Edward G.
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"Burden Kansas," a novella by Alan Ryker (Sucker Punch Press, March 2011), is probably the most unsexy vampire story ever written. However, inasmuch as it forgoes any romantic notions of vampirism, I believe its themes hit closer to home for most people.
Ryker’s vampires are much more like rabid animals than sexy immortal humans. They live in muddy holes under trees, stink of death, and come out to feed primarily on cattle. But things take a turn when two of the main character’s trailer-trashy enemies become vampires themselves during a botched fertilizer theft. Did I mention this was an un-sexy story?
The main character is Keith Harris, a rough-and-tumble alcoholic farmer who put his wife to sleep like an injured dog while she lay dying of cancer in the ICU. He has a niece, Jessica, who ends up an unlikely surviving hero following a brutal decapitation she does with a hatchet as a form of mercy killing in its own right. But you’ll have to read the story to find out whose head rolls in the end.
Rather than detail the entire plot of this short novel (140 pages) and inevitably spoil the punch line, I’d like to comment on the main theme "Burden Kansas" illustrates. That is the impossibility of redemption.
In this story, the meth-heads (Dennis and Brandon) pay for their sins by the eternal hell of becoming rabid vampires who are hunted by hounds and farmers with shotguns. Keith the farmer meets his own torture at the hands of Dennis whom he bullied and mercilessly injured at some point in the past. Jessica, the conduct-disordered drug-addicted teen, ends up alone and facing the bloody dead bodies of all the people who ever cared about her. Thus we see a moral evolving from this theme of no redemption: you will do the crime (we all do), and you will do the time—we all do. There is no happy ending, only a burden.
Except for Keith Harris, the characters are a bit flat and some of the action is cliché if not downright out of character. With descriptions about Jessica such as “She put her hands on her hips and scowled at him.” One tends to envision a spunky teen from Leave it to Beaver, not a hatchet-wielding, ex-drug addict, will-be vampire killer.
Nevertheless, this novel is dark, fast paced, original in its concept, and sells for a mere $2.99 as a Kindle book. Anyone interested in Vampire gothic would do well to pick up a copy for themselves. If there’s a sequel (and there should be), I’ll no doubt be reading it and enjoying it myself, just like I did this one. Personally, I think "Burden Kansas" would make a great mini-series on HBO.
Review by Edward Gordon
