Uncle Gary's Campfire Stories: Bayou Zombie Werewolves

by Visada, J. L. M.

  “You sound so confused. Would you like a sympathetic ear? Here…let me put on my best sympathy face.” Digger’s expression didn’t change beyond tilting his triangular head to the side and flicking his ears back and forth. “Oh you poor baby…does the little whiny bitch-boy want a tissue?” Digger tilted his head back and flattened his ears out. “Yeah, that’s right asshole…you ain’t gonna find no sympathy here, but I might give you a quick colonoscopy if you don’t stop giving me the eye!” Jessup jerked. Somehow, he wasn’t sure exactly how, he could hear the little armadillo waddling around beside him. “I was sitting in that rat hole of a chicken coop minding my own business when you’re stupid ass broke in and bit me…ASSHOLE! You were furrier, and bigger, but you still smell the same. I won’t forget that stench for the rest of my life. It’s equal parts beef jerky and failure.”

  “How can you even be talking? Your brain is the size of my pinky.” Jessup said and then covered his mouth in embarrassment. He didn’t want to admit that he could hear the little angry white creature.

  “That makes my brain bigger than the dick you think with ASSHOLE! Oh I’m sorry…alleged dick. There is no actual proof that you have one.”

  Jessup forgot himself and hopped up, “Alleged my ass! Look at this big ol’ mamba snake dangling down here!”

  Digger rolled onto his back and started twisting and turning as if to scratch an itch. “Damn short stubby little legs. What I need are one of those arm things you assholes have. Oh I’m sorry Asshole…were you saying something?”

  “I was saying I have a big dick, and stop calling me asshole. My name is Jessup.” Jessup growled.

  “Oh…well Jessup the asshole…I apologize profusely. I’m Digger the non-asshole.”

  “Can you stop calling me asshole?”

  “Why not just ask birds to stop flying, or fish to stop swimming. Now would you kindly scratch my back with those finger things you people seem so happy to stick up your noses?” Jessup reached down and started scratching the little armadillo.

  “Now are we friends?” Jessup asked.

  “Fuck no! You still bit me you stupid sunnovabitch, or did you think that somehow I’d forget that? I owe you one, and I’m just biding my time until you least expect it.” Digger said as wandered off.

  Jessup started to try to talk the little armadillo into a truce when he felt his stomach cramping. It was if the muscles were an overwound rubber band ready to snap. He doubled-over in pain, and made his way into the house. In his desperation he forgot all about Lula Mae. He swung the door open to the bathroom, and Lula Mae screamed in terror, “Stranger danger! Stranger danger!” Jessup looked around the bathroom. He saw an old sink, a medicine cabinet that hadn’t been cleaned in months, an old claw foot bathtub with a scared and angry nine year old girl still screaming at him, but no toilet in sight.

  Jessup slammed the door and scrambled back out of the house. With no toilet inside the house, Jessup searched fretfully for the nearest outhouse. He saw it. Like an oasis in the desert, the outhouse called to him from the tree line. Jessup clenched everything from his waist down; he half-crawled and half-stumbled towards the outhouse with a single-minded goal. When he got there swung open the door and gasped. The walls were covered in blood, scraps of skin, bone chips, and dried semen, but that wasn’t all. Feces was splattered everywhere like a Rorshach test, or some disturbing modern art piece dreamt up by a mentally disturbed thirteen year old with anger issues and too much time on his hands. Both holes were so filthy that he couldn’t even bring himself to sit on one. He considered trying to hover, but there wasn’t any place to grab onto that wasn’t covered in something he’d have to spend the next few nights having nightmares about.

  Jessup groaned as the cramps churned and coiled in a stomach. He knew he wouldn’t last long, and he made a mad dash into the tree line. He knelt with his back against an old dead tree. He was thankful that for whatever reason he’d woken up without pants. He didn’t even want to think about why he was lying naked next to a nude nine year old girl at a strange house he’d never seen before or why there were all these dead half-eaten teenagers strewn around the yard. All he wanted to do was go find Bubba, and go home. “Damn tacos!” Jessup groaned as something akin to the lovechild of battery acid and Play-Doh erupted from his anus violently.

  “Revenge!” Digger screamed inside the man’s head. Jessup’s eyes snapped open and he screamed as the tiny armadillo charged at him laughing maniacally. Jessup raised his hands to defend himself, and would have tried to run, but he couldn’t get away. There was angry, violent feces still bursting from his sphincter like vomit from some evil hellbeast. It made it so that he couldn’t stand up. Jessup slapped at the air trying to scare the four-legged maniac away. “Banzai!” The armadillo shrieked as he leaped into Jessup’s lap, knocking the man’s back off the tree. With nothing to hold him up, Jessup fell flat on his back. A mudslide sprayed out of him, and splattered the inside of his pasty white thighs.

  “Dammit! What the hell was that for?” Jessup groaned.

  Digger walked up Jessup’s body until his tiny pointed nose was poking the man just under his chin. “I warned you…when you’d least expect it. BAM! Revenge.” Digger then turned around and moved back down the man’s body. The little albino armadillo made sure to dig his long claws into the man’s torso with each and every step.

  “This isn’t happening. Animals can’t talk.” Jessup covered both eyes with his hands.

  Digger turned around and waddled back up the man’s stomach and chest. He did his best to put even more claw marks all over the man’s chest. Jessup winced as the angry little armadillo buried a claw into one of Jessup’s nipples. “Oh it’s happening Asshole…deal with it.” Digger said before turning around and wagging his leathery tail right in Jessup’s face. It slapped him across one cheek and then the other. Then he just started hitting Jessup across the nose with it.

  “Stop that!” Jessup tried to slap the tiny football of hate off of him, but the armadillo dug his claws in to put a stop to it. “Fine! You win. Now get off of me.”

  The armadillo churned his legs down the man’s body. After all the trips up and down the man’s body, Jessup had a path worn up and down that looked like raw hamburger. Digger stopped at Jessup’s hips and took a deep breath. The scent of Jessup’s bowels wafted up into the armadillo’s nostrils. He sighed, “Oh yeah baby…that’s the sweet smell of victory.” If an armadillo could smile, Digger would be grinning from ear to ear. Instead he just let his ears dance up and down on his head in celebration.

  The armadillo hopped off, and began digging for grubs and beetles as he waited patiently for the man to pull himself together. Jessup sat up and looked at the carnage. Dark green blood oozed slowly down his chest like melted ice cream. His legs were sprayed with bloody green feces. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

  “Don’t know…and don’t care. All you assholes look alike to me.”

  “How am I supposed to get cleaned up?”

  “Not my problem asshole.”

  “I told you…my name is Jessup.”

  “Fine…Jessup.” Jessup heard Digger’s mental sigh.

  “Was that so hard? Now if we could jus-” Jessup asked.

  “The Asshole!” Digger interrupted.

  Jessup was just about to kick the armadillo in frustration when something caught his eye. It was a glass eye, and Jessup knew that eye. Jessup stared into that eye every day. It was Bubba’s fake eyeball. Bubba lost his eye in elementary school after a freak dodgeball accident. He would know that eye anywhere. Bubba like to play jokes with it. He’d drop it in your water, leave it next to the toothpaste, once he even tried to switch it out with a ping-pong ball. “How did he get me to swallow his eyeball?”

  Then he saw something else. There was other jewelry, buttons, and even a zipper throughout the fecal matter. One particular piece caught his eye. It was gold, and had a design on it. “What the fuck?” Jessup grabbed a nearby stick and used it to lift
the gold ring out of the shit. As it was pulled out of the crap, part of a half-digested finger bone dangled precariously from the ring. It was Bubba’s class ring. The cartoon alligator was supposed to look playful and friendly, but right now he just looked like he was taunting Jessup. Reality sank in, and Jessup started screaming. At first he couldn’t even form words, but eventually he started repeating over and over, “I ate my brother! I ate my brother!”

  Digger watched a mild interest as the man slowly descended into insanity. “Stop whining! So what if you ate your brother. I ate three of my brothers, and you don’t hear me being a little bitch about it! Afterall…there’s only so much tit to go around.”

  Jessup stood up and screamed as he let go of whatever sanity he had left. “Come here you little bastard! You just wait until I get a hold of you.” He chased the little albino armadillo in circles as they weaved in and out through the trees. Digger’s low center of gravity helped him to cut in and out between the trees so quickly that he was always just one step ahead of Jessup.

  “Serpentine motion! Serpentine motion!” Digger kept repeating to himself.

  Unfortunately Digger took a wrong turn and ran out of trees. His tiny legs weren’t suited to outrun Jessup. He darted past the outhouse and made a mad dash for the two new people he saw standing out in front of the house. One of them was dark complected with wild, crazy eyes. The other looked a little stupid, and smelled faintly of goat pussy.

  “Gotcha!” Jessup screamed as he dove headfirst onto the armadillo. He wrapped his arms around Digger’s tiny body and they slid across the ground painfully until they came to a stop at Danior’s feet. The little albino armadillo started biting him on the arms. Tiny but sharp teeth punctured the skin, and before long his arms were slick with blood.

  Danior eyed Jessup in disgust. He didn’t say anything, but it was written all over his face. The door to the house swung open, and a nine year old girl ran out screaming, “Master!” She was wearing a dress four sizes too big for her tiny body, but she found a bunch of belts to tie around her waist, arms , and around her torso so that she could keep the dress from falling off, and then she used some scissors that she found to cut six inches off the bottom of her dress so that she could walk without tripping on it.

  Lula Mae tried to hug Danior, and received a stiff palm to the face for her trouble. “I’m sorry Master.” The young girl shuffled back away in embarrassment from the man. She stared at the ground, and was afraid to look directly at Danior. She could already feel that he was in a bad mood, and the last thing she wanted was for him to take it out on her.

  Jimbo draped a sweaty arm over her. “Don’t worry little sister, you’re one of us now. Master Danior might seem grumpy, but he’s really-“

  He never finished that sentence. Danior backhanded him, and he was sent flying. Jimbo landed hard on his back, and he whimpered as he rolled over gingerly. He didn’t hesitate, and immediately crawled on all fours back to Danior’s leg. Lula Mae took the hint and wrapped herself around Danior’s other leg. The old undead gypsy stroked the girl’s hair absentmindedly like a pet while he stared down at Jessup. A cold, unfeeling smile slithered across his face. He had two new pack members, and possibly a third if the man was willing to know his place. They were hardly anything he’d have considered quality, but they were a start. Right now he needed numbers more than anything. One of his kind could be captured easily, but ten of his kind could protect him from most angry mobs. Twenty could destroy a small town. Danior’s plans were much larger. He didn’t want to terrorize a town. He wanted to watch the world burn. He’d need manpower.

  They were linked. Danior could hear their thoughts in his blood. Lula Mae’s were childlike and naïve, but Jimbo’s thoughts perverted and just a little desperate. Jimbo and Lula Mae would have to do anything he wanted because of that same blood bond. It’s how his father kept Danior’s pack in line during World War II. All pack members bent to the will of their master. Unfortunately for Danior his father had been suicidal when Danior was a young teenager. Danior’s mother had died in a fire shortly before the Germans came to take them away. His father didn’t want to live without his wife, and so instead of fighting and escaping he ordered his people’s complete surrender. None of the pack wanted to die, but Danior’s father had a will was so strong that they all marched helplessly to the gas chamber. Even Danior was unable to withstand his father’s iron will, and as much as he wanted to run away he still found himself walking lockstep with his other pack mates.

  His father somehow was able to switch places with a Jewish man in the back of the line. It was so that he would be the last in line. Danior was just before him. The other werewolves pled for him to change his mind, but all he would do was grin and say, “Soon we’ll all be together again.” Finally, it was time for father and son to step in the gas chamber together. Danior prayed to God, the Devil, and everything else to save him from his father’s insanity. His legs calmly walked inside the large room. Danior kept straining against his own body to turn around and run off, or to change into a werewolf and rip the guards apart in a desperate attempt at escape.

  He couldn’t even get the calm smile off his face. It was there because his father wanted it there. He looked around and saw that all his friends, and their families, also had that same calm smile. Their happy demeanors were beginning to unsettle their executioners. By now most people started to look for a way out, or they tried to beg for their lives, but these gypsies were standing inside the chamber and looked as happy as if they’d just taken a Sunday stroll through a park. Danior realized the truth though. He knew they were all trapped by his father’s will just as he was. His father was the Alpha, and his will was there way. That’s the way it always had been, and always would be…until the day he died.

  Danior’s father walked in behind him. The man took a deep breath and smiled, “Soon…we’ll be with your mother soon.” Danior wanted to scream. He was willing to beg, but he just stood there like a mannequin with a stupid smile etched onto his face. Danior couldn’t even cry…his father wouldn’t let him. The door closed behind him, and he waited for the inevitability. He could smell the people that died before him. The combination of fear, desperation, and evacuated bowels from all the previous victims flooded his nose.

  There was a hiss. It was faint at first, but it grew stronger. Danior’s body moved and turned against his will until he was facing his father again. Danior looked into the man’s eyes and for the first time ever…he felt hate. The gas sprayed out from the ceiling. It smelled faintly of almonds. Danior’s first instinct was to hold his breath, but his father didn’t allow it. Danior’s lungs filled with the poison, and so did everyone else’s. Even his father inhaled deeply. It didn’t take long for the poison to take effect. The youngest fell first. Then the weak and the elderly collapsed. Then the women fell to the ground, sometimes their bodies crushed the babies they held in their arms trying to protect. Finally, the men fell one by one. Eventually it was only Danior and his father that stood. The bodies piled around them. Some still twitching, but Danior’s father kept willing the dying to breathe as deeply as their failing bodies allowed.

  “Son…” His father tried to say something, but he couldn’t form any more words. In his weakened state it was just too hard to talk and exert his will on the pack. The man looked at his son with pride. Danior was young, and strong. He was the last of the man’s pack still standing. Maybe it was the poison working on his brain, maybe it was just conceit, or maybe he was just delusional, but Danior’s father relaxed his hold on his son. “I love you son.”

  The man’s heart clenched like a vice as he saw his son’s happy face turn to rage and hate. He knew Danior might not share his outlook, but he assumed Danior would respect his decision. In his arrogance, he hadn’t even bothered to peek into the boy’s thoughts. Now they were written all over his face. He couldn’t bear to have this be the last thing he saw, and so he tried to exert the last of his will on the young man once again. Danior fel
t his face changing back into a smile, and in desperation he used the all the rage and hatred towards his father as fuel for the change. His father barely had enough strength left to change Danior’s expression, and so he didn’t have nearly enough to stop him from turning. He backed away from his son in terror. He could feel the young man’s thoughts. As his body changed, his thoughts were vague and unfocused. It was like static on the radio. Then as the change finished, his thoughts cleared and turned into a single-minded laser focus…murder.

  The guards were still chattering amongst themselves when Danior’s father was thrown through the wooden door. His face was unrecognizable, the back of his skull had been hallowed out, and his body was twisted and broken with a gaping wound in the chest where the heart should have been. The gas poured out of the doorway, and the guards ran to find cover. They never saw Danior walk through the doorway. He was fully transformed, but barely alive. He took a few steps, and then collapsed. Danior crawled until he was away from the gas cloud, and then passed out.

  The guards found him passed out on the grass an hour later. They were going to shoot him in the head and then take him to the crematorium, but then they received orders to save any surviving member of Danior’s family for inspection by a Dr. Aribert Heim. Danior woke up in a steel cage surrounded by armed guards. The days grew into weeks. The weeks became years. Then the Americans came. Danior thought he might be freed from his daily hell. Instead Doctor Heim convinced them that Danior could have useful military applications. He was transported from his own private hell in Germany to a whole new hell in America.

  Now he was the new pack leader. Jimbo and Lula Mae were already completely under his thumb. That left Jessup. Danior had heard about men like Jessup from his father. They were rogues that couldn’t hear the commands from their Alpha. The blood ties somehow skipped them. The packs always called them defectives when he was a child. Most of the time the pack Alpha had them killed as children so they couldn’t grow up and become a threat to the Alpha’s leadership.