“Who are you?” Belle asked him.
“Who the fuck are you?” The old guy waved his gun in my direction. “This’s my place. Looters will be shot,” he said.
“This is not your store,” I said.
“Is now.” He shrugged, glanced down then back at me.
“Who’s the looter here?” Belle clicked off the safety and several things happened in quick succession. The old guy pointed his gun at Belle; they fired simultaneously. Her shot whizzed past his head; his slammed into her shoulder, knocking her down. He whirled around, lost his balance, fired a round in my direction, and missed. Danny came running in the front door holding his gun in both hands. Rather than shoot the guy, he slammed him in the jaw with the butt of his rifle and made a run for Belle. She was bleeding from her shoulder wound, but she was up on her feet when I heard the bell over the door jangling again. We all froze and looked in the direction of the door.
“Fear not then,” said the Angel, “let nothing you affright.”
The door slammed open under the weight of a trio of enormous zombies in orange hunting overalls, plaid shirts, and fur caps. These guys were each well over six feet tall and the smallest of them probably weighed in at more than 240 pounds. Their faces were grayish green and their wild, rheumy eyes were ringed in bloody red. Before I was able to register the angry, indecipherable moans blasting from their rotting throats I was nearly knocked over by their stench.
“Out the back!” Danny grabbed Belle around the waist and yanked her back towards the storeroom. I picked up the duffels and started to turn, but the smell overpowered me. My stomach churned, heaved and I threw up the remains of my lunch, splattering the floor, the counters and the old guy’s jeans.
He was screaming and cursing, scrambling for his gun. He tried to get up, but was slipping and sliding in the expanding pool of my vomit. And then, in a flash, the three hunters were on top of him, ripping and tearing at him like children opening packages on Christmas morning. The old guy was yelling and cursing and I was frozen watching as the trio ripped him to shreds, tearing off hunks of his flesh and stuffing it into their gaping red mouths.
Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy...
A hand grabbed my shoulder and I screamed again. The three hunters looked up from their bloody feast.
“What are you, a freakin’ six year old girl?” Danny growled, clamping his hand over my mouth and pulling me into the storeroom. He locked the door and looked through the peephole. “They seem pretty preoccupied for the moment,” he said.
Belle was sitting on the floor inspecting her shoulder wound.
“Oh god,” I said, looking at the blood soaking through her jacket.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said. “I think there’s a hunk missing from my shoulder, but it not very big and it didn’t hit anything major. I just need to get it bandaged up—”
“But the first aid stuff is in the truck.”
“Right.”
“So, we gotta get outta here and get back around to the front of the store without those guys noticing us,” Danny said.
“It was my fault,” Belle said. “I turned on the stereo. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s a new world,” Danny said. “New rules.”
He went to the back door. “The alley behind the shop looks clear. Jackie, what’re Larry, Darryl and Darryl doing up front?”
I looked through the peephole. “They’re Christmas shopping,” I said.
The most disconcerting thing about the end of the world, was the confounding sense of business as usual. It seemed like the CDC guy was right about these zombie viruses letting their hosts wander around and do things they would normally do when they weren’t running amok and tearing old hippies to pieces with their claws. The three guys in the front room had picked up red plastic shopping baskets and were rifling through the bins of CDs.
“One of them just put a Celine Dion CD in his basket,” I reported.
“This virus is worse than I thought,” Belle said.
“What are they doing?” I said. “I mean, these guys don’t look like the kind of guys who’d be buying contemporary ballads under other circumstances. I mean, what?—Clint Black or maybe Lee Greenwood—I’d kinda get, but Celine? … It just doesn’t make sense.”
“They’re zombies,” Danny said. “How much inner logic are you expecting?”
Belle groaned as she pulled herself to her feet. “I think their brains are processing some impulse to shop, but I’m not sure they’re really being selective about what’s going in the baskets. Probably taking those CDs home to the wives.”
“That’s fucked up,” I said.
“They’re zombies!” Danny said again, like that explained everything. He moved over to Belle and put her good arm over his shoulder, supporting some of her weight. “Jack, come get my gun. You gotta cover us when we go out the back.”
I eased the door open and poked my head out into an empty alley.
The three of us hustled down to the end of the building. I peered around the corner—gun ready—and stopped cold.
The town square, deserted less than half an hour earlier, was now teeming with zombies. Hundreds of bedraggled figured lurched along the sidewalks or stood in groups around the base of the towering Christmas tree.
I stood at the corner of the building for a long time, unable to form words.
“Why are you just standing there?” Danny asked.
“What’s out there, Jackie?” Belle whispered.
“Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” I said, raising my hand and letting the first wet flakes fall onto my outstretched fingers.
What I was looking at was an enraged carnival of Christmas misery. The entire population of Blessed Prospect seemed to be milling around the central square under the swaying Christmas lights and glittering snow. Some of them were dressed for the cold, bundled in mismatched coats, hats, scarves, and mittens; others staggered through the streets in tattered pajamas or naked, their bruised, bloodied gray-green bodies smeared with filth and swarming with insects. A trio of women in tattered bank uniforms sat side by side on a wooden bench, staring in silence at a swarm of children —some of them missing limbs, some of them clutching the bloody carcasses of household pets—flopping around on the snowy lawn.
“Snow angels,” Belle whispered.
She and Danny stood close to me, peering around the corner of the building and watching the townspeople in rapt fascination.
At the base of the towering Christmas tree, a filthy bearded man in blood-spattered overalls sat in a throne and, as we watched, a child staggered from the head of a winding, irregular queue to climb onto the man’s lap. He laid a hand on her shoulder and without warning, he ripped the girl’s arm from its socket, pushing her body to the ground at his feet and gnawing on the end of the still bleeding appendage.
“Holy shit!” I felt Danny’s hand clamp violently over my mouth, but not before the words had escaped and were echoing across the square. Heads raised in unison, turning in puzzlement as rotten, damaged ears attempted to triangulate the origin of the sound.
We froze.
The truck was at least thirty feet away and there were currently half a dozen zombies between it and our hiding place. There were another ten or twenty close enough to reach the truck before we did.
The silence in the square was so complete we could hear the flapping of banners, the shuffle of unsteady feet, the unearthly cries of a distant, enraged infant, and the buzzing of the halogen street lights.
Less than two yards from where we stood, a little girl—maybe six or seven years old with long blond braids that hung askew from her torn, filthy scalp—looked up from her headless white kitten, sniffed the air, and growled.
The sound was too low for a child, something barely within the range of human hearing, but it invoked my body’s panicked genetic response. All the hairs on my body stood at attention and I felt the adrenaline flowing like gasoline flood
ing a cold engine.
Behind me Danny shifted, his rifle rising beside me and pointing irrevocably at the child.
“Get ready to run,” he whispered, his lips close to my neck. “When I say ‘go’ you take Belle and get to the truck.” He pressed the key into my hand and edged across the alley, deliberately distancing himself from the two of us.
The explosive crack of his rifle echoed through the square. The girl dropped unceremoniously to the pavement. All over the square, heads swiveled, chasing the echoes from building to building, but none of them seemed to know where we were.
“What do we do now?” I whispered.
“It’s the smell,” Belle whispered.
“What?”
“Their hearing is too damaged for them to triangulate sound; they react to smell. It’s why the goons in the shop didn’t chase us and it’s why nobody seemed to notice when Danny shot the girl. And the snow’s damping our scent.”
“So what the fuck are they doing now?” Danny whispered, pointing.
All across the square, zombies were staggering in the direction of the tree, stumbling, falling over each other leaving trails of putrid blood and debris in the snow. The zombies closest to us moved away; a toddler in a diaper and Spiderman T-shirt dropped onto his filthy diaper and took the fallen girl’s hand in his.
“Family memory?” Belle asked.
“White meat,” Danny, who had come back across the alley, said as the toddler began gumming and tearing the girl’s flesh with his inadequate teeth.
That is when we heard the singing.
Across the square a mass of zombies had gathered around the base of the tree. The tree glowed with twinkling lights, casting an eerie radiance on hundreds of gray-green faces turned skyward, their mouths moving in a terrifying parody of a Christmas choir. The snow, coming down heavier now, fell on upturned faces, filling empty eye sockets and obscuring the contours of sloped foreheads. The sounds that emerged from the broken jaws, ripped vocal cords, and wheezing punctured lungs were chaotic, high, and reedy at first, but eventually they seemed to grow and merge, and a melody emerged. I recognized the words.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till he appeared and the soul felt its worth.
“Oh, holy shit,” Danny whispered.
A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
The zombies closest to the truck had ambled off to join the singing herd, but we were too transfixed by the horrifically beautiful spectacle to move.
The zombies sang on, voices that alone were coarse or broken sounded together like an angelic choir. A short one-armed woman in a tattered windbreaker stood away from the others on the steps of the town hall, her voice rising above those around her, soaring heavenward in a booming, triumphant solo that made me feel weak in the knees.
Danny was the first of us to come to his senses. He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me towards the truck, throwing his arm around Belle’s waist and hustling her across sidewalk.
Sweet hymns of joy, in grateful chorus raise we, let all within us praise his holy name.
The soloist’s voice boomed out the next verse, the ragged chorus chasing her through the lyrics.
I slammed the key into the ignition and turned it.
Nothing.
I tried again and again.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I slammed my fist on the dashboard.
“Switch places,” Danny said, jumping out the passenger door of the truck and running around the front. I jumped out my side and ran around to the passenger side, stopping on the running board as I heard the final triumphant strains of the song.
Oh night divine, oh night divine…
In the cab Danny was playing with the ignition. Across the lawn, faces turned skyward in song now suddenly began to rotate, looking for the source of the coughing, sputtering engine sounds.
The nearest of the zombies turned towards the truck; the brake lights illuminated their faces in an enraged red glow. I saw a ripple of movement.
Danny cranked the ignition again.
Still nothing.
Belle handed me the rifle and I took a bead on the nearest one. I took the shot, slamming a round into his forehead and dropping him among his fellows. They fell on him like starving wolves.
I took out another one and another one, picking my targets to create the most commotion among the ambling carolers, but there were too many of them and they were coming too fast. A wall of rotting flesh advanced in our direction.
In the distance I heard a frantic barking.
I looked up and saw a small brown and black dog—hackles raised, teeth bared in fierce defiance—standing on skinny legs about two hundred yards away and barking at the top of her lungs. The zombies faltered, looking from the glow of the brake lights in all directions, seeking out the source of the barking.
And then I felt the wind shift.
There was a moment of silence and then the mass of festering bodies turned as one in the direction of the madly barking dog.
They smelled her. And they were going after her.
I pumped round after round into the crowd, effectively slowing their advance towards our canine protector and then I finally heard the engine turn over.
“Got it. Hold on,” Danny shouted. He slammed the truck into reverse, plowing into a pair of disoriented carolers and peeling out into the street.
I looked in the mirror and saw the dog, running a zigzag pattern through the staggering carolers and chasing the truck as fast as her legs would carry her.
“Stop the truck!” I screamed. “Danny, stop the truck!”
“What?!”
“Stop the truck!” I screamed, jumping onto the running board and into the street even before the truck had come to a stop.
The nearest zombies were less than ten yards away, coming towards me at a steady, loping pace. The dog ran past them, her ears plastered to her head, tongue lolling, chest heaving. She leapt into my arms, licking my face, paws scrabbling to hold on as I jumped back into the cab of the truck.
“Go! Go! Go!” I shouted. Hands raked the sides of the truck, fists banging on the metal siding as we rocketed beneath the strings of solar-powered twinkle lights and careened out of town.
Epilogue
I heard A.J. singing Christmas carols well before dawn on Christmas morning. He was switching back and forth between “Angels We Have Heard On High” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” The sound was truly horrible.
I threw a shoe at the wall that separated our bedrooms. “Shut up, A.J.!” I shouted. “You’re killing Christmas!”
I heard him laugh and then heard him running across his room, throwing open his door, and pounding down the hallway to my door.
“Don’t you come in here!” I shouted, but he already had the door open, peeking in and laughing.
Samantha stirred at the foot of my bed, sniffing the air and stretching her long skinny legs.
“We wish you a merry Christmas,” A.J. said.
“Merry Christmas, A.J.” I said.
“Do you think Santa Claus came?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure he did. Do you wanna go downstairs and see?”
“Do I have to wait for you?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said, tugging on a sweatshirt and scratching Samantha’s scruffy, brindled fur.
“She saved your lives,” A.J. said, coming into the room and putting out his hand for Samantha to sniff. I had not told him any of the details of our trip down the mountain.
“Yes. She did.”
“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,” he said. “For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”
“Let’s go, buddy,” I said. I threw my arm around his shoulder and steered him towards the hallway. There were stockings and boxes of Broadway cast albums downstairs waiting for him.
Story Art Cover
By Scott Cole
www.13visions.com
Dedication
&nb
sp; To wife Tracey - my partner, my friend and personal eggnog squad.
Author Bio
Scott Morris, a.k.a. Need a Nickname Scott, lives with his wife Tracey in West Lafayette, Indiana. Scott's story "Santa's Helpers" appeared in the first volume of "The Undead That Saved Christmas" in 2010. He is the host of the Zombie Beat new section of the Mail Order Zombie podcast (www.mailorderzombie.com). Besides manning the newsdesk, Scott has provided several book and movie reviews on this podcast and was voted "Voice of the Mail Order Zombie Family" in February 2010.
Scott's passions extend beyond the world of the undead. He and his wife Tracey host a bi-weekly podcast entitled Disney, Indiana (www.disneyindiana.com). They love all aspects of the mouse and talk about books, music, theme parks, video games and whatever else Disney related they wish. They have also visited both Disneyland and Walt Disney World over 17 times in their 18 years together.
You Better Watch Out
By Scott Morris
The sunlight streamed through the windows outside of Elfenship Hall. It felt very warm on Barthy's face as he approached the main auditorium, but he wouldn't need the sun's warmth to feel good today. After ten long years of study, quizzes, finals and projects, Barthy had made it - today was graduation day, today he was going to be one of Santa's elves!
Barthy was an exceptional student - graduating as this year’s valedictorian with a 4.5 on a 4.0 scale. He enjoyed school, but he was really looking forward to being a part of the team here at the North Pole - helping the big guy bring joy and good will to everyone.
Secretly, Barthy hoped to be named part of the advanced toy design team - he loved designing new and exciting toys, but he had already shown a knack for building tools and machines to help the production of the toys.
If not toy design, Barthy wanted to work in intelligence. This was another area he excelled in at school. Early on, his assignments included watching test subjects - other elves - and report back if they were naughty or nice. Barthy performed this task so well and with such speed not seen by the instructors before, that he was the first student who was actually given real boys and girls to study and profile.
The Undead That Saved Christmas Vol. 2 Page 11
