Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers Read online

  It came running, actually, hurtling along the path. A singular mouth ripped into view in the center of the big, white, bumpy face, opened wide and showed teeth like daggers. As it came it howled, and inside its mouth were squirming worms and wiggling things made of shadow.

  John Henry grunted, raised that nine-pound hammer and swung it hard at the ground. He swung with all his might, and so intense was the swing, sweat popped all over his body, thick as a dose of smallpox. Down came that hammer. It struck the ground and the earth heaved, cracked. The crack spread wide, and again John Henry swung and struck the earth. The ground multi-cracked and swelled, and a smell like rain-dampened earth puffed up from the fissures.

  “Holy Hell,” Johnny said.

  In mid-gallop, incapable of slowing its pace, the beast slipped into the largest of the fissures, hung momentarily to the edges of the gap, its legs and arms scratching. Cars on either side of the hole tipped into it like tumbling beetle husks.

  Jumping splits and cracks in the earth, John Henry ran toward the thing, and leaped high, came down with that hammer on that horrid white head as if he were trying to drive a spike through the center of the earth.

  When that hammer struck that hammer sang, a ringing like the largest church bell that had ever had a clapper smashed against its insides. The white head cracked and split. But out of it, like black and white spiders, came re-formed creatures. The great body they had been a part of was nothing more than a shell now. It shattered and tumbled into the chasm, but the spidery things, the vampire’s new forms, rustled across the ground and came for John Henry.

  “Shit,” John Henry said.

  Elvis and Jenny heard the commotion, rushed to join it. But they didn’t get that far. They found that the biggest prize in this Cracker Jack box of horrors was blocking their path. Big Mama.

  Jenny let loose with the water gun.

  Water washed against the mound of meat like a creek against a mountain, but the blessings had power, and the water burned. There were eruptions of sputtering flesh and puffs of white stinking smoke, and the Big Mama opened her mouth and let out a blast of anger, a hot, hurricane wind that carried the odor of carrion.

  Elvis and Jenny were blown back and they went tumbling along the path between the cars. When they stopped rolling and struggled to their feet, Jenny’s water gun was burst open and she was drenched. Elvis had lost his weapon and a lot of pride, because as they rolled, before Jenny’s gun broke, she managed to shoot him in the ass with a flood of water. It had no effect other than wetness, but now, even under those dire straits, he felt embarrassed that the ass of his pants was filled with water.

  Elvis scrambled to recover his mace. It had rolled under one of the cars. He dropped on his stomach and grasped for it. It was just out of reach. He squirmed closer, but the old car had sagged in the front, the radiator dropping out of it like a bad lung, and he couldn’t get close enough to grab hold of the mace. He turned his head and took a peek under the car. The mountain of flesh, like a pile of ambulatory mashed potatoes, was sliding his way, and suddenly the mace seemed less important.

  “Come on!” Jenny said.

  “It doesn’t need encouragement,” Elvis said, thinking Jenny was offering a challenge to the monster.

  “I mean you. Run.”

  Partially lying under the sagging car (a Ford), Elvis glanced again. Yep. Bad-News-Mashed-Potatoes was twenty feet away at best, making a sucking sound against the ground as it squirmed forward, its wall-wide mouth open, its tongue licking at the air like a flag in a high wind, sword-sized teeth gleaming in the moonlight, saliva dripping from the corners of its mouth in little sticky waterfalls.

  Elvis finally got a thumb and finger pinch hold on the mace, backcrawled out from under the Ford, clutching it.

  That’s when the blob rolled right up on him. Jenny had not forsaken him. She stood her ground. They were both under its moon shadow.

  Elvis thought: Hadn’t Jenny said something about a secret weapon, something of that nature. If that was so, now was the time.

  Nothing. She stood beside him, breathing heavy.

  Elvis raised the mace. Magic mace or not, he felt it was like trying to stop a rhino with a matchstick.

  Then to their right there were lights, and there was a roar, and the chain-link fence collapsed as a massive semi-truck slammed through the fence and onto the lot. It hit the blob smack-dab-solid.

  Elvis could see now that the semi was pulling a big silver trailer with dougie’s doughnuts and breakfast foods written on the side, all the Os being smiling, gold doughnuts.

  The mound of cosmic mashed potatoes, momentarily stuck against the semi’s front, went sliding into the stacked cars, leaving what looked like a shit trail. Cars wobbled and collapsed with screeches and scrapes of metal. Out of their broken or open windshields and side glasses, balls of rotting and whimpering meat rolled and bounced. The semi kept pushing, some of the balls of flesh being smashed under its tires in explosions of leathery flesh and dried innards.

  But Big Mama was the one taking the brunt of its power. The semi was pushing her like a bulldozer pushing a mound of dirt. The semi smashed through a row of rusted cars, the trailer attached to it making a wide swing and a wild shimmy. It missed Elvis and Jenny by inches, and the motion managed to sling Big Mama off the front of the truck.

  Elvis thought the semi would flip due to the trailer, but it didn’t. The trailer swung back in the other direction, taking out a few stacked cars, then weaved back into line. He and Jenny watched the ass end of the trailer slip through a gap of parked cars like an enormous silver snake.

  Whoever was at the wheel was a driving sonofabitch.

  34

  IN THE SEMI, RIDING HIGH

  In the semi cab, leaning forward on the seat, sat Colonel Parker, clutching the truck’s steering wheel in a death grip. Beside him sat Blind Man, his cane in front of him, both hands clutching it. He rode the bounce like an experienced rodeo rider.

  “Fuck you!” yelled Colonel, as he popped the clutch, shifted gears and hit the gas, plowing right over the fallen vampire mama, squirting her in all directions.

  35

  MEANWHILE, BACK WITH JOHN HENRY AND JOHNNY AND THE VERY TENSE SITUATION OF THE MULTI-ARMED BEAST AND THE BADLY CRACKED EARTH

  The mad as hell giant crickets, which is what they looked like at that moment, united again, and re-formed the raging wad of monster, arms and legs wiggling out of it like hairs in the wind. One of its arms reached out and grabbed Johnny and threw him, bounced him off a car. Johnny got up with a shooting pain in his back. So far he had been about as helpful as foul language.

  John Henry was swinging the hammer and singing a war song, but now the thing they had been battling, Big Mama’s united team of cosmic vampire warriors, was splitting apart again. As the pieces hit the ground, they formed into naked men and women, clawing and growling at John Henry, some of them catching his hammer (splash) with their heads and bodies as it made its arc. One was even quick enough and bold enough to grab at the hammer. John Henry’s swing hoisted the thing into the air, dragging it along as the hammer swung wide and clipped the head off one of its comrades.

  Johnny charged back into the fray, but, suddenly—

  Lights through the car windows to his right.

  A motor growled.

  A raking sound of metal.

  Johnny felt a little wee run down his leg.

  The naked warriors scattered.

  And then the semi came smashing through the cars, knocking them about as if they were toys. Where its grill should be visible, was instead what looked like a massive wad of sourdough. It overlapped the windshield. Whoever was driving, was driving blind.

  Johnny leaped aside, car husks sliding around him, precariously close. Through the car windows he glanced the balls of humans, some still and not moving, some with sad eyes staring. It was so much like a bad dream, Johnny felt he might awaken, might in that moment be jolted out of his nightmare to find himself in bed.<
br />
  But jolted he was not.

  The semi was coming right for John Henry.

  John Henry danced out of the way of the falling and sliding cars, leaped to the hood of an old blue Caddy that was sailing by, rode it like a surfboard until it clashed up against cars on the opposite side of the row, knocking John Henry off. He balled up and rolled, came up still clutching his hammer.

  The semi was bearing down on him.

  John Henry tried to move out of the way, and he almost made it, but the side of the truck clipped him. Away he went, air-tumbling, his broken arm dangling, his hammer lost from his grasp, a dislocated hip, and a big hole waiting for him to plunge into; a massive asshole he had created with a mighty blow of his hammer.

  As John Henry felt himself dropping into the split in the earth, as the darkness down there rose up to meet him, he felt himself stop. He screamed with pain, but… He was no longer falling.

  He looked up.

  Johnny was lying on the ground, leaning into the hole, clutching John Henry’s broken arm in a vise-like clench.

  “Hang tough,” Johnny said, and he began to drag John Henry up.

  As the semi rolled by the hole, Big Mama still attached, it honked once, slammed through the cars on the opposite side of the row, veered suddenly due to impact, tipped to the side, righted itself, and smashed through the junkyard fence on the opposite side where it had entered. The creature on its bow was sent through the gaps in the fence like fresh dough shoved through a strainer.

  The thing that was the Big Mama disappeared beneath the semi. Colonel checked the rearview mirror, said, “Goddamnit.” The dough-like pieces heaved together and remade Big Mama. She

  slithered away, purposely dropped into the large hole from which John Henry had been rescued just as the sun rose up and the night fell down.

  36

  JOHNNY'S JOURNAL:

  JOHN HENRY DISCOVERS HE NEEDS TO LEARN HOW TO WIPE HIS ASS WITH HIS LEFT HAND

  I guess, for a moment, it seemed we had the old gal, if such a term applies, on the run. Had her squirming over the ground like animated fettuccini.

  But by the time I pulled John Henry out of the hole, dragged him to rest against the tire of the parked semi, I saw her fall into the hole and disappear. I left Jack with his back against the tire, went to the gap, and cautiously peaked over the lip.

  Darkness. That was all there was to see beyond a few feet down. The sun spread over the hole and there was light on the rim and somewhat inside, but way down it was black as Attila’s dreams, and then the earth trembled. I rushed back to where Elvis and Jenny stood by the semi, and watched the hole collapse into itself, pulling in earth and old cars from all sides, filling up, leaving only a depression in the earth made of debris. A thick puff of dust settled gently over what was now a ragged depression in the earth.

  None of the minions, nor the Big Mama, were in sight.

  The morning covered us with light.

  The Colonel climbed out of the semi, and Blind Man climbed out too, and as Blind Man came, tapping the earth with his cane, the sunlight caused his paper-white skin to glow as if soaked in bright lemon paint.

  “Eat my ass,” I said, directing my anger at the crumpled earth and wadded cars where the hole had been.

  I found John Henry’s hammer, picked it up (that motherfucker is heavy) and toted it back to him. He took hold of it and lifted it with his uninjured arm, and said, “Took you long enough to get me out of a fucking hole.”

  “I was a little tired from watching you run,” I said.

  John Henry grinned at me.

  We all put on our glasses, except Blind Man, just to check around to make sure invisible monsters weren’t sneaking up on us, but there was nothing. Shadows didn’t even want to hang around under the eaves or the edges of those old buildings, bright as the sunlight was, and it left us scratching our heads.

  Elvis said, “Colonel, that was good timing.”

  “Accident,” the Colonel said.

  “Where’d you get the semi?” I said.

  “Stole it,” Blind Man said. “I hot wired it.”

  “You?” I said.

  “I’m blind, not helpless,” Blind Man said. “The Colonel helped some.”

  “I helped a lot. He almost set the truck on fire. I don’t know how, but he almost did.”

  “Bullshit,” Blind Man said.

  “You know, this truck is ruined,” I said.

  We all looked (except Blind Man) where the truck was easing steam from the radiator, dripping water out beneath it with a smell of scalded radiator fluid.

  “Yeah,” the Colonel said, “we’re just going to leave it here. Sorry for whoever owns it, but when our assault vehicle didn’t arrive, we decided to find our own.”

  “Did we finish off…IT?” I asked.

  “Best we did was rip the ass out of its shorts,” John Henry said. “It didn’t like the sunlight mostly.”

  “So it’s still here?” I said.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Blind Man said. “I believe it has passed to the other dimension. The ugly one.”

  “The stolen truck,” Colonel said. “I’m going to come back to that subject. I suggest we just sort of walk off and leave it. Now.”

  We took off our glasses and did just that.

  I guess we must have gone about a mile down the road when we came upon a filling station. Elvis, thinking he might be recognized, stayed outside, leaned against the wall with the rest of us, while Colonel made a call for someone to come pick us up.

  While we were waiting there, a little black boy on a bicycle rode up to where we were, said, “Y’all sho are a strange bunch.”

  “That we are,” Blind Man said.

  “You all white. What causes that?”

  “Drank too much milk when I was young.”

  “Ah, shit now. That can’t be it. Drinking milk can’t do no such thing.”

  “I was black as you.”

  “How do you know I’m black.”

  “I can hear skin color.”

  “You can’t do that neither. You blind. Milk do that too?”

  “No. I asked too many questions of strangers, and my eyes went out. It happens. You ought think about that.”

  “Fuck you, ghost,” and away the little boy went, pedaling down the street as fast as he could go.

  I glanced at Elvis. I could tell he was a little butt-hurt. The kid hadn’t recognized him.

  “You’re a bad man, Blind Man,” John Henry said.

  37

  JOHNNY'S JOURNAL:

  EN ROUTE, AND BACK AT THE HAUNTED HACIENDA

  A long black limousine came and picked us up and carried us back to the house. It was a somber ride, us sitting in long seats facing one another. After a moment, Elvis said, “If this thing ain’t dead, it’s got to get dead. For Jack.”

  There was a pause, then: “For Jack,” Jenny said, and then everyone said it, except the Colonel.

  He leaned back in his seat, pushed his ample belly out, said, “Never thought I’d say it, but we might be in over our head.”

  “So we just let it go, let it seep into the ground, hide under a turd, whatever it does, and we forget it?” Elvis said.

  “Nothing like that,” Colonel said. “But, we may need reinforcements. It’s never happened before, as this is the cream of the crop, but now… I don’t know.”

  “If we’re the cream of the crop,” John Henry said, “and it handed us our ass, killed Jack, fucked my arm up, that means we give up? What’re you saying?”

  “Once again, reinforcements.”

  “This is about us, and it’s about that thing and all those other things, and it’s about Jack,” I said. “We call in more people, we just got more people. Bunch of greenhorns. We’ve been doing this awhile, and we’re the ones cut out to do it.”

  “Not so far,” Colonel said.

  “I’ve never heard you go negative,” Elvis said.

  “I’ve never felt negative before. I’m wo
ndering if it can be stopped, with reinforcements or without. This is different, the connection with the other dimension, this shape-shifting ability is far superior to some of those we’ve dealt with, you know, people turning to bats, rats, insects and shadows. This… Well, it’s different. There’s the Big Mama, and there’s all those minions. They can’t even make up their mind what they are.”

  “Different, but I’m not giving up,” Elvis said. “You want to close down shop, you do that, but me, I’ll stay after this sonofabitch until the last dog dies and the fleas on it.”

  “I’m with Elvis,” John Henry said.

  Everyone else agreed.

  “All right,” Colonel said, “but the first thing I think we should do is call in reinforcements for one thing, and one thing only. Let’s have them run bulldozers over that lot, set it on fire, raze it, blow it up, tell the city it was a gas line explosion, something like that. Let’s fuck that place over until there’s nothing left but the mineral rights. That way we see if it’s still there, and if not, we rid it of that place to hide. Figure our next step from there.”

  “You think it went home, so to speak?” Jenny asked.

  “It and its minions like it here. Less barren, but it does seem to come and go. What it goes back for I have no idea. There’s nothing there except what you all saw under the influence of Rococo Blue.”

  “So they may still be close by,” I asked.

  Colonel nodded. “Possible. Shapeshifting gives them lots of options. And they have to eat.” He looked at Elvis, then at Jenny. “And they want these two especially, all of us for that matter, because of who we are.”

  “Charisma again,” Elvis said.

  Well, we came to the house and the limo let us out and then glided away. The sun was up high, and it was sort of hot, and growing hotter, by the time we came up to the door. The wasp’s nest was active, and wasps buzzed around it and dive-bombed us, one of them hit Jenny solid.

  “Goddamn it,” she said. “I’ve been stung. I hate those things.”