THE CHRISTMAS ZOMBIE
A Short Story
Plus bonus (previously published) short-short story: “Stand By Your Zombie”
By W.D. Gagliani
Author of:
Wolf’s Trap and Wolf’s Edge (Samhain Publishing);
Wolf’s Gambit and Wolf’s Bluff (47North);
Savage Nights (Tarkus Press);
Shadowplays (Tarkus Press)
“The Great Belzoni and the Gait of Anubis” (Tarkus Press);
Mysteries & Mayhem (with David Benton, Tarkus Press);
“Mood Elevator” (with David Benton, Tarkus Press)
“Love at First Sting – A Splatterpunk Story” (with David Benton, Tarkus Press)
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THE CHRISTMAS ZOMBIE
First E-Book Edition, December 2012
Copyright © 2012 W.D. Gagliani
“The Christmas Zombie” © 2012 W.D. Gagliani (new to this mini-collection)
“Stand By Your Zombie” © 2004, 2012 W.D. Gagliani (originally published in the anthology Small Bites, edited by Garrett Peck and Keith Gouveia)
Cover by ProGnosis
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you share it. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author, and all authors.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Twitter: @WDGagliani
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THE CHRISTMAS ZOMBIE
W.D. Gagliani
Northern Wisconsin
December 23
1
He set down the binoculars and reached up to scratch his eyes, scraping off the last remains of sleep. His coffee cup steamed nearby, momentarily forgotten where it melted the snow around it on the railroad tie. His hand trembled a little as he took up the binoculars again, squinted, and brought them back up to his face. The eyepieces were cold.
Okay, now concentrate, he muttered to himself. His breath made a cloud in front of his face.
The binoculars wobbled as he tried to control the slight tremor. Finally he had them resting lightly on his eye sockets, letting his brain take in what the lenses had shown him. He scanned the target area without result. Maybe he’d been wrong. A breeze had started kicking up the snow all around his dug-out.
He tried to tell himself that maybe what he’d seen was a snow-laden tree branch, swinging from side to side. Maybe a piece of old cloth, blown in that breeze and stuck in a branch…
He had checked this spot twice daily for longer than he could remember.
No, this was what he had first thought he saw down below.
Movement.
He hadn’t spotted movement there other than wind-caused or the occasional deer or coyote for at least a year, by his count. There had been that blackout period, a sort of mental hiccup, where he’d lost track of time. Amazing how one had learned to rely on smart phones, but once the last one gave up the ghost people were no longer smart either.
He turned the focus ring and scanned again, sure he had spotted some sort of movement unlike that which he had become accustomed to. He ticked the glasses up and down in tiny increments, then sideways, to try and spot it again.
Movement. A branch swung slightly as if in the wake of someone’s passing.
No doubt, someone had passed through the thinner corner of the wooded lot. And now it was even worse. He told himself it couldn’t be, but he knew he’d seen something else.
There it was, a flash of color. Faded color, but still color. Red maybe. He held the glasses as steadily as he could in the trembling hands. There were enough thick pine trunks in the way to keep him from making out details, but there were several bodies moving through the woods.
He followed, his thoughts racing.
Living? If they were, and they spotted him or his cabin, it could be trouble.
Dead? If they were and they smelled him, it was trouble.
Shit.
He’d been dreading this possibility for months, but he had slowly begun to relax because there had been no one, no movement, since the last of the townspeople had visited him and he’d been forced to execute them.
Execute? Hell, he’d liberated them. He had a good sense that none of them would have chosen to wander their old stomping grounds, killing any “breathers” left and eating their twitching bodies like the monsters in those quaint horror movies he had once enjoyed. No, he didn’t think most people would have wanted to end like that. Well, as food, either.
He gripped the binoculars, hoping to catch another glimpse.
He felt a shiver, but it wasn’t the crisp cold air or the blanket of snow in which he was currently kneeling behind the low wall.
It was a combination of old memories and new fear.
Fear he hadn’t felt in a while.
Who knew what had happened? The rumors had flown while they could: it was a military weapon, some kind of weaponized nerve gas that had escaped one of the many secret military installations they always denied existed; it was a new strain of bacteria from South America, where continued deforestation had released previously unheard of diseases and loosed them onto the populace; it was a disgruntled CDC employee who had tossed a petri dish outside in a temper tantrum; it was the Chinese, who decided to gamble on numbers carrying the day; it was Al Qaida terrorists and this was their doomsday plan; it was an alien disease brought back by a satellite…
Had he forgotten any?
Well, the religious had called it “God’s Wrath.” He’d laughed at that one. Insane laughter, but laughter nonetheless.
Whatever it was, it had killed untold millions, and then in a cruel joke right out of those ridiculous movies — which didn’t seem quite so ridiculous anymore — it had awakened many of the survivors with a twisted hunger for living flesh. First they’d gone for their pets and their flocks, and when those were gone they’d turned on their relatives, friends, and neighbors. The number of survivors dwindled and, throughout the world, television and radio stations had gone silent in waves or broadcast repetitive messages of hope (and later panic) until the power went out. The internet died server by server, and cell phone service followed soon after. Or was it the other way around? He couldn’t remember.
He’d driven out of the city and headed north to his favorite vacation spot, but the people there had either already turned into “Them” or had died at their hands. He’d found a well-stocked year-round cabin that was also defendable and had set about liberating any of Them who stumbled onto his tiny fortress. And then he had set about reclaiming his life. A large library, a thrifty generator and enough nearby stores, homes, and warehouses to raid. He understood the irony of living through what people had in some of his favorite movies and books �
�� but it didn’t change the basic facts.
Whenever any of Them found him, he liberated. To his shame, any “normal” humans who also approached him he’d had to execute, too, because not one had intended anything other than taking what he had carefully built for himself. Not a single one had intended friendship, or even simple coexistence. They had all come gunning, and he had outgunned them. He’d had no choice. He’d surprised himself at how well he coped with the killing.
And then he had become accustomed to being alone, and to keeping a daily eye on his surroundings. A full year now with nothing. Before that, another year in which he’d killed with little pity. Whether they wanted his living flesh, or his supplies (and his fortress), he’d had few qualms.
How had he become an “Omega Man”? What made him immune to the original disease? The joke was that it hadn’t fucking mattered. He’d expected to die and either stay dead or come back, but either way he couldn’t have stopped it.
But nothing had happened to him, other than the passage of time and the slow deterioration of his body and soul.
Now, after so much time without a purpose, he was hungry for some company. But he wouldn’t let it cloud his judgment. There was a good chance what he’d just now spotted was some of Them, moving like a herd through the landscape, eating what they could. He was pretty certain he was the only living being within a hundred square miles, so would they smell him?
The binoculars caught another movement, another flash of color — blue? So there was more than one. Finally they reached a small clearing and crossed it, and he was able to see them clearly. And count.
Seven. No, eight.
Literally a pack, but not a herd.
A large male, several smaller males, a couple or three females. One child. Not that it mattered. They were more like asexual animals now. Their gender didn’t matter. Maybe they were a family unit once. Maybe they’d just clung together like animals following herd mentality. Maybe the large one had somehow made them into a cohesive unit.
He made a decision.
They were far away, at the outer edges of his binoculars’ range. They were stumbling toward town, but had no reason to turn in his direction and look up. He was tired of hunting, and at this range he needed the Weatherby hunting rifle and scope he had up at the cabin, with which he could have picked off each of the walkers before they could figure out what was happening. Since he didn’t have the rifle with him, if he wanted to engage he would have to stalk them from behind. A year ago, even six months ago, he would have done so without a second thought. Now that he had some months of peace behind him, it wasn’t a reaction that attracted him…
No, if they continued on their way, he’d let them go.
Call it his Christmas present to them.
To his conscience, maybe.
He sighed.
By now they’d passed into the thicker part of the woods again and he couldn’t see them any longer, just an occasional branch movement or flash of old clothing. They’d looked ragged, so he assumed it was the walkers — whatever he wanted to call them. Usually he just thought of them as Them, with a capital T. The term zombie was a movie convention. The dying civilization had started with the z-word, then transitioned to ghouls, then to monsters, and then it hadn’t mattered to anyone. He called them walkers.
This was a group of Them, because if they were like him, they’d have been loaded down with backpacks and equipment and… rifles or shotguns. Or swords. No, these were wearing less than they should have for walking in two feet of new snow. So they didn’t feel the cold. The occasional flash of skin tone showed him they were slowly decaying. Maybe they were all winding down, food or no food.
Everything wound down, didn’t it? Maybe the disease had started to wind down. Maybe he was just overthinking again.
He’d made a conscious effort to stop thinking in philosophical terms. And yet… could he ever get away from philosophy? Sometimes it was hell, living in his own head.
He read from his huge library, great fiction and poetry, practical nonfiction when he needed to learn something useful, occasionally history with a sense of irony (who would write the experience of this for history?). He read some biographies he’d never had time to, before: Steve Jobs, Ben Franklin and the more interesting of the founding fathers, Lincoln, FDR, MLK, Malcolm X, Gandhi, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, Michael Caine, Frank Sinatra. Whatever caught his fancy when he made his weekly, very eerie library visits. Reading about other people kept him out of his head. At least it helped.
He shook his head. He often got himself twisted up in contradictions. Attempting to avoid a topic, he’d end up thinking it into the ground.
The walkers had pulled even with him now, straight down the long incline that led to the depression — almost a hollow — and its thick woods. He’d chosen this cabin because its location was high ground and gave an unimpeded view all around. In fall it was like being surrounded by great bursts of reds and browns and yellows on an impressionist canvas. Now, in the thick of winter, it was all grays and a deep, deep white from the recent snowfall. The snow had made the colored cloths more visible from where he huddled in his spy-hole.
As he watched the clump of flesh-eaters, the large male simply stopped in his tracks. The others slowly followed suit. One bumped into another.
He had the binoculars focused right on the large one, and suddenly the branch that hid his face swayed in the breeze and the male turned his head and stared up the hill, right at him.
Its eyes blazed. Before apparently dying off, the world’s scientists had noted that the whites of infected eyes tended to turn red over time (no one knew why), and this one’s eyes were downright bloody.
Shit, he muttered.
The monster’s mouth opened in an ugly scream he could hear clearly even from his fairly distant perch.
The big leader turned to face squarely up the hill and took a step, then another step. The others followed suit. They turned awkwardly in the same direction. Then they were all heading up his way, cutting through the fluffy snow with ruthless efficiency. They were still in the outer edges of the woods, but within minutes they would reach the tree line. And then the way right to him was basically wide open.
His laxness had created a problem. With the beautiful Weatherby rifle, he’d be able to pick them off before they could climb the slope and reach him.
But… he’d stopped carrying it with him on his daily recon. Too heavy.
He’d grown complacent, that was it.
Shit.
So now he took stock. A Sig Sauer 9mm semi-auto on his hip. As back-up, a Colt Python in a hunter’s shoulder rig. A Gerber fighting knife strapped to his thigh.
Sure, he carried enough ammo to blow them all away, but they had to be within range. And if he let them get close enough, then his rounds had to count. And it always took several rounds to bring down one of Them. Maybe they didn’t feel pain. Larger rifle or shotgun rounds definitely worked better than smaller calibers. Whatever, it wasn’t as easy as in the movies. And he wasn’t so confident to think he could drop them all with pistols as they swarmed around him.
If he beat a hasty retreat up the hill to his cabin, they’d be close behind him by the time he got there. He’d bolt his doors and drop his shutters, but at that point they’d be right there. He could skip the door defenses, but by the time he took the rifle and started to drop them, they’d have reached him and then he might wish he’d taken the time with the doors and windows.
They were already starting up the slope. He looked at them more closely. The one large male, the herd leader. Three smaller but healthy-size males. Three females, one older and two younger and fleeter of foot. One child, maybe male. He checked their faces. The leader wore a grimace, his black mouth twisted into a hateful, hungry crooked slit. His bloody eyes seemed to stare right through the binoculars at their user.
He shuddered.
Bad move today.
Too late to correct his mistake.
; The women were grimacing too, as if they felt nothing but pain. One’s head was twisted, as if someone had tried to break her neck. Another seemed to have had half her face shot off — tendrils of her right ear hung down to her shoulders. The other seemed to have taken at least one major blow to the head — tissue and blood had matted there and gave her head a balloon look, as if it had been blown up only half-way by a child’s breath. The child hung back, clearly slower, a tiny boy with a toy truck in his hand but the same red-eyed glare and hunger in his mouth as his (he presumed) father.
While he assessed, his invaders had chewed up another dozen yards of snow-covered slope, their eyes fixed on the hide-away he had built himself — a foxhole dug behind a couple railroad ties behind which he could duck, or from where he could snipe at approaching enemies. When he had the damned rifle with him. If he waited any longer, they’d be on him.
Shoot now, or conserve ammo and wait until they reached the house?
The rear of the cabin faced another slope of the same hill. A sturdy deck surrounded three sides of the cabin on what became its second floor. If they reached the house, they could conceivably outflank him and breach his defenses while he was busy elsewhere. What if there was another group working its way up the other side of the hill?
No, he was psyching himself out. It was purely accidental that this group had caught his scent. If he’d been in the cabin, they would have continued on their way past, never even realizing anyone alive was nearby.
He watched them now, almost not needing the binoculars. Undecided.
He’d never frozen like this before.
What the hell was wrong with him?
He scrambled out of his hole, suddenly needing to feel his walls around him. Suddenly feeling rusty after a year of lonely routine that he had too easily abandoned.
When he stood on the railroad ties and looked down, his stare caught the large one’s and they took stock of each other. He had no idea if the walker could really “see” him, but the walking corpse certainly reacted as if he did. Sight or scent, the walker emitted a snarl that echoed across the hillside, and then his pace increased and he started to leave the others behind. They stepped it up, too.
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