Christmas With the Dead (2 page)

It may have been attrition of power, or a
terrific storm, though not nearly as terrific as the one Ella and Tina had
described.
The one that had changed things.
But something
killed the electricity. He managed to get a lot of meat out before then, and he
tossed a lot away to keep it from rotting in the store, making the place stink.

By then, he had a freezer and the smaller
refrigerator both hooked to gas generators he had taken from the store. And by
siphoning gas from cars, he had been able to keep it running. He also worked
out a way to maintain electricity by supplanting the gas powered generators
with car batteries that he wired up and used until they died. Then he got
others, fresh ones from the car parts house. He didn’t know how long that
supply would last. Someday he feared he would be completely in the dark when
night fell. So, he made a point of picking up candles each time he went to the
store. He had hundreds of them now, big fat ones, and plenty of matches.

The weather was cool, so he decided on
canned chili and crackers. There was plenty of food in the store, as
most of the town had seen the storm and
been affected by it, and had immediately gone into zombie mode. For them, it
was no more cheese and crackers, salads with dressing on the side, now it was
hot, fresh meat and cold dead meat, rotting on the bone.

As he
cruised
the aisle, he saw a rack with bags of jerky on it. He hadn’t had jerky in ages.
He grabbed bags of it and threw them in the cart. He found a twelve pack of
bottled beer and put that in the cart.

He was there for about six hours.
Just wandering.
Thinking.
He used
the restrooms, which still flushed. He had the same luxury at his house, and he
could have waited, but the whole trip, the food, walking the aisles, using the
toilet, it was akin to a vacation.

After awhile he went to the section of
the store that contained the decorations. He filled another basket with strings
of lights, and even located a medium sized plastic Christmas tree. Three
baskets were eventually filled, one with the plastic tree precariously balanced
on top. He found a Santa Hat, said, “What the hell,” and put it on.

He pushed all three baskets near the door
he had come in. He slung the shotgun off his shoulder, and took a deep breath.
He hated this part. You never knew what was behind the door. The automatic
doors would have been better in this regard, as they were hard plastic and you
could see through them, but the problem was if you went out that way, you left
the automatic door working, and they could come and go inside as they pleased.
He liked the store to be his sanctuary, just like the pawn shop downtown, the
huge car parts store, and a number of other places he had rigged with locks and
hidden weapons.

He stuck the key in the door and heard it
snick. He opened it quickly. They weren’t right at the door, but they were all
around his truck. He got behind one of the baskets and pushed it out, leaving
the door behind him open. It was chancy, as one of them might slip inside
unseen, even be waiting a week or two later when he came back, but it was a
chance he had to take.

Pushing the basket hard, he rushed out
into the lot and to the back of the truck. He had to pause to open up with the
shotgun. He dropped four of them,
then
realized he was
out of fire power. For the first time in ages, he had forgot to check the loads
in the gun; his last trek out, a trip to the pawn shop, had used most of them,
and he hadn’t reloaded.

He couldn’t believe it. He was slipping.
And you couldn’t slip. Not in this world.

He pulled the .38 revolver and popped off
a shot, missed. Two were closing. He stuck the revolver back in his belt,
grabbed a handful of goodies from the basket and tossed them in the back of the
pickup. When he looked up, four were closing, and down the way, stumbling over
the parking lot, were more of them.
A lot of them.
In
that moment, all he could think was: at least they’re slow.

He pulled the .38 again, but one of them
came out of nowhere, grabbed him by the throat. He whacked at the arm with
revolver, snapped it off at the shoulder, leaving the hand still gripping him.
The zombie, minus an arm,
lunged
toward him, snapping its teeth, filling the air with its foul stench.

At close range he didn’t miss with the
revolver, got Armless right between the eyes. He jerked the arm free of his neck,
moved forward quickly, and using the pistol as a club, which for him was more
precise, he knocked two down, crushing one’s skull, and finishing off the other
with a close skull shot. A careful shot dropped another.

He looked to see how fast the other
zombies were coming.

Not that fast. They were just halfway
across the lot.

There was one more zombie near the front
of his truck. It had circled the vehicle while he was fighting the others. He
hadn’t even seen where it came from. He watched it as he finished unloading the
car. When it was close, he shot it at near point blank range, causing its
rotten skull to explode like a pumpkin, spewing what appeared to be boiled,
dirty oatmeal all over the side of his truck and the parking lot.

Darting back inside, he managed to push
one cart out, and then shove the other after it. He grabbed the handles of the
carts, one in each hand, and guided them to the back of the truck. The zombies
were near now. One of them, for some reason, was holding his hand high above his
head, as if in greeting. Calvin was tempted to wave.

Calvin tossed everything in the back of
the truck and was dismayed to hear a bulb or two from his string of bulbs pop.
The last thing he tossed in back was the Christmas tree.

He was behind the wheel and backing
around even before the zombies arrived. He drove toward them, hit two and
crunched them down.

As if it mattered, as he wheeled out of
the lot, he tossed up his hand in a one finger salute.

* * *

“They were so pretty,” Ella had said
about the lightning flashes.

She had awakened him as he lay snoozing
on the couch.

“They were red and yellow and green and
blue and all kinds of colors,” Tina said. “Come on, daddy, come see.”

By the time he was there, the strange
lightning storm was gone. There was only the rain. It had come out of nowhere,
caused by who knew what. Even the rain came and went quickly; a storm that
covered the earth briefly, flashed lights, spit rain, and departed.

When the rain stopped, the people who had
observed the colored lightning
died,
just keeled over.
Ella and Tina among them, dropped over right in the living room on Christmas
Eve, just before presents were to be opened.

It made no sense. But that’s what
happened.

Then, even as he tried to revive them,
they rose.

Immediately, he knew they weren’t right.
It didn’t take a wizard to realize that. They came at him, snarling,
long
strings of mucus flipping from their mouths like rabid
dog saliva. They tried to bite him. He pushed them back, he called their names,
he yelled, he pleaded, but still they
came,
biting and snapping. He stuck a couch cushion in Ella’s mouth. She grabbed it
and ripped it. Stuffing flew like a snow storm. And he ran.

He hid in the bedroom, locked the door,
not wanting to hurt them. He heard the others, his neighbors, outside, roaming
around the house. He looked out the window. There were people all over the back
yard, fighting with one another, some of them living, trying to survive,
going
down beneath teeth and nails. People like him, who for
some reason had not seen the weird storm. But the rest were dead. Like his wife
and daughter. The lights of the storm had stuck something behind their eyes
that killed them and brought them back—dead, but walking, and hungry.

Ella and Tina pounded on his bedroom door
with the intensity of a drum solo.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,
bam.
He sat on the bed for an hour, his hands over his ears, tears
streaming down his face, listening to his family banging at the door, hearing
the world outside coming apart.

He took a deep breath, got the shotgun
out of the closet, made sure it was loaded, opened the bedroom door.

It was funny, but he could still remember
thinking as they went through the doorway, here’s my gift to you.
Merry Christmas, family.
I love you.

And then two shots.

Later, when things had settled, he had
managed, even in the midst of a zombie take over, to take their bodies to the
dumpster, pour gas on them, and dispose of them as best he could. Months later,
from time to time, he would
awaken,
the smell of their burning flesh and the
odor of gasoline in his nostrils.

Later, one post at a time, fighting off
zombies as he worked, he built his compound to keep them out, to give him a
yard, a bit of normalcy.

* * *

Calvin looked in the rear view mirror. His
forehead was beaded with sweat. He was still wearing the Santa hat. The
snowball on its tip had fallen onto the side of his face. He flipped it back,
kept driving.

He was almost home when he saw the dog
and saw them chasing it. The dog was skinny, near starved, black and white
spotted, probably some kind of hound mix. It was running all out, and as it was
nearing dark, the pace of the zombies had picked up. By deep night fall, they
would be able to move much faster. That dog was dead meat.

The dog cut out into the road in front of
him, and he braked. Of the four zombies chasing the dog, only one of them
stopped to look at him. The other three ran on.

Calvin said, “Eat bumper,” gassed the
truck into the zombie who had stopped to stare, knocking it under the pickup.
He could hear it dragging underneath as he drove. The other zombies were
chasing the dog down the street, gaining on it; it ran with its tongue hanging
long.

The dog swerved off the road and jetted
between houses. The zombies ran after it. Calvin started to let it go. It
wasn’t his problem. But, as if without thought, he wheeled
the truck off the road and across a yard.
He caught one of the zombies, a fat slow one that had most likely been fat and
slow in life. He bounced the truck over it and bore down on the other two.

One heard the motor, turned to look, and
was scooped under the bumper so fast it looked like a magic act disappearance.
The other didn’t seem to notice him at all. It was so intent on its canine
lunch. Calvin hit it with the truck, knocked it against the side of a house,
pinned it there,
gassed
the truck until it snapped in
two and the house warped under the pressure.

Calvin backed off, fearing he might have
damaged the engine. But the truck still ran.

He looked. The dog was standing between
two houses, panting, its pink tongue hanging out of its mouth like a bright
power tie.

Opening the door, Calvin called to the
dog. The dog didn’t move, but its ears sprang up.

“Come on, boy... girl. Come on, doggie.”

The dog didn’t move.

Calvin looked over his shoulders. Zombies
were starting to appear everywhere. They were far enough away he could make an
escape, but close enough to be concerned.

And then he saw the plastic Christmas
tree had been knocked out of the back of the pickup. He ran over and picked it
up and tossed it in the bed. He looked at the dog.

“It’s now are never, pup,” Calvin said.
“Come on. I’m not one of them.”

It appeared the dog understood
completely. It came toward him, tail wagging. Calvin bent down, carefully
extended his hand toward it. He patted it on the head. Its tail went crazy. The
dog had a collar on. There was a little aluminum tag in the shape of a bone
around its neck. He took it between thumb and forefinger. The dog’s name was
stenciled on it: BUFFY.

Looking back at the zombies coming across
the yard in near formation, Calvin spoke to the dog,
“
Come
on, Buffy Go with me.”

He stepped back, one hand on the open
door. The dog sprang past him, into the seat. Calvin climbed in, backed around,
and they were out of there, slamming
zombies
right and
left as the truck broke their lines.

* * *

As he neared his house, the sun was
starting to dip. The sky was as purple as a hammered plum. Behind him, in the
mirror, he could see zombies coming from all over, between houses, out of
houses, down the road, moving swiftly.

He gave the truck gas, and then a tire
blew.

The truck’s rear end
skidded
hard left, almost spun, but Calvin fought the wheel and righted it. It bumped
along, and he was forced to slow it down to what seemed like a near crawl. In
the rear view, he could see the dead gaining; a sea of teeth and putrid faces.
He glanced at the dog. It was staring out the back window as well, a look of
concern on its face.