Redneck Apocalypse Special Edition Box Set

by eden Hudson

  “You swore your allegiance to me once, Ishtar. Do you swear it again?”

  “On my eternity, I recognize your right to the throne.” Her smile widened. “Let us take back this Earth together.”

  The corner of Kathan’s mouth quirked upward and I felt the amusement running through him. “From your lips to God’s ears.”

  Desty

  Light slammed through the darkness. I scrambled away, into the corner of the cell, but the screaming rays battered the backs of my eyelids and scraped across my skin. My arms closed around my stomach and my knees pulled up instinctively, trying to protect—

  The baby? Too late for that.

  —myself.

  “It’s show time, sugartits.” The foot soldier’s voice resonated in my ear drums, too loud, way too loud. “You’ve got a whole room full of visitors to entertain tonight.”

  The wet rustle of tar-covered wings grated across my nerves and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I had to crush my hands flat against my ears to keep from going deaf.

  The reek of hot asphalt forced itself into my sinuses and down the back of my throat, crowding out the comforting smell of blood. I could feel the tar filling my mouth and lungs, sticking to the walls of my throat, clogging my airways.

  “C-can’t breathe.” I choked. “I can’t—”

  Through my panic, I heard the foot soldier tell someone, “Back on the table where everybody can see her pretty face.”

  Footsteps and rustling wings. I dug my heels into the padding and pressed back into the corner as hard as I could. The calm, disconnected part of my brain knew it was useless, but my body kept trying to get away.

  Large, burning hands grabbed my wrists and legs.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but gagged on the scorched stink of their feathers instead. I thrashed and fought and twisted. I kicked my legs and tried to wrestle my arms out of their grip, but I couldn’t get loose. I tried. I tried so hard. They were too strong.

  “Hope you’re saving a little bit of that for later,” the foot soldier said.

  It’s not forever, the disconnected part of my brain said. It’ll end. If you stop struggling and get it over with now, it will eventually stop, then you’ll be back in the cell, safe and alone.

  But the hysterical part of my brain was babbling. Yeah, safe and alone until they come and get you again. This cycle’s never going to end. No one’s going to save you. Nobody cares about you. You’re stuck here until you die. This is never going to end.

  Tough

  I held down the middle line of the rusty barbwire fence while I ducked through. It didn’t give me much resistance. The lines had gone slack over the last fourteen years without Dad or us kids around to tighten the wires and replace the rotting posts.

  I took a few steps, sweeping my hand out in front of me about waist-high, trying to find the electric fence by feel. I didn’t hear the low tick tick tick that meant the wire was hot, but I still braced myself for the shock. That fence had got me plenty of times as a kid. I’d touched it a few times on dares, and run into it face-first once when I wasn’t watching where I was going. A shock from an electric fence feels less like sticking your finger in a light socket and more like getting hit in the chest with a baseball bat, so I wasn’t looking forward to grabbing it and finding out it was still going strong.

  I ended up tripping over the damn thing. I couldn’t see the faded yellow wire-holder in the dark, but it must’ve worn out and slipped down the t-post.

  Pretty good chance the fence was off, then. If this had been Colt’s compound, the fence would’ve been wired directly into a power line, but defensive measures like that probably never even crossed Kathan’s mind. Until a couple days ago, he hadn’t thought anybody would have the balls to attack him outright anyway.

  I stepped over the downed hot-wire and took off at a jog toward the creek. If I kept my head below the bank line, I could make it most of the way across the back forty without the possibility of anybody on the ground seeing me. Overhead was another story, but I was hoping all the crows would be back at Lonely’s doing crow stuff.

  After fourteen years without any cattle to mow it down or farmers to cut and bale it, the pasture had gone back to prairie grass—thick-stalked weeds, most of which were taller than me. Every so often, brambles scratched at my jeans. If I survived tonight, I’d probably end up picking cockleburs out of my jeans and bootlaces for weeks.

  It was so quiet out there. You couldn’t hear anything but the breeze, the grass whipping against my arms and legs, and my boots hitting the ground. There weren’t even any locusts singing. The last time I’d heard it so quiet was during the war. Every night had been just the sound of the fire, the wind or rain or snow, and the people from our army trying not to cry too loud or whispering to each other instead of sleeping.

  I tried to hear past the sound of my own running in case somebody was on watch. Dark as it was, I’d probably hear them before I saw them. The moon was stuck behind a thick, black, cloudy sky, but I could just barely make out the white rock in the creek bed. I slid down the bank.

  Rocks shifted under my boots, clicking and clacking like old dry bones. When I was a kid, the creek banks had been all smelly cow-crap mud and wet sand crossings. We used to dig our feet down into the really sloppy stuff and pretend like we were getting sucked into a pit of quicksand. Now a person would’ve been lucky to find a damp spot.

  I slowed down and tried to keep to the edge of the creek where there was more sand and fewer rocks, but in all that silence my boots still sounded like somebody pounding the shale with hammers.

  The vamp senses picked up the smell of wood smoke and burned rubber a long time before I got close enough to the front gate to see what was left of the barn.

  When I got to the end of the creek, I climbed up the bank and sat on my heels in the weeds. A couple twisted heaps of junk that used to be cars sat smoldering next to a pile of charred boards and rubble. The foot soldiers must’ve been hard at work over the past couple days gathering up the debris from Colt’s attack to make the Dark Mansion grounds look nice and pretty again.

  Without the barn in my line of sight, I could see stretch limos, armored black Hummers, and even a couple helicopters in the Dark Mansion’s parking lot.

  In front of the big staircase, right where everybody would see it as soon as they pulled up, a fence post with a black shadow impaled on it had been driven into the dirt.

  I shut my eyes before they could look too hard, but I knew. The wind blew the scent of cold dead blood, rotting meat, and shit my way. Underneath that, I could smell Colt. What used to be his smell, anyway.

  For all the other nonsense Lonely had been talking, he was right about one thing—the white knight wasn’t getting resurrected again.

  I swallowed the need to puke and made myself get up and walk. It shouldn’t be hitting me like this. I’d already known Colt was dead. Normal people stay dead. For it is appointed of a man once to die—and Colt had already done it more than his share of times. But some retarded little-kid part of me had been hoping that my big brother couldn’t die. Not for real. Not forever.

  It didn’t matter. I had to focus on watching for lookouts. Just because it seemed like the coast was clear didn’t mean it was. Kathan surely wouldn’t throw a huge party, invite people important enough to bring their own helicopter, and then not post any guards. After what had happened with the Armistice Celebration, that would point to serious brain damage.

  As I got closer, movement at the top of the Dark Mansion’s big front steps caught my eye. A pair of foot soldiers in black riot gear, packing large caliber heat and guarding the south entrance. Another pair prowled between cars in the parking lot.

  So waltzing onto the lawn and booking it with Colt’s body was out. I slipped back into the creek and headed back down a ways, then took one of the draws that used to point toward the back of the house. Nowadays it pointed toward the back of the Dark Mansion.

  At the end of
the draw, I crawled up the bank and sat back on my heels for a while longer, watching. No movement out back. I crept a little closer, staying low. Stopped again. Still nothing. I listened for feathers rustling or combat boots stomping around.

  Just over the sound of the breeze whistling through the prairie grass, I heard someone scream.

  Colt

  Tiffani was curled up against the sloping, rocky wall of her cell, her eyes closed, the lids a dark, bruised purple. Tears streaked down her face and her body shook.

  I was there. I’d found her, finally. I choked on a sob. I was so glad to see her. This was worth it. All of it. I would do it all again if I could. I’d do it however many times it took.

  I dropped to my hands and knees from what felt like ten miles up, then crawled over to her trying to ignore the sledgehammer smashing my hands and knees to paste. I couldn’t stay upright. I slumped against the wall and rested my forehead against hers. It felt like laying my face on a hot stove. I winced and jerked away, feeling some of my skin rip away from my skull.

  Tiffani writhed away from me. She must’ve felt it, too.

  There was nothing to show for it, no charred flesh stuck to Tiffani’s forehead. Just like the carved-up feet, the shredded lungs, and the broken body, the pain was all in my soul.

  “Tiff.” I swallowed. “Open. Eyes. Please.”

  Her eyelids fluttered open. She screamed in pain, her back arching and the tendons in her neck standing out.

  “Tiffani.”

  I could barely get enough breath behind it to whisper. She shouldn’t have been able to hear me over the sound of her own screaming, but she went quiet immediately. Wild, bloodshot eyes met mine.

  “Colt?” Then she shook her head. “He’s not real. I can’t do this again.”

  “It’s me,” I croaked. “I’m here.”

  “No,” she said. “Tattoos.”

  I looked down at my chest. Nothing. No ink on my arm, either. No way to see my back, but I had a guess at what had happened.

  “New body,” I said. “Heaven.”

  She shook her head again. “Not real. You’re not real.”

  The hell I’m not. I held my shaking arm out, putting my wrist under her nose. I didn’t know if my new body would smell like my old one, but it was worth a shot.

  Tiffani inhaled.

  “Colt?”

  “Told you.”

  She started to cry harder and reached for me. Her fingers skidded across my cheek like blacktop in a wreck, leaving my face feeling like a mass of ground beef and road rash. She winced and pulled her hand away.

  I curled my arms under her legs and around the back of her neck, pulled her to my chest. Electricity fried my skin at the points of contact. The smell of ozone and burning meat filled the cell. Tiffani screamed and her muscles spasmed. I almost dropped her.

  “I know,” I said, squeezing her tighter. “Know it hurts. You just have to—” My leg muscles strained and tendons seemed to rip away from my bones as I stood. “—to get through it.”

  “Can’t. I can’t.”

  I braced myself to take a breath and tell her that she could. Then I saw my skin against hers. That faint heavenly light was still glowing in mine, illuminating her skin where we touched.

  Maybe she really couldn’t get through it. Maybe nobody could. Maybe the only reason I had made it so far was the light of Heaven in my skin, dulling the torture or fending off the majority of the pain. That would explain why none of the souls I’d come across so far had tried to leave—not even Mikal. They couldn’t.

  Maybe that was the reason the Gatekeepers hadn’t finished me off. They couldn’t.

  His mark was on you, their leader had said.

  I swallowed back another wave of acid vomit and thanked God that I didn’t have to feel the full force of whatever Tiff was feeling. Then I gathered her up and started walking again.

  Tempie

  I followed Kathan as he led Ishtar and the rest of the envoys to the basement. A separate piece of his mind had already prepared answers to their inevitable questions, more of his pieces were swimming in info sheets on each of the alphas, enforcers, and foot soldiers, and still another piece was tending to me.

  It’s been too long, Temperance, he whispered. If you don’t give your mind some rest, it will be destroyed.

  It was true. I was so tired. I could feel it like drawing a compound bow and holding it and holding it and holding it—your arm starts to shake, the muscles under your boobs start to burn, and your fingertips go numb. I’d been in pieces too many times and for too long today. I needed to rest, but I couldn’t yet.

  Just a little bit longer, I said.

  Kathan didn’t argue with me. Information sheets on the Destroyer slipped through one of his consciousnesses. A broken mind, an unholy rage, a united cause, blood and bone and bane the same. Now wasn’t the time to rein me in for my own good, he decided. Now was the time to let me dictate the pace.

  I heard Kathan discussing the prophecy of the Godkiller and his plans for Desty with the other alphas. It was as if he’d planned out everything with Molech in advance to get the most cinematic performance out of my twin. As soon as Kathan referred to her, she screamed.

  As tired as I was, it took enormous effort to shift my focus from what the pieces of Kathan were processing to what my eyes were seeing. After a few seconds, the basement came in clearly. Desty was naked, bloody, sweaty, crying, strapped to that table Mikal used to use to play with her familiars. Desty’s dark hair—the same color as mine, but shorter and minus the tri-tone highlights—lay across her forehead in wet spikes like teeth.

  I couldn’t tell if she saw me, but I didn’t think so. She was too busy trying to twist away from Molech’s hands and tools.

  Kathan wasn’t trying to hide her from me. Even if I’d been able to feel anything at that point, he knew there was nothing I would do to oppose him. I had told him and the little voice inside my head that I would never betray him and I wouldn’t.

  And isn’t that just like you? the little voice in my head chimed in. Let your sister suffer, then. Be with your beloved. But remember, pretty soon here Johnny’s going to go marching off to war, and there won’t be anybody left to hold his sweet Temperance together. You won’t even have separation or seeing through Kathan’s pieces to hide behind anymore. The veil will rip, the walls will come tumbling down, then it’ll be bloody Tempie, chewing on the scraps of everything she helped destroy.

  I didn’t have the energy to argue. I’d been holding the bow at full draw for too long. My mind was shaking and numb at the edges. I needed to rest.

  You think you’ll get to rest if you put yourself back together, bloody Tempie? the little voice taunted. The only thing that’s waiting for you back there is the full understanding of what you’re letting him do to your sister. You think your soul can survive that?

  A piece of Kathan was watching me, waiting.

  If I asked him to, he would block me off from all of this. The second I came back to myself, he would envelope me in those arms and fold his wings around us. We would be safe and alone there.

  But I kept the bow at full draw. I had to for Desty’s sake. No one had acknowledged the things that Leif and his friends had done to me—any of the things any man had done to me—even when I tried to tell them. Even though I couldn’t stop what was happening to my sister, I had to be there, to be her witness.

  Temperance? Kathan asked.

  It’s almost over, I said.

  Temperance, I need you to remember no matter what that I love you. I’ll always love you.

  I know. It was in his nature. He loved me to the fullest extent of his ability to give love, which was more than anyone had ever loved me. Except for my twin.

  Around the edges of our conversation, I could sense things happening, but I couldn’t understand them. It’d been too long. I couldn’t hold the bowstring tight anymore. I let go. Kathan caught my pieces and held me, just like I’d known he would. The world went away
.

  Tough

  There wasn’t any fence left standing by the Dark Mansion, but I crawled over to where the fence used to be when I was a kid and watched. If I still could’ve touched a Bible without falling apart, I would’ve sworn on a whole stack of them that that scream had belonged to Desty. It was probably my imagination playing tricks on me, though. You couldn’t know what somebody would sound like screaming if you had never heard them do it.

  None of the foot soldiers patrolling the front had reacted to the scream, and I didn’t see anybody going in or out of the mansion. I crawled until I made it to the short, mowed grass of the backyard, watched for a few more seconds, then I got into a crouch and ran to the back of the mansion.

  I wasn’t tall enough to see in the first floor Hell Windows without climbing on something and probably making a lot of noise, but there was light coming from the basement. The panes down there were regular colorless glass set in casements, and they were caked with dust, spider webs, and bits of cut grass. The windows looked so normal that it almost made my skin crawl.

  I hunkered down in front of one window and wiped a spot clean enough to look through.

  This was definitely where the party was happening. The basement was cracked, dirty concrete, and the window I was looking through sat right behind a set of rickety wooden stairs that looked like they’d been built out of square for sheer creepiness. Through the empty spaces between planks, I could see black wings and business suits to spare. There were so many angels and familiars down there that it took me a minute to find Kathan and Tempie. Tempie was hanging on his arm in a dress I bet Desty would’ve worn a hundred times classier than her sister.

  For a second, I just stared at Tempie. That’s the crazy thing about twins. One can be hotter than the other. The sweet, innocent one, the one who kissed you like she wanted to swallow your pain, the one you would’ve given anything to work it out with—