Grits, Guns & Glory - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 2

by John G. Hartness

  “Stole your . . .” My jaw dropped. It really did. I’ve fought undead creatures all over the South, chased my werewolf father and brother through half a dozen states, been beat up by vampires, zombies, lycanthropes and all other manner of nasty, but this took the cake.

  “You lost your gold in a poker game, didn’t you?”

  “They stole it! They cheated me, and nobody cheats the little people and lives!” He started brandishing that curved knife through the air and I took a step back. He was fast, like Jet Li on meth fast, and that knife was sharp. There was no way I was gonna take the little dude in a fair fight, not even at my best. And I was long from my best. He kept flailing around with the knife, and I kept backing up. Eventually my butt bumped into a side table, and I was fresh out of room to move.

  That’s when I remembered where I’d seen that look before. It was on Grandpappy’s face the one time we took him to Tunica to check out the casinos. He was a helluva monster hunter, but a god-awful craps player, and he ran through about six grand before we got him away from the table. And that didn’t end pretty, either. I had to throw the old man over my shoulders and carry his ass out of the casino. For some reason we weren’t invited back. Remembering Grandpappy reminded me that when he got the fever to gamble into him, nothing could get through. Nothing but calling his ass out, that is.

  “You know, I bet they didn’t. I bet you’re just a crap poker player and can’t admit it. It’s okay, most of the terrible gamblers I know can’t admit it. Of course most of them don’t end up gutting the people they lose to, either. So I guess you’re a crap poker player and a sore loser. And that’s just no good.”

  “Well, what are you going to do about it, fatty?” Now that was just uncalled for. I might have put on a few pounds in my recent convalescence, but nothing that I’d describe as fat. I was still a lean, mean 350 pounds of redneck love machine, and I didn’t need any Irish midget telling me different.

  I took a deep breath and pushed down my anger at the leprechaun denigrating my physical appearance. “Well, I’m gonna have to kill you. But in the interests of fairness, why don’t we try a little game of chance first?”

  His eyes lit up as I reached around behind me and picked up a deck of cards from the side table. I know a degenerate gambler when I see one, and this beastie had all the signs. If I could get that knife out of his hand long enough, I might have a chance.

  “What kind of game are ye proposin’?” The leprechaun jumped off the table and into a chair, standing in the seat with both hands on the table. I pushed the corpse of a gray-haired guy in motorcycle leathers out of the chair opposite and sat down. There was a little sploosh as I sat in a puddle of blood, but I tried not to think about it.

  “I think we could play one hand of seven-card stud. You win, you get one free shot at me with that little nut-cutter of yours. I win, I get to hit you in the face as hard as I can.”

  “That sounds like a win-win for me. I get to beat you at cards, and then I get to gut you like an overweight fish! I’m in!” I was really getting tired of fat jokes from the guy whose head stopped at my belt buckle, but I didn’t want to appear insensitive and make a short joke in response. Instead I just shuffled the cards and held them out to him to cut.

  “First two down,” I said as I flipped cards out to the leprechaun, then me, then him, then me.

  “Third street showin’,” I said as I tossed a card face up to the leprechaun, then one to me. He got the ace of diamonds to my four of clubs.

  “Not lookin’ so good for you, is it hillbilly?” The leprechaun grinned.

  “How do you know I don’t have rolled-up fours?” I asked, peeking at my hole cards. I didn’t have rolled-up fours, but I did have queens in the hole, which was a pretty good hand.

  “I know ye’re not rolled up because I’ve got a four in the hole to go with me other ace, boyo.” He flipped over his hole cards to show me the four of spades and the ace of spades.

  “Well, I’m glad I’m not betting my queens into your aces, then.” I grinned as I flipped my hole cards and dealt fourth street face up. I picked up a ten of diamonds to the leprechaun’s eight of hearts.

  “I’m still leading, sonny-boy. Tell you what, if I win, I’ll give you two steps to get to the door before I gut ye.”

  “The song says gimme three steps, asshole,” I muttered as I flipped over fifth street. I picked up another ten to give me two pair, but the damn leprechaun got the eight of diamonds.

  “Aces up beats queens up, sonny-Jim, and the luck of the Irish beats everything.” He leaned back in his chair and laughed until tears streamed down his face. His laugh cut off like a switch when I dealt him a Jack of spades on sixth street and dropped the pretty little queen of hearts on my board to fill me up, queens full of tens.

  “What was that you were saying, ginger?” I grinned across the table at him.

  “Deal the card, you cheating bastard,” he grumbled, and I knew the men in this trailer hadn’t cheated him. Just like none of his other victims cheated him. This little bastard was just another shitty card player and sore loser. There’s nothing I hate in life more than a sore loser. I set the deck on the table and pulled the top card off, flicking it facedown across the table to him through the air instead of sliding it along the felt like the others.

  “Last card’s down and dirty, you sorry bastard,” I muttered as I sent the little square of cardboard flying through the air.

  He snatched that final card out of mid-air, looked at it, and grinned fit to beat the band. He turned his grin to me, and his eyes went big. I pulled the trigger, and Bertha barked, putting a fifty-caliber slug of cold iron right between the leprechaun’s eyes. His little body flipped over backwards, slammed into the wall of the trailer, and slid to the ground, leaving a snail trail of blood down the wall.

  His card fluttered to the table face down. I flipped it over, revealing the ace of clubs. “Aces full of eights. I hear there’s a name for that hand.” I stood up and walked out into the afternoon sunlight, right past the two cops standing by the front door as I got in my truck and headed out of Greenville. It wasn’t until a couple miles later that I remembered my jeans were still covered in wet blood, and I’d just ruined the upholstery in my new truck. I really hate South Carolina.

  She’s Got Legs

  A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story

  By John G. Hartness

  “I hate I-40,” I said to the air as my tires sang out at about 85 miles per hour. I was making good time since I got out of Memphis, but the bad taste of that long-ass highway tends to linger with a body.

  “I know, Bubba, but there ain’t a whole lot of ways to get from North Georgia to Forrest City, Arkansas, that don’t involve I-40,” Skeeter, my technology expert and the world’s worst wingman, said into my Bluetooth earpiece.

  “That don’t help,” I grumbled, reaching for the radio. Mojo Nixon was screeching on my satellite radio, and I needed a little relief. I turned the radio down and focused on Skeeter again. “What’s the job this time?”

  “Don’t you read your email? I explained all that when I gave you the destination.”

  “I only read the ones that promise to make my pecker bigger or give me a million dollars. Crap from you I know I don’t have to read—I can just ask you about it later.”

  “You’re a huge pain in my ass, Bubba.”

  “Yeah, what are best friends for, anyway? So what’s the gig?”

  “Men are disappearing out of the greater Memphis area, mostly around the St. Francis National Forest.”

  “You sure they aren’t just going on the lam after a bad run in Tunica?”

  “We have seven men, all vanished from within fifteen miles of the edge of the forest in the last month. Only three of them had been to Tunica within a month of their disappearance, and two of those three had actually won money. So no, they aren’t dodging a casino debt.”

  “All right, then ditching a girlfriend or wife?” Money and women were the reason
s I’d beat a hasty retreat from more than one small Southern town. Usually both of them together.

  “Only four were married, one was gay, and none seemed to be particularly unhappy in their relationships. And other bright ideas?” I hate it when Skeeter gets snide. Snide is my shtick, and he needs to leave it alone.

  “Nope, I’m not the idea guy, Skeeter. I’m the shoot things until they don’t move guy. What about you, any brilliant ideas?”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line. “Actually, no. There haven’t been any signs of struggle, or any signs of anything, really. These guys just wander off into the woods and are never heard of again. Or at least they haven’t been heard of for a couple of weeks, at this point.”

  “I guess I’ll check it out. Got any real leads for me?”

  “Yeah, turn off at the next exit and head into the park. The last guy just disappeared a couple days ago, and Amy was able to get the locals to keep the campsite secured for you.” Amy Hall is an agent for DEMON, the federal Department of ExtraDimensional, Mystical and Occult Nuisances. She’s part of a super-secret government agency that does pretty much the same thing I do, just with a bigger budget. And black helicopters. No matter how often I ask Uncle Father Joe, our liaison to Rome, the Vatican keeps refusing to buy me a black helicopter.

  “So I gotta be official?”

  “Kinda. They’re park rangers, so you don’t need a real shirt or anything like that. Just flash your badge and you oughta be okay.”

  By this point I was pulling into the St. Francis National Forest. I parked my F-250 in the gravel lot at the front of the ranger station and got out. My beat-up old Wolverine boots clumped on the wooden porch, and I banged on screen door.

  “Anybody home?” I yelled.

  No answer. I walked around to the back of the ranger station, peeking through windows and banging on doors. The only thing I found was a very confused squirrel scampering over a woodpile. I pressed the Bluetooth earpiece, calling Skeeter.

  “There’s nobody here, Skeeter. Was the ranger a guy? Maybe we need to add him to the list of missing dudes.”

  “Maybe we do, ‘cause Jerome Davis is the ranger you’re looking for. He’s supposed to take you to the last known whereabouts of one Aaron Kennedy, a climber last seen in the park Friday morning.”

  “Well ain’t nobody here, so I’m going on in.” I opened the screen door and stepped into the abandoned ranger station. The place was small but neat and clean, with all the maps and logs in their place. I picked up a clipboard from the lone desk in the room. Titled “Climbers,” it had a list of names in small, tight handwriting. There was a check mark by each name except for the last one, Aaron Kennedy.

  “Looks like our ranger went off looking for Mr. Kennedy on his own, Skeeter. I don’t see any signs of a struggle, and there’s an empty spot in the gun rack.”

  “How can you tell it’s not just an empty spot?”

  “The dust in the floor of the case has an oval spot in it, like the butt of a gun usually rests there. And nobody leaves an empty spot one from the left in a gun rack, Skeeter. Even you’re redneck enough to know that.”

  “I’m redneck enough to never have seen a gun rack that wasn’t full.” He had a point. Skeeter’s daddy owned more guns than even my family, and we were better armed than some third-world countries.

  “Well lemme look around and see if I can find out where Ranger Jerry might have gone off to, then we’ll try to figure out what’s been stealing men in the Arkansas woods.” I sat at the desk and looked through the stacks of papers arranged neatly on the blotter. Nothing. I flipped through the stack of pink message slips by the phone. More nothing. I looked over the blotter for notes. Even more nothing. I was just about to give up and start randomly wandering through the woods, always a good way for me to find trouble, when I remembered the list. I grabbed the clipboard and looked at it, then smacked myself in the forehead with it.

  “What?” Skeeter said in my ear.

  “The clipboard.”

  “What about it?”

  “It lists their planned climbs. It tells me right where to look for this Kennedy fella. . .”

  “And by extension, Ranger Jerry.”

  “Yup. Sometimes I think I’m a real dumbass.”

  “ . . . ”

  “Shut up.”

  “I didn’t say nothing!” Skeeter protested.

  “I heard you thinking,” I said and pushed the button to sever the connection. I grabbed the top page of the clipboard and a topographical map that Ranger Jerry had lying around, and then went back to the truck to gear up. I grabbed Bertha, my Desert Eagle, in her shoulder rig, slid my Taurus Judge revolver into a paddle holster at the small of my back, and threaded a Ka-Bar through my belt loops. My backpack had a couple bottles of water, a handheld GPS and some camping supplies, just in case. I didn’t bother with a tent or anything that heavy since I wasn’t planning on being gone more than a couple hours. I used the map to figure out GPS coordinates for Ranger Jerry’s most likely destination, plugged them into the handheld unit, and headed off into the woods, machete in one hand and MP3 player in the other. Nothing like a little Alabama Shakes to help guide a brother through the deep dark woods, I always say.

  It took an hour or so of hard hiking to get to the right GPS coordinates. The trail, if a deserted deer path could be called that, opened up to a clearing at the base of a three-story rock incline. It looked like a pretty simple climb, as long as you weren’t a thirty-something 350-pound redneck weighted down with thirty pounds of guns and gear. In other words, it looked damned impossible to me. But the bright purple rope running down the face of the rock told me that somebody thought it looked like a good idea, and recently.

  But it wasn’t the cliff that stood out most of all. That honor went to the small cottage nestled up against the base of the cliff, complete with chimney and delicate white smoke wafting up into the afternoon sun. I pressed the Bluetooth button but got nothing. I pulled out my cell phone and saw the blinking “No Service” icon.

  “Shit. Well, I guess I can find a bunch of lost hikers without Skeeter’s help.” I hoped I could, anyway. I’d never tell him this, but Skeeter’s pretty important to my hunting. Not only does he look up how to kill whatever I find, but just having his voice in my ear keeps me kinda calm. Like having somebody to bicker with keeps me centered. If I believed in therapy, I’d probably talk to somebody about that. But since I don’t, I just drink.

  The only sign of a climber was the rope dangling from the rock face, and there was nothing to indicate that Ranger Jerry had been by here at all, so I did exactly what everybody in their right mind screams at the TV for people not to do in horror movies—I walked up to the front door of the mysterious cottage that appeared where it had no business being and knocked.

  The door swung open silently at my touch, not even an eerie creak to warn me of what was about to happen. But that was probably because the little old lady that opened the door seemed to keep a neat house.

  She looked up at me from just inside the door and said, “I wondered if you were ever going to have the guts to come knock. What took you so long?”

  She was a little old lady in all ways. Skinny, stooped over, maybe five and a half feet tall if she stood up straight, with white hair pulled into a bun on top of her head. She smiled up at me from underneath bright blue eyes, and I got the distinct impression that this lady didn’t miss anything that happened in her woods. No matter how weird it was that she was in the woods to begin with.

  “Sorry, ma’am. I was a little confused. I didn’t think anybody lived out here, it being a national park and all.”

  “Oh, dearie me, we don’t pay much attention to nations out here. My sisters and I have lived in these woods for years and years. Now what brings a strapping young lad like yourself to my doorstep, and here in my old age no less.” She sounded disappointed, like she wanted me to go away and come back later.

  “May I come in? I’m looking for a few f
riends of mine and was hoping that you might have seen them.”

  “Of course, of course, please come in.” She stepped back and I followed her into the cottage. It was a small, open room with a tiny kitchen, a table set for three, and a living room with three chairs. A doorway opened up off the back of the room, leading to bedrooms, I supposed.

  “Do your sisters live here with you?” I asked, waving at the place settings.

  “Oh no, but we do like to gather for dinner from time to time. I usually do the cooking. Grissy does most of the hunting because she’s the youngest. The animals just seem to flock to her for some reason.” She glanced away when she said that last bit, like it offended her somehow. I decided I didn’t want to get into family politics, especially not a fight over which sister was prettier. There was no way that ended well for me.

  I followed her into the living room and sat down on one of the chairs. Fortunately for me, antique furniture like her house was filled with was built to last and to support big men. The chair creaked a little and maybe even whimpered as I sat down, but it held me and was pretty comfortable to boot.

  “Ma’am . . .” I started, but she held up a hand.

  “Call me Esme, darling. It’s been so long since a man called me that.”

  “Well . . . Esme, I’m looking for some people, and since a couple of them were last headed in this direction, I was hoping you could help me.”

  “Well, of course, dear. I suppose you’re looking for that boy with all the climbing equipment and the nice park ranger, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I mean, yes, ma’am. That’s two of the folks I’m looking for. Do you know where they went?” If I could wrap this up before dinner, I could get out of these woods and get something real to eat, not just the granola bars I had in my pack.

  “Well, they were both here. The climbing fellow a couple of days ago, and the ranger just this morning. The climbing man played around on the rocks behind the house for a while, but then he fell and hurt his arm. My middle sister Minerva is a wonderful healer, so I took him to her house so she could help him out. I suppose he decided to visit with her for a while until his arm was all better. That’s what I told the ranger when he came by this morning. He took off for Minerva’s house without even finishing his tea.” She motioned to a cup sitting next to the chair I was in. Sure enough, it was three-quarters full of what looked like tea.