Scattered, Smothered and Chunked - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1

by John G. Hartness

  "I'm here to help. You didn't think I was just eye candy, did you?"

  "The thought had crossed my mind. And it was a pretty pleasant thought, to be honest with you."

  "You're a chauvinist, Bubba."

  "What gave it away, the name 'Bubba,' or was it something else? Of course I'm a chauvinist. That's half my charm."

  "You don't have any charm." Came the voice in my ear.

  "You stay out of this, Skeeter. You really think you're gonna help me?"

  "I'm fifth dan in kendo and have black belts in tae kwon do and jujitsu. I'm pretty good with this thing. I can help." She patted the hilt of her sword and just stared at me.

  "Well all right, if you think you can keep from getting dead, let's go."

  "Where do we start?"

  "Skeeter?"

  "My research shows that pixies love two things, shiny jewelry and sweets. So the mall food court would be where I'd start. There's probably plenty of sugar scattered around there." I hate it when Skeeter's right, so I didn't bother to tell him that I could see a flicker of wings the second Cinnabon came into view around a corner. Unfortunately that wasn't all that came into view.

  "Stop right there!" A fat mall cop with pit stains and a taser in his hand was yelling at the flittering wings.

  "Ah, crap." I muttered, and broke into a run. The cop turned in my direction as he heard my footsteps, and he panicked a little at the sight of my hugeness headed his way at a dead run. I didn't blame him, just wished he hadn't spazzed out and tased me. Those little pointy bits sting.

  I stopped running, knocked the wires out of my leather vest, and glared at the rent-a-cop. "Don't do that again. It didn't feel good."

  "You're supposed to be out cold."

  "You might have noticed that I'm a little bigger than the average snotnose shoplifting from GameStop. And the vest caught most of the juice. But don't do that again. I'm trying to save your life."

  He turned back to the Cinnabon stand and said "What the hell are those? Bugs?"

  "I hope they didn't hear that." Collette said as she came to a stop right behind me. I did too, but I couldn't blame the cop for his mistake. The little two-inch flying humanoids looked a lot like giant wasps from any distance of more than a few feet, and we were still a good ten yards away. But as soon as the cop spoke, the whole horde of them flew up in a glittery cloud and shot across the thirty feet to the cop in just a couple of seconds. He drew his taser again, but there was nothing to hit. With a buzz and a lightning-fast cloud of red, his hand disappeared. I heard a noise like a supercharged food processor, and then his hand just wasn't there anymore. The bones were still there, and the tendons, but the muscle was all gone. Collette drew in a sharp breath, and the guard started to shriek like a little girl who just heard they weren't going to finish making the last Twilight movie.

  "Shit, Skeeter. How'd they do that?" I whispered.

  "I told you they were fast. And mean." Was the reply in my ear. I looked around, but the glittery cloud was gone.

  "Take care of him." I said to Collette. I reached down to where the guard was writhing around on the filthy floor, snatched off his utility belt, and punched him in the jaw. His eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed.

  "What the hell did you do that for? That man needs immediate medical attention, not more abuse!" Collette turned on me with blazing eyes, but I just stared her down. It's easy to stare people down when you're bigger than almost everybody. The people I've always been impressed with are the ones who can do it without being the size of pro wrestlers or offensive linemen.

  "And now you can give him that attention. And he won't fight you. Or go into shock. Or remember that we were here. Or that he was attacked by fairies. Now I gotta go kill a bunch of nasty-ass Tinkerbelle knockoffs." I turned my back on her and headed towards the nearest jewelry store. Lucky for me the pixies had left a nice fat blood trail for me to follow.

  "You got a plan?" Skeeter asked in my ear.

  "Yeah, kinda."

  "You want to share it with me?"

  "You'll think it's stupid."

  "I think all your plans are stupid. But somehow you've lived all these years. Spill."

  "I'm gonna try to make a deal with them. They stop killing people and they can steal all the leftovers they want."

  "And if they don't take the deal?"

  "I've shot the wings off a hummingbird with a twenty-two before, this shouldn't be too different."

  "Except these hummingbirds are armed, sentient and mean as hell."

  "Good point. I've got a backup plan if that don't work."

  "Care to share that one?"

  "Not really."

  "Did you really shoot the wings off a hummingbird?"

  "Not really. I'm good, but I ain't that good."

  I saw them as I got to the jewelry store. They were flitting in and around the cases, trying to pick the locks with their swords and having no luck. As soon as I got a good look at them I knew the 9mm pistols I was carrying would be useless. That would be like trying to shoot a bluejay with an RPG, frustrating and difficult. It was gonna be all I could do to hit a couple of them with the 522, but I figured I'd better shoot first while surprise was on my side.

  I lit up one of the biggest pixies with the laser and squeezed off a round. It was a little gross when it struck, because the little dude just exploded, spraying glittery fairy guts all over the jewelry counter. The bullet went on like there was nothing there and buried itself in the wall of the store, but the pixie was gone. I chalked it up to fair trade for the guard's hand, and switched targets. I managed to disintegrate two more before the cloud was headed my way.

  They got to within a foot of me when I bellowed "HALT!" in my best high school football coach voice. I've mentioned that I'm a big dude, and I move a lot of air when I yell, so the wind I generated alone was enough to stop them in their tracks.

  "You come one inch closer and I'll kill the whole lot of you. Now who's your leader?"

  "King." Corrected Skeeter.

  "I don't give a rat's ass if they have a king, queen or a pope. I wanna talk to the boss pixie. NOW!"

  A slightly larger form separated from the cloud of pixies and flew to within a few inches of my nose. At that distance I could see that he looked like a normal human, only two inches tall with wings, a sword and a lot of glitter. I guessed that was pixie dust, and probably magical, but that wasn't what kept my attention. I kept my eyes on the sword, with was only about an inch long but looked to be razor-sharp.

  "What do you want with us, mortal?" He squeaked imperiously. Or at least I guess he would have sounded imperious if his voice hadn't been verging on those frequencies that only dogs can hear. But I cut him some slack, since he was only the height of my thumb.

  "I want y'all to leave this place and quit killing innocent people." Might as well lay it all out there.

  "We have slain no innocents. We have killed only those who trespassed on our territory. That is well within our rights."

  "I might usually agree with you, but you see, this is a public mall, and it's all human territory. There's no 'pixies only' zone in here. So you don't get to kill anybody. Now you gotta leave before I get irritated."

  "Irritated? Irritated! You presume to tell me about irritation? Stupid mortal, who do you think this land belonged to for countless centuries before you useless giant meatsacks built this shrine to plastic and glass? These lands are of the Fae, and we intend to reclaim them."

  "That's all I need, another friggin' territory dispute. You guys can take it up with the Native Americans, who might have a thing or two to say about prior claim. But the fact is, this mall is human territory now, and y'all gotta go. Now I've been about as nice as I know how to be, but I'm about to get grumpy. So why don't you round up your bunch of overgrown mosquitoes and get out of here before I have to break out my flyswatter?" I'll admit that last bit might have been a little insulting, but I have issues with authority. And with short people. Clowns, too, but that's a
whole 'nother thing.

  Obviously the Pixie King didn't care for my tone, because he drew his sword and opened his mouth to yell something I'm sure was both inspiring to his people and insulting about my heritage or my hairstyle. I didn't give him chance to so much as take a breath before I put the laser sight on his tiny little forehead and squeezed the trigger on my 522. King Fancypants disappeared in a cloud of glitter and pixie guts, and the rest of his cloud froze in mid-air. For all I know the glitter might have been pixie guts, but this was not the time to be worry about such things.

  I heard a high-pitched voice shriek "Kill them both!" and turned to see Collette standing a few feet behind me, sword drawn.

  "When did you get here?" I yelled.

  "Along about the time you blew their king to bits. How many of them do you think you can shoot?"

  "Not near enough." I said, backing up to stand next to her. "But I've got a plan."

  "Why am I worried?" She relied.

  "Because she's not a moron." Skeeter answered in my ear. "What's your plan?"

  "Shut up, Skeeter. Collette, if any of them get past me, slice 'em like zucchini." I slung the 522 around behind me and pulled the pepper spray from the guard's utility belt, dropping the belt to the floor. With the pepper spray held out in front of me I started walking towards the angry cloud of pixies.

  "Come on, you Tinkerbelle rejects!" I shouted, hoping that was an insult to real pixies. "Come get some!" It worked, because the whole cloud of glittery little bastards headed for me like one of those cartoon bee swarms. I stuck the pepper spray straight out in front of me, squeezed the nozzle, and flicked my Zippo lighter underneath the stream.

  The old-school pepper spray lit up just like gasoline, and suddenly I was walking into a cloud of pissed-off pixies holding a flamethrower. Pixies sound a lot like fingernails on a chalkboard when they're screaming their last painful breath, and a whole tribe of them sounds like a whole lot of fingernails on a chalkboard. The pepper spray sputtered out after about twenty seconds, but by then the most dangerous thing in the air around that jewelry store was a whole lot of capsaicin and the faint odor of my Mexican dinner. Yeah, I'm not ashamed to use the death of a hundred pixies to cover up the sound of a good long fart. Sue me.

  I turned around, and Collette was just standing there, sword down by her side, mouth open, eyes wide. I'd seen that look before, it's the look civilians and other generally nice people get when they see what I really do for a living. I watched any chance of me getting a little nun-nookie evaporate before my eyes. Oh well, I was pretty sure I saw a strip club by the interstate.

  "You killed them." She said flatly, a tear welling up in the corner of one eye. "But they were so cute."

  "They were cute enough to turn that guard's hand into hamburger and strip three people of all their flesh, muscle and internal organs. Yeah, I killed them. They don't call me Bubba the Monster Capturer, or Bubba the Monster Befriender. I'm a monster hunter. And I kill what I hunt. That's why they keep me around." I whipped my 522 around and squeezed off a round that buzzed right past her left ear. The pixie that had just drawn his sword beside her carotid artery exploded, and the bullet whizzed off into a chunk of drywall somewhere. Collete dove for the floor, and I turned to the door.

  "That wasn't very nice, Bubba." Skeeter said in my ear.

  "I'm not a very nice person, Skeeter." I replied to the air.

  "Tell that to the woman and her kid that you helped tonight." He fired back.

  "Does it balance, Skeeter?"

  "Does it matter? We've got a job to do. And people need us to do that job. And we're pretty good at it."

  "And it pays my bar tab."

  "Which is not an inconsiderable sum, Bubba."

  "So which way was that titty bar, Skeeter?"

  "Get a GPS, redneck."

  "Why would I want a GPS when I have you, little buddy?"

  "Yeah, Merry Christmas to you, too." By then I was out of the mall and into my F-250, rolling east on I-64 looking for the promised land and peace on earth. Or at least a nice pair of fake boobs and a pitcher of cold beer.

  Tassels of Terror

  "Now this is a damn shame." I said as I stepped out of my blue F-250 pickup and into a scene of biblical destruction. It looked like something out of the Old Testament, no shinola. Charred beams lay scattered around the parking lot like Lincoln Logs at a hyperactive kid's birthday party, and glass in all shades of brown, green and clear crunched under my Justin boots as I made my way to where the front door used to be. I stepped over the threshold and looked around for somebody not carrying anything heavy.

  The first guy I saw that had nothing but a clipboard in his hands was my best guess for the arson investigator, so I walked over to him. He was a little banty rooster of a fella, the kind that looked like he ironed his polo shirts. He was about five-six, and from my higher vantage point I could see that he used that spray on hair in a can stuff. He also had a long moustache, the ends waxed into little greasy-looking curls. He was just a couple shades too dark to look like Yosemite Sam, but with his scrawny legs jammed deep into a pair of oversized fire boots and polka dot suspenders he sure looked like some kind of cartoon character.

  "You the boss?" I asked, flapping my wallet at him. He looked over at me just as I folded it back and put it away.

  "Yeah, I'm Captain Magee, Chief Fire Inspector for the county. Who're you?"

  "Bubba, uh...Mr. Dixon. I'm with the insurance company. What do we know?"

  "Can I see those credentials again Mr., uh...Dixon?"

  "No. Pay attention next time. Now what do we know?" The little dude looked shocked, but I wanted to keep him off-balance. I had no real authority, unless he happened to be Catholic, and there weren't too many Catholics in Union, South Carolina. Plus little dudes always hate big dudes on principle, so I figured I'd play on his insecurities a little. At six foot five inches, I'm about as big a dude as you get outside the NBA, so I had almost a foot on the good Captain. I kept pressing. "What. Do. We. Know?"

  "It's an obvious arson job. We're fortunate there was only one fatality, a Mr. Jason Brown. Mr. Brown was working as a bouncer and seems to have been injured by falling debris and unable to escape the building."

  "What makes you say debris hit him? Didn't he die of smoke inhalation?"

  "We won't be able to answer that definitively here, but his body is in worse condition than a fire of this size would account for."

  "English, Captain." I tried to keep my haughty insurance-guy attitude going, but this was starting to look more and more like a real case instead of just the tragic loss of one of the best strip clubs in the northern half of South Carolina. I know that sets the bar pretty low, but most of the girls that used to dance in the pile of rubble in front of me had all their teeth, which made it a high-tone joint in my book.

  "His body was torn apart, Mr. Dixon. Limb from limb. And if that wasn't done by debris, then we have a murder on our hands as well as an arson case. Now if you'll excuse me?" He strutted over to where a couple of EMTs were trying to navigate the fallen rubble with a stretcher and started yelling and waving his arms around like little dudes do when normal-sized people are trying to get something done that they don't approve of.

  I walked back to the truck and put in my headset. "Looks like you were right, Skeeter. This one's terrible."

  "How terrible?" came Skeeter's squeaky voice in my ear. I could hear crunching, which told me he was back to eating Cheetos for every meal. I decided to mess with his head a little.

  "Well, besides having to poke around the remains of a beloved social establishment like Trixie's Watering Hole, I heard a horrible story from one of the paramedics."

  "What kind of story, Bubba?" Skeeter's always been a sucker for blood and guts stories, the grosser the better.

  "Well, this dude went to the doctor last week and said 'Doc, I don't know what's wrong with me, but my pecker's turning orange. What could it be?' And the doctor gets this horrified look on his face and says
'My God, man! I don't know. That sounds awful. Have there been any big life changes that may have brought on this terrible rash?"

  The dude thinks for a minute and says, 'Not really, Doc. I mean I lost my job last month, and two weeks ago my wife left me. And I can't think of anywhere I might have caught something, because all I've done for two weeks is sit in my house eating Cheetos and watching porn.'"

  I help my breath for as long as I could, then busted out laughing right as Skeeter said, "Screw you, Bubba. That ain't funny."

  "If it ain't funny, why am I hyperventilating?"

  "Because you're a moron?"

  "Oh yeah, that must be it. How's the Cheetos?" I had to lean on the truck to hold myself up I was laughing so hard by this point. Skeeter's only response was to crunch loudly in my ear.

  I hopped in the truck and rolled over to the other bar in town, this one unfortunately devoid of naked women on most evenings. A blinking neon pig smiled down at me from over the door and the words "Big Sam's Piggie Park" flashed in time to the music booming through the closed door. "Crap," I muttered as I pushed into the bar. I hate loud bars, it makes it harder to hear somebody cocking a pistol. And in my world, that's a sound I need to keep my ears open for.

  "Skeeter?" I whispered to the air. No response. Not even static. I figured he was still pissed at me for the jerk-off joke and pushed through the double doors. A blonde girl that might have been the age of my boots was perched on a stool chewing gum and smoking a Camel filterless. That's what passes for multi-tasking in parts of the Carolinas, the ability to smoke and chew gum at the same time.

  "Five dollars." The girl drawled at me, her eyes never leaving this week's National Enquirer.

  "For what?"

  "Cover charge. It's line dance and karaoke night. And with Trixie's burnt down, we got the only live entertainment in two counties. Unless you count the dog fights. But they ain't got karaoke."

  "What about line dancing?"

  "At the dog fights? Sometimes, but you can't count on it. Five dollars." I paid the girl and walked into a scene that would have scared them good ol' boys from Deliverance into moving from Canada. You see, karaoke is bad by itself. And Line dancing is something best left to the punch lines of jokes, wedding receptions and high school reunions. But when you put them together, and when you take into account that in backwoods South Carolina there's as much flannel and steel toe boots worn by women as there ever has been lipstick, it makes Freddy vs. Jason look like a comedy. Well, that kinda was, but you get my point. Pick a real scary movie - lesbian line dance and karaoke night in Union, South Carolina is scarier.