Princess Penelope hopped into the tub with her, not caring about the Toy Code. Her kid needed her!
Molly stared at her, wide-eyed, not believing what she was seeing.
Princess Penelope knew there was no time to waste.
“Yes, all of us toys are just as real as you, and I’m sure you have lots of questions, but we don’t have enough time now. We’re all going to die if you don’t help us. When the next person comes near you, I want you to grab the showerhead and hit that person in the face as hard as you can. Over and over again.”
“…I…I can’t,” Molly sobbed.
“Yes you can. If you don’t we’ll DIE.”
“O…o…okay,” Molly said, chest heaving up and down.
As soon as she had the detachable showerhead clutched in her shaking hands, Mom stumbled over, ripping the red and green striped shower curtain from its plastic hooks.
Molly raised the showerhead over her head and slammed it down as hard as she could, into the middle of her mother’s face.
Mom stumbled backward, releasing a high-pitched moan, but stepped forward again.
Molly hit her again and again, blood spraying her in the face, but not caring. She didn’t stop until her mother’s face looked like it had a bloody crater in the center and she collapsed to the floor.
She repeated the beating with her father and brother.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered afterward, tears falling down her cheeks.
“You did it!” Princess Penelope cheered, hugging her.
Molly held the doll to her chest and left the washroom, still shaking from her ordeal.
“Everyone it’s over! Molly saved us!” Princess Penelope chirped, turning her head away from Molly’s body.
“No – this can’t be happening!” Princess Penelope shrieked as she saw the rest of the toys.
All of them had turned into zombies and were slowly walking – and crawling - toward them. They were all missing body parts, which could be found in Mom’s, Dad’s or Ryan’s stomach.
Molly ran toward the Christmas tree, but tripped over a present and dropped Princess Penelope.
“No!” Molly cried, watching as Princess Penelope fell mere feet away from the zombie toys.
She felt around for a weapon and her hand landed on her brother’s new baseball bat. She grabbed it and started smashing toys. She worked quickly, flattening her beloved toys until they looked like a car drove over them.
When she was done, Molly dropped the bat with a loud clunk and slumped to the floor. She was out of tears. So was Princess Penelope, who jumped onto her lap.
“Now what?” Molly asked her.
“Well it’s Christmas. How about we figure out what to do next over some Christmas cookies and egg nog?”
Molly agreed and they barricaded themselves in the kitchen.
They had both lost friends and family, but at least they still had each other. It was a Christmas miracle that they both survived.
Zombie Don’t Jingle
By Rusty Fischer
We caroled on Elm Street
We caroled on Oak;
Yes, I’d have to say
We were caroling folk!
We sang ‘til our voices
Were scratchy and sore;
Then swallowed a cough drop
And sang 10 songs more!
The snow felt so chilly
On our bright, singing faces;
As we shuffled around
In brightly lit spaces.
The houses were decked out
So merry and gay;
As we caroled and sang
All night and all day.
Our noses were frosty
As we rounded Pine Street;
Struggling to stand
On our achy, sore feet.
“One more then we’re finished,”
Pastor Carol did boast.
“Then it’s back to the rec hall
Where it’s warm as fresh toast!”
We started to sing
That old Silent Night;
When the door burst wide open
And gave us a fright!
Three zombies came stumbling
Out the Harrington’s door;
Dripping our neighbor’s blood
All over the floor.
Those zombies they saw us
And gave quite a start;
And the smell that came off them
Was worse than… a fart!
It reeked quite of death
Of rot and decay;
Not things one should smell
On a bright Christmas Day!
Their teeth were quite yellow
Their eyes were pure red;
And the gray of their skin
Made it clear they were… undead.
I wanted to bolt
I wanted to run;
But the zombies were hungry
For some holiday fun.
I turned to find seven
Shuffling up to my back;
And six more stumbled over
To wage their attack.
Our church group was surrounded
Our future quite grim;
Until I croaked out a suggestion
To good Pastor Jim.
“The end is quite certain,”
I said with a frown;
“But I’d like one more carol
Before we go down!”
The zombies were inching
Getting ready for a fight;
When our voices sang steady
Of that first… Silent Night.
We sang to the rooftops
We sang to the rafter;
Not caring a whit
For what might happen… after.
I waited each minute
For a crunch or a bite;
For the gnawing to start
On this non-Silent night.
But the zombies stood still
And drooled on their feet;
As our singing and caroling
To them was... quite sweet.
The song it did end
And the zombies all clapped;
Sue Briggs tried to run –
In no time she was trapped.
Before we could sing
Before we could try;
They ripped her to pieces
And sucked her bones dry.
We all stood there trembling
As they wallowed in gore;
Until I haltingly suggested
That we best sing… one more!
With each Christmas carol
The zombies they sighed;
But each time we stopped
The next caroler died!
We sang and we sang
That long Christmas day;
Until the last zombie
Just… drifted away.
“We still have three songs left,”
The last caroler said.
Then I looked all around
To find my friends… dead.
The street was quite empty
The town deadly still;
I stepped on a finger
It gave me a chill!
I wandered for hours
Until it was night;
And found no survivors
Nope, not one in sight.
On the far edge of town
I heard quite a grumbling;
Like the groaning and retching
Of a hundred stomachs rumbling.
I still had my elf cap
Fixed tight to my head;
As I approached the zombie gathering
With fear and with dread.
They stood there and waited
Gore stuck in their teeth;
As I crept up toward them
As neat as a thief.
I stood there before them
And sang Oh, Christmas Tree;
Though each inch of my body
Wanted to flee.
They smiled and shuffled
&nb
sp; They burped and passed gas;
But no mattered how hard I tried
They would not let me pass.
I settled in and gave them
The show of the year;
Grinning and smiling
In spite of my fear.
Their bellies were hungry
But the carols were soothing;
Even if my neighbors’ bones
They were chomping and toothing.
I wasn’t afraid
Oh no sir, not me;
I sang without falter
I sang loud… with glee.
I knew I’d be safe
From this living dead throng;
At least until I came
To the very last song…
Story Art Cover
By Mark Pascale
www.tvboardz.com
Dedication
For my brother Jay, and for Samantha
Author Bio
Jamie Freeman (www.jamiefreeman.net) is a part-time writer with a full-time day job. He dabbles in genre fiction (horror, scifi, erotica and romance), reads obsessively, knows every musical theater lyric ever written, and watches more movies in a year than he can count. He has an empathic younger brother with whom he shares an eerie psychic link.
Zombies We Have Heard on High
By Jamie Freeman
When my father won his second Oscar, he started building Shangri La.
When people at cocktail parties asked him where it was, he would tell them, “Shangri La lies at the end of a long, unmarked road.” He liked the vaguely allegorical nature of the response. It was good acting, he once said. Could mean one thing, but maybe also means another.
He won the Oscar playing a white supremacist named Eli Turner who built a compound in the Rocky Mountains where he planned to wait out the coming race war. Dad received the kind of universal acclaim that’ll get you one-to-one odds in Vegas and precipitate a pre-Oscar shower of second-tier gold statuettes. But the thing about the movie that changed my father was not the Oscar or incredible spike in his subsequent paychecks, but the research he did for the role. My mother always called him the last of the red hot method actors. She learned to act standing in front of her bedroom mirror and practicing poses and faces. I’m not knocking her method—she had an Oscar and three nominations of her own—but my father took the craft seriously and she liked to have fun. He spent a year living with various survivalist groups out in the wilds of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. He cut himself off from the family and the world and submerged himself in race hatred, paramilitary organizations, anti-government activities, Jesus Christ, and a messianic leader named Daniel Walker. And when he came stumbling out of the desert he turned in the greatest performance of his career.
He always used to say he played with whole movie with his eyes, and I think if you’ve seen it, you probably know what he’s talking about.
But he never got back to normalcy. His year in the wilderness made him scared and wary, both of the government and of those who opposed it. He became convinced there would eventually be a showdown between the forces of chaos and the U.S. government and he wanted to be prepared.
So still flying high on the Oscar updraft he accepted four throw-away action films that netted him $120 Million, and he began construction of Shangri La. Shangri La was to be a self-contained, self-sustaining fortress in the Rocky Mountains that could support the extended family and a group of key friends and colleagues when the Christian Soldiers started firebombing schools and synagogues, or when the government started rounding up political activists.
The first part of the master plan involved the construction of an enormous fortified house with a commanding view, perched atop Mount Plenitude. The unmarked road down into the valley twisted back and forth in front of the house—well within range of the armaments that would eventually top the trio of towers. Beneath the house was a tunnel that connected the exterior compound to a vast space built inside the mountain. A series of cavernous rooms laid out like a small village with cavernous storerooms, living spaces, a gym, an Olympic swimming pool; it would have been like the lair of a Bond villain … if had been completed. The main house—with walls that surrounded a trio of cottages, rows of garages, stables, greenhouses, and an indoor arena space—was completed in 2010. The tunnel was completed the same year. The excavation of the cavern began in January 2011 and continued until the week before Thanksgiving, when the workers were given two weeks to spend with their families.
And suddenly things changed.
* * *
There are days people remember forever, days they carry around with them whether they want to or not. Think of them as the collective emotional baggage of a generation. My mother used to tell my brother A.J. and me about being home sick from school the day Kennedy was shot. She was lying on the living room sofa when a neighbor came over and told her mother to turn on the television. She always got teary-eyed and distant when she talked about it.
“Something just broke,” A.J. would say.
I share most of my own historical baggage with A.J. because we are always together when things break.
On an otherwise ordinary January day when I was sixteen, I remember hearing A.J. having a fit in the hallway outside my trigonometry class. He was sobbing and I could hear his quavering voice, so I got up and, despite my teacher’s objections, stepped out into the hallway. A.J.’s teacher, Miss Alyson, was trying to calm him but he was just big enough, even at fourteen, to overwhelm her. He was sobbing—snot running down his face—and when he looked at me he said, “Is it true them people died?”
I looked at Miss Alyson and she said, “The shuttle.” I stared at her for a long time before I realized what she must be saying.
“What?” I still asked the question, still wanted her to say it out loud, to make it feel real.
“Challenger exploded and we were watching it on television. I tried to calm him down, but he said he had to ask you…” She went on and on, spilling out all of her bottled-up anxiety about the shuttle and her students. A.J. was standing there listening to her, wringing his fingers and sobbing.
“It’s true, A.J.,” I said. “And it’s a terrible thing, but we’re gonna be strong right now. Okay?”
He took an enormous, ragged breath and nodded his head.
“And when they have the funeral, then you can cry all that out.”
He looked at me with round, terrified eyes.
“Okay?” I said.
“Okay, Jackie.” And he put out a chubby hand to Miss Alyson and let her lead him back to his class.
Sometimes A.J. still talks about that day, obliquely, as if the memory is now disconnected from the overwhelming wellspring of grief that engulfed him that day. “It sure was sad when them people in the shuttle got killed.” And I nod and say, “It sure was sad.”
On September 11, 2001 A.J. was living in an upscale group home a few blocks from the Palm Beach house where I was living on and off with our globe-trotting parents. I awoke late, stumbling through a hangover towards the television and watching the second plane rocket into the South Tower. I picked up the phone and called the group home. The house manager said he was sobbing and running up and down the hallways calling my name. By the time I got there, he was choking on his sobs and whispering, “the people, the people” over and over again. It took me a while to talk him down. When he finally stopped sobbing and hiccoughing, he whispered, “There are giants in the sky, Jackie.”
Some generations end up carrying more baggage than others.
And the worst days always seem to descend through blue, cloudless skies.
Thanksgiving 2011 was like that: cold, but clear and beautiful. It had stopped snowing and the wind turbines on the mountain were running at full capacity, giving us enough electricity to power the compound and store some for later. We were getting a clear satellite feed of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which A.J. had been anticipating for weeks.
Only a few people were left at Shangri
La: Uncle Danny, who was overseeing the construction; Aunt Holly and her partner Belle; Anna, my mother’s housekeeper, who had pretty much raised me and A.J. during my parents’ frequent absences; Bo and his wife Tamika, who ran the stables and the greenhouses; A.J. and me. My mother and her P.A. Clover were in Cairo filming the latest Bond movie and my father and his P.A. Mitchell were in Munich making a corporate training film for Siemens.
I awoke to the sound of A.J. singing along with the cast of a Broadway show called Memphis. He has always collected cast albums and he knows every lyric from every song from every show ever recorded. He’s not technically a savant, but he’s definitely got his areas of expertise. Sadly, he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.
“Dude, you’re killing me with that wailing,” I said, walking into the living room with a mug of coffee and dropping onto the sofa beside him.
He laughed and said, “You always say that.”
“Maybe,” I said, blowing on the coffee and watching the dancers struggle against the wind.
Holly was sitting in an overstuffed armchair reading a paperback mystery. She glanced up over the top of her half-frame readers and winked at me.
Thanksgiving smells wafted in from the kitchen: cinnamon, apples, cranberries, bacon, maple, and coffee. I was pretty sure I was in heaven.
The parade meandered past as I downed one, then another cup of coffee. I was starting to feel the fog of morning lift when I heard A.J. say, “I don’t like this one.”
I glanced up at the screen. It took me a minute to process what I was seeing.
On the street in front of Macy’s the cast of American Idiot was being physically attacked by about three dozen onlookers. Was it a political thing? Tea Partiers attacking a bunch of grungy, artsy hippies? I moved closer to get a better look. The camera zoomed in on a gray-faced female attacker biting into the neck of a screaming dark-haired boy, ripping and tearing his flesh with her teeth, snapping tendons and splashing blood on the pavement.
The Undead That Saved Christmas Vol. 2 Page 9
