Midsummer - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella

by Hartness,John G.

  “Good nose,” our laconic guide said. “Them’s the sewers. Follow the flow of the water and you’ll come out on the other side of the city walls. Drops out into a drainage pond about a half mile south of the city. I wouldn’t fill up a canteen out of that pond if I was you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, weighing the options of fighting our way through the entire city guard with one bad arm against wading through miles of sewer and probably not fighting anything worse than my own delicate sensibilities. Not having any delicate sensibilities, the choice was pretty easy.

  “Get down the ladder, girls. The faster you get all the way down in it, the sooner you’ll quit noticing the stink.”

  “Is that for real?” Elle asked.

  “Nah, it’s total bullshit,” I replied. “But the sooner we all get down that ladder, the sooner we’re the hell out of this city.” She nodded and swung her legs out into the hole. She climbed down the ladder, and a few seconds later, we heard the slight splash of her dropping into the water.

  “Oh my god, that’s disgusting!” she called up to us. “It stinks so bad down here, I can’t even! And it’s super dark, too. Does anybody have a flashlight?”

  “I don’t think there’s a flashlight within a thousand miles, or at least not in this dimension,” I said. I turned to the barkeep. “Torches?”

  He gave a little shrug and passed me a fistful of long candles and a few matches. “Be careful of fire. Sometimes the gas collects down there. Try not to get blowed up.”

  “I’ll do my best.” I passed the candles and matches to Tamara, who was the only girl remaining. All the rest were in the sewer already, remarking on the stench and speculating on what was bumping into their legs. I never knew there were that many words for poop, much less that a bunch of teenage girls would know them.

  “Thanks,” I said to the bartender.

  “That little scar-faced bastard took advantage of my cousin. Had his way with her and then walked away, leaving her with a son and no husband. And she wasn’t the first or last. He deserved to die for that, if nothing else. And I don’t like slavery.” He pulled his collar aside to show me a gnarled line of scar where he’d worn a collar at one time. I shook his hand and descended into the stink. It’s one thing to take a trip to Fairyland, but having to walk around in its sewers is another thing altogether. But there I was, ankle-deep in shit again.

  Chapter 15

  It was darker than the inside of an elephant’s asshole in the sewers of Tisa’ron, and smelled worse. The girls were troupers, though, and after a chain-reaction pukefest, they pulled their shirts up over their noses and trudged on through. Tamara and Elle managed to keep the candles lit by holding them high in the air, and I walked point with Bertha swinging in my left hand. I didn’t have a lot of faith in my ability to actually hit anything farther away than my nose, but I also thought the big bang my girl made would be a pretty good deterrent for anything that might be lurking in the shadows. Or worse, the water. Because anything that could survive the stuff we were walking through was way tougher than me.

  “Hey, Bubba?”

  I looked down and one of the girls was looking up at me. She was about sixteen, with long brown, curly hair that kinda frizzed out of a ponytail. I could barely make out a smattering of freckles across her button nose, and I instantly felt all big-brothery towards her.

  “Yeah, kid? What’s up?”

  “Maddie.”

  “Huh?”

  “My name. It’s Maddie. But that’s not really important right now, I guess. Um...so I was wondering...I saw that other gun in your belt, and . . . well, my dad taught me how to shoot when I was pretty young, so...”

  “You want to carry the backup piece?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I do. I’ll walk at the back, so if anything comes up behind us, I can at least have a chance of defending myself, and the others.”

  “I don’t know, I mean, I’m sure your dad taught you well and all, but for a little gun, this one packs a pretty good punch, and I don’t want—”

  “If you say you don’t want me to hurt myself, I’ll take that pistol and shove it up your butt.” I took another look at her and was surprised at the fierce expression on her face.

  “Okay, what do you really know about guns?” I asked. I put Bertha in my right hand and reached behind my back for my backup pistol. I clumsily worked my Judge revolver from the paddle holster and brought it around in front of me. That rig was not designed for a left-handed draw, and I was lucky I didn’t shoot my butt cheek off.

  I held the pistol up to catch a little of the flickering light. “This is a Judge revolver,” I started. “It can hold two different types of ammunition—”

  She interrupted me again. It would be annoying as hell if she wasn’t so impressive. “It holds forty-five long pistol bullets or four-ten shotgun shells. Most people use double-ought buckshot in the shotgun shells and call it ‘the carjack gun,’ but people who want a less lethal option load it with birdshot rounds. The revolver holds any combination of five rounds, and I’d expect you to alternate three shotgun shells with two bullets. Right?”

  “That’s pretty good, but for this trip I’m actually running five shotgun shells, all loaded with silver birdshot. Any idea why?”

  She thought for a few seconds, then admitted, “I have no idea.”

  “Good. That shows you’re not a complete wiseass. I thought there was slim chance I was investigating a mundane kidnapping, and I might need to shoot somebody and leave them alive. There aren’t a whole lot of ways to do that with a Desert Eagle. A fifty-caliber bullet to the arm is going to blow that arm clean off, and whoever you shoot is probably dead. With birdshot, I can make somebody regret a lot of their decisions and still leave them alive to think on it. I went with silver shot because most things that aren’t mundane really don’t like silver. Of course fairies are the exception to that rule. They don’t mind silver at all. But nothing likes getting shot, even if it doesn’t kill it. And you’re right, it’ll give you a few more seconds than you’d have without it.” I handed her the pistol, and she grinned up at me.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t even have to talk about dad being an Olympic marksman.” She grinned at me and dropped back to serve as rear guard. Elle went with her to make sure there was light at both ends of the group.

  We trudged through the sewer for what felt like hours until we came to a big junction where a bunch of pipes came together into a circular pool. I held up my hand, and everybody stopped.

  “Okay,” I said, keeping my voice low. “If this was a horror movie, there would be a big friggin’ monster in that pool. I’m not saying my life is a horror movie, but sometimes I think Wes Craven could write my biography without too much of a stretch. Now we have to go to each tunnel in turn to see which one is the outflow, and follow that one to get out of here. Yes, Tamara?”

  Tamara had her hand raised and put it down when I called on her. I never felt more like a substitute teacher than that day. I was underprepared, surrounded by teenagers, and swimming in shit. Yep, definitely a substitute teacher kinda day.

  Tamara cleared her throat. “I don’t want to pretend to know more than you, Bubba, because you’re the expert and all, but...”

  “Spit it out, kid. I’ve got an ego the size of the Grand Canyon, but it’s not big enough to not listen. Besides, I’ve never been to Fairyland before, and I’ll be just happy as a clam if I never come back, so I don’t know a damn thing more than you do. You need something beat to death, shot, stabbed, set on fire, or defenestrated? I’m the expert. You want to wade through poop while escaping the city guard in an overblown renaissance faire? I’ll take all the help I can get.”

  The girl chuckled a little. “Well, I noticed looking at the pipes that one is larger than all the others, and it seems to be a little lower than the rest. And since the old saying is that you-know-what flows downhill…”

  “Shit, Tam, it’s okay. You can say shit,” Elle said.
>
  “Okay, shit flows downhill. And I’m pretty sure that it’s all flowing to that pipe over there.” She pointed to a pipe not quite exactly across the pool from us, but close. It did look like there was a little drop-off there, and that meant it couldn’t be flowing into the junction. That was our way out.

  “Good eye, Tamara. That’s great. Now we just have to figure out how to get over there without disturbing anything that might be in the center of the pool. There’s a little ledge that goes around the wall, I reckon so workmen can come down here and clear out blockages and things without getting as gross as we are. We should follow that to the outflow pipe and get the hell out of here as fast as we can.”

  “I’m all for that,” Elle said. “It stinks down here, and I’m really starting to miss sunlight. Even the dungeon had windows.”

  “On the bright side, we stink so bad nobody will want to buy us for sex slaves,” Maddie chimed in from the back of the pack.

  “You kids sure are a bunch of damn Pollyannas,” I muttered. “All right, here’s the plan. I’m gonna stand here at the mouth of this tunnel. Maddie is going first to walk the ledge around to the exit tunnel. Once all y’all are over there, I’ll follow. Now let’s move.”

  Maddie joined me at the mouth of the tunnel, Elle right behind her with the candle. I helped them step up onto the ledge that encircled the junction about a foot out of the water, and one by one, the girls slipped around to the outbound pipe. When the last girl was over, I stepped up onto the ledge myself and pressed my back to the wall. I didn’t have a candle, so the little light that was there streamed in from the grate overhead or the pair of candles on the far side.

  I slid along the wall as close to soundlessly as somebody my size can get, with Bertha held in my left hand and my right strapped to my chest to try and relieve some of the stress on my throbbing shoulder. I got halfway across the room before everything went to shit. Or more to shit, since we started off in a sewer.

  There was a slight splash in the center of the pool, followed by another, then another.

  I really need that to not be some kind of fairy shit-monster. Just this once, let me be wrong about how awful something is going to turn out.

  Of course my request to the universe went unheeded. Of course I was right about how incredibly terrible things could get, of course there was a friggin’ giant alligator-man thing in the sewers. And of course I found it just when I thought I was going to get out of the sewer without having to shoot anything. Because if it were anything else, it just wouldn’t be my life.

  It rose up out of the pool slowly, like it understood how to make an entrance. It faced away from me at first, so all I saw was its huge back and shoulders. The thing was at least eight feet tall and covered in a green, scaly hide. And poop. It was also covered in sewage. It was vaguely man-shaped, but its head looked misshapen and squished. Then it turned around, and I saw that it looked like somebody had put an alligator head on Hulk Hogan and blown it all up by thirty percent. And it was pink. It was friggin’ Pepto-Bismol pink, with splatters of nasty brown from the sewer.

  I hate being right. Now I’ve got to fight a damn cross between an alligator, a bodybuilder, and My Little Pony. If I live through this, I am beating Puck’s ass.

  “Cover your ears and eyes, girls!” I shouted. I pointed Bertha at the gatorman and clicked off the safety. I didn’t fire immediately. So far it hadn’t done anything, just stood there glowering at me in all its toothy princess glory. It stood there for a few seconds, and I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Tried very hard not to do anything to antagonize the most ridiculous-looking monster I had ever seen.

  And I didn’t have to. I had half a dozen teenage girls with me, not a species known for restraint.

  “It’s pink!” Somebody said from the mouth of the tunnel.

  “It should totally be wearing a tutu,” said another girl. It was like they were determined to get me killed by the most embarrassing monster in history.

  “I mean, it’s cool and all,” another girl said. “I mean, my cousin’s gay and we still like him. It’s the twenty-first century—monsters can wear pink and still be scary.”

  “Or not,” came Maddie’s voice, and the whole gaggle of teens cracked up. The fairy crocfather turned in their direction and began a charge, but I squeezed off three rounds from Bertha and got his attention right back to me. Hell, one of the bullets even hit the thing.

  For all the good it did. Which was none at all. Two shots pinged off the walls of the sewer and ricocheted causing the girls to duck farther down the outflow pipe and me to crouch a little and hope I didn’t die. The third hit the beastie in the big shoulder muscle, but it thwack-ed into the monster’s scales and barely left a scratch.

  Shit. Big, pink, and bulletproof is not how I like my monsters. I really prefer small, furry, and harmless. The pink part is fine. I mean, I’m not racist toward my monsters or anything. As far as monsters go, I’m very much a “you be you” kinda guy. I shoot them all. I’m an equal-opportunity ass-kicker.

  Except this looked like a great chance for me to be an ass-kickee, a change in job description I wasn’t real interested in. The croc fairy put its head down and charged me, and I made it a point not to be standing in the same spot when it impacted the wall. It hit the stone blocks with a wet thump and left a smear of poo on the stones as it slid down.

  Is it going to be that easy? Did it just knock itself unconscious?

  The monster groaned, got to its hands and knees, and shook its head.

  Nope. Never that easy.

  It struggled to its feet, then turned to face me. I was less than ten feet away, so when it opened its long gator mouth and roared at me, I got the sound full in the face. I could only kinda hear it, on account of just firing three rounds from Bertha in a small space and my head ringing like wedding bells in June. But I got a face full of fairy crocmonster breath, and my sweet Jebus, that stink made the sewer smell like rose petals, perfume, and barbecue all rolled up into one.

  I have never smelled anything so foul in my life, before or since, and I shared a locker room with an entire football team. Nothing can destroy a bathroom like a defensive line, but this guy’s mouth was worse than a porta-potty at a four-day music festival that passes out free fish tacos. I swear the funk bleached all the color out of my beard, crossed my eyes, and made my eyebrows run around to the back of my head.

  “Jesus Christ, man, what the holy shit did you eat?” I hollered.

  The monster clapped its mouth shut and looked at me. It cocked its head to the side like it knew what I was saying, so I decided to roll with it.

  “I mean, damn, son. I know you live in a sewer, but for god’s sake haven’t you heard of dental floss? That is the funkiest breath I’ve ever run into, and my uncle Luther had halitosis that could knock a buzzard off a shitwagon at fifty yards. I’m glad you’re big and strong and all, but you don’t ever need to hit nothing, you just cough on somebody, and they’ll drop dead right on the spot.”

  The monster cocked its head from side to side like it was a bulldog chewing on a bumblebee, not sure what that weird buzzing was, but damn sure that it wasn’t having a good time with it. After a second or two of processing, I reckon it decided that I was either not funny or looked more like lunch than a standup comedian, and it opened its mouth to roar again.

  I took one step closer, shoved Bertha right up to the end of that long alligator snout, and pulled the trigger twice. Two fifty-caliber rounds tore through the soft parts of the monster’s mouth and blew holes the size of grapefruits in the back of its head. It spun sideways, smacked into the wall, and dropped facedown into pool of poop, now polluted with blood and gator brains.

  “Next time, practice better oral hygiene you stinky bastard,” I said, safetying Bertha and shoving her back into my sling. I walked over to the girls, who made a path for me to walk right to the front of the line.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here, ladies. It smells like ass down here.”
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br />   Chapter 16

  Somehow we made it out of the sewers without further incident. I didn’t even have to lift any kind of grate at the end, or crawl through some pipe made for hobbits, or anything like that. The worst thing we had to do was jump out of the pipe a couple of feet into a drainage pool and wade out. I sat on the grass, wet, stinky, and tired, but surrounded by half a dozen teenage girls who I had rescued from fates worse than death. My shoulder hurt like a sonofabitch, but nobody was currently being digested by a pink alligator dude. I called the day a win.

  The poop pond was in a big field about a mile outside the city gates. There was one big-ass tree that I sat leaning against, checking ammunition and re-slinging my shoulder. Tamara and Elle helped with the shoulder, and I looked around to see if I could figure out where we were. I could see the spires of the castle, but the gates themselves were over a ridge off to the south. So we were headed in the right direction to meet up with Puck. All we had to do was walk for two days, avoid running into any search parties sent out by a pissed off Queen Titania, and convince a notoriously mercurial magical fairy prankster to change the terms of our deal in my favor and send at least the girls home, if not me too.

  Yeah, it was going to be a long couple of days.

  “Any of you girls know how to use a sword?” I asked.

  “I took two years of Tae Kwon Do, but we never touched weapons,” Elle replied.

  “My parents are in the SCA,” said an athletic-looking girl with short blonde hair.

  “What’s that?” I asked. “I went to an SEC school myself, but I’ve never heard of the SCA. Is that a new conference?”

  “It’s the Society for Creative Anachronism,” the girl said, in that tone that only teenage girls possess, the one designed to make adults realize exactly how stupid they are without having to actually say “you’re a moron.”

  “Is that like a renaissance faire?” I asked.

  “On steroids,” the girl said. “And way more historically accurate. I’ve been going to jousts and tourneys since I was four. I learned how to use a sword before I learned to ride a bike.”