Redneck Apocalypse Special Edition Box Set

by eden Hudson

  Then one day, as we were all shuffling off the bus to the elementary building, Ryder stopped me.

  “Hey, if you hear me click, do it back, okay?” he said.

  I shrugged. I always clicked back.

  But Ryder was serious. “No matter what’s going on. Don’t leave me hanging.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  An hour later, my class was taking a timed math test. I had just recently figured out the perfect attack plan for those things—go from top to bottom, left to right, fill in every answer I knew by heart, then come back and multiply out the ones I didn’t—and I was on a roll. I’d finished the last six tests under the three minute mark and I was about to ace this one, too. I only had two problems left.

  Four times nine. I had trouble with nines. Multiples of nine never sounded right. Two times nine is eighteen, two times eighteen—

  Then I heard it. Ryder clicked his tongue once.

  I looked up. Mrs. Werr and a couple of the other kids had heard and they were looking at the door. The sixth grade classroom was down the hall and on the opposite side. I’d known that the click carried over long distances, but for some reason I was surprised that the sound could travel this far in school. Especially during a timed test.

  Ryder clicked a second time. It almost sounded mad.

  I’d promised him I wouldn’t leave him hanging.

  But this test was number seven in my streak—seven, the perfect number. But I knew that if I didn’t answer Ryder, he was never going to click at me again. Not tomorrow night when I was outside and he was upstairs, not next week when we were in the hayloft whupping Sissy and Tough at basketball, not ever again.

  Underneath the desk, my leg started jiggling.

  Nobody was looking at me. I wouldn’t get in trouble. No one would be able to prove that I did it and there wasn’t any rule against clicking your tongue, anyway.

  What was more wrong—to do something that you wouldn’t get in trouble for or to go back on a promise? How many times had Dad preached that man was only as good as his word? I couldn’t remember him ever preaching about it being sinful to do something there wasn’t a rule against.

  Ryder clicked. The way that click rang there wasn’t any doubt this was my last chance.

  My heartbeat shot through the roof and my face got hot.

  I clicked back.

  Everyone in class turned to look at me.

  *

  I kept my eyes on Principal Baumeyer’s nameplate. The office was so quiet that every time I took a breath, it sounded like I was wheezing.

  Mom wouldn’t believe it. Not at first. She’d throw a fit. “You’re wrong,” she’d tell whoever had to call her. “You got the wrong kid. Colt wouldn’t do anything like that. You figure out whose kid you’ve actually got in that office, then you call his parents.”

  And when Dad found out…

  I bit the inside of my cheek and blinked until I was sure I wouldn’t start crying. Dad was going to be so disappointed.

  Baumeyer came around the front of his desk and sat on the corner in front of me. I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I stared at the way the grain in his sweater vest stretched over his gut.

  “Now, listen to me, son,” he said. He reached out and put a damp palm on my shoulder. “I know for a fact that you’re not a troublemaker. You’re a good kid, got your head in your books, going to make a decent forward when you get old enough for organized basketball. I coached Sissy a couple years ago and if you end up with half her speed, you’ll be starting varsity your freshman year, just like she is.”

  I tried to look like I understood where he was going with this, but all I could think was why didn’t he just get to the part where he yelled at me.

  “That brother of yours, though,” Baumeyer said. “Ryder’s got you into some serious trouble here, Colt. We’re talking detention trouble. A mark on your record that won’t go away. Disrupting class during a test?”

  Something in my chest shriveled up at hearing him say what I’d done out loud.

  “That’s not you, Colt.” Baumeyer shook his head. “I know you thought you needed to be cool. And I know you think Ryder’s got your best interests at heart. Maybe you even think he’s going to be the one who gets in trouble over all this. But, son, that’s just not true. I guarantee you that this very minute, Ryder is sitting out there, coming up with the fastest way to sell you down the river. He’s going to keep his butt out of trouble, Colt, even if that means taking you down instead. The thing is, if you tell me the truth right now— Well, you’re the preacher’s son. You know what the truth does.”

  I looked up and caught Baumeyer’s eye. What I saw switched a light on inside my head—he was frustrated. Not with me, but with kids like Ryder. Ryder didn’t respect his teachers, he wouldn’t do his homework or pay attention in class, and he was a bad influence on the other kids because he still managed to get good grades. If Baumeyer could nail Ryder on this one thing, he could make an example out of Ryder that people would still be talking about when he retired.

  He just needed me to incriminate my brother.

  I leaned back in the chair. For a long time I followed a pattern in the carpeting, then I started working out four times nine the long way. Two times nine is eighteen, plus nine is twenty-seven, plus nine again—

  Baumeyer stood, hitched his khakis up, and went behind me to open the door.

  “Ryder,” Baumeyer said. He patted the back of the chair to my right. “Have a seat, son.”

  I looked over at Ryder. He gave me a big grin and wink.

  “All righty, boys,” Baumeyer said. “I don't want to have to call your mama in over this.”

  “What for?” Ryder said with a straight face. “What’d Colt do?”

  My skin felt hot and cold all over and too tight for my body. I glared down at my sneakers. Baumeyer was right, that jerk was going to put all this on me.

  “You think I’m stupid, son?” Baumeyer asked him. “I know you started this whole thing. What you need to do right now is own up to—”

  “What whole thing?”

  Baumeyer made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Do you have any idea what loyalty is, Ryder? It means you don't let your little brother take the fall for you. When I was in the Marines—”

  Ryder started laughing like he couldn’t hold it in.

  “You listen here, son,” Baumeyer snapped. “If nobody says anything, Colt goes down. He doesn’t have popularity on his side, Ryder. Every kid in his class will swear they saw him do it. People start looking at Colt right now as a troublemaker, they’re never going to be able to see him for anything else.”

  Blood leaked into my mouth, but I couldn’t stop biting my cheek. It was like my jaw was locked.

  “And furthermore—” Baumeyer sounded almost happy. “—if you don't own up and Colt tells me that you started this noisemaking thing, I will rain holy hell down on you.”

  I heard Ryder’s mouth pop open, this half-wet sound. He sucked in a breath. Then he blew it all out and leaned back in his chair. He wasn’t going to say anything. I wanted to kick in his teeth, hit him, gouge his eyes out.

  Ryder plopped his sneakers onto Baumeyer’s desktop right next to the nameplate and pushed his chair up onto the back legs.

  “Now you listen to me, you fat-ass fartsucker,” Ryder said. “You ain’t got shit on me and definitely not on Colt, so hows about you fucking quit wasting everybody’s fucking time and fuck the fuck off al-fucking-ready?”

  Baumeyer was so mad about getting cussed out by a sixth-grader that he forgot all about the clicking.

  Colt

  Book: God Killer

  Description: The night Sissy died.

  Cool night air rushed past, whipping my hair around. Tough and I were in the back of Dad’s old pickup, sitting on the wheel wells opposite each other while Sissy drove. Through the back window, I could see Sissy and Ryder. For a few seconds, Ryder tapped his thumb on the barrel of the Saiga laying across his knees, th
en he stopped. Sissy stared out at the road, clutching the wheel so tight that I could see the bands of muscle standing out on her forearms.

  Tough was staring down at the 9mm in his hands. He must’ve felt me watching him because he looked up. I nodded at him, hoping I looked reassuring. Sissy was right. This was the only way to end it. Somebody should’ve tried it sooner, but Dad had been in too much pain to think straight. Everybody else had just been taking their cues from him.

  Once we got over the next hill, the lights from town came into view. Tough looked like he was going to puke.

  “It’s all right,” I yelled over the wind. We had been patient. We’d waited and planned and prayed and God had given us an opportunity to take Kathan out. “We got this. It’ll be fine.”

  Sissy turned off just before we got to the main drag, slowed down, and parked behind Rowdy’s. She shut off the truck just in time for me and Tough to hear the tail end of a joke Ryder was making about grabbing a beer before we headed over.

  “Tell you what,” Sissy said, climbing out. “If this goes over, I’ll buy you one myself.”

  Ryder got out, too. “You know, lying’s a sin.”

  Tough and I hopped out of the bed.

  “I mean it,” she said. “We get through this and I’ll get you something to celebrate with. I won’t say a word.”

  “Or bother me in the morning?”

  “I didn’t say I was throwing you a kegger.”

  “You supply the starter beer and I’ll supplement it as I see fit.”

  Sissy rolled her eyes, then turned to us. “Circle up.”

  We held hands and bowed our heads. Tough’s hand was shaking and either Ryder’s or mine was sweating like crazy.

  “Dear Heavenly Father,” Sissy started. She took a deep breath. “Do what You need to with us. Let us carry out Your will. Give us the courage, focus, and faith to send Kathan back to Hell where he belongs.”

  “And let the motherfucker burn,” Ryder said.

  “Yeah!” Tough yelled.

  I added, “If it’s Your will.”

  Sissy’s head snapped up to look at me. I swallowed hard and made myself stare at the ground like I didn’t notice.

  “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever,” she said.

  We all said “Amen” together.

  Sissy popped out her .357’s magazine, checked it, reloaded and chambered a round. “Everybody hot?”

  Tough copied her motions with his pistol. Ryder lifted his Saiga and gave the barrel a lip-smacking kiss. I adjusted the sling on my shoulder and checked the action of my rifle for brass—once, twice, three times—

  “Colt,” Sissy said.

  I stopped.

  But my hands wanted to keep going. Three’s a terrible number.

  Maybe, but the look on Sissy’s face said the consequences for doing it again would be worse. It was just stupid OCD crap anyway. It didn’t matter.

  Colt

  Book: General Halo History

  Description: How Ryder and Colt convinced Sissy that they should be allowed to drop out of school.

  Kathan reinstated Halo’s school district two months after the war ended. Part of the recovery effort, he told the news. He wanted the orphans to have a chance to get back to normality, to return to the education they’d been denied over the last four years. And while the cameras were watching, he sent Rian out to the cabin to specially invite us Whitney kids to come back to school. An olive branch, he called it.

  After the entourage of vans and reporters left, Sissy dropped onto the porch steps.

  “We’re not going back, are we?” Tough said. “Fuck ‘em, right?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Sissy said. She rubbed her eyes.

  “I’m with Baby Boy on this one,” Ryder said. “Fuck ‘em.”

  “Yeah?” Sissy said. “And what’re you going to do when this is all over and everything goes back to normal? Sell drugs like some ignorant punk too dumb to get a real job?”

  “I don’t need to go to school to join the army,” Ryder said. “I’ll take the equivalency test.”

  “Read a book, genius,” Sissy said. “You need a high school diploma, minimum, to enlist. They won’t even consider your application if you didn’t graduate.”

  Ryder brought his soda bottle up and spit tobacco juice into it.

  “They’ll let us in based on experience,” he said. “Besides, they can’t pass up the best tag-team in the history of the United States of Ass-whupping, right, Sunshine?” He held his fist out.

  I didn’t bump it.

  “I don’t want to be in the army,” I said.

  “What? Why the fuck not?”

  “Could you quit with the ignorant language for five seconds?” Sissy said.

  “No, I fucking can’t,” Ryder said. He pointed back and forth between me and him. “You and me, Sunshine, we got a gift—a God-given ability to kick the unholy fucking shit out of bad guys and—”

  “Ryder!”

  He didn’t even look Sissy’s way. “—and you’re going to waste that on, what? Seminary? Business school? A life of quiet desperation? Come on, Sunshine, don’t do me like that. Don’t do God Almighty like that.”

  Sissy grabbed Ryder by his shoulder and hauled him down to the machine shed.

  Tough and I started to get off the porch, but Sissy yelled, “Stay there!” over her shoulder, and unless you were Ryder, you didn’t question Sissy.

  They went inside the shed. Ten minutes later, Ryder came out and pitched his spit bottle at a tree.

  *

  I stared down at my notebook. I could feel them staring. They’d been watching me since I walked into the high school building that morning.

  Maybe it was because the placement tests had put me in a higher grade than the rest of my classmates—I was in Junior English with a mix of kids from Ryder’s class and a couple slow kids from Sissy’s—and maybe they were wondering what a freshman was doing there.

  Or maybe it was because my dad had gotten all of their parents killed and now they were being forced to go back to school as if nothing had happened. If it’d been me, I would’ve been pissed, too.

  Someone whispered. Beads of cold sweat rolled down my spine and soaked my t-shirt where it was pressed against the back of the chair.

  There was only one door in this room—only one way in and out—and because the English room was in the center of the building, no windows. If this turned out to be a trap, I was screwed. Why had I agreed to come here without even a pocketknife? If they tried anything, all I’d have was a pen and a useless damn notebook to defend myself with. I grabbed my pen like a knife and crossed my arms so that it was hidden in my armpit.

  A desk scraped behind me. Somebody was getting up.

  I started shaking my legs under the desk. Why hadn’t we realized this was the perfect way to separate us? Put us each in a different classroom, take us all down at the same time so we wouldn’t be able to help each other. They’d probably gotten Tough as soon as we left him at the elementary.

  Shit. I should’ve just gone along with Ryder and told Sissy no. She couldn’t make us all go to school if we didn’t want to. Now Tough was probably dead and it was my fault.

  “Hey, Whitney—” A hand slapped down on my shoulder.

  I hooked my left arm around the arm of the angel that had grabbed me, then wrenched my arm out straight. His elbow cracked. He screamed. I grabbed his throat.

  The desk flipped over backward, still wrapped around my legs. I kicked free of it and climbed onto the angel’s chest. A pencil to the eye might not kill him, but it would sure as hell slow him down. I cocked the pencil back. I could hear screaming, but over the last couple of years that had faded into the background noise of fighting.

  Two sharp, hot pins stabbed me just under the shoulder blade. Then it was like being hit with a wall made out of bricks and pain. Everything stopped.

  *

  “—can’t handle this. My student loa
ns aren’t worth getting killed over. I’m leaving. I can’t deal with—”

  “Take it easy, Miss Trent.” I recognized that voice.

  “Take it easy? He was going to stab that other boy. I think he broke his arm.”

  Fuck, I hurt all over. And I was laying in something wet. Something wet that smelled like piss. I groaned. If it smells like piss…

  “He’s waking up. Oh my God, I don’t want to be here! I quit! Are you listening to me, Officer Rian? I quit!”

  “You’re okay, Miss Trent. You did the right thing, tasing him.”

  My fingers were numb. I couldn’t move my arms or legs. That was what finally brought me around. Not being able to move always freaked me out, even back before the war when Ryder was just messing around, holding me down to spit on me or something.

  “Hey, what the fuck is going on here?” That was Ryder’s voice.

  “Return to your classroom,” Rian snapped.

  “The fuck I will.” He dropped to his knees beside my head and grabbed my arm. “Colt? Colt!”

  “This situation is under control, Whitney. Get your sorry ass back to your classroom.”

  Ryder snorted. “Yeah, okay.”

  He rolled me onto my back. My arm tried to jerk out of its socket and metal cut into my wrists.

  “Man, we’re in some shit now, Sunshine,” Ryder mumbled. “Fucking Sissy. We’re going down to that office right now. No more of this bullshit about diplomas.” He turned his head toward the door and bellowed, “Sissy! English room!”

  Colt

  Book: God Killer

  Description: Colt enjoys a nightmare while harrowing hell for Tiffani.

  My heart boomed like an automatic shotgun in my chest. I hadn’t heard the doctor right. I looked at Dad.

  “My room?” I said. “As in—” There was a bed, a dresser, a toilet and sink. “I thought this was just— You said all I had to do was talk to somebody!”