The Undead That Saved Christmas

by ed. Lyle Perez-Tinics

  “Besides, fire kills everything,” Mike added. “Even zombies need a body.”

  “Then we do know for sure,” Pervy said, satisfied with his logical deduction. “Fire kills the undead. So all we have to do is wait. We’re gonna be okay.”

  “Okay?” Mike said, sweat trickling down his face. “Everybody’s fucking dead, man.”

  “Maybe they’re not dead—they came back once, maybe—Jesus Christ!” His breath was spasming in and out as the panic seized him again. “And where the fuck are the police? Where’s the fire department?”

  “Pervy, don’t—dude, calm down—”

  “JESUS OH FUCKING CHRIST WHAT IF THEY’RE STILL NOT DEAD?”

  9 Ladies Dancing

  Mike’s mom’s naked form twisted in the flume of fire that had consumed her nightgown and robe. She was skewered on the end of the fireplace poker, so she couldn’t quite reach her son. Was she in pain? It seemed like it, with her jumping around and howling and screaming even as her clothes burned away, her hair, her eyes.

  “Kill her, man! Kill her!” Pervy yelled, his knees on his uncle’s chest and Grandma’s knitting needles shoved through his uncle’s eye sockets and into his brain. “I got him—now get her!”

  Mike’s mom was still shrieking and when he turned back to look at her, she had grabbed the poker and was pulling herself up the shaft like it was a movie. Bits and pieces of her were blackening and sloughing off like ash from a cigar, but not enough would be gone by the time she got to her son. The poker was already burning his hand, heating up from the inferno that once was his mother; he couldn’t hold on much longer.

  “Mike, kill her! Now!”

  “With what, dude?!”

  Pervy left the needles in his dead—re-dead—uncle’s eyes and looked around for something, anything that he could throw to Mike to bash his mother’s head in before she took a chunk out of him.

  Half his mom’s left arm crumbled away now, but her right one just swept the collar of his flannel shirt. Five more seconds and she would have him and probably set him on fire at the same time she ripped out his throat.

  Crumbling: The word shot into Mike’s mind and he looked over the charred horror that had been his mother. She’s crumbling like overcooked bacon.

  Burning the shit out of both hands now, Mike grabbed the little bit of poker handle his mom couldn’t reach and swung it like a bat, as hard as he could. Which, as his eighth-grade baseball coach could attest, was pretty damned hard and fast.

  His mom, caught by the centrifugal force as he swung the poker around, slid off the glowing red shaft, tripped backward over the remains of the Christmas tree, and shattered against the living room wall—

  “YES!” Pervy shouted.

  —into a thousand flaming coals, each one of which started a new fire almost immediately wherever it landed.

  “NO!” Pervy shouted.

  Flames roared up the curtains and the walls, blanketed the ceiling above them, and turned the house into an inferno in less than twenty seconds.

  “Let’s get out of here! They’re dead, man, they’re all fucking dead. Twice!” Pervy screamed and grabbed Mike with one arm and their heavy coats hanging by the front door with the other. “Get out! OUT!”

  But Mike stopped, even though bits of ceiling and support beams were raining down as the fire raced up the stairs and overtook the entire upper story, scanning the bodies that carpeted the room. “Where’s Grandma?”

  “Dude, she’s fucking dead, too—come on!”

  “She’s not here!”

  A huge flaming chunk of drywall fell through the ceiling then, a massive sheet of fire and heat crashing to the floor between Mike and Pervy on one side and the unmoving bodies on the other.

  “Come on, man!” Pervy yelled, and caught hold of Mike’s forearm and whipped him out the front door and onto the porch. the same way Mike had whipped his mother off the poker and into the wall. “They’re all dead for real, and nothing can hurt us now if we just get outside!”

  Mike snapped out of his worried trance and ran off the porch and through the icy melt with Pervy, away from the fire-ravaged house.

  8 Maids a-Milking

  “ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES!!!”

  Mike burst through Claire’s bedroom door just in time to see his 15-year-old sister yanking on his best friend’s penis, both of them red in the face from concentration.

  “ZOMB—” Mike saw what was happening, took a second to process it, grimaced and let out a loud “AW, GOD!”

  Claire jumped back, unhanding Perv’s stiff cock in surprise, and jizz flew up in globules like Tang on a spaceship, only arcing back to a messy end when gravity yanked it down.

  “What the fuck, man?” Pervy said, his hands shaking with orgasmic energy, his mind not yet returned to Earth along with his rocketed semen. “Don’t you knock?”

  “When did you—with my sis—” Mike started, then shook his head hard. “Dude, ZOMBIES! Fucking Mom and Dad and your uncle and my grandma—”

  “Not funny,” Claire said. “Grandma’s dying.”

  “No—she’s dead! I mean, undead! Claire, she just took a chunk out of Dad, and then—”

  Pervy sat up, his softening penis still way too visible for Mike. “Is that what that sound was? They’re dead? I was kinda—”

  “Undead, Perv. He’s—”

  “You goddamned geeks and your zombie bullshit!” Claire spat and got off the bed, making a beeline for the door Mike had just come in through.

  Pervy followed her with his eyes. “Wait a minute! I didn’t—”

  “Shut up, little dick!”

  Mike tried to stop her going out her bedroom door, but she was two years older, and bigger, and she pushed him out of the way like a bead curtain. “Claire, don’t—”

  “Fuck off, both of you! When I come back, I want you out!” She slammed the door behind her, and Mike rushed up and turned the tiny doorknob lock.

  “What are you doing, man? Locking her door? She will kill you.”

  “Dude, if she’s gone out there, she’s already dead.”

  Pervy, who was six months older than Mike and had, including tonight, gotten exactly one handjob in his life—one more than Mike had gotten, but still—looked at Mike like he was a little kid and Pervy was the rational adult. “Okay, enough with the zombie shit, man. I really like your sister.”

  “It is the end of the world,” Mike muttered to himself.

  “Why do have to fuck this up for me? Why can’t you just—”

  BAM! Something smashed against the bedroom door, cracking it almost in half up the middle as it nearly bucked out of its hinges and lock.

  Both boys screamed. Pervy tucked his penis back into his pants and zipped up.

  “Jesus, Mike, what’s going on out there?”

  “I told you. They’re zombies. Grandma comes roaring out and—Dad—then Uncle Rebar—he—FUCK!” A huge gasping sob kept Mike from saying anything else.

  “What? What? I thought your grandma was upstairs in her bed! You said she was fuckin’ dying!” He looked at Mike’s distraught, tear-stained face. “I mean, sorry, but I thought she was gonna… you know…”

  Mike sniffed hard. “Dude, that’s what I’m saying. She did die. She must’ve died and come back as a zombie.”

  Pervy sighed and rolled his eyes. “Claire was right. You really are a—“

  MWAGHEEEEEAHHHHH! something screamed and slammed into the door, making both boys jump and scream. A huge chunk of painted wood shot forward and there, jammed through the door with an eye missing and a mouth full of blood, was Claire’s head. She shrieked and fought to work her trapped head out of the stockade of wood around it, but she was good and stuck.

  “Is she in on this with you?” Pervy immediately said, but looked at Mike, then at the slobbering, angry, undead Claire-thing trapped by the door, and shook his head. “Not really her style, I guess.”

  MWARRRRRGHRRRRAHHHHH! the thing roared, and pieces of skin and muscle and bone spl
attered against the wall against the door, where she was pushing to try to rip her head back through the too-small opening. One jagged board held her under the chin, and at her angle she couldn’t pull hard enough to break it off.

  “Man,” Pervy said, staring at her, “Three minutes ago she was jerking on—”

  “Focus! We have to get past her and down the stairs and out the front door without any of them getting us. If one of them grabs us, we’re gonna end up like them.”

  “God, it works fast. It doesn’t work that fast in the movies.”

  “In the movies, it’s a virus. This is… I don’t know what the hell this is. It’s like they get killed and boom—five seconds later, they’re up and at ’em again.”

  “It’s like they don’t die at all!”

  Mike froze. “W-What did you just say?”

  RIARGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!! the Claire-thing let out and ripped paint and strips of wood from the door as she flailed feverishly to get her head loose.

  “Never mind. Through that door, down the stairs, out the front door. The police should be here any second and we’ll be safe. GO!!!”

  Pervy didn’t need to be told twice. He revved up like a sprinter and darted past the zombie stuck in the door, just slipping past her bloody nail-less fingers, which flexed and tried to snag him as he rushed by.

  In her agitation, Claire slammed her head against the wall and rebounded, slamming the door shut with Mike still trapped in the room.

  He was so fucked.

  The zombie spit and snarled and raged against the door, which was finally giving way enough for her to almost get her head out. Mike could see that as soon as she got free, she could ram through the remainder of the door. Then it would be short work for him to end up like Grandma and his dad and mom and Perv’s uncle and—

  “Claire, no! Get away from there!”

  Was that… his mom? She was alive? “Mom! Watch out! She’s a—”

  At the sound of prey on the correct side of the door, the Claire-thing’s blood-rimmed eyes shot fully open and she yanked her head with fresh zombie hunger. The head disappeared.

  Three seconds later, Mike heard his mother scream through gurgled blood.

  “Dude, this is our chance! It’s distracted!”

  Tears were already streaming down Mike’s face. “That’s my mother!”

  “She’s not your mother anymore!” Pervy shouted, and then let out a laugh as he recognized the words. “Hey, that’s like from—”

  “Shut the fuck up! You’re an asshole!” Mike shook it off and spied the empty hole in the door. “Come on—follow me.”

  Mike unlocked the bedroom door and slowly eased it open, both boys wincing at every creak of the hinges. But there was no new attack, only… a sound.

  A slurping, sucking sound that Mike and Pervy instantly recognized from a thousand Foley artists’ effects from a thousand horror movies: It was the sound of guts being sucked out and chewed.

  And there, with Claire’s face in the middle of her exploded gut, was Mike’s mom getting her intestines gulped down. Pervy shoved a hand against his mouth but still puked against it, the bile fanning out like water from a stopped-up garden hose.

  Gayness be damned, Mike grabbed his friend’s hand and yanked him past the distracted zombie to get down the stairs, the stairs that had killed Uncle Rebar. At the bottom, Mike scanned the overturned living room for any signs of undeath and Pervy shot a glance back up the stairs.

  “Mike, your mom—”

  “I know, dude, but I can’t deal with it right now.”

  “No, man, your mom—” Pervy started, but couldn’t finish what he was going to say because Mike’s mom smashed into him, her mouth open and bleeding and drooling, the new zombie snarling and looking very, very hungry.

  Mike spun around in time to see his mother lunging for Pervy’s neck and snatched him out of the way just as her teeth chomped down. He half-ran, half-dragged his friend toward the door, Pervy’s eyes fixed behind them on the spectacle of the ravenous Claire-thing falling down the stairs—and breaking her neck, dashing her brains against the railing—and knocking Mike’s-mom-thing across the living room, where she rolled hard up against the burning fireplace, a spark leaping out and catching the hem of her Christmas dress, and then her kindling-dry undead leg, on fire.

  She went up like an oil-soaked rag, running around the room, shrieking in hunger and rage and turning everything she even got near into a plume of angry flame.

  And now, she was between Mike and Pervy and their only way outside.

  And they couldn’t go back upstairs, either—because, shambling toward them, not even noticing the body of The Thing Formerly Known As The Zombie Formerly Known As Claire as it kicked it out of the way, was Uncle Rebar, undead now himself and ready to rumble.

  Back to back, Mike and Pervy navigated the living room, lashing out against the randomly scurrying Mike’s-mom-thing and staving off the slow-moving-but-still-totally-deadly Uncle-Rebar-thing.

  Pervy bent down and picked up the ottoman, holding it between him and Uncle Rebar like a lion tamer with a chair. Rebar lunged, but Pervy shoved him away as he and Mike inched toward the door.

  Somehow, through the flames and the agony, Mike’s mom noticed there was still living, breathing meat in the room and instantly scrambled her column of flame right at him. If she didn’t sink her teeth into him and turn him into a zombie, she’d catch him on fire and kill him even more horribly that way.

  Without even having time to scream in shock, Mike caught sight of the fireplace set and grabbed the long metal poker. “Come on, bitch!” he yelled, and for one weird second worried he’d be in trouble for cursing.

  7 Swans a-Swimming

  Thunk! The swan-shaped gravy boat bounced off Mike’s dad’s undead head.

  “What is that, two fucking ounces?! That’s goddamn porcelain!” Perv’s Uncle Rebar yelled, unfortunately attracting Mike’s dad’s attention. “Watch this!”

  He took a carving knife from next to where the serving dish was and in one amazingly fast move severed Mike’s dad’s spine, dropping the zombie like a sack of gravel.

  “Now that’s how you kill a… oh, goddamn it.” Uncle Rebar looked down at his forearm, which was now missing a huge bite-shaped piece of flesh. When he looked up again, his eyes were blank and Mike was already scrambling up the stairs.

  6 Geese a-Laying

  Splorch! The stuffed goose exploded against Mike’s dad’s undead head, knocking him to the side momentarily but hardly distracting him from his gnashing attack on Uncle Rebar. The hot platter had blistered Mike’s hands but otherwise done absolutely no damage.

  “That won’t work! That’s goddamn soft, it’s meat!” Rebar yelled as Mike’s dad snapped at his hands and forearms. “Throw something solid!”

  5 Golden Rings

  “Honey? HONEY!” Mike’s mom yelped, making Mike’s dad break his hungry stare at his son and fix immediately on Perv’s Uncle Rebar. The dad-thing lunged across the table at their guest. “HONEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

  “Mom, he’s a zombie! GET AWAY FROM HIM!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Michael—”

  Uncle Rebar didn’t try to reason with Mike’s mom—he just grabbed her arm and flung her around him and toward Mike. “Get her out of here, son! Your dad’s gone crazy!”

  “Grandma bit him—he’s not crazy—he’s a zombie! Seriously, Uncle Re—”

  “Get her OUT!” Rebar yelled, pointing at Mike’s mom, and jumped into a defensive position as the Mike’s-dad-thing figured out he had to go around the table to get a piece of the living hunk of flesh that was Pervy’s Uncle Rebar.

  Mike caught his mother from falling and started pulling her toward the living room and the door outside—but she wouldn’t budge. “Michael, your father! He’s sick! He’s going to hurt himself! He needs me here—”

  The wail of sirens pierced through the guttural growls and snarling. But they still sounded far-off—they wouldn’t be in time
to save any of them.

  “Didn’t you see Grandma? They’re zombies and we will be too if we don’t—”

  “They’re sick! The ambulance is almost here! I need to be with your father—” She broke his grip and ran toward his dad, but Uncle Rebar clotheslined her and she fell to the floor with an audible whump. From the floor she wheezed, “Rebar, that’s my husband! I’m not leaving him when he’s sick! Just calm him down!”

  “Fine!” Rebar grabbed Mike’s dad’s hands to subdue him, but the dead sheath of skin sloughed off the zombie’s fingers and left Rebar holding a hairy, gory glove of skin with a gold wedding band still on its finger.

  Mike retched, but Rebar—who had served in the first Gulf War—was unfazed. “Jesus Christ, it’s Ebola! Go over by the stairs and watch for the police and paramedics! Just get out of the way, don’t breathe it in, you and the boys and Claire!”

  Mike’s mom sat up straight at the mention of her daughter’s name. “Claire? OH MY GOD, WHERE IS CLAIRE?”

  And Perv? Where the hell was Perv?

  4 Calling Birds

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emerg—”

  “My grandmother just ripped out my dad’s throat!”

  “Are you in need of an ambulance?”

  “Fuck, yes! And police! My dad is…”

  “Sir? Young man? What is your location?”

  “My dad, he’s… uh…”

  “What is your location, sir?”

  A few seconds earlier, Mike’s dad laid dead on the floor, unmoving, his jugular ripped away by Mike’s grandmother’s two remaining teeth that hooked it and sliced it open in one drooling bite. Before succumbing and falling to his knees, he had smashed his elbow against Grandma’s face in a panic, ricocheting her across the room and dumping her to the floor with a surprisingly loud crunching of bone.