The Undead That Saved Christmas Vol. 2 by ed. Lyle Perez-Tinics Read Free Book Online

hot bath maybe...”
    All at once the tears started. One minute she was watching him, quietly and vacantly, and the next she was crying.
    Big, muddy-colored tears ran down her cheeks.
    “Ah shit,” he said. “Mindy, I...I’m sorry. What did I say...I - ”
    “I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “This was a mistake.”
    She moved hurriedly to the door. Every impulse in him told him to go after her, hold the door closed, take her in his arms.
    But he didn’t do it.
    He just watched her go without a word

    * * *

    Mindy shuffled through the rain, her mind a blank.
    Or at least she tried to make it a blank.
    Right now, that wasn’t working out so well.
    It was cold, windy and rainy and cold. Her clothes were little more than rags; they offered no protection whatsoever. For too long now she’d wandered, mindless, emotionless, denying all pain and shame, a true ascetic. The rain tore at her skin like icy razors and chilled her to the bone, but she did not tremble, nor did she cry. She let her arms swing limply by her side, her fingertips grazing the ice that formed on her clothes, as she kept pace with the horde of dead things brushing against her.
    Thought was the enemy, not the dead. With thought came fear, and pain, and a memory of all that was gone. If she thought too long - if she thought at all - the dead would see it in her eyes, and she wouldn’t last long after that.
    But the mind was like a flood. It could be contained for a while, even a long while, but it could never be truly silenced until it had run its course.
    And right now her mind was turning toward shame.
    But it wasn’t the shame of what had happened to her - No, strike that, she thought, of what you have allowed to happen to you. - that bothered her so.
    It was that damn Kevin O’Brien.
    When she was by herself, she felt no shame for what she was doing. She was surviving. And she was doing it in the face of a universe that didn’t give a rat’s ass for what happened to her. Or the rest of humanity, for that matter. She was surviving, damn it.
    But so was he.
    And he hadn’t given up anything. He hadn’t debased himself like this. He hadn’t sacrificed every last scrap of his self-respect just to draw another breath.
    She hated him.
    She hated him because he was still human.
    And because his charity reminded her that she was not.
    Not anymore.
    So she turned off her mind and wandered. Damn him. Damn the world. Damn life. There was nothing of the world left for her anymore. Nothing but emptiness and the slow, relentless crawl of time.
    One foot in front of the other.
    Forever after.

    * * *

    The billboard came as a surprise to her.
    For a moment, just a fraction of a second, she stopped.
    And she stared.
    She hadn’t realized where she was. But up there, up above the mindless crowd, was a message written just for her.

    Hey Mindy, it’s cold. Come on up.
    I’ve got a warm bed.

    A memory floated up into her mind, unbidden. The two of them, finishing off their shift, her letting him walk her out to the parking lot. He had a joint in his pocket and she didn’t have anywhere to go. They went around back to the loading dock and passed it back and forth, talking about random shit, nothing either of them really cared about.
    He was nice. A little dorky, but all right.
    She could tell he was getting interested. It was in the way he cracked his lame jokes when he should have let the quiet grow, the way his fingers twitched when they touched whenever she took the joint from him.
    She could have shut it down right then. He was the scared type. He’d back off and nothing more would ever become of it.
    But she didn’t have anywhere else to go, and they both knew it.
    She went back to his place.
    Sitting on his couch, her hand on his thigh, he actually asked if he could kiss her. That had never happened to her before. Most guys went straight for the tits. After that it was a wrestling match to keep her pants on.
    “You don’t have to ask,”