Swamp Music: A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella by John G. Hartness

Author:John G. Hartness [Hartness, John G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Falstaff Books
Published: 2020-05-26T04:00:00+00:00

He was right. I didn’t like it. I even said as much, more than once, as we waited in line to buy our tickets to get into Clyde’s Colossal Reptile Extravaganza and Alligator Emporium. We stood out a little, given the amount of mud on our clothes, but not too much. More than one person in line with us looked like they had just slithered out of the swamp on their bellies, and ours wasn’t the only airboat tied up to the dock.

“This is a terrible idea,” I muttered.

“You got a better one?” Joe said, his voice just above a growl.

“No.”

“Then shut up and buy the tickets.”

I did as I was told, showing my AAA card to get five percent off admission and still feeling my eyes bug out a little at the ticket price. We paid for the Park Pass, which gave us all day admission to wander around the gator farm and bought the cheap seats to the last Extravaganza of the day. I figured if we were stuck in this redneck hell, we might as well get a show out of it. Maybe I’d get lucky and Clyde would feed a DEMON agent to a gator.

Becca stayed behind, waiting outside the electrified fence at a spot Joe marked on his cell phone’s GPS. She figured that there had been enough bad blood between her family and Gator Clyde that her picture was probably number one on his Do Not Fly list at the front gate. Me and Joe walked in without incident, and I had to give them props for the way they shuffled us from the ticket counter through a pavilion dedicated to educational displays about alligators, snakes, and other swamp-dwelling creatures like herons and snapping turtles.

Right by the exit of the education pavilion was a big rack of cheap digital cameras, disposable cameras, binoculars, colorful maps, and glossy guidebooks of the park, all for sale at prices that made me choke a little. I thought about buying a bottle of water, then I saw the price on those and decided if I couldn’t find a water fountain, I’d sooner drink out of a mud puddle than pay that much money. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve drank questionable things off the ground.

It was late in the afternoon, with only about forty-five minutes before the final show of the day, so all the foot traffic was moving at a pretty good clip around the loop the whole park was built in. It was built in such a way as you couldn’t go straight to the big plaza where they held the shows, you had to walk through the whole park to get there, which would send you past a couple of kiosks with sunglasses, more maps, and more cameras, plus a couple of small full-service restaurants set in the far back of the park, right about the midpoint of the long loop through.

The displays and habitats actually were pretty good, especially for a private zoo. The

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