Moonshine & Magic: A Beauregard the Monster Hunter Collection

by John G. Hartness

  “I put a lot of work into those spiders, you stupid hillbilly.” The same voice as before came, but it was closer this time, and behind them. Bubba turned, and there was a big man standing between them and the door. He was almost as tall as Bubba, right around six feet, but much thinner. He wore wool pants and suspenders, with a white dress shirt. His right sleeve was torn off, and that’s where Bubba saw one of the relics stolen from the bank. The man’s right arm was gone from the shoulder, and he had built some type of clockwork arm for himself, a brass contraption with springs and gears to make it bend right. But in the center of the arm, where the big bone should be, was a glowing animal bone covered in carvings. Bubba recognized it instantly - the leg of a black bear carved with Creek holy symbols. More of the strange silvery rocks were set into the bone and the mechanical arm, and the whole thing glowed with an unnatural green luminescence.

  “Nice arm.” Bubba said. “Shiny.”

  “You simpleton. This arm is my greatest creation. It is a fusion of magic and science. Using the earth magic harnessed by the Indian holy objects, and the sky magic from this blasted rock that fell from the sky last year, destroying my locomotive and crushing my arm, I have rebuilt myself, better than before!” The man stepped forward and wrapped his mechanical hand around the barrel of Tavvy’s rifle. He squeezed, the gears groaned, and the barrel of the gun crumpled like cheap sheet metal. Tavvy dropped the useless rifle with an oath.

  “So you broke into the bank to steal the bone to make yourself a new arm?” Bubba asked.

  “Yes! And to take what was stolen from me. When the silver rock fell from the sky last year out west, I was simply, Reginald Kitner, railroad engineer. The asteroid destroyed my train when it landed, and my arm was torn off in the crash. The railroad company did nothing to help me, just put me out in the cold. So I came east, to find the bastards and hit them where it hurt! All their money was in that bank, and now it’s mine! And now that my arm is complete, nothing will stop me from exacting my revenge on those railroad bastards and all their families!”

  “Nothin’ but us. Preacher, shoot this jackass so we can all go home.” Bubba said.

  Preacher Mason stared at Bubba, then looked at the robber. “I can’t just shoot a man, Bubba.”

  “You heard Reggie there say he’s gonna kill them railroad men.”

  “Well, yes.” The minister at least managed to raise his gun and point it at the man.

  “Then shoot him, and we can be done with this by lunchtime. I’m getting hungry.”

  Kitner’s mechanical arm flashed out faster than anything of flesh and blood could move, and snatched the pistol from Preacher Mason’s grip. He passed the gun to his human hand, and leveled it at Bubba and the minister. “Any last words, interlopers?”

  “Yeah,” Bubba said. “What’s an interloper?”

  “Fool,” the tall man lashed out with his mechanical arm and caught Bubba on the point of his jaw. Bubba managed to roll with the punch as he saw it coming, so he only spun around twice before he hit the floor with a heavy thump. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs and looked on as the man stepped forward and picked up the Dervish.

  “You think you can defeat me with your stupid whiskey and fire? I am born of fire and magic! I am Kitner the Unstoppable, master of might! I am the new world order! I am-“ His eyes bulged out as Tavvy caught him solidly between his legs with one pointed boot.

  “You talk too much.” Tavvy said. She reached down to Bubba and helped her brother to his feet.

  “Good job, Tavvy.” Bubba said. “That guy might have been a real problem if you hadn’t raised his voice an octave or two.”

  “Anytime, brother of mine. Any-“ Her words cut off and her eyes got big.

  “He’s up, ain’t he?” Bubba asked. Tavvy just nodded. “And he’s about to knock the crap out of me again, ain’t he?” Tavvy nodded again.

  Bubba turned and once again caught the metal fist solidly across his face. He flew back about six feet, landing spread-eagled on the floor and kicking up a cloud of dust and broken spider bits. Bubba lay there for a minute listening to the sound of the pretty birdies, then shook his head to clear it. Once his eyes focused again, he saw Tavvy unconscious on the floor six feet in the opposite direction, a welt already rising on her cheek. Bubba’s vision ran red and he struggled to get to his feet, but fell twice trying to get the room to stop spinning beneath him.

  Kitner stalked toward Bubba, flexing his mechanical fist. A sneer crept across his dark features, and his accent was heavy when he spoke. “You’re just like the rest of them. Just like the railroad men that didn’t believe Kitner when he said the track failed. Just like the union bosses who took the railroad’s side and said Kitner was drinking on the job. Kitner didn’t cause that crash. Kitner never crashed a train. It was the rocks from the sky that bent the tracks and crashed the train.” Kitner raised his glowing arm for a crushing blow on Bubba’s skull, but froze when a distinctive click echoed through the warehouse.

  Kitner turned to see Preacher Mason holding his .45 aimed straight at his face. “I really don’t want to shoot you.” The preacher said, voice shaking.

  “Good. I really don’t want to get shot.” Kitner replied. Then in a motion so fast it looked like nothing but a blur, he flicked out his mechanized hand and crushed the pistol in his magically-enhanced grip.

  Preacher Mason gaped at the bigger man for a long second, then Kitner brought his other fist around and clobbered Mason to the floor. The preacher landed a few feet away from Tavvy, and Bubba almost swore that he saw her scoot over to get closer to the unconscious man of the cloth.

  Bubba struggled to his feet. “I can’t let you leave with that bear bone. I’m sorry, but it don’t belong to you.”

  “It not belong to you, either, stupid hillbilly. I have as much claim to artifacts as you.”

  “Probably, I just needed another second or two to breathe before I went back to whuppin’ your ass.” Bubba grinned and tackled the other man. They rolled around on the floor scuffling, neither one gaining a significant advantage for several long moments. Finally, Kitner got his clockwork arm wrapped around Bubba’s neck and squeezed. Bubba looked up at the ceiling one last time, then everything went dark.

  *****

  Bubba woke up on the dirty floor surrounded by pieces of the shattered Dervish with a headache worse than his best night drinkin’. He slowly rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up into a crawling position. A few seconds’ looking around revealed Tavvy and the Preacher still out cold across the room, and no sign of Kitner. Great. I got my ass kicked, I lost what I came here for, and there ain’t even any ladies of ill repute hanging around laughing at me. This is not shaping up to be a great vacation. Bubba limped over to Tavvy’s prone form and knelt down beside her. A tender look passed over his oft-gruesome visage as he regarded his sister. She looks just like she’s sleeping. Except for the corset. I reckon she don’t sleep in one of them. ‘Course, knowin’ how laced-up Tavvy is, she’s liable to do just that.

  He reached out and shook her shoulder gently, then more firmly as she she didn’t stir. His brow knit with worry and he pulled her up into a sitting position. Her eyes fluttered open and she mumbled something. Bubba leaned closer. “What was that, Tavvy, I couldn’t hear you?”

  She rolled in his arms like she was fighting through a dream. “Charles . . .” She murmured, a small smile slipping across his lips.

  Bubba almost dropped his sister in shock, but managed to catch her before she hit the hard wood floor. The jolt shocked Tavvy the rest of the way awake, and her eyes locked with Bubba’s. “Not. A. Word.” She said, her eyes hard as the cast-iron skillet their Mama had used to beat Bubba’s behind with when he misbehaved.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tavvy. You were just muttering in your sleep there. I couldn’t understand a word of it.” Bubba tried to keep a straight face, but cut his eyes over to Preacher Mason’s unconscious form.

  “That’s good,
Bubba. Good idea.” Tavvy reached out a hand. “Now help me to my feet. I am uncomfortable and do not relish the thought of being seen in such an undignified posture.”

  Bubba pulled her up and she stood there for a moment, brushing dirt and mechanical spider-bits off herself. “Relish? I don’t know about no relish, Tavvy. I don’t think you’re supposed to eat right after you been whopped in the head. And besides, just relish by itself is a little strong don’t you think? We might ought to put it on something, like a good barbecue sandwich. That’s be good, wouldn’t it?”

  “Are you trying to kill me, Bubba, or just make me pass out again?” Preacher Mason asked from the floor. He had managed to maneuver into a sitting position and held his head in his hands. Bubba walked over to where a mangled mess of levers, lenses and armatures lay on the ground. He picked it up and brought it back to Tavvy. “I think your helmet’s messed up, Tavvy.”

  She snatched the helmet from him and proceeded to attempt to bend it back into some semblance of shape. After a few minutes of beating the demolished hat back into shape, she sighed and dropped it to the floor. “It’s useless. It’s destroyed. Beyond all repair.”

  “Well, I got some worse news,” Bubba said. “The Dervish is wrecked, too. I kinda landed on it, and it broke all to hell. Sorry.”

  Tavvy looked at the pieces of her shattered creations and slumped down onto a box, her face in her hands. “Well, now what? We can’t find him, and we can’t fight him if we do. How are we supposed to get your relics back, now, Charles?”

  Bubba raised an eyebrow at the use of Preacher Mason’s first name, but he kept his mouth shut. Tavvy wasn’t the type to take kindly to her missteps being pointed out, and she’d already had a rough day. So Bubba just nodded and said, “Yeah, Preacher. What’s the plan now? And what kept that Kitner dude from killin’ all of us anyhow? I figured he was gonna choke me to death for sure, then move on to killin’ the rest of y’all.”

  “Well, that might have been my little contribution. I used this on him.” Mason reached underneath him and pulled out a thighbone. “This was one of the relics that was not stored with the others. I thought it might become useful. I had no idea exactly how useful. Kitner had choked you unconscious and was about to move on to do Octavia serious harm when I pointed this thighbone at him, and he literally flew away. I don’t know exactly what happened, but somehow the bone called up a gigantic wind that blew Kitner out of the building. Unfortunately, it also blew a lot of the debris around inside the building, and I’m afraid I may have knocked us both unconscious in the process.” The young minister’s cheeks colored a little with his final admission, but he stood up straight looking at the others.

  “Well, Preacher, that’s better than I did. I got knocked out and didn’t even manage to run off the bad guy first. So I reckon you did good.” Bubba clapped the smaller man on the shoulder, not noticing the wince of pain that flashed across the preacher’s face.

  “Well, now what? We need something that can beat this jerk Kitner. Something that can stand up to his arm. Your thighbone seems to make a pretty good breeze, but Kitner’s got a bunch of these little rocks here stuck in his bear legbone, and got the whole thing wound up together like a steam shovel. Come to think of it, it felt kinda like getting punched with a steam shovel.” Bubba said.

  “That’s a great idea, Bubba!” Tavvy said, moving through the room. She knelt several times and picked up the strange silvery stones that had scattered all over the warehouse with the destruction of the mechanized spiders.

  “Thanks, Tavvy. What idea?” Bubba sat on a crate and watched his sister collect the rocks without a single clue what she was doing.

  “We make a weapon of our own. Something combining the mystical powers of the thighbone with the magical abilities of these sky rocks.” Tavvy waved over to the men. “Well, come one. Are you gonna help me gather these rocks, or are you just going to sit there looking stupid?”

  Bubba got to his feet and whispered loudly to the reverend. “If I’ve ever learned anything, Preacher, it’s that she ain’t really asking when she says stuff like that. She really means for me to get off my butt and do whatever she tells me to or I’ll regret it. Now I’ll get these over here, and you get them over yonder.” With all three of them working at it, they had a sizable pile of the sky rocks heaped onto a shipping crate in minutes. The rocks had a silvery sheen to them, shot through with a metallic sheen.

  “How do we get this turned into a weapon?” Bubba asked.

  Tavvy smiled at him. “I know a man in Atlanta that specializes in unique weaponry. He will be delighted to help us.”

  *****

  “Not in a million damn years, Octavia! I told you I would never lend assistance, credence or any other -ence to another of your half-baked ideas after the last one burned off my eyebrows! Do you have any idea how long it takes eyebrows to grow back??”

  “Now, Gerald,” Tavvy held out her hands to the ranting little man, but he backed away from her and slammed the door in her face, leaving her out on the street with Bubba and Preacher Mason hiding their grins behind their hands.

  “Well, that didn’t go quite as expected.” Tavvy turned to her brother. “Beauregard, I may require your particular style of persuasion in this matter.”

  “You mean punch the little dude ’til he does what I want? That don’t hardly seem sporting, Tavvy.” Bubba held his hand out near waist level. “That little feller ain’t but about yeah high. I land one solid punch I could kill ‘im! And then how would you feel?”

  “I meant get him drunk and make him like you.” Tavvy replied primly.

  “Oh. I can do that.” Bubba knocked on the door and yelled “Hey little feller! Tavvy says I can get you liquored up to get her way, which means she wants this done something awful and ain’t neither one of us gone get any peace ’til whatever she wants to happen happens, so why don’t you open up, do whatever she tells you to, and I’ll give you this here gallon of apple pie I brought down the mountain with me. I was saving it to burn up a bank robber, but he done gone and crushed my flamespitter, so we might as well get drunk.”

  After a few seconds the door opened and the small man came back out into the street. He looked up at Bubba from his full height of maybe four and half feet tall and said “I reckon you’re right, she ain’t gone leave me alone ’til I do it, so I might as well get some liquor for doing what I was gonna do anyway.” He spat in one hand and held it out for Bubba to shake. Bubba’s massive hand engulfed the smaller man’s, but he almost went to his knees with the power of the dwarf’s grip.

  “You’re a stout one, ain’t ya?” Bubba said after he had rescued his paw from the vice-like grip of the small man.

  “Gerry Harris, blacksmith and weaponscrafter. Pleased to meet ya.” He turned and stumped back into the shop. He was a small man, but solidly built, with the barrel chest and thick forearms of a man that worked hard every day, and had the split knuckles of a man that wasn’t afraid of a fight. Bubba, Preacher Mason and Tavvy followed him into his shop. Bubba and the minister gaped at the sheer volume of weapons hanging from the walls. Every type of sword, axe and hammer one could imagine hung from pegs, while cases filled with ornate pistols and rifles fronted every foot of wall.

  Bubba paused before a case holding a pistol the length of his arm. “What do you call this one?” The pistol was a work of art, gold filigree twining around a nickel-plated barrel and pearl handle. It was a revolver, but the cylinder was almost as big around as Bubba’s wrist, so the gun held far more than the normal six shots.

  “I call her Beauty. She’s not for sale.” Gerry said without turning around.

  “But . . . But . . . But . . .” Bubba’s mouth opened and closed like a large-mouth bass flopped up on the shore.

  “Now, what do ye want, lassie?” Gerry stopped in front of a large work table and tied a leather apron around his middle. Then he hopped up onto a step and put both hands on the table. Tavvy motioned to Preacher Mason and he dumped the cont
ents of a small towsack onto the table. The wolf’s thighbone rattled out, followed by several dozen of the small silvery rocks that they had reclaimed from the floor of the warehouse.

  “And what might this be, love?” Gerry picked up one of the silvery rocks and examined it from all sides. He even went so far as to bite into the rock, getting noting but a sore tooth in the process.

  “I dunno, Ger. I was hoping it would make ore of some type.” Tavvy replied.

  “Well, it looks like that might be the case, but let’s take a look.” He grabbed up three of the small rocks and hopped down off his steps. He turned and waddled off into a back room, then stuck his head back through the door. “Well, are y’all coming to the forge or not?”

  Bubba and the others hustled single-file through the shop and into the back room of the store, which was really a quite well-appointed forge, complete with chimney and a sluice to bring water in from the rain barrels outside. Gerry already had the chunks of space rock in a mold and shoved into the fire.The space rocks heated to a silvery glow, then the rock released the metal with a hiss and the molten material flowed into the mold. Gerry waved for Tavvy to bring him more rocks, and he added them to the fire. When all the rocks they brought had melted, Bubba leaned over and peered into the fire.

  “I ain’t never seen metal do that, have you Gerry?” He pointed into the fire where the metal gave off a blue glow.

  “No I haven’t, but I think this might not be a metal I’ve ever worked with before. Now get your giant arse out of me way and let me pour it into this other mold before it hardens.” He nudged Bubba in the gut with an elbow, and the bigger man got out of the way.

  “What am I supposed to be making, Tavvy-love?” Gerry asked over one shoulder.

  “Well, I thought you could use the ore from the space rocks to make a sword, and use this for a hilt.” She gestured with the thighbone.