I pushed a button next to the map lights in my truck’s roof and a little blue light came on. “Come in, Skeeter, this is Big Papi.”
“Who the hell ever called you Big Papi?” Skeeter’s shrill voice came through the Bluetooth connection loud and clear, maybe a little clearer than I wanted.
“I figured I needed a handle, so we could know who was who on the comm link,” I said. I thought Big Papi sounded cool, personally.
“I think I’ll probably know you if you says it’s Bubba, jackass.” I heard Joe snicker and realized that Skeeter had patched him in so we could all talk.
Joe’s new full-face helmet cut most of the wind noise out so we all heard him crystal clear. “Bubba, where are we headed?”
“Mobile,” Barry said.
I looked over at him. “Mobile? I like a good poker game as much as the next guy, but seriously, your tribe is hanging out in the gambling capital of the Southeast?”
“Drunken gamblers are terrible witnesses. Most of the sightings in the area are quickly dismissed and that makes it a good place to raise our young. They get the experience of avoiding humanity without heavier consequences. And we like to fish,” Barry said, fidgeting a little in his seat. “Do I have to wear these things? They bind a little.” He pulled at the cotton on his leg.
“Yes, you have to wear the shorts. I’m pretty open-minded, but I don’t want some butt-naked dude sitting on my upholstery.” I had to cut up a perfectly good pair of sweatpants to make shorts for the gigantic Sasquatch, but then got a good giggle out of him walking around in bright red sweats with “Go Dawgs” written down the legs. It seemed ironic, somehow.
It took about seven hours to get from Joe’s church to the outskirts of Mobile, Alabama. We pulled off on a little dirt road just outside of Blakely Park, a little town east of Mobile that looked like a cross between Mayberry and Duck Dynasty. We got out of the truck and Joe pulled up behind us and put down his kickstand.
“What now, big guy?” I asked. Once everybody was out of the truck, I flipped up the back seats to give access to the custom gun cabinets I had built into the truck. Bertha was in her normal spot under my left arm, but I figured this was going to be a more up-close and personal kind of fight, so I tucked my Judge revolver into the back of my belt and loaded up on my dirtiest fighting tricks. A pair of brass knuckles went into each pocket of my cargo pants, and I strapped a pair of kukri knives onto my belt. Another couple of Gerber Guardian Backup double-edged tactical daggers went into sheaths on my lower legs and my new Benchmade tactical tomahawk slipped into a sling over one shoulder. I tucked a couple of other knives, spikes, and surprises in pockets and slipped my jacket on top of all of it. I was about fifty pounds heavier when it was all said and done, but I was armed to the teeth and reinforced at all the joints and soft spots from the neck down, so I figured I could go toe-to-toe with a badass bigfoot if I couldn’t talk my way out of this mess. And if Barry was any judge of character among his own species, there was no way in hell I was talking my way out of this scrap.
“You look like Darth Vader and Bane’s love child,” Joe said.
“Yeah, well you look like a storm trooper, so I guess we’re even. Joe still had his helmet on, but had swapped out his tinted face shield for a clear one. His riding leathers would protect him from most claw strikes, and he had his Mossberg on his back and Colt 1911 on his hip. He was a badass Man of God, all right. Amy pulled her hair back into a long ponytail and yanked a black balaclava down over her face and hair, leaving only her eyes exposed. I knew she was wearing a lot of Kevlar and toting a pair of Sig Sauer 9mm pistols loaded with silver hollowpoints, not to mention any nasty surprises she had tucked away under that tac vest. A H&K MP5 with a suppressor was her preferred short-range gun, and I’d seen her put in work on the range, so I wasn’t worried about her ability to hit anything she wanted to put holes in. I was more worried about whether or not we could live long enough to get a shot off.
“What’s the plan, Barry? You want a gun or something? I got a couple spares.”
He looked into the back seat of the truck and shook his head at the arsenal there. “I don’t use weapons. None of our people do. It’s a matter of pride.”
“It’ll be a matter of dead if that asshole we’re hunting has changed his mind about that. But whatever you say. Now where are we going?” I made one last gear check, slipped one more magazine for Bertha into my back pocket, and locked the truck. I’ve never been in the situation where I’ve regretted carrying too much ammunition, but I’ve damn sure experienced the opposite once or twice.
“Our last camp was a few miles north of here. We should go on foot so as to avoid arousing notice.” Barry turned and headed up a trail so narrow as to barely deserve the name, and I was wishing I was the one wearing a motorcycle helmet in a few seconds as the branches started to lash my across the face.
“Whoever said this was the way to avoid attention has obviously never traipsed through the woods with Bubba,” Amy said from behind me, and I heard Skeeter snicker in my ear.
“You got us on GPS, Skeeter?” I asked.
“Better than that, I got video through Joe’s helmet cam. You want to duck now.” I did and missed a branch that was just high enough to be out of my eye line but low enough to piss me off.
“Thanks, Skeeter.”
“That’s what you keep me around for, bro,” he said in my ear. We walked the rest of the way in silence, giving me way too much time to think about the mess we were walking into. My baby brother had somehow developed dreams of megalomania, got himself turned into a werewolf, built a whole half-assed religion around killing me, and come pretty damned close to achieving his personal nirvana the last time we tangled. I didn’t know if I could take him if he was here, but I owed it to Barry and his people to try. They were in a mess because I didn’t get the job done the first time, and damned if I was going to let that happen again.
“Penny for ‘em,” Amy said, sliding up next to me at a wider spot in the trail.
“You don’t want to know.” I kept my voice low both to keep from attracting predators and because I didn’t need Barry hearing my doubts.
“This isn’t your fault, Bubba.”
“You want to explain exactly how that could be, darlin’? ‘Cause way I see it, if I’d stuck a sword through my brother’s guts a couple months ago instead of the other way around, Barry’s daddy would still be alive, he’d still be sheriff or whatever his word for it is, and his woman and kids wouldn’t be in trouble. Then we could be out on a lake getting drunk and pretending to give a shit about fishing instead of traipsing through the woods in Lower Goddamn Alabama hunting Bigfoot and the mother-lovin’ Wolfman.”
“Okay, maybe it is all your fault. Maybe you should have just smothered your little brother in his crib like all those self-righteous assholes who talk about traveling through time and killing Hitler when he was a baby. Bubba, shit happens for a reason. I’m not smart enough or holy enough to pretend to know what that reason is, but there’s a reason for it. And if you had killed Jason, then some other monster would have come along and given Barry’s asshole friend Clag’tin an excuse to kill his father and steal his tribe. And then we’d be down here hunting that asshole instead of Jason. But we’d still be here. Because this is what we do. Shit gets fucked up, and we fix it. Now get your head on straight before you get yourself killed.” She reached up and grabbed me by the collar and I couldn’t tell by the fierce look on her face whether she was going to beat my ass or kiss me, but she pulled the bottom of that ski mask down and laid the hottest damn kiss on me that I’d ever felt by a human being. Shit, it was hotter than the last time I got dry-humped by a succubus, and that’s not something I say every day.
She let me go and I stood up straight, looking down at her with my eyes crossed a little. I shook myself like a dog getting out of a creek on a July afternoon and squared up my shoulders. I looked around at Barry and Joe, who were leaning against a tree watching our little exchange
, and said, “What are you assholes looking at? Let’s go kick some furry ass. I got shit to attend to with this woman.”
Joe grinned, Barry let out a low growl, and I heard Skeeter sniff in my headset. “That’s just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard you say, Bubba.”
“Fuck off, Skeeter.”
*****
We tromped through the woods for another hour or so before we came to a clearing with a camper and a little Hyundai SUV parked in it. There was a dirt road coming in from the north that must have been how the campers got in, but there were no signs of anything moving when we crossed the tree line.
“Don’t move,” Barry said, holding up a fist at right angles to his arm.
“You know we ain’t in the army, right? The ‘don’t move’ is fine; we don’t need the G.I. Joe arm signals. What’s up?” I said, stopping right behind him.
“I smell something.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I meant to warn you when we stopped for gas and I got them barbecue pork rinds. I love ‘em, but they don’t always sit so good, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m not talking about your flatulence, Bubba, which is spectacular, by the way, and makes me very glad that I usually travel by running outdoors instead of riding in enclosed vehicles with you. There’s something dead here.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“No, in the camper.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Yes, shit.” I liked that about Barry. Even though we weren’t the same species, we were still able to communicate in that way that guy can, with one curse word taking up a whole sentence or two.
“What’s up?” Amy asked.
“Barry smells dead things, and it’s probably the people that drove that camper in here,” I said. That whole “communicate with one curse word” thing doesn’t work with women. Something about all that estrogen makes them want shit explained.
“Why do you think that? Couldn’t it be an animal or something like that?” she asked.
“It could, but it ain’t real likely. You see, out in the woods, dead things get eaten by things that eat dead things. They don’t just hang out and rot. So if something’s just hanging out and rotting, there’s a good reason for it. And that reason is usually that it’s either hidden away somewhere that scavengers can’t get to it, or it’s too dangerous to go near the kill. Both of those things point to there being one or more dead people in that camper, and probably killed by Jason or our band of bitchy Bigfeet. Bigfoots. What’s the plural of Bigfoot?”
“Sasquatch is the plural of sasquatch. And we really hate the term Bigfoot,” Barry said.
“Yeah, and I hate people getting eaten in the woods when all they wanted was a little fresh air for their nookie.” I stepped out into the clearing and started looking around. The SUV looked pretty intact, so they hadn’t tried to leave. The camper was set up, the sides extended and the front feet down and locked. There was no fire pit built, but there were a couple of chairs and a cooler set out in a half-circle around a cleared spot of dirt where a fire was obviously going to go. I opened the lid of the cooler and stuck my hand inside, coming out with a Coors light can.
“Bubba! You are not stealing dead people’s beer! That’s too far, even for you,” Amy shouted, stalking towards me from the trees.
“You’re right, I wouldn’t drink Coors from a live city slicker, much less steal a dead one’s shitty beer. But this was recent.”
“How can you tell?” Joe asked. He glanced my way but was keeping a close eye on our perimeter, shotgun at the ready.
“Mountains are still blue. Can’s still really cold, and this ain’t a very good cooler. So this wasn’t here more than last night at the most. Amy, watch my back. I’m going inside.”
Campers are a tight fit for me on my best day. I’m 6’ 5” and tip the scales at 350 buck naked. Loaded for bear like I was, I pretty much had to crouch and walk sideways to get into the camper. That didn’t leave me a whole lot of room to turn around and puke when I saw what was left of the campers. They were ripped open from throat to groin and their insides turned to outsides. The stench in the camper was enough to knock a buzzard off a shitwagon at a hundred paces, but I toughed it out, breathed through my shirt and tried to see any kind of evidence that might have been left behind. There were a few tufts of hair caught on a cabinet and the glint of something caught in one of the wounds. I pulled out my Leatherman and used the needle-nosed pliers to yank the piece of whatever out of the man’s collarbone. I could tell it was stuck in his collarbone because he was laid open all the way up to it.
I stomped out of the camper and back over to the cooler. I flung the lid open and grabbed a beer out of it, pressing the cold aluminum to the little bump on the back of my skull until I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to puke. I turned around and sat on the lid of the cooler. The plastic whimpered a little, but held under my weight.
“Bad?” Amy asked.
“As bad as anything I’ve ever seen,” I replied.
“Goblins in the mines bad?” she asked, and I could almost hear her smile. God bless her, she was trying to get my mind off what I’d just seen.
“Drunk rakshasa puking on my shoes bad,” I shot back. I held out the Leatherman for her to take a look at.
“What’s this?” she asked. Joe and Barry had come over by this point, so I spoke up for everyone to hear.
“Werewolf claw, I’m pretty sure. Jason was here, along with something big. Probably your people, Barry. But it was the wolf that did that in there.” I shuddered a little at the memory of what I’d seen.
“How many . . .” Joe started.
“Victims?”
He nodded.
“Two. A man and a woman. They were apparently up here for some together time, and that didn’t end well for them.”
“How do you know that’s why they were here?” Joe asked.
I laughed for a second, then choked it off as the visuals came rushing back. “They were naked, Joe. They were naked, and they were together, and this monster ripped them apart. They just wanted to get away for a little while, and my goddamn brother . . . sorry for the G-D.”
“Don’t sweat it. I think it’s pretty appropriate in reference to Jason.” Joe turned and walked back over to the camper. He stopped at the door, but I watched as he pulled out his rosary and a small Bible from one of his back pockets and started waving his hands around.
“What is he doing?” Barry asked.
“I think he’s giving them Last Rites,” I said, a little confused. “Isn’t it a little late for that?” I asked louder.
Joe didn’t turn around until he was finished with whatever he was doing. Then he looked at me and said, “It’s never too late to ask for the Father’s grace and blessing upon his children. But those poor people don’t need His help anymore. We, on the other hand, could use every advantage we can get. So I asked for a favor.”
“What did He say?” I asked.
“All prayers are answered, Bubba.” Joe gave me one of his inscrutable priestly smiles and closed the door to the camper.
“Yeah, too bad most of the time that answer’s no,” Skeeter said in my ear, perfectly echoing what was running through my head.
*****
After the scene at the campsite, it was pretty easy to track the wolf. Bloody paw prints led off into the woods to the north, so that’s the direction we took. The blood trail faded pretty quickly, but a werewolf and a bunch of Sasquatch moving through the woods leave a trail even Skeeter could follow, so it didn’t stretch our woodcraft to find the furballs in question about two miles from where the campers had been slaughtered.
I waved Amy and Joe to fan out to the sides as Barry and I crouched at the tree line. There was a big cave mouth with a pair of Sasquatch standing guard, and a little trickle of smoke crept out of the cave and trailed off into the sky, letting us know that there were more folks inside.
“Does your tribe have some kind of tradition of honorable challenge and
combat?” I whispered to Barry.
“Yes, why?”
“Because I really want to beat the shit out of something, and that seems like my best bet,” I replied, stepping into the clearing. The Sasquatch to the right of the cave bellowed something that sounded like Chewbacca’s mating call and ran inside. The one on the left looked at his buddy in surprise and then ran straight at me.
I had about fifty yards between me and the guard, so I had plenty of time to draw Bertha and put a round in his knee. I didn’t warn him, didn’t bother giving him a chance to surrender, I just shot the big hairy sonofabitch in the leg and chuckled a little as he rolled ass over teakettle to a stop right in front of me. He lay screaming in the dirt about ten feet away, making more racket than a two-peckered rooster in a henhouse, so I stepped up to him and pointed Bertha at his nose.
“Shut up,” I said.
“It hurts!” he wailed.
I was very aware of the fact that it was male, since nobody was making him wear cutoff sweatpants, so I lowered my aim to something he might value more than his nose and repeated myself. “Shut. Up.”
He shut his mouth so fast I think he bit off a piece of his tongue but was too scared to whine about it.
“Now we’re just going to sit right here and wait until your boss comes out of that cave, then I’m going to kick his ass, kill my kid brother, and go home. If everything works out right, we’ll be home in time to go to the grocery store before Monday Night Football. Worst case, I run a little late and have to do with what beer’s in the fridge. Sound good?” He just lay there bleeding. I couldn’t tell if he wasn’t a football fan or thought his boss was going to kill me.
Grits, Guns & Glory - Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 2 Page 12
