I sat there for a few minutes trying to decide whether I was going to bleed to death or just puke, and when I figured out I didn't need to do either, I got up, poked around the lair for anything valuable, interesting or useful as a bandage, and sat down in the recliner to patch up my legs. I had my backpack first aid kit with me, so I just hacked off the legs of my overalls and treated my cuts. None of them looked like they needed stitches, but I used up a whole bottle of hydrogen peroxide and about three tubes of Neosporin trying to make sure that shit wasn't going to get infected. After my recent knee injury I was a little paranoid about infections. It eventually passed when I figured out that tequila was a good preventative against bacteria, if taken internally often enough.
The vamp had some cool books, but nothing much else to speak of, so after a few minutes I got up and headed back out of the cave to find Jason and Pop. I figured they'd be happy to not have to fight a whole nest of vamps, or enfilade them, or whatever they were gonna do. But when I got to the mouth of the cave, there was nobody there. No Pop, no Jason, and no truck. There was a sheet of notebook paper laying in the dirt at the mouth of the cave, weighted down with a rock. I picked it up.
"Dear Robert," And right off I knew it was bad. Pop only used my given name when he was gonna beat my ass, or when he had bad news. The last time he called me Robert was when he kicked me out of the house after I told him I was going to college and not going into the monster-hunting business. The time before that I was twelve and he told me that Momma had been killed by a werewolf while we were at school that day. She hadn't, but I'd never seen her again since she left with that dude selling vacuum cleaners, so she might as well have been.
"Dear Robert, if you are reading this then you are alive." My Pop, always the heart of perception.
"I am glad the vampire didn't kill you." And such a tender soul.
"But you are a fatass slob and an embarrassment to this family, so you can walk your lard ass back home and think about doing something with your life instead of watching pornos and eating Cheetos. Besides, that makes your pecker turn orange." I mentioned that I hated my father, right?
"Jason and I are fine, don't worry about us." I wasn't worried.
"We hope you will forgive us this slight inconvenience and we hope to see you walking up the driveway soon. Love, Your Pop." I stood there for a second with the letter in my hand, then I threw back my head and yelled as loud as I could. I don't even know if I yelled words. I mighta just been screaming. I screamed until I was hoarse, then screamed some more. I screamed until I almost puked, then I started cussing. I started with "a" and worked my way through the profane alphabet
After a few minutes of cussing like a crazy person, I started walking down the highway. I was sore, bleeding from a bunch of cuts on my legs, and more than a little sweaty, blood-soaked and smelly. Not to mention I was a hairy giant carrying a shotgun and a samurai sword. My odds of getting a ride by some kind soul were significantly lower than the odds of me getting picked up by the local po-po and thrown in jail on suspicion of every damn thing that happened within a hundred miles in the last week. I walked for maybe a mile before I calmed down enough to remember that it was the twenty-first damn century, and pulled out my cell phone.
It was busted, of course. Even before smartphones, cell phones were not made to withstand four hundred pounds of humanity landing on them while fighting vampires. My little flip phone looked like RD-D2 had been run through the Death Star's trash compactor. Circuit boards bulged out the sides, keys wiggled like teeth after a bar fight, and the screen looked like my windshield the morning after prom night.
Don't ask. I had an eventful prom, let's just leave it at that.
All right, fine, there was a troll. Can we drop it now? Thank you.
I threw the cell phone into the woods and kept on walking. As I hiked, I took inventory. I had a twelve-gauge shotgun, a katana and a first aid kit. Most of the stuff in the first aid kit was gone, since I hadn't known I was walking sixty damn miles home when I treated my wounds, but I had some bandages and some aspirin. I had a box of shells for the shotgun, but it was all double-ought buckshot and mostly silver shot. Great for vampires, but I wasn't going to be shooting anything that I could eat and have enough of it left to cook. The buckshot would destroy any birds or small game I could shoot, and I didn't have any way to dress a deer or anything else. Plus I was gonna be staying too close to the road to hunt. It was looking like a hungry couple of days.
I had a bandanna in the bag with my ammo and the first aid kit, and I had my SEC Champions cap, so I didn't have to sweat sunburn. My overalls were thrashed, and I was lucky I didn't have anything inappropriate flopping out while I walked. But I wasn't worried about scaring any drivers. The road I was on was pretty deserted 'til I got to Chattanooga, and then I'd just look like some other homeless dude wandering around. A really big, really armed homeless dude. But I figured if I could get to Chattanooga I could check into a hotel and rent a car the next morning. I felt around in my pockets for my wallet, and checked to make sure I still had my credit cards.
I found a hundred bucks and another note. This one was from Jason.
"Dear Shithead," My brother and I had a groovy kind of love back in those days.
"I swiped all your plastic. Pop made me leave you some money so you wouldn't starve. I told him you could live for a month off stored fat, but he told me I had to leave you a hundred bucks. Don't spend it all in one place, asshole." I cussed some more, but my heart wasn't in it. I had a hundred bucks, a shotgun and a big-ass sword and I was headed into Chattanooga, Tennessee on a Thursday night. What could go wrong?
I walked for about six hours, 'til it was almost midnight, then checked into a Sleep Inn. It was crappy, but for $29.99 I couldn't bitch too much. Plus there was a Walmart across the street, and that hooked me up for travel. I bought two changes of clothes, a couple bottles of water, and still had enough cash left over to destroy a couple eggs scrambled with hash browns scattered, smothered, covered and chunked at the Waffle House next door.
I love the damn Waffle House. It don't matter if it's one in the morning and you come in there covered in blood toting a shotgun, the waitress will still call you "honey." And that's just what I needed right then. She even had most of her teeth. In my later years I probably would have saved on the motel room and just gone home with Betty from the Waffle, but I was younger then and had not yet fully developed my amazing charm.
I showered and fell asleep on top of the covers, then got up the next morning and was just about to walk out the door when I looked over at the hotel phone. "Dumbass," I muttered to myself, then sat down on the bed and dialed Grandpappy's number.
He let the damn thing ring about eight times before he finally picked up. "What?" He growled.
"I need a ride, Grandpappy."
"I know. Your Pop told me what he done. He's a dickhead." Lotta love in my family, you gotta admit.
"Yeah." I replied.
"He's right, though. You done got fat. You kill that stupid Tennessee vampire?"
"Yeah, I killed it."
"All right. Tell me where you are and I'll come get you." I told him, and then sat back down on the bed, thinking about what a dumbass I'd been. If I'd just looked for a pay phone last night I'd still have my hundred bucks. But Grandpappy probably woulda made me take a shower before I got in his truck, anyway. Ever since he got out of the monster hunting business, he kinda soured on cleaning blood out of the floor mats. And with the rancid vampire guts I'd scrubbed off myself, I didn't blame him.
About an hour later a beat up old Ford F-150 rolled into the Waffle House parking lot. I'd just knocked off another couple eggs and a side of bacon, and I was ready to roll. I tossed my gear in the back of the truck, and we headed home. We were almost there when Grandpappy asked me "You know what he was trying to do, right?"
I knew he was talking about Pop. "Piss me off?"
"Wake you up, boy. You're good. Could be the best one of us since my dadd
y, but your heart ain't never been in it. You go at this half-assed, you'll be dead before you're thirty. And I don't want to bury you, boy."
"I don't want you to, Pappy. But I don't want this life. I want to go to college, make something of myself, not just ride around chasing monsters forever."
"Make something of yourself?" His hand flashed out and I felt the slap almost before I saw his hand move. Grandpappy was almost vamp-fast, and twice as sneaky. My head bounced off the glass and when I got my shit together he had pulled the truck off the side of the road and got out of the truck.
"Get out here you little shit!" He hollered. I opened the door and he got right up in my face. Or as much as he could at 5' 9". Grandpappy was never a huge man, but he was what the folks back home called "wiry." That means skinny and mean as a damn snake. He was fast, and little, and smart as hell. He learned to fight monsters from his daddy, who grew up in the hills of West By God Virginia killing anything that looked at him funny. Pappy had stared down demons, ghosts, vampires, werewolves and the meanest monsters in this and seven other worlds. I didn't know what I'd done to piss him off, but I knew I was in for an ass-whooping if I didn't make it right.
I looked down at the shiny top of his head and said "I'm sorry, Grandpappy. I didn't mean to make you mad." That old man could still turn me into a sniveling seven year old in the blink of an eye.
He looked up at me and his scowl softened a hair. Just a hair, but I thought there might be a slim chance of me getting home with all my teeth. He waved me around to the back of the truck and dropped the tailgate. He hopped up on there, and I sat next to him. The shocks groaned with my weight, and I blushed a little bit.
"I said you was fat."
"I didn't say you was wrong, did I?"
He took a deep breath and looked out into the North Georgia woods. When he looked back at me, he suddenly looked all of his eighty-seven years. "Boy, you gotta understand something. What we do...it's important. There ain't a whole lot of people can do it. Most folks live their whole lives without ever knowing the shit we deal with is even real, much less right outside their windows. And we fight to keep it that way. That's the job, boy. It ain't about killing things that need killing. That's part of it. A big part of it, and sometimes the fun part, but it's just a part.
"We protect people, Bubba. We make sure that when some momma comes home with her young'un and lets him run to the front door from the car while she gets the groceries, that he's gonna be safe. We make sure it's safe for a couple of kids to go parking on a Saturday night and for little Tommy to try and get to second base. We make sure that old lady Rossi can walk to her mailbox at dusk without getting eaten. That shit is important, son, whether anybody knows it or not. Hell, it's more important if they don't know about it. Because if they knew, if people understood how much dangerous shit is out there in the world, hell, nobody'd ever leave home. So when you say you want to make something of yourself I say what the holy hell do you think we been trying to do your whole life?"
I started to say something, but he just held up a hand. "Shut up, boy. Right now I ain't in a mood to whip your ass, but you say something stupid and that can change." I don't remember what I thought I wanted to say, but I just took a deep breath and kept my mouth shut.
We sat there, looking out over the woods for a few minutes, then Grandpappy abruptly hopped down off the end of the tailgate and walked over to the edge of the trees. I watched his back in confusion for a second, then grinned as I heard his zipper go down. A few seconds later and I heard a stream of piss hitting the leaves, and watched his shoulders relax.
He turned his head to talk back over his shoulder to me. "Don't laugh, shithead, you got a prostate, too. And one of these days yours is gonna make you have to piss twenty times a day. So shut up and let an old man pee." I did, and he finished his business then got back in the driver's seat of the truck. I closed the tailgate and got in the passenger seat, looking out the window and thinking about what he'd said. We didn't say anything else until he dropped me off at my house twenty minutes later.
Chapter 3
I got my bag out of the bed of the truck and leaned in the window. "Thanks for the ride, Grandpa. I'll think about what you said."
"You do that. And get off the damn couch, Fatty." We both laughed as he pulled out of our driveway.
I stomped up onto the porch and Jason met me at the door. "Have a nice walk?" He grinned. I opened the door and punched him in the gut. I dropped my bag on the porch and grabbed my little brother by the hair, dragging him down the steps into the yard. I gave him a shove and he went sprawling into the dirt.
"Get up." I growled.
"What the hell? It was Pop's idea!"
"Yeah, but the Ten Commandments tell me I can't whoop his ass. Moses never said nothin' about honorin' an asshole little brother. You been up my ass ever since I came home about one thing or another. All I can figure is since I been gone you think you're the King Shit of Turd Mountain. Well, that shit ends right damn now. Now come get some!"
He ran at me, counting on being faster than me to get him out of trouble. What he didn't understand was that even at second string, I played defensive end for the football champions of the Southeastern Conference, and there was not a meaner, faster or dirtier-fighting group of individuals on earth than the quarterback-eating, mud-slinging, blood-spilling defensive line of the 2002 Georgia Mother-Loving Bulldogs. I'd only been on the team two years, but I spent those years playing behind David Pollack, an All-American at our position, so I knew how to run down and put a hurt on faster opponents.
Jason came at me, looking to go at my bad knee, like I knew he would. He dove in, rolled and came up with a side kick at my knee. Except there was no knee there. The second he dove, I spun around behind him, so when he kicked out, I just wasn't there. I lashed out with my bad leg, using my good leg to support me, and kicked him in the ass so hard he went right into another forward roll. This one he didn't come out of so good, sprawling in the dirt and scrambling to his feet. He charged me again, and I feinted left, then juked right. This was another move designed to protect my bad knee, but Jason went straight at me. When I juked right, he compensated too far left, and was out of position for any kind of punch or kick.
But I wasn't. Since I was a good six inches taller than Jason, I flicked out a kick that caught him behind the ear and left him seeing stars and trying to shake the cobwebs loose. His blurry vision led him one step too close, and I dropped him with a roundhouse punch to the jaw that took every bit of anger I had at losing my scholarship, losing my football career, losing my girlfriend back in Athens and channeled it into one shot. Jason's eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped to the ground, out cold before he even hit the dirt. I leaned over and slapped him a couple of times to make sure he was still breathing, and when he opened his eyes, they weren't quite pointing in the same direction anymore.
"You ever touch my wallet again, little brother, and I'll really put a hurtin' on you." Then I walked to the porch, grabbed my bag, and went inside.
Pop was sitting at the kitchen table going over the bills. He spent a lot of time looking at bills, then throwing away the less important ones. Every once in a while he'd even pay one, usually the power bill or phone bill. The rest of 'em he tossed, saying we were doing "God's work, and the Lord will provide." "The Lord turned out to be me or Jason often as not. We'd go down to Atlanta and compete in Tough Man contests or work for a couple weeks as bouncers to earn a little cash, then give it to Pop to pay the bills. When I went out on my own, I started looking for ways to get God, or at least somebody with a direct line to Him, to pay me for doing God's work. It's worked out pretty good so far.
"You lived." He said without looking up.
"Don't sound so damn happy about it." I didn't stop on the way to my room. I didn't want to fight with Pop, not just because of that whole "honor thy father and thy mother" bit, but I was pretty sure he could whoop my ass on my best day, much less the way I felt right then. I stomp
ed down the hall and threw my bag down on the bed. I hung the shotgun on my gun rack, thought for a second, and put the katana on the bottom rack. Then I looked around my room and decided they were all right, it was time to make a few changes. I changed into a sleeveless sweatshirt and pair of shorts, then went out the back door to the barn.
We hadn't kept any livestock in my lifetime, and I don't know if we ever had, but the barn was more of a big storage shed than anything else. There was a couple of old trucks that didn't run stashed in there for Jason to tinker with, and a busted refrigerator that I used to shove him into when we were kids and tell him I was gonna leave him there 'til he suffocated. I always let him out before he turned blue, though.
But I wasn't looking for any of that. I went straight to the back corner and lifted up a blue tarp. There sat my Joe Weider Pro weight bench. I'd had that damn thing since high school, and it had got me through a lot of football. It wasn't anything fancy, just a bench press rack with a bench that would incline, and a leg attachment on the end for leg curls and extensions. I loaded a couple hundred pounds on the bar and settled in for a little warm-up.
Scattered, Smothered and Chunked - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1 Page 24