“Nimar, all clear inside,“ yelled the junior SAC member, as Mrs. Claus fainted.
The Gingerbread squad cheered but Nimar was still all business.
“We’ve still got a zombie Santa on the loose,“ yelled Nimar.
“Not anymore,” came a voice advancing on their position.
It was Calvain and members of the Stocking squad. They had the zombie Santa in front of them with a muzzle on and his hands bound.
“Where did you find him?” asked Ervan.
“He was approaching the reindeer barn when the bomb exploded,“ said Calvain. “The force of the blast knocked him into a snow bank. I was able to get the muzzle on him before he could regain his wits and attack me.”
“How about the rest of the Angels, were there any survivors of the bomb?“asked Nimar.
Calvain silently shook his head back and forth, “The blast took them out.”
“I’m so sorry Calvain,“ sighed Ervan.
“Right now we have bigger fish to fry. Has anyone found the hat?” questioned Calvain.
Barthy emerged from the Claus home and placed the hat back upon St. Nick’s head. The color quickly returned to Santa’s face along with that sparkle in his eye.
“Barthy, you look as bad as I feel,” were the first words Santa spoke, “what are you doing in that awful outfit?”
“Sir, I had the Toy Maker put this costume together. I thought if I could fool Nightshade into thinking I was you, I could get the drop on him. The Toy Maker also gave me a little extra firepower in these guns, “ Barthy explained while raising the costume’s arms.
“Top notch thinking Barthy,” Santa said “Unfortunately Nightshade and myself have caused a lot of damage not only to the North Pole operations but to the SAC as well. Calvain, how many of the Angel Squad survived?”
“I’m sorry to report the bomb took out the entire squad save for me,” explained Calvain, “We had just removed the reindeer team from the barn and we were attempting to disarm the bomb when it exploded.”
“Calvain, I know this will be difficult, “ explained Santa, “but I need the Angel Squad. I want you to take Nimar and Barthy and rebuild the team. I’ll need you to travel with me this Christmas on my run.”
“What about Nightshade?” asked Barthy.
“Don’t worry about him, I have a special place for him on my Naughty list,“ Santa replied with a less than jolly grin.
* * *
It was a warm early May day as Barthy and Nimar welcomed a new class of recruits to the SAC. They explained the need for the Stability and Control team along with how the squads need to be on constant alert because problems could happen at any time of the year.
The two elves left the lecture hall and headed for the supply ship. It was time for one more mission that neither was really looking forward to. Santa had asked the two to babysit the courier elves to the Misfit Mine, North Pole’s penal colony, to pick up a load of coal for the bad boys and girls. Santa wanted these members of the Angel Squad to accompany the ship due to rumors of an uprising at the mine lead by one Conor elf, known to some around the North Pole as Nightshade.
Story Art Cover
By Scott Cole
www.13visions.com
Dedication
To my cat Mothra and my best friend, James Tresaugue.
Author Bio
Timothy J. Collins is a computer programmer who lives in Kirkland, Wa. with his cat (Mothra) and likes to write in his spare time. He is entering middle age and, to quote General Iroh "At this age I only have one mystery left to me... And I'd rather that remain a mystery as long as possible.
Christmas of the Dead
By Timothy J Collins
1.
That first night we just huddled together in the attic. We could hear the sound of the decomposing hands hitting the solid walls of the house and the moans of the dead as they looked for what they couldn’t find. Nobody said much... we just stayed in our small cluster of human bodies with our lantern and remained silent. We wished for the dead to leave us, to let us return to our lives.
2.
When it started my father was watching the nightly news. There was a report of a “demonstration” in one of the Central American countries. That was what the news called it “A demonstration.” We all thought it was another revolution. Maybe a coup. Coups happen all the time in those small countries after all. We didn’t know it was the beginning of the end of us all. The end of life as we knew it.
I was home that day from college and I remember asking my father why the people demonstrating looked so odd. They looked like raw meat with their faces seeming to fall from their skulls, the blood showing through parts of their clothing as they walked slowly through the streets. They were silent - there were no sounds beyond those of the people running away from the “Demonstrators“. My father mumbled something that amounted to, “I don’t know.” After that the newscaster on the scene stopped reporting and the TV claimed “technical difficulties” or “Bad satellite images.” Anything other than an acceptance of what we were seeing was true images.
Nobody paid much attention. It was thousands of miles away, after all.
Months passed. Every few days someone reported on more strange demonstrations or odd occurrences. Again, nobody paid attention. Nobody noticed that the occurrences seemed to be spreading - and coming north. Not until it happened in Texas.
3.
We looked at each other, huddled in the attic. The dead had entered the house, breaking through the defenses. We knew they would. My mother and father surrounded me and my sister. We listened to dead feet padding their way across the floor of what we used to think of as “our” home. It belonged to them now.
4.
Once the dead reached Texas the news stopped calling it demonstrations or strange occurrences. It’s always easier to recognize a serious problem when it is in one’s own backyard... when one can’t turn one’s head and assume it’s the problem of a “banana republic” or a “Military coup.”
When the first images on CNN reached us showing one of the dead chewing on the arm of a person, that person staggering away with blood spurting from the severed arm... it energized the nation. This was no longer just a sidebar on the news.
People asked what caused it and nobody could explain. And to tell the truth, the reason why was not the main question on everybody’s mind... no, the main question was, “How do we stop it?” But the answer to either question was the same: “We don’t know.”
We watched the TV constantly. It spread. The dead would kill... then those that were killed and half-eaten would arise and kill, shambling on half eaten legs, reaching out with arms that had tendons trailing from them.. The cycle kept going and kept spreading outward.
By the end of the first two days the plague of the dead covered half the country and panic was everywhere. Going to the store for supplies became more and more of an act of faith that the store would have food (or be there at all and not stocked with the dead) than a sure thing.
The funny thing was that, for the most part, we all kept planning for the holidays. We put up the trees, we made the cookies, we wrapped the presents. Maybe it was what we needed to do to remind us that we were still there. Maybe it was just us working through shock. We wanted to keep our ways. We wanted to believe that we were going to stay the same.
5.
When the sun rose and we could still hear the dead below us, moving in their slow shuffle, we knew that there would be no gatherings around the tree, no slow distribution of presents in brightly colored paper to rip open (Ripping presents open being a bit too reminiscent of other things being ripped open by the hands of the things outside). But we had one defense - we had food in the attic, we had each other, and we knew that the dead couldn’t reach us.
My mother was the first one on her feet. She walked over to the window and looked out. When she drew back with a gasp, her hand to her mouth, I think we all knew what to expect from a peek out the window... bu
t I still had to do it.
Dozens of them milled around the front of the house.Walking aimlessly to and fro. Looking for food... For us. I sat back down and we all wondered what to do.
My sister opened a box at random. It was the type of box one finds in all attics... just a box of the detritus that accumulates in everyone’s life that they sooner or later move to a storage space.
My sister withdrew a toy - a bobble head Santa figure. My mother looked at it and asked, “Do you remember when you were young and had to have stitches in your chin? Remember how your aunt gave you this to cheer you up?” Her eyes were wistful and wet with memories of that time.
“That was almost 16 years ago mom,” I said, and was almost immediately overcome by guilt upon hearing the edge in my own voice.
6.
By the end of the fourth day of the outbreak in the US, everybody knew that we couldn’t keep up with the daily rhythms of planning for the old celebrations anymore. We knew that they were over for the year... maybe forever.
I traveled home from college. Classes were over anyway and I reasoned it was time to be with my family. I helped my father bring a small heater to the attic, stock it with food and board up the windows. Father had it all worked out - how we could stay in the house as long as we could then retreat to the attic when the time came; if it did come. After all, in his mind this was a passing problem - somebody, somewhere would fix it. Somehow.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I sincerely doubted things would be fixed.
My sister still lived with my mother and father. She was a senior in high school. It’s funny how I notice, upon thinking about it, that I have already switched to the past tense in describing our lives.
We boarded up the windows and that same night was when the first of the dead arrived on the lawn. My mother saw it out the window and we all watched it slowly shamble across the lawn like a lost soul.
7.
I picked up the Santa figure and held it. I could feel the memories of when I received it, could just taste the childhood innocence that saw it as the most fun one could have - making Santa’s head move as if it were laughing. I did it now and watched it silently giggle. I am sad to say I couldn’t feel the same as Santa did that day.
I looked in another box and, as expected, there was the family album. Taking it out I don’t know what I expected. Maybe some sort of epiphany that made all of this terror worth it, made living with the walking dead a price worth paying. It’s too bad families rarely take those pictures like in TV shows or movies that show everybody happy and together.
Instead the pictures were of a family slowly drifting apart. There was me in an outfit in some forgotten kindergarten play. There was my sister in a dress a few pages later. Me, stepping on a bus to take me to college and away from the family home. My parents were hardly in any of the pictures together; usually one was with us while the other took the photo. There was never a photo of everyone sitting or standing, facing the camera and smiling – always at least one person absent.
I put the pictures aside and looked through other boxes.
8.
By the end of the first night the dead had discovered the house and seemed to know that the food they desired was ensconced inside. The sound of their hands beating on the door and on the windows was muffled, somehow seeming to come from a distant land.
We argued. We cried. We fought. And somehow we ended up sitting, watching CNN and trying to make sense of what was going on. Trying to convince ourselves that this wasn’t the end. But I think we all knew it was.
9.
The next box I opened had old report cards in it. I glanced over the A’s and the C’s and the record that me and my sister had attended school. I wonder - will it matter if future generations find that what grade I got in social studies?
My mother is sitting in the corner, Santa bobble head in her hands, watching the head laugh. She has a half smile on her lips and a faraway look in her eyes. My father is looking out the window. My sister is just sitting in the corner with her hands in her lap, looking down.
We are all in the same room. We are all separate.
10.
When night comes, I look outside again and see the same tableau as earlier. I wonder how long our food will hold out... will rescue come before it runs out? Will rescue come at all?
It’s Christmas but it doesn’t feel like it.
We stand in our own little worlds experiencing this Christmas in a new way; alone, lost in our own thoughts, our own emotions. Maybe my mother is still thinking about that little kid that was so fascinated by a simple bobble head Santa, my sister focused on the boyfriends she will never get to kiss, my father on the loss of the home and life he, and all of us, had lost forever.
And then we all look up and our eyes meet. And I think I see the beginning of a smile on more than one set of lips in that attic.
Christmas will still come, at least this one last time. Maybe this is the end of life as we know it. But maybe some of that life will follow us.
Story Art Cover
By Jess Smart Smiley
www.Jess-Smiley.com
Dedication
To my grandma, Margaret
Author Bio
Kevin Walsh has published (or about to publish) short stories in anthologies by Rainstorm Press, KnightWatch Press, PillHill Press, Library of the Living Dead and Coscom Entertainment. He is working on a zombie novel titled Genocide X, which will be available as a free ebook. Kevin invites zombie fans to take a look at the novel's webpage http://genocidexzombienovel.blogspot.com/ He is also working on a horror themed website, collaboratively written by aspiring horror novelists, called Riding the Razor's Edge, which will be launched in September of this year.
Daddy’s Angel
By Kevin Walsh
Two female figures walked onto the desolate street with red rucksacks dangled over their shoulders. The eldest of the two companions surveyed the street with a keen eye, trying to identify the presence of the undead. The brilliance of the snow hurt the eyes and made for a cold journey. A sombre, bitter wind buffeted both of their faces as bits of snowdrift melted against their skin. The street yielded no apparent evidence that the undead had been there for the past week. The younger female idled as she stared back at the home from which they emerged.
“C’mon, Susie, let’s go,” Veronica stated as the wind gusted her face once again.
“My name’s Angel,” she replied indignantly.
Veronica rolled her eyes. “Your name’s Susie. C’mon we have to go; Christmas is only a few days away.”
The little girl’s eyes moistened and her voice cracked a little. “Daddy always called me his little Angel.”
Veronica sighed and spared a glance down the barren, empty street. She knew the young girl was still trying to cope with the death of her father, who had been killed by another survivor. When the zombie apocalypse hit people scrambled in search of food and other survival implements. It was 6 years since the first outbreak, but society had completely disintegrated within a few months. Veronica was grateful that the undead’s mobility was hindered significantly during the winter months.
Veronica noticed that there were two types of living people left in the world. There were the Survivors who tried to avoid contact with adversaries both living and undead. Then there were the Scavengers. Scavengers killed anyone who got in their way. They would kill someone for their goods without batting an eyelash. Her husband—Susie’s father—had been killed by a Scavenger. Veronica burdened a deep hatred for Scavengers for what they had done to her family. It was tough trying to teach Susie about death when the city was littered with the undead.
Veronica usually gave whatever her daughter wanted because she wasn’t sure when their last day might be. They could end up dying tomorrow at the hands of the undead, so she wanted to make sure that her daughter lived as harmoniously as possibly.
That’s why they were about to leave the house. Veronica thought it wou
ld be a good idea to have Christmas every year to bring some normalcy to her life. Every year they set out to look for gifts for one another, which would be tossed into the sacks they carried. Whenever her daughter wanted something, she received what she wanted. Even the really strange stuff.
Veronica gave in. “Okay Angel, let’s go before the weather gets too harsh.”
“Okay, but what about Charlie?” Angel inquired just as they heard the baying of a dog from their home. The dog barked a few times, then quieted down.
“He’s fine. Charlie has lots of food; now let’s get a move on before we freeze our butts out here.”
“Okay,” Angel said with a pleasing smile.
They both floundered through the sleet and snow and disappeared down the street.
* * *
A stout man watched the two girls disappear behind snow encumbered shrubbery. His unruly facial hair added to his homily façade. The begrimed hair on his scalp fluttered in the cold wind and littered the brush of his brow with white flakes. He hocked and spat into the sea of white. Tattered remains of a jacket hung on his shoulders, resembling something from an archaic war film. Under his fingernails the filth was dark in contrast to the purple hue his fingertips had adopted from the weather.
He waited for them to leave before he entered. There were no difficulties with killing another living being, but he couldn’t risk an encounter while he was unarmed, and he knew that the older girl had a pistol.
He crept along the side of the house and found the window, withdrawing the crowbar with anticipation. After several minutes of shouting vulgar obscenities towards it, he managed to open it. Not a sound was made as he landed quietly on the kitchen floor.
The Undead That Saved Christmas Vol. 2 Page 14
