Voodoo Children - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story (3 page)

I pushed the Bluetooth thingy and said
“Skeeter, what does ‘Omagara Grathnor Tingawa’ mean?”

“
What language is it in,
boss?”

“
I don’t know Skeeter, I’m
in the middle of the cemetery killin’ zombies and fightin’ a
half-starved voodoo priest with ugly boots and his ass hangin’
out!”

“
Then it’s probably some
kind of ancient African dialect, so that means…” I heard him typing
in the background, then say “Uh oh.”

“
What do you mean, uh-oh? I
don’t like uh-oh, Skeeter! What the hell’s going on?”

“
Well, if you remembered the
phrasing right…”

“
I remembered it right, the
little dingaling is prancing around inside a magic circle cutting
the heads off chickens and yelling it as loud as he
can!”

“
Okay, then, I hope you’ve
got plenty of firepower, because that’s a mass resurrection
spell.”

“
What. Does. That. Mean.
Skeeter?” I looked around where the ground was starting to roll and
bubble like a big pot of turkey stew on a cold Sunday morning. But
I didn’t think I was going to like what came to the top this
time.

“
That means that your voodoo
priest just called up every dead guy in about a half a mile. And
they all want to kick your ass, Boss.” Sure enough, as I looked out
over the graveyard, dozens and dozens of zombies were crawling up
out of the ground, in various states of decay. A couple of them
were barely more than skeletons, and one looked like he was
sleeping. If people slept without their faces, that is. As they got
out of the ground, they all turned to look at yours truly, and then
they all started moving. They moved just like the other zombies,
only about ten times faster.

“
Skeeter, I told you I hate
fast zombies.”

“
These shouldn’t be fast,
Boss. Did your voodoo guy do anything else?”

“
You mean like cut himself
and mix his blood with the chicken’s blood?”

“
Yeah, just like that.” I
heard Skeeter sigh on the other end of my earpiece, and I knew it
wasn’t going to be good.

“
He put enough of his life
force into them to let them move at least as fast as when they were
alive.”

“
Yeah, I noticed. Hey,
Skeeter?”

“
Yeah, Boss.”

“
I gotta go kill a bunch of
dead guys. I’ll call you back.” I had one spare drum magazine for
the Fat Man, so I slapped that into place and cocked the shotgun.
Then I cranked up Tiger and hefted it into my left hand. I took a
deep breath, looked over at the scrawny bastard hiding behind his
magical circle, and said “I’ll be back for you in a little bit.
Don’t bother goin’ nowhere.”

Then I waded into a mass of dead dudes
thicker than the mosh pit at a Metallica Concert. I laid onto the
Fat Ma’s trigger and just turned around in a slow circle, blowing
zombie brains around like a green, grey and red slip n’ slide.
Pieces of white bone, yellow skin and eye juice got blasted
straight through the backs of the skulls, and the heavy lead shot
was good about going through more than one brainpan before it
finally spent its energy and lodged in the second or third zombie
it hit. That little pirouette of doom, as I liked to think of it,
took out close to three dozen zombies in less than half a minute. I
flipped the heavy gun in my hand and buried the stock in another
monster’s forehead, then concentrated on tearing the apart with
Tiger.

The chainsaw was not as good a weapon for
zombie killing as I had expected. The first couple of normal-sized
zombie went down just fine, but the chain got hung up in the neck
of this great big old fat boy, and I lost valuable seconds pulling
it free and sawing the top of his head off. While I was distracted,
a little girl zombie jumped up on my back and started trying to
chew through the side of my neck. I don’t know if she had a taste
for fresh blood, or if redneck jugular is a particular delicacy in
the zombie kingdom, but my Carhartt denim shirt held up to undead
teeth pretty good, and I was able to reach over my head and throw
her up against a tree before she did any major damage.

That distracted me long enough for one of the
critters to walk up and impale himself on my chainsaw, gumming up
the works worse than a cedar tree after a heavy rainstorm. I let go
of Tiger and punched the thing in the face, then reached down and
drew Bertha. She barked seven times, clearing out a little space in
front of me, and bulldozed my way over to the edge of the
circle.

“
You still can’t get
through, moron!” Yelled the scrawny priest.

“
I don’t need to, jackass, I
just need them not to get to my back.” I turned and pressed my back
up against the magical barricade and faced the oncoming horde.
There had to be forty or more of the things all lumbering in my
direction. I put Bertha away, drew my kukris, and made ready with
the chop-chop.

They were on me in a flash, but I was ready.
The thick, curved blade of the kukri did me as well as it had
served the Indian Gurkhas for centuries. The heavy blade made for
good chopping, and every downstroke crushed a skull. I settled into
a rhythm of swing, crush the skull, kick the corpse down, swing the
other hand, crush the skull, kick the corpse down. After a while it
was like I was swimming in dead guys, and the bodies started to
pile up around me like sandbags. Just as my arms started to really
get tired, something completely out of character happened — I had
an idea.

I looked over at the nearest tiki torch,
which was just about two feet to my left, and saw the flame dancing
in the breeze from falling zombie bodies. “Hey shithead?” I asked
over my shoulder.

“
Yeah, dumbass?” The little
witch doctor replied from behind me.

“
What happens if your circle
breaks before these things are all dead or the sun comes
up?”

“
Well, that probably
wouldn’t be good for me. I would lose control over my minions, and
they might attempt to take some form of revenge up me. Fortunately
you can’t break my circle. Nothing bigger than a drop of water can
get past my magical barricade.” He let out a good old-fashioned
Bwa-ha-ha-ha villain laugh that I just
knew
he’d practiced in front of
mirror, and I sighed a little.

“
If you weren’t such a
little douche, I’d probably feel bad about this.” I said, sheathing
one knife and pulling a Bud out of my beer bandolier. I mourned the
waste of good American lager, then shook the beer up like a
baseball player after winning the pennant. When I felt the contents
were properly agitated, I popped the top on the can and directed
the spray of amber liquid straight onto the flame of the tiki
torch. The beer extinguished the flame instantly, and the smell of
domestic alcoholic goodness mixed with nasty citronella oil, making
my eyes water. But more importantly, the fire at one of the skinny
wizard’s cardinal points blowing out served to break his circle,
and I fell backwards onto the dirt, the wall at my back suddenly
gone.

I looked up at the necromancer, who stood
frozen at the sight of a couple of dozen grumpy zombies who were
suddenly less interested in the fat redneck on the ground than they
were the skinny idiot in front of them. He let out a yelp and dove
into the hatchback of his waiting Civic, pulling the glass rear
door closed behind him. The zombies quickly surrounded the car, but
without any real understanding of tools anymore, couldn’t get the
doors or the windows open. They walked into the car, bumped into
it, and stayed there, kinda like they knew they were supposed to be
doing something to somebody, but couldn’t remember what.

I stood up and looked around. About three
hours until sunrise, and I was in a graveyard with a bunch of
zombies, a voodoo priest in a compact car, and only four beers and
twenty-eight rounds of ammunition. I popped a beer and sat on a
headstone to wait. I was taking a leak on some family’s memorial
crypt as the sun peeked over the horizon for the first time, so I
missed the zombies turning back to dust and the effects of the
magic vanishing from the graveyard, but I got back in time to see
the little weasel crawl out of his car, still wearing the ugly
boots and the tribal mask.

“
Looking for these?” I
asked, holding out a set of car keys.

“
Where did you find
those?”

“
On the ground while you
were cowering in your car.”

“
They must have fallen out
when I was jumping around casting spells last night.” I didn’t ask
where they had fallen out of, since all he was wearing were boots
and a jock, I just dropped the keys and started looking around for
a place to wash my hands.

“
So what was all this crap
about, anyway?”

“
What crap?”

“
Kid, don’t screw with me. I
have been awake in a graveyard all night. I have brains all over my
favorite boots and what used to be a clean pair of jeans. I have a
couple of random zombie teeth stuck in my knuckles, there is no
bacon within half a mile and I am out of beer. If you don’t want me
to stomp a mudhole in your ass and walk it dry, I suggest you
commence to talking.”

“
Well, there’s this girl,
you see.”

“
There always is.” I
muttered.

“
What?”

“
How old are you,
kid?”

“
Twenty-four. But I’ll be
twenty-five next month.” He puffed himself up to try and make
himself look older, but that’s hard to do when you’re in a
graveyard with your buttcheeks flapping in the breeze at seven in
the morning.

“
That fits. You see, kid.
I’ve got a theory that whenever a guy, or a lesbian, but that part
has less data to back it up, under the age of thirty does something
spectacularly stupid, that there’s always a girl
involved.”

“
How often does your theory
turn out to be true?”

“
So far, one hundred per
cent of the time. Now go on. There’s a girl. You like her, but she
won’t give you the time of day.”

“
Well, kinda. We like each
other; at least she says she likes me. But she won’t go steady with
me until I can come up with seven thousand dollars
cash.”

“
Do I even want to know what
the money is for?”

“
She wants a boob job. It’s
tax-deductible, because of her work. She’s an exotic dancer at the
Ride ‘Em Cowboy. And she swears she’ll pay me back, but I’ve got to
come up with the money before the prices go up again.”

“
So you’re in love with a
stripper, who tells you that she likes you, and she’ll be your
girlfriend if you’ll buy her a new set of boobies?”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Take that stupid mask off.”
I reached out and snatched it off of him. He wasn’t a bad looking
kid. Certainly didn’t look like a rocket scientist, but he was no
freak show. Eyes in the right place, nose shaped roughly like what
a nose ought to be, one ear on each side of his head. All in all,
he was alright. A couple of leftover zits from high school maybe,
and he might have had a little of that ferrety look that skinny
people sometimes have, but he wasn’t hideous or
anything.

“
Why in the world do you
think you have to buy this girl a pair of boobs for her to like
you? Don’t you think a girl can like you for who you
are?”

“
Maybe some girls do, but
not this girl. And she’s the prettiest girl in the whole world,
mister. I know if you met her you’d see what I mean.”

“
Well, what’s her
name?”

“
Brandy.” I remembered her.
And her boobs.

“
Yeah, I saw her at the club
yesterday.”

“
Then you know why I’m doing
this.”

“
Yeah, ‘cause you’re an
idiot. Look, kid, lemme tell you something about women. Especially
women that take their clothes off for money. They are all after one
thing, and it ain’t the same thing all us guys are after. You
understand me?”

“
No.” This boy was obviously
dumber than a box of hammers.

“
Look. She don’t love you.
She loves the money she thinks she can get from you. You give her
that money the only thing you’re gonna get in return is bigger
boobs when you buy your next lap dance from her.”

“
That ain’t right! She loves
me! We’re gonna get out of this town and run away
together.”

“
Yeah, and I’m gonna be the
next spokesmodel for Jenny Craig?”

“
Really? How much weight you
gonna lose?”

I slapped him upside the head so hard he fell
to one knee. “Don’t be stupid son. Or at least try not to be as
stupid as you’ve been this week. You are tampering with things you
can’t control. You are raising the dead, boy! Don’t you get what
happens to people who mess with the forces of darkness?”

“
Well, I might go to hell,
but if I quit right after I get enough money and repent of my sins
and don’t do it again, I oughta be okay.”

“
What are you, Presbyterian?
You don’t get off that easy once you go down the dark path. Kid, I
wasn’t sent here to save you from yourself, I was sent here to kill
you.” I might have stretched the truth a little, but he didn’t need
to know that I was being paid to kill zombies and remove the
creator. Uncle Joe didn’t care how I did it, as long as the dead
people stayed dead in Columbia after I left.