Big Dog, Bad Dog

118.

Right at that moment Clarissa remembered Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park. She remembered his line about needing to go faster because the Chupacabra which was about the size of a large bull had been chasing them down various sewers and water ways for twenty minutes. Clarissa lamented all those years of ignoring physical education or any kind of physical activity. Gilbert was faster than her and he was almost triple her age, it was enough to make her feel very old. They came to a smaller room with a metal door, Gilbert waved Clarissa inside and slammed the door shut, the Chupacabra slammed into the door with its full force but Clarissa and Gilbert were able to keep it shut for now.

"Shit I should have popped a flare out there."

"Well just put it next to the door."

"Won't be enough to kill it, probably just scare it away to come back later." The Cabra slammed into the door again and Clarissa felt her grip slipping.

"Well away is better than what we are currently running into." Gilbert shook his head.

"Nah what we need to do is open the door briefly, throw the flare than close it again."

"No Gilbert."

"It'll work I promise."

"I dunno Gilbert this feels like when my dad thought he could change the water tube on a toilet before the water rushed in, except replace water with huge blood sucking dog wolf thing."

"Too late." Gilbert threw open the door and threw the flare towards the chubacabra, before hurriedly slamming the door shut again. The creature slammed hard against it, but they were able to keep it shut. "See like I said easy."

"You know one of these days we're going to have to talk about consent to crazy acts like that."

"I'll probably be long dead before that conversation happens, trust me." The creature kept banging on the door for about thirty minutes, each thrust felt weaker than the last when it finally just stopped. Gilbert waited an additional five minutes, and then opened the door to one dead chupacabra. Gilbert and Clarissa made their way above ground so they could use their cell phones and call the sheriff's department to get paid.

"See this is the kind of job I like." The sheriff was organizing people to collect the corpse, but he'd already approved the fund transfer. Gilbert and Clarissa were taking off their hip waders and getting ready to go home.

"Yeah smelling like shit and money."

"Better than just shit."

"I love this job."

Chupa What?

117.

"Subterranean cannibal humans."

"Nope bites are too big for a human also not really a thing in California."

"But a thing somewhere else?"

"Lets just focus on what could have caused these bites shall we." Clarissa and Gilbert and been puzzling over the corpses for about an hour. Clarissa didn't even smell the sewer or the bodies anymore which was gross to her because she new it was very much both still present she just didn't notice it.

"Well I'm at a loss Gilbert you're the expert, I've just seen bad tv on late at night."

"Which has more truth than you'd like to know, but the lack of blood and random bite patterns has me thinking Chupacabra."

"A what?"

"Goat dog blood sucker thing, usually common to mexico or the american southwest, but could easily be up here."

"You mean down here, La isn't up."

"You just got a lot of sass today girl, I kind of guessed we'd be running into one of these, it's why I brought some witches bane flares, just have to get the sucker to breathe it in and bam dead."

"Is that like an herb, or something that literally kills witches."

"Both actually, though witches don't have to breathe it in, just coat them in it, but witches aren't really an issue anymore, mostly out of fear and hatred killed a lot of them off, they aren't by their nature bad normally. Now Chupacabra? They are terrible, and from the bites, this one looks like a very large one."

"So it looks like a dog?"

"Like a rat dog/coyote, with big fangs and no fur." Clarissa certainly didn't see anything like that in the sewer right now, but it was a fairly large system to check out.

"Ok so we go in deeper to find it?"

"Nah, we need to pull out get some goats blood and set up a trap, that way we can bait it in to the witches bane and easy peasy done."

"Oh thank god a chance to get a shower."

"Might want to wait till after we kill the Cabra, those things can reek like day old ass." Clarissa stopped in the sewer.

"Gilbert."

"You smell it right."

"Yeah Smells real bad just right now."

"Well I've got the witches bane, but..."

"But its one of those things where it probably has to like be concentrated which is hard to do while running away in a sewer."

"You'll make a great exterminator one day Clarissa..."

Of The LA Sewer Troubles

116.

"I honestly wish we were back with the man eating mushrooms." Clarissa had on hip waders and she was knee deep in water she preferred not to think about. The temperature in the sewer was over a hundred and it was only ten in the morning.

"That job sucked, and we didn't even get paid, stupid redneck sheriffs claiming its a common thing and we didn't do enough to stop it, its enough to put the working man off of helping country folk for a while." Gilbert still felt the call for help warranted at least a finders fee for helping to deal with the mushroom folk.

"Why aren't the like LA pd handling this? Like isn't this a cop thing?"

"Cops got better things to do than get killed."

"And we don't?"

"Sorry I was just referring to a movie that came out before you were born, best I could tell animal control was called they went missing, sheriffs department was called they went missing, and then when swat was called someone saw something 'distrubing' and they left, so now here we are getting paid a hefty sum to find it and kill it."

"Probably an alligator."

"That's new york and trust me it ain't gators in their sewers." Gilbert shuddered, what he'd seen under Manhattan couldn't be unseen.

"Well at least I brought some poison."

"To a water way, which will probably poison the surrounding area for years if you use it."

"What's worse poisoned water way or dead us?" Gilbert scowled, but it was dark and Clarissa couldn't see it as she was in front with a flash light.

"Just keep looking."

"For what again? I'm pretty sure I saw a dead rat a while back, but I don't think the plague is what we're looking for."

"I dunno something that would scare a Swat person."

"A grand jury summons over a police shooting?"

"Clarissa!" She chuckled to herself and then stopped dead in her tracks, Gilbert almost ran into her. He shined his light past her and saw the bodies of several city workers and sheriffs, partially eaten.

"Well shit, at least we found the people we were looking for, I wonder if the sheriff's here had that Mcgruff the crime dog thing up here? Because someone took a bite out of them."

"Clarissa that is terrible, this is serious."

"I know the smell just got a lot worse and the day isn't even half way over."

"Clarissa!" Gilbert was chuckling, though he didn't want to be. "Girl you're lucky these men are dead, you got to keep that kind of shit to yourself."

"Next time we're in a sewer in a hundred degree heat I'll keep my sass to myself."

"It's all I'm asking."

You Can't Reason with Food

115.

"Ok so man eating mushroom people is pretty much the last thing I expected at this time of night in the country side." Gilbert's attempt to talk to the mushroom people had lead to a lot of teeth and a lot of anger. Clarissa and he had holed up in the remains of the pizza shop, the mushroom people for their teeth and scary had not been able to break in past the glass.

"Maybe we just didn't appeal to them properly."

"I really doubt saying hello is mushroom for fuck you."

"Maybe they are huge racists."

"Yes mushroom people have long hunted black people dating back to the original mushroom soup massacre, Clarissa please we need solutions here they will find a way in."

"Do it like the turkeys and knock over fryer grease and cook them?"

"Aren't any fryers here, just a brick pizza oven."

"Shit." The pounding on the glass was getting louder. Gilbert had his revolver, but he only had around eight bullets left. Clarissa had a knife, but her bow was in the van which was behind all the mushroom people. Clarissa did try and call 911, but the number didn't connect to a person and she had to leave a message which felt like the height of a bad idea. They did find some cards so they could at least kill the time before the mushrooms rushed in to eat them.

****

"Go fish."

"I highly doubt you don't have any 3's."

"I told you to go fish because I don't Clarissa you chose this after you didn't like poker."

"It was less didn't like and more felt you were cheating..."

"Either way, wait did you hear something?" The mushrooms had stopped doing much to the glass. They had rounded up the people to take them somewhere, but had mostly left Gilbert and Clarissa alone aside from a couple spikey looking mushrooms waiting at the door. Gilbert had heard what sounded like gunfire.

"Someone who broke free of the mushrooms?"

"Nah sounds too concentrated, multiple reports of gunfire. Something else is going on." Over the sounds of gunfire Gilbert distinctly heard a yahoo. It was getting closer, both he and Clarissa watched out for the source of it. Eventually the group of men in sheriff's uniforms arrived and killed the mushrooms trapping them in.

"Someone leave an emergency message?"

Mushroompalooza

114.

It was just twenty people mindless standing in the street. They wouldn't react to Gilbert or Clarissa. Flashlights, loud noises, and bad smells also had no effect. Gilbert wanted to poke one in the hand with a knife but Clarissa felt that was going too far. There didn't seem to be anything else wrong with them, they just seemed like a herd of cows mindlessly standing there.

"Is there a nearby town or something?" Gilbert didn't want to help, but knew that if he said to keep driving Clarissa would give him shit and he was just about done with all of that.

"Riversberg? I've never heard of this town, apparently they have a pizza festival going on." At least they had cell coverage for Clarissa to look up what was nearby.

"And you want us to go there to see if more people are all whatever these people are."

"Its just down the road and like over a bridge..."

"God, god damn it." Gilbert just wanted to go home, face the music with regards to running into the mountain monsters group and then take a long bath, but no he had to be out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, running into some kind of pizza zombies.

Riverberg was barely a city, it was a two lane barely maintained road with some signs announcing you were in Riverberg, and presumably one announcing you were leaving it. Total population according to the welcome sign was 78 people. Including the group that Gilbert had met on the road it seemed the rest of the town was in town standing around just as dead headed. There were signs up for the pizza festival, and some pizza still out on tables uneaten, but if Gilbert had to take a guess something was wrong with the pizza from how people were acting now.

"You think its everyone?" Clarissa's question made Gilbert roll his eyes, of course it was everyone, if it wasn't everyone someone would have called someone by now.

"Well at least I don't see any children, so that'll make this less tragic when everyone is pretty much dead."

"They aren't dead they just are like poisoned."

"Right you can come back from being completely whatever these people are."

"Gilbert!"

"I'm just being honest, seen a lot of people end up something like this, very few of them ever come back from it." Clarissa decided to ignore Gilbert and instead checked out the pizzas. They looked like all different kinds of topping aside from mushrooms, every pizza had mushrooms.

"Its the mushrooms!" They both said it at the same time.

"On the pizza's Gilbert every pizza had mushrooms!"

"There are large sentient mushrooms coming this way Clarissa I'm pretty sure they are to blame for this." Clarissa almost wanted to laugh if not for the human sized mushrooms coming their way.

"What do we do Gilbert?"

"Well obviously don't eat them, but before we make any rash decisions lets at least try and talk to them, this could all be a big misunderstanding." Clarissa didn't like trying to talk to sentient mushroom that can turn you into some kind of Zombie, but Gilbert was the expert, and so she went along with it.

Shameful Pasts

113.

"I can't believe you know the Mountain Monsters crew, Doris is going to be so happy." Gilbert sighed, Clarissa had been continuously sticking the knife in him over having any kind of connection to those hillbillies. She even had a signed picture addressed to Doris.

"I just want to forget everything that happened up there ok, just you can leave me out of it."

"Oh come on Gilbert they were nice guys! I didn't even know they studied Shakespeare That's so crazy! And they loved you! You like showed them the proper way to take care of that Gillawomp, I mean you have to admit that trap was pretty cool with the swinging logs and impaling spikes." Gilbert sighed again.

"They are charlatans! They make our job look like something idiots in camo and drinking moonshine can do! They get people hurt when they too go looking for bigfoots, or whatever the god damn hell they claim they are looking for! It's insulting!"

"Do people really get hurt looking for bigfoots?"

"All the damn time, most of the shows know where to go to avoid the actual creatures, they are just tv bullshit, but general people don't, they'll go deep in a forest no one should be deep in and get snatched up, sometimes the bigfoot just scare them send them on their way, sometimes though they don't, and it just spirals from there, entire communities of people have been lost."

"You're joking."

"I wish I was joking, shows like mountain monsters are as dangerous as those house flipping shows." Clarissa frowned.

"What's wrong with house flipping shows?"

"We have four hours till we get home, do you really want to hear me rant the whole time?"

"Yes very much yes, its either this or talk radio and we're firmly in the crazy spectrum for that, so please Gilbert enlighten me about house flipping shows."

"Ok first off..."

****

"And that's the last time I watched one of those shows, after all the work I'd done for them, that was how they portrayed me."

"So that's why you hate those shows."

"Well that and they drive up the prices of regular houses with false advertising about how easy it is to flip your house, but mostly how they dealt with me."

"Ok I think I get... GILBERT STOP!" It was mostly dark on the road, but Clarissa could clearly see a group of people standing in the road, just standing there. Gilbert slammed on the brakes and stopped short of the group, it was twenty people all looking dazed and confused standing in the road.

"Yes this is normal just twenty people standing in the middle of the road at night."

"Zombies?" Gilbert looked at the group who didn't seem phased from having almost been killed by his van.

"Don't look like zombies, maybe there is some phish concert and these folks wandered away from it."

"Gilbert!"

"What are the phish not a thing anymore?" Clarrisa sighed, and reached into the back for her bow.

"We need to at least see what's going on."

"Sure not being paid for it and its the middle of the night, what's the worst that can happen?"

Worst Day of the Worst Year Of My Life

112.

"At least the sun is coming up." Gilbert was trying to be positive, but he could tell from the ragged breathing and cursing Clarissa had been making since they left the ruins of the cabin his positivity was going unappreciated.

"Right so we can freeze in direct sunlight, this day gets better."

"Not every day is palm trees and warm weather."

"So far none of them have been Gilbert." Gilbert shook his head, but he understood Clarissa's frustration. He was kind of surprised on how far the Gillawomp had managed to wander off, he figured with as much rat poison in its stomach it would barely make it away from the cabins, but it had been miles of snow since there and no sign of stopping.

"I promise you we'll run across it soon enough." Clarissa started to doubt that as they seemed to get deeper and deeper into Alaska with no sign of stopping. Gilbert had stopped for a moment and Clarissa didn't notice and ran right into him.

"Why did you stop do you see it?"

"No I heard something."

"I hear plenty of things Gilbert, mostly just the wind blowing and my own breathing."

"No I swear to god I heard a yahoo."

"A yahoo?"

"Like the kind an idiot redneck makes in a fictional movie."

"Can you get auditory hallucinations because of the cold Gilbert?" Gilbert turned around to tell Clarissa its not very nice to make fun of him when they both heard a "yahoo!" and the sound of some kind of ATV.

"No, oh god no god damn it no." Gilbert knew what that sound meant.

"What? I heard it too! Means some people are here we can get out of this hell!"

"No its you don't know these idiots we're in for..." Just as Gilbert was talking two all terrain vehicles appeared, one full of camera people, the other full of overweight dudes in camoflage with ridiculous beards. Gilbert cursed, the god damn Mountain Monsters crew was here.

"GILBERT DUNKLEY!" One of the crew hopped down from their ATV before waving it on to the rest of the crew.

"You know these guys? You never told Doris that." Gilbert shook his head, his greatest bit of shame was knowing anyone from the mountain monster's show, even accidentally.

"Because mistakes were made in the past, mistakes were made."

"They got a Gillawomp Gilbert! God damn didn't even know those things were real, caught in one of Bill's dumb ass traps sure as day." Gilbert just wanted to disappear into the snow, to pretend he wasn't there.

"Yeah it came after us first, be careful its full of rat poison."

"Right right, they'll probably cook it or whatever these guys do, so you need like a ride back to civilization or something? You both look real cold, my name's Travis by the way." Travis held his hand out to Clarissa who shook it with authority.

"Sure do Travis its mighty cold out here." Gilbert couldn't even say no even as much as he wanted to.

"You must be his new assistant, Gilbert helped us out once in West Virginia, the boys got themselves into a real pickle, we were just making up some bullshit when..." Travis had called another atv over and Clarissa was glad for the company. Gilbert on the other hand wished he could be somewhere else, anywhere else.