No, Annie thought. No one is going to do anything. This is our last Christmas.
Downstairs the zombies shuffled up and down the hallway, not smart enough to stand on a chair and pull the attic door down; they hissed and wheezed.
Annie’s grip tightened around Daniel. Her stomach churned. A cold tear traveled across her cheek and down her nose.
We’re going to die.
December 25th, 2012. 11:09am
When Annie told her little brother they had to stop looking for Mom, his lip quivered and he looked at his booted feet as though they had an answer.
Last year, 2011—the beginning of the zombie apocalypse—Annie thought they weren’t going to make it. How could two kids survive a world full of people who wanted to tear their bodies apart and eat them? Then Mr. Brayer’s sister showed up looking for him. The zombies had wandered off, seeming to forget about Annie and Daniel, so she was able to safely help them down from the attic and pack them into her car.
A week passed before Mr. Brayer’s sister got the sickness and turned into one of them. Annie would never forget the violent gleam in her eyes as she charged them. That had been so long ago. It was 2012, now. It was a miracle they survived beyond that Christmas, but they didn’t find an easy journey ahead of them.
It was time to stop looking for Mom and find somewhere to live out their days; she made the decision when they found Aunt Milly’s house burnt down. That was the last relative’s house they thought Mom could be at. The journey there was made entirely on foot (Annie didn’t know how to drive). A normal trip would take ten hours to get there. It ended up taking them a year because of the waylays.
And that’s where they were. It was Christmas morning and Daniel was served another disappointment and soul-crushing bad news. What made it worse was that Annie heard him praying to God the previous night to have Santa return Mom for Christmas.
There was no Santa, of course, and Annie questioned the existence of a God, but Daniel had enough to deal with as it was. She’d wait another year before she broke it to him.
December 25th, 2013. 8:59am
Rockin’ around the Christmas tree, at the Christmas party hop…
Annie hadn’t seen another sane person in months. As she and Daniel made their journey into the Midwest where the populations were smaller, hence fewer threats, her heart grew heavier. Her digital watch told her it was Christmas Day. Almost as though he had some knowledge of that, Billy began wiggling and signing his favorite songs.
Billy was all they had left of Mom. How depressing was that? A mail-order singing fish that their mother coveted. Yet it was better than nothing. Annie held onto it like it was her mother’s ashes.
She was surprised, and sometimes regretful, that they were still alive. The numbers of normal people dwindled more each month. Annie and Daniel saw few signs of travelers, but the chaos of the hordes of zombies was intense. Houses burned down and bodies strung up with Christmas lights were common sights.
The world has been in perpetual Christmas since that’s when everyone got sick. Each town Annie went to was dressed in faded, broken Christmas decorations. Plastic candy canes and wreathes hung crookedly from street posts. Chipped murals of Frosty the Snowman were still painted on grocery store windows.
It was a mockery of a holiday both she and Daniel used to cherish. No day passed that she wasn’t reminded of the gaudy, but homey, decorations their mom set up at home.
Annie didn’t think that Christmas could get any worse than the previous two, but she was wrong. That morning Daniel coughed up a smear of blood, a predecessor of problems yet to come.
December 25th, 2014. 12:01pm
“Daniel, come on! Wake up!”
There were hundreds of them, maybe even a thousand, screaming and clawing at each other in a wild frenzy to get Daniel and Annie. For three months they’d lived in peace in the top level of a hotel, quiet so to never draw attention, but last night the zombies found them.
Annie locked every stair access door and had an escape plan routed on the roof; the surrounding buildings were close enough to jump to. She planned on waiting until the undead broke into their current building, which was inevitable, then jumping to the next building. Most of them would be inside, and the others too distracted in pushing their way in to notice. Parked behind the third building to their right was the automatic SUV Annie taught herself how to drive.
“It was my fault, Annie,” Daniel whispered.
She stopped shaking him. “What?”
“I wrote a letter to Santa and put it in the mailbox downstairs. No one was out there. I wanted to try one more time.” His pale lips quivered. Tears streaked his dirty face. “I took the hotel keys and snuck out while you were asleep. I’m sorry.”
Anger, guilt, denial, and hopelessness flooded her all at once. How could she have slept through her sick brother sneaking out? How could she have let him keep believing in Santa after everything they’d been through?
She wanted to snap, but held it together for both of their sakes. “I forgive you. Now come on, we need to get out of here.”
When she went to pick him up, his body felt limp. Too weak. A spray of blood flew from his mouth and speckled the front of Annie’s jacket. No doctor would be able to tell her what was wrong with her younger brother, but it was obvious it was terminal. It wasn’t going to go away.
His eyes fluttered. “I’m ready to go. I’m ready to see Mom.”
Annie bit her lip. “No, let’s go. We need to move, Daniel.”
Then his eyes didn’t open, no matter how hard she screamed or shook his dead frame. That Christmas was the worst one there ever could be. Daniel was dead.
December 25th, 2015. 7:12am
Her lips were cracked, her tongue felt like sandpaper. Snow drifted lazily form the sky, settling on her body. She was so close to death that had no body heat to melt them away. There wasn’t any point in living. Using what little energy she had left, Annie moved her hand enough to push Billy’s button. His song was crackly and barely audible, but she needed to hear something other than the moan of the undead surrounding her.
I'm dreaming of a white Christmas …Just like the ones I used to know.
Billy’s song faded into a warped blur. He needed new batteries, but Annie hadn’t had the strength for the past couple weeks to find any.
She contemplated throwing herself off the rooftop. The fall would kill her before the monsters below could tear her apart, sinking their rotting, slimy teeth into her. But again, she’d have to have the energy to even do that.
Annie had been starving and freezing to death on the rooftop of a grocery store for three days now. It was time to let go. The memories of her brother and mom were keeping her alive, but she wanted to close her eyes, forget, and fade away. Like Daniel had last Christmas.
Then she heard it; the distant, but evident, sound of sleigh bells. She opened her eyes and scanned the early morning sky in front of her, turning her head to both sides.
I’m losing it, she thought. I’m losing it.
“Where the treetops glisten, and children listen…to hear sleigh bells in the snow.”
Annie’s body tensed at the sound of someone’s voice. She opened her eyes once more. From seemingly nothing, a man appeared. The apocalypse had taken a toll on him; his face was sallow and his white hair was far overgrown. His deep red bomber coat was stained and patched, and his black leather boots had definitely seen better days. The middle of his round glasses were taped together.
In his gloved hand he clutched a battered envelope. Annie wanted to ask who he was, what he had, or how he appeared, but couldn’t get the words out. When he opened the letter and began to read, Annie’s heart began to hurt.
“Dear, Santa. I don’t know if you and Jesus and God work together, but you probably know them, so I want to ask for something big and kind of weird. I’m really sick. You might know about the other crazy-sick people, but if you don’t, they are chasing me and my sister. I can’t run anym
ore, but Annie is still healthy and can make it to somewhere safe. I want to die. I don’t want to keep running. My lungs hurt and blood comes out when I cough. I can’t run as fast as Annie and I know she’ll die, too, if she keeps trying to save me. So please ask Jesus or God to let me die. And Santa, please rescue my sister since you know where everyone is and when they’re sleeping and stuff.
Love,
Daniel.”
The man’s voice was deep and resonating as he spoke. “Last year, one of my elves detected a letter to me in a box just outside of Oklahoma. It was one of two that season, so we had to check it out. By the time we got it, you two were long gone.”
He shook his head and looked off into the distance. A thousand-yard stare. “I’ve never had a child ask to die before. Never.”
That jingling noise again. Annie refocused behind him and saw blurry figures. Reindeer? It was too much to handle. She choked from the emotional strain of what the man in front of her—Santa—was saying about Daniel.
“That boy had another one and a half years left, but it would’ve been full of pain and suffering. I can’t tell you much more, but rest assured that Daniel is in peace.”
“Why are you here?” Each word was hoarse and took much effort.
“I read you the letter. Daniel wanted two things: to die, and for you to be rescued. You’re one of the last people on my Nice List, Annie, and have been for two decades. Hell, you’re one of the last living, healthy people on Earth. I don’t have many requests lately, as you could imagine. The least I could do is fulfill this one.”
The grocery store windows below shattered. A symphony of footsteps, catcalls, and moans erupted as they flooded the building, searching for Annie.
Santa approached Annie, who still lay on her back, covered in snow, and smiled. He bent down and pushed Billy’s button. As though he had fully charged batteries, he finished another line from White Christmas with as much energy as he had when Mom first bought him home.
“It’s hard when we lose someone, especially someone so young. But take comfort in knowing he doesn’t feel pain anymore. Take comfort in knowing he wanted you to keep living. To survive. Kids are so much stronger and wiser than we gave them credit for.”
“This is wrong,” she whispered. “I should’ve died, not him.”
Santa bent down and gathered Annie up in his arms, despite her weak protests. “We can’t change who dies, Annie.” He crossed the rooftop to his sleigh and reindeer. “But my being here, right in front of you, should remind you to never stop believing.”
Story Art Cover
By Jess Smart Smiley
www.Jess-Smiley.com
Dedication
To the real girl in the Christmas pajamas, my daughter, Kallalaya
Author Bio
Lyle Perez-Tinics. is the creator of www.UndeadintheHead.com a website dedicated to zombie books at the authors. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Rainstorm Press (www.RainstormPress.com) and The Mad Formatter (www.TheMadFormatter.com) a book interior design business. He has stories in many anthologies and is currently working on two novels, Existing Dead and Rising from the Tempest. He is the mastermind behind The Undead That Saved Christmas series.
Author Note:
The Gingerbreads 2 continues where the first one ended. This is part 2 of a 3 part story. Make sure you check the next installment of The Undead That Saved Christmas for the big finally.
The Gingerbreads 2: The Girl in the Christmas Pajamas
By Lyle Perez-Tinics
Good ol’ Saint Nick soared across the sky like a shooting star. He felt the effects of the zombie virus taking its toll, but he wasn’t going to just sit back and let it consume him. The reason why he became infected was because he ate an infected living gingerbread cookie named Ginger. Santa quickly shoved a finger down his throat to vomit. He gagged but nothing else happened. He did it again with no result.
“Stop trying, fat man, you’re not going to get rid of me that easily,” he heard a voice say from inside his body.
Santa’s face began to turn from snowy white to green and rotting. He wanted to try one last time to vomit the gingerbread cookie. Santa was about to stick his finger down his throat when Comet turned his head to investigate the disturbance in the sleigh.
Santa stopped and scolded the animal. “You turn back around you filthy abomination.”
Comet snarled.
The same nine reindeer have accompanied Santa on his delivery run every year for as far back as they could remember. Never once had Santa talked to one of his reindeer this way before.
“I said turn away you overgrown moose.”
Comet stopped prancing dead in his tracks. The sudden change in flight caused the sleigh to rock back and forth and it even did a complete 360 degree turn. Comet began to grunt as if it were communicating with the other reindeer and one by one they stopped prancing. Something was wrong with Santa and they knew it.
A siren blared as an elf’s voice broke through the speakers. “We have an unsafe drop in flight elevation. Santa, are you okay?”
Santa gowned as the sleigh continued to rock back and forth across the December night sky. The reindeer began to fly in all directions. Santa held on to the reins as to not fall overboard.
“Santa! Answer, please! We are monitoring the reindeers’ flight patterns; we have no idea what they are doing.” There was a pause from the speaker then the voice continued, but not addressed to Santa, “Check Santa’s vital signs. The reindeer would have rocked him out of the sleigh. Oh, Santa, why now?”
“We can’t find him,” another voice answered. “It’s like he fell off the face of the Earth.”
Santa began to huff and puff and felt his stomach grumble again. Nausea began to kick in and at that very moment he knew what his reindeer friends were trying to do.
Thank you, Comet. He thought.
The sleigh continued to rock with the frantic voices of elves blaring through the built in speakers. And with each hard turn, Santa felt his nausea grow worse and worse.
Finally, it was time. Santa felt the vomit rise up to his throat. He could taste the scent of digested gingerbread and sour milk. He leaned over the sleigh and –
“Buaaaarrrrrrrffffffff.”
Chunks of white and brown vomit spewed across the sky, raining down on the poor zombie infected souls below. Santa panted and threw up some more. A tiny voice began to cry. “Noooo!” Santa heaved again and felt the small cookie exit his mouth.
“Noooooooooooo!” Ginger continued as the gingerbread cookie fell freely to the ground below.
Santa was shocked when he realized that the gingerbread cookie put itself back together inside his stomach. He sat back down on the sleigh as the reindeers calmed their rollercoaster flight.
“I can see Santa again,” a faint voice from the speakers said.
Another voice, a more authoritative elf voice said, “St. Nick, are you there? Answer or I will release Elf Squad Z-1 for an emergency search and rescue.”
The cool night breeze began to calm Santa as he sat. Finally feeling well enough to talk, Santa grabbed the radio headset and began talking, “This is Cringle One, reporting in.”
Cheers and overdramatic tears of joy blared through the speakers as the elves rejoiced the sudden communication with Santa.
“Santa, please listen to my caution. You have ignored my plea and almost suffered the consequences. Stop this madness and come back to the North Pole,” an elderly woman said.
The man in red felt his heart dropped. He thought that maybe, if he continued his toy delivery to the remaining families of Earth, people would be able to overcome this plague that has reanimated humans into mindless cannibals. But after almost being consumed by it, his safety was now a concern.
“Yes, dear,” Santa began and he pulled on the reins to signal the reindeer. They knew what that tug meant. The night was over and they were to start heading home. “I’m on my way back.”
* * *
“N
ooooooo!” Ginger continued as she fell from the sleigh. Her cry suddenly stopped as she landed on top of a small soft patch of snow. “Oooof,” she groaned.
Ginger glanced around her surroundings and slowly sat up. She shook in an attempt to shake the dazed feeling she had. From her vantage point, Ginger saw Santa’s sleigh shoot through the sky as it made a U-turn and headed back to the North Pole.
“Dang-it,” Ginger cursed as she saw her plans fly away in an arch of magical light. It was her idea to infect Santa with the zombie plague and have the jolly ol’ fat man stop by the remaining living population to spread the disease. But now she had to come up with another plan.
Staring around the area, Ginger saw many infected wandering the dark streets. “Hey,” she said, and as she did, every zombie in her field of vision snapped their heads toward her. One of them moaned. “Listen up, you pus bags. We have a job to do. We’re going to go into every home in this neighborhood and check every nook and cranny for Normals.”
The zombies began to shamble over toward the yelling gingerbread cookie. Their movements were slow and lethargic, unlike Ginger who was filled with spit and fire.
“Can’t you guys hurry up?” She asked as the crowd surround her. She got a symphony of hellish moans, all crying in the tune of Christmas carols as a reply.
The undead surrounded her, each of them bumping into one another trying to get closer to Ginger. But none of them seemed to see her. They never looked down in her direction. She was only a few inches tall; if she wanted the zombies to look at her she was going to need to find higher ground.
Ginger ran to a nearby car, climbed up to the hood and continued yelling, “Can you guys see me now?”
The infected turned toward the noise again and walked faster toward the gingerbread cookie. They finally saw what was making the noise. It was not a Normal, but a cookie. This confused the dead. They didn’t know what else to do but take orders. There was about twenty infected circling the car that Ginger was standing on. They stood around as if they were soldiers waiting for orders.
The Undead That Saved Christmas Vol. 2 Page 20