Voodoo Children - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Short Story Read Online Free

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