Sausagey Santa (6 page)

When I arrive, she has no idea who I am.

“It’s me,” I say, taking off the cabbagey hood.

“Fry?” she says. “What the hell happened to you?” “The stupid elves shrunk me,” I say. “So I can fit into this

suit.”

“What the hell kind of suit is that?” she asks.

“It’s a cabbage suit,” I say.

“What’s it do?” she asks.

“I have no idea,” I say.

She frowns at my new size and taps me in the chest with her toe, pushing me back. Now she hardly needs to use any strength at all to knock me around.

“Where’s the twins?” I ask.

She turns around to show me them sleeping in the back of Santa’s sleigh.

I turn around to see Tea and Boon standing next to me. Tea’s skin is still glowing lavender. She stands a little too close to me. I want to ask her how the suit works, but I don’t want my wife to know that I’ve been hanging around with her just in case she knows why elven skin changes color.

Tea smacks my butt when Decapitron isn’t looking.

I am so going to get annihilated.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DISEASE TRAIN

Decapitron, the twins, Santa, myself, and five elves ride in the sleigh. They make me sit in Santa’s lap to make room for some of the elves. A lavender elf with a white Burt Reynolds mustache sits in Decapitron’s lap. When I see him my head jerks a double-take and then I notice how cozy and friendly the two of them look together.

“Why are you all purple?” I ask Burt Reynolds Elf.

He and Decapitron just laugh at me like it’s an in-joke. Then she vulture-smiles at him.

I’m glad I cheated on her while she was dead.

The rest of the elven army take their own transports, which are all made out of lightning like Santa’s sleigh. But they are all different shapes and sizes. Some of them are shaped like sea serpents coiling through the air. Others are like squids. Others are starfish-shaped. Some, like the seahorse-shaped transports, carry only a single elf. Others, like the turtle-shaped transport, can carry dozens of elves. All of their lightning transports seem to be shaped like sea creatures.

“Fight for Christmas! Fight for Christmas!” the elves on the other transports chant.

The manager elves, like Boon and Tea, are on their own  ships. They have to lead the troops into battle. I wish they were here to explain my cabbage suit. I don’t care if Decapitron sees me talking to Tea anymore.

I look up at Santa.

“Do you know how this suit works?” I ask Santa.

“What that be?” he asks.

“A cabbage suit,” I say.

“Never heard of it,” he says.

Besides Burt Reynolds Elf, there are four other elves in the sleigh. Three of them are males and one female. Of the males: one has a pig nose, one has a big white unibrow, and one has his sleeve rolled up so he can show off a tough skull tattoo on his arm. As for the female, she has very long white hair and Asian eyes.

Santa’s lap is strangely comfortable. His sausage thighs are squishy and form-fitting around my butt. However, there is an odd havarti smell rising out of him that makes my nostrils shudder.

A storm cloud comes towards us as we pass over New York City. The twins are looking over the edge at the bright lights of the city. Their cotton candy hair blows in the wind.

“Arrr, this might get a bit bumpity,” Santa says as we approach the storm.

The cloud opens up and dumps piles of snow onto the streets below.

“Hmmm . . ” Santa says, squinting his eye-olives at the storm.

The cloud poofs up into a big round pillow of white and then a face forms inside. Black eyes, a black mouth, and a fluffy nose with a Hitler mustache dangling off the end.

“It’s a trap!” Santa screams, as the cloud face opens up its mouth and blows a gust of wind at our fleet of ships.

The sleigh dives down under the gust, but several transports get hit. A lightning sea turtle tips over and dozens of elves tumble through the wintry night. The fleet scatters. Lightning stingrays and seahorses slice through the air around us as we dive down between the buildings.

The giant head of Frosty comes after us. It lowers down into the city and squeezes through the New York high-rises, spitting hundreds of snowballs at us like a Tommy Gun. A lightning shark crashes into a building on our right and explodes. A lightning squid plummets toward the street from above, tentacles flailing as it falls.

“Ye bastard! ” Santa cries at the giant fluffy blob.

The lightning sea creatures crash and explode all around us. The snowy New York streets are littered with their flaming husks, as well as the mutilated bodies of a hundred elves dressed in Dungeons and Dragons outfits.

We have only one advantage: the cloud moves very slowly.

“Full speed!” Santa yells to Bald Elf who drives the big electric serpent-shaped transport.

Bald Elf nods as seahorse ships spin sideways through the air around him. He pushes forward on his  joystick controls, which I guess are what steer his ship. As the snaking vehicle speeds up, a tumbling lightning crab beheads the serpent and Bald Elf is vaporized in the explosion. The passengers on the lightning snake shriek as it coils down to earth.

Santa whacks the reins and his deer speed up, pulling us far away from the Hitlery storm cloud.

I look back. Only half a dozen ships are left behind us. Tea’s squid ship is still afloat, but I don’t see Boon.

In the distance, Frosty’s giant head-shaped cloud curls its mouth downwards. Then a long smoke hand extends out of the top of his head and forms the devil sign, as he evaporates over the city.

“It’s a good thing those elves are immortal,” I tell Santa.

“Nay, me boy,” Santa says. “Elves be as mortal as you. They live long, but they die as good as any being. Only I and Frosty be the eternals in this war.”

Our broken fleet makes it to Antarctica without another incident. Unibrow Elf tells Santa that Boon’s ship, as well as several other ships, are still in the air. Most of them were scattered in different directions and got off course. Boon says he will rally them back together and meet us at the South Pole.

Over Antarctica, we pass a collection of crystal train tracks that hover in midair.

“What are those?” I ask Santa.

“Those are for the disease train,” Santa says.

The disease train carries dead bodies from America into Antarctica. Frosty uses his power over winter winds to pull the bodies of those buried in sky graves down into the Antarctic. The bodies are then put on disease trains and brought to the South Pole.

Once the corpses are frozen in the Antarctic climate, they can be possessed by coffee birds. Then they can join the ranks of the F.N.S.A. (Frosty’s Nazi Satany Army).

The train is up ahead, chugging on its tracks. It’s so high off the ground it looks like it’s flying.

“There it be,” Santa says.

He squishes one of his Vienna sausage fingers into a button on the dashboard. Loud bursts echo against the side of the sleigh and then two lollypop rockets shoot out from underneath us. They fly across the crystal tracks and then explode upon impact.

The disease train catches on fire and drops from the sky, disappearing into the white powder below.

“There it go,” Santa says.

I’m freezing by the time we arrive at the South Pole. The cabbage suit doesn’t provide any extra warmth and Santa’s heater is breaking down.

The frozen city of the South Pole is much bigger than the elven city of the North Pole, but it is even more drab and dark. Instead of elves, this city is populated by hundreds of F.N.S.A. zombies and wicked snowmen. We get in a little closer before all the zombies start to howl. They scream with their rotten frozen lungs as if some kind of signal.

“Tentacle bombs,” Santa tells me. “Push it. Quickly, lad.”

But I don’t understand what he’s talking about.

Santa groans and pushes the button himself. Bombs drop out of the bottom of the sleigh. As the bombs hit the ground they burst open and large black tentacles explode out of the containers. The tentacles swell and stretch, wrapping around the zombies and crushing their throats. Their howls subside.

“We don’t want them warning the others,” Santa says.

“I thought they all had one consciousness,” I say. “If one of them saw us wouldn’t all of them see us?”

“Nay, me laddo,” he says. “Once they split they become separate entities. They don’t share their minds until the coffee is brought back together into one pool. If we tread carefully we might still be able to catch them by surprise.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE GRINDING STATION

“There it be,” Santa says. “Frosty’s domain. The grinding station.”

Ahead I see a large black structure. It is a mess of grinding machinery. Gears and spikes and blades and cylinders chew at the air like metal jaws. Steam pours out of horns on its head.

“My kids are in there?” I ask.

“Aye,” he says. “But we’ll get them. Ye shall see, me boy.”

A massive icicle shoots out of the black metal structure like a harpoon and impales a starfish ship on our left. The icicle is attached to a chain that quickly retracts, ripping the ship back into the grinding station. The elves shriek as they are eaten alive by the machine’s crushing jaws.

“Attack!” Santa screams.

He launches five wreath-shaped missiles that spin through the air like Frisbees and explode in the mouth of the grinding station. No visible damage.

Several icicle harpoons are launched at us. Santa jerks at the reindeer and they dodge out of the way. The harpoons catch two more elf ships and reel them in. The elves jump from their seats and fall to their deaths to avoid being eaten by the grinding station.

Santa fires toy train-shaped missiles at it. No effect. More icicles are launched. Dozens this time.

“Retreat!” Santa cries.

A harpooned clam-shaped ship smashes into us, ripping through the side of the sleigh and slamming into the reindeer, as it gets reeled in by the grinding station.

The sleigh is going down.

We spiral out of control as the clam ship is crunched into the machine. Santa and the elves wail into my ears, even Decapitron cries out, as we descend.

The sleigh slams hard into the snow at the foot of the grinding station. The elves are grunting and groaning in the backseat. I look up to see the last couple of elven ships fleeing from the harpoons and escaping the frozen city.

Santa straightens himself and widens his ear holes at the air. I hear it, too. There is a leaking sound. Like someone is going to the bathroom. Then I see it. One of the reindeer. Its belly has been torn open and it is leaking fluid. By the smell of it, I’d say the fluid is gasoline.

The olive-eyes on Santa’s face grow so wide the pimentos almost pop out.

“Run!” he cries.

We jump out and run in opposite directions away from the sleigh. Once I’m at a safe distance, I turn around. The reindeer just stands there casually for a few minutes, huffing and stomping its hooves, as it leaks gasoline from its guts.

Then the reindeer explodes.

It causes a chain reaction and each of the reindeer explode one at a time.

Santa stands above me with tears pouring down his cheeks. As the reindeers detonate into balls of flame, he names them off one by one, crying, “Now, Dasher. Now, Dancer. Now, Prancer and Vixen. On, Comet. On, Cupid. On Donner and Blitzen,” until the explosions reach the sleigh.

When the sleigh explodes, lightning spiders into the snowscape all around us. It crawls up the grinding station and electrocutes the steel structure until its gears lock up and its jaws droop open with chained harpoons drooling out down its chin.

We might have lost the sleigh and the reindeer but at least we’ve paralyzed the grinding station.

We regroup around the flaming sleigh. Burnt deer flesh fills the air.

“How are we going to get home?” I ask Santa.

“Me poor darlings,” he says, his eyes lost in the fire.

“We must push on,” Unibrow Elf says.

“Let’s focus on recovering the bag first,” Asian Elf says. “Then we’ll worry about getting home.”

The other elves nod at her in agreement.

“Frosty’s going to pay for all this,” says Burt Reynolds Elf, as the living dead fill the streets.

The zombies come at us from all sides, emptying out of the icy buildings nearby.

“There’s too many of them,” squeals Pig Nose Elf. “We should run.”

“No way,” Burt Reynolds Elf says. “We’re going to fight!”

Burt Reynolds Elf pulls two sawed-off shotguns from holsters on his thighs. Unlike the other elves, he doesn’t much care for the Dungeons and Dragons thing. He wears boots and a navy blue shirt tucked into his jeans.

The zombies dive towards him as he steps out into the open, but Burt Reynolds Elf dodges out of the way and blows their heads off at point blank range. He kills them two at a time. Their skulls become splatters of red mulch sprayed across the fresh snow. When the shotguns need to be pumped, he slams the butts of the guns against zombie foreheads while holding the pump, cocking it in the process. Then he shoots two more.

I hate to admit it, but:

Burt Reynolds Elf = fucking awesome.

Decapitron joins him. She takes a candy cane from her back and pulls on the crook of the cane. A blade slides out like a cane sword. A candy cane sword?

She charges into the zombie crowd head-first and skewers one of them with her antlers. Then she decapitates another with her candy cane sword. The twins are strapped to her back, giggling as she slices off heads and severs limbs.