Uncle Gary's Campfire Stories: Bayou Zombie Werewolves

by Visada, J. L. M.

  “You don’t know that!” Bessie howled with rage.

  Donald snapped, “He came to our wedding with another man.”

  “That was his cousin!” Bessie screamed in her shrillest voice.

  “Earl is white as snow, and the man he brought was a negro.” Donald responded. Some of the elderly black men and women gave him an angry look, but then resumed attacking Dave Wesker.

  Bessie looked shocked and then leaned in to whisper, “Donald Keen we don’t use the N word…it offends the colored folk.”

  “I’m too old to give a shit about offending anyone…colored or otherwise. Now quit yer yapping…Jesus! It’s like being married to one of those little Mexican wetback dogs…the chalupas.” Donald grumbled, and some of the elderly Hispanic zombies glared at the man.

  “Chihuahuas! They’re called Chihuahuas you old fart! Besides…you shouldn’t call wetbacks wetbacks…it’s just as offensive as calling the coloreds the N word.” Bessie said as she glared at her husband.

  “Chalupas…Chihuahuas…Chimichongas…what does it matter? The point is that you won’t shut the fuck up!” Donald screamed.

  The two married zombies screamed and yelled back and forth at one another until finally one of the other zombies turned and went to the aisle with the gardening equipment. The zombie’s name was Bart and he was a tall black man with strong features. He took a tree pruner on a long reach pole and walked back to Bessie and her husband Donald. One swipe of the pruner and the top half of Bessie’s head lay on the ground. Another long swipe and the top half of Donald’s head twirled through the air leaving a splash of blood and brain matter behind it.

  All the zombies turned to look at Bart. He shrugged and said, “I’ve been living in the room across the hallway for ten fucking years…I’ve heard this shit every day for ten years…I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  The other zombies shrugged and turned their attention back to Dave Wesker. Dave kept throwing plants at the zombies, but he was getting tired and running out of plants to throw. “Jesus…this was always so much easier in the game on my kindle.”

  Bart dodged a petunia that smashed against a support beam beside his head. “Oh you want to throw stuff. Well shit...maybe it’s time to return fire.” The tall man leaned down and pulled the urine bag from one of the other zombie’s wheelchairs. The man wound up and threw the urine bag. It burst like a water balloon at Dave’s feet.

  “Dammit Bart…you’ll ruin the meat!” Silas screamed as he shook his walker.

  “Oh shut up you old bastard! I don’t see you trying to do anything.” Bart yelled at the skinny Jewish man wearing a bath robe but no pants.

  “I’m working on it.” Silas yelled back.

  “Old coot…you been working on something for twenty-three years and ain’t got a damn thing done yet. Now can you close your robe? I’m tired of seeing your schmeckle.” Bart snapped.

  Silas shook his fist at Bart, and his penis shook as it peaked out from the open robe as well. It looked like an old mushroom swaying to some unknown song in a patch of gray grass. The man had a ball sack that hung down almost to his knees. It was wrinkled, and so stretched out that it could have been sold as a knockoff version of Stretch Armstrong. He pulled the belt on his robe tight to close the view before returning to his slow plodding walk towards Dave. “Slow and steady!” Silas groaned.

  Flower pots kept flying through the air, but the zombies were gaining ground. They were just a few feet away when Dave ran out of flower pots. There was nothing left. He looked for anything that would let him escape. Silas and Bart were the first two to reach him. Dave tried to make one last desperate escape. He ran towards a sliver of an opening between the two men. Silas swung his walker with everything he had. The legs were dull, but they hit with such force that they still cut the man into thirds. Dave fell into three pieces, and Silas glared at his bent and broken walker, “Cheap foreign crap.” He threw it down on the ground and picked up Dave’s head. “This can’t be kosher.” He said sadly as he began to bite a hole through the back of the man’s skull.

  ***

  “Here bunny bunny bunny!” Remy Lemeux said under his breath as he veered the Chevy towards the tiny little floppy eared ball of fur.

  *Thump-thump Ka-Thump*

  “Yeah! Another ten points, and an extra five for catching him with my truck nuts.” Remy patted his truck like it was a well behaved horse. “I’m going for the record.” Suddenly there was a little black and white kitten moving across the road. Remy stepped on the gas and turned into the cat.

  *Thump-thump Ka-BAM*

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” He screamed. The truck came back down on four wheels, and the right front tire popped. It sounded like a gunshot, and the truck slid and skidded all over the road. When it came to a stop Remy was still screaming in terror. His hands were locked around the steering wheel in fear. “Jesus…that had to be the biggest fucking pothole ever.” Remy stepped out to change the flat. “I pay my taxes, and they can’t even fix the goddamn road.” He walked around the truck.

  *Scratch-Scratch*

  The sound came from under the pickup. “Dammit! Cat must’ve gotten stuck between the radiator and my engine.” Remy leaned over, “Here kitty kitty….kit…OH SHIT!”

  Digger’s head poked out from under the pickup. He bit down on Remy’s ankle and yanked the man under the truck. “NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! N-“ Blood sprayed out from under the pickup. The pickup shook and shimmied as Digger shredded the man to bits under the truck. Chunks of Remy flew out in all directions. Eventually the pickup stopped shaking and Digger changed back from his were form. The tiny white zombie armadillo ran back out from under the car and started making his way towards Jessup.

  *Thump-thump*

  The armadillo went rolling as a blue Dodge Ram ran over him without even slowing down. By the time he stopped rolling he was already changing so that he could exact his revenge. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  ***Two Days Later***

  *** FRIDAY, JANUARY 25th, 2013 – BAYOU BLACK, LOUISIANA ***

  Terence Burnett was a busy man. He still had to unload the liquid fertilizer out of his trunk, he needed to examine the new batch, bring in the mice, and then check the traps he set up to keep people away from his stuff. The man moved into his underground meth lab. It’d taken him almost a year to dig the area out, frame it up, and then camouflage it. He’d come in every day wearing an orange vest and a hardhat, and amazingly nobody even questioned it. They just thought he was a state employee working hard. When he finished he had what amounted to a basement the size of a large swimming pool. The hardest part was keeping it drained until he could build the cinderblock walls, and lay the cement floor. After it was dug he then built a ceiling sturdy enough that he could cover it over with dirt and vegetation so that no could see it. He hid the vents in some strategically placed dead trees. There was even a trapdoor to slip in and out of his meth lab. It was another six months before everything grew well enough that everything looked natural, but now he could come and go as he pleased without worrying about anyone finding his lab.

  The trap door was some of his best work. It looked like an old rock, but it lifted up to expose the stairs leading down into the lab. Once he closed it nobody would even know he’d been there. Of course he still put in some “special touches” to make sure people that did show up wouldn’t ever leave. Bear traps were placed in various spots so that anyone trying to sneak up on him would get a surprise of their own. He even ran piano wire between trees for a particularly nasty surprise. He didn’t need any of these traps, and if he was thinking clearly he’d have known that if anything was going to bring attention to his meth lab it would be the traps and defenses he had in place, but all the fumes had begun to make him paranoid.

  He set them everywhere, but left himself one path to come in and leave. The bear traps and piano wire weren’t the only surprises he’d put out since paranoia began to reign. As an animal control o
fficer for New Orleans, he got lots of calls about snakes. The constrictors were caught and released in Bayou St. John, but anything venomous got the trip down Old U.S. 51 to Bayou Black between Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain. When he got them there he had to do a little old school surgery on. Metal spikes were inserted in the ground and a piece of wire was slipped through a hoop on the end of the spikes. The other end of the wire was pushed through the tail of the snake. The pain from the wire made the snake extremely aggressive to anyone that got near it, but it also kept the snakes from roaming more than five feet in any direction. All Terence had to do was remember to bring feeder mice whenever he came in to check on his product.

  Terence was starting to think people were spying on him everywhere he went. He was sure everyone knew exactly what he was doing, and they were just waiting for the chance to steal his product when he wasn’t looking. He’d dyed his hair three different colors in the last two months because he wanted to make it more difficult to have a current photo of him. Currently he had jet black hair, but he was already thinking about how blondes have more fun. He’d been clean shaven, had a Vandyke, a goatee, and was currently sporting a jet black mustache that would have impressed Yosemite Sam. He thought about getting contacts to hide his hazel eyes, but he couldn’t stand the idea of sticking his finger in his eye. He’d even taken to wearing long sleeve shirts all year round to hide his tattoos. In January it wasn’t too bad normally. There was the occasional hot days like they had had most of the week, but usually it was nice and cool if not downright cold.

  A month ago Terence found a parks and wildlife official dead. One of the snakes had bitten him, and in his effort to get back to his car, the man had tripped and fallen face first into a bear trap. Disposing of the man and his car had been fairly easy. He just loaded the body into the man’s car and pushed it off into the water far away from his lab where it disappeared from sight. He should have been happy that his traps worked, but instead they only made Terence more paranoid. He started nailing the wired snakes up in trees so that the snakes could get people in the face. He began digging spiked pits, deadfall traps, and snares that lifted their victims up and then swung them on a pulley system into well hidden wooden spikes. The hardest part was the deadfall traps. He had to climb up the trees using a ladder, and then set up the large rocks so they fell when someone hit the line attached, and didn’t just fall every time the wind blew.

  Terence had every part memorized. There was one safe way in, and only one safe way out. Even if someone had somehow snuck through all the traps in an effort to get to his lab, and if they knew the trapdoor’s location, they still had to know the pass code. There were nozzles pointing back to the door leading into the lab just under each stair step. The nozzles ran to propane tanks, and when the wrong code was entered the unfortunate person would be roasted alive.

  Beyond that, Terence had been amassing a cache of weapons that would have put most eighties action heroes to shame. He had one AR-15, an MP5, two Uzis stored in the lab. On top of that he had more handguns and shotguns tucked away in tree hollows than he could count, and of course there was his baby…an M134 Minigun that fired thousands of rounds per minute. He even had hand grenades, and phosphorus grenades. He kept the Minigun inside the lab. It was heavy, but he built it on wheels like a push cart. He could hit a switch and the stairs would lower like in a funhouse so that they became a walkway. It was still hard to get the gun pushed up and out, but it was a lot easier than carrying it. He even built it so that the bullets could be transported with it easily. With the money he was making dealing meth, Terence could retire in five years if he wanted.

  He unloaded the fertilizer. He still needed to pick up some other supplies and bring them in this week, but the fertilizer was becoming his biggest problem. Terence didn’t want to buy his fertilizer from the normal suppliers. The amounts he bought would raise suspicion. Instead he always got his second hand from farms. It meant a lot more driving, but it he was sure it kept him off any potential watch lists. Of course now the farmers he was buying the stuff from were getting suspicious. So he’d have to start buying from even farther away. That meant more driving. On a few occasions he’d considered hiring an assistant, but he was absolutely sure they’d either kill him and take over, or just steal his product.

  Inside the meth lab were some basic creature comforts. He installed a generator for power that vented out with the meth fumes. Then he put in a refrigerator for cold beer and a few snacks, a recliner when he needed to catch a little rest from all the driving, a television to catch the Saints while he worked, and of course his trusty Fleshlight because the life of a paranoid meth manufacturer can be a lonely one at times. Terence had taken the time to make his lab a very comfy one since he’d be spending so much time in it.

  The first thing he did after setting down the fertilizer was check the cinderblock walls for any leaks that needed to be patched. Water constantly tried to seep in, and so he was almost always patching leaks. After checking the walls he was pleasantly surprised that everything was dry. “Guess I finally got them all.” He said optimistically even though he was reasonably sure that he’d be patching another leak in a day or two.

  The next thing he did was go out to the car to get the feeder mice. He grabbed his thick snake handling gloves that he used when he worked animal control, and his forty inch metal snake hook. Terence walked carefully around the area. He avoided the snares, the bear traps, and even the piano wire in order to get to the snakes. He took out a mouse for each snake, and tossed it to them. Sometimes he had to hold the snake and dangle the mouse in front until they struck. He had to do that for the ones in the trees that sometimes were just dangling by the wire. The snakes always attacked immediately because they were driven mad by the pain of having a wire through their tails. He never fed more than a few every day. That way he didn’t have to spend more than an hour or two at a time wandering the bayou. If he came across any dead ones then Terence took the snake off the line, and then took it back to the lab. He liked to use the dead snakes venom in his batches to give his meth a little extra kick that the others didn’t have. It was just one of his own little twists on the formula.

  Terence then came back in and checked on the meth. It was all doing well. “Oh…damn. I knew that po’boy tasted funny.” Terence groaned as his stomach gurgled. Even though the man had practically built a home underground there was one thing he couldn’t build. He wasn’t able to put in a bathroom. He’d considered having an outhouse, but it would have just drawn attention he didn’t want. After a few weeks of shitting in the woods, Terence finally came up with another solution.

  “Nnngh!” Terence grunted as he blew a mostly digested po’boy out his colon right into the meth he was making. It had taken some creative constructing, but eventually Terence turned his lab into his toilet as well. Since approximately six pounds of toxic material is made for every pound of meth he cooked, Terence wasn’t really worried about ruining his supply. In fact the urine and feces had become just another part of the recipe as far as he was concerned. The dealers loved selling his meth, and he was quickly making a name for himself as a manufacturer of the best shit in Louisiana. They just didn’t realize how true that statement was.

  Terence worked on it all for a few hours and then made his way back to the surface. It was time to drive home. He walked down the safe path to his car. The moon was already high up in the sky, but he couldn’t see it because of the fog. It had rolled in quietly while he was working so he had to be extra careful where he walked. He couldn’t see anything twenty feet in front of him.

  *Clang*

  Terence jerked to attention. One of the bear traps had snapped shut, and he could hear groaning. Instead of heading to his car, Terence moved carefully off the safety path toward the sound of the bear trap. He could hear thrashing and groaning. He needed to get to whomever set off his trap before they called for help on a cellphone.

  *Clang*

  Another bear trap snapped shu
t.

  *Clang*

  And another.

  *Clang*

  And another. Terence froze. That was far too many to be an accident. It had to someone trying to move in on him. If it was the police there’d already be screaming cops and maybe even a helicopter by now. The fact that they weren’t screaming for help meant they didn’t want to give their positions away as far as Terence was concerned. He had two options. Either run for the car, or run back to the lab to defend it. After all the work he put into the lab…it wasn’t much of a choice.

  The wily meth manufacturer ran through the bayou like a manic rabbit. He still knew were every trap was, and he was careful to avoid them as best he could, but it was hard to do in the fog. He had no points of reference to go by visually, and a couple of times he nearly stepped into a bear trap. If he hadn’t have been wearing boots he’d have been bit ten times. Lucky for him the snakes he hung in the trees were farther out in the bayou or they’d have definitely gotten him.

  He opened the trap door, and then ran down the stairs. After punching the proper keys in, Terence started grabbing his guns. After laying them on the push cart he had the mounted M134 Minigun attached to, he lowered the stairs so that he could push the cart back up and out of the lab. It was hard to get everything up onto the surface, but eventually he did it.

  By now he was hearing the bear traps clanking shut from all directions. There had to be hundreds of them surrounding him, and he couldn’t see them at all. All he could see was the fog thickening. He couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of him now. Terence heard movement and groaning. They were moving closer.

  *Snap*

  One of the snares snapped closed and was followed by a meaty crash as whoever was caught was impaled on the wooden spikes. “Serves you right you fuckers! Nobody fucks with Terence Burnett! Nobody!” The only response he heard was more groaning and the sound of the traps. He never heard a scream. He didn’t hear gunfire. It struck Terence as particularly odd that his attackers didn’t speak, but they weren’t trying to be quiet either because he could easily hear them walking.