Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “Yeah,” Elvis said. “Damn indeed. Think how Jack feels. Things are not so groovy for him right now.”

  “We have to rescue him,” Jenny said.

  “Now I see it,” the Colonel said. “This was just a feeler attack, to see how prepared we are. We did all right with the house to protect us, all the spells and preparation. But now they got Jack, and they want us to come after him—”

  “Into their lair,” Blind Man said.

  “But we won’t go,” the Colonel said.

  “What,” I said. “What do you mean we won’t go? We’re talking about Jack here.”

  “I know,” the Colonel said. “I’m as fond of Jack as the rest of you.”

  “Fond?” I said. “What the fuck?”

  “I know how cold-hearted it sounds,” said the Colonel.

  “No you don’t,” I said. “You don’t know shit if you can’t see exactly what we have to do.”

  “Colonel’s right, Johnny,” Blind Man said. “It’s a trap.”

  “You sense that do you?” Elvis said. “A trap. Like we need some goddamn telepathy, or whatever that shit is you do, to know it’s a trap. Okay, it’s a fucking trap. Now we all know. We still got to go get Jack.”

  “They tested us here, and the plan was if they couldn’t beat us, they’d steal one of us away, try to bring us to them,” Colonel said. “The Big Mama wasn’t even in this fight. She directed it. She’s more powerful than all of them, but she’s the general. She stayed home and sent out her warriors. She’s connected to them, commands them, sees what they see. She knows how many we are and how we fight. It’s reconnaissance. Next time, it won’t be so easy.”

  “You call what just happened easy?” Johnny said.

  “Comparatively,” Colonel said.

  “We get it,” Elvis said. “And you need to understand this, ’cause I must be unconsciously speaking Greek or something, since you’re not understanding the words I’m saying. We’re going after him. Should I write that down, maybe draw you a picture of us going out the door? I mean, shit, man. We know where they are. We beat them here, we can beat them there.”

  “We had the house on our side,” the Colonel said. “Our charms and spells. And I don’t know that we actually beat them. They got Jack, didn’t they?”

  “We can take charms and spells and this big goddamn hammer with us,” John Henry said. “I didn’t get near enough pleasure out of it tonight.”

  “They are far stronger in their lair,” Blind Man said. “Me and the Colonel, we keep telling you that this was just a feeler mission. My bet is that we only saw a small portion of what they can do.”

  “As for Jack, they have most likely cracked his back and rolled him into a ball by now,” Colonel said. “They know we’ll want to come rescue him, but there won’t be anyone to rescue. He’s beyond that now.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  “I think I do,” Blind Man said. “They are counting on our humanity to do us in.”

  “If humanity does us in,” I said, “then it kind of shows we’re on the right track, don’t it. Humanity. That’s what we’re trying to protect, ours and everyone else’s?”

  “I’m with Johnny,” Elvis said.

  “No. We wait here for them to come back,” the Colonel said.

  “And what if they haven’t killed Jack,” I said. “What if they don’t come back. They know we can give them trouble here, so why come back? They can go on with their blood sucking, marrow chewing, or whatever they do, while we sit here holding our dicks. One of us notwithstanding.”

  “Thank you,” Jenny said.

  “We stay,” said Colonel. “I’m in charge here, and I say we stay, and that’s all there is to it.”

  He made his point more clearly by slamming the tip of his sword into a floorboard.

  Let me tell you what we did.

  We ignored the Colonel, and within thirty minutes we had gathered weapons and were in the process of making tuna sandwiches. We were thinking we could steal the Nocturne, wondering if the dead folk on board knew how to put it to the river without commands from the Colonel.

  There was another problem with our plan. Two, actually. We didn’t know exactly where the junkyard was. Elvis had been there, but as he said, “I was there when I was high as Neptune, and many years ago, so I don’t have what you might say is a real good remembrance of where it is.”

  He did have a general rememberance, however, but still, it was a problem.

  The other thing was Blind Man and Colonel knew what we were doing and were sitting at the table while we made the sandwiches.

  “So, you’re going to go anyway?” Colonel said.

  “Look like we’re trying to pretend we’re not?” John Henry said.

  “You are defying a direct order,” Colonel said. “I am actually a real Colonel, you know. Of the Hidden Agenda.”

  “Fuck you,” Elvis said.

  “Eat shit,” I said.

  “Go to hell,” John Henry said.

  “I respect you, Colonel, but I must follow my conscience,” Jenny said. “That’s a polite way of saying eat shit.”

  Blind Man said, “You will all be killed.”

  “Could be,” Elvis said.

  “How you going to get there?” Colonel said. He hadn’t heard our previous discussion about stealing the Nocturne.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Elvis said, as he stirred a bowl full of tuna and mayonnaise. A lot of mayonnaise.

  Colonel sighed. “So your mind is made up?”

  “Yep,” Elvis said, speaking for all of us.

  “We are going to find them and knock their asses straight into hell,” John Henry said.

  “Go on, then,” the Colonel said. “I’ll even give you directions. But Blind Man and I aren’t coming. We are going to meet up in the morning with one of our men that is flying in from Washington. He is going to provide us with an assault vehicle. It is blessed with spells. They will bring reinforcements.”

  “Morning might be too late for Jack,” Jenny said.

  “What the fuck are we doing?” Elvis said. “Making tuna sandwiches while Jack is in their clutches.”

  “We got to eat,” John Henry said. “I can’t go into this weak. I have hypoglycemic tendencies.”

  “You getting any vibes on Jack?” I asked Blind Man.

  He shook his head. “The vampires, the shadow, the bone people, the great ball of power, or whatever they are, have pulled in and are grouped up with the Great Mother, or Big Mama as Colonel calls her. When they’re that way they contain their thoughts and images better. She puts a kind of mental shield around things.”

  Elvis was slicing a banana into the tuna fish.

  “Who’s going to eat that?” Jenny said.

  “Better than you think,” Elvis said.

  “Your last meal is going to be a tuna fish and banana sandwich,” Colonel said. “That’s sad. What you’re doing is stupid and impulsive.”

  “I’ve made these sandwiches before,” Elvis said.

  “Not what I meant,” Colonel said.

  Elvis was slapping tuna and banana on bread now. “I know. And you should know, we’re going.”

  “I’m not going to have this argument,” Colonel said. “There are recruits in the wings to take your place, if need be. We have a guy named Morrison who has gone off the radar, playing dead. He’s good at this kind of thing, Big Charisma, makes the Big Bads stick their heads out, way you do. He might have more juice than you have. And he’s looking for an upper management position.”

  “There’s an upper management position?” Elvis said.

  “For those that rate,” the Colonel said.

  “Hell with it,” Elvis said. “We’re bagging up our supper, and then we’re gone.”

  30

  JOHNNY'S JOURNAL:

  THE NOCTURNE AND THE MISSISSIPPI

  There was a dead man at the controls.

  The moon was bright and the Nocturne’s image lay heavy and sil
ver on the water. The lanterns weren’t lit up, just standard lights fore and aft. The dead folk were in charge, and they didn’t need the Colonel to know what to do. We ate as we sailed. The tuna sandwiches were good. Elvis was right, that banana was surprisingly good mixed with mayonnaise and tuna. Who would have thunk it?

  The dead moved along the deck, serving drinks, even though we hadn’t asked for any. They served them on silver trays. We sent them away. They went down below and out of sight, except for the dead river pilot in the wheel house.

  After awhile we came to a place where the trees were cut away and there was a slick bank that ran up a slope and out of sight. The Nocturne pulled in close, edged against the shore, and then down came the walkway, out went the tie lines, the anchor lines, everything needed to hold the boat in place.

  I looked at the phosphorescent hands of my watch. Morning was not far away.

  We disembarked, and up the slick hill we went. When we got to the top there was a large field full of saw grass and a sprinkling of stubby trees. Beyond that we saw the dark shape of buildings and cars through a chainlink fence. Moving up close to it, we walked around until we came to a gate.

  Elvis stopped us, said, “Wire cutters.”

  John Henry had a bag of tools with him. He put them on the ground and searched inside.

  “How about a hammer?”

  “There’s no wire cutters?” Elvis said.

  “Nope.”

  “Damn. All right. Give me the goddamn hammer.”

  “I brought one of my own,” John Henry said, and swung his hammer at the lock, knocking it in the dirt. The gate creaked.

  “Well, at least we’re being quiet and sneaky,” Jenny said.

  “I’m all out of sneaking around,” Elvis said.

  “We’re going to need some sneaking,” Jenny said. “We’re mad, but we can’t be crazy.”

  “All right,” Elvis said. “Be as quiet as you can, until you see one of them sonofabitches and then let out a war whoop.”

  “We sticking together?” John Henry said.

  “I thought about that,” Elvis said, and he and all of us were talking quietly now, though by this time we may have let the weasel out of the box. “I think we split in teams of two, me and Jenny, you and Johnny.”

  “Sounds like divide and conquer us to me,” I said.

  “We can cover ground faster, and we can yell or shoot off a flare if need be… You did bring the flares?”

  “In the bag,” John Henry said. “They got salt in them and all manner of hoodoo shit.”

  John Henry scratched around in his bag and came up with a flare and gave it to Elvis, who slipped it into the pocket of his coat.

  “Do what you got to do,” Elvis said. “And listen, we don’t get far apart, just enough to see what the lay of the land is. See that long row of cars? Take the other side, and we meet at the end of the lot. We’ll go down every row we have to. When we find them, hit hard, hit fast, and if we can get Jack out, make a run for it. These suckers will wait. We can wait until daylight to go at them again. Right now the priority is Jack.”

  “What if he’s…you know?” I said.

  Elvis pushed back his jacket. He had a snubnose .38 revolver strapped to his side. “I put him out of his misery, or you bean him with that hammer, John Henry. One of us will finish him off. He wouldn’t want to spend his life as a basketball.”

  “Maybe we could shoot hoops with him,” John Henry said.

  No one said anything. We all just looked at John Henry.

  “Yeah, that was uncalled for,” John Henry said. “Much too soon.”

  “We take it slow, and if we’re here when light comes, they aren’t supposed to be as powerful, and we’ll have some slight advantage.”

  “Why not wait until daylight, then?” Jenny said.

  “Because Jack can’t wait,” Elvis said. “Every minute counts.”

  “We spent a lot of time making sandwiches,” I said.

  “Got to have your strength,” Elvis said.

  “All of his minutes could already be counted,” John Henry said.

  “Then, like I was saying, it’s up to us to put him out of his misery. Another thing. Everyone better have their glasses. Gets light, you’ll need them to see these suckers, if they decide to become invisible. Only time they can do that. I think.”

  “Not as reassuring as I had hoped for,” Jenny said.

  “All I got,” Elvis said.

  Me and John Henry started down our row of cars, Elvis and Jenny went along on their side. We had our weapons at ready. Me and my crossbow, plus a short, blessed sword strapped to my hip. Elvis had a mace carved with spells and his pistol with the blessed cartridges. Jenny had a large plastic water gun full of salt water, monk urine, and a tiny bit of heat-sweat from the walls of a mosque and a synagogue, both out of Morocco. How you collect sweat from walls is beyond my pay rate, but I wondered about it from time to time.

  And Jenny said she’d brought a secret weapon, hopefully not needed.

  What that weapon was I couldn’t guess, and she wasn’t talking.

  31

  IN THE JUNKYARD: ELVIS AND JENNY

  “Oh damn,” Elvis said. “Sorry. Tuna gives me indigestion.”

  “It’s fine,” Jenny said. “Kind of smells like bananas.”

  Elvis and Jenny walked slowly, John Henry and Johnny on the other side. They saw what was inside the cars. Things that had once been human in tight stacks, some of them with their noses pressed to the glass due to the way they were packed in with the rolled-up bodies of men and women and children, even dogs and cats and things that were too worndown and sucked out to identify.

  “Jesus, poor things,” Jenny said.

  “We got to concentrate on the problem at hand,” Elvis said. “Somehow,” Jenny said, “this water gun makes me feel inadequate.

  Like I’m stalking my little brother.”

  32

  BIG FAT MAMA AND HER TIT-SUCKING SERVANTS

  Movement in her brain, a stench in her nostrils. They were near. As expected. Humans couldn’t help being human. They had come to rescue their own, as she knew they would. That made them come out at night. Not their best time.

  And she could feel something else. Something probing from a distance, a powerful mind poking at her. She had felt it earlier, before she had sent her minions to attack. Blind Man, he was called.

  She constructed mental walls and backup walls. Blind Man’s mind punched at the walls, but the walls held.

  Sunrise was a half hour away. She would be weaker then. She would not be at her full powers, so it was time to take care of the intruders, to absorb them.

  Come to me, she thought. Come to me while the dark still clings.

  The Great Mother rocked back on her fat bulk, opened her eyes. For her the dark was like day. She could see clearly. She could hear their footsteps. She could smell them, and their odor made her hungry. She could almost taste their powers, especially one above all others. Elvis. That was the name that popped into her head. Jenny. John Henry. They were all full of hot-power juice, and the one called Johnny, well, he was merely a snack.

  The suckers slid off her tits and lined up on the floor, first on their bellies, then on their knees, and then they stood. They begin to look more human, and they began to multiply and fill the room.

  The bit of shadow formed by the creatures broke loose from them and fled away across the floor toward the door.

  The source of the shadow(s), the vampires, followed.

  33

  JACK

  Rounding the end of the row of cars they looked to their left, where two Chevrolets were stacked on top of a big red Cadillac. Through the windshield they saw Jack. They could still make out his face, but that was it.

  Tears ran down his puffed cheeks, glistened in the moonlight. He was broken up and in a ball, the veins and capillaries in his face had burst and were fat red beneath his skin. His mouth moved a little. Elvis, tears in his eyes, leaned forward. />
  Jack’s mouth formed words he could not hear, but it was easy to determine what he was saying.

  “Kill me.”

  Elvis leaned the mace against the car, pulled the revolver from under his coat.

  Jenny grabbed his arm. “He’s alive.”

  “You call that living?”

  Jenny held his arm a moment, then let it go.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Elvis pointed the revolver, pressing the barrel close to the glass, and fired. There was an explosion of lead and a hissing of air and a squirting of darkness from Jack’s rounded shape, and then Jack rolled to the right and forward, out of sight, tumbling onto the floor board.

  “So much for sneaking,” Jenny said. “Did…did you kill him?”

  Elvis went around and knocked the glass out on the passenger’s side with the revolver and looked inside. Jack’s head was little more than a puddle of liquid and a few bone fragments.

  “Jesus,” Elvis said.

  Elvis returned to the front of the car. “Those things get me, make me like that, do me how I did Jack,” he said.

  “Ditto,” Jenny said.

  “Goddamn those sucking freaks. Let’s smash their asses.”

  “Ditto.”

  Big Mama stirred, and following her minions, out of the shed she oozed, under the crack in the doorway, making a puddle that looked like mud. The puddle swelled and heaved and became Big Mama. Her mouth split from ear to ear, little knots popped up on her body, heaved and pulsed and leaked pus like sweat.

  Down a long path bordered by cars came John Henry and Johnny, and at the end of the path were the vampires, now white faceless things, bent at the waist, knuckles touching the ground. Before them lay a pond of shadow. The vampires linked arms and wrapped legs, leaned together, and fell flat into the shadow and the shadow coated them like a stain, and now they were one, and the ONE made a cracking sound, like a hungry dog gnawing a bone, and the thing rose up from where it fell, now a multiarmed creature, the arms writhing like the arms of Kali, but there were far more, and the legs were a multitude; it was as if a dozen Barbie dolls had been wadded together with ink-stained Silly Putty.