Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors (40 page)

Weasel started giggling insanely and fell off his log. His chortles could be heard from the weeds like a madman in some forgotten asylum.

“I’ll tell you one thing, Mason, Bambi’s one dead deer. That motherfucker killed my goddamn dog!” He looked down at the dog’s corpse. “Oh, Get, what in the hell did he do to you?”

Billy Bob suddenly awoke and sat up. One hand went to the bulging knot that sat in the middle of his head like a third eye and the other reached for the thirty ought six.

“Man,” he said chuckling to himself.
 
“I just had the weirdest dream. There was this deer you see,” he said levering himself back onto the log and grabbing a beer. “There was this deer and he spoke to me. He said, ‘You asshole. We are tired of this shit. Prepare to die.” Billy Bob chuckled again until his eyes rested on the battered corpse of Get.

He noticed Mason and
Rolly
alternately staring at the darkness between the trees and him, aiming down the lengths of their guns. He studied the ground and saw the prints. He squatted and ran a hand lightly over the powdery ridges, his knuckles around the gun tightening until they were white. Suddenly, he stood. He grabbed his pack full of shells and slung it over his back, then gripped the rifle at port arms.

“Hey guys, I am just
gonna
run back to the truck and check
somethin
,” he said, his steps getting quicker and quicker. As he hit the forest edge, he broke into a run, leaving
Rolly
and Mason gaping at his departure.

It was a few seconds before
Rolly
broke the silence with a question. “What did he mean the deer said, ‘Prepare to die?’ All I heard was ‘
Ixtli
’ or what-the fuck.”

Mason turned to answer, but they both froze as Billy Bob’s screams pierced the air from far off to their left. It was silenced by a roar.

“Oh fuck, Mason, that was a goddamn bear!”
Rolly
shouted, his gun shaking as his eyes roamed around the dark trees, trying to penetrate the blackness. He glanced hurriedly up and noticed Mason’s ass shimmying up a tree. “Where in the hell you
goin
’, Mason? You
ain’t
goin
’ to get very far
hidin
’ up in a damn tree.”

“You got a better idea?” Mason asked, not bothering to turn around as he struggled to hold onto his gun and climb up at the same time.

Rolly
had to acknowledge that he didn’t, and began to follow his friend. Weasel, who had sat up when they weren’t looking, watched them like a little kid fascinated with monkeys at the zoo.

Rolly
and Mason both managed to find a good-sized branch to perch themselves upon and began to study the ground below. Each snap and rustle made their hearts leap in their chests.

“What about him?” Mason asked, indicating Weasel, who had found the marshmallows and was toasting several over the fire, oblivious to reason and common sense.

“What about him?”
Rolly
replied rhetorically, checking his gun to make sure the safety was off. “If he don’t have enough sense to defend himself, he
ain’t
our problem. If we want to get out of this, we’re going to have to worry about ourselves.”

It’s like that weird comic strip
, Mason thought as he studied the ground below for signs of attack.
What in the hell was that called? The Far Side. The one where the animals were always talking like humans.

“You know something, Mason?”
Rolly
asked, a crooked smile on his face. “One can’t help but recognize the irony in this situation, us being hunters and all.”

Mason laughed aloud and Weasel looked up at them curiously. “That’s why I like you,
Rolly
. No matter how bad things get, you never lose your sense of humor. You lost two wives—your brother was killed last year in that motorcycle accident, Get’s dead. Your mama—”

“Uh, Mason, just now might not be a good time to bring up Mama, may she rest in peace.”

“Sorry,
Rolly
, I—” he looked down, and bit his tongue. He ignored the pain and the rivulet of blood that seeped down his chin.

A spiked buck and a black bear strolled into the clearing like two friends out for a romp, the bear walking on its two hind legs like a human. Weasel began to chuckle, clapping his hands with glee. He placed a hotdog upon a stick and held it out to his new ‘friends.’

“Bambi want some pig?” he asked, giggling.

The deer leaned down and smelled the proffered gift, recoiling in almost human disgust. It glanced at the bear, who, with a quick swipe of its paw, removed Weasel’s hand, sending it slapping sickeningly into the trunk of the tree that Mason and
Rolly
were hiding in. Weasel screamed once and then stopped as his throat was removed an instant later. The wet fountain of blood hissed red into the campfire as Weasel, a split second later, joined it, his hair crackling as his skull caught fire.

“
Ixtli
!” shouted the deer. “
Ixtli
trat
!”

“So what’s ‘
trat
’ mean?” asked
Rolly
giving their position away.

“I bet it means
Die redneck
,” replied Mason, switching aim back and forth from one target to another, unable to decide which to kill first.
Rolly
solved the problem.

The bear looked up at them and roared, falling over, its head exploding in a spray of red mist.

“Take that you Yogi Bear motherfucker!”
Rolly
shouted from his branch. “You and Boo
Boo
ain’t
gonna
be
stealin
’ the picnic baskets around Yellowstone anymore, are
ya
!”

“
Ixtli
!” the deer shrieked and vanished back into the woods. Mason eyed
Rolly
, studying his friend. That last line about Yogi Bear was a bit much, even considering the situation.

Rolly
glared back at Mason with wild eyes and a huge shit-eating grin. “Hey, Hey, Boo
Boo
!” He shouted out hysterically. Suddenly, he stopped, his face serious once again. “I just figured out something, Mason.”

“What’s that?” Mason asked, staring at his friend cautiously.

“Bears can climb trees.”

“The bear’s dead,
Rolly
,” said Mason, his worry over his friend’s sanity escalating.

“Ever read Goldilocks? Everyone knows there’s three bears. We got one earlier. I just killed me one, now. That leaves one more,”
Rolly
began giggling, sounding eerily like Weasel. “And I bet we taste just fucking right. Human porridge. That’s what we are Mason. Human
fuckin
’ porridge.”

Mason nodded gravely at his funny farm bound friend. He looked down and patted his shotgun. “Well, he’s not going to be climbing this tree, I can tell you that.”

“
Shhh
!”
Rolly
hissed. “Here they come again.”

What looked like the same spiked buck walked into the clearing, this time followed by three others and two bears. As the animals began to talk amongst themselves in that strange language,
Rolly
elbowed Mason. “See,” he whispered too loudly. “I told you there was three.” His smile was too wide, too happy, too insane.

“Don’t shoot at them,” Mason suggested with a whisper as
Rolly
nodded. “Maybe they’ll go away after awhile. They may not know we’re here.”

Suddenly,
Rolly
, who had been shifting position, fell to the ground with a shriek and a loud
whooompf
.

The animal’s conversation suddenly stopped as each turned and regarded
Rolly
, sprawled in a lump of arms and legs. There was a few seconds of complete silence before the animals looked over at him and began to cackle, their bodies shaking with mysterious hilarity. It was the scariest sound that Mason had ever heard.

The bear was on
Rolly
in a second, a mass of fur, swinging claws and blood sprays. It was then that he finally screamed; a thin whine that went up and up until it was replaced by the wet sounds of the bears feeding on flesh.
 
Mason watched as
Rolly’s
head, still wearing the John Deere hat, rolled against the broken body of Get, a look of utter surprise still on the unmarred face.

The deer watched, like an audience at a ball game, every once in awhile speaking to each other and breaking out into laughter that sounded like a mixture of a human and a cat. Mason, who had been almost invisible among the leaves and kudzu, leaned down on the branch to relieve the ache in his arm and then watched with queasy fascination as his cigarette lighter fell to the ground below, hitting with an audible thud.

The animals all stopped moving at once. In an almost slow motion maneuver they all looked up, piercing Mason with their hate. He felt the urine run into his jeans with a hot rush, soaking and warming his crotch. He opened fire with his shotgun, getting two deer and a bear before he ran out of ammunition.

“Jesus wept,” Mason whispered, dropping his empty gun to the ground below. “Now what?”

The animals were pouring into the clearing. A pack of wolves, several slim red foxes, a dozen or so squirrels, three white rabbits, a trio of chipmunks and a huge white possum that appeared to swagger with each step. They began to circle the campfire in a strange dance, bumping and grinding, playful bites mixed with nips and barks of glee.
 

“I’m fucked.”

Mason watched, wishing he had written that great novel, or a book of short stories. Hell, he would have settled on being the best graffiti artist in town; ‘cause he saw that one of the bears had reached into the campfire and was now holding a flaming brand before him, the flames licking promisingly into the air.

“Smoky and his buddies have just discovered fire,” Mason said to his dead friends. He couldn’t help but smile, despite the situation.

“People don’t start forest fires. Animals do,” Mason growled madly in his best Smoky the Bear impression. It was the last thing he said.

Weston
Ochse
(pronounced 'Oaks) (1965 - Present) lives in Southern Arizona with his wife, and fellow author, Yvonne Navarro, and Great Danes, Pester Ghost Palm Eater, Goblin Monster Dog and Mad Dog
Ghoulie
Sonar Brain. For entertainment he races tarantula wasps, wrestles rattlesnakes, and bakes in the noonday sun. His work has won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, been finalists for Bram Stoker Awards for Long Fiction and Short Fiction, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for short fiction. His work has also appeared in anthologies, magazines and professional writing guides. His novels include Scarecrow Gods, Empire of Salt and Blaze of Glory. He thinks it's damn cool that he's had stories in comic books.

Weston holds Bachelor's Degrees in American Literature and Chinese Studies from Excelsior College. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from National University. Weston is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer and current intelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been to more than fifty countries and speaks Chinese with questionable authority. Weston is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a purple belt in
Ryu
Kempo
Jujitsu and a green belt in the Hawaiian martial art of
Kuai
Lua
.

Visit Weston online

www.westonochse.com

David Whitman is the author of the novel
Harlan
(a darkly comic tale of teenage suicide). He is also the co-author of the new collection
Appalachian Galapagos: A Scary Rednecks Collection
. Other works include his critically acclaimed novella
DeadFellas
(soon to be made into a major motion picture).

David's award-winning short fiction has been published in over 100 publications, including
Gothic.Net
,
Fangoria
,
Scarlet Letters
,
Black October
,
Twilight Showcase
,
The Edge: Tales of Suspense
,
Deviant Minds
,
Electric Wine
,
Imaginary Worlds
,
Mindmares
, and
Blood Fetish
.

He has received several honorable mentions in Ellen
Datlow
and Terry
Windling's
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
.