Redneck Apocalypse Special Edition Box Set

by eden Hudson

  Danny and the black Hulk are still staring at me. Danny’s got this look on his face like I remind him that people are generally bad.

  I just flip him off and head up the street, pretending to enjoy my cigarette. Out of nowhere there’s a guy with a telephoto lens taking pictures and yelling at me. “Hey, Shannon! Shannon Colter! What were you arrested for tonight? Was this another fight with Philly?”

  I turn the bird at him and walk on by. Behind me, I hear Tiffani getting rid of him.

  It’s okay. I’ll be okay. I’ll go to a club. I’ll find some guy in no time flat. My game’s always on when I’m this wound up, some kind of sick survival mechanism. I’ll see a guy and know he wants me and we’ll head for the bathroom or the back room or my place, and for a little while, I’ll be okay.

  Danny

  “Dude,” Clare says. “That’s nuts.”

  We’re on the J train back to Brooklyn and Noah’s done filling Clare in on what he missed.

  “She wasn’t always like that.” I feel like I need to say it even though it’s only partially true. My mom used to joke with Shannon about her redheaded temper, about how it might give the Whitney temper a run for its money. Now I think Shannon’s could swallow mine whole with no trouble.

  “You dated Shannon Colter,” Clare says, shaking his head. He looks at Noah. “And you knew about this?”

  “I didn’t know she was The Shannon Colter,” Noah says. “Somebody didn’t think that was an important detail.”

  I stare down at my shoes on the sticky train floor and listen to the screech and clap of the wheels on the tracks. Shannon always had that black, boiling anger inside her, but it used to come and go. When she was happy, she could be the funniest thing God ever created. I sit there staring at a dirty gray circle of gum by my instep and wish the guys could know what it was like to be around my Shannon.

  Things change—even little things. She started smoking and I started drinking coffee. I didn’t used to. Even decaf made it impossible for me to sleep, and I used to love sleeping. When I slept, I dreamed about Shannon. Holding her, making love to her sometimes, but usually it was just being around her. After we broke up, I couldn’t handle the dreams. Waking up crying isn’t just emasculating, it’s depressing and it makes you feel out of control, so I turned to caffeine.

  In a way, it’s because of Shannon that I’m on a subway train in Brooklyn at two in the morning wearing a concealed sword and knife combo. When I moved down to seminary, I started going to the gym to fill the extra five or six hours a night. That’s where I met Noah, who was trying to work his knee back into shape. And that’s where we were the night Clare chased that coi demon into the weight room.

  If I hadn’t watched Clare rip that thing to shreds before shifting back into his human form, I probably never would’ve believed that demons aren’t just Bible stories. I’d still be as skeptical as my parents.

  “So, the seeker,” I say. “Don’t they usually have a higher-up demon controlling them? They’re basically just Hell’s attack dogs. Why was this one running loose?”

  Noah looks like he wants to point out how obviously I’m avoiding the Shannon subject, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Maybe the higher-up demon got banished,” Clare says. “Or maybe the seeker got off its leash. Or maybe some idiot human summoned it and it ate the human’s brain. You humans are always doing stupid stuff like that.”

  Noah rolls his eyes. “Yeah, nothing us humans love as much as a quiet night in, summoning demons from the pits of Hell.”

  “Whatever, dude,” Clare says. “You know what I mean. Humans can be a bunch of dinguses when it comes to the powers of darkness and stuff.”

  The train lurches to a stop at Jay St.-Borough Hall. We get out and head for the stairs. Noah’s still got a hitch in his step. I feel like a walking bruise.

  Clare jogs up the steps to the street.

  “Must be nice healing so fast,” I say.

  Noah shakes his head. “Us human dinguses would be too stupid to utilize rapid healing anyway.”

  “I’m going to find a new pack,” Clare says. “One with less whining and racial sensitivity.”

  We’re headed down the block toward the hotel when Clare stops. His head snaps back and he tracks something through the orange-black light pollution.

  “Whoa,” he says. “That was a big one.”

  Meaning powerfully evil and probably a lot more intelligent than the seeker.

  “Got to be kidding me,” Noah says. “You’re ready to go for the instant replay?”

  “Danny?” Clare says.

  “Don’t ask Dingus #2,” Noah says. “As many times as he hit his head tonight, he’s probably got a concussion.”

  “I don’t have a concussion,” I say. “I was just hoping to get some work done on my thesis. You know—those big, giant papers that’re due five weeks from now if any of us want to graduate?”

  “It’s our duty, though, right?” Clare’s nodding as if I answered him and fidgeting from one foot to the other. Just watching him makes me antsy. “What if it attacks somebody? Or what if it’s the higher-up demon? The one that controlled the seeker? It might be searching for its little lost brain-chomper right now. We’re just going to let it go?”

  Noah looks at me for some kind of argument.

  “It is early,” I say. “And you know he’ll stay up all night scratching at the hotel room door if we don’t go after it.”

  “Fine,” Noah groans.

  Shannon

  As luck would have it, I do end up having a threesome after all. Like I said, my game is incredible when I’m really worked up. I could walk into the Vatican and get half the priests excommunicated.

  After we finish, I take a shower and Tiffani comes in to make sure the guys leave without rifling through my drawers and medicine cabinet and stuff. I only had a problem with that one time, but it’s best to have Tiffani around just in case my shark-radar doesn’t tip me off.

  Usually I’ve got a few hours of peace and quiet after sex, but tonight while I’m in the shower, the melody to a new song starts clawing its way through my head. I shut off the water without even washing my hair and get out. Don’t bother drying off. My hands are shaking so bad I can barely open the bathroom door. I push past Tiffani, still naked, and head for the living room. I’ve got to get to my guitar, get this out now.

  It didn’t used to be like this, like I needed to fight back. Music used to comfort me. I played all the time, not because I had a hundred shows a week, not because we had to keep recording and re-recording tracks, but because I felt the music and I wanted to hear it. Yeah, it was pissed-the-hell-off bitchy white girl rock, but I was a pissed-the-hell-off bitchy white girl, so it helped.

  Over the last year, though, the music has morphed into something dangerous. I used to write songs so I could hear them outside my head, but now I’m writing as many songs as fast as I can to get them down before they get me. Like they can’t hurt me if I can get them out of my head. Every single note is mad now. They all hate me. They all want me dead.

  And that’s not even the crazy me talking. The crazy me makes that sound totally sane. The crazy me knows the car wreck that killed my dad and my sister last year was a message.

  The Lost Derringers were just off of the summer tour and we had a couple weeks before they wanted us back in the studio to lay down some toned-down riffs for some special acoustic release. I was going back home for a week or however long I could stand to listen to Dad harp at me for wasting money on cigarettes and wonder out loud why I didn’t get a man for a bodyguard.

  I had just finished packing when Corey called. Mena was leaving the band. We needed to do a couple of “secret” farewell shows with all of the original Derringers or something stupid that I frankly didn’t think Mena deserved if she was deserting us. True, she and I hadn’t talked to each other in forever, not even when we were in the same room, but I thought we were still supposed to be loyal. But I stayed in the city and d
id the shows because back then Corey and I were still friends and I didn’t want to give him trouble. And Dad—who used to make little old ladies look like reckless speed demons—drove into a culvert. According to the accident report, he hit his head just right. Died on impact. Charlotte was ejected from the vehicle and drowned.

  Charlotte and I looked so much alike that everyone thought it was me at first. For most of Friday night and some of Saturday morning, the media was reporting that I had been killed in a freak car accident, but the label finally got everyone set straight.

  The worst thing about the wreck was how the crazy me was the only one who noticed the wet clump of black feathers clutched in Charlotte’s hand in the accident photos. The crazy me knew I was looking at a blinking neon “This Is What You Get When You Fuck With Us” sign.

  And to think, I grew up wanting to believe, just like Mulder. Now that I know angels are real, I wish I didn’t.

  “Shannon?”

  I stop strumming my guitar and look up. Tiffani’s there, sitting on the coffee table, looking into my eyes as if she’s trying to find me.

  “I’m here,” I say.

  Tiffani nods, but I can tell she doesn’t believe me. I don’t blame her.

  “I’m going dark,” she says. “Want to come with me?”

  The sun is coming up. It’s morning, finally.

  “Yeah.” I set the acoustic on its stand and follow her into the dark room.

  I bought this apartment for two reasons—the wall of windows on the east side that look out toward the sunrise, and the huge dark room in the center of the place that had been some kind of in-home theater. When we moved in, I had the dark room converted into a bedroom/living space where Tiffani could spend the daylight hours.

  “You’ve got a while before you need to get ready,” she says, flipping on the television and switching it to a cooking show. “You should get some rest.”

  “Are you tired?” I ask.

  Tiffani lays down on the futon.

  “No, but I’ll be here,” she says.

  I nod and stretch out beside her. I wish she would take off her clothes so I wouldn’t be the only one naked, but Tiffani just pulls an electric blanket over us.

  “Did you eat last night?” I ask her.

  “No.”

  “You could’ve drank off those guys. I bet they would’ve let you.”

  “Not my type,” she says.

  “Yeah.” I push my face into the hollow by her jaw. Her skin is cold, but it feels good on my cheek. Like she’s keeping me from combusting. “You could drink off of me if you’re hungry.”

  “I’ve got blood in the fridge,” she says. “Go to sleep.”

  “Okay.” I give her a kiss on the neck.

  After a while, Tiffani reaches over me, then I hear a lighter. I don’t feel like opening my eyes to watch her, but I know she’s holding the cigarette between her first and middle finger and staring through the smoke at the TV. She looks like one of those silver screen beauties when she smokes, like Audrey Hepburn or something.

  “Hey,” I say. My voice sounds half-asleep.

  “What, hon?” Sometimes that slips out when Tiffani’s talking to me. She likes to pretend like she’s not country under all that vampire sophistication and deadpan, but she is. It’s another one of the reasons I hired her.

  “If I don’t wake up in an hour, will you have someone send Danny those tickets?”

  “Yeah,” she says. Then she runs her fingers through my hair until I fall asleep.

  Danny

  The pounding on the bathroom door is loud enough that it has to be waking people up down the hall.

  “Come on, princess,” Clare yells. “We’re going to be late.”

  I finish drying off and get dressed.

  “If you guys would’ve let me take first shower—”

  “The whole hotel would be out of hot water,” Noah says.

  “Probably is now,” Clare says.

  I come out of the bathroom and throw my towel at his head.

  I know that it sounds like the most backwoods thing in the world, but showers fascinate me. They’re efficient. Clean. You can take one in five minutes if you need to. At the farm, my parents have a bathtub that I’m fairly certain was in the house before the advent of indoor plumbing. It takes twenty minutes just to get a few inches full, half the time the water isn’t hot, and when I still lived at home, I usually had to take a bath last to save water because I got dirtier than anyone else. So, I like showers. I haven’t managed to take a five minute shower yet, but knowing that I could really appeals to me.

  Clare picks up his Bible off the desk to shove it in his backpack and I get a look at the clock.

  “Hey, we don’t even need to head over to the auditorium for another—”

  “Don’t talk time to me, Country,” Noah says over my complaining. “It’s rush hour. Unless you plan on walking, you need to figure in traffic, parking, and there’ll probably be at least one accident on the way—”

  A knock on our hotel room door shuts him up. I start to get it since I’m closest, but Noah shoves me back toward the rollaway bed.

  “Button your shirt and get your shoes on,” he says. “Two minutes and we’re leaving.”

  Noah answers the door. It’s a guy with bike-riding gloves and headphones on.

  “Daniel Whitney?” The guy takes a manila envelope and a clipboard out of his satchel.

  I leave my shirt hanging open and go sign for it. I don’t realize what it is until the messenger’s gone.

  “It’s the tickets for her concert,” I say.

  “No offense, dude, but that really is crazy,” Clare says.

  What’s crazier is that since I started drinking coffee and running myself to exhaustion, I haven’t had one dream that I can remember. I was starting to think maybe I’d trained myself out of them. But last night—after going ten rounds with that seeker, then tracking the other demon for almost four hours just to come up empty-handed—I dreamed about Shannon. Just standing there, looking at each other. Then I held out my hand. Blood poured from my palm, ran down my arm, and spilled all over the floor. She looked at it and shook her head. It wasn’t enough.

  “Shoes and shirt,” Noah says again. “We’re leaving.”

  I do what he says, in a sort of robotic trance, still thinking over the dream. The tickets. The man who couldn’t eat sugar.

  On the way out the door, I ask them, “You guys still want to go to the concert tonight?”

  Shannon

  Luckily Jenny, the band’s publicist, was able to talk STF into sending their guy up to the Garden for the exclusive interview after sound check. Luckily.

  “So, Shannon, the early noise on this new album is that it’s a lot harder than the last three, more intense than Razor Wire Roulette, that you’ve hit a really dark groove lately,” the reporter says. His name is Branton with a T, his head is shaved on one side and his hair is long on the other and he’s gay. Maybe because the last time I talked to a straight guy from STF we wound up at my place and Jenny had to bury the story about how many different anti-anxiety pills I had in my bathroom.

  “Yeah, well, I had a feeling that things were about to turn against me,” I say.

  Branton laughs and fills in the rest, “So you wrote a morbid album.”

  I wink and shoot him with a finger-gun. Play nice. That’s what Jenny ordered me to do before I sat down with this guy. Now she’s in the row of seats behind ours, pretending to read the itinerary for next week, Shannon-sitting. Jenny’s one of the only people I still see from the label when I’m out of the studio because I’ve pissed most of them off enough that they don’t want to look at me if they don’t have to. They’ll put up with me from a distance as long as I keep turning out the tracks and dragging in the bucks. And DO NOT miss another fucking show.

  “Can you confirm the name of the new album for me?” Branton asks.

  “That’s kind of rookie, isn’t it?” I say. “Trying to get me to
leak the name of an album that we’ve only finished eight tracks on?”

  Jenny glares at me over her paper.

  “But cute,” I add. “I’m thinking of calling it Brandon. With a D.”

  When Branton’s done pretending to laugh, he hits back. “So, how do you plan to respond to the rumors that you became violent with Philly Darcy after the break up?”

  I pull a Mulder on him. “I don’t.”

  Tiffani would’ve laughed, but she’s dark until the sun goes down.

  “I heard the police had to split you two up,” Branton says. “Someone said they Tased everyone involved.”

  “This is starting to sound like gossip rag stuff, so unless you’re actually interested in the music…” I let the threat hang.

  “Oh, I am,” Branton says. “The metamorphosis, specifically. I mean, you guys are just shooting toward the stratosphere, up out of Nowhere, Midwest to LA and NY and London and Tokyo. Four years of rocketing, two double platinum albums, then you’re set to release Bullet Proof—which all the early buzz swore had more grit and swagger-pain than anything you’d done before—and all of a sudden—Bam!—Shannon Colter is dead. No, wait, it was her sister and—”

  “That is absolutely out of bounds,” Jenny snaps, sitting forward. “Another question like that and this interview is over.”

  “Sorry,” Branton says, even though he’s totally not. “What I meant to ask was where you feel your sudden turn to a darker, harder sound is coming from. All Skynyrd jokes aside.”

  “From a holy terror that Hell itself is following me, trying to destroy me, duh.” I say it like a joke and with a big laugh, but inside the jitters ramp up to an all-out shiver so I cross my arms over my stomach and roll my eyes. “Seriously, Branton—‘swagger-pain?’”

  “There are people who think it’s apt,” he says. “So, what was with the contract renegotiations after the—uh—after last year?”