tree stand frantically with bloodied hands, before the zombies get him.
Even over Dad’s screams I hear the crunching of teeth on bone as I sprint past his writhing arms and bleeding gums.
There are three zombies gnawing on Dad’s admittedly meaty calves; two of them local neighbor kids (I never did like either of them) and one a stranger in a flannel shirt and overalls.
I club them all viciously, brains splattering on the cellar steps and even up onto the ceiling, until they run – or fall – away.
Dad has managed to pull himself into the living room proper as Mom cries into his bald spot and Zach uses Christmas ribbon as tourniquets on both of Dad’s legs.
Zack is frantic, crying, wrapping like a mad man, bloody like a serial killer and I kneel to him and say, “It’s too late for that, Zack.”
He ties them anyway as we yank Dad up and turn him around, until his back is against the wall and he’s staring at us with sweat – and blood – pouring down his broad forehead.
Just then the living room picture window implodes and Echo steps calmly over the shards to step next to the fallen Christmas tree.
He sizes the scene up in seconds; the blood, the safe room door, Dad’s gnarled legs, Zack’s bloody hands, Mom’s useless tears.
“April,” he says somberly, tenderly, but I can’t run to him now.
Dad is mumbling so I lean in, his breath already foul, his eyes turning yellow, the Dad I knew becoming the monster I’ll see in my nightmares 20 years from now.
“What, Dad?” I ask, leaning in more closely. “What’s that? I can’t hear you.”
More loudly this time, he rasps two words: “Kill. Me.”
I stand, and back away; all my training failing me now as Mom clatters into a dining room chair, guzzling the rest of her wine in two large swallows as she looks away from the man she no longer knows.
Zack hides behind her, clutching to her like he did as a little tyke on the first day of kindergarten.
“Take them,” Echo orders me, reaching for the spare shotgun in the open closet. “Upstairs, out back, wherever, April; take them somewhere so they can’t hear.”
There is a low growling on the floor behind him, and when I look up Dad is sniffing Echo’s leg like a bear at a fresh campsite.
“Hurry,” he says as I gather Mom and Zack tightly to me, shuffling them past the room where Jimbo lies congealing and around the corner toward the den, where I crank up the Christmas music on Dad’s old school stereo as loud as it can go.
As Bing Crosby croons, as the snow falls, as Mom covers her ears and Zack stares out the window at a dozen dragging zombies, I hold my ear to the door.
I’ll never know what Dad said to Echo, if anything; or what Echo said to Dad.
I only know that I don’t flinch when I hear the shotgun blast, and that Echo has cleaned the blood off – all of it – when he finally comes to get us long hours after the latest infestation has come and gone.
With the sirens racing down the street, and lights flashing in their wake, we spend the rest of Christmas the only way we can these days; hunkered down, stomachs rumbling, with the ones we love.
Or, at least, the ones we trust…
* * * * *
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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