"I think I'm gonna need a bigger boat."
"I've heard that somewhere before. But now you gotta get backstage and start staking, or we're gonna have a real problem. I saw five or six people going back behind the curtain at intermission, which means the dancers are setting up their little after-show buffet right now. So if we don't want a bunch of innocent people getting killed..."
"I gotta go kill a bunch of vampires with a couple toothpicks and my charm."
"You better count on the toothpicks, because the other only ever gets you slapped." He had a point, but if getting slapped was the worst thing that came out of this mess, I'd count that a blessing.
The lobby was packed full of people, but I've learned over the years that if you walk like you know where you're going, most people just get out of your way. If you're bigger than some small island countries, that helps too. So I made my way back to the stage door without any problems. There were a bunch of trucks lined up in the street and a bunch of scruffy people wearing ratty black hoodies, t-shirts and jeans hanging around outside smoking. Looked like my kind of crowd, as well as a good way to get inside, so I moseyed on up and stood around for a few minutes.
After a while, a tall skinny dude who looked like Keith Richards on his worst day lurched over to me. "You here for load out?"
I had no idea what he was talking about, but a couple of guys near me nodded, so I said, "Yeah, I'm new. Where do I check in?"
"Go in the stage door and tell security you gotta go sign in with Mickey. He'll point you to the dock." He jerked a thumb at the glass doors behind us, and I went inside. I repeated what he'd said to the security lady, a pleasant woman in her late forties with a long blonde ponytail and funky eyeglasses. She pointed me around a couple of corners, and I was in like Flynn.
Backstage was full of dancers running around on tippy toe, throwing clothes off as they ran down the hall, ducking into dressing rooms with short women wearing do-rags on their heads and all black following them with a mouthful of bobby pins picking up the crap they were throwing down. Every single dancer I passed was deader than a doornail.
It's really easy to tell dead people from the living, even without touching them. You can tell, because a living person always has a certain rhythm to their movement, like one motion flows into the next, even if it doesn't flow all that well. Dead people go from zero to full motion without any transition. There's no shifting of gears in their movements, it's all angles and jerky motions. Even dead ballerinas walk like dead people when there's no music playing.
I followed one ballerina and her little costume minion into the first dressing room on the right. The minion gaped up at me as I closed the door behind me, and then started trying to get out the words "You can't be in here." Since she was scared out of her gourd, it came out more as "Y-y-y-ou c-c-c-c-can't..." By that time I got tired of it and thumped her on the head. She fell down, out like a light. I looked down at her for a second, watched her chest rise and fall, and deduced that she was not only alive, but pretty likely to stay that way.
The ballerina didn't look happy to see me. In fact, she looked downright hungry. I guess all ballet dancers look hungry, but the dead ones take it to the extreme. She opened her crimson-painted mouth to show a set of fangs that had to be four inches long, and she leapt across the room to wrap herself around me.
Ordinarily this is kind of a turn-on for me, having women throw themselves at me, figuratively or literally. But when those fangs started towards my neck, I swung a fist the size of a Honey Baked Ham at her head. The dancer hung on tight, so I punched her in the face a couple more times. I heard something in the side of her face crack, and she let go, dropping to the ground to stare up at me.
"Ow. That hurt!" She whimpered indignantly.
"And you jabbing fangs into my neck wasn't going to hurt me?"
"I'm a vampire, it's in my nature."
"I could use the same argument, I'm a monster hunter. Look! I found one!" I pointed at her in mock surprise and kicked her right on the point of her chin. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she flopped back onto the dressing room floor.
I pulled a stake from my boot and was well into my downswing before I heard Skeeter in my ear screeching "Wait!" He was way too late, and I plunged the stake into the napping vampire's heart.
If you've ever seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you know what's supposed to happen then - the vampire turns to dust. I have the whole Buffy box set on account of my unhealthy Eliza Dushku fixation, so I was sorely disappointed when a geyser of black-red blood spewed out of the she-beastie's chest and splattered me from eyebrows to toenails.
"That was not supposed to happen." I said to the air.
"I tried to stop you," replied the giggling voice in my ear.
"She was supposed to turn to dust, not spray blood all over me. I can barely see through all this crap, much less go out in the hall chasing more vampires!" I wiped the sticky blood from my face and used the dead vampire's tutu to clean what I could off my hands. I heard the squeak of a tennis shoe and turned to find a very nervous costumer standing in the corner, staring at me.
"What are you looking at?" I muttered.
"You killed her."
"Duh. She was a vampire. I'm a monster hunter. That's the preferred outcome."
"But she...she was a vampire?"
"Did you not see the fangs?" I grabbed the vamp's head and pulled her up to show the offending teeth to the scared little minion. She shrank back even further into the corner, trying her best to press her ass right through the drywall.
"What are you going to do to me?"
"Are you a vampire?"
"No, I'm just a dresser."
"Then help me get some clean clothes and then get the hell out of here."
She looked all the way up and down my admittedly larger-than-normal human frame. "I don't know if we got anything that'll fit."
"Get me as close as you can. Gimme your cell phone." She handed it over, a fancy new iPhone. "Now go get me some clothes. You can have your phone back when I'm not dripping on the carpet." She bolted out of the room and I dragged the dead vamp into the little bathroom. I stepped over the corpse and got into the dressing room's tiny shower fully dressed. When I was as clean as I figured I was gonna get, not to mention soaked to the skin, I got out of the shower, shucked off my drenched shirt and stepped back out into the dressing room.
The costume girl had a pile of cloth in her hands that looked suspiciously like not near enough material to cover me, but I took it from her anyway. "It's all I could find. I stole a hoodie from one of the truck loaders." She held out her hand and I gave her back the phone. She bolted out the door and I stripped down. She had brought me a pair of tights, a shirt that looked like it might fit on a twelve-year-old, and a beige slingshot.
I held the slingshot up in front of my glasses and said, "What the hell is this, Skeeter?"
"It's a dance belt."
"How is this little thing gonna hold my pants up? That don't make no sense."
"It goes on under your tights, so not everybody in the world can see your business, Bubba."
"Oh, like a jockstrap?"
"Kinda, yeah, except it fits a little bit differently." Yeah, I reckoned so. Looked like a thong to me. But I put it on, or tried to. Seemed like dance belts don't come in XXXL, so there was a little bit of leakage around the top, but I eventually got everything squeezed in. The tights were a little challenging too, since they were also obviously made for somebody the size of the dancers, not the size of an NFL nose tackle. I didn't even bother with the shirt she brought, just grabbed the hoodie and pulled it on. It at least was made for a grown-up, not a little kid. I laced my boots back up over bare feet since my socks had gotten soaked with blood then soaked again with water in the shower, and stuffed my spare stake in the left boot top.
I stepped out into the hallway and looked right and left before starting to sneak my way towards backstage. The dressing area was pretty deserted, so I figured the s
econd half must have started. I hoped the vampire I killed wasn't too important early, I kinda wanted a few minutes of cover. "Alright, smartass," I said into the air. "Since obviously a stake in the heart isn't the cleanest way to kill a vampire, what am I supposed to do here?"
"Well, now Bubba I tried to stop you."
"Shut up, Skeeter."
"Well I did."
"Fine. You tried to warn me. Now how do I kill these things without looking like I just came from a GWAR concert?"
"All the old ways work. Sunlight's good."
"Except it's ten at night."
"Fire works."
"I think it's probably a bad idea in a crowded theatre."
"Or you could break their necks, crush their skulls, pierce their hearts or decapitate them."
"Messy."
"Look who's talking."
"I'll have to give you that one. Alright, messy it is." Decision made, I turned a corner in the hallway and a skinny dude bounced right off my chest. He'd been hauling ass back the way I'd come from, so I reached down and helped him up. Cold skin, check. Pale as crap, check. 'Course, everybody in the theatre is pale as crap, so that didn't really help.
"Get out of the way, you lout!" He snarled at me, and I saw the tip of one very long canine. There we go. With the proof I needed, I pulled him in close and wrapped my arms around his head. I quickly pulled his face one way and his shoulders the other, snapping his neck with a loud crack! He slumped to the floor and I tossed him around the corner.
"Two down. How many you think there are?"
Skeeter's voice did not sound encouraged. "I count twenty-four in the program, if we're assuming everyone in the company is a vampire, which seems like the safest assumption at this point."
"You mean I gotta kill two dozen vampires?" I looked back around the corner at an exit that suddenly seemed very, very far away.
"Only twenty-two now, if that makes you feel any better."
"It don't."
"Well, ain't nothin' I can do for that now, Bubba. You probably better get to killin' before the show ends and all them people that came backstage at intermission end up as a buffet." I took a deep breath, pulled my crucifix out of my hoodie, and went looking for dead people.
It didn't take long. The first two vamps came around the corner just ahead of me, moving fast. They ducked into a room off to the side of the hall, and I tried to follow. I jiggled the door handle quietly, but it was locked. There was a numeric keypad above the door handle. "You got the combination, Skeeter?" I whispered.
"Try 1-2-3-4-5."
"You gotta be kidding me." I muttered, but punched it in. The red light flashed to green, and I opened the door. The two guys I'd seen duck into the room were on either side of a plump older woman, fangs buried in her throat. I grabbed one vamp's head in each hand and smashed them together like coconuts. They sounded almost a hollow when they smacked together, too. I kept bashing their heads together until one of them crushed like a pecan, then dropped them both to the floor. I stomped their heads flatter than a penny on a railroad track, and looked around for something to put around the victim's neck so she wouldn't bleed out before help could get there.
I finally ripped the shirt off one vampire and bound the woman's wounds with that, then turned to leave. I slid a little, so I took the time to pick all the brain out from the treads of my boots with the chopsticks before creeping back out into the hallway.
"That was truly nasty." Skeeter said in my ear. I could almost see him, sitting in front of his bank of giant computer monitors, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after barfing in the trash can. I told the boy, if he didn't eat so many Cheetos he wouldn't have such a weak stomach.
"It mighta been nasty, but it was quiet and effective." I said. Just then, four vampires came around the corner in front of me. "I don't think it's going to be quiet for much longer." I said as I watched their noses flare with the scent of fresh blood. The one in the lead glanced down at my boots and started to run straight at me. Two of the others followed him, while the last vampire turned and ran in the opposite direction.
"Looks like the cavalry just got called." I said under my breath as I ran straight at the lead vamp. I lowered a shoulder to tackle him, but he sprang at the ceiling and dove right over me. I couldn't correct fast enough and barreled into the two biters behind him. All three of us went down in a heap and the vampires underneath me started clawing and biting at my neck. I grabbed one of them by the ears and twisted his head until I heard a satisfying POP! Sound and he went still.
Unfortunately that gave the lead vamp enough time to latch onto my neck good and tight, and only the thick insulation of the hoodie saved me from getting drained right there in the hallway. I stood up, and he latched on to my neck and rode me like I was giving a kid a piggyback ride. I reached over my shoulder and flipped him forward, tossing him into the other vamp, who was struggling to his feet. They both went down, and I reared back and kicked the top vamp in the temple like I was going for a 50-yard field goal. He went limp, and that made it all the harder for the one under him to get up.
I pulled a chopstick out of my sleeve and jabbed it through the struggling vampire's eyeball, stirring his brains like a lump of wasabi in a big bowl of soy sauce. He went limp, and I quickly snapped the neck of the unconscious vamp laying on top of him. I got to my feet feeling pretty good about myself for taking out three vampires with just my bare hands and a pair of chopsticks, until I looked to the end of the hall and saw a dozen vamps standing there glaring at me.
"I guess this is the part where I tell you it's not what it looks like, right?" I said as I started inching slowly backwards down the hallway.
"It looks like you've killed three of our companions, and now we're going to kill you." Said a girl vampire who might have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. I figured if breaking vampires in half was a good way to kill them, I was gonna start with the little ones. They looked much more snap-able.
"See, that's where you're wrong. I told you it wasn't what it looked like." I grinned, holding both hands out from my body in my best non-threatening fashion. I pasted a big "I'm harmless" grin on my face and said "I've killed seven of your little blood-buddies, and now I'm gonna kill all y'all too." Then I turned and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction.
Sometimes I don't remember all my monster lore. I mean, there's a lot to keep up with. Like whether or not mummies are flammable (they are), or if voodoo dolls really work (they do), or if vampires are really way faster than giant rednecks. And they most certainly are. I made it around the corner only to find the little girl vampire standing there smirking at me. She'd run all the way around the other way through the halls of the theatre and beat me to where I was going, and now she was right in my way.
Bad for her. She was fast, and she was strong, but she was still five-three and weighed a hundred pounds, and I was a whole lot of Bubba at a dead run and I didn't intend to stop. I ran right over her like a Mack truck over a ten-speed bicycle, slowing down only long enough to give her face a good stomp as I made my way down the hall.
"I don't think that killed her. But it was rude."
"I didn't intend to ask her on a date, Skeeter, and I knew it wasn't gonna kill her. I just needed a little more room."
"Room for what?"
"I need to get to the stage. I need more space."
"For what?"
"Fightin', I hope. Dyin', if the fightin' don't work out."
"Then turn right, stage is the next door." I did as the voice in my head told me, and burst onto the stage right in the middle of a bunch of crazy Russian dances. Three dudes in fuzzy hats were doing high kicks and jumps all over the place like blood-sucking jumping beans, and it was all I could do to get to the side of the stage without getting my face kicked in. I looked around frantically, and a little dude with a headset came running over to me with a worried look on his face. Come to think of it, I get a lot of those worried looks. Especially from short people.
"I'm already here. I need a weapon."
"A what?"
"A weapon. A shotgun would be great, but I'll take anything. You got a chainsaw?"
"No..."
"Axe?"
"No!"
"Flamethrower?"
"Where would I get a..."
"Sword?"
"Props table. He pointed over his shoulder at a folding table with a bunch of crap on it, and I saw, gleaming like friggin' Excalibur itself, was a gleaming broadsword. I shoved the little dude out of the way, picked up the sword, and pulled it out of the sheath. It had an edge about as sharp as Skeeter's wit, which is to say not at all, but it weighed a good four pounds and seemed to be made of decent steel. I swung it around a few times, getting the feel of it, and decided I could probably cause some damage with it.
I looked back to the stage, where any semblance of a dance performance had ended, giving way to just a teeming mass of angry vampires. I looked them over, decided that odds of thirteen or so to one weren't too unfair to them, and gave my best redneck battle cry.
"Come get some!" I yelled, charging the stage with my sword. They scattered like drops of grease in a dish detergent commercial, all except for one poor confused little vampire that ran straight at me. I skewered him on my sword, picked him up, and snapped his neck over my bent knee like a rotten twig.
A huge gasp went up from behind me, and I turned to face an audience of fifteen hundred people. Or witnesses, if we wanted to be exact. "Crap." I whispered.
"Pretend like it's part of the show." Skeeter said from my ear. So I picked up the dead vampire and started twirling him around and around. I went up on my tiptoes, spun around a couple more times, and flung the dead monster into the wings. The rest of the vampires, en masse, tippy-toed out onto the stage after me, fangs bared and claws at the ready. I ducked, wove and stabbed the best I could with a blunted sword, but I wasn't making a whole lot of progress.
Things got really ugly when a pair of them latched onto my sword arm and I couldn't shake them. Before I knew what was happening, eight vampires had my by the arms and legs and I was held fast. I tried my best to throw them off, but got nowhere. Then, like a twisted parody of a Christmas angel, a male vampire with long hair, honest-to-God glowing red eyes and a smile like the cat who's about to munch on his favorite canary descended from the rafters to land right in front of me.
Scattered, Smothered and Chunked - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1 Page 4