The hall door opened, with everyone spilling into the living room. John, Barry, and Dan were standing between the writhing James and the other horrified members of the family.
Amy saw James tied up and struggling on the floor. “James! What in the hell did you do to my James?” Amy ran forward, but John and Dan wouldn’t let her pass. They each grabbed an arm as she watched the father of her children twist like a wild beast on the floor.
“My God, what’s wrong with him?” Amy asked softly.
“I’m not sure. But on my way back from the deer camp, the scenery started looking more like Halloween than Christmas. People were wandering around like zombies out on a hunt. Some looked like they had been dead for years. I tried to get some news on the radio, but most of the stations were nothing but static. I did get some info on the CB radio . . .” John hesitated, turning his gaze to the children, then continued. “The zombies were attacking people. That’s what the guy on the CB called them. He called them zombies. He said they were . . . eating people alive.”
“We don’t have time to talk about this!” Beth interrupted. “They broke our bedroom window and took Brian and Grace.”
“Oh God, no,” Dan said, feeling even worse than before.
“That settles it. Grab your jackets, and let’s go. We don’t have much time. This town is crawling with zombies!” John’s military training took over. The enemy was attacking. Time to move. “Five people can ride with me. The other five in Dan’s Cherokee. Let’s go people! Move! Move!”
“What about James? We just can’t leave him here,” Amy said.
Beth came to her sister’s side. “Amy, we can’t take him with us. Not like this. We can come back for him.”
“No, no I can’t leave him. Take the girls and come back for us later.”
John grabbed Amy and slung her over his shoulder. Amy screamed in protest, which only made her children more upset.
The family followed John out the door and into the garage. He put Amy into the back of the Jeep Cherokee. Beth directed Amy’s two girls to sit next to her.
“Freddy, I need to be with Aunt Amy. Go with your Uncle John and the others. There’s not enough room for you in here. Listen to what Uncle John says. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right,” his mother said.
Freddy nodded his head and followed behind John as the garage door rose. He felt better now. His mom had told him that everything was going to be okay.
The cold winds blew. The streetlight dimmed by the falling snow. Freddy followed behind John, and heard his handgun fire twice in rapid succession. It startled him, but he pushed forward, right at the heels of his uncle.
“Get in the truck, now!” John hollered. The gun popped off three more times as the others fled for safety.
John went to the bed of his truck and unzipped his shotgun from its case. There were two zombies coming up the drive. A quick aim at one, trigger pulled, BAM; one down. Another quick aim, trigger pulled, BAM; two down. “Buckshot rules!”
John hurriedly entered his Ford King Ranch and handed the butt of the shotgun to Barry sitting on the passenger side. Kyle, Grandpa, and Grandma were huddled together in the rear seat, shivering more from fear than the cold.
John fired up the engine and pulled out on the street, waiting for Dan to back out and get on the road behind him before setting out for safety. It was back to the deer camp for him and his family.
The deer camp was more than just a place to sleep to a survivalist, of which John was. The camp was his intended refuge for a variety catastrophes. It set high on a hill making it safe from floods. It was so far from civilization that it protected him from an outbreak of flu or other infectious disease pandemics. The camp’s close perimeter was cleared of trees and brush to avoid the flames of a wildfire. There was enough food in storage to last for five years, and a supply of potassium iodine in case of nuclear fallout. And last, but not least, enough guns and ammo buried on the property to take on a small army.
John opened a can of Skoal and shoved in a big dip. The saliva in his mouth mixed with the pungent ground tobacco and delivered his much needed nicotine fix.
He rolled his window halfway down and spit. A country-boy can survive, he thought.
* * *
“It just doesn’t taste like Christmas,” Freddy said, dropping his turkey leg on his plate while slowly chewing.
“Alfred Purple! How ungrateful!” Beth yelled at him from across the table. Dan jumped in his chair, nearly spilling his grape flavored drink.
“Son, how can you be so selfish? Uncle John spent hours hunting that turkey so we could have a special Christmas Eve. You could be eating venison again, or worse, an MRE. Your mother slaved to make us the best meal possible, considering our situation,” Dan said.
John reached over and snatched the turkey leg from Freddy’s plate, and started eating it. “Taste just fine to me.”
Freddy’s lip started to quiver. He put both of his elbows on the table, and rested his chin under his hands.
Beth felt a little guilty for her outburst. Sometimes the burden of the last two years would pile up, and then come crashing in an inadvertent out-lash.
Her mother’s heath failed rapidly and she died before the spring of the first year. Dad didn’t live a full month afterward. It was hard on Freddy seeing his grandparents die that way. Death came to them because of the end of hope. At least they weren’t eaten by the living dead, like her sister Amy.
Amy had snuck out before dawn after the first night in the cabin, presumably, to go back after James. She left in the Jeep, and it was a couple of hours before anyone woke and noticed her gone. John went after her after arming the rest of the family to the teeth. He found the Jeep with a flat tire forty miles away. Amy wasn’t in the vehicle. The windows on the Jeep were broken. Blood covered the seat and in the snow by the door. There were remnants of a bloody shredded shirt a few feet away. John didn’t recognize the shirt, but couldn’t remember what she had been wearing anyway. He didn’t stay to look for her. The story the scene painted had an obvious ending.
Beth gazed around the table thinking of last year’s Christmas Eve. Karla and Tracy had sat to her right, Barry and Kyle to her left. Those chairs were empty now.
Last year’s winter was harsh. The lake had frozen over by Christmas day. Barry and Freddy were ice fishing, with Kyle and Amy’s two daughters ‘ice skating’ nearby. The ice gave way under the three children without warning.
When Barry rushed to their aid, the ice collapsed under his weight just before he could reach them. He fell into the frigid waters. Barry called for Freddy to get help.
Freddy ran faster than he had ever run in his life. But it was a full fifteen minutes before John, Beth, and Dan arrived to help. By that time the kids were no longer on the surface. Barry was so stiff and cold he could barely move his arms. Dan tied a rope to his waist and crawled out to Barry’s side. He grabbed onto Barry’s arm, while the others pulled with all their combined might.
Barry was rescued but remained unconscious for twelve hours. When he awoke, he was despondent. He sat with a blanket around his shoulders and cried, ignoring any comfort his family offered.
“I’m going outside to the bathroom,” were the last words that Barry spoke. He shot himself in the head just a ways from the cabin, next to his parent’s graves.
Beth took a bite of beans and chewed without tasting them. She looked around the cabin she had decorated for Christmas, for Freddy. Pinecones tied together were interlaced with mistletoe, and hung to make a wreath on a bare wall of the cabin. She had whittled little crude figures from wood into shapes resembling Santa, his elves, and even his reindeer. A six-foot pine tree stood in the corner with an aluminum foil star on top. Other shiny pieces of food packaging had been twisted or shredded to form colored ornaments.
She tried to swallow. Her tears welled in her eyes and the lump in her throat made her spit the beans back onto her plate. It just didn’t taste like Christmas.
*
It was Christmas morning, the sun shown faint orange rays through the trees casting shadows on the snow covered forest floor.
There were no presents under the tree that morning. No new bike, no new electronic toys, not any wrong sized clothing to return to the store the next day. The day brought the hardships that every day brought since the dead began to walk.
Freddy was helping his uncle John by gathering kindling. He dragged a plastic garbage bag and filled it with pinecones and small dried twigs and branches, shaking off as much snow as he could before placing them in the bag.
He had wandered from the watchful eye of his uncle and was busy working on a broken fir branch with his hatchet. Fir made excellent kindling, and the branch had been dead for some time.
Freddy heard the metallic sound of a chain rattling nearby. His Uncle John had animal traps set throughout the woods. The locations were marked with orange flagging tied to the tree branches above. He followed the sound twenty feet deep in the woods, and froze when he saw the creature held captive by his uncle’s trap.
It was a young, living dead boy. He was straining to walk in one direction, but his foot was held tightly in the clamp of the trap. Freddy had not seen any of the living dead since that Christmas Eve two years before. There had had been a few stray ones come on the deer camp property, but he only knew that because he had overheard his Uncle John tell his parents about them. The camp was in a very remote location. He had not even seen another living person in those two years.
The zombie child changed directions. The chain rattled behind him until it became taut again. Then he stopped, and tilted his head in the air, and turned toward Freddy. He walked twice as fast as before, until the chain’s restraint jerked him back. His arms were outstretched, clawing at the air.
Freddy could feel the zombie’s wanting desire to eat him alive. Cold fear washed down his spine. He wanted to call out to John, but couldn’t find his voice.
The sun caught the face of a metal object hanging from the zombie’s neck. Freddy focused past his fear and gave it a double take. It was a dog tag.
Freddy thought about the dog tag and about the red sweater the zombie child was wearing. It looked just like the one that Brian wore the day he was snatched from the house. In fact, except for the clothes being tattered and dirty, he was wearing the exact clothes Brian was wearing.
This couldn’t be Brian, could it? he thought.
That possibility scared him more than the zombie did now. He turned to run and find his Uncle John, and crashed right into his legs. He was standing a few steps behind Freddy, pistol drawn, and aiming at the undead child.
Freddy pressed his face in John’s stomach, his head jerked when John pulled the trigger. He wanted to cry, thinking how things used to be with his best friend Brian.
“There, there, Freddy. He won’t bother anyone anymore,” John said.
Freddy slowly walked over to the emaciated form of his friend. His face was ashen white with dark circles around the eyes. Parts of his arm and shoulder were missing chucks of meat and frayed like ragged cloth. This creature looked nothing like the real Brian he knew and loved.
Brian was on his back, a hole on the left side of his forehead, and the dog tag lying on his chin.
The spent cartridge from John’s gun had hung up in the injector port. He was busy working to extract it.
Freddy stooped down and eyed the dog tag. The camouflaged brown and green plastic around the edges had chips in places, but Brian’s name and address were still readable.
Freddy wanted the dog tag. He wanted to put it on his chain, so that the two could be together again. He slowly reached his hand down, and as soon as he grabbed onto it, Brian’s whole body shook uncontrollably for a few seconds. Freddy leaped backward and rolled on the ground away from Brian.
“Freddy, what is it?” John had finally pried the spent casing out of the injector port and cycled the slide to load another bullet.
“He moved!” Freddy said, clutching the dog tag secretly in his hand.
“Moved huh?” John walked over to the zombie child and fired two more rounds into the head. “There, that’ll keep it down for good. Let’s get you back home. Your dad and I need to make a quick perimeter sweep to see if any more are around.”
Freddy followed John back to the cabin. He opened his hand and examined the dog tag again, bringing back so many memories of his friend.
Something sticky and red was on the plastic guard. Further examination found a small scrape on his index finger, and a trickle of blood. One of Brian’s teeth had scraped it when he retrieved the dog tag.
*
“Look at the poor boy, he’s traumatized,” Beth said, stroking Freddy’s hair as he lay in bed, shivering under the covers.
“Well, this is something he needs to get used to. We’ve been lucky for a long time. There may come a day when we’re going to need him to fight alongside us,” John said, pushing the last shell into his bandolier.
“John and I won’t be gone long. We’re going to take a look around and make sure that there aren’t any more of them wandering around. Keep the doors locked, and don’t forget the shotgun is loaded and ready to shoot. Just take it off safety before you pull the trigger,” Dan said, squeezing Beth on the shoulder before he and John left the cabin.
Beth closed her eyes and held back tears. It seemed lately that she was always on the verge of crying. It wasn’t that she wasn’t thankful for what they had. It was that this horrible situation didn’t have a conclusion to look forward to. Just surviving day after day, living in a constant state of uneasiness. In fear of the world that Freddy would inherit.
She left Freddy sleeping in his bed, gathering her sewing kit and a pair of pants. The boy was going through a growing spurt, and she had a limited supply of clothing to work with. John had left the cabin a few times over the last two years for additional supplies and to check out the order of things. On his last trip out, he was unable to find any diesel for the truck and barely had enough fuel to make it back. He did bring back a load of clothing from a good-will store. There were no other supplies to be found. As far as the order of things, it was as chaotic as it had ever been. The dead walked. The living hid.
Beth put on her reading glasses and threaded a needle after pulling a chair close to a window for better light. She heard Freddy stirring in the background. This made her smile; he was going to be all right. He just had some growing up to do. She knew that it was going to be hard on him. Growing up was hard for a young boy in any situation. She was going to make sure she gave Freddy every advantage possible to help him grow into a man.
Beth felt Freddy’s arms wrap around from behind, giving a strong hug. Her smile broadened across her face and her heart melted, feeling the love through the embrace of her only child.
Freddy pressed his cold, dead lips on his mother’s neck, and tore off a large chunk of meat with his teeth. Her screams of anguish fell on a soul dead of recognition, dead of compassion, only feeling the hollowness of perpetual hunger.
It was Christmas day, his first day as a member of the walking dead. From now on, he would be feeding upon the flesh of the living. This is what Christmas would taste like as long as his animated body would roam the Earth.
Every day would taste like Christmas.
The End
From Severed PRESS
Alien microbes mutate with the DNA of the dead, reanimating corpses to life. A cop, Rico, and a junkie streetwalker, Angie, barely escape the onslaught of zombies. As they head for sanctuary, a jealous pimp seeks revenge, and Angie’s drug addiction, become a greater threat than the undead.
From Severed PRESS
INTRODUCTION BY JOE MCKINNEY
“Scioneaux and Hatchell double-down on the horror and thrills in this gritty, action-packed zombie thriller. This one has real bite." – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling author of Rot & Ruin and Dead of night.
"Scioneaux and Hatchell give you a fast-pac
ed narrative full of oozing bodies and narrow escapes and poignant ruminations on the fragility of a man’s body and the resiliency of his character" – Joe Mckinney, Bram Stoker award winning author of Flesh Eaters and Inheritance.
Other titles by the author:
Table of Contents
The Last Noel
It Just Doesn’t Taste Like Christmas
Dreaming of an Undead Christmas Page 4