So Digger became the best kept secret in the house. Even her mother didn’t know. Lula Mae wanted to tell her, but she was afraid that her mother might let it slip out during one of the “lessons” her father gave her. It had happened before. Joe Bob had lost his temper because the cornbread was a little overcooked for his taste so he held her mother down and put the oven pan of cornbread right on her mother’s back. He pinned her down and just left it there to sizzle. The fabric on her dress practically melted away. Her skin didn’t do much better. Joe Bob probably would have just left it there until he got bored with it, but Dana Ann started screaming about how Lula Mae had been hiding a puppy from him. Joe Bob took the pan away from her back. The blisters already forming, and then he made Lula may show him the dog. When she finally showed him, he beat it to death with the cornbread pan, walked back inside, threw the pan at her mother, and made her go clean the pan to make a new batch of cornbread. Lula Mae never liked the taste of cornbread again, but her father always made sure she got the first piece ever since.
“Lula Mae! Get your damn slice of cornbread. Your mother worked her worthless fat ass off over the stove to make you that goddam cornbread.” Joe Bob growled.
“Yes Daddy.” Lula Mae said as she cut out a small square.
“Goddammit girl…you’ll ruin the hole fucking meal like that. Take a regular sized square. I work too fucking hard to let you just piss away money like that. Dana! You better teach this stupid girl to cut her squares evenly. No man is gonna want a woman that can’t even cut the cornbread right.” Joe Bob screamed at his wife before muttering, “Dumb bitch!”
“She’s nine.” Dana Ann responded, and then clapped her hand over her mouth in fear.
“Are you back talking me?” Joe Bob rose from the table, and started removing his belt.
“N-n-no dear…I’d never do that.” Dana Ann McCultie panicked.
“Oh…so now you’re calling me a liar!” Joe Bob yanked his belt, and it slipped through the belt loops with a quick schwwwwwwwwwwwiiiiiiiiiiiiip! He was already coming around the table when there was a loud crash from outside. “What in the hell was that?” Joe Bob asked.
*Crash*
It sounded large, whatever it was. The noises came from the old chicken coop. “Digger!” Lula Mae said before slapping her hands over her mouth. All the hard work of hiding the little armadillo was made useless by one slip up.
“What’s a Digger?” Joe Bob growled.
“He’s my armadillo. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.” Lula Mae said, but in her heart she already knew it was over.
“Dana…get my shotgun.” Joe Bob ordered.
Lula Mae didn’t say anything else. She just sat at the table and cried as her mother brought the shotgun to her father. Joe Bob slid two shells of buckshot into the double barreled shotgun. “I’ll be right back. I just have to go shut that little armored rat up.” He walked outside and made his way to the old chicken coop. There were more crashes, and Joe Bob could hear something thrashing around behind the chicken coop. A couple of times he heard boards breaking. There was a distinct sound of chicken wire being ripped out of place. It was followed by an armadillo screeching .
Joe Bob stepped around the chicken coop and pointed his shotgun at the large shadow moving in front of him. “Get off my property you son of a bitch!”
Then it turned around. Eight feet tall, fur matted down from wading through the swamp. Wolf eyes glared back at the man. Digger was in its mouth. He hadn’t killed him yet, but his teeth had already punctured the leathery shell. The armadillo was panicked, and its tiny legs were kicking in the air as it screeched in terror.
*KA-BOOM*
Joe Bob pulled the triggers firing both barrels at once. Lead pellets cut through the air, and hammered into the werewolf. Joe Bob expected it to crumble to the ground and die. Instead he just pissed Jessup off. He watched in horror as the lead pellets came right back out of the wounds, and then the wound healed as if nothing had happened. Jessup turned his head, and spit out the armadillo. His yellow eyes stayed locked on the man in front of him. The werewolf shifted forward, and began stalking towards Joe Bob.
“Get away!” Joe Bob screamed as he threw the shotgun at the giant werewolf. Jessup didn’t even try to move out of the way. The gun twirled through the air and struck him right in the face. It cut him, but the wound healed almost immediately. Jessup picked up the shotgun and started moving more quickly. There was a gleam in his eye that meant something, and even though Joe Bob didn’t know what it meant…he knew it would be bad when he found out.
As the werewolf got closer it began a low growl. Joe Bob could feel the rumble on his skin. He turned and started running. Jessup gave chase. It didn’t take long before Jessup’s clawed hand got a good grip of the man’s shoulder. Jessup squeezed, and the bones in Joe Bob’s shoulder were crushed almost instantly. He started to scream, but Jessup threw him into a tree. Bones shattered. Joe Bob lost consciousness briefly, and by the time he woke back up Jessup had him by the face. Claws were digging into his skin. Jessup used the claws on his other hand to dig out one of Joe Bob’s eyes. The man tried to scream, but the werewolf had his mouth covered. So all he could do was give a very muffled wheeze, and watch as Jessup swallowed the eye like it was a grape.
Jessup took the shotgun in one hand and rammed the barrel through Joe Bob’s shoulder, impaling him onto an old tree. He let go of Joe Bob’s mouth, and now he could scream. “Dana Ann! Lula Mae! You two worthless bitches get out here. Help!”
Jessup started with his feet. He reached down, and just sort of pinched them off at the ankles. The werewolf then knelt down, and lifted the man’s bloody stumps up enough that he could drink every last drop. Joe Bob screamed all the way until the end. The pain in his shoulder was nothing compared to the feeling of his freshly severed feet. As the blood started slowing down, Jessup started biting and chewing his way up the legs. First one, and then the other, then he moved to the hands, by now Joe Bob was already dead, and Jessup was savoring his meal. There was a loud crunch as Jessup chipped a fang on Joe Bob’s wedding ring, but he eventually swallowed it down as well.
It didn’t take him long to eat almost every trace of Joe Bob McCultie. He devoured the head last…like it was a desert. The skull gave a strangely satisfying crunch as he chewed it. When he was all gone, Jessup turned his attention to the house. Dana Ann was watching through the window. She had a smile from ear to ear. It faded quickly as soon as she realized she’d been seen. She shut the curtains, hoping that perhaps if she was out of sight, she’d be out of mind. Instead, Jessup came crashing through the window and landed on top of her.
“Lula Mae! Get in the cellar, and lock the door behind you!” Dana Ann screamed.
“Get off my momma!” Lula Mae tried to push the furry beast off her mother.
Jessup backhanded the girl across the room. She crashed into the television and then rolled on the floor. Four claw marks were slashed across her face. The television wobbled and then fell over on top of her, covering her completely.
“Lula Mae!” Dana Ann bawled. She completely ignored the hulking weight on top of her as she tried to twist out from under Jessup to get to her unconscious daughter. She ignored the claws shredding her back and sides. She even ignored when the beast bit down, and pulled back a bloody chunk that used to be part of her shoulder. After all these years Dana was used to pain. The only thing that mattered to her was her daughter. Right now Lula Mae was hurt, and she was going to make sure that she was okay no matter what. Dana drove an elbow into the side of Jessup’s head, and the wolf growled in frustration. He shifted his weight back, and she lunged out from under him. She didn’t have far to go, and with every ounce of strength she could muster, she threw herself forward. Dana Ann landed just beside the television. She turned her head to see under it, and smiled. Her daughter was breathing. She was hurt, but still alive.
“Thank God.” Dana Ann sighed with relief and that’s when Jessup grabbed her head with one clawed hand. He
gave a quick twist. Dana Ann never made another sound again. Her eyes were dull and lifeless. Jessup wasn’t particularly hungry by then, so he just took a few bites before devouring the head as a treat.
Chapter Sixteen
Lisa Kaye dug through the storage locker trying to find the portable dispatch terminal. “Where is it?” She grumbled. It’d been twenty minutes since she started looking. That was ten minutes longer than she wanted to be in the building to begin with. Colton had made it pretty clear things were going south quick. She needed to get out of here, but she also needed that portable terminal. With it she’d be able to track the fire, ems, and police vehicles. That alone would make her safer. She kept digging, when one of the piles of crap fell over. Boxes went everywhere. “You’d think they could at least remember to straighten up around here.” Lisa groaned as she realized she could probably be in here another twenty minutes and not find it. “I can’t waste any more time. I have to get out of here.”
Lisa closed the door, and then headed down the hall to where they kept the weapons. There were always extra guns. Most of the time the sheriff and his deputies acted like a bunch of teenage idiots, and she had to constantly handle their messes. She’d been hired to be a dispatcher, but ultimately she became more like the den mother. Her days consisted of making sure they all turned in their paperwork, making phone calls for the officers, and ignoring the girly magazines that were occasionally left on one of their desks. They were idiots, but they were all her idiots…at least that’s how she looked at them.
Lisa was good at her job. So good that people kept giving her more things to do…and as much as it irritated her, she kind of liked the challenges that came with it. She started as just a police dispatcher, and then they made her control Fire as well. Finally, they put her in charge of EMS…and she ran all three with extreme efficiency. She did this on top of the mountain load of daily tasks she had. She was so efficient that they actually closed positions and just incorporated them all part of her day to day work. So when she came in for work, four other women left, and when she got ready to leave four women arrived to replace her. They even had to hire some part-timers to take over for her during the weekend. It was a testament to how incredibly talented Lisa was that nobody even questioned the insanity of letting one person do the work of four people.
She opened the gun lockers and found herself a revolver. There weren’t many in the weapons room. Most were semi-automatics that you fed a magazine into. She could have taken one of those, but Lisa thought a revolver would be more reliable. It wasn’t flashy, but it would get the job done. As guns went, it was a fairly small pistol. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any pockets. Her purse was still up near the front of the building beside the customer service desk. So she decided to tuck the pistol into her ample cleavage. After making sure the gun wouldn’t slip she started to head back to the front, hesitated, and then went to grab a shotgun.
It was a Remington 870 Police Breacher. It had a short barrel, just under a foot long, with a parkerized finish so that the metal wouldn’t corrode. It was black and fit in her hands perfectly. She loaded it, and grabbed an extra box of shells…just in case. Then she made her way back to the front of the station. She got to the customer service desk, and was putting the shotgun shells when Carl “Scooter” Hobson and Thomas Hack began pushing their way through the double doors. The two paramedics looked horrible. Duct tape was wrapped around their midsections.
“Hey Lisa…Scooter and me got hungry, and we figured we’d just drop by for a bite.” Thomas said.
“Sure, there’s a candy machine on the left. If you two will excuse me?” Lisa was hoping they’d just step aside and let her through.
“Oh, no we can’t do that. You see Scooter keeps telling me just how fine you are. Those beautiful breasts, the blond hair, those beautiful eyes…he keeps saying you look good enough to eat. So I decided we’d head over here and find out how true that was” Thomas grinned and started moving towards the woman.
*Click-Clack*
The sound of the shell being loaded into the gun should have been enough to get him to back away, instead he just kept coming. “Oh…I like it when they play hard to get.” Thomas said as he rounded the corner.
“Back off jackass!” Lisa took careful aim. She was about to pull the trigger when a fire engine ran right through the glass doors, and into the lobby. “Oh shit!” She turned and ran as the firemen started coming down off the fire engine.
“Dammit Peanut! I told you to brake.” Esteban screamed.
“I did…I broke the whole damn building.” Peanut laughed. “Relax boss…I’ll just back it out when we’re done. I just wanted to mark our territory.”
Esteban grunted and then started directing his men to pull out the tools. “Hurry up boys…the sooner we get down into holding the sooner we get ourselves some easy food.”
“Hell of a plan guys. Do you mind if we join you?” Scooter asked.
“Wait…what about Lisa?” Thomas asked.
“What about her? I’m hungry, and I’m not gonna waste my time chasing her sweet ass around this station when there’s perfectly good food downstairs in holding.” Scooter answered. “So how about it guys? Can we come?”
“Yeah, but we get first dibs.” Esteban answered as he walked towards the holding cells.
Lisa watched the men heading downstairs. She had two choices. The smart choice was to run like her ass was on fire out the front door and never look back. Of course if she did that the men and women downstairs wouldn’t stand a chance. Option two was for her to go downstairs guns blazing, and hope somehow she survived long enough to open the cells and give the inmates a fighting chance. There was only really one good option, but she just had to choose the other one.
Maybe it was a sense of duty, or maybe it was just something inside her that wouldn’t let a poor defenseless person be attacked, but either way she stomped her way downstairs. She reached the hallway to the cells. The three jail guards were already on the ground. Their blood was pooled all the way across the hallway floor, and bloody footprints led off towards the cells. The two paramedics were feasting on two of the guards. The third had parts ripped off. It was like the firemen had decided to bring a snack with them as they started working on the cell doors.
*Blam-Blam*
Both paramedics slumped to the ground. Their heads turned into a mush that sprayed down the hallway. She quickly replaced the shells in her shotgun and then moved forward carefully. She could see the firemen had already used their tools to open a few of the cells. “Get away from them you assholes!” She sounded a lot tougher than she expected. She thought to herself. Everyone sounds tougher holding a shotgun. They all turned around, and started running towards her. They were too far to be sure she’d hit them in the head with the shotgun. She needed them closer for that, but if they got closer there were too many of them for her to shoot. Lisa turned and ran. She jumped over the pool of blood and kept running.
The Firemen ran as hard as they could. Peanut was in front, and would have caught her, but he slipped on the blood and fell face first onto Scooter’s headless corpse. The problem was that his friends were right behind him. What was initially one man slipping, became the entire fire department knotted up in a dog pile.
“She’s getting away!” Peanut screamed.
“Get your foot out of my face!” Rico yelled.
“I will as soon as you get your elbow out of my balls.” Mohammad grunted.
“Those are your balls? I hope that thing poking me in the face isn’t your…” Max asked nervously.
“It’s my flashlight Max.” Mohammad laughed.
Max exhaled in relief, “Oh thank God. You had me worried there Mo, but I just knew that couldn’t have been what I thought it was.“
Mohammad grunted, “If it’d been my dick, you might have been crushed under its weight. Now move your fat ass because that beer tap sticking out of you is poking me in the ass…and that’s how rumors start.”
The men slowly untangled from one another, and then made their way back up the stairs. Lisa was already in the fire engine, backing away. Her foot shoved the pedal all the way to the floor, and she hit three cars backing up. The firemen were giggling as she smacked a Mazda, and it went twirling off into the parking lot. She was almost completely backed out of the parking lot when she struck the curb. The fire engine lurched up, and in a panic Lisa twisted the wheel. The fire engine went up on two wheels and crashed onto its side. They all stood there with shocked looks on their faces, and then burst out laughing.
“Let’s go get her.” Esteban grunted, and his men made their way to the fire engine. The driver side door was now on the pavement. For Lisa to escape, she’d have to climb up the passenger seat like a ladder. The problem was that there was no way she’d make it out before the firemen were on top of her. Grim resolution set in. She pointed the shotgun up at the passenger window.
Rico was the first to climb onto the fire engine. He crawled to the passenger window, and peeked in, “Hey baby! How about you and me-“
*Ka-Blam*
Rico’s head popped like a water balloon. His upper body lifted up and then fell back down. The momentum carried the body down inside the fire engine. Another fireman tried to slide in behind him.
*Ka-Blam*
Mohammad was dead before he landed on top of her. The two bodies pressed her down into the driver side door. She was pinned under three hundred plus pounds of dead firemen. Their blood from their wounds all over her, but she braced herself for the next fireman. Max was about to climb up and try to get to her when Esteban called him back.
“What? I can get her.” Max said.
The Fire Chief shook his head, “No, what you’d get is a face full of buckshot. We’ve got plenty of food inside. Why waste more of us out here chasing one woman around.”
Uncle Gary's Campfire Stories: Bayou Zombie Werewolves Page 17
