Redneck Apocalypse Special Edition Box Set

by eden Hudson

  “I know.” She rolled her eyes. “But I didn’t say I wouldn’t fuck him first. Seriously, babe, I have needs. Where am I supposed to get it? From you?”

  He gulped. Sniffed.

  I scrubbed my hand through my hair and looked around the room for my hat. It would’ve been great to have some clothes on. Or to be anywhere else. Back at the house playing PKR with Harper and Jax. I could’ve probably even made this whole thing sound funny if I tried. But Jax was dead, Harper hated me, and the dumbass I wanted to blame for it all was about to bawl because his trophy wife was screwing me again.

  But she was just doing it because I was the only guy in town who would put up with her psycho-bitch bullshit. I was the only guy as screwed up as she was. Sex was all I was good for, so she might as well.

  My lungs started sucking wind like my life still depended on it. The walls felt like they were closing in on me. The mattress—which had gotten thrown across the room during Round Four of the hate-sex—got bigger and bigger, until it took up my whole field of vision.

  I had to get out of there. Fuck getting revenge on Jason. Fuck banging Mitzi. Fuck everybody. I had to get out.

  I got up, grabbed my jeans from off the TV. My shirt was too bloody and tore-up to salvage, so I left it. My boots were sprawled out by the door, and my John Deere hat was on the doorknob. I didn’t bother putting anything on, just took it all outside with me. I climbed up in the truck and sat with my clothes on my lap.

  I wished I could be gone. Just gone. Not Heaven or Hell—just never having existed at all. Things would’ve been different without me. Better. Jax would still be alive. Him and Harper might be married by now. Maybe Mom would even still be alive. Maybe Dad would’ve gone with her to pick Ryder up from after-school detention that day. Dad wouldn’t have hidden in Mom’s flipped-over van like a little bitch, bleeding and shaking while Mikal stomped Mom’s skull in. He would’ve stopped Mikal. Everything would’ve been different.

  I squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. I didn’t even feel like hitting anything.

  Just let me be gone.

  But I wasn’t even praying to anybody anymore. Getting made had cut me off forever.

  My whole life I’d felt like I was missing something that everybody else had, that direct connection to God that everybody but me said they could feel. Even Mom, who’d been more like me than anybody else in our family. Mom used to say if you held really still when you hurt the most, you could feel God inside of you, fixing things. But I’d never felt that. Not once in my life.

  Well, I sure as hell could feel something now—I could feel where He’d been ripped out. It was nothingness. Cold fucking emptiness.

  A shiver rolled down my neck.

  Better enjoy it while it lasts. Somebody shoves a stake through your heart, it’s going to warm up real fast.

  Ryder

  Colt didn’t slow down or give any indication of stopping again until we tore through the last strip of trees and out into a bean field. Up ahead, I could see the lights at the very top of the Ferris wheel shining over the businesses on the square.

  “Tell me we’re not just going to waltz into town,” I said.

  Colt took off across the field.

  I groaned. “Aw, fuck me.”

  At the edge of town, he stopped, checked every which way to see if anyone was around or flying overhead. Then he jogged across the highway and ducked into an alley. Brick buildings loomed on either side of us. It would’ve been a great bottleneck if someone wanted to drive us into an ambush.

  The alley came out smack-fucking-dab on the square. While Colt scanned the area for potential threats, I stared at the deserted carnival. The hair on my arms stood up. Looked like everyone had disappeared in the middle of the Armistice Celebration and now the place was lit-up and empty forever.

  Somebody had taken the initiative and hung a sign up on the Ferris wheel. Actually, it looked like a bunch of bedsheets that had been sewed together and spray-painted on. A couple were even different colors—light blues and pinks instead of white.

  TOURISTS GO HOME

  HALO is CLOSED

  by ORDER of the INMATES

  “What do you think that means?” I looked over at Colt. The whole side of his shirt was soaked. “Shit, Sunshine. You got shot.”

  He peeled the hem of his shirt up and looked.

  “It’s just a graze.” He went back to staring out at the square. “You think it’s a trap?”

  “I think you’re losing a shitload of blood, that’s what I think.”

  “We’re almost there.” He sounded halfway lucid, but that was the problem with nutcases. Sometimes they were really good at hiding the crazy.

  “Where? Almost where? Do you even fucking know?”

  “Don’t ask.” He hung a right out of the alley and started running again.

  And I saw it—where we were going.

  “Great,” I said. “Just great.”

  The lights inside the bakery were on when we got to the door. Through the order window behind the counter, I could see into the kitchen. The vamp who ran the place was reaching into the oven for something.

  Colt pushed some buttons on the electronic deadbolt’s keypad. The numbers flashed red. He stared at it for a second, then he knocked on the glass.

  The vamp turned, a pan full of scones in her hand. When she saw Colt standing at the door, she dropped them.

  Tough

  The vamp hearing picked up a heartbeat approaching the passenger side of the truck. I looked out the window.

  Scout. She opened the door and hopped in. Heat and girl sweat and some other smell I’d never noticed while I was alive swirled around her like a cloud. The new smell was kind of spicy, but not like food-spice. More like the time Mom took me with her to the dime store over in North Fork and they had all those potpourri brooms and fake flowers.

  “Where have you been?” Then I guess Scout realized why I would be naked, sitting in the truck in the motel parking lot because she said, “Oh.”

  I don’t think I’d ever seen Scout look at me like that before. Like I’d let her down or something. But then she shook her head like she was shaking it off and straightened up.

  “I tried to get out to the cabin,” she said, “but Rian’s got all the roads blocked. I thought maybe—not that you and Colt would get captured, I know you wouldn’t let that happen—but I thought Rian might be out there trying. So I had Cash do a flyover—”

  It was like listening to someone talk about a song you’ve never heard. The words were going right through my brain. I’d caught some of the names. Rian. Colt. And wasn’t Cash that crow-boy in Scout’s class? Lonely Pershing’s little cousin?

  “—and he said the Tracker had just pulled up, so I figured you guys had gotten out just in time—”

  I put my hand up. Scout stopped talking.

  Rian was at the cabin. And like the screwed-up, selfish bastard I was, I’d left Colt at the cabin alone while I ran off to fuck Mitzi until I couldn’t think.

  But if Rian had called the Tracker in, Colt obviously hadn’t stuck around. He might be crazy, but he wasn’t stupid.

  I looked at Scout and mouthed, Where’s Colt?

  Her eyebrows scrunched up while she tried to read my lips. Probably wasn’t easy with the pole light being all the way on the other end of the parking lot.

  “Colt?” she said finally. “I thought he was with you. That’s why I wanted to find you. I thought…”

  She looked back down at the pile of clothes covering my crotch. A little breath hissed out of her lungs. It really added to the overall air of disappointment in the truck. Whatever Scout had thought, I damn sure wasn’t living up to it. Little kid crushes are a bitch.

  “Look, Tough, this is it. This is the beginning of the end. We’re about to shove it all up Kathan’s ass and light the fuse. This is what we were born for.”

  Ooooh. I nodded. Scout wanted me to be the guy who would do t
he right thing, the guy who would win the war, the stone-cold badass, the chosen soldier of God. She wanted me to be Colt.

  I leaned across the seat, reached over Scout, and opened her door.

  “What—?” She stared at me. “Tough?”

  I gave her a Get out nod.

  “What about everything?” she said. “When I heard that you got made, it was like an epiphany. You finally figured it out! You found a way around all of Kathan’s rules. You didn’t stay some helpless human. We don’t have to stay helpless. It was the last piece of the puzzle.”

  I popped my door, got out, and pulled my jeans on. Then I went around to Scout’s side and jerked her out. I slammed the door hard enough that the truck rocked.

  “Dammit, Tough, I get it!” She stomped her foot. “I understand why you got made! To know your enemy, you must become your enemy! Nobody else gets it, but I do.”

  I shoved her toward the street. You’re just a kid. I saw you cry for thirty minutes once when Harper used your fingernail polish. Go the fuck home.

  I went back around to the driver’s side.

  Scout went rigid. It was like I could feel the wheels turning in her brain.

  “You’re not mad at me,” she said. “This is about you being a vamp now. You can’t get enough with the blood, can you? It’s not strong enough.”

  I froze with my fingers wrapped around the door handle.

  “That’s what you need, isn’t it?” Her voice had switched tones. She wasn’t that little brat throwing a fit anymore. The way she sounded now made me think of the blues—low, moody, deep down and dirty. Sex music. “I told you I can make my blood stronger. I can do it for you.”

  I snorted. Of course she can.

  Because as soon as you think you’ve hit rock bottom, some asshole throws you a shovel.

  Ryder

  The vamp stood there staring at us.

  Colt stared back like he couldn’t understand what she was.

  I, on the other hand, had come too far to wait outside for that dipshit Rian and his foot soldier death squad to catch up. If I’m going to be forced to run four and a half fucking miles through fields and woods, there had damn well better be a payoff waiting for me at the other end.

  I knocked on the glass harder than Colt had. “How about letting us in before we get gunned down or this dumbass bleeds to death on your sidewalk?”

  That snapped the vamp out of it. She switched on the speed and was at the door unlocking the deadbolt before I could flinch. She held it open for us.

  Colt didn’t move. He was still staring at her. He started to shake his head.

  “Colt?” she said.

  “No,” he whispered. He smashed his hands flat against his ears and backed away. “No!”

  “Like hell you do.” I grabbed his arm. He kicked and punched me, but I barely felt it. At least he’d put away that sword. That I would’ve avoided. I pulled Colt into the bakery and hollered at the vamp, “Lock the door!”

  Once she got it shut and deadbolted again, I let Colt go. He dropped to the floor and scooted until his back was to a wall. There he resumed the crazy position—arms wrapped around his stomach, knees up, head down, rocking and jabbering to himself.

  “—gone, she’s gone, she’s gone, bad dog, bad dog—”

  I sighed. “Great. Back to square one.”

  “Why are you here?” the vamp asked me. “I thought… Earlier, you said—”

  “Look, honey, I kind of don’t give a fuck what you think. I ain’t driving this crazy train. He wanted to come here, so here we came.”

  A little wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

  “We had to haul ass to somewhere safe and this is where he picked. Ran it like he’d run it a hundred times before and could do it blindfolded and backward if he had to. So, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a question or two for—”

  “He?” The vamp took a step closer to me. “He who?”

  “The president of the United States.” I pointed my spit bottle at the nutcase on the floor. “Who the fuck do you think?”

  “Colt—”

  “Yes. Colt.” I gave her an exaggerated nod. “Gold fucking star. Now, if you don’t mind, could we get somewhere without quite so many big-ass windows and glass doors?”

  The vamp looked back and forth between my eyes. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Kathan sent his death squad to ‘arrest’ Colt.” I enunciated as clearly as possible and made a little running guy with my fingers. “We ran the fuck away from the cabin. He ran the fuck to here. Now we are here—” I pointed at the floor. “—and we need to hide.” I made my little running guy duck behind my spit bottle.

  The vamp didn’t move.

  Well, hell. I was really proud of that little running guy bit. I shrugged.

  “The sooner, the better, honey,” I said. “We’re kind of on a timetable.”

  “Colt, do you remember who I am?” she asked without looking away from me.

  Behind her, Colt pulled himself into a tighter ball. “—take her away, please, please take her, don’t let this happen, please, I can’t do it anymore, if she knew, if she knew, if she knew—”

  I snorted. “I’m no psychologist, but I’m going to say that’s a yes.”

  Tiffani

  Colt. Colt standing in my bakery, talking to me.

  Except his speech was different. An exaggerated redneck drawl rather than his more subtle country timbre. His posture had changed, too. In five years, I’d never once seen Colt stand with his back to a door. His head was almost always tilted downward at a self-conscious angle. His left shoulder was always slung slightly lower than the right. Tonight, he stood with shoulders square, one hand hooked in his pocket, the other hanging near his waist as though he was holding something. It was all different, all wrong. It reminded me of that X-Files episode where aliens had stolen human bodies, but couldn’t quite mimic their hosts’ mannerisms.

  I took a breath through my nose to see if Colt’s scents had changed. The smell of blood overwhelmed everything else.

  “You’re hurt,” I said.

  “Not me,” Colt said. He pointed at the wall. “Him.”

  “Him?”

  Colt took an irritated step forward, then shifted his weight back to his other foot. “Aw, for f— Are we going to do this all day? Him—the nutcase guy on your floor, my brother, Mikal’s former bitch—that him.”

  I shook my head. “What? You’re Colt.”

  “No,” he said as if I were stupid. He pointed at his chest. “I am Ryder.” He gestured at the wall. “That is Colt.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I could if you’d get with the program. When he came here, I just assumed you knew—”

  The vamp speed switched on and I had a handful of Colt’s shirt wrapped around my fist before he could finish his sentence.

  “Stop, Colt. Just stop. You are Colt.”

  “Honey, I think you need to get your eyes checked.” He shoved at my arm, but I didn’t let go.

  “This isn’t funny,” I said.

  “Do you see me laughing?”

  The same nose, the same hair, the same dark blue-green Whitney eyes, the same scents of tattoo ink and sunlight and gun oil and outdoors. His heart had even started to beat the same way it did when he was turned on.

  I gave him a shake. “You’re not Ryder. You’re Colt. Somewhere deep down, you know that. You know me. You remember. That’s why you’re here.”

  “I’m here because I’m trying to keep this dumbass alive long enough to—”

  “Ryder’s dead, Colt.”

  “Yeah, but I’m sort of on a work-release program right now—”

  “No, you’re not! Maybe you need to think you’re Ryder, so…” So what? As a coping mechanism for losing Mikal? As a way around the suicide drive of being a castoff? “I don’t know. But you’re not him. Look at your hand. Look at the burns.”

  He didn’t take his eyes o
ff me.

  I let go of his collar, grabbed his shirt by the hem, and whipped it over his head before he could stop me. Blood trickled from a bullet hole in his side, but I made myself focus on the black letters inked across his chest.

  “Look,” I said. “Your tattoo—Colt’s tattoo. Resist or Serve. You’re not Ryder.”

  He wouldn’t look down. I grabbed his neck and tried to force him to.

  Colt hit me. A solid right to my solar plexus.

  I let him go and stumbled back a step. My lungs tried to gasp. The hit had been hard enough to restart my diaphragm’s panic reflex.

  “I’m not Colt,” he snapped. “And who the hell would want to be? You know he traded you in, don’t you? Mikal needed you gone so he would fall ass over teakettle in love with her and he traded you in without a second fucking thought.”

  Then something changed, something too subtle for human perception. The vamp instincts picked up on it the way a wild animal senses its prey is rabid and should be left alone.

  “That’s not true!” Colt yelled.

  And it was Colt. It was his voice.

  Primal panic froze me in place. Something very bad was happening.

  Colt lurched backward into a table. His hip banged off the corner, then he dropped to the floor and rolled.

  “I fought her!” His hands scratched at his face and throat. “I fought as long as I could. I tried. I—”

  Then he was different again. Colt dug a finger into the bullet hole in his side. He screamed and my stomach shuddered.

  “You loved what she did to you,” he said. “Admit it!”

  Another shift. Colt pulled the bloody digit out of his side and curled into a ball, covering his head with his arms. His voice was muffled. “No!”

  He rolled up to his hands and knees, then stood. “So all those times you got off as fast as she did were what? Accidents?”

  Colt grabbed a handful of his hair and smashed his face on the edge of a table.

  “Admit it!” Blood sprayed through his teeth onto the tabletop. “Mikal was perfect for you! You need somebody to tie you up and beat you like a bad dog. And it felt good, didn’t it? Finally getting what you deserved?” He reared back and hit his head again, his tirade barely missing a beat. “Some fucking holy soldier. You let Dad die, you let Sissy die, you’re the reason Tough’s going to Hell. I can’t believe I died for you, you sack of shit.”