Christmas With the Dead by Joe R. Lansdale Page A

the
Santa, and pulled them into the house. He plugged them in and happily
discovered they lit right up. But the strings of lights were still a problem.
He searched the garage, and only found three spare bulbs— green ones—and when
he screwed them in, only one worked. If he put up those strings they would be
patchy. It wasn’t as if anyone but himself would care, but a job worth doing
was a job worth doing right, as his dad always said.
    He
smiled.
    Ella,
his wife, would have said it wasn’t about doing a job right, it was more about fulfilling his compulsions. She would laugh at him now. Back
then a crooked picture on the wall would make him crazy. Now there was nothing
neat about the house. It was a fortress. It was a mess. It was a place to stay,
but it wasn’t a home.
    Two
years ago it ended being a home when he shot his wife and daughter in the head
with the twelve gauge , put their bodies in the
dumpster down the street, poured gas on them, and set them on fire.
    All
atmosphere of home was gone. Now, with him being the most desirable snack in
town, just going outside the fence was a dangerous endeavor. And being inside
he was as lonely as the guest of honor at a firing squad.
     
    * * *
     
    Calvin picked the strapped shotgun off
the couch and flung it over his shoulder, adjusted the .38 revolver in his belt, grabbed the old fashioned tire tool
from where it leaned in the corner, and went back to the garage.
    He cranked up the truck, which he always
backed in, and using the automatic garage opener, pressed it.
    He had worked hard on the mechanism so
that it would rise quickly and smoothly, and today was no exception. It yawned
wide like a mouth opening. Three zombies, one he recognized faintly as Marilyn
Paulson, a girl he had dated in high school, were standing outside. She had
been his first love, his first sexual partner, and now half of her face dangled
like a wash cloth on a clothes line. Her hair was falling out, and her eyes
were set far back in her head, like dark marbles in crawfish holes.
    The two others were men. One was
reasonably fresh, but Calvin didn’t recognize him. The other was his next door
neighbor, Phil Tooney . Phil looked close to falling
apart. Already his face had collapsed, his nose was
gone, as well as both ears.
    As Calvin roared the big four- seater pickup out of the garage, he hit Marilyn with the
bumper and she went under, the wing mirror clipped Phil and sent him winding.
He glanced in the rearview as he hit the garage mechanism, was pleased to see
the door go down before the standing zombie could get inside. From time to time
they got in when he left or returned, and he had to seal them in, get out and
fight or shoot them. It was a major annoyance, knowing you had that waiting for
you when you got back from town.
    The last thing he saw as he drove away
was the remaining zombie eating a mashed Marilyn as she squirmed on the driveway. He had shattered her legs
with the truck. She was unable to fight back. The way his teeth clamped into
her and pulled, it was as if he were trying to bite old bubble gum loose from
the side walk.
    Another glance in the mirror showed him Phil
was back on his feet. He and the other zombie got into it then, fighting over
the writhing meal on the cement. And then Calvin turned the truck along
Seal Street
, out of their view, and rolled on toward
town.
     
    * * *
     
    Driving, he glanced at all the Christmas
decorations. The lights strung on houses, no longer lit. The yard decorations,
most of them knocked over: Baby Jesus flung south from an overturned manager, a
deflated blow-up Santa Clause in a sleigh with hooked up reindeer, now lying
like a puddle of lumpy paint spills in the high grass of a yard fronting a
house with an open door.
    As he drove, Calvin glanced at the
dumpster by the side of the road. The one where he had put
the bodies of his wife and daughter and burned them. It was, as far as
he was concerned, their tomb.
    One morning, driving into