"Born ready, Skeeter. Thanks." I didn't have to say anything else.
"I love him, too." Apparently Skeeter did have to say something else. I hung up and wiped a little bit of give a damn out of the corner of my eye and looked up as Rich and Junior sprang into action.
They ran toward their car, and I yelled at Rich "Hey! Where y'all going?"
"Big hostage thing on the other side of town. Everybody's gotta report."
"You gonna uncuff me and give me my gun back?"
Rich ran back to me, Desert Eagle in hand. "The only reason you're getting this back is we can't confiscate it, and it's empty. But you're staying hooked to that truck 'til we get this figured out." He turned and ran for the car. Junior peeled rubber as they pulled out of the parking lot, visions of SWAT situations no doubt dancing in his little pea brain.
I didn't waste any time arguing with Rich, I just dug around in my wallet for the handcuff key I kept in there. You'd be amazed how often that kind of thing comes in handy, so I started carrying on my senior year of high school. I got myself free of the cuffs and walked through the sliding doors of the hospital. When I got to the information desk the doc I'd turned Grandpappy over to walked through the doors leading back to the ER and surgery. I looked at him, his scrubs covered in my Grandpappy's blood, and knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. The look on his face said it all.
He drew a deep breath, steadying himself to tell this gigantic redneck with the big-ass gun that his loved one was dead, but I held up a hand. "Did he ever wake up?"
The doc blinked once, slowly. "No, sir."
"Then he never felt any pain after he passed out?"
"No."
"Thank you, doc. You tried. That's all you can do."
"It doesn't help." He was a young doc, maybe thirty-five. He wasn't used to losing patients. That made us pretty even. I wasn't used to losing family members. And I'd lost three in one night. There weren't any left. Every person that shared blood relations to me on this earth was gone except for my mama, and she'd been gone so long she didn't count no more. I turned around and walked back out the sliding glass doors.
I made it halfway across the parking lot before I lost control of my legs. I sagged onto an unfortunate Buick as the whole night hit me across the shoulders like a ton of bricks. I pounded on the hood of that car for a couple of minutes, then I fell to my knees, asphalt digging through my jeans. I threw my head back and screamed. I let out all the rage, all the hurt, all the loss in one bellow of pain and fury like nothing I'd ever cut loose before. People inside the building turned to look at me, but I didn't care. They were gone. My family was gone. I had nothing left. Nothing except a monster wearing the skin of my father. A monster I wasn't strong enough to kill.
I don't know how long I knelt there in the parking lot, crying, screaming and cursing God, but it was still dark when a familiar voice from behind me said "Sorry about your grandfather."
I turned my head and looked at Rich, the old cop from earlier. "I guess you found out there wasn't any hostages."
"I knew all along. Ain't nobody in Muscle Shoals worth kidnapping, boy. Doc Hawkins told me. You got a plan?"
"Go home. Bury my grandfather. Put up a stone for my brother. Heal for a week or two. Come back and shoot my daddy between his yellow wolf eyes."
"All of it sounds good but the last part. Get in the truck. Go home. I'll arrange for transporting your grandfather's body back to you. But don't come back here looking for revenge. We've had an arrangement with the local pack for a long time. A balance, you might say. You come back here with blood in your eye, that balance goes out the window. That could be bad for a lot of my people. I can't have that."
I was on my feet by the time he finished talking, and I crossed the ground between us in two big steps. I grabbed the front of his uniform shirt and pulled him to me. He had to stand on tiptoes to look me in the eye, but he never blinked. "You telling me that if I come back here hunting my daddy, the monster that used to be my daddy, that we're going to have a problem?"
I heard a soft click. When I looked down the barrel of a .38 was pressed into my stomach just below the ribcage, angled up. It was a killing shot if he pulled the trigger. I stared at the gun long enough to decide that I still cared, and I let go of Rich's shirt. He nodded to me and slipped the pistol into a holster in the back waistband of his pants.
"I'm not saying we're going to have a problem. I'm saying I will shoot your ass. If you bring danger down on the people of this town, I will bring an end to you. Are we clear?"
"Crystal. I'll stay out of your town. But you understand this - whatever deal you think you've got, is over. It ended the second my Pop killed your old Alpha. You got a whole new kind of monster now, and he used to be the best monster hunter in the game. If he's turned half as crazy as I think he has, you're in for a world of shit. And don't bother calling me to bail you out." I got to my feet, walked the rest of the way to my truck, and got behind the wheel. A few seconds later, and the Shoals Hospital was in my rearview mirror.
I dialed Skeeter. I figured he was the closest thing to family I had left, and he ought to know about Grandpappy. He picked up on the first ring. "I'm sorry, Bubba."
"How did you know?"
"You don't call somebody at five in the morning with good news." I didn't have anything to say to that, because he was right.
I drove along, listening to Skeeter try to make me feel better for a couple miles, then I turned off the road. The sun was starting to peek over the horizon, but I was seeing three of them. I pulled the truck into the parking lot of a Waffle House and took a space way around back where I wouldn't be in anybody's way too bad.
"I think I'm gonna sleep a little while, Skeeter. It's been a hell of a night."
"That is has, Bubba. You want me to call you in a couple hours to wake you up?"
"Nah, I'll be all right. I'll probably have to pee sometime before too long, that'll get me moving."
"Okay." There was a long pause. "I'm sorry, Bubba."
"Thanks Skeeter." Another one of those pauses. "For everything."
"Anytime." He hung up and I stretched out across the seat. I had to roll the window down and hang my feet out one side of the cab, because I was just taller than the truck was wide, and this was before every truck had a back seat, so there wasn't any laying the front seat back to catch a snooze. I put the Desert Eagle under the seat and wrapped my fist around a tire iron in case somebody had the bright idea to wake me up suddenly. I didn't figure they would. Waffle Houses are used to people sleeping one off in the parking lot, but it never hurts to be prepared.
It was 5:30 when I looked at my watch and laid down, and when I came to my watch read 8:25. I was right, my bladder was full and it was not interested in waiting another few hours so I could feel like a human being again. I got out of the truck and went inside to pee. That taken care of, I washed up a little in the sink and sat down at the counter for breakfast. The woman running the cash register could have been the twin sister of the woman I'd ordered breakfast from in Chattanooga a few months ago, but I didn't ask. I just wreaked havoc on a plate of eggs and bacon, then went back out to the truck.
I made good time on the way home, but I don't remember anything about the drive. It's all a blur of trees whizzing by and me cussing Pop and the werewolf that bit him. I'd thought my life was screwed up when I blew up my leg, then I found a new life working with Pop and Jase. Now that was gone, and I thought I'd hit rock bottom, this time even further down than before.
I was wrong. I wasn't anywhere close to the bottom. But I was about to find out what the bottom looked like.
Chapter 9
When I pulled into my driveway and saw the yellow Ford Escort sitting there, I smiled for the first time in two days. Brittany had come over from Athens on one of her "wild hair" visits. She was just what I needed. I could talk to her like I couldn't talk to anybody, not even Skeeter. There's a level of trust with the woman you're sleeping with th
at just don't exist with other folks, no matter how close you are to them. I pulled the truck in next to hers and threw open the door. I made the porch in three steps, and hopped up onto the porch in one bound. I pulled open the door and yelled "Honey, I'm home!"
Corny, I know. But it had been a rough couple of days, and I wanted nothing more than to get out of the nasty hospital scrubs I was still wearing and wrap myself in the tender arms of a little blonde-haired girl. I stood on the porch, one foot in the house, waiting for her to come running, but nothing happened. Nobody came running. Nobody called from the back of the house. Nobody said or did anything at all.
"Britt? You here?" I called. Nothing. I went into the house. Nobody in the den. Kitchen was empty. Went down the hall to my room, nothing. Jase's room? Couldn't think why she'd be in there, but I opened the door anyway. My chest got tight at the sight of his favorite t-shirt laying balled up on the floor, but no Brittany. I pushed open the door to Pop's room, with the same results. The bathroom door was open, and we didn't have any other rooms, so she wasn't in the house.
I walked back out to the porch and looked again. No sign of her outside. I looked in the window of her car and saw her overnight bag sitting on the passenger seat, still zipped up like she'd just gotten there. Huh. Maybe she went for a walk in the woods. Not her usual thing, but maybe she got bored waiting for me.
I walked around the house toward the barn, and froze. Lying in the dirt between the house and the barn, was one sneaker. Just a red and white ordinary running shoe, the kind you can buy at half a dozen stores in any mall in America. I knew the shoe. I'd been with Brittany when she bought 'em at the Foot Locker in the Georgia Square Mall. It was the week before the SEC title game, when I still thought I was going to finish college and maybe play in the NFL. She tried on about twenty pairs of shoes that afternoon before she decided on the fifth or sixth red and white sneaker I'd seen her try on. I was so crazy about her I didn't even care, I just sat there staring at her, watching her long legs as she tried on shoe after shoe, noticing the sales guy at every store fall all over themselves to help her, and being proud that she was mine.
One of those shoes was laying in the red dirt between the back door of my house and the barn. And when I got close enough, I saw a drop of blood on the toe. I froze. If there had been anything within a mile that wanted to kill me, it had the time and opportunity. I must have stood there for ten or fifteen minutes before the wind rustled a branch against the side of the barn and I snapped back to reality. I pulled out my cell phone and called Skeeter.
"At least it's daylight this time." He answered. We never bothered with hellos or any of that silly shit.
"I need you to get over here."
"What's the matter?"
"Get over here, Skeeter. I need you."
"Bubba, I'm at school. If I leave right now, it'll be three hours before I get there. What happened? I mean, I know what happened, but you were all right a little while ago, and now --"
"I think he's got Brittany."
There was silence on the other end of the line for a long time. When Skeeter's voice came back, he was a little out of breath, like he was trying to do other stuff and talk to me at the same time. "I'm on my way. Don't you go up in them hills until I get there, you hear me?"
"I hear you."
"Mama's on her way to you. Just do what she says until I get there."
"I don't want her here, Skeeter, I don't want anybody else --"
"Shut up. You don't get a vote. You need somebody there who knows you and can keep you from running off into the woods after your Pop until I get there and we can make a plan."
"You think your mama can stop me?"
"You stupid enough to think she can't?" Skeeter had a point. Even at 5'3", Skeeter's mama was a formidable woman with a sharp tongue and a ready hand on her twelve-gauge. And Skeeter knew I wouldn't hit her, no matter how crazy I got.
"Fine, but get your ass in the car."
"I just gotta tie my shoe. I'll stop by the house and get my guns. I'll be there in three hours. Mama'll be there in ten minutes."
I didn't say anything. I took a long look around the back yard, saw nothing else out of place, then walked back around to the front porch. I got Jase's gun out of the truck and went inside. He kept his ammo in the top dresser drawer, just like Pop and me. I found a box of Magnum Research XTP 350-grain ammunition and the shoulder holster I gave him for Christmas. He never wore it in the summer, said it itched. I adjusted all the straps to fit my oversized frame, and slid it over my shoulders. It felt like it was made for me. I loaded up the magazine in the pistol and clicked it home, then grabbed another four loaded mags and slid them into the ammo pouches on the opposite side of the holster from the gun. The weight of the four full magazines offset the weight of the pistol, and I had thirty-five rounds of fifty caliber ammunition tucked into my armpits. I didn't worry too much about silver, I figured the destruction a .50 bullet left in its wake would be enough to stop anything short of God himself.
I heard footsteps on the porch and drew the pistol. I crouched by the door to Jason's room, and when I heard the screen door, I charged out in a low run, pistol up and blood in my eye. Only to freeze when I got to the kitchen and saw Skeeter's mama standing there with a casserole dish.
"I reckon you was expecting company of a different sort, Robert." Skeeter's mama was one of two people in my life that had ever called me by my real name. I stood up, holstered the pistol, and took the blue and white Pyrex dish from her.
"Thank you, ma'am. I appreciate this."
"It's no trouble. You know I keep a couple green bean casseroles in the freezer in case somebody passes suddenly. Now go put a shirt on over that hand cannon, we can't have you scaring all the people from the church that's coming. I've got me a pen and some paper, I'll keep track of what everybody brings over so you can write thank you notes in a couple weeks." She looked around the kitchen and let out a sigh. "I knew it would be trouble, what with it being nothing but men living here for so long, but I didn't expect catastrophe. Oh well, we'll have this place looking ship-shape in no time."
I stood there for a second, my mouth opening and closing like an old catfish that found himself unexpectedly dangling from a fisherman's line. The sound of gravel crunching under car tires snapped me out of my reverie, and I reached for the gun.
Skeeter's mama looked at me and laughed. "Son, I know you've had a bad night, but anything that goes bump in the night ain't likely to drive right up to the front door. Now go cover up that sidearm like I told you to and let me greet the ladies from my Sunday School class."
"Yes, Mrs. Jones." And just like that, I went back to my room to make myself look presentable. I put a long-sleeve black shirt on over the pistol, slid on a clean pair of blue jeans, then went across the hall and took a quick sink bath. I washed my face and pits with a washcloth, then ran a comb through my hair and beard. I made sure there were no visible bloodstains on my pants, brushed my teeth and went out to face the gauntlet that was ahead of me.
If you've never had a family member die in a small town in the South, you don't understand what I went through the rest of that morning. I saw distant cousins I hadn't seen since elementary school, neighbors I hadn't seen since high school, and a bunch of folks from various churches around the county that I'd never seen before. It's the kind of thing that's bad enough if you're just a normal, church-going family, but when everybody in fifty miles knows you hunt down monsters, they feel particularly obligated to pay their respects when the monsters hunt you back.
Within an hour of Mrs. Jones stepping on my porch, her Sunday School ladies had cleaned my whole house from top to bottom, separated and started the laundry, scrubbed the kitchen so hard it was a whole new color, and brought more casseroles than I could eat in twenty years. I stood there watching them for a little while, then went out back and took some pictures of the shoe with my new digital camera. I took a bunch of pictures of the dirt, but it was werewolf tracks, there was never
a question about it. I carried the shoe back in the house and put it on my bed, then closed the door just in case somebody decided to clean back there.
I had just shut the door to my room when a hush fell over the house. I couldn't think of much that would quiet down a houseful of Baptist Southern women, so I had my hand on the butt of my gun when I stepped into the kitchen. I expected a wolfman, or a troll, or some kind of monster. I never expected what I saw.
Chapter 10
Standing in my kitchen was a trim man of maybe thirty years wearing all black, with a short dark brown beard and kind blue eyes. He looked a little familiar, but I couldn't quite place him. Mrs. Jones had cut the young priest off at the front door and was flapping her apron at him like a matador going at a bull when I got there. "You ain't needed here, Joe. We've got this under control. You can go back to your incense and Communion wine, and leave this community to those what still live here."
I saw the man wince at that and realized who he was. I hadn't seen Skeeter's uncle in years, not since his family moved out of Georgia when Skeeter and I were in middle school. That was about the time we met, so I didn't remember much about him. Some kind of scandal about who Joe's mama remarried or something. Looking at the collar, I figured out what the scandal was. That fine upstanding Southern Baptist woman went off and married a Catholic, and her family didn't approve.
"It's fine, Mrs. Jones. If he wants to pay his respects, he can come on in." I said, leaning against the refrigerator.
"Thank you, Bubba. I appreciate that. I'm Father Joseph Jones." He stepped forward and held out his hand. I shook it and laughed a little. The sound felt forced, but good, like exercising a muscle you'd forgotten you had.
"No, you're Uncle Joe. I know who you are. I reckon you're Uncle Father Joe now, though, ain't you?"
Scattered, Smothered and Chunked - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 1 Page 28