ear, ‘Where once stood the cities’ for example, would have worked better as ‘where the cities once stood,’ and instead of ‘A teen-aged female waiter,’ a simple ‘waitress’ would have sufficed. Perhaps I’m giving these minor flaws undue attention, but when a story is this good it makes the odd slip stand out. With another polish, MOAB would truly shine the way it deserves to. Don’t let this put you off though. The story is so dark and unrelenting that it damn near blew me away and I highly recommend it to horror fans hungering for something different. The only other thing I have to add is that while it works as a stand-alone, it could easily be the start of a bigger story.
If we’re lucky, perhaps it will be.
My only real criticism is that at times the story is somewhat overwritten and hampered by the odd typo, missing word, and occasional slip into cliché and redundancy, ‘ruby and crimson,’ ‘like a rag doll,’ ‘tough as nails’ etc. The internal dialogue becomes a bit contrived towards the end and there are a few unintentional tense changes and awkward sentence structures. To my ear, ‘Where once stood the cities’ for example, would have worked better as ‘where the cities once stood,’ and instead of ‘A teen-aged female waiter,’ a simple ‘waitress’ would have sufficed. Perhaps I’m giving these minor flaws undue attention, but when a story is this good it makes the odd slip stand out. With another polish, MOAB would truly shine the way it deserves to. Don’t let this put you off though. The story is so dark and unrelenting that it damn near blew me away and I highly recommend it to horror fans hungering for something different. The only other thing I have to add is that while it works as a stand-alone, it could easily be the start of a bigger story.
If we’re lucky, perhaps it will be.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews