Night at the Museum - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella

by John G. Hartness

  “Marty, this can go down a couple of ways, and they’re all your choice, buddy,” I said.

  “I reckon don’t none of them choices include me getting the five large that little shitbird promised us, do they?” Marty asked.

  “Well, son, that’s between you and him. Way I see it, you did your part. It ain’t really your fault you ran into an armed federal agent and the meanest sumbitch in twenty square miles.”

  “You got a point, Bubba, but you gonna send this jackass to jail, and then he ain’t never gonna be able to pay me! I shoot you, at least I get something out of the deal. I kill you and I get to drink for free in every werewolf bar in Georgia.”

  “And Tennessee,” Bart said from the ground. Some people choose the strangest times to get chatty.

  I thought for a second. I didn’t know how Marty and Bart came to know that werewolves were real, but most hill folk are a little more in tune with the supernatural than your average Joe. I figured on a counter-offer. “I bet that boy’s got himself a couple grand in his wallet, and that watch he’s wearing looks expensive. How about I let you roll him, then y’all go on home, and we’ll take care of this dumbass.”

  “That sounds fair,” Marty said. “That okay with you, Bart?’ Bart grunted, keeping the total number of words I’d ever heard him speak to two. I lowered the pistol, and Marty knelt by the unconscious weed farmer. He took his watch, a couple of rings that I thought looked fake, but I’m no jeweler, and pulled a wad of bills out of that boy’s front pocket big enough around to choke a horse. “Can I have the credit cards, too?”

  “Nah, just take the cash,” I said. “We don’t want y’all to get in no identity theft trouble.”

  “Okay,” Marty said. He stood up and held out his hand. I shook it. “Thanks, Bubba. We didn’t much want to help him rob you, especially since you was always decent to us growing up and then turned out to be so damn big. But he offered more money than we make in a month, so we kinda had to do it.”

  “It’s alright, Marty. I know how it is.” Bart was on his feet by now, and I shook hands with him, too, then I tied the city slicker’s hands and feet together with his boot laces and dumped him onto the back of Joe’s ATV.

  “Let’s get back to the house. Amy’s gonna have some paperwork to do with this asshole and I reckon I need to pack a bag to go to Florida.” I gave Amy the thug’s pistol to put in her bag and we rolled off to the house. Joe parked his four-wheeler next to my truck, and Amy called the Sheriff to come pick up our little Junior El Chapo.

  I grabbed a quick shower, threw some clothes in a bag, and was back out on the porch to see the Sheriff’s car rolling down my driveway in a cloud of dust. “Everything cool?” I asked Amy.

  She was sitting on my porch in a rocking chair, her feet propped up on the porch rail, pink toenails shining in the afternoon sun. “Yeah, it’s all good. Sheriff’s gonna stick him in a holding cell for twenty-four hours while I get somebody down here to charge him with possession, intent to distribute, concealed weapon, conveying threats, and whatever else I can get him on. I don’t get the big charge, which would have been nice, but somebody mulched all the evidence.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s fine. He threatened a federal agent, even if he didn’t know it at the time. So he’ll get the book thrown at him on everything else, and my testimony should be plenty to put him under the jail for years.” Amy stood on tiptoes and gave me a kiss. “Now get in the truck and find out what’s got Joe so riled up about Florida. I’ve called the office and they’re sending a chopper for me in a couple of hours. I’ll stay at my place in DC tonight and check in with you tomorrow.”

  “Alright, we’ll get rolling. I bet Joe’s pacing my living room like a lion in a cage.”

  “I’m surprised he’s not sitting in the passenger seat honking the horn.” Amy grinned up at me, then hugged me again. “Be safe, you big idiot.”

  “Yeah, I love you, too,” I said, then hollered back into the house. “Joe! Let’s roll!”

  He burst through the back door, a duffel bag in hand. That boy was ready to go. I bent down, kissed Amy again, and hopped into the truck to go to Florida and find out what was so important to Joe in the Sunshine State.

  Chapter 3

  The sun was coming up as we rolled off the interstate and onto International Drive. According to Joe, this new Museum of Antiquities was in one of the old parts of the convention center, so I turned into what looked like the right parking lot, found a spot near the back door, and turned off the truck. Joe reached for his door handle, but I pressed the “lock” button before he could escape again.

  “Open the door, Bubba, I need to use the bathroom.”

  “You peed less than an hour ago at that Waffle House, so you can hold it for a minute. I been in this truck for most of eight hours, and you ain’t said a word yet about the case, or why it’s so all-fired important that you be here with me. Matter of fact, aside from singing along to Blank Space, you been silent as a monk since we left the mountain. Now spill it, or we’re gonna sit in this parking lot all day.”

  “It’s complicated, and I’d rather you hear the details of the case from the museum personnel,” Joe said, then turned back to try the door again. Wasn’t happening.

  “That’s fine. I don’t really give a shit what we’re after. It’s bad, we’ll hunt it down, I’ll kill the shit out of it, we’ll go home. That ain’t what’s important here. What’s up your butt, Preacher?” He flinched a little at the word “preacher,” and I was even more confused.

  “It’s about that, actually…”

  “For God’s own damn sake, Joe, if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on, I’m gonna whoop your ass ’til my arm hurts!”

  “Fine, fine, calm down.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his curly black hair. He wore his hair too long for most mountain-type preachers, but The Church cut him a whole lot of slack because he was the only one who could kinda keep me in line. They cut me a whole lot of slack because I killed everything they sent me to kill, and sometimes brought back bonus dead bad guys, too.

  “There’s someone working here in the museum that I used to know. That I used to…be friends with. Before I was a priest.” Joe very studiously did not look at me while he said all this. Somehow, the mirror outside my passenger window was suddenly very interesting.

  “Okay, so there’s a chick here you used to bang, back when you banged chicks and didn’t save it all for Jesus. Who probably doesn’t want all your sweet lovin’, by the way. But that’s another conversation. What’s the big deal?”

  “Well…we haven’t seen each other in a very long time, not since we broke up, and I’m afraid that she might have…”

  “Are you scared that she moved on and got married, or are you more scared that she didn’t?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. Now he looked at me, and the regret and pain in his eyes was so raw, so open, that I almost couldn’t take it. I’m not much for sentimental. A good fart joke is as close to sentimentality as I usually get, so seeing Joe bare his soul like that was really shocking.

  “Well, shit, Joe,” I said. “You loved her!”

  “I thought I did. Then I felt the call. So I left school and transferred.”

  “Without telling her,” I added.

  “Without telling her,” he confirmed.

  “And you didn’t return her calls.” I tried not to condemn with my tone.

  “Or her texts, or her emails,” he agreed. “I cut her out of my life without warning, and I’ve felt horrible about it ever since. But I was twenty years old, I had no idea what I was doing, and now…”

  “The world has played a nasty trick on you and you have to deal with the shit you pulled when you were a stupid kid,” I finished his sentence for him. Probably not in the words he was planning on using, but I got my point across.

  “Yeah, pretty much.” He sagged into the seat of my truck and looked up. “What do I do?”

  �
��Sack up and deal with it,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” He turned to face me. Pretty sure that’s the first time since he put on that collar that anyone told him to “sack up.”

  “Put on your big boy pants and get in there. You screwed up, you feel like shit about it, so go in there, be a professional, and the first chance you get to talk to this girl in private, apologize.”

  “Apologize?”

  “Apologize.”

  “Apologize?”

  “A. Pol. O. Gize. It ain’t hard, Joe. I’ve seen you fight elvish warriors, werewolves, vampires, snake-dudes, and all sorts of nasty critters. Just yesterday you stared a pissed-off drug dealer in the face and didn’t flinch. I’m pretty sure this woman, no matter how much you crushed her heart, is less interested in killing you than anyone else on that list. So reach deep down into your socks, find your balls, and strap ‘em on. Let’s go.” I unlocked the doors and got out of the truck. Joe didn’t budge, and I didn’t press him.

  I opened the back door of the crew cab and shoved my duffel into the floor. Then I flipped up the seat and opened the top drawer of the gun case I had built into the truck. I grabbed Bertha, my Desert Eagle, and slipped on her shoulder holster. I checked to make sure she was loaded and confirmed regular ammo in the gun. Then I slipped three magazines into the other side of the shoulder rig. One was silver, and the other two alternated between cold iron and white phosphorus rounds. Anything that could stand up to cold iron usually really didn’t like getting set on fire from the inside out, and vice versa.

  I grabbed a paddle holster and clipped it to the inside of my waistband at the small of my back. My Judge revolver went there, with three holy water and silver .410 shotgun shells and two cold iron .45 long rounds. I liked the versatility of the Judge, and there was something reassuring about having a shotgun just hanging out at the small of my back for tough situations. I tossed my caestus into a backpack with a few flash-bangs, a couple smoke grenades, half a dozen yew stakes and three Dasani water bottles full of holy water. I strapped a pair of silver-edged kukri to the outside of the pack and slung it over both shoulders. Feeling loaded for bear, I looked up in the front of the cab. Joe was gone. I buttoned up the gun case and closed the door.

  He was standing by the front bumper, still looking a little green.

  “You gonna make it?” I asked, using what I thought was my “tender voice.” In other words, the only voice I had that didn’t send small children running for the hills whenever I spoke.

  “Do I have a choice?” he asked, a sickly little smile on his face.

  “Sure,” I said. “You can wait in the truck. I ain’t gonna leave it running, but I’ll crack a window for you, like you’re my dachshund or something.”

  “The day you own a dachshund, I’ll go out and get a mastiff,” Skeeter’s voice came into my ear over our Bluetooth connection. Joe’s head snapped up as he heard his nephew.

  “Hey, Skeeter,” Joe said.

  “Uncle Joe,” Skeeter replied. “Now, are y’all gonna go in there and find out what needs killin’, or are y’all just gonna stand outside and hold hands some more?”

  “We’re going,” I said, and started walking toward the door. I didn’t look back at Joe. He was either going to get his shit together about this girl, or he wasn’t. And if he wasn’t, I didn’t want him watching my back anyhow. But I was relieved to hear the clump of his engineer boots on the asphalt behind me as I got close to the Employee Entrance.

  The security guard at the back door either thought he’d nabbed The Big One or that he was going to die when I walked up, bristling with artillery. “Hey,” I said, stopping at his station.

  “C-can I help you?” he asked, and I’m guessing this was a good day for him to be wearing the brown pants.

  Joe stepped up, back to his smooth self. “We’re here to see Rebecca Knowles. We’re here to consult on the religious significance of some artifacts she may have recently acquired. My name is Dr. Joseph MacIntyre. I believe she is expecting me.”

  “For some time, Dr. MacIntyre,” came a silky female voice from the now-open door into the body of the museum. She was a good-looking woman, medium build, with a dark brown or maybe auburn pixie cut. She wore jeans and sensible hiking boots, with a dress shirt tucked into her pants. A pair of wire-rimmed glasses set atop her button nose, and she had a splash of freckles across her cheeks that made her look younger than she probably was.

  She stepped forward and held out her hand. Joe shook it with a mute nod, and I stuck out my big paw. “Robert Brabham, Miss…Knowles?”

  “Doctor,” she corrected. “Doctor Rebecca Knowles, but you can call me Becca. Everybody around here collects PhDs like some people collect baseball cards, so if you just call out ‘Doc,’ you’re likely to get half a dozen answers. Including your friend, Dr. MacIntyre.” She gestured to Joe, who still hadn’t spoken since she stepped through the door. I felt like the polite thing to do was to hold up his end of the conversation, too, but I was gonna have to make a wisecrack sometime in the next two minutes or I might explode.

  “Nah, he knows if I’m looking for him, I’d holler ‘Padre’ or something like that.” That didn’t count, even though Becca faked a little laugh. We stood there shuffling back and forth for a couple minutes until I said, “So, I understand you’ve had some strange stuff going on? You want to show us where the weird shit has been going down?”

  She snapped to like I’d pinched her, which I swear I didn’t. Hell, as small as she was, if I pinched her, it was liable to leave a bruise. “Yes, of course. Let’s get you some visitor badges and take a look at the site of the disappearances.”

  We had pictures taken and the guard printed out little laminated ID cards. Apparently they had a deal on laminated cards, or somebody thought this was going to be more than a one-night gig. Becca led us through the back door into the body of the museum, pointing out some of the back-room kinda stuff as we passed, like storage rooms with uncategorized donations. I filed that away for future reference, since all kinds of stuff ended up donated to museums, and we might find the answer to all our problems in some box of Mrs. McGillicutty’s knickknacks.

  The museum was all but abandoned, with a few workers here and there touching up exhibits. I’d never been to a museum right before it opened, but I’d been to a bunch of other construction projects, and this one felt weird somehow. There was none of the buzz of activity that accompanied the final stages of a building project, and nothing in the people around me said “We’re in a hurry, we open soon.” Everybody just seemed semiconscious, or like they were sleepwalking.

  “Becca, I don’t mean to sound rude or nothing, but don’t y’all open in a couple days?” I asked.

  She did have the courtesy to blush, which I appreciate in someone who has conned me into driving all night for a fake grand opening. “We…don’t really open Friday. I mean, not this Friday. We open next Friday. That’s…just what I told your people so they would pass our request directly to your team. Directly to…’

  “Me,” Joe said. “Directly to me.”

  “Yes,” Becca admitted. “I knew, well I hoped anyway, that if you saw my name as the client that you would push me to the top of the list.”

  “So you manipulated the system using your past relationship with my handler to get me down here sooner than normal,” I said.

  “Yes, and I’m sorry, but there really is something going on, and I really do need your help.” She was almost in tears after admitting her lie.

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “Hell, I respect somebody who’s willing to lie a little bit to get what she wants. So what’s the deal? What’s going on around here?” I looked around, but the place looked just like every other museum I’d ever been to—a whole lot of boring in one address. One of these days, somebody’s gonna build a museum to boobies and beer, and I’m gonna be all over that shit. Until then, I pass.

  Chapter 4

  “The problems started when we changed the opening exhibit
from a history of early American coin-operated games to an immersive exhibit on fictional and fantastical monsters throughout history. Our board of directors felt that we needed something with broader commercial appeal for our grand opening, so we made the change over the protests of some of our curators, several of whom had invested quite a bit of time bringing in coin-operated games from all over the country,” Becca said, looking way, way up at me.

  “You mean like Pac-Man, and pinball and shit? How hard could those be to find?” I asked.

  “We’re actually talking about games much older than those, from toy banks from the turn of the century, to replica Batmobiles and hobby horses that stood outside grocery stores to extract that last quarter from your mom’s purse after a shopping trip.” She corrected me with a grin, and I started to see what Joe liked in her. She was a sharp one and would have made a good match for my preacher buddy, except for that whole not getting married and celibacy thing.

  “What kind of problems have you had?” I asked. By then we were standing in front of a big sheet of plastic with strips of yellow caution tape crossed over the surface in a big “X.” A couple of the nearby workmen were giving us the side eye, so I found the split in the plastic and held it open. We stepped through, and Becca walked over to the wall and turned on the overhead fluorescents.

  I could see how the place would be creepy as shit with the dim exhibit lights as the only illumination, but like so many things that are creepy in the dark, pouring a ton of light on it made it all seem harmless. Skeeter’s dance moves are one exception to that rule. The darker it is when he’s flailing about like an epileptic giraffe, the better for everyone.

  “You getting all this, Skeeter?” I asked, turning around slow so he could get a good look. I wasn’t wearing my sunglasses, which was how he usually got a camera shot, but a couple weeks ago my little super nerd came busting into my house holding a pretty badass skull belt buckle and grinning like the cat with a bellyful of feathers. Turns out the skull is a Wi-Fi camera, so now wherever my belt went, Skeeter went. This made for more than one uncomfortable moment at a urinal and a real long lecture about my behavior during a lap dance over a weekend where Agent Amy had to stay in DC for work and I was left to my own devices. I am not a man with a strong moral compass, so when the opportunity to drink beer and look at boobies arose, I was there. I forgot that wherever my pants went, Skeeter went. And my pants went to Jolene’s Landing Strip out by the airport for about six hours and forty-seven beers. At least Skeeter drove me back to get my truck after he finished bitching me out.