Scattered, Smothered, & Chunked

Voodoo Children I rolled into town a couple hours before sunset, the better to get the lay of the land. Of course, my idea of getting the lay of the land pretty much meant pulling up in my F-250 in front of the only titty bar in Columbia, Tennessee to see what the afternoon shift looked like. I’ve always been able to learn about a town by the level of talent working a pole at four in the afternoon. If the saggy boobs and cottage cheese butt cheeks on display at the Ride ‘Em Cowboy Saloon were any indication, Columbia had seen its better days. To start with there were only about five guys in there plus me. There was a bartender, a DJ who looked like a meth addict on the tail end of three-month tweakfest, an old man asleep with his face down on the bar, and two fat rednecks that must have been what passed for successful businessmen in that part of Tennessee. They had the red faces of the terminally drunk, more chins than a Chinese phonebook, and the laugh of guys who expected the whole room to laugh with them. I hated them on sight and figured if I couldn’t get a decent lap dance I’d at least get a good fight in before the sun set and the real ass whoopin’ started. I took up a seat at the end of the stage and looked up at a bored girl with stringy bleach-blonde hair and eight-inch clear lucite heels. She had tattoos covering her legs, track marks covering her arms, and a g-string covering her crotch. Otherwise she was naked as the day she was born and probably just as skinny. She saw me sit down and threw me the half-smile that says “yeah, it sucks, but we’re here together, so why not at least stare at my t**s for a while?” At least, that’s what I figured it said, so I gave her a dollar and waved a hand at what passed for a cocktail waitress. It didn’t surprise me that the cocktail waitress was hotter than the stripper, that had made its way onto my checklist of nasty strip club qualities some years back. She jiggled her way over to me and I handed her a twenty. “Gimme a pitcher of Bud.” “Gimme another twenty bucks.” “I don’t want a dance yet, I just want some beer.” “Pitcher’s thirty, jackass.” I handed her another twenty and turned my attention back to the stage. Blondie was standing in front of me staring down from her stilts. I gave her another dollar and waved her off toward other customers before I remembered there weren’t any other customers. She clomped off up the runway to the pink shimmer curtain and I heard the DJ announce that Brandy was coming up. He repeated himself, and I heard a thump and a yelp from backstage, then a sleepy black girl stumbled out onto the stage and started walking around in a bit of a daze. My beer made it back about then, along with ten dollars in singles for my change. I left one on the tray for the waitress and motioned for her to sit. “Join me?” “I can’t. Got customers.” “No you don’t.” “You’re right. I don’t drink beer.” “And I ain’t paying whatever they’re asking for better booze. So sit down and take a load off. And help me beat the girls off with a stick.” She laughed at that and looked around. There were two girls taking turns gyrating on the businessmen, and the only other girl in sight was the sleepy Brandy, who’d obviously been awakened backstage to come dance. “I’m Wendy,” she said as she sat down and poured out two plastic cups full of watery beer. I downed my first cup in one long swallow, then poured the cup full again. “You thirsty?” “Kinda, why?” “Then you keep the cups.” I took a long pull off the pitcher and just held it. It keeps things easier to just drink out of the pitcher most times for me. My hands are too big for most normal cups, and I’m less likely to break a pitcher without thinking about it. “What brings you to town?” She asked. “Hunting.” “It’s not hunting season for another month. Trust me, once it is you won’t be able to swing a dead cat in here without hitting some jerkoff in an orange vest bragging about the one he almost got.” “The deer or the girl?” “Yeah.” She toasted my pitcher with her cup and I caught her taking stock of what she saw. It didn’t bother me, when you’re this damn big you get used to the staring. And the questions, which I figured were about to start. “You a wrestler or football player or something?” Right on cue. “Or something. I’m a hunter.” “What does that even mean?” I leaned in close, setting the pitcher on the edge of the stage. I locked gazes with the girl, my brown eyes with her green ones. I stared deep into her eyes and said “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” “What the f**k are you talking about? Are you high?” “It’s Shakespeare, dammit. A buddy of mine said quoting Shakespeare to a chick was guaranteed to get me laid.” Damn that Skeeter, I should have know better. That boy couldn’t get laid in a whorehouse. And if I kept listening to him, I wouldn’t either. “Well your friend was a dumbass. But if you wanted to get laid, you shoulda said something.” “Yeah?” “Yeah, then I wouldn’t have wasted my time and you wouldn’t have wasted your beer. I ain’t screwing you. One, I don’t mix business with funtime. And two, you’re a big boy. If you’re that big everywhere…” “And I am, I promise you.” I grinned, showing my recently repaired smile, new false tooth and all. “Then there’s reason number two right there. You’re liable to split me right in two! So why don’t we just have a beer, make stupid jokes about the floppy titties on Brandy up there, and then you can maybe get a lap dance once the night shift comes in.” “I won’t be here when the night shift gets here.” “Why not?” “I gotta work. A brother’s gotta earn a living, you know.” “Yeah, about that. You never did say what you hunted.” “You’re right, I didn’t.” I drained the last of my pitcher, dropped a couple of bucks on the stage for Brandy and her floppy t**s, and headed out the door. Whoever invented titty bars must have installed a damn time machine in every one. I coulda sworn I’d only been in there long enough to have a beer or two, and maybe irritate one cocktail waitress, but somehow it had gone from four in the afternoon to full dark, and my wallet was two hundred bucks lighter when I got into the truck. I put the little Bluetooth thingy in my ear, pushed the button and said “You there, Skeeter?” “Yeah, boss. I’m here.” Came the voice on the other end of the phone. He even sounded skinny, something I never managed to understand. “Well that thing about quoting Shakespeare to women is bullshit, Skeeter. I no more got laid with that Horatio bullshit than I did that time I gave Erlene a cactus instead of flowers for her birthday. That’s the last time I take advice on women from a homo.” “The fact that I’m gay has nothing to do with the fact that you’re a complete disaster with the opposite s*x. I bet you tried that line on some floozy at a topless bar, didn’t you?” I took a minute to look for the camera before answering. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out the little s**t had me bugged. “No, I didn’t. I was talking to a nice lady. A librarian, I’ll have you know.” “You usually find those in libraries, Bubba. Not in places called the Ride ‘Em Cowboy Saloon.” “And how do you know I’m at the Ride ‘Em?” “I track your GPS and cell phone, remember?” Oh yeah. He started doing that when I got bit by a manifestation of Apep, the Egyptian snake-demon. I kinda wandered off into the desert for a couple weeks after that. Skeeter was worried about me. It was cute, how upset he was. All I ended up with was a hell of a sunburn, but he wanted to keep track of me ever since. “Alright, alright, I was in a titty bar. But that don’t explain the thing with Erlene!” “Should I even bother to remind you that she’s your cousin?” “Second cousin once removed. We’re barely blood related at all. But anyway, where am I going and what am I killing?” Skeeter never told me anything about a case until it was time for the killing. He said he didn’t want to clutter my thoughts. I figured he just didn’t like repeating himself, since I usually only about half listened to him anyway. “You’re headed out of town to an old cemetery. There’s been a rash of zombie attacks.” “Zombies? Slow zombies or fast zombies? I don’t like fast zombies. Fast zombies ain’t right, just not natural.” “All evidence points to these as voodoo zombies, so they would be slow. And you don’t have to worry about their saliva, either.” “I don’t spend much time thinking about zombie slobber, Skeeter.” “And this time that’s okay. Now get on the road and I’ll explain more as you drive.” Skeeter gave me the skinny as I cruised through the sorry excuse for a town. You like that? It’s funny, ‘cause he’s skinny, and I said…never mind. I guess you had to be there. Well anyways, apparently there had been a bunch of robberies on the eastern side of Columbia, where what passed for hillbilly high society lived. One of the robbers had been caught in the act, which was usually a good thing, because robbers tended to talk when arrested. Problem was, this robber had a long criminal record. A criminal record that ended in 1987, when he died in a drunk driving accident. So the local constabulary (I don’t know why the hell Skeeter can’t just call them the po-po like everybody else) had consulted with the nearest Catholic Church, which happened to be in Nashville. Nashville didn’t have very many exorcists on staff right now, thanks to a bad case of non-belief in these here United States, so they kicked it up the food chain until they finally got to Skeeter’s uncle Joe. Now most of Skeeter’s family didn’t talk to Uncle Joe, because of the whole turning Catholic thing, but most of them didn’t talk to Skeeter neither, because of the whole liking boys thing. So Skeeter and Uncle Joe got to be buds, because they was the only people who talk to either of them at the family reunions, except for Aunt Linda, who had cerebral palsy and didn’t know enough to do anything but love everybody. So whenever something came across Uncle Joe’s desk that seemed to need my particular talents, he sent his favorite nephew a little email, and we went out and killed a bunch of something. We weren’t officially on the church’s payroll, but since we weren’t all that holy, we got to keep any loot the bad guys we smoked were hiding. And supernatural bad guys usually kept some pretty good loot around, so we made ends meet. And when we didn’t, Skeeter whored me out as security for rock concerts. I pulled into the cemetery at around ten o’clock, which I figured would be good zombie-raising time. It was dark, and the zombies would have plenty of time to shamble off to wherever they were being sent, steal stuff and bring it back before the sun came up. I didn’t know if voodoo zombie could run around in daylight or not, but I preferred to do my killing in the dark. Just always seemed fitting that way. I knew I’d come to the right place because the gate was wide open. Most cemeteries are pretty good about locking the gate at dark. Not usually for keeping things in, but mostly for keeping kids out. I never saw the appeal to making out in a graveyard myself, but I’ve been killing things that go bump in the night for a long time, so I reckon the place has kinda lost its luster for me. The three dead guys walking down the path to the gate were the other indication I’d found the right place. I pulled the truck into the graveyard and pulled the gate shut behind me. I took a piece of chain out of my toolbox and fastened the gates shut. I didn’t have a lock, so I ran a piece of baling wire through the links to hold the chain together. I kinda figured zombies wouldn’t have the manual dexterity to unwind a piece of wire. If they did, my troubles were just starting.