Christmas With the Dead

by Joe R. Lansdale

  It was a foolish thing to do, and Calvin had not bothered with it the last two years, not since the death of his wife and daughter, but this year, this late morning, the loneliness and the monotony led him to it. He decided quite suddenly, having kept fairly good record on the calendar, that tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and zombies be damned. The Christmas lights and decorations were going up.

  He went into the garage to look for the lights. He could hear the zombies sniffing around outside the garage door. The door was down and locked tight, and on top of that, though the zombies could grab and bite you, they weren’t terribly strong most of the time, so the door was secure. The windows inside were boarded over, the doors were locked, and double locked, and boarded. The back yard the dead owned, but the windows and doors were boarded really well there, so he was shut in tight and safe.

  Prowling through the holiday ornaments, he found immediately the large plastic Santa, and three long strings of lights. They were the ones he had ripped down in anger about two years back.

  He managed all of the strings of lights into his living room. He plugged the wires into the extension cord that was hooked up to the generator he had put in the kitchen, and discovered most of the lights were as dead as the proverbial dodo bird. Many were broken from when he had torn them down.

  He sat for a moment, then went to the little refrigerator he had replaced the big one with—used less energy—and pulled a bottled coffee out, twisted off the cap, and walked over to the living room window.

  Unlike the garage on the side of the house, or the back yard, he had fenced the front yard off with deeply buried iron bars to which he had attached chicken wire, overlapped with barb wire. The fence rose to a height of eight feet. The gate, also eight feet tall, was made of the same. He seldom used it. He mostly went out and back in through the garage. There was no fence there. When he went out, they were waiting.

  More often than not, he was able to run over and crush a few before hitting the door device, closing the garage behind him. On the way back, he rammed a few more, and with the touch of a button, sealed himself inside. When they were thin in the yard, he used that time to stack the bodies in his pickup truck, haul them somewhere to dump. It kept the stink down that way. Also, the rotting flesh tended to attract the hungry dead. The less he made them feel at home, the better.

  Today, looking through the gaps between the boards nailed over the window, he could see the zombies beyond the fence. They were pulling at the wire, but it was firm and they were weak. He had discovered, strangely, that as it grew darker, they grew stronger. Nothing spectacular, but enough he could notice it. They were definitely faster then. It was as if the day made them sluggish, and the night rejuvenated them; gave them a shot of energy, like maybe the moon was their mistress.

  He noticed too, that though there were plenty of them, there were fewer every day. He knew why. He had seen the results, not only around town, but right outside his fence. From time to time they just fell apart.

  It was plain old natural disintegration. As time rolled on, their dead and rotten bodies came apart. For some reason, not as fast as was normal, but still, they did indeed break down. Of course, if they bit someone, they would become zombies, fresher ones, but, after the last six months there were few if any people left in town, besides himself. He didn’t know how it was outside of town, but he assumed the results were similar. The zombies now, from time to time, turned on one another, eating what flesh they could manage to bite off each other’s rotten bones. Dogs, cats, snakes, anything they could get their hands on, had been devastated. It was a new world, and it sucked. And sometimes it chewed.

  Back in the garage, Calvin gathered up the six, large, plastic, snow men and the Santa, and pulled them into the house. He plugged them in and happily discovered they lit right up. But the strings of lights were still a problem. He searched the garage, and only found three spare bulbs— green ones—and when he screwed them in, only one worked. If he put up those strings they would be patchy. It wasn’t as if anyone but himself would care, but a job worth doing was a job worth doing right, as his dad always said.

  He smiled.

  Ella, his wife, would have said it wasn’t about doing a job right, it was more about fulfilling his compulsions. She would laugh at him now. Back then a crooked picture on the wall would make him crazy. Now there was nothing neat about the house. It was a fortress. It was a mess. It was a place to stay, but it wasn’t a home.

  Two years ago it ended being a home when he shot his wife and daughter in the head with the twelve gauge, put their bodies in the dumpster down the street, poured gas on them, and set them on fire.

  All atmosphere of home was gone. Now, with him being the most desirable snack in town, just going outside the fence was a dangerous endeavor. And being inside he was as lonely as the guest of honor at a firing squad.

  * * *

  Calvin picked the strapped shotgun off the couch and flung it over his shoulder, adjusted the .38 revolver in his belt, grabbed the old fashioned tire tool from where it leaned in the corner, and went back to the garage.

  He cranked up the truck, which he always backed in, and using the automatic garage opener, pressed it.

  He had worked hard on the mechanism so that it would rise quickly and smoothly, and today was no exception. It yawned wide like a mouth opening. Three zombies, one he recognized faintly as Marilyn Paulson, a girl he had dated in high school, were standing outside. She had been his first love, his first sexual partner, and now half of her face dangled like a wash cloth on a clothes line. Her hair was falling out, and her eyes were set far back in her head, like dark marbles in crawfish holes.

  The two others were men. One was reasonably fresh, but Calvin didn’t recognize him. The other was his next door neighbor, Phil Tooney. Phil looked close to falling apart. Already his face had collapsed, his nose was gone, as well as both ears.

  As Calvin roared the big four-seater pickup out of the garage, he hit Marilyn with the bumper and she went under, the wing mirror clipped Phil and sent him winding. He glanced in the rearview as he hit the garage mechanism, was pleased to see the door go down before the standing zombie could get inside. From time to time they got in when he left or returned, and he had to seal them in, get out and fight or shoot them. It was a major annoyance, knowing you had that waiting for you when you got back from town.

  The last thing he saw as he drove away was the remaining zombie eating a mashed Marilyn as she squirmed on the driveway. He had shattered her legs with the truck. She was unable to fight back. The way his teeth clamped into her and pulled, it was as if he were trying to bite old bubble gum loose from the side walk.

  Another glance in the mirror showed him Phil was back on his feet. He and the other zombie got into it then, fighting over the writhing meal on the cement. And then Calvin turned the truck along Seal Street, out of their view, and rolled on toward town.

  * * *

  Driving, he glanced at all the Christmas decorations. The lights strung on houses, no longer lit. The yard decorations, most of them knocked over: Baby Jesus flung south from an overturned manager, a deflated blow-up Santa Clause in a sleigh with hooked up reindeer, now lying like a puddle of lumpy paint spills in the high grass of a yard fronting a house with an open door.

  As he drove, Calvin glanced at the dumpster by the side of the road. The one where he had put the bodies of his wife and daughter and burned them. It was, as far as he was concerned, their tomb.

  One morning, driving into town for supplies, a morning like this, he had seen zombies in the dumpster, chewing at bones, strings of flesh. It had driven him crazy. He had pulled over right then and there and shotgunned them, blowing off two heads, and crushing in two others with
the butt of the twelve gauge. Then, he had pulled the tire tool from his belt and beat their corpses to pieces. It had been easy, as they were rotten and ragged and almost gone. It was the brain being destroyed that stopped them, either that or their own timely disintegration, which with the destruction of the brain caused the rot to accelerate. But even with them down for the count, he kept whacking at them, screaming and crying as he did.

  He swallowed as he drove by. Had he not been napping after a hard days work, waiting on dinner, then he too would have been like Ella and Tina. He wasn’t sure which was worse, becoming one of them, not knowing anything or anyone anymore, being eternally hungry, or surviving, losing his wife and daughter and having to remember them every day.

  * * *

  Mud Creek’s Super Savor parking lot was full of cars and bones and wind blown shopping carts. A few zombies were wandering about. Some were gnawing the bones of the dead. A little child was down on her knees in the center of the lot gnawing on the head of a kitten.

  As he drove up close to the Super Savor’s side door, he got out quickly, with his key ready, the truck locked, the shotgun on his shoulder, and the tire tool in his belt.

  He had, days after it all came down, finished off the walking dead in the Super Market with his shotgun, and pulled their bodies out for the ones outside to feast on. While this went on, he found the electronic lock for the sliding plasti-glass doors, and he located the common doors at side and back, and found their keys. With the store sealed, he knew he could come in the smaller doors whenever he wanted, shop for canned and dried goods. The electricity was still working then, but in time, he feared it might go out. So he decided the best way to go was to start with the meats and fresh vegetables. They lasted for about six weeks. And then, for whatever reason, the electricity died.

  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 o
ver. 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.