At 19, Zenith just finished his first semester of college, and he loved being away from home. Z’s dorms were officially closed from December 24 through January 2, so he’d spend that week at home, bored. He planned to head home only after watching his favorite film star cascading through an epic action adventure: he expected a bloody, plotless film stuffed with grisly effects and a muscled hero saving the day. Way better than watching his sisters unwrap a bunch of junk and pretending he thought about the presents he’d purchased last week before heaping them into a sack. He’d had about all the holiday spirit he could stand in wrapping the dumb presents.

Right now, things were looking better. He was tooling around looking for a spot to park, nothing too far from the door since it was so damn cold. The whole parking lot was teaming with last minute shoppers. Fake holly draped around every window, beckoning people inside. The outdoor mall dripped with the spectacle of holidays past, someone’s idea of a quaint Christmas turned consumer nightmare. Roving carolers in Victorian era clothes sang at the main intersection, holding up battery operated candles, no less, and meanwhile people were pushing their way in and out of every store looking for the perfect bit of nonsense to add to their holiday expense account. What a crock Z shook his head, relieved that all he had to do was force through the crowd and enjoy some action.

Shoving his way in line for tickets, Zenith relaxed as he inhaled the salty air of movie popcorn, and felt downright psyched about enjoying a slasher flick before kicking off all that crappy holiday nonsense at home with his family. They didn’t get how over it he was. To him, it was all a bunch of phony showing off about who spent the most money or who pretended to be thoughtful or got the best presents. His girlfriend chided him for the bah humbug attitude last week after he announced his desire to celebrate gift-free holidays, and he quickly retorted, “No one means any of that sentimental peace on earth shit. Wouldn’t there be more, I don’t know, peace, if any of it were true?” They didn’t talk about it again, but he did buy some stuff for his sisters, the little dizzy angels were too young to understand his more serious motivations. They’d just think he was cheap.

The theater was more crowded than he expected, and he had to jam himself between two fat guys to find a seat. Wow. Who knew Van Osterof had so many die hard fans, he thought to himself. Once the previews kicked in he was ready to be entertained, so he texted his friends not to bug him: “Dudes- in a movie. Go deck your halls.” He snorted a laugh to himself, and settled into the sights and sounds of the dark room. The air smelled like popcorn and sugar, and the room was thick with the sound of chewing and crunching, crinkling bags, and an occasional snicker or whisper. It was warm, probably because it was so crowded, and soon the smells of the room included an unpleasant sort of sticky sweat smell, but it didn’t take long for the bombardment of images from the previews to swallow up any sense of irritation he harbored while sitting in the packed room.  The lights dimmed even further for the main attraction.

While Zenith reached down into his bag to fetch a snack, the movie screen flashed a mesmerizing light between the previews and the opening. After the bright feverish blast of white hot light and a few odd clicking noises, a vibrating swirl of colors cascaded from the projector. Momentarily, it felt like a sort of mist transmitted through the air, and a ripple of wet coughing and grumbling swept through the crowd. As Zenith sat up, the reel for the main attraction finally began. Zenith sat in the center of the theater, his seat now compressed awkwardly between the two large men whose arms fully blocked his armrests on both sides.

Zenith briefly considered pressing his elbows into one of them, jabbing just persistently enough to garner himself a little more space, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Distracted by the sheer delight in the impending sequel to Blood Rains, he put on his best holiday cheer and sacrificed his armrests for the greater good. He smiled to himself, content with his good natured attitude and settled in to his scrunched seat with his snacks. In addition to the popcorn he purchased, he brought in a few candy bars, a bag of toffee, a can of soda, and a soft pretzel from the vendor in the mall. That’s plenty he thought, as he glibly smiled at the chubby man to his right. Ten of these wouldn’t fill him, he thought, grabbing the pretzel.

The film credits rolled into an opening action sequence, and the audience rumbled with delight. Soon the chomping got weirdly loud, it drowned out the revving engines in the first chase scene, much to Zenith’s surprise. Then he noticed some faint growling sounds coming from behind him.

Was it in the movie or something in the room? He couldn’t tell. In the darkness of the theater he couldn’t quite source any of the increasingly weird gurgling sounds. He tried to focus more intently on the movie, but the slurping, fat mass of flesh to his left was getting seriously annoying. Mr. Slob went from chomping to snarfing, and Zenith was about ready to tell him to shut up when he noticed a candy cane was stuck to the side of some kid’s face in the row ahead of him. Gross he thought, squirming in his seat, trying to inch away from the gurgling soda monster at his left.

To his right bulged another huge mess of a character who kept wiping his grease smothered, hands on his pants and snorting as he inhaled popcorn from a giant cardboard trough. Blegh, Z. recoiled again, only to see in the kid with the candy face now had two people chewing at the sticky bit of striped sugary candy. Chewing it right off his face.

Shit, they didn’t stop at the candy- his cheek is bleeding. Zenith, mortified, jumped up and shouted, “Hey, leave him alone, you freaks!”

A roar of groaning interrupted his outcry, and his isle-mates grabbed him by the shoulders and tugged him back down into his seat. They clasped him firmly, refusing to let him wiggle out of their tight clutches. Zenith couldn’t over power the two of them, couldn’t pry off their grimy fingers.

You quiet” one of them yelled, the words garbled from a mouthful of chocolates, or something gooey Z hoped were chocolates as he watched it dribble from the goon’s lips and down his flabby chin. Zenith looked around the theater and couldn’t grasp the hideous magnitude of what he saw. Through the dark with the flickering light of the projected images and minimal footlights, he perceived only snippets and flashes.

The boy with the bloody face was chewing something, crunching through what sounded like bone. Zenith shuddered. He glanced over his shoulder at the women behind him, and their sickly sweet perfume nearly gagged him as he turned around. The women behind him were shoving heaps of food in their mouths with both hands and incidentally unaware of having bitten off bits of their own fingers in the process. The bloody nubs of hands dripped into their popcorn buckets, but they expressed no pain as they stared up at the screen and continued to mindlessly devour the larger than life serving of Hollywood hunk in the shape of one very brawny Van Osterof. “MMM,” they groaned and cackled when Van’s shirt was ripped off on screen displaying his fiercely pronounced biceps and chest muscles.

What the . . . Zenith twisted forward quickly and gave a shiver at the sight of the grotesque pair of them. All down the row, everywhere he could see in the filtered dim celluloid haze were hoards of people in a writhing frenzy of consumption. Their fiendish yowls, slurping, and endless chomping echoed through the theater, rendering Zenith both disgusted and terrified. Their skin faded as open wounds from misplaced bites oozed blood that smeared with sugary soda, forming a dark slime that soon pasted patches on the seats and clothes nearly everywhere Zenith looked.

Zenith was surrounded. Some strange sickness had taken over the room, at least, he hoped it was limited to the room. Maybe the flash on the screen, the mist, he wondered. More importantly, he wondered how to escape their repulsive clutches. Every effort he made to stand up resulted in their disgusting, desperate grasps tugging him down into his seat. He couldn’t know for sure that he was the only conscious being remaining in the dark room, but it sure felt like it.

Zenith patched together a plan as he sat as still as possible. From what he witnessed, he could rely on the distraction of the movie. His mind wandered to unthinkable thoughts: what if it’s not confined to this room? What if the entire movie theater or mall has been possessed by this sickening force? What would happen when the movie ends?

All around him, movie goers-turned-zombies seemed to be engulfed in a frenetic surge of eating anything they grabbed. They groped forward and gnawed into each other’s heads, grabbing at chunks of hair that ripped out like cotton candy from a stick as they sat, eyes unwavering from the movie screen. Everywhere he looked he saw their graying faces mindlessly chewing on any bit of food or skin they could grasp. Their clawing hands murkily stretched out in the darkness of the theater to find any loose scraps to nab. The sound of nibbling surrounded him; like a room full of hungry rodents, the creatures feasting while their eyes remained fixed on the movie screen.

Zenith couldn’t assume the unsettling spell that overtook the moviegoers was temporary. He had to plan a way out, something to free him from the entire region, get him on his way home. If the thing, whatever it was, had spread, at least his home town was sparsely populated, giving him better odds of survival than in the densely coagulated streets of the city. He had to get to his car, to the highway, and escape. He assumed the worst in order to plan his best chance for slipping out of this nightmare.

Zenith couldn’t stand to look around. His breath quickened as he listened squeamishly to the gnashing teeth of the dead eyed monsters all around him. Their heavy strained grunting breath punctuated by the ravenous feasting noises made him gag. The seething congestion of the audience, its relentless chomping, filled him with repulsion.

Their insatiable appetites and mindless devouring rendered Zenith startlingly precise in his strategizing. He watched them haphazardly ripping and chewing at seat backs, clawing at the hair and skin of those near them. Zenith drew himself up onto his seat tighter and tighter, folding up his legs and surrounding himself with his own arms as if to minimize the space he took, his volume in the room. If he could make himself small enough, perhaps he could remain unfettered by the greasy fingering, pawing hands that beset him.

If they had independent thoughts, Zenith couldn’t figure out what they might be. From the looks of things, it was a room full of empty headed monsters unlike anything he’d seen, even in his favorite B movies. The crowd hinged on the action of the movie, growing agitated when the it slowed. That’s when they seemed to be most interested in each other’s flesh. When the action rose, Van Osterof leaping across the hood of a transit train or speeding through an alley way firing his machine gun through the window, the monster crowd gaped and grinned, grunting in satisfaction as gobs of gooey food dribbled from their open mouths. Zenith noticed the open wounds from the bite marks oozing a strange bubbly liquid, like some sort of fermented concoction from the combination of junk food, flesh, and whatever heinously dark force possessed the gathering and rendered them hapless to imbibe on anything their grasping, eager fingers could reach. Can’t let them touch me, he thought.

The movie was the only thing holding their attention, and Zenith realized he would have to escape before the action stopped. The next big sequence, he thought, I’ll move through the mass and go through the rear exit while they’re mesmerized.

Zenith knew he couldn’t rise fully, so he prepared himself for a low crouching run. He’d rely on the momentum and force he’d gain pushing against their knees to progress. It would have to suffice. If he kept his stature at seat level, he wouldn’t draw much attention pushing through them. He’d risk some contact, but hoped they wouldn’t be quick enough to grab him as he angled his way out of the row. He stuck his snacks onto the outsides of his coat, tossing a little food in their faces would surely keep them occupied long enough to push through the row.          It was as good a chance as any other he could imagine. If he could make it to the isle, it could be no more than twenty or thirty feet, he could make it to the exit. He eyed the exit, which remained fortunately unblocked, the writhing zombies stayed mostly leaning forward, slumping and slouching in their seats, drunk on entertainment.

Finally the climax of the film erupted onscreen, Van Osterof leapt from a building and Zenith followed suit, plunging himself over the last two seats in the row to reach the isle, then diving quickly for the door. He thrust open the exit, allowing the hallway light to illuminate the grisly scene only for a moment. The masses bellowed, “No, no light! Off!”

The door slammed closed behind Zenith, who was well on the way to his car, plummeting through a dispelling throng of shoppers. He paused to glance around him, uncertain if the messy bewildered flock of people hurrying through the mall were like him, conscious, or if they were merely a brainless horde of shopping drones. He couldn’t tell and he didn’t care. He sped through the heaving herds of people weaving in and out of stores, their bags jostling about them like the shackling chains of Jacob Marley himself. Zenith felt a sudden, sharp need to return to his family, to confirm their safety from the repulsive multitudes.    Zenith arrived at his car, hastily jostling the key into the ignition and speeding to the highway. He pictured his family’s simple plans around the piano and yearned for their off-key singing, their modest feast, the homemade gifts of his sisters. He didn’t take the time to try to discern anything about the miserable swarming crowds at the stores, now scarcely discernible in the distance. In the parking lot he only heard only a few rumbling engines and slamming car doors. Nothing worth investigating even if he had felt less afraid.

Few cars were on the road, and he noticed several dozen groups of what he could only assume were more zombies collected in gatherings at the roadside near collapsed cars. They waved their arms out aimlessly, roaring as Zenith sped by them, stranding them to each other. If they were still conscious beings, they’d have to fend for themselves. Zenith couldn’t afford any more chance encounters.

Finally after two hours of forgetable highway as desolate as he’d hoped, Zenith found himself arriving at the comforting sight of his unpeopled home town. Acadia boasted no more than 500 villagers, and its quiet life looked undisturbed thus far. The town general store, still whitewashed and well groomed was long closed for the holiday. A simple green wreath hung on the door. Its owners no doubt at home with their grandchildren. The Post Office, a cubicle brick building across from the gas station, and the community center looked just as he recalled. No one hovered on the street corner, no one could be spotted eating anything rancid or hiding behind corners. No one could be seen at all. Nothing was open, no one bustled about town, and Zenith sighed in relief. Normal he thought to himself.

Festive colored lights hung lazily blinking in the dimming light of the day as he pulled up his parent’s driveway, gravel spitting out beneath his spinning tires. Zenith arrived at his parents home to find them exactly as he’d hoped: Dad shuffling around in his gray felt slippers, Mom on the couch with a cocoa, the fireplace warming the living room, and his sisters nestled at the piano bench thumping out familiar carols in the easiest chords possible.

“Hey everyone! I’m home!” Zenith announced merrily, relieved by all the comforting sights and sounds of his family. The gang welcomed him heartily with enthusiastic hugs and hurried him inside. As Zenith unwound himself from his sisters’ wiggly hugs, he untangled the bag of gifts he had so haphazardly purchased and set it beside the tree. The girls ran outside to make snow angels, giggling and cavorting. Zenith watched them from the window. Home, he sighed.

Zenith’s mother beckoned him to the couch, patting the space beside her. She clicked on the TV and hit the mute button while commercials ran.

“Call back the girls. We were just going to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Such a sweet movie. Let’s grab some snacks from the kitchen,” she added, standing up and waving her arms inviting everyone to help. As they headed toward the kitchen, Zenith noticed from the corner of his eye a strange flash on the screen. That’s weird.

Zenith clicked off the TV and said, “Hey, let’s just catch up instead, I’ve missed everyone so much.” Zenith didn’t mention the freaks at the mall. He didn’t even know if they would believe him. If more were coming it didn’t matter. They’d find out soon enough.

The old woman didn’t answer. She was carrying a lit wicket inside an archaic, silver, antique candle holder and the hot wax was dripping down onto her wrists. There was no need for this of course as the hallway was already ablaze with light courtesy of the best bulbs which G.E. had to offer. Plus the cold afternoon sun, which was brightened by the high piles of leftover snow outside, shone fearlessly through every available pane.

She was wearing a long, red, flannel granny gown with green trim and printed patterns of silver bells tied together with mistletoe. Her endless white hair, which was generally piled up in a bun, hung ragged and scraggly all the way down past the backs of her knees.

“C’mon. Let’s get you back into bed.”

After he’d pulled the blankets up to her chin, he noticed large beads of sweat dotted up on her gray and wrinkled forehead.

“Jesus, Mother you’re sweating… and it’s freezing in here.”

He turned on the electric space heater and scooted it a little closer to the bed.

“Seymour!” She barked suddenly, causing her grown son to jump. She rarely spoke at all anymore, as her dementia was far advanced, so the sound of her voice startled him.

“Jesus, Mother?!”

“Seymour! There was a man in the backyard.”

“No now there wasn’t, Mother. It’s ten degrees outside.”

“Yes there was!” She snapped. “A man came under the fence while I was tending to my garden; a wild man.”

“Mother, don’t tell me you went out to that garden. Why there’s a foot a snow coverin’ those plants over. No wonder you’ve gone and gotten yourself a fever. It isn’t fit for man nor beast out there.”

The old woman didn’t say anything else and for a moment he thought that the garrulous spell had passed, so he said: “Why don’t you get some sleep, Mother? I don’t think anyone’s going to bother you.”

But instead of regressing back into her usual catatonic state, the old woman exploded: “Don’t you patronize me boy! I was fightin’ in these factories when you were shittin’ figgie pudding!”

“Mother?”

“Now I SAID that there was a man out there, in the backyard. A man who slithered underneath the fence and all that red snow. A man with eyes like blue fire. And if you don’t believe me see for yourself: he bit me!”

She pushed the blankets off and clawed back the long sleeve of her granny gown revealing a rancid and inflamed bite mark.

“Hell’s bells Mother, how in the world did you get that?”

But the old woman was done talking. Her body straightened out on the bed as stiff as an ironing board and her mind refracted into the voiceless nostalgia of lost and darkened decades.

Seymour shook his head and went into the bathroom to open the medicine cabinet. By the time he’d fetched the bandages and Mercurachrome he could already hear the old woman snoring softly. He though that it must have stung like hell once he applied the disinfectant, but the old woman made no reaction.

“Jesus, Mother,’ he said to himself more than her. “we may have to take you to see Dr. Burke tomorrow.” After he’d finished bandaging her up he turned off the light and walked out of the bedroom scratching his head. How in the world had she received such a nasty looking bite? He checked all the doors and windows but they were either bolt locked or screwed down tight. There was no sign anywhere that anyone had broken in, and even if someone had: why in the world would they want to bite an eighty nine year old woman?

He plopped down on the couch and began watching a hockey game on the large color television. He didn’t know what the score was or who was even playing; content to just watch the players skate around. Could she have really been out in the backyard? Perhaps she’d been attacked by a dog?

Concerned, he got up and began walking towards his mother’s room. If she’d been out in the snow, maybe the bottom of her nightgown would still be damp?” He opened the door just a tiny crack and listened carefully. But he could no longer hear the old woman’s rasping breathes. He switched the light back on.

“Mother?”

No reply.

The old woman was as pale as vanilla and lying like a corpse in a casket. He tried to shake her awake but she didn’t move a wrinkle.

“Mother! Mother!”

He fumbled through the top drawer of the vanity until he came up with the old woman’s ancient, gold plated, compact mirror. He held it under her nose for several seconds but no foggy breath clouded its silvery surface.

“Oh no, OH NO!” He said as he grabbed the phone on the night stand and began dialing. “Alice it’s Mother. I don’t think she’s breathing.” An inaudible squawk lisped out from the other end of the line. “No Alice I don’t think she is. You’d better get over here. Yes I’m calling the ambulance now. Hold on let me check.” But as he took up the old woman’s wrist to feel for a pulse, as Alice had no doubt instructed, Seymour’s dead mother leapt to life and sank what was left of her halitosis inflicted teeth into his forearm. He screamed more with surprise than with terror and dropped the phone onto the rug. With the damage done, the old woman’s frail body dropped back onto the bed. Where she writhed into a couple of convulsions and then seemed to lose consciousness. Seymour jumped back and inspected the fresh bite. Blood was oozing up into the teeth marks like swamp water filling up muddy footprints.

“Dear Lord, Dear Lord,” he kept repeating.

“Seymour, Seymour,” the receiver called out from the carpet. After a few seconds of sucking on his wound like a mother cat he picked it back up.

“It’s okay Alice, I thought that she wasn’t breathing for a minute, but now she’s up. You’d better be gettin’ over here pretty soon anyway, I’ve got to be gettin’ down to the mall.” After he’d hung up, Seymour covered the old woman over with a blanket. She had quieted back down even though her eyes were open and blazing like the torches of a lynch mob. Once he was out in the kitchen, he let the tap water run over the wound and down into the sink. Once the blood had been rinsed from the teeth marks, the indentations were a blue color and the viscous cuts still smarted even under the flow of the faucet.

He thought that he heard a new noise coming from the bedroom. But when he crept back over to open the door slightly, all was silent. He looked at the clock and thought that Alice should be arriving pretty soon.

Once he was in front of the mirror he tugged on his white beard. It looked so authentic that there was no longer any need for the frost white fake one he had donned in previous years. There probably wasn’t any need for the foam belly anymore either but he pulled it from the closet and strapped it on anyway. A furry red jacket with white trim hung from a solitary plastic hanger. It was the same one he put his arms and shoulder blades into every year from Thanksgiving all the way up until Christmas Eve; the familiar and famous garb of Saint Nicholas.

#

“You look a little under the weather Seymour,” Stan said, “or at least equal with it.” He was referring to the blizzard which had quickly converged upon the mountain town and was now raging on outside.

“Ah, it’s just Mother again.”

Stan took a sip of scalding black coffee and said, “ya know Seymour, there ain’t no shame in putting a dying person in a…”

“…nursing home I know,” Seymour finished the sentence for him.”I can’t do it Stan. Not after the way she cared for dad all those years.”

“Well, it’s none of my business but…” Before Stan could finish, the eye of the walkie talkie which was attached to his belt winked yellow and then red before spitting out a line of garbled static. After a couple of seconds the white noise translated to words: “Stan 109, Stan 109.”

Stan held the speaker up to his mouth, “you got me.”

“Stan, you better get down here. I think we got a shoplifter at Spencer’s.”

He sighed before pressing the talk button, “be right there.” He got up from the lunch room table he’d been leaning his buttocks against. “Gotta go big boy.”

Seymour felt so weak and feverish that all he could do was nod.

“Look, don’t think about any of it tonight,” Stan offered as parting advice, “just have a good time makin’ the kids happy.”

But as Seymour walked past the store fronts out in the mall, his limbs felt stiff and their joints aflame. Breathing was difficult as if the oxygen were igniting a liquid fire inside his chest. He doubled over in discomfort and pawed the bite which was now hidden underneath his red and white sleeve. It throbbed with each beat of his heart and when he pulled the cloth back to inspect it he saw that it was practically glowing with a seeping green liquid.

“Look! It’s Santa.” Then the children were all around him. Usually, he enjoyed the walk through the mall. It gave him the opportunity to pass out his surplus of small, striped red and white hard candy canes to the excited kids.”HO HO HO,” he made himself say. But what he really wanted to do was floor the first snot nosed brat who tried to touch him. He shook his beard like a wet dog and sighed. What the hell was he thinking; he loved children, he’d always loved children. Maybe it was just that awful episode with Mother which had put his nerves on edge.

The sleigh was centered underneath a huge skylight in an expansive circular section in the center of the huge cross shaped mall. Above the glass roof, the ubiquitous cloudy beard of God shook out its mighty dandruff in the form of millions of snowflakes. There were eight living deer hooked to the front of the sled. They had been fastened up with reins and cordoned off in a small, chain link pen which doubled for a petting zoo. There were some cumbersome, clumsy, artificial antlers which had somehow been fashioned to their heads to make them look like the real deal. Many children were already mulling around the small enclosure and were busy feeding the creatures some smelly, small brown pellets which could be purchased from a nearby gumball machine for twenty five cents.

There was a very sexy teenaged girl, with legs much too long for both her years and for the elf costume she was wearing, standing over next to a display of empty but very colorful Christmas presents. Her long brown hair was so thick and shiny that it still looked stunning even underneath the absurd, pointed hat. She had worked carefully with the holiday shades of green and red to create an extremely alluring look with brushed on streaks of eye shadow.

There was also a thick, tired looking, rotund, middle aged woman who was stationed behind a big Polaroid camera which had been mounted near a check out desk. She wore a miserable expression and was shuffling her feet aimlessly. Seymour remembered a year when she was much more affable, but that was long before they had converted the entire mall into a non-smoking establishment.

“Jesus Seymour,” she said, “you’re fifteen minutes late.” She pointed to a long line of parents with their children; kids eager to tell Santa all about their Christmas wishes. “Look at these brats.”

“Okay, okay, Charlene,” he said, “let’s not make a federal case out of it, let’s just get some of the kids through the line.

Charlene sighed as if she knew he was right and unclipped the red velvet rope which separated the first customers from Santa. As he situated himself up inside the sleigh, a crud chewing (rein)deer watched him settle into his seat without much reaction. It was an actual mountain sled which had been donated by the local hunter and trappers museum. The door panels had been painted a dark maroon color and tacky, plastic, mistletoe which was sprayed gold was draped over the top half of the refurbished leather seat. The running boards were held in place by a network of wires which were hooked onto some temporary ground rods like a carnival ride.

“Hey Sarah.”

“Hey Seymour.” The ultra-attractive elf acknowledged his greeting.

The first kid of the day climbed up onto Seymour’s lap and proceeded to act like a repulsive brat. “I want an XBOX and a skateboard and a GI Joe and a…” Seymour was shaking his head yes when the boy paused: “hey? Why aren’t you writing any of this down?”

“I don’t have to write any of it down; my elves are recording it all.”

“The boy looked around as if checking for recording equipment and locked eyes with the vivacious Sarah instead. “She’s got pretty big tits for an elf.”

Before Seymour had to say anything else, the Polaroid’s flash popped and Charlene shouted, “Next!”

Next turned out to be a sweet little girl who was dressed like a miniature Mrs. Claus in strawberry red and snow white. All she asked for was some sort of urinating doll and was quickly taken down. A few more like her and Seymour thought that he might be able to get caught up a bit, but these hopes were dashed when he took one glance at the ever lengthening queue.

But as child after child rotated past a makeshift north pole, and request after request fell onto Seymour’s rapidly deafening ears, he felt worse and ever worse until his chest felt like there were two rats inside his breast plate fighting to devour his lungs. His arms and legs were heavy and cold like scrap metal from a dissected refrigerator and every time Charlene snapped a new instant photo, he felt as if his eyes were looking into a welder’s torch with no visor or at the detonation of an atomic bomb.

“Are you okay Seymour,” Sarah, the breathtaking elf inquired.

“Yes, I’m fine kiddo,”

“Maybe we should close early? You don’t look so good.”

“Oh no no sweetheart, I’m fine. These children deserve a Santa. Now call the next child up please.”

She did as she was told and for awhile the pace of the visits quickened. Child on, spiel spat, photo snapped, child down, cash garnered, next. This rush ensued until a roll of film got eaten up by the Polaroid. While Charlene busied herself with ripping it out and replacing it, a cigarette hanging from her withered lip despite the NO SMOKING sign which was only a few feet from her head, and while Sarah had her hands full trying to fend off the verbal advances of a fourteen year old boy who had wormed his way inside the red and green velvet ropes, Seymour slumped down in his seat. Charlene cursed as the new roll of film refused to cooperate. The lovely Sarah told the boy, who was much too old for Santa but much too young for her, to get lost. Perhaps, with all this aggravation on their plates they simply didn’t realize. Or maybe, when Seymour tilted his head back and closed his eyes, they just thought that he was taking a power nap until the camera was flash ready again. Whatever the case, they did not notice when Seymour passed away at 4:46 Mountain time.

Even when the amorous teenaged boy gave up and strutted away; even when the camera was repaired and ready to photograph, even when the children who had been so very, very good, were cleared to tell their tale to Santa; they still did not notice Seymour’s heavy and stiffening head.

Not until a darling little girl; with a look that could challenge the style and overwhelming cuteness of Shirley Temple herself, began slapping the face of the deceased Saint Nick did they take notice. The little girl snickered and hopped down. Only to be replaced by a huge boy who was obviously much too old and oversized to subscribe to such childish fables. While Charlene and Sarah glanced at each other in confusion the boy began running through his list. After a few seconds he paused and said: “Santa? Are you asleep?”

“Sarah,” Charlene shouted as she snapped what was sure to be a peculiar picture, “Is he alright up there? He doesn’t look so good.”

“I already asked him that once,” Sarah replied, “he says he wants to finish out the shift.”

“Well Jesus,” Charlene said as she tilted her grey head in an effort to look past the youngster on Seymour’s lap, “it looks like he’s passed out or something. Is he drunk for God’s sakes.”

Sarah walked up to the sled. “Seymour doesn’t drink. Wait a minute; I think he’s coming around.” Indeed, Seymour had began to stir and when his eyes re-opened they were as red as his jacket. Thinking that Santa had revived the boy continued with his delayed wish list.

“Seymour? Are you all right?” Sarah tried to whisper. Seymour, his face strangely glazed and distant, did not answer or even seem to hear her.

“… and a go-cart and a scooter and the Kim Kardashian DVD…” The big boy rambled on as a low guttural growl escaped from Seymour’s slightly parted lips and his face took on the countenance of a desperately sick and hungry animal.

“Seymour?”

Of all the items the boy had listed as potential gifts there was one thing that he certainly did not want for Christmas: and that was to have the first three fingers bitten off of his left hand. But that is what he got in the next instant as a Satanic new Santa, which was no longer any kin to the kind and respectful Seymour, chomped the digits off as if they were ketchup laced french fries. As the oversized child drew back his squirting and maimed hand, the first of what was sure to be many screams rose from the crowd. Sarah stepped away totally stunned; her gaping mouth as perfectly round as a moon while Satan Claus continued to chew the boy’s fingers; gore ruining his beard like the blood of a slaughtered animal running from a steel trap in the snow.

For a few awe stricken seconds, the parents and kids who had been waiting in line paused. As if there was a chance that this horrific spectacle could somehow still be a sick joke or even part of the show. They faltered like this for a few heartbeats like deflated flags in a weak breeze, before terror took hold and they dispersed in a wild zig zag of panic. People punched, kicked and pushed past each other as vicious as carnivorous zombies. The riot was on.

Seymour stood up; the nonplussed boy still locked in his grip. For a second he swayed drunkenly, his eyes maniacal. Then he bit a patch out of the child’s scalp as if it were a juicy cantaloupe. Sarah turned and bolted down a carpeted ramp; somehow finding her way out from the fog of shock. Charlene left her post behind the camera and bravely bustled up to the sanguinary soaked Santa.

“Good God, Seymour,” she said without much steam, “stop!”

She reached out and grabbed the gore splattered flap of the boy’s jacket. But even as she did this, the demonic Santa released the boy and switched his grip onto Charlene’s shoulders. When he bit into her cheek the blood squirted out as if from a torn ketchup packet. The sound of her scream was drowned out only by the boom of gunshots. Stan was pointing his pistol straight out from where he’d been seeking cover between two twirling display holders in front of the Sunglass Hut. The bullet struck Satan Claus in the chest; the impact knocking him back down into his seat; but it had no other effect.

“Stop Seymour! Don’t make me shoot you again!”

But the monster who used to be Seymour didn’t stop. He rose and continued to bite patches out of both the boy and Charlene, that pair now rendered unconscious inside the sled. This prompted Stan to empty his gun into the red and white clad target. The final projectile, however, grazed the gray antler of one of the (rein)deer and the balsa horns exploded into dull confetti. This panicked the animals and they were so spooked the no constraints could hold them. They quickly trampled the chain link petting zoo. The reins connecting them to the sleigh pulled it right out of its stanchions and away from the flimsy rods that no one had thought would be needed to help contain the docile deer.

Sparks shot from the tile floor as the sled gathered speed and mowed over what was left of the audience. A mother and several small children were tromped over and clomped on by the deranged (rein)deer. As the sleigh reached maximum velocity, a man was dragged for several yards along with Charlene’s dead body. After the man fell off and rolled violently into a Pepsi machine, Charlene’s felled carcass could still be seen hooked onto the door. One young mother, who had unfortunately fallen, had her legs scissored off by the skating blades. The detached limbs lay like reddened octopus meat, separated by several yards from her floundering body.

As the storefronts blazed past in a blur of neon commercialism, Seymour stood up and peered out over the crowd like an evil pharaoh; his eyes swirling with tiny cyclones of madness. At this juncture he let out a terrible and peevish laugh; perhaps owed to the fact that he was still an immature child of a creature inside his diseased mind. Or maybe the motion of the onrushing sleigh awakened some thrilling memory of fun, which his rotting pulp of a brain still manged to conjure. No one can say for sure. But whatever the case, the sound of that revoltingly jolly wail was disgusting and blood curdling; hearty and horrible it fell onto the sensitive ears of the shocked shop keepers.

The (rein)deer did not slow down as they reached the exit. They simply veered off from the doors, which were separated by stout aluminum frames, and aimed for the much wider berth of the department store’s display windows instead. They mercilessly trampled the seasonally garbed mannequins and crashed through the wide showroom-type pane with a sonic shatter. A large sliver of glass now protruded from Seymour’s chest. But even as the wound pumped fresh blood and the shard jutted out close to where his heart must be, he didn’t seem to notice.

Outside the blizzard flew with such a robust bluster that the plows and road graders could not keep up. A thickening layer of powder, which was near perfect for sledding, covered the parking lot. It was already dark outside and headlights reflected off of the menacing procession as the train continued on, careening off of cars and threatening to mow down aloof pedestrians. Then a sleigh, with eight tiny (rein)deer and one lifeless yet blood thirsty Santa at the helm, flew down the wide thoroughfare of the mountain town’s Main Street. The quickness of the sled had pushed Seymour back down into his seat where he foamed at the mouth at snapped his teeth at anyone who was even remotely close to the carriage. At the intersection, they bustled right through the red light causing a fancy Christmas lady who had been driving a Honda Civic to swerve in order to avoid them. She had to cross over into another lane where a huge YELLOW semi obliterated her small compact. The truck hit her so hard that the little import seemed to pop and burst like a balloon and the lady was thrown out into high drifts as dead as Seymour, while the big truck slanted and plowed into a ditch askew.

A few blocks from this accident a young family, perhaps thinking that this obscenity was some type of holiday parade float, pulled up next to the sleigh. A small girl peered out from the back seat and the evil Santa showed her his red and white teeth. Which looked as if he’d just chewed a ball of dentist’s dye to reveal cavities. Charlene’s corpse bobbed up and down along side the carriage, reddening the fresh flakes. The family, then realizing that they were dealing with something deplorable, quickly sped away.

Near the edge of town, they passed a speed trap and soon red and blue lights and sirens could be seen and heard trailing the sleigh. The following conversation was heard by many a curious townsfolk on the police radio band:

“What have you got car four?”

“Uh, this is four, we’re in pursuit over.”

“Request license plate number of suspect over.”

“Um, no plates, suspect is dressed in a Santa suit and appears to be dragging a dead body through the streets over.”

Pause.

“Clearance to shoot out the suspect’s tires over.”

“Um, vehicle doesn’t have tires. Appears to be a sled pulled by some type of dogs. Over and out.”

And they pushed on, until the traffic thinned out and the tall towers gave way to shorter three story buildings. Then they were outside the city limits, where they rode past the unmarked county roads, all boundaries and lane lines obscured by the relentless snows. The drifts were so high that they covered the snow fences and the barbed wire barricades, leaving no boundaries to obstruct the octet of deer and their cargo. Soon the hills slanted, chopped long ago by the ax of God they dipped into steeper slopes where the angry police vehicles could not follow. They climbed all the way to the top of Mount Paydirt. Its flattened peak gazing down at Gordon’s Gorge five hundred feet below; home of the Great Northern Paiute Grand Valley Indian Reservation.

Without pausing for a beat, the entire caravan ran off of the cliff and began the long plunge to the sharp, man-sized boulders below. For a few seconds, they looked amazingly graceful as their forward progress held onto the neat design of the jumping (rein)deer. Like a postcard with a silhouette of Santa Claus and the outline of his eight dependable beasts. Then it all fell apart as the heavier animals were grabbed by gravity and became entangled in the reins. The sled soon turned upside down in midair and Seymour was thrown from his lofty perch. He fell silent and solemn, too devoid of humanity even to react in defense of his own well being.

Far down below: in a house which did not have a Christmas tree or a wreath on the door, a young boy had seen the beauty and grace of the sleigh’s brief flight, before it turned into a tangle of falling creatures and twisted reins like the strings of a fractured puppet show. A child with chestnut brown eyes and shoulder length black hair. He was the only one who had glimpsed the entourage before they vanished below the precipice of the rock face. When the cervids finally found the thankless terrain at rock bottom, they exploded into chunky red ribbons of brown furry gore like slabs of dead meat. At the same time Seymour’s brain burst apart on the Sanskrit; his body shattered by an impact that not even someone who was already dead could survive.

“Mama, mama,” the small Native American boy said while pointing out his bedroom window. “I just saw Santa Claus.” The silhouette of his washboard hipped mother appeared in the doorway but she did not answer. After a few seconds of this silence, the child turned to her and said in a confused voice, “Didn’t you see him?” But she still didn’t answer, so he reached over and turned on his bed side lamp: the ceramic fixture was a depiction of a Paiute warrior riding atop a spotted black and white mustang. “Mama?” He said again as she shuffled within range of the bulb’s weak light. But that was the last words that he spoke, for by now he could see that there was something wrong with her eyes.

END.

It was Jenny Cupcake who found the body. An avalanche had exposed a transparent wall of ice; and behind the ice, an elf hung, suspended in ice, arms akimbo and skin blue. His eyes stared forward blankly, and his mouth had dropped open. He looked flash frozen.

Jenny Cupcake tapped the ice with the butt of her Uzi. “You okay in there?”

The elf made no reply; didn’t blink, didn’t move, made no sign that he had even registered Jenny’s presence.

She peered at him. His uniform was outdated but identified as a worker from Sector 7-G. A ragged stump marked the spot where his left thumb had been savagely removed from his hand, and angry looking red gashes criss-crossed his palm. He had probably been a wood worker.

She shouldered her weapon and tapped the ice in front of the elf’s face. “Hey,” she said again, softer than before. Her voice was higher pitched than anyone else’s in Perimeter Patrol, and she always worried she might cause an avalanche and bury the entire workshop with a careless word or shout.

The elf’s left eyelid twitched.

Jenny jumped back, and cried out. Her heart pounded in her throat. Goodness gracious, she thought. He’s still alive! She smiled, and then started to giggle. She always did when she was nervous.

A hideous squawk erupted from beside her, and she jumped again, looking around wildly. When it sounded again, she chided herself. It was just her walkie-talkie. Trying to bring her giggling under control, she flipped it open. “Prancer Five here.”

A deep voice boomed out of the speaker. It was the Big Guy himself. “Report!”

Jenny cleared her throat. “I think we’ve got a situation here Santa.”

“What kind of situation?” The Big Guy’s voice was terse. He was in a bad mood. It was just a week before Christmas, and production was backlogged, particularly in the Electronics division. The programmers were having a hard time integrating USB expansion ports into the new robot dolls and making them compatible with the newest circuits from YoYoDyne. They kept protesting that it was a hardware issue, not a software issue, but Santa was unsympathetic. Quotas had to be met.

“I think you should come out here and take a look,” Jenny said.

The walkie-talkie vibrated in her hand even though she couldn’t hear anything. Santa was grumbling. “Where are you?”

“Quadrant 2L. South side of Peppermint Mountain.” She relayed her exact coordinates.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes. Santa out.”

Jenny Cupcake released the “talk” button and reattached the walkie talkie to her belt clip. “Well, old buddy,” she told the elf, “we’re going to get you out of there and back to work.” She started to giggle again, completely unaware that within just a few hours she would be giggling even more wildly, and for the very last time in her life.

#

Doctor Evergreen stared at the frozen elf. It did indeed wear an outdated Sector 7G uniform. Seriously outdated. Like, by two hundred years. Doctor Evergreen hadn’t seen that particular pattern and fabric in Santa’s workshop since the 1700′s. “You found him buried on Peppermint Mountain?”

Jenny Cupcake nodded, the bell on her cap jingling merrily. “I found him in Quadrant 2L. I think an avalanche uncovered him.”

“Hm.” Doctor Evergreen peered at the body.

“The point is,” Santa thundered from behind him, “is this elf still alive? Can we put him back to work?”

Doctor Evergreen sighed. It was always work for the Big Guy. “He could be. If he is I’ll have to be very careful in reviving him.”

“Oh, he’s alive!” Jenny blurted out. “I saw his eye move!”

Santa laughed, a cheery “HO! HO! HO!” that reverberated throughout Sick Bay.

Doctor Evergreen made his way over to his instruments. “Then I can definitely revive him. He should be back online in just a few hours.”

“He’ll need reeducation,” Santa said. “We phased out Sector 7-G in 1947. Nobody wants wooden toys anymore.” He yawned and stretched. “Give me a holler when you’re done, will you? I’m gonna take a nap.” He lumbered out of the room, muttering to himself.

“Can I stay and watch?” Jenny Cupcake asked. “I’ve never seen one of your experiments.”

Doctor Evergreen looked at the young elf, and decided she was probably harmless. He shrugged. “Sure. But don’t touch anything.”

“Oh, I won’t!” Jenny bounced to a workbench and jumped up, laying her Uzi down next to her. “I’ll be perfectly good!”

Doctor Evergreen grunted. As long as Jenny stayed out of his way, she would be fine. Of course, the whole thing couldn’t have come at a worse time. He was pretty sure he was on the verge of a major breakthrough in advanced toymaking. If this newest project worked out, then the elves would be able to control toy assembly nanomachines through a special neuro-computer interface. It was exciting research, but none of his test subjects had survived for long after he had put the implants in their brains.

The frozen elf gave no hint that he was alive. Doctor Evergreen wondered how to proceed. He hadn’t been in this lab for long, only eighty-three years. His predecessor, who had vanished under very strange circumstances, had been a sloppy note taker and an even worse house keeper. Doctor Evergreen was still trying to work out the man’s organization system, and it seemed he was always losing tools. He kept stumbling over items labeled “Project Epiphany”, but there was no hint as to what that might have been.

At last he decided the simplest route was the best, and he picked up an ice pick from his medical bag. He wiped the tip clean of his last test subject’s brains, and began picking at the ice.

After he had been at it for an hour, he heard snoring behind him. He turned. Jenny Cupcake was fast asleep on the workbench, cuddled up with her submachine gun the way children worldwide cuddled with their teddy bears. The sight was adorable, and Doctor Evergreen smiled. Someday she’d make someone an excellent specimen.

A sharp crack from the block of ice drew Doctor Evergreen’s attention back to the frozen elf. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, not sure he was really seeing what he thought he saw. Just a moment before the elf had been lifeless and still; now its eyes rolled wildly in its head and the muscles in its jaws worked. Its mouth was still blocked by ice, so it couldn’t talk. It looked like it was suffocating.

“Oh my goodness!” Doctor Evergreen exclaimed. He had expected that hours of resuscitation efforts lay before him. “Keep calm,” he told the elf. “I’ll have you out of there in a jiffy!”

He took up his ice pick again and tapped away at the ice that trapped the elf, working first on its face so that it could talk and breath.

Finally a chunk of ice fell away from the lower half of the elf’s face. Working carefully with a pair of tongs, Doctor Evergreen removed a chunk of ice from its mouth.

“There you go,” he said. “What do you say to that?”

The elf said nothing coherent, but its mouth dropped open and air rushed out. Doctor Evergreen staggered and nearly fell over when the stench of its exhalation assaulted his nose. Then the elf let out a low, drawn-out groan.

“Huh,” Doctor Evergreen said. He leaned closer to the elf, and its jaws snapped shut with a loud clack. Doctor Evergreen jumped back. The poor thing was disoriented. A couple of centuries trapped in ice would do that to anyone, even one of Santa’s elves, who were bred to handle extreme conditions.

Doctor Evergreen chipped away more ice. It came off in big chunks now. When it was all gone and the elf was completely free, Doctor Evergreen took a step back and looked over his handiwork with pride. Sure, the elf was confused and probably terrified, but it would get better with time; and then it would be re-educated, and back online in no time, probably in a sector that needed less specialized skills.

Then the elf’s mouth dropped open again, and this time a single sound came out. He said a single long, drawn out word as he lifted his left hand and reached out toward Doctor Evergreen. “Braaaaaaaaiinnsss!”

“Holy crumbcakes!” It was the foulest curse Doctor Evergreen knew, and he stepped back as he said it. The elf reached for him.

“Calm down!” Doctor Evergreen shouted. “You’ll be all better soon!”

“Braaaaaaaaaiiinnnsssss!” the elf repeated. It took a shaky step forward.

Doctor Evergreen stumbled backwards and reached out blindly behind him, hoping to grab something to use as a weapon. He bumped into a chair, nearly knocking himself over. He grabbed the chair and sent it hurtling on its casters toward the elf.

The chair bumped into the elf and it fell over on his back. Doctor Evergreen let himself relax for just a moment. How was he going to treat this? This was going to take more than a couple of days in a re-education camp.

“Hey!” a new voice squeaked. Doctor Evergreen turned. Jenny Cupcake had woken up; she sat on the workbench, looking confused.

“Jenny, get out of here,” Doctor Evergreen shouted at her.

The shambling elf thing on the floor raised its eyes to Jenny. “Giiiiiirrrrrrllllll braiiiiiinnnsss!” he hissed. And with a speed that Doctor Evergreen would not have thought possible, the elf was up on its feet and shambling toward Jenny.

“Goodness gracious!” Jenny cried. She reached down, grabbed her Uzi and disengaged the safety.

“Don’t shoot!” Doctor Evergreen yelled. Jenny was good with her guns, he knew, but even a carefully applied spray of bullets would destroy his sensitive equipment and he still didn’t know what half of it did.

“Eat hot lead, you motherfucking zombie!” Jenny shouted. She squeezed the trigger, and her submachine gun spat out bullets and smoke. Shells flew everywhere. Doctor Evergreen was well out of Jenny’s line of fire, but he dropped to the ground anyway, despairing as he watched glassware shatter and computers explode.

Several bullets hit the shambling elf. The elf staggered backwards, but did not fall over.

“Holy crumbcakes,” Doctor Evergreen cursed again.

Jenny’s gun suddenly ceased firing. Doctor Evergreen risked a look up and saw her fussing with the weapon and cursing. And, strangely, she was giggling, a high pitched little laugh that was somehow even more disturbing than the zombie elf’s moans.

“Jenny, look out!” he shouted at her.

Jenny looked up just in time to see the elf — bullet ridden, slimy and still wet from the ice that had so recently entombed it — stumbling toward her. She screamed as it grabbed her and spun her around so that she faced away from him. It bit into the back of her skull and then pulled its mouth, flesh and hair dripping from its mouth. It spat out bone fragments, then took another bite.

Doctor Evergreen watched for a moment, then clambered to his feet. It was too late for Jenny. The elf — no, the creature — chewed, and Jenny screamed that she was blind. Well, no wonder, Doctor Evergreen thought wildly. The thing had eaten her occipital lobe.

But there was no time for analysis. Doctor Evergreen had to take advantage of the creature’s distraction. He ran out of Sick Bay and slammed the door behind him.

This, he thought, was not going to end well. Not end well at all.

He took a moment to catch his breath, then reached down for his cell phone. Damn. He’d left it in the lab.

“Code red!” he shouted. He began to run toward the Big Guy’s office. “Code red! Santa! Help!”

#

Five minutes later, Doctor Evergreen stood in front of Santa’s big desk, wringing his hands as the Big Guy watched the tape of the events in the lab. Santa was a big guy. There was no denying that. Even the huge easy chair that Mrs. Claus had given him last year was too small for him now.

On the screen, in grainy black and white, the elf bit through the back of Jenny Cupcake’s skull and started eating her brain. The tiny speakers conveyed Jenny’s screams — and her odd giggles — in a voice as tinny and small as the electronic chip in a musical Christmas card.

When the tape was done, Santa punched the power button on the monitor. “Huh. Didn’t see that coming.”

“This is horrible.” Doctor Evergreen kept rubbing her hands on he moaned. “All my equipment smashed, all my research gone. Even my predecessor’s research. What am I going to do?”

“Doctor Evergreen, there’s a brain-eating monster in there, and all you can worry about is your research notes?”

Doctor Evergreen looked up at Santa, who looked genuinely annoyed. “Sorry, sir,” he said.

Santa huffed and then looked back at the monitor, though he left it switched off. He leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers before him. “We have to figure out how to kill these things.”

“There’s just the one.”

Santa looked surprised, but recovered his composure quickly. “Of course. Just one. I meant, let’s hope there aren’t any more of those things out there. So we need to figure out how to kill this thing. In case any more show up.”

Doctor Evergreen sat down in sat down in the chair and thought hard. None of his research had prepared him for this. But he remembered some scary movies he had watched late one night back in the 60′s; he’d been so stoned that night it was amazing he remembered anything about it at all, but one piece of information floated up. “I think,” he said slowly, “that if we cut off its head or destroy its brain or something, that might kill it.”

“You think so?” Santa asked.

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Excellent.” He leaned forward and pressed the TALK button on his intercom. “Miss Gingerbread, would you contact Mr. Peartree and have him report to me immediately?”

A tiny voice squeaked through the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Claus.”

Santa turned to Doctor Evergreen. “Peartree’s my finest sniper. He should be able to shoot the thing right in the head.”

The door opened just a minutes later, and an elf stepped through. At just under three feet tall, he was taller than most elves. The clothes he wore were so black they seemed to eat the light. His black curly-toed looked like puddles of oil. The bells on his toes and his cap were muffled, and barely jingled at all when he walked. Large mirror-lensed sunglasses hid his eyes, and a deadly looking rifle hung from a strap over his shoulder. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, and the smoke encircled his head like a wreath.

Santa stood up slowly from his seat. “Mr. Peartree. “Thank you for coming.”

“Yeah.” The deadly-looking elf’s speech was as terse as his outfit was dark. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it out under his heel. “What’s the job?”

Santa swung around his monitor around to face Mr. Peartree, and typed a few keystrokes on his computer. The scene of the elf eating Jenny’s brain replayed itself. “We need a good clean shot to the head. Just one should do it. Do you know that room?”

Mr. Peartree lit another cigarette and took a long drag. “Sick Bay. No problem. I know all three entrances to that room.”

“There are only two!” Doctor Evergreen said.

Mr. Peartree smirked. “That you know of.”

“That’s enough,” Santa said. “Mr. Peartree, this needs to be done as soon as possible. You’ll be paid the standard rate. Just be careful. That thing is deadly.”

“No problem.” Mr. Peartree spun on his heel and left the room as liquidly as he had arrived. The door closed behind him.

Santa sat back down on his chair; it creaked ominously. “Let’s watch,” he said. He twisted a dial on the side of the monitor and a new picture appeared: a live streaming image of the medical lab.

The elf’s face, still dripping red and gray, dominated the screen. Its mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, as it looked back and forth.

Doctor Evergreen had been staring at the elf so intensely that when a black shadow passed before it, momentarily blocking the view, he jumped. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.” Santa fiddled with the controls, and the view pulled back, showing the elf’s entire body, and the now-empty workbench that it stood before.

“Doctor Evergreen?”

“Yes, Santa?”

“Where’s Jenny?”

Doctor Evergreen shuddered. Jenny’s body should have still been on the workbench where the elf had dropped it. But it wasn’t. “I don’t –”

Then the shape passed before the camera again. This time, Doctor Evergreen saw it for what it was. “It can’t be,” he breathed.

Santa leaned forward, squinting. Then he reached into his breast pocket and removed a pair of reading glasses and slipped them on to his face. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“It’s Jenny!” Doctor Evergreen exclaimed. “But that’s impossible! I watched the thing eat her brain!” He swallowed past a huge lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat.

“Do you know what this means?”

Santa sighed. “Taking out their brain’s not gonna kill them.”

Doctor’s Evergreen’s stomach lurched as he watched Jenny’s reanimated corpse shamble around in the lab, moaning for brains and giggling. “Holy crumbcakes. We’ve got to stop Mr. Peartree!”

Santa picked up his walkie talkie and adjusted the frequency. “Mr. Peartree, come in! Mr. Peartree, do you read me?”

The walkie talkie clicked and then fell silent. Santa cursed, then punched the “talk” button on the intercom. “Miss Gingerbread, assemble an armed response team at the medical lab on the double!”

“But Santa, I can’t.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because last week you reassigned all security personnel to Toy Production. Don’t you remember?”

Santa swore again, then picked up his walkie talkie once more. “Mr. Peartree, if you can hear me, I want you to abort the mission immediately. Do you read me? Abort!”

He put the walkie talkie down, then stood up again, pulled open one of the drawers of his desk and pulled out a pistol that Doctor Evergreen thought looked as big as he was.

Santa flipped open the chamber and spun it, checking the cartridges. Then he shot Doctor Evergreen an urgent look. “Let’s roll.”

#

Mr. Peartree slid through the corridors of Santa’s complex, unnoticed by the other elves that toiled there. Half of that was stealth; the other half was the overworked and burned out state that every elf went through this time of year. His walkie talkie squawked at him one, and he stabbed the “Off” button reflexively. He had a job to do.

The door to the medical lab was closed but unlocked. He chuckled. The creature, whatever it was, obviously hadn’t worked out the basic principle of the doorknob.

He raised his gun, keeping it up with his left hand, and placed his right hand on the knob, flattening himself against the door itself. He counted to three, slowly, under his breath, then twisted the knob and thrust the door open. He took a step inside and brought the gun’s sights level with his eye.

He had been expecting the monster to be standing right in the middle of the room, but it wasn’t there. He grinned. “The chase is on,” he muttered. It was the most dangerous game. Elf.

He scanned the room slowly, then he heard a low moan to his left, like someone trying to talk through mud. “Brrraaaaaaaiiiinnnnssss!”

Mr. Peartree spun and fired his rifle. It was a perfect shot; a tiny black hole appeared in the elf’s forehead. But instead of falling over and dying, it simply kept shambling forward.

“Oh, so you’re gonna play tough, huh?” Mr. Peartree grinned; he liked a challenge. He took aim again, this time right at the undead elf’s eye.

But before he could fire, another voice welled up behind him, a high pitched squeaky voice.

“Brrraaaaaaiiiinnnssss!”

Mr. Peartree turned. Jenny Cupcake stood right before him. He recognized her; they’d actually been married for some time, but she’d walked out on him, claiming that she could no longer handle what he did for a living. Now, it appeared, she was an undead brain-eating monster from hell.

Some people, it seemed, never change.

Mr. Peartree aimed his rifle again, and a thrill went through him. “See you in hell, bitch!” he cried at her.

He never fired. The back of his head exploded into a raging storm of sharp pain. Everything went red, then black. His head felt oddly cool, like there was a draft in the room.

“Ah, shit,” he muttered. And that was it for Mr. Peartree.

#

“What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?” Doctor Evergreen was panicking. He and Santa had not made it to the lab in time; in fact, Jenny and the first elf had just finished eating Mr. Peartree’s brains when they’d shown up. If Santa hadn’t thought quickly and pulled the lab door shut with a slam, they would have been eaten for sure.

“Where are the other doors?” Santa demanded, interrupted Doctor Evergreen’s frantic mantra.

“There’s only one other door,” Doctor Evergreen replied. “It’s in the back. It’s locked and there are dozens of heavy crates in front of it.”

“What about the third door?”

“There is no third door. Mr. Peartree was just messing with me, I’m sure of it.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Doctor Evergreen nodded. “Of course I’m sure.” He realized he was shouting, and made a deliberate effort to lower his voice. “If there was a third door, I’d know about it by now. I’ve been all over that lab.”

Santa regarded Doctor Evergreen for a long moment. Then he said, “All right. Let’s get back to my office. I can coordinate crisis response better from there. You!” He pointed at one of the harried-looking elves who was scuttling by with a large bundle under her arm.

“Yes, Santa?”

“Stay here and guard this door. As of this moment you are officially relieved from toymaking duties until further notice. If anything happens, you let me know immediately. Do you understand?”

The elf saluted sharply and stood at attention, her bells jingling authoritatively. “Yes, Mr. Claus!”

Santa didn’t even acknowledge her. He simply grabbed Dr. Evergreen’s arm and began to run.

“I was afraid this would happen,” he panted.

Doctor Evergreen pulled himself to a stop, forcing Santa to turn around. They were at the intersection of two corridors. “You knew about this, didn’t you! You knew something like this was going to happen!”

“Not now, Doctor Evergreen. Come on!”

But Doctor Evergreen was adamant. “No, Santa. Tell me what’s happening.”

Santa sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I guess I did know that something was going to happen.”

“So tell me!”

Santa took a deep breath. “Project Epiphany. It was your predecessor’s idea. We thought we could disable the lower brain functions in elves and injecting them with a reanimation tincture I created and make productivity skyrocket.”

Doctor Evergreen blinked in shock. “What! And you didn’t tell me!”

“It was a failure. The things were unstoppable. We couldn’t kill them. We finally just drove them out into the Arctic waste and hoped that nature would take its course.”

“The Arctic Circle,” Doctor Evergreen muttered. “It’s just like a deep freeze out there. You should have known when you saw that elf encased in the ice!”

Santa shook his head sadly. “I just assumed all the zombies were dead. I had no idea what Jenny had found.”

“You just forgot, didn’t you?” Doctor Evergreen was flabbergasted. “I can’t believe it! You just forgot!”

“Okay, so I’m a bad Santa. Let’s just get back to my office.”

There was a loud scream from the right. It was followed by another scream, and then the familiar moans: “Brrrrraaaaaaaiiiiiinnnnnssss!” This was followed by a ghastly high pitched giggle.

Doctor Evergreen looked back to the lab. The door was still shut. What on earth was happening?

“The third door,” Santa said.

Doctor Evergreen’s heart sank. “I swear I didn’t know!”

“I ought to just leave you here,” Santa snarled. But then he grabbed Doctor Evergreen’s arm and began to run again.

#

Doctor Evergreen stood silently watching the carnage on one of the closed circuit TV screens in the Big Guy’s office. The number of zombies shambling through the corridors of the workshop had already tripled. Even now he could see Jenny and another elf fighting each other for the brains of a young elf in a Programmers’ Union uniform. His stomach turned at the sight. “What are we going to do, Santa?”

Santa said nothing for a long moment. Then he sighed. “We’re going to have to go with emergency plan Omega Z.”

“Omega Z? Nuke the facility from orbit? But you can’t! It’s only a week to Christmas! The toys!”

“We’ve got no choice. Get into the escape hatch, and I’ll initiate the detonation sequence from here.” He punched the intercom button again. “Miss Gingerbread, I want you to make an evacuation announcement. Anyone still able to leave the workshop must do so within ten minutes. We’re going Omega Z.”

“Goodness gracious!” Miss Gingerbread squeaked. “For real?”

“Yes, for real. Now do it! Then get out of the building as quickly as you can.” He turned to Doctor Evergreen. “Move it!” He typed a series of commands into his computer, and a panel on the south wall of his office slid aside, revealing a black tunnel.

Doctor Evergreen ran for the tunnel and ducked inside. He heard Miss Gingerbread’s voice start to blast over the PA system: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is an evacuation alert. All elves who are still alive must evacuate the facility within ten minutes. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”

Doctor Evergreen paused to listen to the voice. This was the worst thing he could imagine. Santa’s workshop invaded by zombies. The entire facility being nuked, and only a week before Christmas! How could this be happening?

“Move it!” Santa’s voice was loud and commanding from behind him. He looked behind him; Santa was crawling into the tunnel behind him, barreling on him like a giant boulder. Doctor Evergreen didn’t have a chance to turn around completely before Santa was on him, shoving him backwards down the tunnel. He scrambled to get himself turned around, but he couldn’t get a grip on the floor or walls. Then high pitched voices screamed out, “Santa braiiinnnssss!!!”, and then Santa screamed.

Heart pounding, Doctor Evergreen ran.

#

When he opened his eyes again, Doctor Evergreen found himself out in the snow. Before him, flames leaped skyward from the ruins of the workshop. Smoke billowed upwards, colored orange and red by the flames. Elves milled about them, looking lost and confused. Doctor Evergreen counted less than a dozen of them; Santa had employed close to five thousand.

“Holy crumbcakes,” he said. Grief welled up in Doctor Evergreen’s chest, and he fell to his knees. “This is all my fault!” he wailed, pounding the sides of his head. “Everyone’s dead! I should never have released that elf from the ice! I should have known where that third door was!”

One of the other elves patted Doctor Evergreen on the shoulder. “There, there,” she said. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.” She paused. “Could you?”

Doctor Evergreen shook his head. “I suppose not. Well, there’s nothing for us to rebuild at this point. We’ll have to find a new Santa and issue some press releases. I think…”

He was interrupted by a sound overhead, something like a jet engine, something like hoofbeats. He looked up, saw a miniature sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer.

Santa.

Doctor Evergreen felt his heart sink. Santa had a list, and he would be checking it twice.

And as he drove out of sight, Doctor Evergreen heard him exclaim, “BRAAAAAAAAIIINNNNSSSS!!”

THE END

More on Mr. Crawford at www.mossroot.com

Jenny Cupcake tapped the ice with the butt of her Uzi. “You okay in there?”

The elf made no reply; didn’t blink, didn’t move, made no sign that he had even registered Jenny’s presence.

She peered at him. His uniform was outdated but identified as a worker from Sector 7-G. A ragged stump marked the spot where his left thumb had been savagely removed from his hand, and angry looking red gashes criss-crossed his palm. He had probably been a wood worker.

She shouldered her weapon and tapped the ice in front of the elf’s face. “Hey,” she said again, softer than before. Her voice was higher pitched than anyone else’s in Perimeter Patrol, and she always worried she might cause an avalanche and bury the entire workshop with a careless word or shout.

The elf’s left eyelid twitched.

Jenny jumped back, and cried out. Her heart pounded in her throat. Goodness gracious, she thought. He’s still alive! She smiled, and then started to giggle. She always did when she was nervous.

A hideous squawk erupted from beside her, and she jumped again, looking around wildly. When it sounded again, she chided herself. It was just her walkie-talkie. Trying to bring her giggling under control, she flipped it open. “Prancer Five here.”

A deep voice boomed out of the speaker. It was the Big Guy himself. “Report!”

Jenny cleared her throat. “I think we’ve got a situation here Santa.”

“What kind of situation?” The Big Guy’s voice was terse. He was in a bad mood. It was just a week before Christmas, and production was backlogged, particularly in the Electronics division. The programmers were having a hard time integrating USB expansion ports into the new robot dolls and making them compatible with the newest circuits from YoYoDyne. They kept protesting that it was a hardware issue, not a software issue, but Santa was unsympathetic. Quotas had to be met.

“I think you should come out here and take a look,” Jenny said.

The walkie-talkie vibrated in her hand even though she couldn’t hear anything. Santa was grumbling. “Where are you?”

“Quadrant 2L. South side of Peppermint Mountain.” She relayed her exact coordinates.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes. Santa out.”

Jenny Cupcake released the “talk” button and reattached the walkie talkie to her belt clip. “Well, old buddy,” she told the elf, “we’re going to get you out of there and back to work.” She started to giggle again, completely unaware that within just a few hours she would be giggling even more wildly, and for the very last time in her life.

#

Doctor Evergreen stared at the frozen elf. It did indeed wear an outdated Sector 7G uniform. Seriously outdated. Like, by two hundred years. Doctor Evergreen hadn’t seen that particular pattern and fabric in Santa’s workshop since the 1700′s. “You found him buried on Peppermint Mountain?”

Jenny Cupcake nodded, the bell on her cap jingling merrily. “I found him in Quadrant 2L. I think an avalanche uncovered him.”

“Hm.” Doctor Evergreen peered at the body.

“The point is,” Santa thundered from behind him, “is this elf still alive? Can we put him back to work?”

Doctor Evergreen sighed. It was always work for the Big Guy. “He could be. If he is I’ll have to be very careful in reviving him.”

“Oh, he’s alive!” Jenny blurted out. “I saw his eye move!”

Santa laughed, a cheery “HO! HO! HO!” that reverberated throughout Sick Bay.

Doctor Evergreen made his way over to his instruments. “Then I can definitely revive him. He should be back online in just a few hours.”

“He’ll need reeducation,” Santa said. “We phased out Sector 7-G in 1947. Nobody wants wooden toys anymore.” He yawned and stretched. “Give me a holler when you’re done, will you? I’m gonna take a nap.” He lumbered out of the room, muttering to himself.

“Can I stay and watch?” Jenny Cupcake asked. “I’ve never seen one of your experiments.”

Doctor Evergreen looked at the young elf, and decided she was probably harmless. He shrugged. “Sure. But don’t touch anything.”

“Oh, I won’t!” Jenny bounced to a workbench and jumped up, laying her Uzi down next to her. “I’ll be perfectly good!”

Doctor Evergreen grunted. As long as Jenny stayed out of his way, she would be fine. Of course, the whole thing couldn’t have come at a worse time. He was pretty sure he was on the verge of a major breakthrough in advanced toymaking. If this newest project worked out, then the elves would be able to control toy assembly nanomachines through a special neuro-computer interface. It was exciting research, but none of his test subjects had survived for long after he had put the implants in their brains.

The frozen elf gave no hint that he was alive. Doctor Evergreen wondered how to proceed. He hadn’t been in this lab for long, only eighty-three years. His predecessor, who had vanished under very strange circumstances, had been a sloppy note taker and an even worse house keeper. Doctor Evergreen was still trying to work out the man’s organization system, and it seemed he was always losing tools. He kept stumbling over items labeled “Project Epiphany”, but there was no hint as to what that might have been.

At last he decided the simplest route was the best, and he picked up an ice pick from his medical bag. He wiped the tip clean of his last test subject’s brains, and began picking at the ice.

After he had been at it for an hour, he heard snoring behind him. He turned. Jenny Cupcake was fast asleep on the workbench, cuddled up with her submachine gun the way children worldwide cuddled with their teddy bears. The sight was adorable, and Doctor Evergreen smiled. Someday she’d make someone an excellent specimen.

A sharp crack from the block of ice drew Doctor Evergreen’s attention back to the frozen elf. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, not sure he was really seeing what he thought he saw. Just a moment before the elf had been lifeless and still; now its eyes rolled wildly in its head and the muscles in its jaws worked. Its mouth was still blocked by ice, so it couldn’t talk. It looked like it was suffocating.

“Oh my goodness!” Doctor Evergreen exclaimed. He had expected that hours of resuscitation efforts lay before him. “Keep calm,” he told the elf. “I’ll have you out of there in a jiffy!”

He took up his ice pick again and tapped away at the ice that trapped the elf, working first on its face so that it could talk and breath.

Finally a chunk of ice fell away from the lower half of the elf’s face. Working carefully with a pair of tongs, Doctor Evergreen removed a chunk of ice from its mouth.

“There you go,” he said. “What do you say to that?”

The elf said nothing coherent, but its mouth dropped open and air rushed out. Doctor Evergreen staggered and nearly fell over when the stench of its exhalation assaulted his nose. Then the elf let out a low, drawn-out groan.

“Huh,” Doctor Evergreen said. He leaned closer to the elf, and its jaws snapped shut with a loud clack. Doctor Evergreen jumped back. The poor thing was disoriented. A couple of centuries trapped in ice would do that to anyone, even one of Santa’s elves, who were bred to handle extreme conditions.

Doctor Evergreen chipped away more ice. It came off in big chunks now. When it was all gone and the elf was completely free, Doctor Evergreen took a step back and looked over his handiwork with pride. Sure, the elf was confused and probably terrified, but it would get better with time; and then it would be re-educated, and back online in no time, probably in a sector that needed less specialized skills.

Then the elf’s mouth dropped open again, and this time a single sound came out. He said a single long, drawn out word as he lifted his left hand and reached out toward Doctor Evergreen. “Braaaaaaaaiinnsss!”

“Holy crumbcakes!” It was the foulest curse Doctor Evergreen knew, and he stepped back as he said it. The elf reached for him.

“Calm down!” Doctor Evergreen shouted. “You’ll be all better soon!”

“Braaaaaaaaaiiinnnsssss!” the elf repeated. It took a shaky step forward.

Doctor Evergreen stumbled backwards and reached out blindly behind him, hoping to grab something to use as a weapon. He bumped into a chair, nearly knocking himself over. He grabbed the chair and sent it hurtling on its casters toward the elf.

The chair bumped into the elf and it fell over on his back. Doctor Evergreen let himself relax for just a moment. How was he going to treat this? This was going to take more than a couple of days in a re-education camp.

“Hey!” a new voice squeaked. Doctor Evergreen turned. Jenny Cupcake had woken up; she sat on the workbench, looking confused.

“Jenny, get out of here,” Doctor Evergreen shouted at her.

The shambling elf thing on the floor raised its eyes to Jenny. “Giiiiiirrrrrrllllll braiiiiiinnnsss!” he hissed. And with a speed that Doctor Evergreen would not have thought possible, the elf was up on its feet and shambling toward Jenny.

“Goodness gracious!” Jenny cried. She reached down, grabbed her Uzi and disengaged the safety.

“Don’t shoot!” Doctor Evergreen yelled. Jenny was good with her guns, he knew, but even a carefully applied spray of bullets would destroy his sensitive equipment and he still didn’t know what half of it did.

“Eat hot lead, you motherfucking zombie!” Jenny shouted. She squeezed the trigger, and her submachine gun spat out bullets and smoke. Shells flew everywhere. Doctor Evergreen was well out of Jenny’s line of fire, but he dropped to the ground anyway, despairing as he watched glassware shatter and computers explode.

Several bullets hit the shambling elf. The elf staggered backwards, but did not fall over.

“Holy crumbcakes,” Doctor Evergreen cursed again.

Jenny’s gun suddenly ceased firing. Doctor Evergreen risked a look up and saw her fussing with the weapon and cursing. And, strangely, she was giggling, a high pitched little laugh that was somehow even more disturbing than the zombie elf’s moans.

“Jenny, look out!” he shouted at her.

Jenny looked up just in time to see the elf — bullet ridden, slimy and still wet from the ice that had so recently entombed it — stumbling toward her. She screamed as it grabbed her and spun her around so that she faced away from him. It bit into the back of her skull and then pulled its mouth, flesh and hair dripping from its mouth. It spat out bone fragments, then took another bite.

Doctor Evergreen watched for a moment, then clambered to his feet. It was too late for Jenny. The elf — no, the creature — chewed, and Jenny screamed that she was blind. Well, no wonder, Doctor Evergreen thought wildly. The thing had eaten her occipital lobe.

But there was no time for analysis. Doctor Evergreen had to take advantage of the creature’s distraction. He ran out of Sick Bay and slammed the door behind him.

This, he thought, was not going to end well. Not end well at all.

He took a moment to catch his breath, then reached down for his cell phone. Damn. He’d left it in the lab.

“Code red!” he shouted. He began to run toward the Big Guy’s office. “Code red! Santa! Help!”

#

Five minutes later, Doctor Evergreen stood in front of Santa’s big desk, wringing his hands as the Big Guy watched the tape of the events in the lab. Santa was a big guy. There was no denying that. Even the huge easy chair that Mrs. Claus had given him last year was too small for him now.

On the screen, in grainy black and white, the elf bit through the back of Jenny Cupcake’s skull and started eating her brain. The tiny speakers conveyed Jenny’s screams — and her odd giggles — in a voice as tinny and small as the electronic chip in a musical Christmas card.

When the tape was done, Santa punched the power button on the monitor. “Huh. Didn’t see that coming.”

“This is horrible.” Doctor Evergreen kept rubbing her hands on he moaned. “All my equipment smashed, all my research gone. Even my predecessor’s research. What am I going to do?”

“Doctor Evergreen, there’s a brain-eating monster in there, and all you can worry about is your research notes?”

Doctor Evergreen looked up at Santa, who looked genuinely annoyed. “Sorry, sir,” he said.

Santa huffed and then looked back at the monitor, though he left it switched off. He leaned back in his chair and templed his fingers before him. “We have to figure out how to kill these things.”

“There’s just the one.”

Santa looked surprised, but recovered his composure quickly. “Of course. Just one. I meant, let’s hope there aren’t any more of those things out there. So we need to figure out how to kill this thing. In case any more show up.”

Doctor Evergreen sat down in sat down in the chair and thought hard. None of his research had prepared him for this. But he remembered some scary movies he had watched late one night back in the 60′s; he’d been so stoned that night it was amazing he remembered anything about it at all, but one piece of information floated up. “I think,” he said slowly, “that if we cut off its head or destroy its brain or something, that might kill it.”

“You think so?” Santa asked.

“Yes. Definitely.”

“Excellent.” He leaned forward and pressed the TALK button on his intercom. “Miss Gingerbread, would you contact Mr. Peartree and have him report to me immediately?”

A tiny voice squeaked through the intercom. “Yes, Mr. Claus.”

Santa turned to Doctor Evergreen. “Peartree’s my finest sniper. He should be able to shoot the thing right in the head.”

The door opened just a minutes later, and an elf stepped through. At just under three feet tall, he was taller than most elves. The clothes he wore were so black they seemed to eat the light. His black curly-toed looked like puddles of oil. The bells on his toes and his cap were muffled, and barely jingled at all when he walked. Large mirror-lensed sunglasses hid his eyes, and a deadly looking rifle hung from a strap over his shoulder. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, and the smoke encircled his head like a wreath.

Santa stood up slowly from his seat. “Mr. Peartree. “Thank you for coming.”

“Yeah.” The deadly-looking elf’s speech was as terse as his outfit was dark. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and crushed it out under his heel. “What’s the job?”

Santa swung around his monitor around to face Mr. Peartree, and typed a few keystrokes on his computer. The scene of the elf eating Jenny’s brain replayed itself. “We need a good clean shot to the head. Just one should do it. Do you know that room?”

Mr. Peartree lit another cigarette and took a long drag. “Sick Bay. No problem. I know all three entrances to that room.”

“There are only two!” Doctor Evergreen said.

Mr. Peartree smirked. “That you know of.”

“That’s enough,” Santa said. “Mr. Peartree, this needs to be done as soon as possible. You’ll be paid the standard rate. Just be careful. That thing is deadly.”

“No problem.” Mr. Peartree spun on his heel and left the room as liquidly as he had arrived. The door closed behind him.

Santa sat back down on his chair; it creaked ominously. “Let’s watch,” he said. He twisted a dial on the side of the monitor and a new picture appeared: a live streaming image of the medical lab.

The elf’s face, still dripping red and gray, dominated the screen. Its mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, as it looked back and forth.

Doctor Evergreen had been staring at the elf so intensely that when a black shadow passed before it, momentarily blocking the view, he jumped. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.” Santa fiddled with the controls, and the view pulled back, showing the elf’s entire body, and the now-empty workbench that it stood before.

“Doctor Evergreen?”

“Yes, Santa?”

“Where’s Jenny?”

Doctor Evergreen shuddered. Jenny’s body should have still been on the workbench where the elf had dropped it. But it wasn’t. “I don’t –”

Then the shape passed before the camera again. This time, Doctor Evergreen saw it for what it was. “It can’t be,” he breathed.

Santa leaned forward, squinting. Then he reached into his breast pocket and removed a pair of reading glasses and slipped them on to his face. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“It’s Jenny!” Doctor Evergreen exclaimed. “But that’s impossible! I watched the thing eat her brain!” He swallowed past a huge lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat.

“Do you know what this means?”

Santa sighed. “Taking out their brain’s not gonna kill them.”

Doctor’s Evergreen’s stomach lurched as he watched Jenny’s reanimated corpse shamble around in the lab, moaning for brains and giggling. “Holy crumbcakes. We’ve got to stop Mr. Peartree!”

Santa picked up his walkie talkie and adjusted the frequency. “Mr. Peartree, come in! Mr. Peartree, do you read me?”

The walkie talkie clicked and then fell silent. Santa cursed, then punched the “talk” button on the intercom. “Miss Gingerbread, assemble an armed response team at the medical lab on the double!”

“But Santa, I can’t.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because last week you reassigned all security personnel to Toy Production. Don’t you remember?”

Santa swore again, then picked up his walkie talkie once more. “Mr. Peartree, if you can hear me, I want you to abort the mission immediately. Do you read me? Abort!”

He put the walkie talkie down, then stood up again, pulled open one of the drawers of his desk and pulled out a pistol that Doctor Evergreen thought looked as big as he was.

Santa flipped open the chamber and spun it, checking the cartridges. Then he shot Doctor Evergreen an urgent look. “Let’s roll.”

#

Mr. Peartree slid through the corridors of Santa’s complex, unnoticed by the other elves that toiled there. Half of that was stealth; the other half was the overworked and burned out state that every elf went through this time of year. His walkie talkie squawked at him one, and he stabbed the “Off” button reflexively. He had a job to do.

The door to the medical lab was closed but unlocked. He chuckled. The creature, whatever it was, obviously hadn’t worked out the basic principle of the doorknob.

He raised his gun, keeping it up with his left hand, and placed his right hand on the knob, flattening himself against the door itself. He counted to three, slowly, under his breath, then twisted the knob and thrust the door open. He took a step inside and brought the gun’s sights level with his eye.

He had been expecting the monster to be standing right in the middle of the room, but it wasn’t there. He grinned. “The chase is on,” he muttered. It was the most dangerous game. Elf.

He scanned the room slowly, then he heard a low moan to his left, like someone trying to talk through mud. “Brrraaaaaaaiiiinnnnssss!”

Mr. Peartree spun and fired his rifle. It was a perfect shot; a tiny black hole appeared in the elf’s forehead. But instead of falling over and dying, it simply kept shambling forward.

“Oh, so you’re gonna play tough, huh?” Mr. Peartree grinned; he liked a challenge. He took aim again, this time right at the undead elf’s eye.

But before he could fire, another voice welled up behind him, a high pitched squeaky voice.

“Brrraaaaaaiiiinnnssss!”

Mr. Peartree turned. Jenny Cupcake stood right before him. He recognized her; they’d actually been married for some time, but she’d walked out on him, claiming that she could no longer handle what he did for a living. Now, it appeared, she was an undead brain-eating monster from hell.

Some people, it seemed, never change.

Mr. Peartree aimed his rifle again, and a thrill went through him. “See you in hell, bitch!” he cried at her.

He never fired. The back of his head exploded into a raging storm of sharp pain. Everything went red, then black. His head felt oddly cool, like there was a draft in the room.

“Ah, shit,” he muttered. And that was it for Mr. Peartree.

#

“What do we do? What do we do? What do we do?” Doctor Evergreen was panicking. He and Santa had not made it to the lab in time; in fact, Jenny and the first elf had just finished eating Mr. Peartree’s brains when they’d shown up. If Santa hadn’t thought quickly and pulled the lab door shut with a slam, they would have been eaten for sure.

“Where are the other doors?” Santa demanded, interrupted Doctor Evergreen’s frantic mantra.

“There’s only one other door,” Doctor Evergreen replied. “It’s in the back. It’s locked and there are dozens of heavy crates in front of it.”

“What about the third door?”

“There is no third door. Mr. Peartree was just messing with me, I’m sure of it.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Doctor Evergreen nodded. “Of course I’m sure.” He realized he was shouting, and made a deliberate effort to lower his voice. “If there was a third door, I’d know about it by now. I’ve been all over that lab.”

Santa regarded Doctor Evergreen for a long moment. Then he said, “All right. Let’s get back to my office. I can coordinate crisis response better from there. You!” He pointed at one of the harried-looking elves who was scuttling by with a large bundle under her arm.

“Yes, Santa?”

“Stay here and guard this door. As of this moment you are officially relieved from toymaking duties until further notice. If anything happens, you let me know immediately. Do you understand?”

The elf saluted sharply and stood at attention, her bells jingling authoritatively. “Yes, Mr. Claus!”

Santa didn’t even acknowledge her. He simply grabbed Dr. Evergreen’s arm and began to run.

“I was afraid this would happen,” he panted.

Doctor Evergreen pulled himself to a stop, forcing Santa to turn around. They were at the intersection of two corridors. “You knew about this, didn’t you! You knew something like this was going to happen!”

“Not now, Doctor Evergreen. Come on!”

But Doctor Evergreen was adamant. “No, Santa. Tell me what’s happening.”

Santa sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I guess I did know that something was going to happen.”

“So tell me!”

Santa took a deep breath. “Project Epiphany. It was your predecessor’s idea. We thought we could disable the lower brain functions in elves and injecting them with a reanimation tincture I created and make productivity skyrocket.”

Doctor Evergreen blinked in shock. “What! And you didn’t tell me!”

“It was a failure. The things were unstoppable. We couldn’t kill them. We finally just drove them out into the Arctic waste and hoped that nature would take its course.”

“The Arctic Circle,” Doctor Evergreen muttered. “It’s just like a deep freeze out there. You should have known when you saw that elf encased in the ice!”

Santa shook his head sadly. “I just assumed all the zombies were dead. I had no idea what Jenny had found.”

“You just forgot, didn’t you?” Doctor Evergreen was flabbergasted. “I can’t believe it! You just forgot!”

“Okay, so I’m a bad Santa. Let’s just get back to my office.”

There was a loud scream from the right. It was followed by another scream, and then the familiar moans: “Brrrrraaaaaaaiiiiiinnnnnssss!” This was followed by a ghastly high pitched giggle.

Doctor Evergreen looked back to the lab. The door was still shut. What on earth was happening?

“The third door,” Santa said.

Doctor Evergreen’s heart sank. “I swear I didn’t know!”

“I ought to just leave you here,” Santa snarled. But then he grabbed Doctor Evergreen’s arm and began to run again.

#

Doctor Evergreen stood silently watching the carnage on one of the closed circuit TV screens in the Big Guy’s office. The number of zombies shambling through the corridors of the workshop had already tripled. Even now he could see Jenny and another elf fighting each other for the brains of a young elf in a Programmers’ Union uniform. His stomach turned at the sight. “What are we going to do, Santa?”

Santa said nothing for a long moment. Then he sighed. “We’re going to have to go with emergency plan Omega Z.”

“Omega Z? Nuke the facility from orbit? But you can’t! It’s only a week to Christmas! The toys!”

“We’ve got no choice. Get into the escape hatch, and I’ll initiate the detonation sequence from here.” He punched the intercom button again. “Miss Gingerbread, I want you to make an evacuation announcement. Anyone still able to leave the workshop must do so within ten minutes. We’re going Omega Z.”

“Goodness gracious!” Miss Gingerbread squeaked. “For real?”

“Yes, for real. Now do it! Then get out of the building as quickly as you can.” He turned to Doctor Evergreen. “Move it!” He typed a series of commands into his computer, and a panel on the south wall of his office slid aside, revealing a black tunnel.

Doctor Evergreen ran for the tunnel and ducked inside. He heard Miss Gingerbread’s voice start to blast over the PA system: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is an evacuation alert. All elves who are still alive must evacuate the facility within ten minutes. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”

Doctor Evergreen paused to listen to the voice. This was the worst thing he could imagine. Santa’s workshop invaded by zombies. The entire facility being nuked, and only a week before Christmas! How could this be happening?

“Move it!” Santa’s voice was loud and commanding from behind him. He looked behind him; Santa was crawling into the tunnel behind him, barreling on him like a giant boulder. Doctor Evergreen didn’t have a chance to turn around completely before Santa was on him, shoving him backwards down the tunnel. He scrambled to get himself turned around, but he couldn’t get a grip on the floor or walls. Then high pitched voices screamed out, “Santa braiiinnnssss!!!”, and then Santa screamed.

Heart pounding, Doctor Evergreen ran.

#

When he opened his eyes again, Doctor Evergreen found himself out in the snow. Before him, flames leaped skyward from the ruins of the workshop. Smoke billowed upwards, colored orange and red by the flames. Elves milled about them, looking lost and confused. Doctor Evergreen counted less than a dozen of them; Santa had employed close to five thousand.

“Holy crumbcakes,” he said. Grief welled up in Doctor Evergreen’s chest, and he fell to his knees. “This is all my fault!” he wailed, pounding the sides of his head. “Everyone’s dead! I should never have released that elf from the ice! I should have known where that third door was!”

One of the other elves patted Doctor Evergreen on the shoulder. “There, there,” she said. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.” She paused. “Could you?”

Doctor Evergreen shook his head. “I suppose not. Well, there’s nothing for us to rebuild at this point. We’ll have to find a new Santa and issue some press releases. I think…”

He was interrupted by a sound overhead, something like a jet engine, something like hoofbeats. He looked up, saw a miniature sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer.

Santa.

Doctor Evergreen felt his heart sink. Santa had a list, and he would be checking it twice.

And as he drove out of sight, Doctor Evergreen heard him exclaim, “BRAAAAAAAAIIINNNNSSSS!!”

THE END

Jennifer managed to put a pair of those stupid foam antlers and a green wreath on one of the big ones. He was the closest Eater we could find to Santa. In the sub-freezing temperature, he moved like he was swimming through pudding. Most of the wrinkled and withered corpses just froze. The fresh ones from autumn or the ones that died with meat still on them were still active until the snows fell and the temps dropped below freezing for more than a day or so. Fat Santa had a red suit – bloody coveralls – and a big smile – he had chewed off his own lips like most Eaters – and his belly jiggled with rotten, liquid organs and whatever sludge that made it down his bloated, blackened neck.

After a few minutes of watching it step and pause, turn and pause, lurch and pause, the novelty wore off and I crushed his fat head with a tire iron. Cheers rose from the circle of children gathered near the safe house fire door. I imagined a generation from now, when this is over and we start rebuilding, maybe children will gather out in some wide open back yard, laughing and taking sticks to a cartoon paper zombie that spills candy from its ruptured skull instead of greasy, yellow gore.

When the wolves howled from the edge of the woods we knew it was time to go back inside. Jennifer gathered the children and looked back at me from the shadow of the fire door. I could see the eyes of hungry predators shining in the reflection of sun off the forest snow. Unchallenged by the Eaters and unafraid of humans, they reminded us that there were more things to fear in this new world than flesh-eating monsters.

As I reached the fire door, they had closed half the distance between the tree line and our safe house. Thin, dirty and crazed from hunger, they showed no sign of weakness or mercy. I closed and latched the door. Jennifer and the kids had already marched to the far end of the hallway and into the communal safe house, sharing their Christmas morning stories with the other families in front of our great hearth. I waited at the door until I heard the dogs scratching against the steel, slamming into the metal with enough force that I’m sure they shattered bone. They wouldn’t get in. The door was thick enough to keep out a horde of roaming Eaters in summer.

Above me, from a window just above the door, my son Michael leaned out and fired six careful shots. Six yelps. Silence. I heard the signal and opened the door.

Christmas dinner.