The Last Christmas

THE LAST CHRISTMAS

b
y

Jacqueline Druga

By Jacqueline Druga

Copyright 2013 by Jacqueline Druga

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo by
© Vedmochka - Fotolia.com

Thank you so much for me Christmas dream team for pulling through on this one. Jhanelle, Bonnie and Laura. I can’t thank you three enough for the
high speed team effort to get this out.

Her eyes said she was hungry, but my wife, Melissa
, would never complain. She wouldn’t tell me she didn’t have enough to eat. She and I were always the last to eat. The kids were first. I know they were hungry too.

I felt guilt
y taking the last spoonful of the potted meat. But that was the only thing I had consumed all day. We were at the end. The last can. It toppled from my hand, clanking to the floor in my helpless defeat.

I was failing my family.

We wouldn’t make it much longer.

Days, weeks, I knew this
. Melissa knew this. The kids, well, they were kids. They knew what they were told. And at four- and six years old, we told them very little.

We
were fortunate, in a sense, for a lot of things. The location of our home was perfect; at the onset, we had an ample supply of food and a source to get more nearby. We had a fireplace in the basement family room to keep us warm; and most importantly, we had each other.

When hundreds of
millions lost their families, I managed to keep mine.

We were together.

But how much longer would that be the case? I had to do something, and even if I did, would it make a difference?

The local source for
supplies had been wiped clean, by us and other people who hid for their safety. To get more, I’d have to venture farther out.

Because we stayed in the
cellar with the fireplace for warmth, I hardly could tell if it was day or night. I looked at my watch, it was evening. I’d venture out the next day. But the time wasn’t what got to me. It was the date.

December 23
rd
.

The next day was Christmas Eve
, and that fueled my determination even more.

I had to do it. Melissa an
d I always made Christmas special, and this year would not be an exception.

I get out there, get something. My gut told me we weren’t going to be around much longer, not
through the winter. So I was going to make it the best Christmas yet.

Because I truly believed, that as
a family, it would be our last Christmas together … ever.

<><><><>

Daddy, is Santa bringing me that toy?

Daddy, how will Santa find us?

Kids didn’t know. Mine certainly didn’t.

Carly had just turned four when it all started, and Jeff was six. Their biggest worry was why they couldn’t go to school.

As I said, we were fortunate.
We lived on a little stretch of road just beyond the city and right before the next town. A dead area, no pun intended. We actually were far away enough from the mayhem when it started that it was a neighbor who told me not to go anywhere, to hunker down and stay put.

At first that was the
thought on all of our minds.

I guess in actuality it was longer than four months ago
, closer to a year. In fact it was just after Christmas when we first heard about it.

The
Venice Flu started in, well, Venice. It pretty much locked down the city. An ordinary flu turned bad. It wasn’t like the flu cases in the movies, where people just dropped dead. People were sick for a while, days and weeks passed before they succumbed. Raging fever, cold symptoms. That was stage one. Early on, everyone made it through stage one. Well, almost everyone, a small, very small percentage, like the ordinary flu, passed away.

Then just as Venice thought it was finished, a second wave of the flu hit. Those who had it
the first time had immunity. And you know, because it was a hard flu, but not deadly, people didn’t fear it. They should have.

It mutated. Suddenly, after stage one, the victims felt better for a few days. A misleading remission. Then the cold symptoms grew out of control and the raging fever cause
d internal bleeding. By the time stage two of the flu had been discovered, stage one had spread across Italy.

Stage three began, the inability
of the body to retain any hydration. Basically, they bled out and dried out before death.

The
entire process took no less than a week. Imagine hundreds of millions of people suffering with not enough hands to care for them.

It was a fraction of the
population that caught it the first wave. Ten percent. But the second wave was like the Spanish Flu, it toppled sixty percent of the population. No one caught it. They all died.

Leaving
Italy barren.

That was the Venice Flu in Italy
and a few surrounding countries.

Somewhere, somehow, it mutated again.

The sixty percent infected became eighty, and it had a kill rate of one hundred percent.

It had a rise rate of fifty percent.

Half the people who died from the Venice Flu reanimated. The first reanimation occurred in London.

The family was
gathered around the recently deceased, and he sat up and bit the neck of his wife.

It was all over the Internet.

In the United States, we felt infallible. Really, we did. We’d read daily about it striking here and there, but not in the U.S.. It was reminiscent, people said, of the days of SARS.

I paid attention to the flu. Reading headlines about
the millions dead, and the violence ‘over there’ brought on by the undead, as they were called, was frightening. But we went on living our lives, living normally.

Then
on August 15th, eight months after it started in Italy, the first case was reported in New York, and then another in Virginia.

It was here. It landed.

Stage one.

It spread like wildfire and the last day I left my house
for a while, was on September 1st. That was to go to the store. Panic buying hadn’t begun yet. I was a few days ahead of it. Plus, I lived in a rural area.

Schools never opened, and my plan was to stay in until the
flu ran its course. Not even to go outside.

It was in the air, so we had to avoid it.

I wasn’t a “prepper”. I wasn’t a survivalist. I was a father and a husband with a will to protect my family. I was driven to do so.

At the end of September, that was the last we heard anything on the news. The dead were rising. They were spreading out, looking for
victims, looking for anyone alive.

Suddenly I was struck with fear. Were we too close to a town or city? If those things
that roamed in killer packs were out and about, how long would it be until they reached our home?

I had managed to keep my family together.

To me, it was time to go.

I knew there had to be people
around us who were sick, and how long would it be before they rose? Heck, without cars or airplanes, sound travels. The violent coughing carried through the dead air.

They were close, they had to be. We had supplies, they were dwindling, but that was fine. We’d
get more. Safety was foremost.

I packed the supplies I needed and had just put
my family in the van, when I saw my neighbor, Gene.

“Mark, what are you doing?” he asked.
No wait, he had raced from his house with a baseball bat. “Mark!”

“Leaving, running for the hills, I suppose. I’m thinking somewhere way out there.”

“My God, Mark. You’re taking them in the van and you have no idea where you’re going or how long you’ll be driving?”

“What choice do I have?”

“You’re insane. Your choice is to hunker down. Stay safe. Don’t leave. Don’t get in the van.”

“C
ome with us, Gene.”

Gene shook his head. “
No. Why would you do this?”

“This
is my family, I need to protect them. How much longer will we be safe from those things that are killing people?”

“The undead, the
zombies,” Gene said, “they won’t last forever. It’s dead flesh. It won’t last forever. Just hunker down.”

I had no intention of following Gene’s advice, until I saw them.

Two sauntered down from the yard of the house across from me, and four more came down the street.

Gene saw
them. His eyes shifted and he backed up. “I won’t stay out here and die out here. Godspeed.”

I needed Godspeed, because I discovered at that moment, some were fast. The ones coming down the street were soon followed by a running pack. The pack split,
and four of them pursued Gene.

He swung out his bat like a baseball pro and fled into his home.

I jumped in the van, and then they pursued us.

My family screamed. They were obviously terrified, I didn’t blame them.

“It’s okay, I have this.”

But I didn’t. Soon those things forgot about purs
uing Gene and encompassed our van. I slammed it in reverse, knocking over the group that pounded to get in.

I made it out of the driveway
but they kept coming.

I drove, and it wasn’t until I was a
quarter mile down the road that I realized I was a pied piper. Every walking dead homed in on us.

So I slowed down.
Slow enough for them to keep up, but fast enough that they couldn’t catch us. Once I hit Pierce Road, which was a about a quarter mile from my house, I turned.

I led them pretty far and then I returned home.

Only this time, I pulled into the garage.

I knew I was
there to stay. Like Gene said, hunker down. Wait it out.

Pro
blem was, how long could I wait?

Supplies were
dwindling; I had to feed my family.

<><><><>

My first plan was to establish a safe environment for us all. They weren’t happy at all when we got back, and I knew they were scared. I was scared. But I explained to Melissa that it was for the best.

The next few days were spent boarding up the windows, rationing supplies and
foraging the empty houses nearby for food, medical supplies, and stuff to burn when the weather grew cold.

Most of
those things moved slowly. Some were quick, but those ones that were fast were motivated by something and easily stumbled. You just had to be ready to swing.

I ventured to TJ’s
Market, down the road, without incident. The first time I went, my heart pounded, but I didn’t run into any. It was a quick trip there and back.

We weren’t eating as much as we
should have; the kids were pale from lack of nutrition. I saw my neighbor Gene, just one more time before he died.

Yeah … he died.

But he did so helping me get food.

I’ll always remember him, because without his help that fateful day I would have been a goner. My family wouldn’t have made it.

I owe him.

That was early November, when we took the last from the shelves, when we
ventured out into the mobs of those things.

But I had another reason to go out again.

It was Christmas.

We were already in the basement
and I made the decision to get them. The Christmas decorations, or at the very least least some of them. Carly held her doll and Jeff was leafing through a book when I brought them out. Their eyes lit up. I guess they thought I forgot. I almost did.

I strung up the lights around the fireplace and set up the tree.

There was just a tad of gas in the generator, and I planned on using it to fire up the lights on Christmas day.

There
was a feeling about everything, a sad one, that the end was coming.

I needed to make it special. They looked at me as if I were strange when I passed out those goofy Santa hats and made them wear them.

Well, the kids liked them.

Melissa held out her hand to me.
I knew she was holding back crying.

“I have to go,” I told her. “I have to. I have to do this. I’ll be back. I promise.”

She didn’t want to let me go when I said my goodbye, neither did the kids, and it was tough.

I plugged the lights into the
extension cord and carried it with me to the garage. Before leaving, I looked back at them. “When I’m back, I’ll plug this in.”

Then
I left, running the extension cord under the door and pulling it closed. I placed the plug end by the generator.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared leaving them. I was. I was
petrified. But we hadn’t had an incident of those things trying to get in since early on. I had barricaded the stairwell door, and there were no windows in the family room. It was safe.