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

by John G. Hartness

  And as much as I am a bonafide country boy, I'm not a big fan of the smells of nature, if you know what I mean. And this field was full of some impressively natural smells. I much prefer the kind of smells that come from a bottle. Like the sweet, soothing smell of Jack Daniels. Or the glorious lavender-scented cloud of stripper perfume. I once heard a fella say "they call it Destiny, but it smells like shame." I disagree. It smells like the hopes and dreams of desperate men and women smart enough to take advantage of them. I love strippers, they have an uncomplicated view of life. You give them money, they show you boobies. I have a similarly uncomplicated view of life -- monsters need to be killed, I kill 'em.

  And that's why I was stuck in a damp, smelly field in the middle of the night miles away from the scent of whiskey or the sight of a boob. I had a monster to kill, and as long as the critter was playing shy, I was stuck out there freezing my ass off and bitching to Skeeter over the Bluetooth. Skeeter's my backup, my technical liaison, my navigator and my best friend. He'd appointed himself my best friend since the day I kept Jason Skoonfield from running his underpants up the flagpole in middle school. I probably wouldn't have stopped Jason from having a little bit of innocent fun, but since Skeeter was still wearing his underpants I thought that was a little over the line. So me and Skeeter struck up an unusual alliance. I kept him from getting killed for being the only black kid in our school, not to mention the only gay kid and the smartest kid in three counties, and he made sure I passed algebra and got out of high school. Even the principal thought it was a fair trade. He was pretty tired of replacing all the desks that couldn't hold me, and he didn't want to deal with the paperwork if Skeeter ended up dead. So he didn't ask about my grades, and I didn't tell.

  "Skeeter, you remember when Jason Skoonfield was gone run your drawers up the flagpole in tenth grade?" I asked the air.

  Skeeter's disembodied voice came back in my ear. "It was one of the most traumatic experiences in a traumatic youth, Bubba. Of course I remember it. It may have been the pinnacle of my humiliation in that vile institution they called a school. Why do you bring that up now?"

  "You know I get all philosophical-like when I'm stuck out here smelling cowpies and staring up and the stars. You ever wonder where we'd be if I hadn't stopped Skoon and his buddies?"

  Skeeter's voice got very quiet. "I do, Bubba. Sometimes I do, but I try not to think about that too much. And you shouldn't either, we've got a job to do."

  I knew where he was going, and it wasn't a road I wanted to go down right then. Or ever, for that matter. I looked down at the glowing face of the child's Mickey Mouse watch and thought back to happier days. Then I gave myself a shake and answered Skeeter. "Yeah, but what the hell is the job, Skeeter? I'm freezing off my danglies out here and ain't heard nothing all night."

  "You know the monster's been feeding every third night, and this is the only herd that hasn't been attacked this month. So if there really is a chupacabra somewhere around here, this is the best spot to find it."

  "Yeah, it's a pretty damn good spot to get a frostbit sack, too." I grumbled. "You got it easy, sitting there in your nice warm little command center. Remember, I was on a lake just a few days ago in flip-flops and no shirt, and supposed to be there for another four days. Instead, I'm fully dressed in long pants, a leather jacket and a sweater and I'm still freezing my ass off!"

  I heard a sharp intake of breath as Skeeter started to reply, but I cut him off with a hiss. "Shut up, I think I hear something." There was a rustling sound coming from the fenceline a few feet away. I crept over in the direction of the sound and suddenly realized that the source of the sound was a cow. I got to within three feet of the beast before I could make out its shape in the moonless night, then I scrambled backwards as quickly as I could as the cow unleashed the most terribly stench I'd ever experienced right in my face.

  "Skeeter you sonofabith a cow just farted on me!" I screeched into the earpiece, trying to get away from the cloud of methane that was wrapped around my head. I heard Skeeter laughing uncontrollably in my ear as I worked hard not to vomit.

  "You know I'm gonna kill you when I get out of here, right?"

  "I don't make the assignments, Bubba, I just send you the emails." He sounded dangerously close to hyperventilating, and I was dangerously close to walking off the job when I heard the scream.

  If you've never heard a goat scream, you should do everything in your power to keep it that way. It's a sound like nothing on earth, kinda like a mix of a human scream with a deeper tone than any human can make, and it can carry for miles. It chilled me to the bone, and put my butt in gear. I started running for the sound, drawing Bertha, my fifty-caliber Desert Eagle as I went after the monster. When I got there, I stopped dead in my tracks at the scene in front of me.

  This was not what I had come here to hunt.

  *****

  And here's where I do that irritating thing they do on TV all the time nowadays -- the two-day flashback. You see, instead of telling the story straight I'm gonna get you to someplace real interesting in the narrative, then I'm gonna pull back and dump a couple days' worth of exposition on your heads. It drives me batshit when they do that on TV, but I figure if it works for the boys on Supernatural, then it oughta work for me too.

  *****

  I was sitting on my boat fishing with an unbaited hook when the phone rang. After my last couple of jobs, I didn't really want to kill anything else for a while, even a fish. But if I was gonna go fishing, I figured I oughta at least get my hook wet. But nobody ever said anything about having to bait it. So I was listening to the Dirt Drifters' new album This is My Blood while I dozed on the back end of my pontoon boat. I had on my typical fishing gear, size 16 flip-flops, cut-off jean shorts, and a Roger Creager baseball cap I bought at a concert a couple months ago. I'd slathered on enough sunscreen to lube up half the Village People and I was ready for some serious relaxation.

  Then my cell phone rang. I wasn't wearing my Bluetooth earpiece because I was on vacation, and Skeeter was three of the top five people I didn't want to hear from. And he knew it. So when "I'm Sexy and I Know It" blared from my phone, I knew it was trouble. I grabbed the phone, and sure enough, there was Skeeter's face.

  I pushed the TALK button and said "I'm on vacation. Go screw yourself for forty-eight hours." Then I pushed the red button and threw the phone into the lake.

  Then my backup cell phone rang. I dug around in my tackle box for it, and flipped it open. Skeeter's face again. I pushed the button and said "Why did I ever give you this number? Piss off." Then I pushed the END button and threw it after the first phone.

  I sat there in blessed silence for about two minutes before Queen's "Fat Bottom Girls" started to blare out from somewhere on the boat. I didn't have another phone. And I'd never set that as a ring tone. I found it in a bait well of the boat, and pushed ANSWER.

  "Are you gonna hang up on me again?" Skeeter asked.

  "Probably. But what is it?"

  "A chupacabra. In Florida."

  "Is that anything like a chalupa, 'cause I'm getting hungry."

  "Maybe if you'd put bait on that hook you'd catch something."

  "Then I'd have to clean it. And how did you know I ain't got no bait on the hook?"

  "I put a camera on your boat when I put this phone on there. You really need to do something about your back hair. I could braid a rug off your shoulders alone."

  "Shut your piehole, Skeeter. What about this chimichanga?"

  "Chupacabra. It's a giant half-bat, half-goat creature that sucks the blood from livestock."

  "Does it hurt people?"

  "Not usually."

  "Then it can wait. I'm on vacation." I went to push the END button and Skeeter spoke up, fast.

  "It's killing off all the prime beef stock in a couple of counties in Florida. If we don't do something soon the price of steak is going to skyrocket."

  "That could be bad."

  "Like you not being able to afford your weekly
porterhouse down at the Beef Barn?"

  "I'm on my way."

  "And put on a shirt!" Skeeter called just before I threw the phone in the lake.

  "Asshole." I grumbled as I reeled in my lines, pulled up my little anchor and steered back to my dock. A couple hours later I had the boat tied off, my beer stowed back in the house, and was in the truck rolling toward Skeeter's. I'd showered to get all the sunscreen off before I got in my truck, but I was still planning on dropping by Skeeter's shirtless. I shouldn't be the only one whose day was ruined by this chinchilla, or whatever the hell it was.

  I pulled up to Skeeter's place and parked my Ford F-250 pickup next to his Mini Cooper convertible. I test-drove one of those once, but figured I shouldn't buy a car that I couldn't drive with the roof closed. I walked in Skeeter's front door without knocking, 'cause I never knocked at Skeeter's. That, and the biometric lock on his front door only opened with a palmprint from him, me, or Uncle Father Joe, our handler for the Holy Roman Catholic Church. I knew Uncle Father Joe was there, too. I'd seen his Harley in the driveway.

  I made my way back towards the conference room, stopping off at Skeeter's fridge to help myself to a dill pickle and a Bud. I knew he only kept the Bud in there for me, 'cause Skeeter's more of a wine drinker. Probably more of a wine spritzer guy if I was really gonna give him crap about it, but I figured he was nice enough to keep some Bud in the house for me, so I'd give him a pass for the day, anyhow. I got to the conference room and sat down at one end, propping my feet up on some random black box on the floor.

  Skeeter came in a minute or two later, smacking my feet off the box. "That's expensive, Bubba, keep your feet off it. And haven't you ever heard of a napkin? You're drippin' pickle juice all in your beard."

  "I'm saving that for later. Now what about this enchilada I'm supposed to go huntin'?"

  Uncle Father Joe came in and sat down across the table from Skeeter and handed each of us a manila folder full of pictures. "Hey Bubba, Hey Skeeter. How's your mama?"

  "She's good, Uncle Joe." Joe really was Skeeter's uncle, but it got kinda confusing what with him also being a priest, so I just always called him Uncle Father Joe. Skeeter kept better track of it than me, so he switched up depending on if they were talking family or business. They were almost always talking business, on account of most of the family didn't speak to Skeeter since he told them he was gay. And most of the family didn't speak to Joe since he turned Catholic and became a priest. I'm not sure which one of them the Baptists in their family thought was going to Hell first, but I'm pretty sure neither one of them had been to a family reunion in a couple decades.

  Me, I hadn't had any family outside the two of those guys for quite a few years, ever since I got started killin' monsters. But that's a story for another time when I ain't quite so sober.

  Anyhow, Uncle Father Joe got done with the pleasantries pretty quick, and we got down to business. He let us flip through the pictures for a few seconds, then he started talking. "What you're seeing is what the locals think is the work of a chupacabra, a lizard-like creature said to suck the blood from livestock. These pictures show a string of goat and sheep in the panhandle of Florida that have been bled almost completely dry, then left in the fields. Migrant farm workers first brought this to the attention of the Church, and after significant evidence accumulated, we decided to investigate."

  "Goats and sheep? What about cows?" I asked, glaring at Skeeter.

  "There aren't any significant cattle farming operations in the Florida Panhandle, Bubba. But to date nearly two dozen sheep and goats have been attacked."

  "I wouldn't have got off my boat for sheep, Joe." I was pretty well shooting lasers at Skeeter with my eyeballs by this point.

  "I know that, Bubba, that's why I told you it was cows. I know how far you'll go for a good steak, so I reckoned if you thought it would affect your diet, you'd be more likely to come off the lake." Skeeter jumped in. "Joe didn't know anything about my deception, I swear."

  "Of course not, Bubba. I would never lie to you." Uncle Father Joe protested.

  "All right, I reckon since I'm already dressed I might as well take a look at it." I said, shooting Skeeter a look. "But when I get back you'd better have a week with nothing to do but fish and drink lined up for me."

  "I promise!" He swore. I just looked at him. "And this time I mean it!" Joe laughed, and after a second so did I.

  "Where am I going?" I sighed, getting up and going into the spare bedroom where I kept a packed suitcase. I dug around until I found 3XL AC/DC concert shirt to put on with my overalls, and I was pretty much ready to roll.

  *****

  Seems the trouble was centered on a pair of farms just outside of Wausau, Florida. If there was a poster child for small Southern towns, Wausau was definitely in the running. One main street, a supermarket, one cafe and bunch of churches were pretty much the whole town. Anymore you could tell how small a town was by whether or not it could support a Walmart, and my that measure Wausau was tiny indeed. I drove through it twice, circling the main square a couple times and trying to figure out how and why a chili pepper monster would ever find this place, much less decide to set up shop here. Of course, that kind of isolation is exactly what makes a place appetizing for monsters, no pun intended.

  It was on my second loop around downtown that I noticed the blue lights in my rearview mirror. I pulled over to let Smokey go by, and was surprised when he pulled over right behind me. I sure hadn't been speeding, If anything, I was going too slow trying to get a finger on the town. I looked around the cab of the truck and saw nothing incriminating, for a change. I wasn't even wearing Bertha while I drove. All my guns and knives were safely locked up in their hidey-holes under the back seats. And if you didn't have the right fingerprints, you were not getting into those cases.

  An honest-to-God Southern stereotype got out of the car and walked up to the side of my truck. The cop was about five-eight in all directions. He must have weighed three hundred pounds if he was an ounce, and he had the seventies cop mustache rocking. He sidled up alongside the truck and tried to lean in the window with his elbow, but the truck was a little jacked up with mud tires on her, so he wasn't quite tall enough to lean in without looking like a little kid trying to buy candy at the drug store.

  "You lost, son?" He drawled.

  "Well, Sir, I reckon I could use a bit of help finding my cousin's farm. His name's Jacob Mueller, and I hear he runs a farm out on the east side of town, but I been ridin' around for about an hour now and I ain't seen hide nor hair of it."

  "Mueller? I know Jake, and he ain't never mentioned no family. You from up north or something?"

  I wasn't quite sure what he meant, since just about everything was north of where we were standing, so I went with honesty for a change. "I'm from North Carolina, but that ain't what most folks call north, if you know what I mean." I grinned at the cop, but he didn't even crack a smile under his mirrored Ray-Bans. Looking at his fat ass I reckoned the only time he smiled was when the dinner bell rang. Humorless shithead.

  "I reckon I know what you mean, boy. Anyhow, Jake's farm is out on 278. You get to the big pond, you done gone too far. Shouldn't be too hard to find, it's the one with them news trucks and out-of-towners hovering about."

  "Thank you kindly, Sheriff. I do appreciate the help." He walked back to the car and I banged on the steering wheel in frustration.

  I pushed the button on my earpiece and called Skeeter. "What's up, Bubba?" He asked a second or two later.

  "We got a problem, Skeeter. The media's here."

  "That ain't no problem, Bubba. Just don't let 'em see you."

  "Skeeter in case you missed it I am over six and a half feet tall and weigh over three hundred pounds. I'm hard to friggin' miss! And I usually carry more guns than some Latin American countries. I stand out a little in a crowd, you know! So how am I supposed to investigate this la cucaracha thing if I gotta hide from the TV cameras, too?"

  "I bet they can't get
onto the farm, can they?"

  "I don't know. I ain't been out there yet." I admitted.

  "Well first things first, dumbass. Drive on out there and see if they're on the farm or just parked all along the side of the road. If they can't get onto the farm, then you just need to drive right up to the front door, tell Mr. Mueller who you are, and then go about your business."

  My heart stopped for a couple of long beats before I could gulp in enough air to reply. "Tell. Him. Who. I. Am?"

  "Of course. Look in the glove box." I did like I was told, and found a leather wallet with a badge in it. It said "FDA Livestock Inspector" on the gold badge, and the other side had a picture of me wearing a white shirt and a necktie on an official looking identification card. It listed my name as John E. Carson, and I decided that it was better than ripping off musician names. I remembered Skeeter making me wear that stupid shirt and tie and taking a bunch of pictures one day. I told him if they ever ended up on Facebook I was gonna rip out his kidneys, but now I see he had a plan.

  "Fair enough. I reckon I been sent out to investigate some reports of mysterious livestock deaths?"

  "Exactomundo, my big muchacho. Now get to investigatin'!" I pushed the button before I worried too much about what Skeeter had just called me. Half the time that boy talks I got no idea what he's saying, anyway. That's what happens when you hang around with people that are way too smart for their own good.

  I did like Skeeter suggested, and sure enough, there were news vans lining the road out in front of the farm, but none on the property. I had put a polo shirt on over my AC/DC tee before I pulled into town, so I looked at least a little bit respectable. I pulled up the gate and an old dude with a shotgun walked up to the driver's window. He looked an awful lot like somebody who knew how to use a shotgun, so I quickly jumped on my best behavior.