Santa Vs. The Living Dead
Read Santa Vs. The Living Dead Online
Authors: Josh Hilden
Santa Vs. the Living Dead
Josh Hilden
Twitter: @Josh_Hilden
Amazon Author Page (Check out my work)
Edited By – Gypsy Heart Editing
Copyright © 2014 Josh Hilden
All rights reserved.
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This is the story of the Christmas that almost wasn’t. The Christmas when the question of whether there is a Santa Claus was finally decided in Virginia. The Christmas when the dead rose to devour the living and only one person had the strength to rally humanity and lead us to victory. This is the story of the Christmas when Santa Claus fought the Zombies.
Very few people were aware of the coming danger.
When the outbreaks of Ebola occurred in Western Africa a year earlier, nations panicked. When the American Centers for Disease Control contained and eliminated the threat it was logical to assume the citizenry would calm down.
This was not the case.
A wise person once said that an individual human is rational and smart, while the human race as a whole is composed of frightened ignorant beings that’d trample their own mother for a buck. The same could be said for the human desire for power and control over one another. The idea was the brainchild of a cadre of the world’s ultra rich and their global political lackey’s. It’d seemed so obvious, use the global fear of Ebola to seize total control of the world.
The plan was simple.
First they would release a highly contagious but mostly harmless virus in isolated areas causing the citizens of the first world to panic. Then once the population was properly terrified they’d quietly declare a state of emergency and offer free vaccinations for everyone. But what the people believed to be vaccinations would be a new virus designed to render them docile and open to suggestion. Meanwhile, the chosen elite would be vaccinated against the real virus.
Does this seem like an overly complex and stupid plan to you?
It was and like every overly complex plan—the creators screwed it up.
For ninety percent of the population given the “Vaccination” nothing happened. They were protected from nothing and they were not rendered passive or easily controlled. The remaining ten percent seemed to be affected in the intended way. They became passive and easily swayed.
It all changed on Christmas Eve.
Nobody knew the radiation was coming. In an invisible and virtually undetectable wave it washed across the planet in the blink of an eye. Was it from space? Was it from within the Earth itself? Nobody would ever know but that didn’t matter because the effects were instantaneous.
Every one of the ten percent of the human race affected by the vaccination, almost three quarters of a billion, instantly dropped dead. They hemorrhaged from all openings, convulsed violently, and ceased to live.
Then… they got back up.
Like a bad horror movie the now reanimated dead attacked the living. They were driven by an unquenchable need to feed on the warm flesh of the living. Panic ensued and in a matter of hours the human race was brought to its knees.
On that night, the snow fell on the American Midwest in buckets. Cities were shut down, interstates came to a halt, and for many the power ceased to flow. Despite the record amounts of white stuff pounding the center of the United States, children all over were excited for the Christmas holiday.
While the dead were hungry and on the prowl.
Christmas Eve
Lucy’s House
“Daddy I don’t want to go to sleep.” Lilly pouted, standing rooted in her bedroom doorway. “I want to stay up and see Santa!”
“Lilly, if you stay up Santa won’t come,” Eli Jones said to his only daughter with a chuckle. “Now you need to get into bed.”
Lilly hung her head in surrender. The little girl, just three months shy of six, had been waging a campaign to stay up late with the adults on Christmas Eve ever since Kindergarten had gotten out for the holidays. Her mother, aunt, uncle, and grandmother were all in the living room drinking adult drinks and talking and having fun without her.
“Alright Daddy,” she said heavily.
The lights flickered for the hundredth time that evening.
I’m glad Maria got me to top off the generator before the storm started,
Eli thought silently thanking his wife yet again for being the practical one in the family.
Out loud he continued, “Now give me a hug and it’s off to bed with you.”
Her mood returning to light and excited at the prospect of Santa coming, Lilly hugged her father then scampered off to bed. Once her light was off and the Eli was reasonably certain she was down for the night he headed back to join the rest of the family.
The lights flickered again.
“How’s the little Princess?” Maria asked when Eli came back into the living room. “Did she stop trying to convince you she should be allowed to stay up?”
“She’s fine,” he laughed settling back next to his wife on the leather couch. “She tried every trick in her arsenal but in the end she went to bed happy.”
Soft laughter filled the room.
A fire crackled merrily in the fireplace and the wind whipped outside. Mark, Eli’s brother got up and stoked the fire. Then he went to the window and pushed the heavy curtains aside.
“It’s really coming down out there, I can’t even see the cars,” he said turning back to the room. “Good thing we were all planning to stay here tonight anyways.”
“When your father was alive he thought a heavy snow was the precursor to trouble,” Dianna Jones said sipping her coffee, which was liberally spiked with Kentucky bourbon. “But your father was also convinced our old neighbor, Mr. Ryerson, stole the Sunday newspaper from our porch every week—so take that as you will.”
“Is that why he kept those binoculars by the front window?” Mark asked grinning. “I always thought it was so he could watch the neighbor lady across the street when she was sun bathing.”
Mark’s wife Julie started laughing then coughed as she choked on her drink.
“No dear that was me,” Dianna deadpanned.
Everyone laughed.
Then the lights went out.
One, two, three, four, five… the generator should kick on any second now,
Eli thought as they all sat cloaked in the sudden darkness.
Any second now the beast will turn over and we’ll have power once more.
“Umm Eli?” Maria asked in the fire illuminated darkness, “Shouldn’t the generator have kicked on by now?”
Eli sighed and got to his feet. This wasn’t the first time the power had gone out and the automatic switchover had failed. Such events necessitated a trip to the shed behind the house where the generator was installed. For the hundredth time Eli wished he’d taken care of the problem last time it occurred.
“Want me to come with you?” Mark asked moving from the window and into the glow of the fire.
“I’ll never say no to some company,” Eli laughed.
The two brothers, best friends since before they could read, headed into the blowing snow of the back yard without even donning coats. Even when they’d been young, the brothers had been notorious for not being properly dressed against the elements.
“You two are gonna catch your deaths!” Dianna called out between laughs. She was used to the way her boys were, it was so much like the way their father had been.
“I don’t think the two of them will every really grow up,” Julie laughed taking another sip of her drink.
The wind blew even harder and none of the women heard the moaning.
Tea Party Patriot Bunker
“What are we going to do?” Congresswoman Shelly shrieked.
The plan had been so simple. They’d release the plague on the public and as order collapsed, the Patriots of the Tea Party would come forth with the cure. But when the vaccine was administered to the staff of the bunker they were transformed into the same savage undead as the infected outside. The slaughter had been fast and all consuming, leaving the Congresswoman and her two colleges trapped in one of the first class washrooms.
The dead pounded on the locked steel door.
“Please God save me!” Senator Eddie sobbed, his face buried in Congressman Willie’s chest. The two men were cowering together in the far corner of the first class executive washroom.
Shelly shook her head in disgust. Her place in the hierarchy had been clear. Eddie was the front man, Willie was the blowhard, and she was the woman who’d make them look strong and reasonable by comparison.
At least that’s how it’s supposed to be,
she thought staring at the pathetic excuses for men cowering beneath her gaze.
Isn’t that the reason I threw my Presidential campaign, because that’s what I was supposed to do?
“The Lord will come and deliver us,” Congressman Willie said absently stroking Eddie’s hair. “We are the chosen ones. It’s not our fault those bastards in California messed up the virus, our intentions were pure.”
“I thought the Jews were the chosen ones,” Shelly muttered. She winced as fists slammed against the door.
“Those bagel munchers are hell bound, my daddy says so,” Eddie whined.
“I’m glad we made it out of the carnage in the dining room,” Willie chimed in. The pudgy Texan looked at Shelly and quickly added, “Well all of us except for your husband, sorry about that.”
Shelly glared at the two men from her perch on the marble counter. Her husband had been a trusting, if naïve, man and had taken the vaccine to prove to the base staff it was safe. Now he was outside the washroom hunting down the survivors in the base.
“Do you think the others are okay?” Eddie muttered.
Shelly knew he meant the real leaders of the nation, the corporate masters who’d given them their marching orders. They were the only ones who knew all of the details of the plan.
Mittens why the hell aren’t you here with us?
she thought wincing as a new round of fist pounding on the doors commenced.
He’s probably cowering in the Nevada facility hoping his magic underwear will protect him from the monsters.
Resolution firmed in her bony body and she dropped from the countertop.
“All right enough of this crap!” Congresswoman Shelly barked. Her head snapped around and she glared at the cowering men, her eyes blazing with the intensity she was infamous for. “Get off the floor and act like men!”
Neither Willie nor Eddie argued with her. Instead both of the men rose and took their places behind her. The power amongst them had shifted, now she was the one making the decisions and leading the way while they would be the ones to follow and do what they were told. There had to more survivors in the complex and enough true vaccine to protect hundreds of thousands of people, at her fingertips along with the means to mass produce more. Maybe it was her time to shine once more.
“Now let’s take back this shelter,” she said coldly.