Joe R. Lansdale - Christmas with the Dead [hc]

It was a foolish thing todo, and Calvin had not botheredwith it the last two years, not since the death of his wife and daughter, butthis year, this late morning, the loneliness and the monotony led him to it. Hedecided quite suddenly, having kept fairly good record on the calendar, thattomorrow was Christmas Eve, and zombies be damned. The Christmas lights anddecorations were going up.

Hewent into the garage to look for the lights. He could hear the zombies sniffingaround outside the garage door. The door was down and locked tight, and on topof that, though the zombies could grab and bite you, they werent terriblystrong most of the time, so the door was secure. The windows inside wereboarded over, the doors were locked, and double locked, and boarded. The backyard the dead owned, but the windows and doors were boarded really well there,so he was shut in tight and safe.

Prowlingthrough the holiday ornaments, he found immediately the large plastic Santa, andthree long strings of lights. They were the ones he had ripped down in angerabout two years back.

Hemanaged all of the strings of lights into his living room. He plugged the wiresinto the extension cord that was hooked up to the generator he had put in thekitchen, and discovered most of the lights were as dead as the proverbial dodobird. Many were broken from when he had torn them down.

Hesat for a moment, then went to the little refrigerator he had replaced the bigone withused less energyand pulled a bottled coffee out, twisted off the cap,and walked over to the living room window.

Unlikethe garage on the side of the house, or the back yard, he had fenced the frontyard off with deeply buried iron bars to which he had attached chicken wire, overlappedwith barb wire. The fence rose to a height of eight feet. The gate, also eightfeet tall, was made of the same. He seldom used it. He mostly went out and backin through the garage. There was no fence there. When he went out, they werewaiting.

Moreoften than not, he was able to run over and crush a few before hitting the doordevice, closing the garage behind him. On the way back, he rammed a few more,and with the touch of a button, sealed himself inside. When they were thin inthe yard, he used that time to stack the bodies in his pickup truck, haul themsomewhere to dump. It kept the stink down that way.Also, the rotting flesh tended to attract the hungry dead. The less he madethem feel at home, the better.

Today,looking through the gaps between the boards nailed over the window, he couldsee the zombies beyond the fence. They were pulling at the wire, but it wasfirm and they were weak. He had discovered, strangely, that as it grew darker,they grew stronger. Nothing spectacular, but enough he could notice it. Theywere definitely faster then. It was as if the day made them sluggish, and thenight rejuvenated them; gave them a shot of energy, like maybe the moon wastheir mistress.

Henoticed too, that though there were plenty of them, there were fewer every day.He knew why. He had seen the results, not only around town, but right outsidehis fence. From time to time they just fell apart.

Itwas plain old natural disintegration. As time rolled on, their dead and rottenbodies came apart. For some reason, not as fast as was normal, but still, theydid indeed break down. Of course, if they bit someone, they would becomezombies, fresher ones, but, after the last six months there were few if anypeople left in town, besides himself. He didnt know how it was outside oftown, but he assumed the results were similar. The zombies now, from time totime, turned on one another, eating what flesh they could manage to bite offeach others rotten bones. Dogs, cats, snakes, anything they could get theirhands on, had been devastated. It was a new world, and it sucked. And sometimesit chewed.

Backin the garage, Calvin gathered up the six, large, plastic, snow men and theSanta, and pulled them into the house. He plugged them in and happilydiscovered they lit right up. But the strings of lights were still a problem.He searched the garage, and only found three spare bulbs green onesand whenhe screwed them in, only one worked. If he put up those strings they would bepatchy. It wasnt as if anyone but himself would care, but a job worth doingwas a job worth doing right, as his dad always said.

Hesmiled.

Ella,his wife, would have said it wasnt about doing a job right, it was more about fulfilling his compulsions. She would laugh at him now. Backthen a crooked picture on the wall would make him crazy. Now there was nothingneat about the house. It was a fortress. It was a mess. It was a place to stay,but it wasnt a home.

Twoyears ago it ended being a home when he shot his wife and daughter in the headwith the twelve gauge , put their bodies in thedumpster down the street, poured gas on them, and set them on fire.

Allatmosphere of home was gone. Now, with him being the most desirable snack intown, just going outside the fence was a dangerous endeavor. And being insidehe was as lonely as the guest of honor at a firing squad.

* * *

Calvin picked the strapped shotgun offthe couch and flung it over his shoulder, adjusted the .38 revolver in his belt, grabbed the old fashioned tire toolfrom where it leaned in the corner, and went back to the garage.

He cranked up the truck, which he alwaysbacked in, and using the automatic garage opener, pressed it.

He had worked hard on the mechanism sothat it would rise quickly and smoothly, and today was no exception. It yawnedwide like a mouth opening. Three zombies, one he recognized faintly as MarilynPaulson, a girl he had dated in high school, were standing outside. She hadbeen his first love, his first sexual partner, and now half of her face dangledlike a wash cloth on a clothes line. Her hair was falling out, and her eyeswere set far back in her head, like dark marbles in crawfish holes.

The two others were men. One wasreasonably fresh, but Calvin didnt recognize him. The other was his next doorneighbor, Phil Tooney . Phil looked close to fallingapart. Already his face had collapsed, his nose wasgone, as well as both ears.

As Calvin roared the big four- seater pickup out of the garage, he hit Marilyn with thebumper and she went under, the wing mirror clipped Phil and sent him winding.He glanced in the rearview as he hit the garage mechanism, was pleased to seethe door go down before the standing zombie could get inside. From time to timethey got in when he left or returned, and he had to seal them in, get out andfight or shoot them. It was a major annoyance, knowing you had that waiting foryou when you got back from town.

The last thing he saw as he drove awaywas the remaining zombie eating a mashed Marilyn as she squirmed on the driveway. He had shattered her legswith the truck. She was unable to fight back. The way his teeth clamped intoher and pulled, it was as if he were trying to bite old bubble gum loose fromthe side walk.

Another glance in the mirror showed him Philwas back on his feet. He and the other zombie got into it then, fighting overthe writhing meal on the cement. And then Calvin turned the truck along Seal Street, out of their view, and rolled on towardtown.

* * *

Driving, he glanced at all the Christmasdecorations. The lights strung on houses, no longer lit. The yard decorations,most of them knocked over: Baby Jesus flung south from an overturned manager, adeflated blow-up Santa Clause in a sleigh with hooked up reindeer, now lyinglike a puddle of lumpy paint spills in the high grass of a yard fronting ahouse with an open door.