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

by John G. Hartness

  *****

  “Bubba? Bubba? Bubba, are you all right? Are you awake?” I heard Amy’s voice, but it was like it was coming down a tunnel from a long way away. I tried to say something to her, make her know I heard her, but it was no good, I couldn’t make my mouth work. I concentrated on making my eyes work, instead. If I could open my eyes I could make her understand that OHHHH SHHHIIIIITTTT thathurtslikeasonofabitchmotherofgodthathurtsholyshitbiscuitsBatmanthat’spainful.

  “Ow,” I managed to speak after a few seconds of moving my mouth and nothing coming out.

  “Oh thank God you’re alive! I was really afraid I might have killed you for a minute,” Amy said. She was kneeling next to me, one tear rolling down her cheek. I wanted to reach up and brush it away, but I didn’t have my fine motor control back yet. In fact, I was doing pretty good managing monosyllables and keeping my bladder in check.

  “Bubba? Thank goodness you weren’t hurt,” Joe said. I didn’t bother to mention that he has a stupid definition of “not hurt.” I tried to reach out but could only move a couple fingers. Joe and Amy got the idea, though, and they heaved me into a sitting position with my back to the Suburban.

  “Elf?” I asked. I still wasn’t sure I could say anything longer without puking, and I wasn’t sure that I could puke without drowning.

  “He ran off after Amy shot him with another grenade.” Grenade. That made sense. If I was standing next to the elf when a grenade hit him. . . Nope, still didn’t work. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t dead. This time.

  “It was a concussion grenade, Bubba. And I shot it over the two of you to land right behind the elf. It blew him off his feet, but I guess you were a little too close and I might have blown you up a little bit. Sorry about that.”

  “Happens,” I croaked, and reached out my arm to Joe. “Help me up.” He looked like he wanted to argue, but since I’d managed a full sentence, I guess he thought I was okay, or at least better.

  I leaned on Joe and the hood of the Suburban for a long minute trying to get the ground to stop doing cartwheels. It finally stabilized, and I looked at Amy. “Which way did he go?”

  “He headed off that way.” She pointed off down Main Street.

  “Did he look like he had a plan or was he just running away?” I asked. My head was starting to clear, and a high-pitched noise was starting to ring in my ear. After a couple more seconds, things calmed down enough for me to recognize Skeeter’s voice.

  “Hey Skeeter, you can quit yellin’. I ain’t dead.”

  “I know you ain’t dead, jackass. I monitor your heart rate when you’re in the field. You probably have a concussion, though.”

  “Yeah, my vision’s a little fuzzy. I probably shouldn’t be the sniper on this gig. Why don’t I leave that to somebody who can see and I just hit things real hard?” I asked.

  “You mean like every other time?” Skeeter shot back. “Fine. But you might want to move your ass on over to the church.”

  “Why, Midnight Mass ain’t for a couple of weeks—oh shit.”

  “Oh shit is right. Your dance partner is at the church doors and he looks like he’s fixing’ to tear some shit up.”

  I turned to Joe and Amy. “He’s at the church. Amy, you drive.” I tossed her the keys to my truck and started toward it. I stopped by the passenger door and looked back at Amy, who hadn’t moved. “You comin’?” I asked.

  “You’re letting me drive your truck?” she asked. She turned around but still hadn’t moved.

  “Yeah, I got a concussion and probably shouldn’t drive.”

  “But I’m your girlfriend, and you’re letting me drive your truck. In Georgia isn’t that common-law marriage?”

  “Only if we’re cousins. Now please get your cute ass in here and drive us to church. And don’t get any weird ideas about us both being in a church and that “M” word coming out your mouth. I love you, but we ain’t nowhere near ready for that conversation.”

  Amy took about three steps and then came to a dead stop again. “You . . . love me?” She looked up at me, and I heard Skeeter suck in a breath over the comm.

  “Don’t fuck this up, Bubba,” he whispered in my ear.

  Don’t fuck this up, Bubba, I thought at the same time.

  “Of course I love you. And I’ll be happy to show you just how much after we take care of the psychotic elf currently turning Uncle Father Joe’s church into tiny little holy relics.”

  Amy nodded, then ran to me and threw her arms around my neck. She kissed me on the lips, then whispered in my ear, “I love you, too, you big ox.”

  She let go of my neck and stood there looking up at me. She was grinning like the kid that really got a pony on Christmas morning, and I felt a big stupid grin come across my face too. We stared at each other until Joe slammed the back door of the truck, snapping us back to the reality of a mythical creature hell-bent on our destruction waiting a few blocks over. You know, like every Tuesday night.

  I left Bertha in the truck along with the Judge. Bullets and silver shot didn’t do anything to the elf, so I didn’t need the extra weight. I opened the weapons case under the backseat and poked around for anything useful, but it was full of guns and knives, not really anything that I could use.

  “Elves hate iron, right, Skeeter?” I asked the air.

  “We don’t really know, Bubba. The mythology is so jumbled between elves, fairies, and creatures of the Fae realms that we can’t separate reality from one of a hundred books. Tolkien’s elves had no ill effects from iron, but I’ve read some books where elves and fairies are interchangeable, and both are weakened by iron.”

  “So we don’t know?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Well that ain’t exactly helpful, Skeeter.”

  “Sorry.” And he sounded like it, too. It wasn’t often Skeeter couldn’t answer something, and when he couldn’t, it bothered the piss out of him.

  “Hey Bubba?” Skeeter asked again.

  “Yeah, Skeet?”

  “Where did this elf come from?”

  “What?” Joe and Amy both looked at me. We’d all been so caught up in the catching, killing, or just stopping of the lanky bastard that none of us had even asked about how he got here or what he was doing.

  “There ain’t never been elves in Georgia, Bubba. They’re a European thing. There’s some out West, up outside of Portland where there’s still some old-growth forests, and there’s even some swamp elves down in the bayou of Louisiana, but this guy calls himself a prince, and those are old-school German or French elves. So what the hell is he doing in Georgia?”

  “Skeeter, I’ll put that on the list of things to ask him right after I finish kicking his ass,” I said, then snugged up my ceastus and walked up the steps to Joe’s church.

  The elf prince was standing at the front of the church, just on the other side of the communion rail. He whirled around as I stepped through the doors and drew his sword.

  “You come for more pain, human? You are either stronger or more stupid than I expected.” He looked none the worse for wear for having a grenade go off right behind him. I’m sure I looked way the worse for wear since I was seeing two of him about every other time I blinked.

  “I ain’t sure which one myself, Keebler, but it’s time we figured out how to get you sent back to elf-land and out of my town without any more property damage.” I started down the aisle, and the elf grinned and hopped the communion rail to meet me.

  He put his sword away, I reckon to make the fight a little fairer, but I wasn’t sure that was going to help. He was bigger, faster, stronger, and made of magical elf-stuff. I was concussed, bloody and beat all to hell, but this son of a bitch was in my town, and I was determined to get rid of him one way or another. I started my charge when I was twenty feet from him, so I had a full head of steam when I laid into the elf’s jaw with a haymaker that would have made Mike Tyson proud.

  It didn’t do shit. I hit him square in the jaw with my iron-loade
d fist at a dead run, with three hundred fifty pounds of pissed-off redneck behind it, and it knocked him back all of two feet.

  “A mighty blow, human. Almost worthy of an elf,” he said, then laid an uppercut on me that lifted me off my feet and took out three pews when I landed.

  I lay there for a second, then rolled under what was left of another pew as the elf leapt into the seats to plant both feet in my sternum. I made sure my sternum was nowhere near his feet and came up with a broken piece of pew in both hands. I laid that thick oak across the back of his head and shoulders like an old-school Mick Foley chair shot and shut my eyes tight as the pew exploded into splinters across his shoulders and armor.

  That drove him to one knee, and I pressed my advantage. With Rec'teer down on one knee, I slapped him in a rear chokehold and tried my best to pop his head like a zit. His armor kept me from getting much pressure on his throat, and he stood up with me on his back like I was nothing but a big hairy backpack. I wrapped both legs around his midsection and squeezed with my arms and legs. I heard a rib pop through his chain mail, and he actually sucked in a breath like I’d hurt him.

  Then he got serious about kicking my ass. He reached over his shoulder and grabbed my head in one hand like he was palming a basketball. He pulled me over and tossed me in a flip that sent me flying a good ten feet before I plowed through another four or five pews and got a fateful of splinters. I lay there for a second, then pushed myself up on all fours. That turned out to be a mistake because it left my ribs exposed to the football kick the elf unloaded into my middle. I flopped over like a flounder sucking for air, and all I could do was look up helplessly as a big armor-clad foot came crashing down at my face.

  BOOM! The air was split with a huge explosion and the foot disappeared from my vision, along with the rest of the elf. BOOM! Another explosion, and the smell of high explosives filled the church. Amy’s here was my thought as I tried to pull myself to a standing position. I made it to one knee and looked around before the pain in my ribs froze me in position.

  Amy was standing at the back of the church, grenade launcher in hand. She would fire a round at the elf, lay him flat for a few seconds, then calmly pop the spent shell out of the launcher, load up another round, and lay into him again. This went on for three or four rounds, her shooting the shit out of the shiny elf prince, him getting back up, her shooting him again, until the last time he came up with his sword in hand. That time she fired, but with a flick of the wrist that would have won Wimbledon, he volleyed the grenade right back at Amy. The concussion grenade hit the ceiling right above her head and exploded, showering her with drywall, wood, and roofing material.

  “Amy!” I yelled.

  “She’s fine, Bubba,” Skeeter said into my ear. “She got out into the vestibule just in time. But she can’t get back to you for a minute or two.”

  So I was on my own against the elf. Again. I stood up, using my fingers to push my broken ribs back into place. Between the pain of my ribs and the concussion, there were a lot of flashing lights going off in my head, and more than a couple of flashes coming from the inside of the church, too, from little fires and sparks that we might have caused in our scrap.

  “All right, you pointy-eared son of a bitch, come get some,” I said from the middle of a field of splinters. I had to use a pew to hold myself up, but I was determined to put this bastard down once and for all.

  “Time to die, mortal. You and your pitiable race have defiled the holy solstice. The penalty for that blasphemy is death. And I am happy to deliver the sentence.”

  “Not in my house, elf.” I looked past the elf to see Uncle Father Joe standing on the pulpit, the Christian flag in his hands like a quarterstaff.

  The elf turned to him and laughed. “The girl was armed with magic. The male is at least overlarge for one of your ilk. What makes you think you can stand against me, little human?”

  Joe reached up and stripped the flag off the pole, leaving himself with a six-foot pole with a gold cross on one end. He carefully unscrewed the cross from the pole and set in on the altar. Then he stepped down off the pulpit and walked down the aisle to the elf. They met in the center of the church, Joe a two hundred pound, six foot tall man armed with faith and a big stick against a seven foot elf in full battle armor with a sword that could cut through solid steel and a punch that could knock a rhinoceros out cold.

  “What lets me stand against you, elf? God. This is His house, and I am his servant. And you will no longer defile my place of worship.” Joe spun the flagpole around over his head and laid into Rec'teer like he was the star of the Sunday afternoon kung fu movies me and Skeeter grew up on.

  Joe was a man possessed, almost literally. He lashed out with the flagpole again and again, and every time he landed a blow, the elf staggered backward. He blocked sword strokes with the wooden pole, and the sword bounced off like it had hit solid rock. Rec'teer went for an overhead strike, but Joe knocked the sword aside and struck back with two quick raps to the back and a spinning shot to the forehead. Another upward strike to the point of the jaw and Rec’teer’s eyes crossed. One more overhead twirling strike to the temple and the elf’s helmet went flying across the church to clatter against the brick wall. Rec’teer spun in place and sagged to the floor, his eyes rolling up in the back of his head.

  I looked at Joe, standing in the center aisle with moonlight streaming in the stained glass windows. There seemed to be a glow around him that didn’t come from the moon, but I couldn’t be sure. I did know one thing—that wasn’t just Joe swinging that flagpole like a damn ninja.

  “What the hell was that, Joe?” I asked, limping over to the unconscious elf.

  “I don’t think it was anything from there, Bubba,” Joe grinned at me, leaning on his staff.

  “Have you been taking Jackie Chan lessons when I wasn’t watching?” I asked.

  “No, Bubba. That didn’t come from me. I can’t do those things. I’ve never had a karate lesson in my life, you know that.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “What do you think it was? We deal with the worst things the supernatural world has to offer on a daily basis. Why is it so hard to believe that the good things in the legends are real, too?” He gave me one of those looks, the kind you only get from a priest or a mother.

  “I don’t know, Joe. It’s easy to believe all the bad stuff is out there because I see it. I fight it, I kill it. But if all the good stuff is there, too, then . . . I don’t know. I guess what I’m saying is if all the angels and good stuff is real, why do we still have to fight so damn hard? Why doesn’t He just send us a bunch of angels down to clean up the mess?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amy come into the sanctuary through the side door, then stop cold as she saw the unconscious elf.

  “Maybe it’s our mess, Bubba. And He only lends a hand when we need it, not necessarily when we want it.” Joe held out his own hand, and I took it. He pulled me up, and then into a hug, and I felt something run through me. It was warm, and for a second in his hug I smelled my dad’s aftershave, and my mother’s gravy, and the privet hedges at Sanford Stadium, and Amy’s perfume. I hugged him back, maybe a little harder than I intended, but he didn’t whimper much. After a few seconds, I pulled away and watched as the last of the glow around Joe faded. That’s when I noticed my ribs didn’t hurt anymore. And my vision was clear. And all my bruises were gone.

  “Joe, what the hell?” I asked, then shut up as Joe’s eyes widened.

  “You’re healed,” he murmured.

  “Yeah, it sure feels like it.”

  “Your face, your nose is fixed, your eye isn’t bloody.” He reached up to poke at my jaw, where there had been a mother of a bruise blossoming from the elf’s punches. It didn’t hurt. Whatever had possessed Joe had healed me before it went away. Cool.

  “Are you two finished having your moment?” Amy asked, stepping into the aisle. “Because I think we’d better find some way of tying this big bastard up until we figure out how to g
et him back to wherever he came from.”

  “And whenever he came from,” Skeeter’s voice came over the comm. We all looked at each other, and shrugged in turn.

  “What do you mean, Skeeter?” Amy said. It was good having a girl around when the obvious question needed asking and our guy code wouldn’t let us ask. It also gave me somebody who could read a map or in a pinch, ask for directions, both serious violations of the guy code.

  “I’ve been researching that armor, and a couple things he said, and I’m convinced that he’s not French or German.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I don’t like the French. Buncha cheese-eating surrender monkeys if you ask me.”

  “We didn’t,” Skeeter went on. “But the reason he ain’t French is because he’s English.”

  “Whatever. French, English, German. It’s all a big bunch of ‘yonder’ to me,” I said. “All I care about is how he got here and how we get him back.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. If he was a contemporary elf, we could just send him home. But since I think he was pulled through about a thousand years of time as well as space, it’s going to take more magic than just Uncle Joe’s holy beat stick to fix this part.”

  “I prefer ‘blessed beat stick,’ I think,” said Joe.

  “Why do you think he’s that old, Skeeter?” Amy asked.

  “It started with something he said early on, about being a prince of flowers. Turns out that is the royal family of English elvendom, except that line died out after the Battle of Hastings.”

  “Like 1066 Battle of Hastings?” I asked.

  “You were awake in World History?” Skeeter asked.

  “I sat right behind Mary Lynn Dogget, and she had an ass that wouldn’t quit and a tendency to wear low-rise jeans before they were cool. I did a lot of whale-tail watching in that class. Every once in a while something got my attention. Like wars and shit.”

  “Well, there were a couple of things going on at Hastings that they didn’t mention in our history classes. Like the war between the House of the Sun and the House of Flowers, two rival branches of elven monarchy. Looks like our boy Rec’teer was in line for the throne if the House of Flowers was successful, but if the House of the Sun won the battle, he was screwed.”