Voodoo Children - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story

By John G. Hartness

A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story

Copyright 2011 John G. Hartness

Smashwords Edition

*****

I rolled into town a couple hours before
sunset, the better to get the lay of the land. Of course, my idea
of getting the lay of the land pretty much meant pulling up in my
F-250 in front of the only titty bar in Columbia, Tennessee to see
what the afternoon shift looked like. I’ve always been able to
learn about a town by the level of talent working a pole at four in
the afternoon. If the saggy boobs and cottage cheese butt cheeks on
display at the Ride ‘Em Cowboy Saloon were any indication, Columbia
had seen its better days. To start with there were only about five
guys in there plus me. There was a bartender, a DJ who looked like
a meth addict on the tail end of three-month tweakfest, an old man
asleep with his face down on the bar, and two fat rednecks that
must have been what passed for successful businessmen in that part
of Tennessee. They had the red faces of the terminally drunk, more
chins than a Chinese phonebook, and the laugh of guys who expected
the whole room to laugh with them. I hated them on sight and
figured if I couldn’t get a decent lap dance I’d at least get a
good fight in before the sun set and the real ass whoopin’
started.

I took up a seat at the end of the stage and
looked up at a bored girl with stringy bleach-blonde hair and
eight-inch clear lucite heels. She had tattoos covering her legs,
track marks covering her arms, and a g-string covering her crotch.
Otherwise she was naked as the day she was born and probably just
as skinny. She saw me sit down and threw me the half-smile that
says “yeah, it sucks, but we’re here together, so why not at least
stare at my tits for a while?” At least, that’s what I figured it
said, so I gave her a dollar and waved a hand at what passed for a
cocktail waitress. It didn’t surprise me that the cocktail waitress
was hotter than the stripper, that had made its way onto my
checklist of nasty strip club qualities some years back. She
jiggled her way over to me and I handed her a twenty.

“
Gimme a pitcher of
Bud.”

“
Gimme another twenty
bucks.”

“
I don’t want a dance yet, I
just want some beer.”

“
Pitcher’s thirty, jackass.”
I handed her another twenty and turned my attention back to the
stage. Blondie was standing in front of me staring down from her
stilts. I gave her another dollar and waved her off toward other
customers before I remembered there weren’t any other customers.
She clomped off up the runway to the pink shimmer curtain and I
heard the DJ announce that Brandy was coming up. He repeated
himself, and I heard a thump and a yelp from backstage, then a
sleepy black girl stumbled out onto the stage and started walking
around in a bit of a daze.

My beer made it back about then, along with
ten dollars in singles for my change. I left one on the tray for
the waitress and motioned for her to sit. “Join me?”

“
I can’t. Got
customers.”

“
No you don’t.”

“
You’re right. I don’t drink
beer.”

“
And I ain’t paying whatever
they’re asking for better booze. So sit down and take a load off.
And help me beat the girls off with a stick.”

She laughed at that and looked around. There
were two girls taking turns gyrating on the businessmen, and the
only other girl in sight was the sleepy Brandy, who’d obviously
been awakened backstage to come dance. “I’m Wendy,” she said as she
sat down and poured out two plastic cups full of watery beer.

I downed my first cup in one long swallow,
then poured the cup full again. “You thirsty?”

“
Kinda, why?”

“
Then you keep the cups.” I
took a long pull off the pitcher and just held it. It keeps things
easier to just drink out of the pitcher most times for me. My hands
are too big for most normal cups, and I’m less likely to break a
pitcher without thinking about it.

“
What brings you to town?”
She asked.

“
Hunting.”

“
It’s not hunting season for
another month. Trust me, once it is you won’t be able to swing a
dead cat in here without hitting some jerkoff in an orange vest
bragging about the one he almost got.”

“
The deer or the
girl?”

“
Yeah.” She toasted my
pitcher with her cup and I caught her taking stock of what she saw.
It didn’t bother me, when you’re this damn big you get used to the
staring. And the questions, which I figured were about to
start.

“
You a wrestler or football
player or something?” Right on cue.

“
Or something. I’m a
hunter.”

“
What does that even
mean?”

I leaned in close, setting the pitcher on the
edge of the stage. I locked gazes with the girl, my brown eyes with
her green ones. I stared deep into her eyes and said “There are
more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in
your philosophy.”

“
What the fuck are you
talking about? Are you high?”

“
It’s Shakespeare, dammit. A
buddy of mine said quoting Shakespeare to a chick was guaranteed to
get me laid.” Damn that Skeeter, I should have know better. That
boy couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse. And if I kept listening to
him, I wouldn’t either.

“
Well your friend was a
dumbass. But if you wanted to get laid, you shoulda said
something.”

“
Yeah?”

“
Yeah, then I wouldn’t have
wasted my time and you wouldn’t have wasted your beer. I ain’t
screwing you. One, I don’t mix business with funtime. And two,
you’re a big boy. If you’re that big everywhere…”

“
And I am, I promise you.” I
grinned, showing my recently repaired smile, new false tooth and
all.

“
Then there’s reason number
two right there. You’re liable to split me right in two! So why
don’t we just have a beer, make stupid jokes about the floppy
titties on Brandy up there, and then you can maybe get a lap dance
once the night shift comes in.”

“
I won’t be here when the
night shift gets here.”

“
Why not?”

“
I gotta work. A brother’s
gotta earn a living, you know.”

“
Yeah, about that. You never
did say what you hunted.”

“
You’re right, I didn’t.” I
drained the last of my pitcher, dropped a couple of bucks on the
stage for Brandy and her floppy tits, and headed out the
door.

*****

Whoever invented titty bars must have
installed a damn time machine in every one. I coulda sworn I’d only
been in there long enough to have a beer or two, and maybe irritate
one cocktail waitress, but somehow it had gone from four in the
afternoon to full dark, and my wallet was two hundred bucks lighter
when I got into the truck. I put the little Bluetooth thingy in my
ear, pushed the button and said “You there, Skeeter?”

“
Yeah, boss. I’m here.” Came
the voice on the other end of the phone. He even
sounded
skinny, something
I never managed to understand.

“
Well that thing about
quoting Shakespeare to women is bullshit, Skeeter. I no more got
laid with that Horatio bullshit than I did that time I gave Erlene
a cactus instead of flowers for her birthday. That’s the last time
I take advice on women from a homo.”

“
The fact that I’m gay has
nothing to do with the fact that you’re a complete disaster with
the opposite sex. I bet you tried that line on some floozy at a
topless bar, didn’t you?”

I took a minute to look for the camera before
answering. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out the little shit had
me bugged. “No, I didn’t. I was talking to a nice lady. A
librarian, I’ll have you know.”

“
You usually find those in
libraries, Bubba. Not in places called the Ride ‘Em Cowboy
Saloon.”

“
And how do you know I’m at
the Ride ‘Em?”

“
I track your GPS and cell
phone, remember?” Oh yeah. He started doing that when I got bit by
a manifestation of Apep, the Egyptian snake-demon. I kinda wandered
off into the desert for a couple weeks after that. Skeeter was
worried about me. It was cute, how upset he was. All I ended up
with was a hell of a sunburn, but he wanted to keep track of me
ever since.

“
Alright, alright, I was in
a titty bar. But that don’t explain the thing with
Erlene!”

“
Should I even bother to
remind you that she’s your cousin?”

“
Second cousin once removed.
We’re barely blood related at all. But anyway, where am I going and
what am I killing?” Skeeter never told me anything about a case
until it was time for the killing. He said he didn’t want to
clutter my thoughts. I figured he just didn’t like repeating
himself, since I usually only about half listened to him
anyway.

“
You’re headed out of town
to an old cemetery. There’s been a rash of zombie
attacks.”

“
Zombies? Slow zombies or
fast zombies? I don’t like fast zombies. Fast zombies ain’t right,
just not natural.”

“
All evidence points to
these as voodoo zombies, so they would be slow. And you don’t have
to worry about their saliva, either.”

“
I don’t spend much time
thinking about zombie slobber, Skeeter.”

“
And this time that’s okay.
Now get on the road and I’ll explain more as you drive.”

Skeeter gave me the skinny as I cruised
through the sorry excuse for a town. You like that? It’s funny,
‘cause he’s skinny, and I said…never mind. I guess you had to be
there. Well anyways, apparently there had been a bunch of robberies
on the eastern side of Columbia, where what passed for hillbilly
high society lived. One of the robbers had been caught in the act,
which was usually a good thing, because robbers tended to talk when
arrested. Problem was, this robber had a long criminal record. A
criminal record that ended in 1987, when he died in a drunk driving
accident. So the local constabulary (I don’t know why the hell
Skeeter can’t just call them the po-po like everybody else) had
consulted with the nearest Catholic Church, which happened to be in
Nashville. Nashville didn’t have very many exorcists on staff right
now, thanks to a bad case of non-belief in these here United
States, so they kicked it up the food chain until they finally got
to Skeeter’s uncle Joe.

Now most of Skeeter’s family didn’t talk to
Uncle Joe, because of the whole turning Catholic thing, but most of
them didn’t talk to Skeeter neither, because of the whole liking
boys thing. So Skeeter and Uncle Joe got to be buds, because they
was the only people who talk to either of them at the family
reunions, except for Aunt Linda, who had cerebral palsy and didn’t
know enough to do anything but love everybody. So whenever
something came across Uncle Joe’s desk that seemed to need my
particular talents, he sent his favorite nephew a little email, and
we went out and killed a bunch of something. We weren’t officially
on the church’s payroll, but since we weren’t all that holy, we got
to keep any loot the bad guys we smoked were hiding. And
supernatural bad guys usually kept some pretty good loot around, so
we made ends meet. And when we didn’t, Skeeter whored me out as
security for rock concerts.

I pulled into the cemetery at around ten
o’clock, which I figured would be good zombie-raising time. It was
dark, and the zombies would have plenty of time to shamble off to
wherever they were being sent, steal stuff and bring it back before
the sun came up. I didn’t know if voodoo zombie could run around in
daylight or not, but I preferred to do my killing in the dark. Just
always seemed fitting that way.

I knew I’d come to the right place because
the gate was wide open. Most cemeteries are pretty good about
locking the gate at dark. Not usually for keeping things in, but
mostly for keeping kids out. I never saw the appeal to making out
in a graveyard myself, but I’ve been killing things that go bump in
the night for a long time, so I reckon the place has kinda lost its
luster for me.

The three dead guys walking down the path to
the gate were the other indication I’d found the right place. I
pulled the truck into the graveyard and pulled the gate shut behind
me. I took a piece of chain out of my toolbox and fastened the
gates shut. I didn’t have a lock, so I ran a piece of baling wire
through the links to hold the chain together. I kinda figured
zombies wouldn’t have the manual dexterity to unwind a piece of
wire. If they did, my troubles were just starting.