* * *
Santa passed out on the way back to the North Pole. Luckily the reindeer knew their way home. They were still nervous and flew faster than normal. They needed the security and safety they knew they would feel when they got into their stalls.
The smell of blood reached them, even in the air. The reindeer jerked so hard, and rocked the sleigh so violently, it woke Santa. He moaned and took the reins, guiding the reindeer down the best he could.
He passed out again, just as they halted in the bright red snow.
* * *
Hammond had seen the sleigh land and had come out to meet it. As he approached, he noticed how pale Santa was. Rushing to him, he shuddered as he saw the festering wound on Santa’s neck and the blood that dotted his coat.
For a moment he just stood there, not knowing what to do. He wasn’t sure if he should waste his time by having Santa dragged inside, or if he should just slam something into his head now, before he turned.
The choice was taken away as a young female elf saw Santa. She screeched with joy and tugged at her mother’s skirt, yelling, announcing his return.
Soon the remaining elves were surrounding the sleigh. The adult’s eyes took in the situation and they looked to Hammond with panic and concern.
“Take the reindeer to the barn and see to them,” he instructed a small group of elves. “The rest of us will get Santa inside. Janet, why don’t you take all the little ones to your house while we get him inside.”
Janet nodded and took charge of the small children.
The remaining elves helped him get Santa inside. They removed his belt, boots, hat, and coat and put him in bed.
Hammond stayed with Santa. He could hear the nervous chatter of the other elves in the hall. There was no hope for Santa. He was going to become a zombie, too.
Hammond bowed his head to pray, and jumped when the door to Santa’s room flew open and an elf, no more than five-years-old, came dashing in giggling. Her blonde hair was coming free from her long braids, looking like woven gold in the candle light.
“Santa!” she squealed and hopped up onto the bed.
Hammond jumped up and tried to grab the child, but she was too fast.
Santa’s eyes shot open, they were cloudy. He hissed and sat up, grabbing the girl as she wrapped her arms around his neck. His teeth were merely an inch away from her tender flesh, when she spoke.
“Merry Christmas, Santa!”
Zombie Santa froze, and a blinding flash of light flashed between him and the little girl.
Hammond raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare. Blinking rapidly, he waited for it to fade. It only took moments.
When he could see again, he looked at the girl and Santa. He was normal! He looked cheerful and healthy! The girl was sitting on his lap rattling off all the presents she had gotten, like nothing at all had happened.
Speechless, Hammond turned and left the room. The Magic of Christmas had come through for them after all. Everything would be fine, and there would be more presents next year.
Story Art Cover
By Faron Baldwin
Dedication
To all those boys and girls that feel lost…you are never alone
Author Bio
TW Brown is the author of the Zomblog series and the Dead series. He is deeply immersed in the multiple sequels of each franchise while trying to balance the duties of husband, father, friend, and band member as well as keeping busy reading and editing the numerous submissions for a variety of upcoming anthologies and full-length titles for May December Publications. He is a member of Horror Writers Association and has had short stories published by Pill Hill Press and Living Dead Press.
You can contact him at [email protected] or visit his website at http://www.MayDecemberPublications.com
You can follow him on twitter @maydecpub and on Facebook under Todd Brown and also under May December Publications.
Yes, Rindy, There is a Santa Claus
By TW Brown
Rindy Farmer peeked out from the shadowy doorway. This house had been a good find, sitting all by itself on a hill looking out over a vastness that everyone was pretty sure must be somewhere in Wyoming. A steady rain continued to fall, adding to the gloom felt by everybody the past few days. Nobody could be absolutely certain, but the general consensus placed it to be sometime in December. This would be the third Christmas since, them. Most folks called them zombies, not Rindy. That was the nickname she had given her little brother, Zimbalist—named after some long-dead television star that her dad liked when he was little.
When her parents brought him home the first day and told her the name they had picked, she wrinkled her nose in distaste. From that day, he’d been ‘Baby Zombie’ to her. He was dead now. Both times. Same as her parents.
At age twelve, Rindy Farmer had been trapped in a bathroom while her mom, dad, and little brother clawed at the door. Then, the soldier came. His name was Morgan, and he had shot each of them in the head.
He saved Rindy.
Over the next two years, she traveled with Corporal Morgan. He taught her to shoot. He also taught her not to shoot. Noise always brought more of them. That was why he also taught her how to use a knife, a spear—for jabbing, not throwing—and a bow and arrow. He showed her how to search a room. Then secure it after ensuring an escape route.
He taught her other stuff, too. He taught her how to tell if a can of food was bad, how to make fire with a flint and the blade of her machete. And he taught her how to hide.
“Never trust anybody,” Corporal Morgan said time and again. “Especially men.”
“You’re a man,” Rindy pointed out the obvious the first time.
“Yep,” Corporal Morgan agreed. “And my daughter was about half your age.”
“They got her?”
The corporal nodded. “But not everybody had daughters. Some men will see you differently.”
Rindy knew what Corporal Morgan wasn’t saying…was too embarrassed to say. The past few years she had seen gruesome examples of exactly why he had given that warning.
Two hundred and thirteen days ago, Corporal Morgan died. Then, he sat back up. Rindy put him down and unlike with her brother and
parents, Rindy was able to take the time to bury him. Afterwards, she had been alone for almost a month. Just like when she traveled with Corporal Morgan, sometimes there were others; sometimes not. One morning, twenty-six days after she buried Corporal Morgan, Rindy discovered a motel all by itself on an empty stretch of what was left of a highway. That wasn’t a very big deal. The big deal was finding Marjorie, Brad, and Amber.
Marjorie was only a few years older than Rindy. She was Brad and Angie’s big sister. She was also very pregnant. She and her brother and sister didn’t have a Corporal Morgan. They had found out the hard way that they couldn’t trust just anybody. Especially men.
Brad, age nine, and Amber, age seven, didn’t talk anymore. Marjorie told Rindy that they had seen things. Rindy didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know. The four of them lived in one motel room together for a week. Rindy didn’t like staying in one place too long.
One morning, she woke up, ready to say farewell to Marjorie, Amber, and Brad. Only, Marjorie wasn’t there. She checked in the bathroom…empty. She went outside, peeking through the dusty plastic blinds first, just like she’d been taught.
In the room to the left, the door was open. Rindy peeked inside, finding Marjorie on the bed. Something was sticking out between her legs. It looked like tiny feet. Marjorie was dead. Rindy covered Marjorie with a blanket, then left the room closing the door behind her.
Just leaving wasn’t a choice. After all, where would she be if Corporal Morgan had just left her behind? So, she went into the room and woke up Brad and Amber. After breakfast—the last can of beef stew—she explained what happened and held them as they cried. It was okay to cry. Corporal Morgan said that holding everything in wasn’t good for you. When things happen that upset
her, he always told her, “One good cry…get it all out and move on. It ain’t like the old days when you had time to let one tiny problem own you for weeks.”
Rindy let them cry. It was obvious that they needed it, because they cried for a long time. Then something strange happened, Brad stood up and asked, “Can we leave? I don’t want to stay where my sister died.”
Little Amber got up next to her brother and wiped her red, runny nose with her sleeve and sniffled. “Me, too.”
Rindy helped them gather their few belongings, and they began walking up the long, empty road. Two days later they met Ryan and Penny; they were both twenty-five. Ryan was a cook and Penny was a dancer. Rindy tried not to giggle when Amber asked if Penny could teach her to dance.
The two had met at a FEMA evacuation center. One night the soldiers in charge simply up and left. Ryan said it got bad fast. A couple of men were ‘hurting’ Penny when he found them. He had a .22 pistol and shot one of the men. The other man walked away. That night Ryan and Penny left the FEMA center. They’d been on the road ever since.
The five of them travelled together. Twice they thought they’d found a place to hold up through the winter. Once, a large gang rolled into the area. Nobody wanted to wait to find out if they were friendly, so they slipped out under the cover of night.
The second place, a non-descript house in a partially burned down development seemed perfect. Even though many of the houses had burned down, the whole community was behind a waist-high wall. A stone’s throw away, a river swept past. Ryan said it was the Platte River. The blessing became a curse when a terrible storm came through. For three days they watched as the river flowed over its banks, creeping just as slowly and steadily across the flat plain as any zombie. Every hour it came closer to the houses. Eventually, water began flowing down the razor-straight grid of streets. They travelled for two more weeks when they found the biggest, most amazing house Rindy had ever seen. It sat on a hill looking over a valley that stretched off to the east and west. The valley was bordered by enormous rocky cliffs to the north and the south.
Unlike many houses these days, this one still had most of its windows intact. It stood three stories high, and had a huge fireplace inside that seemed bigger than Rindy’s bedroom in her old house with mom, dad, and ‘Baby Zombie’. The only disappointment had been the pantry. Easily the size of a small apartment, it was full of bags and bins. These people had obviously not believed in food out of a can. Not a single box of macaroni and cheese. There were a variety of herbs and spices…all rotten and useless.
Looking around, they found a large plot that Ryan said was a garden. Of course it was dead and full of weeds, but Ryan said it held promise. It looked like they had found not just their winter home, but maybe a place that they could stay. At least that’s what Ryan and Penny kept saying. Rindy wasn’t so sure. She didn’t like staying any place too long.
The days grew shorter, colder, and gloomy. Rindy continued to teach Brad and Amber the things Corporal Morgan taught her. Sometimes Ryan and Penny watched, whispering back and forth. For some reason, watching her train Brad and Amber seemed to make them sad.
One morning, Rindy was out early before the sun came up. She’d made herself a breakfast, roasting a chunk of pumpkin and eating it with her fish that Penny caught and smoked a few days before. She liked going out early by herself. The first day, she’d come back with three rabbits. That had been quite a feast. She hadn’t been out twenty minutes when she saw it: an enormous deer.
An hour later, she, Ryan, and Penny were hauling the field-stripped carcass back to the house. While Rindy and Penny went to work cutting it up, Ryan and Brad went foraging for some editable winter greens. Ryan was really good at identifying plants.
Late that afternoon, Ryan and Brad returned. Ryan was very excited. The two had gone off searching for some greens, and hopefully a few herbs he could use to spruce up that night’s meal. They found a road, mostly washed out. Curiosity getting the better of them, they’d followed it. It was Brad who found the sign: Elkhart 2 mi. A town was a mere two miles away!
“You know what that means?” Ryan asked.
“That we’ll need to be more careful and keep our eyes open for roamers and stragglers,” Rindy said.
“Gloomy much?” Penny snorted.
“It means that we might be able to salvage some useful stuff,” Ryan ignored Rindy.
“It will be like a shopping spree,” said Penny sounding like she’d just won the grand prize on a game show.
That night, everybody sat around the fire, eating venison, a bitter salad that Amber took one taste of and refused to take another, cups of steaming hot water from the creek nearby, and the big surprise that Ryan had kept hidden and sent Brad for once dinner was done…apples! One of the houses on the outskirt of the newly discovered town had a pair of apple trees in the yard. They were kinda shriveled, but everybody snacked away with ear-to-ear grins.
“You went into town?” Penny asked.
“Naw,” Ryan shook his head, “just this one house on the outskirts.”
That night, the rest of the talk centered on the possibilities of what they might find. The next day, Ryan and Penny left early with empty backpacks. They were gone all that day and night. The next day, they came back with full packs and huge smiles.
“We got the makin’s of a regular feast,” Ryan crowed. “Just in time for Thanksgiving.”
“Did you find turkey?” Amber climbed up onto a stool next to the counter as Ryan and Penny unloaded their packs.
“Nope, but we got venison, just like the pilgrims ate, and…” He produced two bottles carefully wrapped. “I found corn syrup.”
“Ohhhkay,” Rindy raised an eyebrow.
“The perfect sweetener, along with some cinnamon and ginger. I think I can make something close to pumpkin pie. Just without the crust,” Ryan explained.
This made everybody smile. The next day, while she was out in the morning, Rindy bagged five quail. To make things even better, she’d found a nest with seven newly hatched eggs, bundled up the chicks and returned to the house.
“You’re lethal with that bow and arrow, kid,” Ryan said. Rindy scowled, and Ryan raised his hands. “Young lady…sorry”
“That’s pretty close to turkey,” Penny offered. “But what’s with the little peepers?” she asked tilting her head. Rindy carefully arranged the cluster of chicks in the empty kitchen sink, nestling them in a ratty sweatshirt.
“Maybe we can raise ‘em and use their eggs,” Rindy shrugged.
“That’s not a bad idea at all,” Ryan admitted.
That night, they decided it was close enough to Thanksgiving. The meal was great, and everybody loved Ryan’s pumpkin custard. None of them could remember being that full and that satisfied in a long time.
“All we need is the Detroit and the Dallas game, and it would be just like old times,” Ryan said as he undid the button on his pants and stretched out on the couch.
“You were into that?” Penny scoffed.
“I’m a guy aren’t I?”
“I miss the Black Friday shopping with my sister and a few friends,” Penny said sheepishly.
“You were one of those people?” Ryan sat up so that Penny could sit at the other end of the couch. Amber had taken to following the woman everywhere, and climbed up to nestle under her arm.
“And I suppose you were the type that did all his Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve.”
“Christmas?” Amber’s head popped up. “With Santa Claus?”
Silence.
Everybody looked at each other, hoping the other would speak. Rindy watched Ryan and Penny raise eyebrows and shrug.
“Well…” Ryan began, drawing that first word out. “Now that we have a house to live in…I don’t see why not.”
Rindy felt her mouth fall open. What could he be thinking? Her eyes burned into the side of his head until he finally glanced her way. What? Ryan mouthed. Rindy’s eyes flash from Amber and back.
“Ummm…well…no,” Penny answered, caught off-guard. “His reindeer are too quick, and will protect Santa.”
Rindy stormed out of the room, heading upstairs. She heard more talking followed by squeals of laughter from Amber as she stalked into the room that she’d claimed. It caught the rising sun in the morning—when it wasn’t obscured by clouds. It helped her remember something that Corporal Morgan used to say a lot. “If you see the sun come up, then you’ve made it through the hardest part.”
Lying on her bed, the food in her stomach suddenly felt like a lead ball. It didn’t matter that Ryan and Penny were older; Brad and Amber were her responsibility. She couldn’t have little Amber’s hopes riding on some imaginary character from a world that was long since dead. Those days were gone. If this were that old world, Amber would be at about the age when Santa ceased to exist.
“Hey,” Ryan stuck his head inside the door. Rindy rolled onto her stomach, turning her face away from him. She had started crying for some stupid reason.
“What’s so wrong with letting Amber have a little piece of childhood?” Ryan asked. He sat down at the foot of Rindy’s bed. “It can’t hurt.”
“Yes,” Rindy insisted. “It most certainly can.”
“How?”
“When none of her Christmas wishes are there on whatever day you decided is Christmas Day…”
“You know what she asked for?”
“What?” Rindy rolled over, curious.
“Candy and a Barbie.” Ryan laughed.
The Undead That Saved Christmas Page 7