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

by John G. Hartness

  I skittered back on my ass, looking around for the attacker, and Pop stepped out from behind her. He looked like hell, blood and flesh in tatters across his chest. He was completely returned to human form, except for the razor-sharp claws at the ends of his hands. One of those hands was jammed wrist-deep in Brittany's back, and I could see the impressions his claws made in her shirt as he punched a hole almost all the way through her. He pulled his hand free with a sick wet sucking noise, and tossed her body aside to land in the stream with an almost comical little splash.

  Pop never spoke, just stood there with his hands spread wide, Brittany's lifeblood pouring off his fingers into the river. I screamed and drew the Judge, pulling the trigger again and again until the hammer clicked empty. Four more rounds of silver buckshot poured from the little revolver, and Pop took all of them to the chest and face. He sank to his knees in the water, then fell face-first into the creek, his blood mixing with Britt's as they ran across the rocks toward a lake far away.

  I threw the gun aside and fell at Britt's side, turning her over and checking for a pulse. Nothing. Her eyes stared wide up at the darkening sky, and the savagery and suddenness of Pop's attack hadn't even given her time to show the pain on her face. She died looking surprised, stunned by the world that killed her. I screamed at the heavens for the second night in a row, cursing God, cursing Pop, cursing everything and everyone that had ever walked the earth.

  Skeeter and Uncle Father Joe heard my screams and came running, guns out, but they were too late. Everyone was too late. I was too late, too slow, too stupid to keep her alive. Skeeter reached for me, but I drew Jase's gun and pressed it to his nose. He backed up, and I picked Brittany up and carried her back to the cabin.

  I talked to her as we walked, telling her stories about all the things we would do after she graduated. I spun whole futures out of the air for both of us. I told her about the grad schools she'd get into and the things she'd get her Master's and PhDs in. I told her about the house we'd buy in the suburbs of Atlanta, Chicago, Sacramento, anywhere she wanted to go, and the two and a half kids we'd fill it with. I told her about the station wagon she'd drive and the motorcycle I'd buy when I had my midlife crisis. I told her about how we'd grow old together and someday when we were a hundred years old and pissing off the nurses in the old folks' home how we'd get on my motorcycle and ride off into the sunset because the good guys don't ever fucking die in the stories and I'm a monster hunter and one of the goddamn good guys.

  But she didn't answer. She didn't suddenly come back to life with a gasp and a chorus of weak-ass violins. Because she was dead. And when people die, they stay dead, no matter how good and beautiful and innocent they are.

  Unless they're real evil motherfuckers like my father apparently. Because all that bullshit the Bigfoot told us about uniting the monsters - that's straight out of the journal Skeeter and I found when we went back to that cabin in the woods. It was Pop's handwriting, only shakier, like he was losing it while he was writing it. And of course he was, otherwise he wouldn't have killed his youngest son, his father and my girlfriend. But he did. And now, almost ten years later, he's back. I don't know how, and I don't care. Because I've been hunting the things that haunt other people for a decade, and now it's time to go after the son of a bitch that's been haunting me.

  Epilogue

  "I'm sorry."Agent Amy said when I finished. She handed me a Kleenex.

  I took it, wiped my eyes, and threw it behind the seat to land on a couple of McDonald's bags and an empty Jim Beam pint bottle. She'd eaten twice while we drove and I talked. I drank the Jim.

  "I leave anything out, Skeeter?"

  "Nope, that's the story I heard. And the parts I saw." Came the voice from my earpiece.

  "Anything else you need to know, Agent Amy?" I asked. I hadn't looked at her the whole time I was telling the story. I didn't know how much I liked Agent Amy, but it was a little more than I'd liked any woman in ten years. And the last woman I liked for longer than a three-song lap dance special ended up dying in my arms, so I wasn't crazy about getting too attached.

  "Where can I get silver bullets in 9mm?" She asked, and I smiled for the first time since she put the Suburban in drive.

  Final Countdown

  It was getting close to dark when we pulled Agent Amy's Suburban into Skeeter's driveway. I had the window rolled down on account of a truly spectacular fart I'd ripped a few miles back, the result of one bag too many of Lance Bar-B-Q pork rinds I picked up at the gas station when we got off the interstate. The smell of late summer honeysuckle wafted in the windows, taking the edge off my flatulence and reminding me what home smelled like. Skeeter's Mini Cooper was flipped on its side, with all four tires slashed. The front door was clawed all to shit, and the frame was splintered where something big and mean had come through it hard.

  "Shit." I muttered as I got out of the SUV. I grabbed Grandpappy's sword and drew it, looking for any indication that Pop or his pack were still around. I was a little stiff from the car ride and the ass-whooping I'd taken from a troll a couple days before, so I didn't really feel up to killing more than six or seven normal werewolves. But if Pop was there I'd make an exception.

  Glass crunched under my boots as I stepped over the threshold. The whole place was trashed. The fridge had been flipped on its side and thrown across the kitchen, breaking the dishwasher loose and sending water all over the floor. The living room was similarly demolished, with a TV thrown through the big picture window and the couch cushions shredded. And in typical doggie fashion, someone had pissed all over everything, marking it as his territory.

  Amy came in behind me, wrinkling her nose at the smell. That was nothing unusual, she'd been wrinkling her nose at some of my smells for the last hundred miles, but this time she had her service weapon out and held low. "What is that godawful smell?" She whispered.

  "Werewolf piss." I said in a normal voice. "Don't worry about whisperin'. Werewolves can hear a pin drop a mile away, so if anything's still here they knew we were coming before we turned into the drive."

  "So is there anything still here?"

  "I have no idea. But if there is, shoot it."

  She laughed. "That was the general plan, jackass."

  We cleared the rest of the main floor slowly, making sure there were no big dogs laying in wait for us. The place was empty except for us, and a bunch of Skeeter's busted belonging. I stepped over crushed boxes of superhero action figures, mounds of ripped up bedding and clothes, and shattered heaps of electronics and old Native American pottery.

  Once I was sure that none of Pop's pack was still hanging around, I went back to the living room and checked the entertainment unit. The TV had been ripped out and thrown across the room, but the big hunk of furniture it lived in was still in its place. I pressed my hand to the right side and heard a soft click.

  "What are you doing?" Amy asked from behind me.

  "You see Skeeter anywhere?"

  "No. I assumed he had gotten away."

  "That was his car in the driveway. The one resting on the driver's door. And there's no way in hell Skeeter would leave his computers here for somebody to get ahold of. So if this place hasn't blown up or burned to the ground, he's still here. And if he's here, he's in the SkeeterCave."

  "What's a SkeeterCave?"

  "A SkeeterCave is what happens when grown men make too much money and don't have a woman to spend it for them. They spend it on crap like original Boba Fetts and fake Legend of Zelda thrones." I pressed on the secret panel again, and the fake wood slid off revealing a biometric scanner. I pressed my palm to the scanner; it read my palm and the entire entertainment center slid into the floor. Behind the entertainment center was a staircase leading down to a heavy steel door. I started down the stars, but Agent Amy stopped me

  "Wait. What if it's a trap?"

  "It is a trap. Unless you're me, Joe or Skeeter. That panel will open for anyone, but if it's not one of the three of us, the door down below won't open
and the tunnel will fill with cement."

  "That's a little intense, don't you think?"

  "This is an intense situation. And this is the day we built this place for." I went down the stairs and pressed my hand to another scanner. Pop and his dogs obviously hadn't been down here, but Skeeter had done everything just like we practiced. He'd gotten to the command center and locked himself down until I could get there. If I knew him there was enough junk food and caffeine in there to keep him going 'til Jesus came to rescue him, not just me.

  The door slid open and cool air hissed out. I heard the clack of a shotgun chambering a round and yelled out "Skeeter, it's me! Don't you shoot me you little sonofabitch!" That really was a code phrase we'd worked out. "Open the damn door, Skeeter" meant "open the damn door." And "don't you shoot me you little sonofabitch" meant there was somebody with me but they were friendly. Seriously. We worked that shit out ahead of time.

  I heard Skeeter let out a long breath and he came around the corner, a Monster energy drink in one hand and a Mossberg 590 tactical slung over his shoulder. I got him the 590 with the AR-15 style stock because it holds nine damn shells, and even Skeeter can usually hit something with that much buckshot.

  "How you holding up?" I asked.

  "Well, after I got down here and got some clean underwear on I'm fine." He gave me a shaky laugh and I knew he was a lot more scared than he wanted me to know. "I hadn't been in here five minutes before your Pop got here with his wolves and started tearing my place to shreds."

  "Yeah, you probably don't want to go up there until the smell dies down a little."

  "The smell?" Skeeter asked.

  "Wolves like to mark their territory." I said. Skeeter wrinkled his nose and I could almost hear the wheels turning as he mentally inventoried his ruined possessions. I went on, more to take his mind off his wrecked collectibles than anything else. "Pop say anything, or he just tear shit up?"

  "He mostly tore shit up, but he hollered for me a few times. Crap like he knew I was here somewhere, he could smell my fear. I was tempted to tell him that wasn't fear, it was pee, but I reckoned that counted as the same thing. After they spent a couple hours turning my house into a garbage dump, they left."

  "How long ago was that?" Amy asked.

  Skeeter took a good look at her for the first time, and his eyes widened a little. "You're better-looking in real life than you are on the video feeds, Agent."

  "Thank you."

  Skeeter turned to me. "She's out of your league."

  "I know."

  "And none of that matters if we can't find your father, Bubba. You'll never find out just how out of your league I am if we can't get this settled." Amy cut in.

  "Why's that?" Something in her voice told me this was a little bigger than just her wanting to help me out because of my boyish charm and my dashing good looks.

  "My superiors have taken an interest in this situation. Ever since they read my report on our Bigfoot encounter, they've been keeping an eye on your father and his plans. A supernatural uprising would be bad for everyone, and the boys in Washington have decided that it's enough of an issue to handle themselves."

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  "It means that we have roughly forty-eight hours to resolve this situation or DEMON will send a strike team into the area." She hadn't looked me in the eye since she started talking, like she was afraid I'd think she betrayed me or something. Smart girl. My gut was doing more flip-flops than a politician in October, and I wondered what else she hadn't told me while I was baring my soul during our ride to Skeeter's.

  "And what does a DEMON strike team do when they come into an area?" Skeeter asked.

  "Have you ever seen Apocalypse Now?" Agent Amy asked.

  "Yeah, I've seen it." Skeeter said.

  "That's the warmup. Basically, anything breathing within a twenty-mile radius of the creature they're hunting becomes an additional target. They assume that if you're in the region, you're siding with the monsters. And that makes you the enemy."

  "So it's all napalm and silver bullets?" I asked.

  "Pretty much." Amy replied.

  "Sounds the last forty pages of a James Tuck novel. I don't think I want to walk through that. And it sounds downright unhealthy for Uncle Father Joe." I said, turning to the stairs. "Let's go. Skeeter, lock yourself back in here and fire up the comm rig. Amy and I are on the way to get Joe."

  "The Hell you say." The iron in Skeeter's voice stopped me cold. I turned and stared at him, and my best friend was pissed. He had that shotgun unslung from his shoulder and held in front of him like he was ready to shoot me, and his nearly foot-tall Afro was quivering, he was so angry. "That asshole daddy of yours came in here, busted up my place, pissed all over my living room, and kidnapped my uncle. I'm going after his ass with you."

  "Skeeter, think about this -"

  "I had plenty of time to think while I was hiding in a hole in the ground listening to that son of a bitch tear up my house! I'm done thinking, Bubba, now it's time to whoop some fuzzy ass." Skeeter stomped past me out the door and up the stairs. I turned to Agent Amy, who shrugged back at me. We followed Skeeter up the stairs and piled into the Suburban. I took shotgun.

  Agent Amy fired up the big SUV and looked over at me. "Where to?"

  "Billy Wayne's Bait and Ammo. It's a couple miles from here. I need to resupply, and Wayne owes me some poker money." I said. "Head back into town, then turn left at big plastic cow on the side of the road." You just can't put shit like that into a GPS.

  Billy Wayne's was a combo gas station/restaurant/bait shop/ammo dump that had enough diesel fuel and fertilizer to keep the whole county on about a dozen government watch lists. The half-dozen log trucks in the parking lot told me that Wayne had a poker game going in the back room, which was a good thing, because there'd be plenty of cash on the table.

  "Y'all stay here and keep the engine running. If I come out like somebody's trying to shoot me, they probably are." I said as Amy pulled into the parking lot. I got out and held out a hand to Amy. "Lemme borrow your peashooter. Bertha's out of ammo." She handed me her Glock and I slid it into a pocket, with a few extra magazines in the other pocket.

  I pushed through the glass door at the front of the store and said hello to Miss Mary, Wayne's mama and the proprietress of the store. "Miss Mary, don't you shoot me. I ain't here to hurt nobody I just need some guns, some silver ammo and maybe a couple grenades."

  Miss Mary, a mountain of a woman with a mouthful of gold teeth and a headful of stark white hair, relaxed as she processed what I was saying. "That's good, Bubba. Your grandma asked me before she passed on to try not to shoot you or your baby brother, and I was hoping I wouldn't have to break my word to a dead woman. You know that's a good way to get a haint after you, don't you?"

  "Yes ma'am, I've heard that. I'm glad you won't have to shoot me. Wayne in the back?"

  "He sure is. You go on back there, but look out for Marty Faulkner. He's been losing for two weeks and is about as ornery as a rattlesnake in a kick drum." The woman was a true poet, I swear.

  I went to the back of the store and banged on a door labeled "Restroom - Out of Order." That restroom had been out of order for at least forty years, and most afternoons had a rolling poker game featuring anybody in three counties that had a little money to put on the table.

  "Open up, Wayne. I got money to lose!" I hollered, and heard the bolt slide back. The door opened and there stood Billy Wayne, the spitting image of his daddy and his daddy before him. A bandy-legged little dude with a permed blonde mullet and a handlebar mustache, Billy Wayne was the richest man in a hundred miles, unless you were measuring morals, in which case he was one hundred per cent bankrupt.

  He looked at me and broke out into a gap-toothed grin. "Bubba! How you been, boy?" He must have been on a good run if he was going to pretend like we didn't hate each other. I was the one that knocked out his front tooth when we were kids playing football, and I broke his nose a few years ago w
hen he made an unkind remark about Skeeter. For his part, Billy Wayne had broken my arm when we were ten and playing Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes, and his sister gave me a nasty case of the clap in high school. I'm not sure which one of us was more pissed off about that last incident. But there wasn't much love lost between the two of us, so if he wanted to give me a hug it was either because he was having a good week at the tables, or he wanted to pick my pocket.

  I pounded fists with him instead, and shouldered my way inside. There were seven men sitting around an oval table playing Texas Hold'Em, and a topless girl who couldn't have been more than twenty serving drinks. "Glad you're keeping it classy, Wayne. I need some guns."

  Wayne grabbed my arm and pulled me off to one side of the room. "Keep your voice down, do you know who that is sitting yonder?"

  I looked and didn't recognize any of the men playing cards. A couple of them looked like loggers, which fit with the parking lot full of tractor trailer rigs, and a couple of them just looked like ordinary rednecks. There was one guy who stood out a bit, probably because he was wearing pants that weren't made by Dickie's. He had white teeth, brown hair and tan skin, and generally looked like he didn't drop out of school in the fifth grade. So he looked a little out of place, to say the least. "Is that the sheriff or something?" I asked Wayne.

  "No, the sheriff don't give a shit if I sell guns. That's Richard; he runs the Bass Pro Shops franchise up the road. If he thinks I'm cutting into his ammo business he'll stop playing in my game. And he's the worst poker player I've ever seen! So shut your piehole."

  "I've got way more important shit to deal with than your poker game, Billy Wayne. My Pop's in town."