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

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,