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

by John G. Hartness

  I just sat there. I didn’t say anything for a long time, just sat there looking at the dead “monster” wearing my cutoff sweatpants and laying in a forest with his life’s blood spilled out around him. I cleaned my kukri and put them away, then cleaned my tomahawk and put it away. I put a fresh clip in Bertha and re-holstered her, then checked all my pockets and pouches to make sure I was ready for any surprises. Amy came over and sat on the ground by my rock, her back pressed up against my hip, just calmly reminding me of her presence. Joe made his way down from the ridge and leaned his rifle against a tree. He sat on a fallen log a few feet away.

  After a while the rest of the tribe came out and either sat on rocks, or the ground, and we sat. Barry’s little girl-squatch came out and knelt beside her father’s body and cried a little, but not much. Her mom butted her head up against her, and the girl threw one arm around the wolf’s neck and wept quietly into her fur. It all felt too familiar, too human somehow. Then I figured it out—it felt just like a human funeral.

  I cleared my throat. It was dry after all the fighting and all the dust and the yelling and cussing that goes along with such a thing, so I pulled a flask out of one of the side pockets of my pants and took a slash of some of Lynchburg, Tennessee’s greatest export as the warm caress of Gentleman Jack soothed my throat. I passed the flask to Joe and started to speak.

  “I didn’t know Brar’kan very well, or for very long, but I know he was a good man.” I paused there and looked around. I didn’t want to offend anybody by calling Barry a man, but nobody seemed to mind. “He and I threw down a few months ago, and he whooped my ass good. I couldn’t outfight him on his worst day, and he knew it. But he didn’t kill me when he could have, because he didn’t need to. He knew that there were times to fight, and times to kill, and times to talk, and times to walk away. And unlike way too many people nowadays, he had a good sense of when those times were.

  “He had honor, something that way too many people nowadays can’t even spell, much less possess. And for all I made fun of him for being a butt-naked savage, he was more honorable than most humans I’ve met in my life.

  “And he loved y’all.” I knelt down and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. She pulled her face out of her mama’s fur and stared at me, her eyes huge and red-rimmed. “If there’s anything I would want you to remember about your daddy, little girl, it’s that he loved you enough to leave you when he knew he’d die if he stayed, and he loved you enough to come back when he thought he could win.” I stood up, and looked around at the gathered tribe.

  “That’s the hardest thing for a man to do, walk away from a fight that he can’t win. We ain’t wired for that. We’re wired to bash our heads against the wall until something crumbles, be it the wall, or our skull. But Brar’kan was smarter than that. He was better than that. He knew he couldn’t fight Clag’tin and . . . ” I took a deep breath before I could say the name. “Megan alone. But he knew that with me,” I gestured to my team sitting around me, “with us, that together we had a chance. So he came to get help, leaving the people he loved most in this world in danger so he could get help to get them out of that trouble. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to do that. I hope I am, if it comes to that.

  “So that’s the kind of man Brar’kan was. He was your Sheeran-kar, but he was my friend. And I’ll miss him. I’m sorry for your loss.” I turned to sit back down, but the wolf pawed my leg.

  I looked back and the little girl was standing, her hand on her mama’s back, fingers buried deep in the fur on her neck. She looked up at me and said, in that kind of gravelly voice most Sasquatch have, “Thank you, Bub’ba. Thank you for bringing my daddy back. Thank you for bringing his honor with him. Thank you for freeing us from the wolf. You will always be friend of this tribe.” She reached up a hand and I shook it, surprised at how solemn and mature the little girl was. Of course, for all I knew Sasquatch age like elves and she could be a hundred and twelve.

  I turned to one side, reached down and helped Amy up. Joe stepped forward and knelt by the wolf and little girl, murmuring those comforting kinds of words that priests just naturally have in those moments when shit is at its ugliest. He stood up, nodded to me, and we made our way back into the woods. There was the normal patting of shoulders and shaking of hands like at the end of a funeral, but none of the moonshine-fueled banjo picking that often followed. As we reached the spot where we’d left my truck, it had gone full dark and we were walking by flashlight. But when we stepped up to the truck, the moon came into a break in the trees and its full light shone down bright enough on us to put our flashlights away. And as we got all the gear loaded up and I reached down to crank the truck, I heard the mournful howl of a single wolf echo across the forest.

  The End

  Double Trouble

  A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story

  By John G. Hartness

  Somebody with a better sense of the ironic would comment on the fact that I was enjoying the company of two identical twin sisters when the call from Uncle Father Joe came in. I don’t have a good sense of the ironic, so I checked my caller ID, saw that it was work, dropped my cell phone in my beer pitcher, and returned to the gyrations being performed in my immediate vicinity by two proponents of elective plastic surgery known locally as Bambi and Barbi, the Boom-Boom Twins. The establishment where I was abusing my liver, my wallet and my moral standing didn’t have a name, it was just a nondescript building on a frontage road off Highway 74 in North Carolina. Nondescript, that is, except for the eight-foot high, twenty-foot wide blinking neon sign that bellowed “TOPLESS” in redder than Satan’s drawers red to all who passed. I wondered about the local sign ordinances, then remembered that just as I’d turned into the parking lot, I passed the “Welcome to Charlotte” sign, putting this establishment well into unincorporated territory and thus less likely to have pesky visits from the sign police. I also figured that meant there weren’t too many visits from the health inspector, either, so I decided to forego the seafood buffet.

  I make it a policy never to eat the buffet at strip clubs. I’m always afraid I’ll get too splattered in grease and sauce, and that could lead to an irreparable lap dance injury. And since I’ve experienced one or two reparable lap dance injuries in my time, I don’t ever want to get one of the irreparable kind. So Barbi, or maybe it was Bambi, had just unwrapped a pair of the finest triple-Ds money could (and did) buy when my backup phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket and pressed my thumb up to the screen. It scanned my fingerprint and gave me access to the phone.

  Living in the future is pretty cool, but the first couple of times I tried that trick, I did it with clean hands, so my phone never recognized me. Eventually I learned to only use the fingerprint recognition software when my hands were covered in blood, beer, or gun oil. The machine’s never had a problem believing it was me as long as I kept to that plan.

  I pressed the phone up to my ear and said, “Is the world ending? And I by that I mean is the world going to end at any point in the next three songs?”

  Skeeter’s nasal, high-pitched voice came back in my ear, sounding like a cross between a Jewish mother and a dentist’s drill. “No, but as soon as your time on the jukebox is up, you better call Joe. He’s got a case. And keep your hands off them girls, you’re old enough to be their daddy!” Skeeter hung up on me before I could protest.

  I dropped the phone on the table, this time next to the beer, and did some quick math in my head. Once I satisfied myself that I was not early bloomer enough to have a child dancing at a topless bar, I leaned back and enjoyed the three-songs-for-one special I’d negotiated. I love me some afternoon shift girls at the strip club.

  I blinked and batted at the sun, but it stayed hanging right there. I dug out a pair of sunglasses blacker than my high school football coach’s soul and slipped them on. I got behind the wheel of my Ford F-250 and mashed a few buttons on my phone. “Call Joe,” I said.

  “I do not recognize that command.” My pho
ne recently developed this bad habit of talking back to me instead of doing what I told it to. I blamed Skeeter, since that’s pretty much exactly how he behaves, too.

  “Call Joe,” I repeated, as clearly as I could, being from North Georgia and all.

  “I’m sorry, there is no one by that name in your contacts list,” the cultured mechanical voice came back at me.

  “Goddammit you ignorant hunk of plastic, call Joe before I throw you out the friggin’ window and scatter your circuits all over the highway!” I screamed at the phone.

  “Calling Joe. Please hold.” I hate technology.

  “Hey, Bubba. Did you get my message on your other line?” Uncle Father Joe came on the line, all pleasant business and good cheer. He’s Skeeter’s adopted uncle, but he’s also a Catholic priest, so I usually call him Uncle Father Joe. Unless I hate the assignment he’s giving me, in which case I call him a whole bunch of other things. Joe is my handler. I’m the Southeastern Regional Monster Hunter for the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Technically, I’m an independent contractor, so I have to buy my own health insurance, but Joe assures me that since I’m at least tangentially employed by the Church, I get a couple of free venal sins between confessions that I don’t have to worry about.

  I’m pretty sure that two hours in the Champagne Room with the Boom-Boom Twins had exhausted my supply of grace.

  I didn’t remember a message from Joe, then it came back to me—the beer phone. “No, Joe, I’m sorry. That phone died on me and I had to switch to my backup. That’s why I’m calling on this number.”

  “You threw it in the beer again, didn’t you?”

  “This ain’t confession time, I ain’t gotta tell you. Now what’s the deal?” I was hoping that by changing the subject we could avoid any discussion of my afternoon’s activities. Uncle Father Joe was my confessor, but sometimes I spread my confessions around. I do a lot of killin’, and lot of random sinning’ on the side, and that’s a bunch for one priest to handle. I like Joe, and I don’t want to overload his circuits. Plus my girlfriend works for a secret government agency, and she likes to tap my cell phone. She doesn’t specifically object to me going to titty bars, but some things are just better left alone.

  “We’ve got a shapeshifter robbing banks all through Alabama. We think it’s headed for Georgia, and if it gets to Atlanta before we catch it, we’ll never find it,” Joe said.

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” I said. “If that thing gets into a big city, it can just keep changing faces and robbing a different bank every day. I’m in North Carolina, so I’m a good four hours away. Can I even get to wherever this thing is before it gets to Atlanta?”

  “Probably, if you don’t stop for any detours, particularly in the Greenville area.” I knit my brow for a second, wondering exactly how a priest knew about my favorite titty bar in the I-85 corridor. “I see your receipts before they go to Rome, Bubba. And I do not approve Platinum Plus as a travel expense.”

  “I don’t know why not. I’m traveling when I go there,” I protested as I cranked the truck and pulled back onto the highway. I headed toward I-485 and pointed the big blue machine south.

  “Bubba, if you can’t understand why the Catholic Church objects to paying your bar tab and topless clubs, then perhaps it’s time you went back through Sunday school.”

  “Anything but that, Father. I can’t handle them nuns. They kicked my ass.”

  “Probably with good reason. Amy is flying in now. Please pick her up at the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport.”

  “There’s an airport in Greenville?”

  “Yes, and indoor plumbing, too, Bubba. She’ll be landing about the time you pass through, if you leave now.”

  “I’m rolling.” I hit the on-ramp the same time I hung up with Father Joe, and headed south into trouble. Again.

  *****

  Agent Amy Hall stepped out of the front doors of the airport with a backpack and a small rolling suitcase. I was standing by the truck parked under a No Parking sign at the end of the sidewalk waiting for her. An airport security guard was taking a little nap in the bed of the truck after a conversation about my ability to stay there and wait for my almost-girlfriend. She walked up to me, gave me a little hug and a quick kiss on the lips, then handed me the handle of the suitcase.

  I opened to door for her and took the backpack. “Where’s the rest?”

  “The rest of what?”

  “The rest of your luggage?”

  “Bubba, we’re only going after one doppelganger. I packed light.”

  “I understand that, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to take your shirt off.”

  “What! Why would I take my shirt off in the airport parking lot?”

  “I need proof that you’re really a woman if you’re gonna claim to be traveling with nothing but a couple of carry-ons. Besides, I want to check out your boobs.” I tossed her bags in the back seat of the truck and leaned in the window. “So, how about it?”

  “Sorry, Bubba, today is not the day you get to second base with a federal agent in the parking lot of an airport.”

  “Well, shit,” I said as I walked around and slid in behind the wheel. “But you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “You’re insane.” She laughed and tossed her blonde hair in a way that made me remember how much I missed her just about every second we weren’t together. I put the truck in gear and pushed a few buttons on the big LCD panel that took up half the dashboard and reminded me every time I drove anywhere that my truck is smarter than me.

  Skeeter’s face popped up on the dash a few seconds later. “Hey y’all. I wasn’t expecting you to call for at least an hour or two.”

  “We ain’t got time for all that, as I’ve been so painfully reminded,” I grumbled.

  “Hello, Skeeter,” Amy replied, all business. “What’s the situation?”

  “Well, our boy, or girl, or I reckon it can be whatever it wants to be, hit another bank in Birmingham this morning, so we’re pretty sure it’s made it to Atlanta by now, if that’s where it was going in the first place,” Skeeter said.

  “So now what? There’s too many banks in Atlanta to cover, and we don’t know what the thing looks like now even if we were gonna try. Do we just go to Atlanta and ride around waiting for this thing to rob another bank?” Amy looked grumpy. I reckon flying a puddle-jumper from DC to South Carolina on a wild doppelganger chase will do that to a body.

  “Y’all ought go to the first robbery site and see what you can figure out from there. If this critter started robbing banks last week in Shreveport, there’s gotta be some reason it’s headed for Atlanta,” Skeeter replied.

  “And some reason it just started robbing banks now after all this time. I mean, it’s an adult, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it is. We call that a trigger event, Bubba, and you’re right, maybe there’s something in Shreveport to tell us what started this whole mess,” Skeeter said.

  “Who you calling ‘we,’ redneck? You and every other shut-in that watches every Criminal Minds marathon they run on A&E?” I said. I swear Skeeter even blushed a little bit, which was impressive since he’s blacker than the ace of spades.

  “But that’s a good idea,” Amy interjected, probably so she didn’t have to listen to us bitch at each other the whole drive. “If we can figure out what the end game is, we can get there first and maybe keep this mess from escalating.”

  “All right, we got a plan. Now what can you tell us about the robberies before we get there, Skeeter? How do we know it’s a shapeshifter?” I asked.

  “Does it use a gun? Has anyone been injured? What do we know?” Amy added.

  “Here’s the deal—there have been five robberies counting the one this morning in Birmingham, one every day since last Thursday,” Skeeter said.

  “That’s pretty damn fast,” I said. “Sounds like something is pushing our boy to get a pile of money fast.”

  “And whatever it is looks to be in Atlanta,” Skeeter co
ntinued. “Every robbery starts the same way, and this is how we know it’s a shapeshifter. Elvis Presley walks into a bank with a shotgun and fires a round into the nearest security camera. Then he cleans out the teller drawers and runs outside, but not before disarming any guards and herding everyone into the vault. He then leaves them on the floor of the open vault and hauls ass.”

  I cleared my throat. Skeeter looked at me on the monitor, one eyebrow up in that disapproving way that only gay men have of saying, “Go ahead you stupid straight man, ask your stupid question that’s a waste of my time, but I’ll answer it anyway because you’re so fashion-deprived as to be almost dangerous.” Skeeter might have given me that look a time or two.

  “So how do we know it’s a shapeshifter and not really just Elvis knocking over a bunch of banks? I mean, Priscilla got all his money when he ‘died,’ so maybe he’s broke,” I asked.

  “Bubba—” Skeeter started, but Amy interrupted him.

  “Two reasons. First, it’s young, skinny Elvis on these videos, not fat Elvis. And second, we’ve verified Elvis’ whereabouts for the times of the robberies, and he was nowhere near Alabama.”

  Skeeter sat there on the video, his mouth hanging open. I nodded. “Okay, that makes sense. So it’s a shapeshifter, and he, for lack of a more specific gender definition, hasn’t hurt anybody yet. I reckon we can work with that.”

  “Wait a second,” Skeeter said. “You mean Elvis is —”

  Amy held up a hand to cut him off. “This isn’t a secure line, Skeeter. We can’t discuss that over the airwaves.” His mouth closed with a click I could hear over the video link, but his eyes kept darting back and forth like a Cylon on crystal meth.