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

the cracked and weedy pavement as though on autopilot.
    She tried to turn off her mind as well, but she found that much harder.
    She kept thinking of Kevin.
    What, exactly, had happened last night?
    Not what . Not really. She knew what had happened. That had actually been quite pleasant. Better than she remembered it, anyway.
    No, what she really wanted to know was why . And why now ? She’d seen others before him. She knew they weren’t the only ones. She suspected - and she believed this without reservation - that there were more normal people out there than she’d seen. There had to be. The world couldn’t simply be empty. That wasn’t possible.
    But none of the others had managed to arouse her pity. She’d watched them die, and in some cases rise again, and she’d felt nothing.
    And then - Kevin.
    He’d told her his stupid jokes. He’d offered her a place to stay, all the food he had, even a warm bath. In the few days since she’d first seen him she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. Before him, walking around being dead was no trouble at all. She could go days at a time without a single thought passing through her mind. The world was one unending parade of nothingness.
    And then he came along, and she couldn’t take three steps without falling out of character, without thinking of the life they’d once shared.
    That’s what it was, she told herself. He was a window to the world that used to be, a shipwreck from her past that had mysteriously surfaced to haunt her mind. There was nothing more to it than that. He was nothing but a ghost, and she was merely lonely.
    But a voice at the back of her mind kept prodding, questioning.
    What if this was more?
    What if this was...love?
    Maybe, she thought. It was Christmas day, after all. She’d seen the calendar - the days gone by dutifully crossed out with a big red X - right before she’d walked out of his apartment. Christmas had a way of warming even the coldest heart.
    Wasn’t that the secret to Scrooge’s redemption? She’d never paid much attention to books in school, but she thought she remembered that much. For Scrooge, it hadn’t been fear of the grave, but fear that the heart would no longer love again, that made it possible for him to accept the spirit of Christmas into his life.
    She stopped then, a sudden alarm causing her pulse to quicken.
    She had fallen out of character again. She’d stopped walking like the dead. Like her mind, her feet had started to wander. If she’d happened upon one of the dead while walking like that, they’d have torn her to ribbons.
    But, for now, she was alone on the street.
    Turning, she happened to see her reflection in a shop window. And at first, that one quick glance threatened to send her over the edge of reason. She looked horrible. In a word, she looked dead. And she played the part well. Her hair was stiff with mud and probably blood too. Her face, which hadn’t been that bad back in the day, was discolored with God knows what; attractive, it seemed, only to flies. Her body was a bony jangle of sticks. She looked like a crack whore, though she imagined that even the crack whores of the world gone by had more self-respect than she did at that moment.
    She had nothing.
    But then her gaze shifted beyond the window, to the Sexy Elf costume in the display. For a moment she experienced an odd sense of displacement. It was her face, her gaunt, exhausted face, but her body was draped in the red velvety finery of the elf costume. Her fingers reached for, and could almost feel, the cotton candy fringe at the edge of the playfully short skirt.
    She smiled.
    Kevin O’Brien, you wonderful bastard. I’m gonna blow your mind.

    * * *

    It was Christmas morning.
    He had hoped to wake up late and spend the day with her, hopefully draw her out little by little. The two of them had been pretty good, he thought, back in the day. And they were certainly good last night. When they were good, it seemed, they was