Dead Flesh: Stories of the Living Dead (6 page)

Tea Party Patriot Bunker

              “The dead are coming!” the elf said bringing his mount in for a landing. The reindeer snorted in agreement and stamped its hoof on the asphalt.

              The elf and reindeer team had been on a long aerial recon of the area making sure all was going as Santa planned. Other teams were landing across the fields in front of the bunker. As human units were bolstered and reinforced across the world, select teams of elf and reindeer warriors rallied to Santa. Amongst the elves and reindeer were elite teams of humans sent by the governments of the world for this assault.

              Everything hinged on this action and Santa had been put in overall command. He was the only person all the surviving governments trusted to give the orders needed to end the nightmare.

              “We want them to come to us Hermy,” Santa said looking through his brightly colored binoculars. “Our people will be safer with the enemy coming at our defenses than if we attacked them. We need to keep the dead occupied while we breach the bunker.”

              The elf nodded in silent agreement.

              In the far distance a wall of ambulatory corpses chewed up the distance between themselves and Santa’s Army of elves, reindeer, and humans. All that could be done had been done and now they had to wait, once the army of the dead was engaged and occupied the way to the complex and the vaccine would be opened to them.

              “Krampus,” Santa said turning to his lifelong frenemy. “While the good boys and girls engage the dead you and I will deal with the bunker.”

              The holiday demon flicked his serpent tongue and grinned with delight. Never has he been given the opportunity to enact punishment on such naughty people. He was hopping up and down with excitement. He was like a puppy jerking at the end of his leash.

              The forces of the living and dead clashed in the middle of the field. Blood flew as elves, reindeer, and humans were torn asunder. But for every good boy and girl brought down by the ocean of the dead, a thousand zombies were left broken and empty. The heavens roared and the ground shook with the cacophony of carnage.

              “Now Krampus!” Santa yelled.

              The two ancient beings, opposite sides of the same coin, dashed for the entrance of the bunker. The locks on the bunker, some of the most complicated and powerful in the world yet to Santa they were as effective as a piece of string. Once inside the concrete and steel fortress Santa was assaulted by the smell of death.

              “I think the dead may have already been dispatched,” Krampus said growling and sniffing the stagnant air of the bunker. They moved swiftly through corridors stepping over unmoving corpses. “But I can smell at least one living person here.”

              They rounded a corner and nearly ran into her.

              Congresswoman Shelly was dressed in riot armor. In one hand she held a fire axe coated in blood and gore. In the other she held two ropes connected to the necks of two zombies. Senator Eddie and Congressman Willie had fought her at first but now they accepted their new place under her command.

              “Oh Shelly, you’ve been a naughty little girl,” Santa said shaking his head sadly. “Tell us where the vaccine is and we’ll let you be.”

              “This is my time now!” the woman shrieked. Her eyes bulged with insanity, any rational thought she might have once possessed had been exorcised from her during the course of the long nightmare. “Serve me Santa. Join me and together we’ll rule the world!”

              Krampus vaulted past Santa and scooped Congresswoman Shelly off her feet. She attempted to bring the axe down on him but Krampus snatched it from her hand and snapped it like a twig. “Naughty girl,” he hissed flinging her over his hairy shoulder.

              Zombie Eddie and Zombie Willie moaned and moved towards them.

              Santa acted quickly shattering both of their skulls with a single strike from his staff. The former politicians and conspirators crumpled to the cold hard ground.

              “Get the vaccine Santa,” Krampus said grinning. “There are many spankings to be delivered to this one.”

              Congresswoman Shelly screamed as Krampus bounded away. As he hopped on his strong goat legs he delivered smack after smack to her narrow bottom.

             
Krampus will do his job and do it well. It is after all his purpose in life. I need to get the vaccine and replicate it in my sack then I need to spread it to all the good little boys and girls.

              And Santa was as good as his plan. Once he located the vaccine he used the tremendous magic of his sack to replicate it. Then using his powers over space and time he delivered the vaccine to the children of the Earth and their parents. It wasn’t enough to end the zombie plague in a night but coupled with the heroics of the human, elf, and reindeer warriors they managed to turn the tide.

              As the sleigh returned to the North Pole on Christmas morning, Lucy woke. She’d slept through the end of the fighting and the night of deliveries. Martha Kringle was waiting for her husband, hot coco in hand.

Christmas Eve, One Year Later

              The year had been one of hard work and rebuilding. In the aftermath of the Christmas Zombie War, the children of the Earth came together. Old differences and conflicts were set aside and all the good boys and girls worked to make the world a better and brighter place. Things were far from perfect but every day thing got a little better.

The North Pole

              “Ho-Ho-Ho,” Santa called out entering the stables to inspect the team. “Are we ready to head out, team?”

              The line of excited reindeer, with Rudolph at the front of the line, stamped their hooves in affirmation.

              “Good!” Santa exclaimed examining the raiment of each member as he passed them. “Now where is my assistant?”

              “Here I am, Papa Santa!” Lucy cried out entering the stable. “Mama Claus wanted me to make sure I finished my dinner before we left.”

              Santa took his foster daughter up in a hug and spun her around.

              “Well that’s just fine,” he said laughing as she giggled with dizziness. He set her back on her wobbly legs and tweaked her nose playfully. “Now we have a lot to do and we need to get moving.”

              Lucy, dressed in a miniature version of Santa’s own working clothes, took her spot next to him in the sleigh. Maybe it was fate that brought Santa to her in the dark night, or maybe it was chance, but regardless when he laid eyes on her, Santa knew her destiny.

              Santa was long-lived but not immortal. He knew one day he would be too ancient to continue delivering the presents. He’d often wondered who’d do the job when he no longer could but now worried no more. One day Lucy, the daughter of his heart, would take his place and wear the name of Santa.

              “Give the order little one,” Santa whispered.

              “Alright Rudolph, are we ready?” Lucy said taking the reins.

              The tall and powerful reindeer turned his head and nodded.

              “Let’s fly!” Lucy yelled and the sleigh took to the air.

              When the dead rose I admit I was happy. I didn’t necessarily want the vast majority of the human race to be destroyed in an orgy of blood and violence, but neither did I feel much kinship with them either. After my birth I’d wanted to be a member of the human race and to participate in society more than anything else.

              Those desires ended soon after.

              I once asked Vlad about this. We’d been walking through Central Park during the great depression. He was on the prowl for a snack and I was just bored and in the mood for some conversation. He was one of the few people in the world that could understand my depression.

              “They are beneath us Frank,” he said eying a semi-comatose homeless man who seemed cleaner than most of the vagrants sleeping in the park that night. “They build the buildings, make the music, and write the plays that we enjoy. But they are still beneath us.”

              I laughed. Vlad still calls movies “Play’s” to this very day. Not that anyone was making new movies these days. I’d taken Vlad to see The Wizard of OZ the week before and the poor blood sucking bastard had cried and claimed he had just, “Gotten something in my eye,” when we’d left the theater.

              “It’s funny but it’s also the truth. We can love them like pets and care for the ones that pull our heart strings but our welfare comes first,” he finished and then swept down on the man for a snack. It was a rare occasion when Vlad took more than enough from a meal to feel full.

              He almost never killed if he could help it.

              That was the last time I brought the subject up. Vlad was older than me, wiser than me, and maybe smarter. Although that was debatable, I did have the brain of a genius after all.

              When the first reports of the dead rising and attacking the living began to appear I was in the far North of Canada. I decided in the 1980’s that what I needed was solitude. So I used a tiny fraction of my vast fortune to purchase a large island in the North West Territory. Sabbaticals such as this were far from unknown since my creation but I usually returned to the centers of human population after a few years of rest.

              The rise of the information age  changed that.

              I became a techno junkie. As computers and instantaneous communications became more common, I found less need to physically associate with regular humans. The World Wide Web served all of my needs. From ordering food and supplies to simply chatting, I never needed to leave the confines of my compound. With my greater strength, vast intelligence, and no requirement for sleep I accomplished more than a hundred men could have in the same span of time. I made friends online and was able to interact with them. I was a master Warcraft Player, and I increased my fortune several times over through online trading.

              For those few decades I was happy.

              News reports were posted first on the fringe news websites. Then they began to filter to the major sites. When the Huffington Post banner read “THE DEAD WALK” I knew it was a serious issue. Still I was unconcerned. I could live up in the north comfortably for an indefinite period of time. Besides, humans were resourceful and clever, in some ways they were to be admired. I was sure they would be able stop or at the very least contain this plague.

              Surprisingly I was wrong.

              I may have remained safe and isolated as the world crumbled around me if it had not been for Susan. I met her online seven years before the zombies began to rise. She was fourteen then and her parents had signed her up for math tutoring online. I volunteered for things like this all of the time. Children have always been special to me. Especially since I once a child myself and hurt a little girl on accident. After she’d finished her tutoring we remained friends. We gamed together and talked on Skype nearly every night. Vlad thought it was good for me to have a pet that I could love and care for. He said he worried about me bottled away from humanity in my icy paradise.

              One evening I was viewing the increasingly horrific news when my satellite phone began to ring. Susan was one of three people, Vlad and Puck being the other two, who had my number. She’d only called it once before and that had been when she was seventeen and her dog had been hit by a car. I picked up the phone and was shocked to see my thick grey fingers were shaking.

              “Susan,” I said quietly.

              “Frank, oh thank god it’s you!” I heard the desperate relief in her voice. “They are everywhere Frank. I tried to leave the city and get to my parents place but the roads are filled with wrecked cars and the dead. Frank… the dead are everywhere.” She didn’t cry or scream but I heard the fear in her voice. It was then that I was truly afraid.

              Vlad was wrong. I didn’t love her like a pet. I just loved her.

              Susan was living in Boston and going to school. That meant she was in one of the most densely populated areas in North America. If the reports were right she was going to be in a lot of trouble very soon.

              “Where are you?” I asked her as I raced around grabbing supplies and anything else I thought I might need. Thankfully I kept the jet fueled and ready in case of emergency and the skies were clear. Although I would have gone for her even if it was blizzard conditions.

              “I’m in my dorm room. Mindy and I barricaded the door. Frank… there are so many screams.” Her voice had gone cold.

              “Stay there, it’s going to take a few hours but I am coming for you,” I said just as I slid my thick heavy boots on, boots that I had not worn in a very long time.

              I could hear her breaking down into a sobbing mess on the other end of the phone.

In The Air

              I called Vlad and Puck before the jet took off and didn’t receive an answer from either. Depending on where Vlad was at the moment he would be sleeping and unable to rise. Puck was often not available so I knew I would be doing this on my own. I thought for a second about calling Morgan but the last time she and I had spoken things had been messy.

              The air over the city of Boston was almost completely free of traffic but the ground was a mad house. I watched as large sections of the city burned and the roads were clogged with traffic jams and massive wrecks. I attempted to raise the tower at Logan Airport and was greeted with silence and static.

              My small Gulfstream jet was nearly on fumes, normally I would have refueled somewhere in Canada but I had to get to Susan, and I needed to land. I eyeballed the runways of Logan in the dying light of the evening sun and picked out a length I thought I would be able to land on.

              I would never claim that the landing I made was a good one. Even if the airport had been operational I would never have been able to fly the jet again. That being said it didn’t explode when it ran off the runway and into the safety barriers.

On the Road

              I found an abandoned jeep near the terminal and was able to hotwire it. I have always been good with automobiles. All around gunshots and screams could be heard. Above all the noise I could hear the moans of the dead. It almost sounded like a language to me. A language that I should have been able to understand but I could not. I had yet to meet one of the risen dead and I was not looking forward to the encounter.

              Would they want to eat me?

              Would they see me as a threat?

              Those were both fair questions considering my fundamental physical nature. I had no time to stop and test those questions out. Susan and her roommate were trapped and they needed to be saved.             

              Things were worse in the city than I could have imagined. All around me chaos ruled. Zombies chased and ate people. I could accept that, these creatures were just acting as their nature dictated. It was a horrible and gruesome nature and it would make me very happy to see all of them destroyed, but it was still their nature nonetheless.

              It was the humans that sickened me.

              All around the worst of humanity was on display. Thieves, robbers, murders, and rapists were reveling in the freedom to explore and immerse themselves in their base instincts. I swear I would have stopped and helped if it had not been for Susan. “After,” I said to myself, “After I am sure that Susan is safe I will go out into the night and help as many people as I can.”

At the School

              I arrived at the dorms of Susan’s school to find a scene of carnage. If it had been the dead besieging the building I would have figured a way around them. If the dead had overrun the building I would have plowed right through them. Instead there were a dozen men armed to the teeth.

              They had the female students on the grass in front of the building. Each of the male students, I counted seventeen, had been shot in the head and piled for burning. The remaining female students, eight by my count, were in various stages of being raped by some of the men while the others either looted the surrounding buildings or stood guard to keep the dead at bay.

              My Susan was there.

              I stopped the Jeep and threw it into park. Then I nearly ripped the door off as I exited the vehicle. My blood, such as it was, was pumping hotter and faster than ever before. All around me fires burned but at that moment I feared them not.

              “SUSAN!” I roared in my deep tortured voice. Then I was running toward them.

              The men I encountered first never knew what hit them. With one punch I put my hand through a man’s chest and felt as his spine smashed out of his back. I dropped him and turned to his partner twisting his head clean off of his body. He never even had time to scream.

              Then the bullets started to fly.

              I won’t lie, they hurt. If you ever see me get shot you’ll notice I don’t really react. This has more to do with stubbornness than anything else. A side effect of my creation process is that I heal very fast. You ever read that comic book about the little guy with the knives in his hands? Yeah kind of like him but with less emo bullshit.

              I smashed through the mass of bandits till I reached the area where the girls were being held. At this point the bad guys were retreating and giving me a wide berth.

              “Susan,” I whispered as I approached her still form. I touched her gently and my heart soared. Her pulse was strong and steady.

              “Frank?” she moaned opening a puffy black and blue eye.

              “Yes Susan it’s me,” I said and hugged her. Her five foot five body was dwarfed by my seven feet of cool muscle.

              “Frankenstein,” she said and touched the mostly faded scars on my face.

              “Now you know,” I said to her and braced for the inevitable fear and revulsion.

              “I’ve always known,” she said and lifted her face to kiss me before I could react.

              My heart soared.

              Before we could do more than share a kiss one of the other girls began to scream. All around the open area in front of the dorms the dead were massing. In groups and knots they were being drawn to the pile of dead boys and group of living girls laid out for them.

              They were coming to feed.

              “What do we do?” Susan asked. She rose from the ground and began throwing on her ripped and tattered garments.

              I didn’t answer. Instead I got up and marched toward the nearest group of the dead. There were maybe twenty of the shambling and rotting things. One of Susan’s fellow girls, her roommate Mindy I realized, ran behind me. She looked at me and I didn’t see fear I saw hope. I put my hand on her small shoulder.

              “Gather all of the girls by Susan and wait for me.”

              Mindy nodded and I continued to the dead. Now I was going to find out what these things made of a man who was truly reanimated flesh. They were the universes cheap copy of my perfection. I felt insulted by their very existence.

              I planted my feet and squared me shoulders. “STOP!” I yelled at them. I don’t know what I expected. Looking back on that moment I was just getting myself ready for the attack. I never actually expected them to stop in their tracks. And not just the group in front of me, every zombie within eyesight had stopped and was doing… nothing.

              “Frank, what’s happening?” Susan asked taking my large cool hand in her small warm one.

              “I’m not sure,” I said dumbfounded. “I am not sure why Susan but they are listening to me.”

              “I think, Frank, that you may be able to save the world,” she said and snuggled into my side.

              At that moment I didn’t care about the world, though I would very soon. Right then I just cared about her.