by Hilden, Josh
“What do you mean?” he asked strapping his club to his hip. The kid was all ropey muscles and tight sinew. He had the hard look all survivors had these days. But he was grinning like the cat that got the cream.
“You were playing with that thing. When you encounter a ghoul you put it down, it’s not a toy it’s death,” she said coldly.
“I’m training,” he said. He was looking at her again and now she realized he was probably only thirteen or fourteen years old.
He wasn’t even born when the world was right, she thought and shook her head sadly.
“If I don’t practice hunting and killing them how the fuck will I protect myself when I get cornered by a pack?” he asked cocking his head curiously.
They began to walk toward the road together. Neither was conscious that they were following the other. It was a gorgeous sunny June day. The last two years had been something approaching normal, the ashes from the dead cities burning had finally begun falling from the upper atmosphere allowing the globe to warm again.
A hawk cried out in the distance.
“Where do you live?” Dana asked. She unhooked the ancient canteen from her belt and took a hard pull then offered it to the boy who gulped down half the contents.
“Me and my mom live with a group,” he replied not giving details. Dana approved, they had just met and she had no need to know where he lived. He was so calm and confident. It had been a long time since Dana had met anyone who seemed to have a hopeful outlook on life.
“What do you do?” he suddenly asked her.
Dana broke out laughing. It was the last question she would have ever guessed the boy would ask. “I travel,” she said giggling.
“Well yeah,” he said, “but what do you do?”
Dana thought about it for a second. The kid was so like she had been as a kid. They stopped and she reached into her bag and brought out a fat notebook. She handed it to him.
“Can you read?” she asked.
“Yep, mom says I have to understand the world if I am going to live in it. She was a teacher,” he replied smiling. “What is this?” he asked.
“My journal, I record everything I see and do on the road. Tonight I will write about you.” She didn’t know why she added that last part but the grin that split his face made her heart sore.
“Really? That is totally cool!” he said. “Why do you do it?” he asked and his genuine interest was infectious.
“One day this will all be over. The dead will be nothing more than a nuisance, if they are even still around. Then we will rebuild and people will want to know what happened during the dark years,” she said. It had been Zane who had started the first of the six journals she carried. She had made copies of them and hidden them around North America just in case she never had an opportunity to hand them off.
“Wow,” he said again and began flipping through the pages. Dana smiled. He was really a good kid.
“I gotta get moving kiddo,” she said after a minute.
The disappointment on his face hurt her but she had nowhere to stay and the closest community was a three day hike. She needed to find a place to hold up for the night.
“Um…” he started, “do you want to come back to my house? My mom would love to see your books,” he said shyly.
Dana grinned. “I would love to,” she said.
The boy yipped with joy and they headed off together. Placing one foot in front of the other and the sun setting behind them, the world full of new possibilities.
Santa Claus Vs the Living Dead
Prologue
This is the story of the Christmas that almost wasn’t. The Christmas when the question of whether there is a Santa Claus was finally decided in Virginia. The Christmas when the dead rose to devour the living and only one person had the strength to rally humanity and lead us to victory. This is the story of the Christmas when Santa Claus fought the Zombies.
Very few people were aware of the coming danger.
When the outbreaks of Ebola occurred in Western Africa a year earlier, nations panicked. When the American Centers for Disease Control contained and eliminated the threat it was logical to assume the citizenry would calm down.
This was not the case.
A wise person once said that an individual human is rational and smart, while the human race as a whole is composed of frightened ignorant beings that’d trample their own mother for a buck. The same could be said for the human desire for power and control over one another. The idea was the brainchild of a cadre of the world’s ultra rich and their global political lackey’s. It’d seemed so obvious, use the global fear of Ebola to seize total control of the world.
The plan was simple.
First they would release a highly contagious but mostly harmless virus in isolated areas causing the citizens of the first world to panic. Then once the population was properly terrified they’d quietly declare a state of emergency and offer free vaccinations for everyone. But what the people believed to be vaccinations would be a new virus designed to render them docile and open to suggestion. Meanwhile, the chosen elite would be vaccinated against the real virus.
Does this seem like an overly complex and stupid plan to you?
It was and like every overly complex plan—the creators screwed it up.
For ninety percent of the population given the “Vaccination” nothing happened. They were protected from nothing and they were not rendered passive or easily controlled. The remaining ten percent seemed to be affected in the intended way. They became passive and easily swayed.
It all changed on Christmas Eve.
Nobody knew the radiation was coming. In an invisible and virtually undetectable wave it washed across the planet in the blink of an eye. Was it from space? Was it from within the Earth itself? Nobody would ever know but that didn’t matter because the effects were instantaneous.
Every one of the ten percent of the human race affected by the vaccination, almost three quarters of a billion, instantly dropped dead. They hemorrhaged from all openings, convulsed violently, and ceased to live.
Then… they got back up.
Like a bad horror movie the now reanimated dead attacked the living. They were driven by an unquenchable need to feed on the warm flesh of the living. Panic ensued and in a matter of hours the human race was brought to its knees.
On that night, the snow fell on the American Midwest in buckets. Cities were shut down, interstates came to a halt, and for many the power ceased to flow. Despite the record amounts of white stuff pounding the center of the United States, children all over were excited for the Christmas holiday.
While the dead were hungry and on the prowl.
One
Christmas Eve
Lucy’s House
“Daddy I don’t want to go to sleep.” Lucy pouted, standing rooted in her bedroom doorway. “I want to stay up and see Santa!”
“Lucy, if you stay up Santa won’t come,” Eli Jones said to his only daughter with a chuckle. “Now you need to get into bed.”
Lucy hung her head in surrender. The little girl, just three months shy of six, had been waging a campaign to stay up late with the adults on Christmas Eve ever since Kindergarten had gotten out for the holidays. Her mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmother were all in the living room drinking adult drinks and talking and having fun without her.
“Alright Daddy,” she said heavily.
The lights flickered for the hundredth time that evening.
I’m glad Maria got me to top off the generator before the storm started, Eli thought silently thanking his wife yet again for being the practical one in the family.
Out loud he continued, “Now give me a hug and it’s off to bed with you.”
Her mood returning to light and excited at the prospect of Santa coming, Lucy hugged her father then scampered off to bed. Once her light was off and the Eli was reasonably certain she was down for the night he headed back to join the rest of the family.
The lights flic
kered again.
“How’s the little Princess?” Maria asked when Eli came back into the living room. “Did she stop trying to convince you she should be allowed to stay up?”
“She’s fine,” he laughed settling back next to his wife on the leather couch. “She tried every trick in her arsenal but in the end she went to bed happy.”
Soft laughter filled the room.
A fire crackled merrily in the fireplace and the wind whipped outside. Mark, Eli’s brother got up and stoked the fire. Then he went to the window and pushed the heavy curtains aside.
“It’s really coming down out there, I can’t even see the cars,” he said turning back to the room. “Good thing we were all planning to stay here tonight anyways.”
“When your father was alive he thought a heavy snow was the precursor to trouble,” Dianna Jones said sipping her coffee, which was liberally spiked with Kentucky bourbon. “But your father was also convinced our old neighbor, Mr. Ryerson, stole the Sunday newspaper from our porch every week—so take that as you will.”
“Is that why he kept those binoculars by the front window?” Mark asked grinning. “I always thought it was so he could watch the neighbor lady across the street when she was sun bathing.”
Mark’s wife Julie started laughing then coughed as she choked on her drink.
“No dear that was me,” Dianna deadpanned.
Everyone laughed.
Then the lights went out.
One, two, three, four, five… the generator should kick on any second now, Eli thought as they all sat cloaked in the sudden darkness. Any second now the beast will turn over and we’ll have power once more.
“Umm Eli?” Maria asked in the fire illuminated darkness, “Shouldn’t the generator have kicked on by now?”
Eli sighed and got to his feet. This wasn’t the first time the power had gone out and the automatic switchover had failed. Such events necessitated a trip to the shed behind the house where the generator was installed. For the hundredth time Eli wished he’d taken care of the problem last time it occurred.
“Want me to come with you?” Mark asked moving from the window and into the glow of the fire.
“I’ll never say no to some company,” Eli laughed.
The two brothers, best friends since before they could read, headed into the blowing snow of the back yard without even donning coats. Even when they’d been young, the brothers had been notorious for not being properly dressed against the elements.
“You two are gonna catch your deaths!” Dianna called out between laughs. She was used to the way her boys were, it was so much like the way their father had been.
“I don’t think the two of them will every really grow up,” Julie laughed taking another sip of her drink.
The wind blew even harder and none of the women heard the moaning.
Two
Tea Party Patriot Bunker
“What are we going to do?” Congresswoman Shelly shrieked.
The plan had been so simple. They’d release the plague on the public and as order collapsed, the Patriots of the Tea Party would come forth with the cure. But when the vaccine was administered to the staff of the bunker they were transformed into the same savage undead as the infected outside. The slaughter had been fast and all consuming, leaving the Congresswoman and her two colleges trapped in one of the first class washrooms.
The dead pounded on the locked steel door.
“Please God save me!” Senator Eddie sobbed, his face buried in Congressman Willie’s chest. The two men were cowering together in the far corner of the first class executive washroom.
Shelly shook her head in disgust. Her place in the hierarchy had been clear. Eddie was the front man, Willie was the blowhard, and she was the woman who’d make them look strong and reasonable by comparison.
At least that’s how it’s supposed to be, she thought staring at the pathetic excuses for men cowering beneath her gaze. Isn’t that the reason I threw my Presidential campaign, because that’s what I was supposed to do?
“The Lord will come and deliver us,” Congressman Willie said absently stroking Eddie’s hair. “We are the chosen ones. It’s not our fault those bastards in California messed up the virus, our intentions were pure.”
“I thought the Jews were the chosen ones,” Shelly muttered. She winced as fists slammed against the door.
“Those bagel munchers are hell bound, my daddy says so,” Eddie whined.
“I’m glad we made it out of the carnage in the dining room,” Willie chimed in. The pudgy Texan looked at Shelly and quickly added, “Well all of us except for your husband, sorry about that.”
Shelly glared at the two men from her perch on the marble counter. Her husband had been a trusting, if naïve, man and had taken the vaccine to prove to the base staff it was safe. Now he was outside the washroom hunting down the survivors in the base.
“Do you think the others are okay?” Eddie muttered.
Shelly knew he meant the real leaders of the nation, the corporate masters who’d given them their marching orders. They were the only ones who knew all of the details of the plan.
Mittens why the hell aren’t you here with us? she thought wincing as a new round of fist pounding on the doors commenced. He’s probably cowering in the Nevada facility hoping his magic underwear will protect him from the monsters. Resolution firmed in her bony body and she dropped from the countertop.
“All right enough of this crap!” Congresswoman Shelly barked. Her head snapped around and she glared at the cowering men, her eyes blazing with the intensity she was infamous for. “Get off the floor and act like men!”
Neither Willie nor Eddie argued with her. Instead both of the men rose and took their places behind her. The power amongst them had shifted, now she was the one making the decisions and leading the way while they would be the ones to follow and do what they were told. There had to more survivors in the complex and enough true vaccine to protect hundreds of thousands of people, at her fingertips along with the means to mass produce more. Maybe it was her time to shine once more.
“Now let’s take back this shelter,” she said coldly.
Three
The North Pole
“Ho-Ho-Ho, are we ready to go team?” Santa asked as he walked down the line of reindeer and patting each one on the head.
He was rewarded by stamping of hooves and snorting from each of the magnificent beasts. Each of the animals had a bit in their mouths and was therefore unable to speak. The younger reindeer, standing to the sides of the sleigh along with a multitude of elves, cheered. This was the night they always worked towards. This was their night to be the light of goodness in the world.
“Rudolph my boy, are we set?” Santa asked removing the bit from his lead reindeer’s jaws.
“We’re ready to fly Santa,” the young buck said a grin on his face. Behind him the eight other members of the team stomped in agreement. Santa set the bit back into his team captain’s jaws and headed back toward the sleigh.
“Santa,” a familiar voice called from the crowd. “Santa, can I talk to you for a second?” Though long retired from the team Donner, was still the senior reindeer and one of Santa’s oldest friends.
“Of course Donner,” Santa replied turning from the sleigh and joining the massive animal. The grey on his muzzle, far from making Rudolph’s father look old, lent him the air of a distinguished elder in the reindeer community. “What can I do for you?”
Donner looked from side to side and seemed to be unwilling to speak openly. Instead he gestured for Santa to join him by the shed where the special feed was stored. Just before the team took to the air they’d each be fed a bag of the high calorie mix they needed to keep up their strength during the night’s journey.
“Santa,” Donner continued once they were isolated, “I’ve been talking to some of the elves and what they’ve been hearing from the world has me worried.”
“What have they been hearing?” Santa inquired. He was an
xious to begin the trip but he always took what his oldest friend had to say seriously. If Donner was worried, Santa needed to know why.
“It’s massive chaos Santa. They’ve been watching the satellite news feeds and riots have broken out in many of the world’s major cities.” Donner dipped his head in frustration as he tried to find the right words. “It doesn’t make any sense Kris,” he finished using Santa’s given name, something he rarely did.
Santa set a gloved hand on Donner’s neck and looked him in his dark brown eyes. The old souls took the measure of one another. There was never much need for them to say more than a few words for the other to know what they were thinking.
“How worried are you Donner?” Santa asked.
“I haven’t been this concerned since the Blitz,” he admitted. It was a hard thing for Donner to admit weakness to anyone, especially to Santa. “I haven’t been this worried since you were determined to fly into war torn Europe and deliver presents despite the threat of the Luftwaffe.” Santa straightened himself and a thoughtful expression crossed his face. Donner could almost see the internal debate and knew before he spoke that Santa had reached a decision.
“You’re in charge here while I’m gone. Coordinate with Mrs. Claus and Alton,” Santa said. Mrs. Claus, was the defacto Mayor of their village and Alton Silver Hammer, was the leader of the Elves. “If things get really bad I’ll be in contact with you.”
Donner nodded and stamped his front hoof in agreement.
With that dealt with Santa headed toward his sleigh. There was work to do and in the millennia he’d been custodian of the Earth’s children he’d never missed a Christmas.
This year would not be an exception.
Four
Lucy’s House
Uncle Mark is bleeding, Lucy thought. Whenever one of the flashlights swept across Mark she could see the blood soaked cloths Aunt Julie had wrapped around his arm. Uncle Mark is bleeding and Daddy looks scared.
