Redneck Apocalypse Special Edition Box Set

by eden Hudson

  Dad started to open his mouth, but the doctor shook her head at him.

  “This transition will go more smoothly if you step outside and let me handle it,” she said.

  “Dad?” I took a step toward him.

  The doctor ushered him out into the hall and closed the door.

  “Dad!” I yelled.

  The doctor turned back to me. “Colt, you knew you were being admitted. We talked about this. It’s been explained to you twice since—”

  “I was just supposed to talk to somebody!”

  “Think, Colt,” she said as if she was losing her patience. “If that were true, why were you asked to change into the hospital sweats? Why did you bring your bag?”

  “They said I just had to talk to somebody. Dad said— Dad would never lie to me! Lying bitch, he would never—”

  She held up her hands, palms out. “Breathe, Colt. Think.”

  Mom crying. Dad crying. Me screaming at them. Blood running down my knee and shin, a paring knife, a gash in my thigh.

  “That didn’t happen. It didn’t—” But I could feel the sterile white bandage taped to my leg. It was a fake. A prop. I’d never gotten stitches in my leg. Never even been cut there. “You’re lying!” I pulled up the leg of the pants and ripped off the bandage. A bloody red gash held together by thick, black stitches. “No!”

  It wasn’t real. It had never happened. I’d never cut myself to get away from the black noise. Mom and Dad had never said I needed help because they never knew.

  “This isn’t real,” I told the doctor. “They wouldn’t do this to me. Even if they’d known—”

  “About the medication? You can’t expect it to help if you won’t take it.”

  I got a flash of red capsules, yellow capsules, more red ones. Breakfast, lunch, and bedtime. Anger flooded my brain, followed by a wash of fear. I couldn’t be angry at something that hadn’t happened.

  I was hyperventilating.

  “It’s going to be okay,” the doctor said. “You won’t be in here forever, Colt.”

  Endless hours alone. Days and days of nothing. Years of scratching at a padded wall. Scrambling across the floor and pressing my face to the crack under the door whenever I heard footsteps out in the hall, yelling like a dog left alone and forgotten for so long that all it could do was bark when someone came near.

  “Colt?”

  Mom and Dad visiting, but me not being able to think straight enough to talk, to act human, to act sane. Having to be restrained.

  “He’s having an episode. Hold him.”

  “No, I’ll be good. I’ll stop, I swear, I’ll stop!”

  “Get a vein if you can.”

  Tiffani

  Book: Hell Bent

  Description: If Tiffani had opened the bakery the morning after the end of Halo Bound.

  Out the bakery’s big front window, I could see two little old ladies coming across the street and helping each other up onto the sidewalk. I put their ages at around seventy-five, maybe closer to eighty for the Hispanic-looking one. If I was still alive, I’d be her age. Probably a lot less healthy. She had dentures, but that was it. The younger woman’s kidneys were failing, she wore adult diapers, and she had stomach cancer. Cancer was how Aaron finally went, too. Seventy-eight and surrounded by his children and grandchildren, holding his second wife’s hand as he drifted off to sleep.

  The bell over the door rang as they came in.

  “Morning, honey,” the older lady said. “Are you open yet?”

  “Sure am,” I said. “What can I get you gals?”

  They tottered over to the counter.

  “Well, by now I’ve usually had me two cups of coffee,” the younger lady said. “I’m not used to getting up and around so late.”

  “Oh, hell, me neither,” the older one said. “Get us some coffees, would you?”

  “And we’d better have a couple of those carrot cakes to wash them down with.”

  They cackled as they settled into a booth by the window.

  I kept an ear and eye on them while I got their orders. When the NP-Human conflict had ended, Kathan had ordered Mikal and the foot soldiers to execute everyone twenty-five years old and up, so the people who were still living in Halo were all under thirty-five. I didn’t get a chance to hang around folks my own age very often.

  I brought the coffees and carrot cakes out and set them down. “You all in town for the Armistice Celebration?”

  “A vamp who owns a bakery,” the older lady said. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

  “Maybe not yet, but you stick around Halo long enough and you will,” I said, straightening up.

  “I heard y’all have sirens,” the younger lady said. “Is that true? I thought they were mostly river-dwellers.”

  “We have a couple,” I said. “But we don’t see much of them. There’s a river goes by town and they mostly stick to it.”

  “Good, strong brew,” the older lady said. Then she jumped and looked at me. “Well, here we are chatting you up and we don’t even know your name.”

  I opened my mouth, but the bakery door slamming open cut me off.

  “Tiffani!” Jason Gudehaus, Mitzi’s husband. He was wearing a factory-distressed cowboy hat and boots, probably from his record label, and he smelled like moonshine and Rowdy’s bar. “Where is that little cocksucker?”

  I took a breath so I could let it out, then told the ladies, “Excuse me just a minute, girls.”

  “Where is he?” Jason yelled. “Upstairs? I’m going to get me a goddamn stake and—”

  I grabbed Jason by the arm and dragged him back outside, into the long morning shadow the bakery cast.

  He tried to shake me loose, but he couldn’t. “Get your goddamn hands off me.”

  I let go and he stumbled and fell onto the sidewalk.

  “What the hell are you doing, barging into my bakery stone-drunk?” I asked.

  Jason struggled until he got up to his knees.

  “Mitzi didn’t stake him,” Jason said.

  “Tough?” I said.

  “I’m going to fucking do him in myself!” He whipped off his cowboy hat and used it to point at the bakery. “Where’s he sleeping? There wasn’t nobody at his house.”

  I felt the wrinkle appear between my eyebrows.

  “You want to stake Tough—the vamp I made—while he is asleep, and you think I’ll just let you do it?” I shook my head. “You’ve been married to Mitzi for, what, five years? Don’t you know anything about vamps?”

  “She fucked him all night, all over town.” Jason’s voice cracked. After a few seconds, he sat down on the curb and put his elbows up on his knees. He sniffled, then swiped at his nose with a wrist. “I think—” He choked. I smelled the tears a split-second before one dripped onto the back of his hand. “I think she likes him.”

  I shifted feet. Hoped to hell that the vamp senses and the super-smell would tell me that this was some kind of trap, but all I got off of Jason was sincerity and stale moonshine breath.

  “You were fine with Tough sleeping with her before,” I said. “Five years you guys kept up your protection contract with him. What do you care if he’s sleeping with her now?”

  “He’s a vamp,” Jason said. “She fucked him before because he had body heat and because he could—because he didn’t—the cold didn’t bother him. But he’s a vamp now.”

  I took a deep breath so that I could sigh. Sat down on the curb a couple of feet from Jason and tried to think how to explain Mitzi to a heartbroken drunk.

  “The crow magic makes vamps primal, territorial,” I said. “And Mitzi’s always got to be the first one to get somewhere. She likes virgins.”

  “Tough ain’t no goddamn—”

  “Mitzi wanted to be his first vamp-on-vamp experience. She’ll get bored of him. Then she probably will stake him.”

  Jason looked up at me, red-eyed and hopeful.

  “Now will you please piss off?” I said. “I’ve got customers waiting for me.�
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  Tiffani

  Book: God Killer

  Description: The memories Tiffani was reliving while Colt was searching for her.

  The car was in the drive. They were both home. I stopped at the front door and took a deep breath through my nose, even though I knew I wouldn’t smell anything until I went inside. Those few seconds before opening the door were always the worst.

  I reached for the knob, then pulled my hand back. The note and pamphlet taped to my grade card.

  Tiffani Ann is an exceptional student. I believe she would excel in UMSL’s summer mathematics program. Information for scholarships attached. Please consider this wonderful opportunity to nurture her natural talents.

  I peeled the tape off of my grade card, careful not to leave any traces that it was ever there, then shoved the note and pamphlet down behind the bushes. I’d find a better hiding place for it later.

  Another deep breath, then I opened the door. The scent of freshly baked lemon bars washed over me. I froze with one foot on the porch, the other in the den.

  “—way you throw money around, and suddenly you’re worried about the house?” My father’s hearty, hateful laugh filtered out of the kitchen. “That’s rich, Judith. That is damned rich.”

  My mother’s voice was almost too quiet to hear. “Harold called—”

  “Harold and I have an arrangement!” Father bellowed. “You keep your goddamn beak out of business that doesn’t concern you. Go get your hair done again. Waste a little more of the money I worked my goddamn fingers to the bone for.”

  Silence. My heart pounded in my ears. I looked across the den, past the doorway to the kitchen. Eight steps to the hallway. I could see sunlight shining through my bedroom window, illuminating a square of the hallway’s pristine beige carpet. Eight steps and I would be safely past them.

  “That’s right,” Father said. “Have another piece of cake. Stuff your fat face, piggy.”

  The pan clattered to the counter. Footsteps softened by house slippers crossed the kitchen floor, followed immediately by the heavier tread of men’s wingtips. They were coming toward the den.

  My heart thundered in my chest. I put on a wide smile and slammed the door as if I’d just come in.

  Mother ducked into the den and stopped. She smiled brightly. Unshed tears twinkled in her eyes.

  “How was school, sweetheart?” she asked.

  “Great!”

  Father leaned against the kitchen door jamb. “Have your scores?”

  I nodded and handed him the grade card. He looked them over.

  “Why, these are top-notch, Tiffani Ann,” he said.

  “That’s wonderful, dear!” Mother wiped her hands on her apron. “What would you like for supper, Tiffi? Anything, go ahead and name it.”

  Father chuckled cruelly and shook his head.

  “We’re celebrating, Raymond,” Mother said.

  “Go ahead, Tiffani Ann,” Father said, waving his hand dismissively. “Help your mother spend us out of house and home even though we’ve got perfectly good roast in the ice box right now.”

  “She did an excellent job at school this year—”

  “And because she scored well on a few tests, you want to teach her to be frivolous with her husband’s money, too? I’ll tell you why the hell Harold called. Because you’re spending all our goddamn mortgage payments before I can put them toward the house!”

  My fingernails bit into my palms and I felt faint, but my smile never slipped.

  “Roast sounds keen to me, Ma,” I said, my voice somehow still bright and cheerful. “I love roast.”

  Mother looked at me as if I’d betrayed her. She thought I was taking Father’s side and she couldn’t believe it. Her own daughter. Her little girl. She thought I loved him the most and that I thought she was a silly cow. My eyes stung and watered. My stomach tightened. I needed to wretch, to sob until I vomited, but I held the smile.

  I had to get out. I couldn’t take any more. I had to—

  *

  Pain. A straight razor slowly scraping the skin from my body. I could hear the wickwickwick of the blade slicing at the fascia, feel the fingers of my torturer bunching up the loose flesh, getting a better grip, pulling. With a ripping sound, muscle was exposed to open air. I tried to scream, but all that came out was a whistling exhalation. My vocal cords were swollen and bloody. Too long spent screaming already.

  I couldn’t stay here. The pain was too much.

  *

  The bright lights of the doctor’s office glared down on Aaron and I. He smiled and squeezed my hand, but the smile was nervous. Aaron never was any good at hiding his emotions.

  The door opened and Dr. Lichty came in. As soon as I saw the look on his face, I knew. He was trying to hide it, but he wanted to grin.

  The test was positive. I was pregnant. I was going to be a mom. Aaron was going to be a daddy. I wanted to laugh and scream and shout and clap and kiss Aaron and praise God and call my mother and cry all at the same time, but I held still.

  “Welp,” Dr. Lichty said, easing himself down onto his stool and fixing Aaron with a mock frown, “I don’t know what you’ve been up to young man, but here in about nine months you’re going to be a father.”

  Aaron whooped and threw his arms around me. Then he backed off.

  “Aw, jeez,” he said, “I’m sorry, Tiff. Are you all right?”

  I laughed.

  “I’m not suddenly made out of glass.” I looked at Dr. Lichty. “Am I? That was all right, wasn’t it?”

  “We’ll go over a few things, but nothing so small as a hug is going to harm the baby.”

  Aaron grinned and hugged me again. “A baby!”

  “A baby!” I repeated.

  “God, I love you,” Aaron whispered.

  I couldn’t stay here. It hurt too much. I had to get out.

  *

  I didn’t find Aaron’s shirt with a lipstick stain on the collar the way country music and the movies portrayed the jilted wife finding out. Aaron was too crafty for any of that. When I started to suspect him for spending all his free time at the office, he’d even found a way to convince me that it was my imagination. “Jealous Tiffani Ann, always has to have all the attention in the world directed at her, can’t stand to think that someone else is getting a minute of my time. You know, sometimes I think it’s a good thing you lost that baby. You never could share the spotlight.”

  But over time, I picked up on his deflections and non-denials. I realized that another woman wasn’t just getting a few moments of my husband’s time, she was getting whole evenings and lunch breaks and pretty soon I was sitting at the kitchen table with my fifth glass of sherry at one in the afternoon, reading a Notice of Foreclosure for the third time, wondering how many more times it would take before it started to make sense.

  Aaron was a partner at his firm. We hadn’t hurt for money since his law school years. We’d never been past due on our house payment. Not once. They would have sent a notice.

  Eight months past due.

  The bank would have sent reminders, then warnings. Frank would have called. I was in at the First & Loan the other day to drop off that money from the Ladies’ Auxiliary bake sale. Someone would have said something. Why wouldn’t they have mentioned the mortgage to me?

  Because I was the woman, that was my first thought. Frank would have mentioned it to Aaron. Come in here, let’s get this straightened out. You couldn’t possibly have been missing payments all these months, could you? They would have buddied it up together, and then they would have worked out some kind of fix for this because they were men and keeping the house and having the career, those were their business. My business was to keep the kitchen of that house clean and organize the Ladies’ Auxiliary bake sale and have the children, and I’d already failed at one of those things.

  My second thought was much worse. A little more than nine months ago, Marguerite had had to resign from Aaron’s firm and go home to Wisconsin to supposedly help her a
iling mother. There had been business trips since then. Conferences. Plenty of vague answers, stock responses, and averted gazes when I asked Aaron how they’d gone.

  I was still sitting at the table with my sherry glass and the foreclosure notice when Aaron pulled into the garage a few hours later, but the sherry bottle had been empty for the last several drinks. I had replaced it with gin.

  “What in God’s name?” Aaron asked, when he flipped on the kitchen light and saw me. “Are you soused already?”

  “Not nearly enough. What is this?” I shoved the paper at him.

  He snatched it away. We’d given up the pretense of civility in the privacy of our own home months ago.

  Aaron grunted at the notice, then headed for his den.

  “Don’t you walk away from me, Aaron Mitchel Cranston.” I learned to my feet. The world spun, but I pushed on. “Tell me what the hell that is.”

  “You can read, can’t you?”

  “How are we behind? How are we that far behind?”

  “Oh, here we go, now she cares about the bills!”

  *

  Vic was beautiful, enchanting, and so romantic. She was a wonderful lover and a caring, attentive partner. But she wasn’t only mine.

  “You understand, don’t you, Tiffani?” she asked, her lips perfectly pouted. “I cannot be with just one woman or just one man. You are beautiful, but me, I need more. Do you understand? If I tried to contain my love to one person, that person would be overwhelmed. And me, I would get bored. One body, one mind, one heart will never be enough for me. I cannot be tied down to one place or one person. You understand, yes?”

  I nodded and forced an undamaged smile.

  “Tiffani, you will stay with us, won’t you?” she asked.

  Again I nodded. I had nowhere else to go. No one else who wanted me.

  Mitzi squealed and clapped her hands. “Yay! Tiffani joins the all-night party!”

  “I’ll stay if you make me,” I said.

  “I would not have it any other way,” Vic said.

  *

  Colt. My Colt. The real thing. Jagged broken bottles twisted in my neck and along the backs of my thighs where his skin touched mine.