Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers

by Joe R. Lansdale

  We eased the door open and went inside.

  “I’ll call an exterminator,” Colonel said, as he moved toward the kitchen, as we all did, except for Jenny. She went upstairs.

  We sat at the kitchen table as if it had been planned, but after a moment I got up and went to making us a big pot of coffee. I sat back down while it percolated. It was solemn in that kitchen, I tell you that. You could have heard a roach pass a turd.

  It wasn’t long before Jenny came back down the stairs, headed for the front door. She had a can of hairspray in one hand, something smaller in the other. We all looked at one another, and again, as if planned, we all rose and followed her outside.

  “I hate these things.”

  You can figure the state we were in, all of us out in the yard watching Jenny say bad things about wasps. It was a spectator sport for a moment there; wasps and circuses, I guess you could say.

  Jenny lit a piece of paper she unfolded from her blue jeans pocket with a cigarette lighter (that was what was in the other hand) and then she held it up to the buzzing wasps, pointed the hair spray at the can, and squeezed the button. The spray hit the blaze and made a small flame thrower effect, caught the nest on fire, as well as some flying wasps. The flames kicked up and the nest turned black. The eave above the door caught fire as well, burned for a moment and went out.

  The blackened nest broke loose and fell to the ground. A couple of wasps, their wings burned off, crawled smoking out of the nest, and then they quit crawling. They were blackened wisps.

  “I feel sorry for them,” John Henry said. “They were just doing wasp things.”

  “Unfortunately for them, that means stinging me, so I was just doing Jenny things,” Jenny said.

  “Fair enough,” John Henry said.

  That’s when I noticed Elvis. His mouth was hanging open, and he was looking at that blackened nest as if some great revelation of God was about to be revealed.

  “Let’s get that coffee,” I said. “I don’t feel like much else right now.”

  That was the cue, and everyone went inside.

  Except Elvis.

  Little later when the coffee was ready, I poured cups for everyone, and then, holding the unplugged pot in my hand, I glanced out the window. Elvis had found a lawn chair, and was sitting in it, staring down at that nest. I guess he was grieving like the rest of us. Not about the wasps, but Jack. Maybe both. He was hard to figure sometimes.

  I fixed his coffee like he liked it, milk and sugar and a dollop of coffee, and took it out to him.

  When I handed it to him, he took it, said, “Thanks,” but never looked up. He kept staring at that nest.

  “You okay?” I said.

  “Fine.”

  “Get tired of staring at the nest, come in and have some breakfast. Colonel is cooking.”

  “Sure.”

  There was nothing else to say, so I went inside and had my breakfast and drank my coffee. We all told stories about Jack, and none of us mentioned what had happened to him.

  After a while, Jenny scooped some scrambled eggs and a few strips of bacon onto a slice of bread, put it on a plate, and took it out to Elvis. I watched him take the plate, place it in his lap, lift the food and eat it. It didn’t seem as if he actually knew he was eating. He wouldn’t take his eyes off that wasp’s nest.

  Jenny put her arm around him, and finally she sat down in the yard by his chair, and they both looked at the nest.

  I left them to it.

  Well now, I reckon it must have been about noon or so when I remembered they were out in the yard. I had gone up to my room and showered and changed clothes, and to keep from thinking about Jack, I read a little, but it was like my mind couldn’t keep the words. I had no idea what I read.

  Back downstairs I saw the doctor had arrived. He was one of ours. I had seen him before. He traveled about to attend to people, if he was close enough. He was out of Shreveport. He had a pretty, black nurse with him. They were working on John Henry’s arm. He grunted when they set it.

  They didn’t put it in a cast. Instead they wrapped it and slipped on a brace, then hung it in a nylon sling so that it lay across his chest. John Henry was chatting the nurse up, trying to make some time, but she wasn’t having any of it. She smiled, but behind the smile was a no.

  I went over and tried my luck. John Henry glared at me all the time I was working it, but it didn’t matter. We both struck out. Back at the kitchen window I looked out, and still sitting there were Jenny, on the ground, and Elvis in that chair. It was as if my looking out the window was the signal, because they both stood up and came into the house.

  Elvis said, “People. Me and Jenny. We think we know how to kill it.”

  “Or get killed trying,” Jenny said.

  “Let’s just do the first part,” Blind Man said.

  38

  ELVIS AND JENNY LAY IT OUT

  “What we got to do is rethink things,” Elvis said.

  “We have been looking at this all wrong,” Jenny said. “Have we?” Colonel said. “What can we do that’s different?

  Hold our mouths at a different angle?”

  “Other day,” Elvis said. “When we made our little Rococo Blue trip, you said something interesting.”

  “I always do,” Colonel said.

  “No. This was truly interesting,” Jenny said.

  “That’s right,” Elvis said. “You said, you couldn’t figure why the things kept going back. What were they doing easing out of sight in that strange, bleak land? Remember saying that?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, maybe I dreamed you said that, or I read between the lines. But would you say that is indeed a curiosity, and that you hinted at that?”

  “Words to that effect,” Colonel said.

  Elvis nodded. “And when Jenny set fire to that nest, I understood the solution. When we were in its world, that big dark thing that pulsed, and we didn’t know what it was, and I’m assuming we all saw the same thing, even if we didn’t see one another. Am I right? Big. Dark. Hanging on a cliff wall.

  Red light oozing out of it like radioactive strawberry jam. Everyone see that?” There was general agreement.

  “And you said, Colonel, that it was part of the environment. It was like a volcano, or an earthquake. It was some natural thing that went on all the time, and it was as natural to that world as those things are to ours.”

  “True,” Colonel said. “Or maybe I said that. Maybe I didn’t.”

  “Did or didn’t, that’s how I remember it, and maybe I brought some of your thoughts that went out there back with me. Doesn’t matter. But that big dark thing with the strawberry jelly, I know what it is. Wasp’s nest got me thinking on it, that and the fact that we know the head cosmic soul sucker has other suckers under her. Big Mama in my view, may be the Big Mama under a Bigger Mama, or Big Daddy. Whatever you want to call it. Fact is, I’m as certain of it as I can be. That giant, black, pulsing thing is not merely a part of the environment. It’s a nest. A giant nest.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Colonel said.

  “Think about it,” Jenny said. “Their world has been decimated, or close enough to it. Real life there is gone, or will soon be, but with the rips in time and space due to Rococo Blue and what have you, they have come here. The food they crave, the power from charisma, even the little powers from the dullest mind in the universe, are their meat. They want anything they can eat, but the more powerful a personality, the more they want it because it gives them Jacked-up Mojo. But the power is not for them alone, the ones that come here. They are merely servants. Even Big Mama. What they suck in, they spit out for the feeding of the hive. Big Mama has a boss, and it’s in that hive. It’s like bees. You know, how the queen is taken care of, fed, how it makes honey, how she lives off royal jelly. Whatever is in that hive, that’s the queen, or king, and they are all in service to it, and that oozing red stuff we saw leaking out of the hive, that’s their honey.”

  “That’s as big
a jump in thinking as I’ve ever heard,” Colonel said.

  “Perhaps not,” said Blind Man. “I sensed it was a living thing, but I thought living in the manner of grass as a living thing. It doesn’t put off the same sort of waves we do, as even its minions do, including Big Mama. If Elvis is right, this thing is alive, but not in the same sense as its helpers or as we are. It is alive in the way nature is alive. It doesn’t care, doesn’t give a damn. It just has to eat, and every time it gets enough of what those things bring back to it—because that idea is making sense to me now—it grows.”

  “So, to cut this down to where I can understand it,” John Henry said, “on the other side of this dimension, just to the left of reason, off the highway of common sense and into a rest spot for the weird, there’s a big nest and it’s getting all this goop brought to it by worker bees, and that keeps it alive?”

  “That sounded pretty smart for you,” Blind Man said.

  “Fuck you,” John Henry said.

  “That’s right, John Henry,” Jenny said. “And this thing’s workers, they survive on some of what they capture, a person’s essence, however you define it, but most of it goes to that thing, and it’s that thing that keeps them alive. Its servants don’t reason about why they do what they do. They just do it.”

  “Simple solution,” Elvis said. “We eliminate their purpose. The source of all this is a far easier mark than its protectors. It just sort of hangs out and survives. Big Mama and the minions do what they do not out of loyalty, but out of instinct, same as wasps and ants and politicians. Get rid of it. We get rid of them.”

  “Still all guess work,” Colonel said.

  “You’re mad you didn’t come up with it,” John Henry said. “Got a better idea, Colonel?” Jenny said.

  Colonel sat quietly. “Actually, no. But even if you’re right. So what? It’s there, we’re here, and how do we know it’s the only one in that dimension?”

  “It’s the only one we know of,” Elvis said, “so it’s the only place we have to start with. One swift blow and we could stop this thing. If there are others, then we have to deal with them later. But I think it’s reasonably safe to say that the big black pulsing nest is the source of our problem. And it’s the weak link. If we are mistaken, well, we have to come up with a Plan B.

  And you may be in the market for two more operatives.”

  “Two more operatives,” Colonel said.

  “Yeah,” Jenny said. “We got a plan.”

  39

  JOHNNY'S JOURNAL:

  THE PLAN

  This is what Jenny and Elvis were thinking, and it sounded like a plan alright, but I don’t know that it sounded like a plan that would work. But after considering on it, it was like in those old science fiction movies where they decide they are going to kill some monster or such, and a scientist, or someone in “the know” comes up with an idea so whacky, that someone says, “It’s crazy, but it just might work.”

  “What we need,” Elvis said, “or rather what I want, is a big pink Cadillac convertible.”

  “What the fuck?” Colonel said. “You’re expecting presents?”

  “I’m going to do this, I want to drive to that dark hell in style.”

  “Drive?” Colonel said.

  That’s when Elvis and Jenny explained it. I’m going to nutshell it for you, just like I understand it all. Thing was, Elvis talked about the big black jet of stone, and how he had glimpsed it seeming to grow right up out of the safe house’s yard. He was talking about when he was on the Rococo Blue and the mind bump from Blind Man.

  That spot was going to be the entry point. Elvis and Jenny, because they decided it had to be the two of them, because any more than the two of them was unnecessary, and if they failed (and there seemed a large-ass chance they would) there would be defenders left.

  They were going to load a Cadillac with enough explosives to blow the butt end out of a pachyderm, and then some. They were going to jump that bomb-loaded Caddy straight into that nest, pulling a plug, firing a wick, whatever worked, let it rocket into that thing, and with a little luck it would blow it to kingdom come, leaving the worker bees, and their leader Big Mama, high and dry as far as the nest went.

  They asked for a certain rig, wanted a special device built, a kind of giant rack put up in the yard. Attached to that rack would be giant straps of elastic (I’m serious), and they would have harnesses on one end of the elastic, and Jenny and Elvis would slip into the harnesses, then they would get into the convertible. The straps would stretch back across the back of the open-roofed Cadillac, all the way to the supports. And the elastic would draw taut. When they felt the car was aimed, they would pop a lever that would cause the seat harnesses to come loose and snap them back from that world, return them to this one.

  That’s of course if the portal stayed open.

  Oh yeah, and there was the ramp. A big wooden ramp that pointed up at the sky, and went nowhere at the end. Way Elvis and Jenny saw it, was they took the drug, it would jump them and the car into the other dimension, and then they would only need a few seconds to do what they needed to do, before being snapped back over the ramp and into a stack of thick mats lying out in the yard in front of the rack. The problem, of course, was they might hit the rack, but mats would be pushed up against it too, so maybe they wouldn’t hit it hard.

  Shit, what could go wrong with a plan like that?

  40

  ELVIS AND THE COLONEL AND A SOUL IN A SACK

  The night before the carpenter and all the materials were to arrive, Elvis sat out on the veranda and looked across the vast yard toward the Mississippi, smoking a cigar, Colonel came out and sat down beside him.

  “It’s all set in motion,” Colonel said.

  “Good,” Elvis said. “I’m ready, and I think Jenny is too.”

  “Maybe I can make you even more prepared,” Colonel said, reached inside his coat and pulled out a small purple bag with a drawstring at the top.

  “Know what this is?” Colonel said.

  Elvis removed the cigar from his mouth and swallowed. “I think I do.”

  Colonel held the bag in front of him, said a few words, what sounded like gibberish to Elvis, and then Colonel opened the bag with a swift jerk of the drawstring. There was a rush of wind from the bag, the air turned warm as toast, and then there was a feeling of contentment that swelled over Elvis, from head to toe. He could smell his mother’s scent, and he could feel that sensation she always gave him of total acceptance and absolute confidence. And then there was a twist of blue mist. The mist spun around him and rose up and drifted under the overhang of the veranda, then slipped slowly out of sight.

  Elvis stood up, leaned out over the veranda rail, looked up. The mist spread and faded as it rose starward.

  Elvis felt a tear run down his cheek and gather in a ball on his lip, and then it rolled over his lips and down his chin.

  “Heaven all mighty,” he said. “That was Mama.”

  “It was,” Colonel said. “She’s free now.”

  Elvis turned, his eyes filled with tears. “Thank you.”

  “It was long overdue. You should be beating my ass for holding that over you. It seemed like the right choice at the time. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Way I feel,” Elvis said, “I’m completely grateful and forgiving. Another time, I might want to beat your ass. But right now, I feel great satisfaction and joy.”

  “I didn’t want you going into tomorrow not knowing her fate. She is free, and so are you, to make your own choices. Again, I’m sorry, Elvis.”

  “It’s done, Colonel. I feel satisfied.”

  “Good. That’s all that matters.”

  41

  JOHNNY'S JOURNAL:

  THE BIG DAY COMES

  The car arrived. It was so fine, so very pink, and shiny as a wet dime. A ’57, with the cool fins. Elvis patted it on the hood as if it were a pony.

  The ramp didn’t take long to build. Colonel had carpenters brought in, and
they put that damn thing up pronto-mucho-fucking-quick. Then the big frame went up to which the elastic straps were attached. Those were long straps, and they could be adjusted to coil tight at the harness, and then a rip cord could be pulled and bam, they would tighten again, and if all worked out, the straps would snap our pair back. Course, it could just snap them into the ramp or pull them through the back of the Caddy, but as John Henry said, “You can’t have everything.”

  The mats were brought in as well. Slide rule fuckers were used, eggheads. They measured this, they measured that, and they pretty much decided it would work, but as one of them said to Elvis: “I’m glad it’s you, not me.”

  That isn’t the sort of endorsement that makes a fella feel enthused.

  The time came. Elvis and Jenny went out in the yard and I helped them get fastened into their harnesses, which were made of leather and canvas. I fastened the thick elastic straps to them with metal clamps. The straps went back to huge spools bolted to a heavy iron frame weighted down with a bunch of sand bags.

  Next the trunk of the convertible and the backseat were packed with explosives. It was done carefully and slowly and the men and women who did it popped sweat on their foreheads and trembled ever so slightly.

  “What if it goes off now?” I said to the Colonel.

  “The good news is there’s enough explosive there, you won’t feel it, and what’s left of us all will be found on the far side of the Mississippi.”

  “Oh, now I feel better,” I said.

  Elvis and Jenny climbed in the convertible while those helpers Colonel had brought in made sure the elastic didn’t tangle. Whole setup looked like some kind of cartoon about to go wrong. You know, the coyote goes off the cliff and there’s a puff of smoke, and the roadrunner says “Beep. Beep.”

  Blind Man made his way to the car, tapping the ground with his cane, but hell, we all knew he could sense where they were. He had with him two fat blue pills. John Henry came over with a water bottle, gave that to them.