The Undead That Saved Christmas Vol. 2 (26 page)

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 25
^th
, 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 25
^th
, 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 25
^th
, 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 25
^th
, 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 anymore, 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.