Read The Undead That Saved Christmas Vol. 2 for Free Online Page A

its ulna and radius extending from rotten flesh.
    “Gotta go,” he said.

    * * *

    Several days later, with Christmas, by his count, less than a week away, Kevin was putting up ornaments on a fake tree. There had been a Hallmark in the Dayton Mall and he’d made good use of the Snoopy ornaments piled on the floor. Growing up, his mom had waited out front of the local Hallmark in order to scoop up whatever was new that year. At the time, he’d thought it stupid. They’re collector’s items, she’d said. Or they will be. Which, to his way of looking at it, hadn’t made it any less stupid.
    But now, hanging the Snoopy with the little typewriter and Snoopy as a World War I ace ornaments on his tree, he sensed a flood of painful memories trying to surface.
    Christ, he thought. He didn’t need this. Not now.
    He heard moaning coming through an open window and he jumped to his feet to take a look. There was no point in it, really. The zombies keyed off of what they saw and heard. Those were about the only two senses that seemed to work, and as long as he stayed out of sight and kept quiet, his little hiding spot up in this third floor apartment was as safe as any spot on Earth.
    But he crossed to the window anyway because checking out the zombies kept him from his memories.
    And that’s when he saw Mindy Matheson for the second time.
    Her group had wandered from the mall over to here, probably in search of the pack of wild dogs Kevin had heard baying in the night the last few days. The group wasn’t especially large. He counted about thirty, though there were almost certainly a few more somewhere out of sight. They wouldn’t be much of a threat when he needed to go out, but even still, there were enough of them that they would probably be sticking around for a few days at least. They hunted collectively, he’d discovered, so the bigger groups tended to stay in one place longer.
    Just as well, Kevin thought. It would give him a chance to talk with Mindy again.
    He slid out the window and into the chilly evening air. It looked like it would probably rain later. There was a ledge just below his window that led over to another building’s roof. From there, he climbed onto a billboard that looked down on the intersection, where Mindy and the others were wandering around, moaning.
    He kept a can of spray paint up here, just in case.
    He gave it a shake and wrote:

    HEY MINDY! I’M IN 318 OVER TO YOUR RIGHT.
    COME ON UP.

    He’d gathered quite a crowd. At a glance, he noticed that he’d underestimated the size of the group by at least half, probably more. Their mangled, upturned faces and ruined hands were all pointed at him, their moans taking on an urgent, pulsing quality that he had come to think of as their feeding call. He saw quite a few of them down there.
    But Mindy wasn’t with them. She was drifting away from the group, stepping back toward a screen of shrubs at the far side of the intersection while the others surged forward.
    “Good girl,” he muttered.
    Moving quickly, he went back to his apartment. The zombies wouldn’t be able to follow, and besides, he had some quick cleaning up to do.

    * * *

    She wouldn’t sit down.
    He offered her a place on his couch, at his table, on the floor. She just shook her head every time he offered.
    Kevin tried small talk, but she wouldn’t answer any of his questions, and after a while, he began to feel foolish and stupid, like he was wasting both their time. He jammed his hands into his pockets and looked around the room for some glimmer of inspiration.
    Nothing.
    “So,” he said. “You know what they call a fast-moving zombie?” He waited a beat, hoping for another of her half smiles. “A zoombie.”
    She just stared at him, and the cold, lifeless emptiness there sent a chill through him.
    “How about a hockey playing zombie?” he said, forcing a grin. “A zombonie. What do you think, huh? I got a million of them. How about this? A zombie, an Irish priest and