Shotgun Bastards and Other Stories

By Andrea Speed

A collection of short tales filled with monsters, be they human or beast, ranging in setting from dystopia to pitch black noir and even general silliness. From the ludicrous to the frighteningly plausible; from deep space to after the end of the world. There are clumsy werewolves and bloody revenge, monster sleep overs and a dieting fad sure to kill your appetite. Whether looking into the past or the future, you're sure to find that stuff gets really weird.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrea Speed
• Release date: Aug 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393023845

Book preview

Part One

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT...AND MAYBE IT'S NOT THAT BAD?

When The Rains Came

N.B. This may be my favorite apocalypse of all. Written for that Twitter friend, a fellow author who goes by the handle @FrogCroakley, this is the first of his inspired by stories.

When the rains came, everyone thought it was blood.

It seemed to fall in fat drops that slid thick and oily down the windows. A general disgust soon gave way to panic when everyone found out why they were crimson. Karenia brevis, the algae that causes red tide.

The panic was stupid. As long as people didn't drink it, the worst it could do was irritate eyes and lungs, but humanity was in full on panic mode since the start of what some called the ocean wars.

If movies had taught us anything, it was that apes were eventually going to rise up and take us over—either prior to or instead of machines—but it didn't happen. What did happen was something no one had anticipated. Sea life turned against us.

It wasn't immediately obvious. A few shark attacks here and there, a rise in the number of poisonous jellyfish in Australia, whales taking out sightseeing boats that got too close. It was random occurrences, and no one saw a pattern, except for some marine biologists who were dismissed as hysterical when they pointed out how strangely aggressive sea life was becoming across the globe. It wasn't until the truly weird shit started happening that humanity started paying attention.

A pod of humpback whales sunk a heavily laden cargo ship in an attack that went on for about an hour. A crab boat was attacked by crabs and killer whales alike. Poisonous jellyfish killed beachgoers by the score in a dramatic and heavily filmed attack. Dolphins even took out a warship in the Florida Keys. No boat that went out on the water ever came back, except in pieces. All submarines were lost.

Sea life declared war on us en masse, and by the time we'd figured it out, it was all over. You could call it a stalemate because we could stay safe on land, and they couldn't get to us there, but really we had lost. There were some species that could walk on land, and while they were hardly the most fearsome, a group of crabs stripped all the flesh off a toddler's bones when inattentive parents lost sight of them. They could do damage.

Somehow they were starting to invade inland bodies of water. They were polluting water supplies, clogging sewer systems, making beaches too dangerous to venture near. It was God's wrath, or global warning, or space aliens.

Some marine biologists did attempt to talk to the creatures, using captive dolphins that already had communication skills. All the dolphins told them was, Your time is over. And in spite of precautions, the dolphins killed them.

We killed lots of the water life. There were people still dumping toxic waste into the seas by the ton, making the water so toxic it was unsafe to be downwind of it. But that was the joke. By killing them, we were killing us, and they knew it too. Even if we killed them all, they would still win.

When I first started maintaining the lighthouse, I had no idea what I would be getting into. I saw the red rain coming in, hidden within swollen black clouds. When it started falling, I knew it wasn't the blood they were screaming about on Twitter. It was just an algae bloom that would hurt the fish as much as us if not more. What I couldn't figure out was how they did it. They couldn't have. This could not have been a deliberate terroristic move by sea creatures. I don't care how smart dolphins are. Maybe there was a greater intelligence behind it all.

I watched from the top of the lighthouse as the crabs came over the shore in droves. Lobsters too. I've never seen so many hard shelled creatures at once. It was a swarm, a drove, thousands upon thousands of them, moving towards the roads, climbing the reefs, piling up around the lighthouse. It was a proper invasion, although it couldn't last long. Crabs were easy to kill.

But it bothered me the way they were gathering at the lighthouse, piling on top of each other in a growing wave, slowly climbing up the sides. What were they trying to accomplish? Could crabs be said to ever have a goal? That was one of those weird things that came up all the time with this war. If your opponent supposedly had no higher intellect, could they actually be at war with you? All we could say was humans were dying, and the seas were dying, and I suspected we would all die together.

As I write this now, the rain has fallen for twelve hours straight. Newscasters are advising people to stay out of it, to not drink it—duh—and to rinse it off as soon as you get in. Pet deaths and deaths of immune compromised people have been reported. The crabs are almost to the top of the lighthouse now. If I turned it on, there'd be a shadow of a mess of crabs projected on the dark gray water.

I don't know what the ultimate goal is here. To rid the world of all life? Humans just weren't killing themselves at a brisk enough pace? This is my best guess.

To the intelligence responsible, may I say fuck you? I hope you choke on the waste of our corpses. I hope some mutated algae from the sea kills you all.

A soft scuttling noise gives way to clacking, like multiple muted castanets. The crabs are inside the lighthouse. Dozens upon dozens of them, choking the stairwell, blocking the door, falling over each other in their haste to fill the room.

Of all the ways I could die, I never would have guessed this.

The End's Girlfriend

N.B: This is my second favorite apocalypse.

The hardest part about the end of the world? Explaining to my friends that my girlfriend had to do it.

It wasn't her fault, was it? The angel Gabriel turned out to be Gabrielle, which wasn't a shock considering how sexist the Bible was. It got a lot of other stuff wrong too, but that's not the point. I was kind of surprised, being an atheist, that my cool chick girlfriend with the short green hair and combat boots was also the Angel of the Apocalypse. Once I got over the disbelief factor and ascertained that she was not crazy, it was totally cool.

Okay, not the explaining to friends thing. That sucked. Oh, and the whole world ending thing.

But like I said, that wasn't her fault. She had a job to do. We've all had shitty jobs. It was just hers was more massive and suckier than most. I did wonder what was going to become of us after the end, especially since I was an atheist, but apparently being Gabrielle's girlfriend puts you in the VIP section no matter what. She's not the boss, but she has like major pull with the boss.

The family was a different story. As it was, I had a bad relationship with my family—they weren't down with the whole lesbian thing—so I was glad to hear they were toast with the rest of the human race. But the friends … oh dear. I wanted to save them all, but there was a limit of two. I didn't tell them because I didn't want it to be a contest. This was already awkward enough.

In the end, I picked my two very best friends, Dana and Harper. I didn't tell them or the others. It would have been needlessly cruel for no reason. There was no stopping the end of the world, apparently, but there was little point in dwelling on it either. Shit happens. Sometimes shit that's too big and too weird to wrap your head around. Like your cool new girlfriend kicking off the apocalypse.

Before it happened she took me on a whirlwind tour around the world, showing me some of humanity's greatest hits. The usual touristy stuff, like the Eiffel Tower and the Great Wall of China. Considering I'd never even traveled much beyond Seattle, this was a huge fucking deal for me. It also made me realize that humanity had done some decent stuff too. It was a shame to piss it all away, but Gabi couldn't stop it. And let's face it—for the little good we had done, we had done a shit ton of bad. It was probably high past time we went.

When the end came, I didn't see it. Heaven was apparently whatever you wanted it to be, so I was with Gabi in a temperate rainforest when it all unfolded. She didn't need to be there the whole time, just kick things off. Because I'd always wanted some ridiculous, fancy ass treehouse balanced on absurdly large branches, that's what we had. We were sitting on the back porch, drinking appletinis and watching the sun set over a valley green and blue with trees and water. So what now? I asked.

She shrugged. She still looked human, even though she wasn't. Don't know. I'll know as soon as the boss makes up her mind.

I reached out and took her hand. Hope we get set up on a new planet this time. Might be fun.

She rolled her purple eyes but still smiled. You are such a nerd.

So I know how it all ends. I just don't know what comes next.

Aftermath

N.B.: Third.

The weirdest thing? Vampires smelled like hamburgers.

No one knew why, or if they did, they hadn't shared. And not good hamburgers either, but ones just starting to turn, ones with wilted, slimy lettuce and mayo this side of rancid. Pretty disgusting, especially when a bunch of them were together in an enclosed space.

Not that the human in the carbon fiber net smelled any better. It was a feral kid, one from the wastes, so covered in grime and with a matted tangle of wild hair it could have been a girl or a boy. Raven had tried talking to it, but it just whimpered.

Finally, they were moved from the total darkness of the back of the van and thrown down on the dirt in front of a group of five vamps. Mostly they were dressed like burn outs, in denim, leather, and decorative studs and chains. Some even had the long stringy hair that went with the outfit, although others had weirdly anachronistic, sleek hairdos that hinted at the world before the vampires appeared. Before everything went to shit.

As the net fell away, the feral kid tried to run off, but the vamps grabbed it and tossed it back to the center of the circle, laughing. Raven pushed herself up to a sitting position and looked between the vamps, trying to determine if she was in the encampment or not. The moon high overhead was only three-quarters full, but it was a clear night, and her eyes had adjusted enough to make out the wall of tires, scrap metal, and the skulls of their victims. It always seemed like a performance art project to her, those walls that were supposed to be so intimidating. She even found them kind of funny at times, which led to Dare accusing her of being morbid. Maybe she was. It was hard not to be.

One of the vamps grabbed her chin and tilted her face towards them. They were mostly shadowy figures, although their skin had an almost pearlescent cast, and their eyes had a faint glitter, like diamonds at the bottom of a murky well. Good, young meat, the one holding her chin said. She decided to name him Bluto.

The gravelly voiced leader, whom she'd already named Dumbo, said, She might be a good breeder. Popping out veal like it was candy.

I don't wanna wait, moaned a reedy voiced one. She mentally dubbed him Fucko. I'm hungry.

You're always hungry, a butch female voice said, giving Fucko a violent shove. Raven decided to call the woman Elvira. If we could get tapeworms, I'd say you have one.

Dumbo shouldered Bluto aside and bent over so he could look her in the eye. Supposedly some vamps had a kind of hypnotism thing, but it didn't work on all people. It had never worked on her. Why aren't you scared, bleeder? The tips of his fangs were just visible over his pale lips, and his eyes glimmered like pools of oil.

She smirked up at him, aware that most of the other vampires had moved on to taunting the feral kid. 'Cause I got you where I want you, asshat.

For a moment he just stared at her, like he was trying to work out if she was bluffing, when a flaming arrowed arced over the wall and punched right through Fucko's head with supernatural precision. It lit his greasy hair on fire before it burst through his rotten brain cavity, and he hit the ground like a fallen torch, still smoldering. Burning hair smelled even worse than a bunch of vampires.

It all happened on cue. The vampires were barely reacting to the threat when she heard the throaty, straining rumble of the lumber truck speeding towards the vamp's desert nest. The vamps had strips of tire shredding spikes surrounding the encampment, so you couldn't come up to it without blowing your tires. But they didn't need to get all that close. Not with physics on their side.

At first, the discovery of the lumber truck was one of those random things. They actually argued a bit before taking it because what use was it? Sure, fuel for fire and arrows was great, but these logs were massive, trees felled just before the end of the old world, not yet cut into manageable chunks. But Hannah noted they looked like battering rams, and their usefulness fell into place.

Alej had the hard part.