Holiday of the Dead

by David Dunwoody

  No lights were on.

  Strange. Usually by this time, Emil had a big pot of strong coffee brewing. Maybe the old guy had overslept. He parked the cruiser, wandered up to the door and knocked hard. The door creaked open. He frowned. It wasn’t like Emil to leave his door unlocked, let alone open. He pushed the door a little further with his foot, unlatched the strap on his gun, and laid his hand on the weapon. His pulse quickened at the possibility the he might have to use it. Not much call for that in Shakers Point.

  He inched his way in.

  “Hello?”

  No answer.

  “Emil?”

  Nothing. He wandered into the front room, then into the kitchen. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee was conspicuously missing. Emil was nowhere to be seen. Gary crept to the stairs and called loudly. “Emil? You here?” Nothing.

  Maybe the poor old guy had kicked it. That would suck, croaking the day before Thanksgiving. It would suck even more to have to buy a frozen turkey every year from now on, instead of enjoying one of Emil’s rare gems. He should check the bedroom just in case.

  Gary plodded up the steps, hand still on his weapon. He peeked into the bedroom.

  “Emil?”

  The room was empty. The bed didn’t look like it had been slept in.

  Gary checked the bathroom, and the spare room at the end of the hall before making his way back downstairs. He rubbed the back of his neck and went into the front room. A note was tucked under the lamp. He hadn’t noticed it before.

  Maybe Emil had written a note explaining his absence. But then again, the poor old guy couldn’t read a lick, so how could he write a note?

  He gently lifted the lamp and took the note. It looked old, tattered and discoloured. The scratchy handwriting was faded, but legible.

  To whoever finds this here Nife. You need to leave it be. There’s something real bad about this Nife. Evil. Don’t do nothing with it. Don’t use it. Don’t try to destroy it, or it will destroy you. Don’t use it on nothing, or the evil will spread. Just leave it be. LEAVE IT BE-or else. EHL II

  Strange note. Gary scratched his head and looked around. There was no knife.

  Could Emil have written this after all? Probably not. Either way, the note didn’t make much sense.

  An unusually loud garbling disrupted the eerie silence. Gary reached back, pulled the curtain aside, and peered out the window toward the side of the house. The light in the barn was on. That’s where Emil kept the holiday turkeys for slaughter. Most of those turkeys should’ve be cleaned and dressed by now, wrapped and sitting in the cooler, but from the sound of it, it sure didn’t seem that way.

  Emil must be behind a few steps this year. It’d be a sin if the turkeys weren’t ready yet. People sure wouldn’t like that. Folks in this town didn’t like their routines disrupted. He’d better go out to the barn and see what was up with the poor old guy.

  He placed the note back on the table, clipped the safety strap back in place on his weapon and headed out to the slaughter barn.

  THE END

  OATMEAL COOKIES

  By

  Eric Dimbleby

  "Don't let her in," Tyler whispered in his sister's ear. She was a good foot taller than him, which she never failed to mention alongside her being three years his senior. And so Tyler had to stand on his tiptoes. He leaned against her backside, and the sticky residue around his mouth temporarily glued to the back of Susan's grimy shirt.

  Susan nudged him back with her shoulder, huffing in annoyance. "I'll do what I want, y'little brat." Susan tossed her golden pigtails aside and peered through the peephole again. "She doesn't look so bad."

  "She's sick. Just like Mommy and Daddy," Tyler whined, trying hard to bite back the tears of the realizations that were coursing through his brain. He was only six years old, goddammit. This wasn't how things were supposed to be. His only defence was his sister, who couldn’t care less about what happened to him. Why couldn't he have been born earlier? If so, then he would be in charge. Susan would have no say. Fate was a cruel bitch, and so was Susie.

  The oldest always has all the power, thus goes the kingdom of children. "But she's our grandmother, chump. Back up," Susan threatened, showing her teeth. A couple of her formerly white fangs were missing, but the Tooth Fairy had not come. In fact, the Tooth Fairy was nowhere to be found these days, which troubled them both. Tyler had not started losing teeth yet, and so the prospect that the Tooth Fairy had also turned made him angry.

  "Please, Susie. Please!" Tyler shouted, not wanting to see his Gram ever again. She was a monster, an undead beast like all the rest of them out there. A zombie, as Susie had once explained.

  "When you broke your leg, who brought you oatmeal cookies?"

  "Gram did," Tyler whimpered, suckling on his thumb in an attempt to make all the bad things go away. It didn't always work.

  "That's right. And who brought you to church every Sunday?" Susie asked next.

  "Gram," Tyler replied in the same tone as before, though he despised going to church. Everybody smelled of cabbage there, wet and steamy cabbage. "But …"

  Susie snapped, "Then shut your hole! All the grownups are dead, and our Gram is here to save us, you dummy. Don't make me bite you." Her threat was not idle, for she had bitten him on dozens of occasions, each time worse than the last. Based on her progress towards more violent chomps, Tyler estimated that she would fully bite an entire appendage off by the time he was ten years old.

  Pulling open the door to their fifth floor luxury apartment in New York City, Susan smiled at her grandmother, reaching out her arms in a hazy embrace. "Gram!" she called out, a delusional void filling the logical side of her brain. This was not her Gram, though. No matter how well Susan had talked herself into the opposing truth.

  Grandma was a zombie.

  In a nursing home on the other side of the city, she had succumbed to the gray-skinned attackers (roamers- that's what the news guy called them before the televisions had shut off for good, roamers) while in her sleep. She had been bed-ridden for the past year, crippled by a debilitating disease in her nervous system, but now had come across a new invigoration. Undeath was kinder to her than life had been, and she had returned to capture the brains of her two favourite grandchildren. Most roamers were known to do just that, to roam. But Gram was different. Something innate at the base of her brain had called her to action. Brains always tasted better when you were acquainted with the brain.

  Their visiting Gram was somehow different than the rest of the brain chompers. She was disconnected from their chaotic wiring, a spoiled bit of zombie. Perhaps that differentiation was the driving force behind Susan's quick acceptance of her own delusion.

  "We've missed you so much, Gram!" Susan said with tears edging her eyes. She tumbled forward, wrapping her arms around her grandmother. Tyler could only look on, shaking his head from side to side, worried for his sister's unflinching ease, for this was not his Gram. No way, no how. "You came back for us," Susan mumbled in a dreamy voice. “Finally.”

  Was she so naïve to believe that her disease had been cured?

  Tyler braced himself.

  When Gram bit into her granddaughter's scalp, blood jettisoned from the open wound as though Susie's head was a liquid piñata. It coated Tyler's face and chest, forever marring his Captain America pyjamas, which he had been wearing for more than a week now. Susan crumpled to the ground, weeping as she gave in to the pervading darkness behind her eyelids. "Susie!" Tyler cried out, backing away from his grandmother's malice while she lorded over his sister's twitching body. The last sight she ever saw was her grandmother's pink bunny slippers. Gram gnawed on a torn piece of skin and hair while she glared at Tyler, groaning low and wishing for more, more, more.

  By the time his Gram was knee deep in her granddaughter's demise, Tyler was locked away in his bedroom, thankful that his father had installed a lock before he died. Tyler prayed to the God he had forever questioned (“It's like a movie, Gram,” he had once pur
ported) during those Sunday morning church visits.

  Though it was a feat of immeasurable uncertainty, Tyler was able to slide his big-boy bed a few inches to the left, blocking the door. Between the lock and the roadblock, it would not hold Gram back, not if she was determined to gain entry, but it was enough to hold her at bay, if killing him was her intention. The brutal strength that she had employed upon his sister was what made his nerves cringe.

  Within only a few moments of slurping at her granddaughter's body, Gram was banging at his door with her liver-spotted fists, moaning in a guttural language native to the earthly Dead. Tyler would forbid himself from being as gullible as his sister had been. His grandmother had always baked blissful oatmeal cookies, but they weren't quite good enough to make him forget how ravenous she had become, with that new desire for human flesh and brains.

  Tyler, for the first time in his short life, was all alone.

  While his grandmother released her death rattles from outside his door, insisting in her undead language permission to enter, Tyler did what he had always done when he was nervous; doing in fact what all children only knew how to do. With only one universal stress reliever at his disposal, he played with his toys, tears soaking his eyes and cheeks, but still maintaining a smile the best he could. Just like his Gram had often told him, “If you can't smile by yourself, you'll never smile at all.”

  Tyler had a personal bathroom off his bedroom. He was thankful, like the lock on the door, for that perk. The running water still worked, for the time being, as did the toilet. He imaged having to pee in the corner, and the smell that would come from that. Such thoughts felt overly adult to him, but the days of thinking as a child were over. When an animal is backed into a corner, it survives by any means necessary.

  Hours passed in gruelling tedium. Tyler's stomach began to seize in ripples of pang. Gram had quit her incessant thudding upon his door for several minutes, but had returned again. This continued on through the night. Tyler could not be certain where she had gone off to during those absent moments, but it seemed that she was not easily forgetting that he was within her potential reach. She had retained enough of her living memory to walk halfway through the city, to remember the exact address, floor, and apartment number. Most of her had died, but part of her being seemed to troop on, undeterred by her decreasing state of living and breathing.

  Tyler could barely remember the last time he had eaten. It had been breakfast, the previous day, but he wasn't sure how many hours that was. He wasn't all that crafty with time calculations, though he could recognize the significance of certain numeric representations on digital and traditional clocks. If it was near the six, and it was getting dark out, then it was dinner time. If it was near the twelve, and it was light outside, then it was lunch. When he woke up (usually around seven), it was time for breakfast. He, like his dead sister in the next room, had always depended on his mother for scheduling and management of his activities, feeding, and life.

  Since their parents had turned to undead beasts, Susan had been steadfast and effective in the care of her younger brother, though begrudgingly so. It was her duty, and she understood that from the outset. But she had acted like a doofus. Her misguided hope had trumped her reason. Tyler could not let himself mourn for her, like they had when their parents had turned away from the human condition. They had run away from home for several days, hiding in the basement of their apartment complex, nestled behind the garbage shoot with the rats. When they thought it was safe to come out, they had returned to their apartment, to find it empty. Their zombie Mommy and Daddy had abandoned them, and Susie had informed him that it was for the best. They had cried for days on end, but soon found a new sense of bravery, that which they had never known existed inside of them.

  Now he was alone. He had once watched a movie about a little blonde kid who had been left alone by his parents. Two robbers tried, throughout the moronic (even at the age of six, Tyler understood the concept of moronic) movie, to gain entry to the boy's home. In a series of booby traps, he defeated the robbers. Real life was nothing like that movie, Tyler had discovered. He wished that he only had to deal with bumbling burglars. He wondered to himself what the blonde kid may have done if under the duress of a zombie attack. Tyler assured himself that the boy from that movie knew nothing about zombies, and probably didn't even know what a zombie was.

  “A zombie's like a vampire, but they don't drink blood. They try n' eat your brain,” Susie had informed him during one of the days that they were cowering in the basement, hiding behind the trash chute as they wondered what had happened to their doting parents. Tyler had replied to Susie that he didn't believe in things like that, and that she was just trying to scare him. In fact, he had originally believed this to be some sort of prank. His Daddy had always tried to startle him, jumping out from behind doors or out of closets. Tyler could only laugh at such antics, though. This felt altogether different. “You better start believing in them, Ty,” Susie had responded with unblinking eyes, the smell of garbage making her nose twinge. “Because they're everywhere. We're all alone now.”

  All alone.

  Tyler dropped his Mega Monsters on to the carpet. He was bored, but also frightened. Taking his mind off things with make-believe Mega Monster scenarios would only work for so long. Tyler was denying the truth, and prolonging his entrapment. Gram was out there somewhere, plodding around the living room, wanting to eat his brains, and it was inevitable that he would have to exit his room. Eventually.

  He put his ear to the door, listening for her. Not a peep. She was either gone, or waiting for him in the shadows, ready to jump out and terrorize his delicate senses, like his father had often done. “Gram?” he whispered against the door, wondering if she would respond to him with a grunt, because that is what the undead did. They grunted. Horrible, ugly grunts that were not of this world.

  Unlocking the deadbolt, Tyler pulled his race car bed back from the wall, just an inch, enough to open a crack in the door and look through. He climbed up on to the bed, on his knees, and lined up his eyeball with small fissure. No Gram, at least not in his direct line of his sight.

  Maybe the human part of her brain had shut down for good. Maybe Gram was gone, fully sucked into the zombie world. Tyler sighed in relief, pulling the bed back a little further. He walked from his room, scanning the hallway and the living area. No sign of his sweet old Gram, she of the Oatmeal Cookie Baking tribe.

  She, like his parents, had moved on.

  Tyler pulled on the curtain in the den, looking out into the streets below. Zombies roamed, bumping into each other and groaning. They looked confused to him. As though they had lost their puppies, but hadn't the first inkling as to where they should start their search. Some of the gray and green roamers would start off in one direction, careening off a parked car or even a brick wall, turning back in the other direction and wandering until they hit another roadblock. He observed them for several minutes, taking a certain delight in one particular undead beast who was ricocheting off of two aligned parking meters. It would walk into one, turn around, and then walk into the next meter down the line, over and over again. Tyler wondered how long this had gone on for.

  They were brain dead. But not like his Gram. Not like …

  Susie?

  Tyler's heart skipped a crucial beat in his chest. He hadn't thought to check Susie's body.

  Had she turned as well, and wandered off into the night?

  As if she could have read his thoughts, Susie snatched the collar of his pyjamas, turning him around to face her. She was in a horrific condition, ever more maligned than Gram had been. The damage that Gram had done to Susie's face and neck region made her almost unrecognizable. One of her eyes dangled from the socket by a thin tendril of pink flesh. Her scalp had been half pulled back, presumably for easy access for Gram's hungry teeth. Her hair now descended all the way to the back of her knees, following behind her like a hairy shadow of what she had once been.

  She growled
, sniffing the air as she manhandled Tyler. “Susie, no!” he cried out, trying to pull away from her but finding her grip to be too strong. He reached behind him for leverage, gripping his hand around a flower pot (the flower itself, withered from a lack of care). Susie looked upon her younger brother with one good eye, craning her head as a curious puppy would, some niblet of her consciousness telling her that Tyler had once meant something to her. She had, once upon a lifetime, bossed him around, the unofficial leader of the children of their brood. And now, he was different than she. Or was she merely different than he?

  Tyler let out a sob as he swung the orange pot at Susie's forehead, bursting into a million pieces. She fell to her knees, groaning in anger, then looked up at him, fury pulsating through her. “I'm sorry!” he called out, skirting past her, ready to return to his room. He couldn't hurt Susie again. Not like this. He could pull her hair (although now it may have tore the rest of her scalp off), but never anything more. Deep inside, aside from their squabbles, he loved his sister more than anything. He loved his parents, wherever they went. And his Gram.

  As he scuttled to his room, Susie rising from the ground behind him, Tyler considered his food situation. He was starving and would be holed up in his room again. He glanced to the kitchen, and then at Susie, who was touching her forehead with curiosity, unsure of how she had been bested by the strange young boy who seemed quite familiar to her ineffective brain matter.

  There were cupcakes, individually wrapped, in the cupboard. In the days and weeks following their parents' turn for the worst, Susie and Tyler had eaten with wise consideration, first consuming the food that would spoil (vegetables, breads, and dairy products), then moving on to the frozen items, then to the canned goods. When Susie had finally turned down that non-retractable path, they had been down to the last of their reserves. Susie had warned him, “We're gonna need more food by next week. We'll have to go out. Out there.” They had looked out the window together, holding hands, wondering if there were any other survivors, and where those people were obtaining their food.