Every year I try, try, try to write a story that fits the holidays. I try to write a Halloween story and try to write a Christmas story. The follow is the 2014 Holiday Story. It’s set in the world of CEMETERY EARTH but it works on it’s own. It’s very brief but I like it. It fills in gaps that were in my mind. Here it is, rough as heck and still pipin’ fresh…like entrails.
The First Frost
It was the first winter after the dead had returned and it seemed as if Christmas had come early. With the colder temperatures the dead slowed, slowed, and stopped. Not all, but most. The freshest of them still prowled and hunted but many of the things went into a sort of hibernation that allowed the human race a slight reprieve. A chance to re-group, dig in, re-supply, and for some, to turn their dark intentions towards one another. As the first snowflakes fell the flies that feasted on the dead, crawling all over them, burrowing into them, and make them mobile feeding grounds began to die off themselves, leaving behind colonies of children that would hatch into maggots come the first thaw. The dead were gathered in fields, in neighborhoods, in cities, one by one their engines stopping and their bodies ceasing activity as they all went into their own sort of hibernation, the cold too much to fight as it took hold of the earth. Even Mother cannot fight her own nature.
Winter descended on the Americas and as it ran rampant humanity first began to realize that this was a war it may not win. The industries it had relied on were halted, the government was gone, and even the last vestiges of electricity began to finally dim. The winter storms were the worst seen in generations and without a plan on how to survive many were lost that first year. It would take time for Man to adapt to the Dead Age.
As for the dead themselves Mother left them and turned her attentions to the rest of the world, where the war was in full swing and humanity was valiantly making a stand against an enemy it could not even hope to understand. Mother was angry. The dead of the winter regions though waited until Mother was ready for them once more. Waiting for spring. Waited for thaw. Deep within them though, deep, deep in the darkest parts of what they once were they remembered. they remembered what they once had been. They remembered who they once had been.
They remembered and tried to fight it, tried to stop it, and tried to scream against the things they now were but nothing happened. It seemed that Santa truly was dead because the age of miracles was over. This was now an age for the dead.
And down fell the snow.
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The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 