A Most Apocalyptic Christmas

by Phil Williams

“You never saw the world before,” I told the kid. “A world of half-arsed make-believe. Manufactured happiness that no one could sustain. Tower Bridge crumbled into the Thames, but this joke’s still standing. And it’s a fucking call centre.” I huffed, “Bet you don’t even know what Tower Bridge was. Or London, even.”

  “London was a city in Europe,” he told me, merrily. “Evacuated in 2032.”

  “Get bent,” I told him.

  Further down the road was a vaster second carpark, filled with motors tangled in weeds or rusted shut. At some point in the war, when people started running west, all these people had somehow ditched their rides here. Hundreds of them must have been hanging in this theme park when some scare came their way and made them flee on foot. The cars were still neatly parked, maybe they never got a chance to flee.

  It struck me, looking at the vehicle graveyard, that it had been a good idea not to go through the theme park. As I headed between the cars, keeping an eye out for traps, the boy asked the million dollar question, “Was there fighting here?”

  “You’re the history buff, Mr London is a City in Europe. You tell me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Once they firebombed whole parts of the country,” I said. “There wasn’t much left worth fighting for. So they didn’t come this far, no.”

  The kid watched me thoughtfully. He said, “So what happened here?”

  I didn’t have a good answer to that.

  One of the vehicles sat a little apart from the others, a pickup truck, free of plant life. It had no obvious snares. To be safe, I nodded to the kid, “Try that one. I’ll keep an eye out.”

  The kid looked at me like he thought I might be pulling a fast one on him, so I took out my pistol to show I was all about protecting him. He did it, good on him, pulled the handle and the thing didn’t explode. Just opened up, no lock or nothing.

  The kid looked at me with this great elated smile on his face, so surprised and pleased with himself it seemed like he deserved a medal. I smiled back at him, anything but sincere, and pushed him out of the way to get in.

  “Now we can get my dad back!” he said, running to the other side. I watched him jump in and plug in his seat belt, bouncing about in excitement.

  “Our priority’s to survive,” I told him, “Second priority is to get home quick enough for a drink.”

  He held my gaze, the happiness exhaling like air from a balloon. He said, “My dad - we need to get to Auntie Lee’s -”

  I felt under the dashboard as the whimpering crept back into his voice. There was a key in the ignition. This was either an honest to God miracle or a Very Bad Thing. I looked out the windows, searching the darkness for movement.

  The kid railed on, as though I’d stopped to listen, “She said she’d give my dad a chance. Because it’s Christmas. They wanted to meet me, so we could all be together.”

  I kept my hand on the key as I asked him absently, “What’d he do, cheat on your mum?”

  “She blamed him for mum dying. In the war. But when he told her about his new job, if we could get to New Oak City, she said she could help. Because of the holiday. She said there are markets, and trees, and lights. It made her want to give dad another chance.”

  I braced myself as the kid continued, “And now we’re here, and we need to get him!”

  “Ah, fuck it!” I said firmly, then turned the key. Worst case scenario this would blow us both to hell and shut him up. I screwed my eyes closed as I did it, and was met with the beautiful sound of an unhealthy mechanical purr, the accelerator shaking to life against my foot. I sat back with a grin, like I always knew it would work, and I told the kid, “What’d I say? Here’s you getting all emotional and everything’s coming up Scully.”

  His face lit up, “We’re going to get my dad back?”

  I had just the answer for that: “Fuck off. We’re going home.”

  In retrospect, I should’ve done the right thing then. But you live and you learn, don’t you?

  9

  One of the truck’s lights was out and the fuel gauge was broken, making it anyone’s guess how far we’d make it. I was wary of opportunities to scavenge more fuel; if the bandits had left a working motor in the carpark, they might’ve left other stuff untouched.

  We headed up the road, to the north, the kid’s silence enough to cut stone. As it seemed we’d be travelling further together, I decided to lay down some truth for him. Fat Walter certainly hadn’t. I said, “Your dad told you about Christmas miracles, did he? Family forgiveness, presents for everyone, that kind of thing?”

  “Yes,” the boy said.

  “He shouldn’t have. You know what a miracle is? Anyone being alive at all. I don’t deserve to be, for one. A thousand aunts on a thousand Christmases ain’t forgiving me for the things I done. And those things ain’t stopping. So get used to it, and count yourself lucky for whatever you do have.”

  He looked down at the present in his lap. This box he’d been carrying dutifully, a parting treat to remember his flaccid father by. He said, “My dad deserves to be alive. He kept the country running. During the war. In Beaver Valley.”

  “Oh shit,” I laughed. You don’t need me to tell you what went down at Beaver Valley. Tens of thousands died over that power plant. After all the fighting, the fortifying of the city, they shut Beaver Valley down anyway, not a year after the armistice. I said, “He must be harder than he looks.”

  “He worked there. It was his job.”

  “Must’ve thought he was doing something real important,” I said, picturing this bloated fool saving the world by punching buttons, keeping the lights on in the capital.

  “We didn’t have a choice,” the kid sniffed. “It wasn’t safe for mum to move. She got ill, from the chemical weapons.”

  “That’d be right,” I said, “Those coughing blood on your dinner plate kind of horrors were usually reserved for civilians trying to keep the world running.”

  “She thought if we stayed there it’d help win the war,” the boy added.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was easier to survive if you weren’t trying to win anything. Everyone was fighting just because a fight needed to be had.”

  He turned away from me, unimpressed by my philosophy. Another sad child that never stood a chance, riding a truck with a thug while his dad’s getting beat up on Christmas Eve. Still clinging to the holiday dream, he asked, “Do you believe in Santa Claus?”

  “Take a turtle fart of a guess.”

  “Is that him?”

  He pointed.

  I slowed down. This was a strange development.

  10

  The important looking building, with its clock tower, was everything you’d expect from the wastelands. Windows boarded up, walls crumbling. A hole in the slanted roof said it was either hit by a dud bomb or just hadn’t stood up to a few years without maintenance. A busted town hall like a million the world over, except for the thing out front. A statue. Half of his face was melted and someone had sprayed paint across the sack that covered his lower body, but it was unmistakably Ol’ Saint Nick.

  A twelve foot Santa statue, as I live and breathe, stood in front of this important-looking building with a serious sense of permanence. Where in scum were we?

  I pulled over and walked up to this monstrosity. Its cracked base said Dedicated to the Children in the world. In memory of an undying – and whatever was supposed to have been undying was gone. Smashed away. There had been nice messages all around, holding up this enormous jolly fat man and his sack of presents, but someone had gone editorial on them. The one with most of its text smashed away now said: Life hath given thee nothing more.

  “Real fucking cute,” I commented.

  I checked out the building behind this statue. Its title was still there, the place more than just a roadside attraction: Town Hall. Santa Claus Indiana.

  The entrance doors had been barricaded by furniture and covered by a chunk of sheet metal. Big enough to stop someone walking i
n there without making a noise. A sign of life after the fighting. The place seemed dead enough now, though.

  It was too dark inside to make anything out, so I went for the makeshift door. Gave it a good scan to make sure it wasn’t trapped, then kicked it. It shifted, scraping across the floor loud enough to wake the town. I stopped and made sure no one was coming, then I tried again. It stuck, not enough room for me to get through. I gestured the kid over and told him, “Take my PK, have a look around.”

  He looked through the gap in the door with nothing but fear, but he didn’t say no. He took the device, shone its light through and gave me a glance. I nodded, and he dutifully ducked into the darkness. He fed back, “It’s just furniture!”

  “Keep going. They blocked the door for a reason.”

  As I waited for him, I heard something, my ears pricking. It must’ve been there before, but I guess the weirdness of Santa Town Hall stopped me noticing.

  A long way off, there was some kind of music. Bells. Trying to pick out its direction, I walked out into the road. It was almost too quiet to hear, but it led me to noticing a gentle glow on the horizon. A little arc of yellow, just peeking out of the darkness. Could’ve been a mile away, could’ve been ten. It didn’t matter. Where there was light, there’d be fuel.

  I gave the town hall another glance. Whoever set up camp there was long gone

  “Get back here,” I called out to the kid, heading to the truck. As I got there, another sound drew my attention, though. The crunch of the frosty road as frantic feet ran over it. I dropped behind the truck and moved along the side, poked my head out and saw, back the way we’d come, a man sprinting towards us. There was something long and thin in one of this hands, a bat maybe, a gun probably. He was panting heavily, must’ve pushed beyond all reason to catch up.

  As he got within easy shooting distance, I fired a shot in the air then turned the pistol on him, “Close enough, Linford Christie.”

  He stumbled to a stop, throwing both hands up as he steadied himself.

  “Drop it,” I instructed, and he looked at the thing in his hand. He threw it aside. It slapped into the road, whatever it was not heavy, or metal. I said, “Where you going so fast?”

  “That’s my truck,” he said, scared.

  “Was,” I corrected. “You with whoever’s over there?” I pointed towards the far-off light. He nodded, barely visible in the dark. I said, “Can’t hear you.”

  “Yes,” he said quickly. “They’ll kill me if I go back without the truck.”

  “Who’s they? Bandits?” He was shaking his head, so I asked, “You got a problem with speaking?”

  He stuttered the answer, “No not bandits. More dangerous.”

  “Sure. Sort of thing people say to keep you from checking.”

  He continued, “Carry on up this road. You can still get away. Just leave the truck behind. I beg you.”

  “Your people, they got fuel?”

  The ground crunched behind me. The kid stepping into the open. I gave him a backwards glance: he looked scared, had his hands hid behind his back.

  “You have a child,” the man gasped. “Were you looking for us?”

  “Answer my question. You got fuel?”

  He didn’t answer, again, saying “We have games, and toys, if you embrace the holiday spirit. Do you think-”

  By the time he got to that, I had closed the distance between us. I punched his jaw. He dropped stiff as a pencil, just getting his hands under him as he hit the tarmac. I don’t have patience for people that talk back when you’ve got a gun on them. He scrambled about a foot away from me before I got a knee into his chest and pressed the pistol to his cheek.

  I stopped, noticing what he looked like up close. He was young and malnourished, with long hair and a bit of a beard going on. And he wore a great frilly costume. His collar was all pointed triangles, sleeves striped, chest lined with oversized buttons. I took a step back, to see what I knew was coming: leggings and pointed shoes. On the ground near his face, a big long hat. And the thing he’d been carrying, that long pole, I now saw was curved into a hook.

  “Is that a fucking candy cane?” I asked.

  “The reward of the Hallow Swings,” he answered with gibberish. I let him pick it up again, too thrown by this weirdness to think he could be any kind of threat. He sat up and cradled the cane like a baby as he told me, “It’ll keep me safe tonight.”

  “Christ,” I said, “Now you’ve got me curious. What the hell is going on?”

  11

  I kept one eye on the Linford Christie Elf and one on the road as we rolled towards what he told us was an expansive inn. He got in a few more warnings, genuinely seeming scared of his own community, but also blurted out things about the season of good cheer and laughed. This guy was prancing around in an elf suit, risking his neck in a booby-trapped holiday park for a candy cane, and we had a town hall named after a fictitious fat man, so I was more concerned with finding a punchline to the joke than how scary he thought it should be.

  Near the town hall was a sign for a bunch of shops, topped by another damn Santa face and the words Kringle Place. The street sign at the intersection, hanging off its pole after someone had taken a bat to it, said we were on Holiday Boulevard.

  We rolled on past what must’ve been a shopping complex. A lot of stores had smashed in windows, some of their contents gutted across the parking areas and roads. Sadder than most ghost towns, with cracked Christmas ornaments and bits of fluffy reindeer in the mix of your usual broken shelves and overturned bins. I made out a sign for Santa Claus Hardware. There was a joke in there that I didn’t feel like finding. Instead, I demanded of the elf, “What the fuck is this place?”

  “Used to be a town,” he said, “Linked to Holiday World. Oldest theme park in America, you know?”

  “Of all places, this is where you chose to stay?”

  “People still needed recreation during the war. They needed hope. The States Military took most of our fuel, the food. All our weapons. But we kept going. We embraced the holiday spirit, and this year, with the guidance of Christopher, we are truly thriving as the Great Day approaches.”

  Ahead were the reassuringly plain markings of a petrol station, its central canopy knocked down in places around the pumps, one of the walls defaced with Give me sugar! Beyond that mess, the lights were clearer, across the road and visible through more trees. I stopped and killed the engine.

  The sounds from the lodge were louder. Shouting, lively music.

  I asked, “How many people you got?”

  “About thirty,” Linford told me. “More started coming around two months ago. Drawn by the safe haven of the Court of Chrimbo. We offered shelter, order, and the promise of salvation through the coming holiday.”

  I raised an eyebrow to this, then nodded to the nearby petrol pump. “This thing work?”

  The elf shook his head, “We have had to scavenge from miles around.”

  There was a sudden flash of light, with a loud bang, and a great circle of twinkling stars faded into the sky. A firework from the lodge. I gave the elf another questioning look. Without me asking, he said “That was a Missile Toe. It had to be.”

  “Fucking what?” I said, but he was fumbling out of the truck, drawn towards his people. I got out and headed after him, eyes on the lights of the promised lodge. Closer to the trees, it came more fully into view, like a cabin in an old ski movie, slanted roof, lines of windows glowing yellow, a reflective body of water down a slope. Would’ve been idyllic with a dusting of snow, if that was still a thing.

  A patch of grass and some trees separated us from the building. As I started towards it, Linford said, “That way’s not safe.” The empty ground ahead looked clear enough, but the shadows could’ve hidden anything. More mines included. The elf continued, “There’s a road. Over here.”

  His diversion took us past a stone sign announcing Santa’s Lodge. Past that, another towering Santa, waving us in, this one missing part of his g
ut, a few bits of twisted metal sticking out. A sinister fat man with black abysses instead of eyes, spilling his artificial guts in the midnight blue. The opposite of the friendly welcome it’d once been.

  Up close, the lodge proved just as foreboding. The wood panelling along its front and sides had fallen off in places. Over the main doors was a flickering set of fairy lights, twisted into the words Court of Chrimbo. They were so erratically erected that only a nutcase could’ve christened this place.

  By then the music was fully audible. Some rock version of Jingle Bells. I asked, “What pillock took that irritating fucking tune and made it angry too?”

  Linford either didn’t know or didn’t say.

  I continued surveying the scene and, off to the right, spotted a handful of cars, a few trucks and couple of rooters. Converted minibuses, armour plated, with broad iron cattle-catchers on the front and cages around the windows. I shone my pistol torch on them and saw that they’d had paint jobs.

  There was red, white and green paint across the sides of them. Stripes, stars, snowflakes, a crude fir tree. Ho ho ho! written on one. The closest one’s driver’s door had been twisted out, as though opened with a crowbar. There was a huge scratch down the side.

  “I thought your people weren’t bandits,” I said.

  “These vehicles shouldn’t have come here. They did not come in the Christmas spirit.”

  I took it all in, confirming that Laslo and his Merry Men weren’t responsible for everyone who’d gone missing down there over the past month. The signs pointing to the real nutcases were marginally worse. Still, the old rooters were ready and waiting. I said, “Tell me where the keys are and we’ll skip the whole going inside and meeting and greeting shit.”

  “Is this really where Santa lived?” the kid suddenly asked, and I turned to find him staring up at the statue. Honest to God I’d forgotten he was even with us, having had him sit in the back of the truck. Quiet little creep. But there he was, in awe of Gutted Giant Santa and his Lodge of Horrors.