Contents
Title
Special Thanks
Love Hurts
UnHoly Night
Dead Man's Hand
She's Got Legs
Howl
Double Trouble
Elf Off the Shelf
Casket Case
Stone Cold Crazy
High on that Mountain
Bad Moon Rising
White Lightnin'
Preview Title
Raising Hell Chapter 1
Appearances
About the Author
Also by John G. Hartness
Grits, Guns & Glory
Bubba the Monster Hunter
Season 2
By John G. Hartness
Falstaff Books
Charlotte, NC
Special Thanks to my Patrons!
Sheelagh
Melinda Hamby
Trey Alexander
Salem Macknee
Wayne McCalla
Lisa Kochurina
Patrick Dugan
Madison Metricula Roberts
Charlotte Babb
Dan Shaurette
Rebecca Ledford
Ray Spitz
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Acknowledgements
A very heartfelt thanks to Melissa Gilbert of Clicking Keys for her help in proofreading my mess.
Love Hurts
A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story
By John G. Hartness
The last thing I saw was the handle of my Grandpappy’s sword sticking out of my belly, covered in blood that was supposed to still be inside me. The last thing I heard was my brother’s voice, speaking to me for the first time in about fifteen years, mocking me as he twisted the blade. The last thing I thought was how much family reunions suck.
The next thing I knew I was laying in a hospital bed with more tubes and wires stuck to me than Wolverine in that crappy X-Men prequel. I stared up at the ceiling for a minute, wiggling fingers and toes and other parts that would wiggle before I turned my head to the side. Agent Amy was asleep in the chair by my bed, a strand of blonde hair creeping loose from her ponytail to brush across one cheek. I reached out to brush it back into place but was really surprised to find that somebody had tied hundred-pound weights to my hands. Or at least that’s what it felt like because I couldn’t move either mitt.
Amy must have heard or sensed something because her eyes snapped open, and she reached for the call button on my bed.
“Can I help you?” came the tinny voice from the little speaker thingy that doubled as a speaker for the TV and a walkie-talkie to the nurses’ station.
“He’s awake. You should probably come untie him now,” Amy replied. I heard what she was saying but didn’t quite get what she was saying until Amy looked back to me.
“Good morning, sleepyhead. The nurses kept the keys to your restraints, and I didn’t think it was worth fighting over while you were still asleep.”
“Where am I?” I don’t really have a problem with cliches, as long as they’re valid. And this one was. I had no friggin’ clue where I was.
“Atlanta. I had you flown here after Jason skewered you.”
“Like a damn shishkabob. Little bastard ran me through like poop through a goose.”
“That’s attractive, Bubba.” A new voice came from the door, and I looked up to see my best friend, wingman, and technological guru Skeeter standing in the doorway, striking a pose. He woulda looked more heroic standing there all backlit and shit if he was bigger, or maybe armed. As it was, his skinny ass was the best-looking thing I’d seen in weeks. Except for Agent Amy, but she’s a chick, which gives her a default boost in the good-looking department. Anyway, Skeeter stepped into the room and flipped on the lights as a cute Asian nurse pushed past him.
“Mr. . . .”
“Bubba.” I cut her off with a wave of my hand. “Just Bubba will do fine, sweet-cheeks. Now, you wanna let me loose from all these cuffs and tubes and wires and shit? I gotta go rip my brother’s head off and crap down his neck.”
I didn’t know Asian people could get that pale, but she turned white as a sheet. I think she was afraid I was gonna kill Jason right there in the hospital. Which I reckon I woulda if I’da thought for a second that he was in the hospital.
She glanced over at Agent Amy, who gave her a nod. I reckon it was supposed to reassure the little thing that I didn’t want to kill her. It must have worked since she set to unfastening me from the bed. “Mr. Bubba, you can’t rip anyone’s head off for a while. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you’re going to be in much shape to be ripping open a bag of Doritos anytime soon. You suffered serious internal injuries, and if it were not for the work of a lot of very fine surgeons and your friends here rushing you here in a —”
“Black government helicopter that none of us knows anything about,” Skeeter said with a grin. He was sitting in a straight chair by the window, grinning like a possum that had just crossed the freeway. He’d been full of conspiracy theories since we were in middle school, so finding out that the government really did have black helicopters was the best Christmas present he could have ever imagined.
“Yes, that,” Nurse Whatsherface finished. “My name is Lucy, and I’m your daytime nurse. Ethel is the charge nurse and your technician is Alex. Dr. Watson will be by later to talk with you about your injuries and how long you can expect to stay here.”
“Are you serious?” I asked.
“Serious about what?” Lucy had that look on her face that said she knew exactly what I was asking about but didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of just answering the question.
“My doctor is named Watson?”
“Yes, sir. Dr. Watson is one of our most competent surgeons, with experience in a wide range of internal injuries. And your injuries were apparently quite extensive.”
“Yeah, that’s what happens when your kid brother shoves a sword through your guts. Extensive injuries.”
She looked back down at her charts, doing a good job of not asking any of the obvious questions. “Yes, well, my sibling rivalries were slightly less violent. Now Agent Hall, Mr. Jones, would you please step out of the room for a few minutes while I check the dressing on his wounds?”
They left, and Nurse Lucy did a thoroughly professional job of checking my wounds, redressing the hole in my back and my front, and making sure that nothing got kinked up in my catheter line. And if you ever need to feel like the least sexually interesting human being in the world, let a nurse slap a huge bandage across your naked belly while you’re pissing into a catheter bag.
“How long?” I asked, more to take my mind off what she wasn’t doing than anything else.
“How long what?” she replied, not bothering to look up from the task at hand.
“How long was I out?”
“You were in surgery for about eleven hours, then there were some issues with getting you stabilized, so it says here that they went back in to patch up a couple of other small bleeders and then you were out for about three days.”
“So it’s been four days since that little son of a bitch gutted me?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind my asking, why haven’t the authorities been involved? You came in here on a government helicopter and you’ve said repeatedly that you know who stabbed you. So why aren’t there any police around?”
I looked up at her and tried to remember the days before I knew that the things that go bump in the night are real and that the monster under your bed was us
ually a boggart, not a figment. Those days were way too long ago, I couldn’t drag up that innocence anymore. I gave her my best lopsided grin. “Nurse Lucy, I’d love to tell you, but it was a government training exercise, and I can’t say anything more.”
“But you said —”
“I’m pretty sure you misheard me. Didn’t you?” I smiled a little, which is usually enough to scare normal people. It worked. The little woman turned pale again and went back to work without any other questions.
When she was done, Amy and Skeeter came back in. With only one chair, Amy sat on the end of the bed and Skeeter took the seat.
“How do you feel, big man?” Skeeter asked.
“Like I got stabbed, dipshit. Thanks for asking. Where is he?”
“We don’t know,” Amy said.
“What happened after he stabbed me?”
“I shot his ass,” Skeeter said, his voice flat.
“Did it kill him?”
“No.”
“I thought you were loaded with silver shot?”
“I was. He took a load of silver double-ought buck square in the chest from twenty yards and laughed at me, Bubba. I don’t know what the hell your brother has got into, but he ain’t no ordinary werewolf,” Skeeter said.
“How fucked up is my life that there’s such a thing as an ordinary werewolf to me?” I looked up at the ceiling, but it didn’t have any answers. That made me think of something, though.
“How’s Uncle Joe?” I asked.
Skeeter grinned. “I wondered when you’d get around to asking about the whole reason you got gutted. He’s fine, carrying enough guilt to power the whole damn Vatican over this mess, but all that your pop and Jase did to him was beat him up a little. He’s seen worse in bar fights.”
“I’ve been in some bar fights with Joe, he musta got his ass beat.”
“Yeah, pretty much. But he’s gonna be fine.”
“Good. Now if silver didn’t kill my asshole brother, how’d y’all get me here?”
“I shot him, too,” Amy said. “A bunch.”
“After Agent Amy emptied a clip into him, and I pumped a couple more shells his way, Jason decided you were dead, or close enough, and he hauled ass.”
“With the sword,” I said.
“With the sword” Skeeter confirmed.
“I liked that sword,” I said.
“I think that sword might have something to do with this whole mess,” Amy said. “Our scientists said there were trace elements of some very odd things in your blood.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. Grandpappy always said it was special. And why did you have the DEMON lab looking at my blood?”
“Because your recovery was . . . odd, to say the least. You’ve recovered a lot faster than any human should be able to, and we wanted to understand the reason.”
“What was it?”
“We still don’t know.”
“Well that’s useful. There’s weird shit in my blood from my Grandpappy’s sword, my super-werewolf brother is out there with said sword and a desire to chop me into pepperoni, and I’m stuck here flat on my back pissing into a zip-loc bag!”
Amy looked away for a second, and I could tell that I’d crossed a line. Usually when I cross a line with a woman, bouncers get involved, but Amy was different. I actually gave a shit about her feelings. “Look, I’m sorry. I know you’re trying.”
She looked back at me. “Yeah, I’m doing a lot of good here yelling at the assholes in my office over the phone.”
“Well, get out of here, then. I’m gonna be fine, and I’m sure you’ve got a lot of ‘splaining to do to the bosses back in Washington.”
“Yeah, there might be a few questions about my appropriating a few helicopters to rush you to the hospital, not to mention calling off an airstrike that would have dealt with our Southern werewolf problem once and for all.”
“We think,” Skeeter chimed in. He’d done a pretty good job of making himself invisible while Amy and I had our little moment, but now he was back, sticking his skinny neck into things. That habit got him a lot of ass-whoopings back in high school.
“What are you talking about, Skeeter? They were ready to drop enough napalm on us to make me think I was Ho Chi friggin’ Minh!” I said.
“Yeah, but Jason took a whole lot of silver to the chest and didn’t drop. We got no proof that fire can still kill him. We don’t know anything about him anymore. Everything we know about werewolves went out the window when he didn’t die from my silver buckshot, and that worries the piss outta me.”
He turned to Amy. “So we need you to get your cute little behind out of hot water with your bosses so we can put the full might and power of the government and all them black helicopters behind figuring out what’s in Bubba’s blood and why Jason is suddenly immune to silver.”
“And what will you be doing while she’s handling all that?” I asked.
“I’ll be getting my car out of the shop after your daddy and brother broke it all to hell, then overseeing the contractors at my house, which your family also broke all to hell, then I’m on my way to the suburbs.”
“What’s in the suburbs? I thought you hate homeowner’s associations.”
“Funny. You know how I love those Yard of the Month contests. Anyhow, Uncle Joe told me about a case of some dead Christmas carolers that I’m gonna go look into while you’re laid up. Can I borrow Bertha?” Bertha was my favorite pistol, a .50 Desert Eagle that I thought I had inherited when my little brother was murdered by werewolves. A lot of my supposed family history got flushed when the aforementioned brother reappeared alive, pissed off and furry, but I still loved that gun.
“Did you suddenly gain a hundred pounds and triple your upper body strength?” I asked. Skeeter might have been a hundred-forty pounds soaking wet with his pockets full of quarters, and Bertha tipped the scales at four and a half pounds without ammo, and almost ten pounds fully loaded, so I wasn’t inclined to give Skeeter a sidearm that weighed more than his real arm.
“I’ll get the Ruger. There’s an iPad on the table. I hooked up the 3G and patched it into my network at home, so you’ve got all my files here if I need you to do some research for me while I’m out shooting things.” He turned to go.
“You got any straight porn on this thing?” I asked as he walked out the door. He just flipped me the bird over his shoulder. I shrugged and looked at Amy. “Alone at last?”
She smiled a little and scooted up on the bed to where I could reach her. She laid her head down on my chest and put an arm carefully across my midsection. Somehow she found a way to be there that didn’t pull any stitches or tubes out of whack, and we just lay there for a minute, not talking. I was enjoying the scent of her shampoo, probably a hell of a lot more than she was enjoying the smell of four-day-old Bubba, when the door opened.
Amy sat up and moved to the chair as a little dude that I figured was my doc walked into the room. He looked to be about my age, medium height, brown hair, medium build, kinda goofy grin with what looked an awful lot like a Rush t-shirt peeking out from under his lab coat. He held out a hand to me, and I shook it. Firm grip.
“So, Mr. Brabham, how are we feeling this morning? I’m Dr. Watson, and I’m responsible for you still being with us today.”
“Well, Doc, I feel like refried shit that got a samurai sword stuck through its belly, how are you?” I growled at him. I hate people who use “we” when they mean “you” or “me.”
He chuckled nervously. When you’re my size, you get used to the fact that most people are nervous around you, even when you’re flat on your back and perforated in all sorts of new places. “Well, I’m fine, Mr. Brabham. Or should I call you Robert?”
“Bubba.”
“Excuse me?”
“My name is Bubba, Sherlock. Now when can I get out of here?” I tried to sit up a little, but somebody picked that exact moment to shove a red-hot poker through the middle of my guts, and I laid back down in a hurry.
“I think you’ll be our guest here for at least a week while we monitor your progress. Your injuries were significant, and we had quite the time getting all of the bleeding stopped. I’d hate for you to rush yourself home, tear something, and then bleed to death before you could come back. It would be quite the black mark on my record.” He grinned at me.
“It wouldn’t do a whole lot for my day, either, Doc, so let’s try and keep that from happening,” I agreed.
“All right, then. Let’s do that. Now you won’t be able to leave the bed for at least another day or so, but I think now that you’re conscious we can do a little bit to make you more comfortable, like removing that catheter. I’ll send a nurse in shortly to help with that.”
“Make sure she brings me my pants.”
“I think I mentioned that you won’t be walking around, Bubba,” he admonished. He actually admonished me. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’d been admonished since grade school, but he put on his doctor voice and scolded me like a six-year-old who got caught eating paste again.
“I didn’t want to walk around, Doc. I just wanted some cash to tip the nice lady. If she’s gonna be handling my junk, I figure that’s at least as good as a lap dance, right?” I laughed until my gut hurt again, which didn’t take long. For some reason the doctor just stared at me blankly and Agent Amy was giving me that look that said I’d stepped over the line. Either that, or it was the look that said I’d run over her cat. I get those two mixed up a lot.
They left, and the nurse came in and took out my catheter. I spent a little time learning to piss in a bottle, but finally got everything figured out and took a leak that felt like Niagara Falls was rushing out of my bladder. When I finished, I felt a little deflated and thumbed my morphine drip until I passed out watching Oprah reruns.
You don’t understand the true meaning of boredom until you’ve been bedridden in a hospital without enough drugs to make things entertaining. The next couple of days were a whirlwind of absolutely damn nothing. Amy was back in D.C. answering all kinds of uncomfortable questions while Skeeter was out in the Atlanta suburbs chasing down rampaging Christmas carolers or some such bullshit. I was left to lay flat on my back in the hospital and watch a ton of daytime television and Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas specials. Made me long for the days of a good old-fashioned Kenny and Dolly Christmas.
Grits, Guns & Glory - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 2 Page 1
