Christmas With the Dead (3 page)

“I shouldn’t have stopped for you,”
Calvin said, and in an instant he thought: If I opened the door and kicked you
out, that might slow them down. They might stop and fight over a hot lunch.

It was a fleeting thought.

“You go, I go,” Calvin said, as if he had
owned the dog for years, as if it were a part of his family.

He kept driving, bumping the pickup
along.

* * *

When he arrived at his house, he didn’t
have time to back in as usual. He hit the garage remote and drove the truck
inside. When he got out, Buffy clamoring out behind him, the zombies were in
the garage, maybe ten of them, others in the near distance were moving faster
and faster toward him.

Calvin touched the remote, closed the
garage door, trapping himself and the dog inside with those ten, but keeping
the others out. He tossed the remote on the hood of the pickup, pulled the
pistol and used what ammunition was left. A few of them were hit in the head
and dropped. He jammed the empty pistol in his belt, pulled the tire iron free,
began
to swing it, cracking heads with the blows.

He heard growling and ripping, turned to
see Buffy had taken one down and was tearing its throat out, pulling it’s near
rotten head off its shoulders.

“Good dog, Buffy,” Calvin yelled, and
swung the iron. “Sic
em
.”

They came over the roof of the truck. One
of them, a woman, leaped on him and knocked him face down, sent his tire iron
flying. She went rolling into the wall, but was up quickly and moving toward
him.

He knew this was it. He sensed another
close on him, and then another, and then he heard the dog bark, growl. Calvin
managed to turn his head slightly as Buffy leaped and hit the one above him,
knocking her down. It wasn’t much, but it allowed Calvin to scramble to his
feet, start swinging the tire iron. Left and right he swung it, with all his
might.

They came for him, closer. He backed up,
Buffy beside him, their asses against the wall, the zombies in front of them.
There were three of the dead left. They came like bullets. Calvin breathed
hard. He grabbed the tire iron off the garage floor, swung it as quickly and as
firmly as he could manage, dodging in between them, not making a kill shot,
just knocking them aside, finally dashing for the truck with Buffy at his
heels. Calvin and Buffy jumped inside, and Calvin slammed the door and locked
it. The zombies slammed against the door and the window, but it held.

Calvin got a box of .38 shells out of the
glove box, pulled the revolver from his belt and loaded it. He took a deep
breath. He looked out the driver’s side window where one of the zombies, maybe
male, maybe female, too far gone to tell, tried to chew the glass.

When he had driven inside, he had
inadvertently killed the engine. He reached and twisted the key, started it up.

Then he pushed back against Buffy, until
they were as close to the other door as possible. Then he used his toe to roll
down the glass where the zombie gnashed. As the window dropped, its head dipped
inward and its teeth snapped at the air. The revolver barked, knocking a hole
in the zombie’s head, spurting a gusher of goo, causing it to spin and drop as
if practicing a ballet move.

Another showed its face at the open
window, and got the same reception.
A .38 slug.

Calvin twisted in his seat and looked at
the other window.
Nothing.
Where was the last one? He
eased to the middle, pulling the dog beside him. As he held the dog, he could
feel it shivering. Damn, what a dog. Terrified, and still a fighter. No quitter
was she.

A hand darted through the open window,
tried to grab him, snatched off his Santa hat. He spun around to shoot. The
zombie arm struck the pistol, sent it flying. It grabbed him. It had him now,
and this one, fresher than the others, was strong. It pulled him toward the
window, toward snapping, jagged teeth.

Buffy leaped. It was a tight fit between
Calvin and the window, but the starved dog made it, hit the zombie full in the
face and slammed it backwards. Buffy fell out the window after it.

Calvin found the pistol, jumped out of
the car. The creature had grabbed Buffy by the throat, had spun her around on
her back, and was hastily dropping its head for the bite.

Calvin fired. The gun took off the top of
the thing’s head. It let go of Buffy. It stood up, stared at him, made two
quick
steps toward him, and dropped. The dog
charged to Calvin’s side, growling.

“It’s all right, girl. It’s all right.
You done
good
. Damn, you done good.”

Calvin got the tire iron and went around
and carefully bashed in all the heads of the zombies, just for insurance. Tomorrow,
he’d change the tire on the truck, probably blown out from running over
zombies. He’d put his spare on it, the dough nut tire, drive to the tire store
and find four brand new ones and put them on. Tomorrow he’d get rid of the
zombie’s bodies. Tomorrow he’d do a lot of things.

But not tonight.

He found the Santa hat and put it back
on.

Tonight, he had other plans.

* * *

First he gave Buffy a package of jerky.
She ate like the starving animal she was. He got a bowl out of the shelf and filled
it with water.

“From now on, that’s your bowl, girl.
Tomorrow... Maybe the next day, I’ll find you some canned dog food at the
store.”

He got another bowl and opened a can of
chili and poured it into the bowl. He was most likely over feeding her. She’d
probably throw it up. But that was all right. He would clean it up, and
tomorrow they’d start over, more carefully. But tonight, Buffy had earned a
special treat.

He went out and got the tree out of the
truck and put it up and put ornaments on it from two years back. Ornaments he
had left on the floor after throwing the old dead and dried tree over the
fence. This plastic one was smaller, but it would last, year after year.

He sat down under the tree and found the
presents he had for his wife and child. He pushed them aside, leaving them
wrapped. He opened those they had given him two Christmas’s ago. He liked all
of them.
The socks.
The underwear.
The ties he would never wear. DVD’s of movies he loved, and would watch,
sitting on the couch with Buffy, who he would soon make fat.

He sat for a long time and looked at his
presents and cried.

* * *

Using the porch light for illumination,
inside the fenced-in yard, he set about putting up the decorations. Outside the
fence the zombies grabbed at it, and rattled it, and tugged, but it held. It
was a good fence.
A damn good fence.
He believed in
that tediously built fence. And the zombies weren’t good climbers. They got off
the ground, it was like some of whatever made them animated slid out of them in
invisible floods. It was as if they gained their living dead status from the
earth itself.

It was a long job, and when he finished
climbing the ladder, stapling up the lights, making sure the Santa and snow men
were in their places, he went inside and plugged it all in.

When he came outside, the yard was lit in
colors of red and blue and green. The Santa and the snowmen glowed as if they
had swallowed lightning.

Buffy stood beside him, wagging her tail
as they examined the handy work.

Then Calvin realized something. It had
grown very quiet. The fence was no longer being shaken or pulled. He turned
quickly toward where the zombies stood outside the fence. They weren’t holding
onto the wire anymore. They weren’t moaning. They weren’t doing anything except
looking, heads lifted toward the lights.

Out there in the shadows, the lights
barely touching them with a fringe of color, they looked like happy and
surprised children.

“They like it,” Calvin said, and looked
down at Buffy.

She looked up at him, wagging her tail.

“Merry Christmas, dog.”

When he glanced up, he saw a strange
thing. One of the zombies, a woman, a barefoot woman wearing shorts and a
tee-shirt, a young woman, maybe even a nice looking woman not so long ago,
lifted her arm and pointed at the lights and smiled with dark, rotting teeth.
Then their came a sound from all of them, like a contented sigh.

“I’ll be damn,” Calvin said. “They like
it.”

He thought: I will win. I will wait them
out. They will all fall apart someday soon. But tonight, they are here with us,
to share the lights. They are our company. He got a beer from inside, came back
out and pulled up a lawn chair and sat down. Buffy lay down beside him. He was
tempted to
give those poor
sonofabitches
outside the wire a few strips of jerky. Instead, he sipped his beer.

A tear ran down his face as he yelled
toward the dead.
“Merry Christmas, you monsters.
Merry Christmas to all of you, and to all a good night.”