The kid looks up guiltily, as if I don’t already know the way Donors think of us, or talk about us, or how they try to trap us at the borders. As if I care, or can blame them.
“Home for Christmas” plays next, and he taps along quietly with his mittens on his brown corduroy pants.
“Do you have a name?” he asks, braving a closer look at me. To his credit, he only winces twice.
“I used to,” I say. “Now they just call me Scout.”
“Why?”
“Cuz that’s what I do. I walk ahead, a few miles at least, and sniff things out. If nothing’s doing, if there’s nothing to eat, I come back. If something’s happening, a fresh grave or road kill, I find it first and when I don’t come back, the rest know to follow.”
He looks around, eyes wide and mittens tapping, and not in time to the music. “Don’t worry, they’re hours away from us. Maybe half a day, if the snow keeps up like this.”
He sits back in his seat, but some of the sweetness is gone from his voice when he asks, “But, before it was ‘Scout,’ what was your name?”
“You mean, when I was alive?” He nods, scratching at his woolen cap with matching mittens. “Tracy.”
He wrinkles his nose and pushes his glasses up. “I think I like Scout better.”
I chuckle, dryly. “Me too.”
There is a silence, but no awkward pause this time. I say, “Your turn.”
“I like my taken name better, too.”
“Taken name?”
He shrugs. “When I lost the last of my people, I figured I could call myself whatever I wanted. So I took a name.”
And… nothing. I sigh, making “come on, come on” motions with my hands. My bloody hands. “Which was…?”
He smirks, looking down. “The Caretaker.”
I snort.
He looks up, wrinkles his nose. “Hey, what?”
“You mean, like the wrestler?”
He smiles and slaps a fuzzy palm on his forehead. “No, that’s the Undertaker.”
I nod, still fuzzy on the kid’s logic. “So, why the Caretaker?”
He points over his shoulder and I look up to see a house on the hill. It’s lit, a rarity these days, and then I listen more closely and hear the background hum of a generator. A big one.
“My Dad was the caretaker of the cemetery for a long time, before he went to school to be a funeral director, then he did that. He taught me what to do, after the first outbreak. Just in case, you know. Then, when all his help died during the second one, I took over. We were partners. Then they got him in the last one, and so… this is what I do now.”
I tap my chair, point at his. “You did all this? The funeral? The coffin?”
He nods, proudly.
“Dude, how old are you?”
“Fourteen,” he says, sitting up a little, like it’s going to make him taller, let alone older.
I nod, because… that’s pretty impressive. He looks at me, waits a bit and then says, “And you?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“What, I’m going somewhere?”
“I was seventeen during the first outbreak.”
He nods. “That when it happened? That when they got you?”
I nod. “I was on my way home, my phone was out of juice so I didn’t hear anything on the news. I stopped in front of the TV store, you know, and saw a bunch of zombies on all the screens in the front window. I thought, I thought it was Sean of the Dead 6 or something, you know? Then I recognized City Hall, and the town square and I looked behind me and… well, there they all were. It was too late to run. A few hours later I came to and shuffled out of town. I found some others, like me, ones who could talk, walk, figure, stay alive, stay undead, anyway. That was, well, that was during the first outbreak…”
“Three years ago,” he fills in the date. I nod. He wrinkles his nose again. “You’re old.”
I chuckle, the dizzying electric wave draining out of me, leaving me numb and almost cheerful, or what passes for it in the afterlife. “You don’t know the half of it.”
We sit there, for a minute or two, maybe more. I look around, hear the silence, other than the music. “You’re here alone? No parents? Brothers? Sisters?”
“You got ‘em all,” he says simply. “I mean, you people. You… things.”
I give him that because, we are. Look at me, gore under my nails, brain bits still on the back of my tongue, nothing but a bolt cutter and a gory shovel in my backpack.
“But not me,” I say. “I didn’t kill them.”
He shrugs. “How do you know?”
I shake my head. He’s got me; I don’t. In the beginning, during the angry time, shuffling from town to town in that first month or two, I was like a werewolf during a full moon, or that time Jenny Crackle’s parents went out of town and I drank so much of their vodka I blacked out in the shower.
Back then I ate anything that moved; human, animal, mineral. Their faces meant nothing, and I barely remember the first few. It’s only after a dozen or so brains that things settle down upstairs, that you cool out and find the you hidden inside.
You never get all the way back, mind you, but just enough to know it’s wrong to kill a human. That is, unless they’re trying to kill you.
“You’re right,” I tell him, because he seems to be waiting for something like that. “I don’t know, but I don’t think it was me.”
He waves a hand, offering an awkward half-smile. “It wasn’t you,” he finally says.
“How do you know?”
He pats his pants pocket and pulls out a small pistol, old, with more duct tape on the handle. “Because I hunted down the ones that did kill my family, every last one.”
“No wonder you’re still around,” I say.
He nods, then shakes his head. “Just wasn’t my time yet.”
He’s a weird one, this kid. But then, this has made us all weird, the living and the dead. Still, there are worse ways to celebrate Christmas. He stops talking and listens to the music. We both do. “Winter Wonderland” is jazzy, but “Rudolph” is cheesy.
When the song ends, followed by a quiet moment or two full of static, I start to think of my friends, and what might happen if they find me here. I stand, abruptly, snow falling off my knees. “Hey, where you going?”
“I… I have to go now, before my friends get here.”
He stands, his voice desperate. “Take me with you.”
I laugh, play it off. He tugs my sleeve and a violent notion fills my head. Donors don’t touch Shufflers unless they want trouble; to give it, or get it. You think, with a pistol in his pocket and a house full of coffins, the kid would know that by now.
“I’m serious.” He follows me, down the hill, toward the gate.
“You wouldn’t like my friends.”
He tugs me again and I turn, unable to hide the snarl on my face. He takes a step or two back. “It doesn’t… I mean, from what you said… it doesn’t sound like you’d miss them very much, either.”
I smirk. The kid has a point. I think of Scrim and his bulgy yellow eyes, of Sarah and her mousy, dead voice, of Craft and his bossy, bulging ways. “So?”
“So, so…” We’re walking again, and he doesn’t just follow me, he bumps around at my side. “So I can’t go back to that house anymore. I can’t bury anymore else. Not anymore.”
I nudge him, playfully. “But you’re the Caretaker.”
“And… and… you’re the Scout. So, Scout us someplace new, away from here, away from your friends. We’ll start over, together.”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because the living and the dead aren’t supposed to travel together, don’t you know?”
His eyes grow wide, his smile bright. “That’s just it. You need me, Scout. You need me to get through check points, and borders and places where Shufflers can’t go.”
“I’ve done fine so far,” I brag.
br />
But… have I? Taking the back roads, always at night? The kid’s right. He could open up new doors, take me places I haven’t been yet. We could snap a pair of cuffs on me, he says he’s bringing me in for a bounty, we could go anywhere. It could work. Actually, it would work.
He watches me, the wheels going around in my mind. I wonder how long we’ve been standing here, how much closer my friends are.
“It won’t work,” I say, unconvincing. “I’ll get hungry, you’ll be sleeping, I won’t be able to help myself.”
He taps his pistol pocket and says, “I’ll make sure you’re fed before I go to sleep at night. Please, honest, just… come to the house, let me get some stuff and we’ll be—”
“There’s no time,” I tell him, pulling him through the gate. I yank it shut, loudly, and wind the chain through the doors, kick the lock into some bushes to the side.
“What do you mean? You said I had all night? You said they wouldn’t be here until…”
I keep walking, to the side, past the graveyard. He follows. “I was kidding, okay? I figured I’d talk to you long enough, they’d show up and… Merry Christmas, Zombie Pals.”
“Dick!” he says.
I hang my head. “I’m not proud of it.”
“You were going to let them eat me?”
“Hey, zombies need Christmas, too.”
“But… now?”
I move, as quickly as I can. “Now, I’m saving you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
We walk, and I can tell it’s a pain for him to walk as slowly as I do. But I can’t help it, and no manner of training is going to make me faster. He’ll just have to deal.
We walk up a hill on the edge of town. I know there’s a border crossing coming up ahead of us, and the rest of my crew at my back. This is stupid, and crazy, but it’s also the first time I’ve looked forward to sunrise in the last three years.
“Hey,” he breathes, raggedly, and suddenly I remember how easily humans tire. “Wait up!”
We stand there on the rise, covered in snow, surrounded by trees. Below us Crescent Valley lies quiet and still, the houses lit, if not all by electricity, than the rest by fire pits in the yard. People stand, clustered, armed but clustered, talking, laughing, drinking, their breath coming out like steam.
The Caretaker – yeah, we’re going to have to find him a better taken name – leans against a tree, catching his breath. He’s still got his radio. He must have turned it off somewhere, along the way. I say, “Turn it on, will you?”
He smiles, turns a knob, and “Silent Night” streams out, some instrumental version, guitar only.
“Nice,” we say, almost at the same time.
And it is. Nice, I mean. I don’t know how long it will last, or what the hell I’m thinking, but it is nice. I look from the town to the kid. He’s smiling, shoving up his snow hat, itching his nose.
“Let’s go,” I say.
“Already?”
“There’s another one of those army supply stores down there. Won’t be open tonight. You got any money?”
“Why?”
“Do you have any money?”
“Yeah, I’d have more if you’d let me go home, but since that’s a big ‘no, baby’ I have a few bucks.”
“So we’ll break in, buy some handcuffs, you’ll bring me to the border in the morning.”
“You sure?”
I look behind us, knowing my friends are on the way. “It’s the only way to get rid of my friends, once and for all.”
He nods, and we walk, side by side, to the bottom of the rise. There is an hour or two before dawn, and a mile or two to the Border. Just enough time for me to realize the mess I’ve gotten myself into.
And how to keep from backing out of it…
* * * * *
About the Author
Rusty Fischer specializes in seasonal short stories for the YA paranormal audience. Read more of Rusty’s FREE stories at www.rushingtheseason.com.
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