Dirty Laundry Read online

  DIRTY LAUNDRY Copyright 2015 by J.D. Monroe.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Editing by Rhonda Helms

  Cover Design by Steve Novak

  Book Design and Ebook Formatting by J.D. Monroe

  Publisher: Mighty Fine Books, LLC

  ISBN: 978-1-944142-02-5

  First Edition: September 2015

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For all the bad girl in all of us...

  DIRTY LAUNDRY

  Trying to get blood out of clothing is a major pain in the ass. Generally speaking, Charity Pierson finds it’s better to avoid getting it on herself entirely, but she also remembers what her uncle used to say: we make plans, and God laughs. Appropriate, considering how he met his grisly end. So she’s learned a few tricks just in case she finds herself splattered in blood.

  Like tonight.

  First, time is of the essence. The longer blood soaks into clothes—like her favorite pair of jeans—the harder it is to get out. Once it dries, she’s got a better chance of winning a thousand bucks on a scratch-off lotto ticket.

  This is why she’s breaking one of her mama’s cardinal rules of hunting. Don’t shit where you eat. Her mother used to say it all the time, and although she had a way of misusing idioms, Charity got the point. Even when she works under the shadow of night, it’s easy to attract unwanted attention with a stray gunshot or suspicious-looking tarp in the bed of her truck.

  That’s why she clears out of town as soon as the job is done. When the ghosts are at ease, the corpses are back in the ground, and dust has returned to dust, then good little hunters need to get on the road.

  But her favorite jeans are wrecked.

  Hunting the undead is hell on a girl’s wardrobe, and she’s not exactly rolling in the Benjamins. This pair is a lucky find from a consignment shop; her sister told her they ran eighty bucks or more new. And they look so good on her. She’s washed them dozens of times in dozens of fluorescent-lit laundromats in tiny towns just like this one. They’re soft and velvety under her fingers. And they’ve got just enough room that she can get away with a heaping pile of cheese fries after a good hunt.

  So while she knows she should already be thirty miles down the interstate from Leland, Alabama, she turns her truck the opposite way and finds a twenty-four-hour laundromat a quarter mile from where she just finished a job. With the stinking, dripping evidence still under a tarp in the bed of her truck, she strips out of her jeans and changes into a pair of ratty sweatpants and oversized T-shirt. She has enough sense to stow her concealed .45 in the glovebox before grabbing her laundry bag and heading into the laundromat.

  Big Ed’s All-Nite Wash seems to have seen its last update sometime when Reagan was in office. The industrial-sized machines lining the walls are beige, and Charity can’t be sure if it’s from dirt or age. Two gray plastic tables are shoved together in the middle of the open center to make a folding area.

  A change machine and a Coke machine flank the door to the unisex restroom like they’re standing guard. No snack machine. Too bad. She’s hungry, and the Subway on the other end of the strip mall is already closed.

  The only other person in the laundromat is a teenage attendant in a faded red Big Ed’s T-shirt who’s too engrossed in something on his phone to notice her walking in. Oversized white headphones cover his ears. She could probably cut the change machine open with a chainsaw and escape with a duffel bag full of quarters without ever catching his attention.

  All the better. She dumps out the contents of her canvas laundry bag. A small jug of generic brand detergent thumps onto the table, followed by a spill of dirty clothes with the dark-stained jeans sitting conspicuously on top. There’s a definite funk of decay and dirt coming from them. She wrinkles her nose and shoves them aside, then sorts the rest of her laundry into lights and darks. A stained blue tank top catches her eye, and she holds it up to the light. There’s a splatter of brown down the side. She braces herself for the worst, then presses it to her nose. In her line of work, it could be anything. The fibers smell like stale coffee.

  Phew.

  She throws the shirt back into its pile with the darks, then loads two adjacent washers with her clothes. After dumping in a capful of detergent each, she feeds the machines a handful of quarters and leaves them.

  Now her jeans.

  Trick number two of blood removal: unseasoned meat tenderizer. She grew up watching her mother scrubbing stubborn stains out of her daddy’s shirts with it, and it always worked. It was really the salt, but her mother swore the tenderizer worked way better. However, the unseasoned part was important. Charity’s sister, Patience, once made the mistake of buying Cajun Fire seasoning, and she smelled like a steakhouse for months. Charity didn’t mind. One, she was a big fan of steak. Two, it was an exceedingly rare delight to have a blunder like that to mock Patience for, and she milked it for all it was worth.

  Now she keeps a small jar of meat tenderizer in her laundry bag. It’s nowhere near the strangest thing she has to buy on a regular basis, though it does look strange sitting on a grocery store conveyor belt along with dryer sheets and toothpaste.

  Charity grabs the plastic jar out of the bag and scans the laundromat. There’s no sink, so she heads to the single restroom with her jeans crumpled in a ball. She flips the light on.

  The bathroom smells like lemon air freshener and the faintest hint of crap, like the attendant just left and tried to hide his business. She’s half tempted to peek out and tell him, “Everybody poops, and now it just smells like shit-flavored lemonade in here.” Fortunately, she’s able, if not one hundred percent willing, to resist temptation and mind her own business.

  She digs her phone out of her pocket and checks the time. Just after midnight. It’s only been forty minutes since she left Haversham Park, which was the hunting ground of a family of ghouls until tonight.

  A friend tipped her off after seeing a string of news stories about mutilated deer and geese at the park. A few days ago, someone’s beloved pet poodle was found dead. At least, what remained of it was, identified only by its discarded collar. Leland residents suspected a kid torturing animals—their own budding serial killer—but she strolled through the park and knew right away that she was dealing with something unnatural.

  It took a day to narrow down its hunting ground to the new construction area. Most of the dead animals had been found nearby, and it only made sense. The attacks had started not long after the construction crew broke ground. There was no graveyard near the park, but the ghouls could have been living and hunting in the woods for years without being detected. And like any wildlife, a disruption of their habitat would cause a change in their behavior.

  As far as anyone knew, the ghouls were just eating animals, and while the loss of a poodle was sad, it wasn’t an emergency. But with construction crews in the park, and soon more people in the area to use the newly built amphitheater, it was a massacre waiting to happen.

  At least until she came along.

  She drapes the jeans over the sink and winces. It’s worse than she thought, which is pretty much the story of her life. The legs are streaked in a rainbow of stains and half-dried fluids she doesn’t want to identify. This could be the start of a late-night infomercial for one of those miracle cleaning products with the manic announcers. That’s righ
t, Susan, it can even get that stubborn ghoul bile out!

  There’s the unmistakable rusty-orange hue of Southern red clay on the knees and back pockets. Black grease smears down the left thigh. And then there’s the swatch of reddish-brown down the right leg, like a sigil against an Old Testament avenging angel of laundry.

  If she had a lick of sense in her head, she’d wear the ugly-ass sweatpants to hunt and save her good clothes for special occasions. But no one has ever accused Charity Pierson of having an excess of sense, and her pride and vanity are a powerful duo.

  “I need to invest in a Hazmat suit,” she says to the mirror. She sighs. “Better get to scrubbing.”

  ***

  Four Hours Earlier

  Two stragglers from the construction crew have been talking for forty-five damn minutes about God only knows what. She’s dubbed them Bad Tats and Pitstains for obvious reasons. They’d better be curing cancer or discovering the real meaning of life for as long as they’ve talked after their shift. They’re leaning against a white pickup dusted in red clay dust, passing a joint back and forth. She’s not hopeful for the cancer cure.

  Charity huffs in exasperation and takes another sip of the high-octane energy drink from the convenience store down the road. She’s been sitting here in the next parking lot for an hour, slouched down in the seat with no air. The siren call of sleep keeps sneaking up on her, and she’s shaken herself awake half a dozen times since she got here.

  The sun is going down, and the longer these two idiots linger, the closer they get to being the main course of a ghoul feast. She doesn’t want to take any unnecessary risks of exposure, and she sure doesn’t want to have to come back again tomorrow night. Hoping to be on the road by midnight, she’d already checked out of the Red Hill Lodge, a fine establishment for folks who don’t mind a little mold on the walls and mysterious stains on the sheets.

  “Don’t y’all have wives to go home to or something?” she murmurs to herself.

  Then again, maybe that’s the problem. Maybe this is their way of gearing up for another battle at home. She’s got her own rituals, so who is she to judge?

  She’s finishing off the syrupy drink by the time Bad Tats crushes the remains of the joint under his clay-caked work boots. Pitstains gives him a manly high five, a clap on the back, and then they go their separate ways. Pitstains climbs into the white pickup truck, while Bad Tats hitches his leg over a neon green crotch rocket and peels out in a cloud of smoke.

  “Finally,” she mutters. She drops the can in the plastic grocery sack and cranks the ignition. The air is still relatively cool, and she puts it on full blast. She loops around the parking lot and into the next lot, driving right into the spot Pitstains’ white truck just left vacant.

  Charity slides out of the truck and into the oppressive summer heat. The cicadas are out and singing their noisy summer drone from the trees.

  Sweat immediately beads on her skin. One of these days, she’s gonna go somewhere that’s not so damned humid. It doesn’t help that she’s wearing blue jeans and a heavy army jacket when it’s ninety degrees outside. But in her line of work, the more skin she covers, the better. An exposed leg has about the same effect on a zombie as it does a horny redneck.

  The construction area is cordoned off in flimsy orange plastic, with a sign that says Another Quality Avrett Construction Project. There’s not much to see yet, just a mountain of red dirt and a blue Port-a-Potty backed up to the fencing. A clay-streaked backhoe is parked at a drunken cant on the hill, like the driver got tired of trying to straighten it out and said, “To hell with it.”

  She walks around to the passenger’s side of her truck, where she gears up. Her antique Colt Commander, an engraved beauty that belonged to her daddy, comes out of the glovebox and goes into the concealed holster on her belly. Ivory-handled knife—also her father’s—in a clipped sheath on her belt. Plastic lighter and Maglite in one pocket, and two extra clips for the Colt in the other.

  After locking the cab, Charity climbs into the bed of the truck for the rest of her equipment. Her crossbow is in a zippered case there, but she’ll grab it last. First, there’s the bait, wrapped in white plastic grocery bags. When she nudges the bags with her foot, she catches a whiff of spoiled meat.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she says. She crouches and opens the first bag. Inside is a family-sized package of last-day markdown steaks that have been sitting outside in the sun all day to get good and smelly. The next bag holds a tall plastic container full of pig’s blood from a nearby Vietnamese market. It was a frozen bloodsicle when she bought it, but the midday sun seems to have melted it down completely. The last bag holds a clear pink Dora the Explorer water bottle. She hesitated at the cartoon characters, but it was on the clearance table, and that’s four dollars more she can spend on dollar draft specials later.

  She unscrews the lid of the bright pink squeeze bottle, then spreads the plastic bag under it. With a careful hand, she peels the taped lid off the pig’s blood and pours it into the water bottle. The thick liquid smells like metal and coats the sides of the bottle. A few solid chunks of ice fall in with a plop as she pours.

  A thunderous crack explodes through the hum of cicadas. A jolt runs down her spine. She feels the unmistakable wet sensation on her leg as she jerks to look for the source of the sound. When she looks back, she’s managed to splatter the blood all over the bags and her favorite pair of jeans.

  “Dammit!” Charity swears. “Come on, Dora, get your shit together.” She dumps the remaining blood into the water bottle, then screws the cap on. She uses her foot to hook a discolored towel stuffed in the corner under the toolbox. The once-white towel is now sort of tiger-striped in yellow and brown, with a stiffness that’s better to not ponder too closely. It’s a literal biohazard, and it’s probably about time for it to find a new home in a Dumpster. She wouldn’t even risk the potential biological apocalypse by trying to wash it. After using one relatively clean spot to wipe the bottle’s sides, she kicks it back under the toolbox and makes a mental note to steal a towel from the next motel.

  She examines her pants. “This is all Pokey’s fault.”

  ***

  Stephen “Pokey” Polk is a hunter from Paducah, Kentucky. To say that he isn’t all there is to make a gross understatement. If he was rich, people would call him eccentric, but unfortunately for Pokey, he’s dirt poor and relegated to weird. And that’s being charitable.

  First of all, he’s a grown-ass man who calls himself Pokey, which should explain it all. Second of all, he hunts in a pair of Mickey Mouse ears with a .22-sized hole in the right ear. He swears they’re his good luck charm. Charity thinks it’s bullshit, but he’s forty-three and still kicking, so maybe Pokey’s got something going. It’s probably more likely that even the undead recognize that a grown man with a shotgun and a pair of mouse ears has nothing left to lose.

  But Pokey fancies himself an expert on ghouls, and based on her couple of run-ins with him, he’s not far off the mark. He also fancies himself an expert on women, which is so far off the mark as to be utterly delusional.

  Hey, no one’s perfect.

  In any case, she came out here last night looking for trouble. She found it, in the form of a ghoul on the opposite end of the park. Ghouls are just nasty. Well, just about everything she encounters in relation to hunting is nasty, but ghouls are on the high end of that spectrum. They’ll eat anything made out of meat, and they’re the personification of the saying, “You are what you eat.”

  Old folklore tells that ghouls take on the form of their most recent victim. At the extreme, they could pull a Big Bad Wolf. Ghoul eats Grandma, and then it takes on her form. Suddenly, Grandma’s acting strange, and not in an is it time for the home? sort of way. Left alone, a ghoul can go through a whole family pretty quick.

  The ghoul she found last night was strange, even by ghoul standards. It was still more or less human-looking, but its face was elongated, and its dirty fingers were furry a
nd ended in gnarled claws. If werewolves were real—and God, she hoped they weren’t—it would have looked like one halfway transformed. Considering the reports of mutilated pets around the area, this one had probably been eating a steady diet of cute and furry creatures. She put an arrow through its skull, though she was too late to spare the poor calico cat it had eaten as a midnight snack.

  As soon as she’d determined that Leland had a ghoul problem, she gave Pokey a call for advice. A few years before they met, she’d had a nasty run-in with a ghoul that put her in the hospital and almost put her in an early grave. So when she’d stumbled on a nest of ghouls five months earlier in nearby Metropolis, Illinois, she’d called an old friend, Elijah Tanner. He was tied down with a job in Mississippi, but he’d given her Pokey’s number and told her he was “an odd duck, but he knows his shit.”

  They’d met at a bowling alley in a rundown strip mall. For a small town, the bar and grill at the bowling alley was hopping. Blaring country music from the jukebox in the bar clashed with the rhythmic percussion of bowling balls and clattering pins.

  “See, ghouls is funny,” Pokey said, leaning over his basket of cheese fries. This was before he put on the mouse ears, when she thought Elijah might have been overstating things. “Town like this? You ain’t gonna be dealing with a ghoul most likely.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Too big,” Pokey said. He picked up his knife and fork and neatly cut the cheese fries into bite-sized pieces. He speared one, dipped it into the side of ranch dressing, then daintily put it in his mouth.

  “Paducah’s too big?” She watched him in fascination. Who the hell eats cheese fries like that?

  He finished chewing, then dabbed his mouth with a napkin before speaking again. “This is a Mama Bear town. Not too big, not too small. That’s not to say it can’t happen. But specific—sadistic—statistically speaking, you’re looking at two options.” He held up one finger, glassy eyes locked on hers. “First, a one-stoplight town where they can get ‘em a good bellyful and then skedaddle off to the woods and eat wildlife till they get a hankering for long pig again.”