Insidious

I stood in my Workshop, supervising an Elf team constructing a prototype of a toy blimp I'd designed. The aroma of fresh-cut pine filled the air. I leaned an elbow on the worktable, my boots sinking into thick sawdust.

"Bend the wires gently. Use top quality cotton. Enid is testing a new polymer glue formula. Says it'll be perfect for stiffening the cloth."

"Will it fly, Santa?" Elmore reached for a sheet of sandpaper.

"Eric is working on a wind-up mechanism." I smiled, glancing at a corner of the shop where he bent over piles of tiny gears, springs, wires, and electrodes.

"Can we unravel the bugs, manufacture it by Christmas?" Eliza furrowed her brow. "We only have a month."

"We can do it. So many kids asked for a steampunk blimp this year, I thought I'd try making one for them."

At lunchtime, the elves filtered out of the workshop to their meal hall, where my wife Nicolette and her helpers would be busy serving them. I remained behind, tinkering with my miniature blimp. Maybe if I turned the propeller like so… maybe lower the basket so kids could ride stuffed animals or dolls in it? We'd have to make it bigger…

Someone tapped at the window. I jumped out of my reverie, turning to see a layer of feathery ice spreading across the glass. A shadowy figure darkened it. That could be only one person. My heart skipped a beat. I brushed the sawdust off my shirtsleeves and lumbered towards the door.

I rushed outside without my jacket, frigid air biting my nose and ruffling my beard as I floundered through the snow, around the corner to the window.

"Jack Frost, my dear boy! It's you!" I wrapped my arms around the long, skinny drink of icewater I hadn't seen since he was twelve. "Where've you been all these years?"

He wriggled away from my bear hug, brushing wisps of pale blue hair out of his gleaming silver eyes, saying casually,

"Roaming throughout the Earth, and going back and forth in it."

"Come on inside and warm up." I drew an arm across his shoulder and guided him towards our home.

"You know I like being cold," Jack snickered, rubbing his paper-white hands together.

I told him about marrying Nicolette and expanding my workshop and everything I'd done in the fourteen years since he'd run away.

"That's cool, Uncle Santa. You haven't changed a bit."

"Now tell me what you've been up to, Jackie boy."

"I'm studying DNA and viruses lately. Going into biophysics."

"I always said you'd be a weatherman if you didn't want to be my apprentice." I chuckled as we approached the house. "You gotta meet Laddie, our collie. He's the best friend I have after Nicolette."

"Oh?" Jack pulled aside, his eyes narrowing, arms folding back behind him. "I'm not good with dogs."

My eyebrows knotted into a frown.

"You mistreat them?" Sternly. I remembered his past behavior.

"No. I outgrew that. They don't trust me."

I shrugged. We reached the door. I scraped the snow off my boots.

"Laddie loves everyone." I patted Jack's shoulder. "You'll be fine."

A jingle bell hung on the door announced our entrance musically. Laddie bounded towards us, barking joyfully. He pulled up short when he saw Jack, lurking by the coat closet. A long, low growl emitted from the dog. His legs stiffened, his hackles rose. I'd never seen him like that.

"Laddie…" I said in my warning voice reserved for phrases like "don't eat those chocolate brownies!" It didn't have any effect. He lunged at Jack. I managed to grab his collar, dragging him away as Jack leaped back against the wall, releasing a defensive froth of ice from his hands.

"Bad dog!" I cried. "Naughty, naughty. Jack Frost is family."

It didn't work. No matter what I said to Laddie, he was enraged by Jack's presence. I had to lock him in the laundry room, apologizing profusely to both of them. Then Jack and I were able to sit peacefully at the kitchen table with hot cocoa and muffins.

"I need a job, Uncle Santa. Need to get away from the rat race out there." Jack sipped his cocoa. "I thought I'd come up here, see how things are, do something charitable for a change. You need any help?"

"Good heavens, man, I always need help!" I thumped the table, making our drinks slosh. "You could be my apprentice again. This is your home for as long as you like. You're family."

***

Later that evening, after Jack and the elves were asleep at the elf bunker, Nicolette and I sat up in front of the fireplace, talking things over. She was curious about Jack, having never met him before. I explained how I'd raised him from a baby, after his grandfather, Old Man Winter, abandoned him in the middle of a frozen lake in a snowstorm.

"He was a strange child, quiet and mischievous. Loved drawing frost patterns on the windows. He took snowball fighting to another level—I had to forbid it!" I chuckled at the memory. Then I grew somber.

"But as he got older, he would play cruel pranks. I tried to make him stop. I caught him frostbiting Dasher and threatened a whipping. He unleashed a blizzard and disappeared. I hadn't seen him since."

"Are you glad he's back?" Nicolette asked as she knit a scarf in her rocking chair.

"He always had potential. I hope he's learned to be kinder."

I stood up, looking out the window. The aurora borealis sent shimmering curtains of blue and green across the sky, reflecting on the snow. I felt vibrations of energy. Laddie stood at attention beside me. I patted his head absently.

"I don't know if the way Laddie treats him is a warning—"

A shrill bloodcurdling scream filled the air. Eliza the elf ran across the yard from the bunker, crying for help. I swung the front door open in time for her to stumble into my arms.

"Santa, Eric turned into a zombie! He's trying to eat my brain!"

"What?"

I exchanged baffled glanced with Nicolette. It was impossible to imagine mild, nerdy Eric, who spent his spare time doing ham radio, becoming a rotting undead monster.

No need to imagine: a ragged, stumbling creature with arms outstretched came loping along, stooped to the ground, tracking her prints.

I slammed the door shut. The creature banged and howled.

"What should we do?" Nicolette gasped. "How do you kill a zombie?"

"With a chainsaw." Jack came wiggling down the chimney, bringing a blast of cold, wet air that squelched the fire. The device in question was slung across his shoulder. "Here, Uncle. You take this. I tried freezing the monster in a block of ice. It didn't work."

Laddie leaped at Jack again. A scratching sounded in the chimney. Nicolette and Eliza screamed as the zombie slid down into the house. I grabbed the chainsaw and yanked it to life with a tremendous roar, stepping forward to do battle.

The zombie reached blindly for me, eyes bloodshot and oozing. A horrid smell of putrid flesh filled my nose. I swung, and in one slash I decapitated it. Laddie howled as the bloody head bounced towards him.

"It's not over, it's only just beginning!" Jack waved out the window at hordes of screeching zombies descending on the house. I spotted former reindeer among them.

"Nicolette! Eliza! Barricade yourselves in the basement. We'll deal with this."

I tried to start a new fire in the fireplace, but Jack's pile of snow suffocated my feeble matches. Zombies clambered noisily up the walls to get inside via the chimney. At least they'd be coming down one at a time, I thought grimly. Shouldn't be too hard to play "Whack-a-Zombie—"

Laddie's frantic barking rose over the buzzing chainsaw, drawing my eyes away from the fireplace in time to see Jack fling the door open wide and slither out between zombies as they shoved over themselves flooding in.

I wielded the chainsaw in all directions as they surrounded me. Laddie ran circles around them, yelping, nipping at their heels and trying to herd them away from me as a collie should. He darted in and out through the stampede, missing trampling by a hair.

Dozens of claws reached for me. One slobbering, toothless monster snatched at my beard. I whacked the chainsaw. The explosion of rotten guts spraying over me made my stomach churn. It was hard to think of anything other than bare survival as I tried not to stumble over the furniture and body parts scattered across the floor. One slip, and I'd be gone.

What if they got into the basement? I worked my way through the kitchen until my back was firmly planted against the door to the basement stairs. If they wanted Nicolette's brains, or Eliza's, they'd have to get past me first.

My joints burned, my head throbbed and my muscles quivered. I was approaching the end of my stamina as the last zombie elf, riding on a foamy-mouthed reindeer, bore down on me. Laddie shot in from the side, tripping the reindeer, which collapsed in a tangle of hooves and snapped antlers. It pinned the rider elf underneath. Laddie barely missed getting caught under them.

I set my jaw and dispatched both of them as quickly as possible. The growling chainsaw filled my aching head with din. I choked at the stinking mess of blood and gore in my home. No more zombies appeared. I shut off the chainsaw. Silence reverberated through the ransacked building.

"Laddie!" I fell to my knees and hugged him. "We made it."

I stood up, opened the basement door and called to Nicolette and Eliza,

"I think we got them all! Come out into the fresh air. Don't look around."

The ladies shielded their eyes and noses from the horrors as they made their way outdoors into a tainted yard. Blood stained the snow wherever the zombies had trampled through. We finally found a clean spot to sit down under a sturdy conifer.

"What just happened?" Nicolette whispered, leaning against the tree trunk.

Laddie lay stretched out in the snow with his head in her lap. Eliza sat clutching her knees and rocking back and forth, eyes squeezed shut, moaning. I couldn't blame her. I tried to clean my hands in a snowbank.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm not familiar with zombies. How did it happen so fast?"

"It's a virus."

Jack Frost stepped out from behind a boulder. He held up a vial of bubbling green fluid. An unearthly light glinted in his eyes, like a sample of the aurora borealis.

"My goal of eliminating Christmas has succeeded." His pale, thin lips twitched into a smirk. "You work way too hard, Uncle Santa."

My mouth slipped open, my eyes blurring in a daze of shock.

"Jack… it was you?"

"I said I'm into biology now. Meaning I'm obsessed with zombies. I've isolated and purified the virus which causes zombie infestations."

"Why unleash it here?" My voice trembled.

He shrugged.

"Christmas is such a pain in the neck every year. Accidents, annoying music, tinsel and glitter and jingle bells and greed and gluttony. How can you stand spending all your life surrounded by the artificial, commercialist trappings of a holiday based around some Baby who probably never existed?"

"Don't say that!" I reached out. "Jackie, please. I took you in, cared for you, loved you. How can you turn around and try to kill me and my family? Look at the destruction you've caused."

"You really thought I came sniveling back to be your apprentice?" He waved an arm and sent an arrow of ice shooting into the tree over our heads. "As the rightful heir of Old Man Winter, holding the power of snow, ice and now zombies, I deserve to be the one feared and admired. Not you, you softhearted old sap."

"Power," Eliza squeaked, staring up at Jack. "That's what you want. No heart, only ice."

"Exactly. Who needs a heart when you wield blizzards in your hands?" Jack cupped his left hand, palm up. A tiny ice tornado formed, as if he were twirling a basketball.

"Why zombies, then?" I stifled a crazed laugh in my nauseated belly.

"You aren't afraid of blizzards," he scowled. "I couldn't smother Christmas with a snowstorm. I tried enough times! You always came through, with your elves and your reindeer. But no holiday is a match for zombies."

"Nonsense." I struggled to my feet and faced Jack, waving a finger at him. "As long as I'm alive, there will be Christmas. You can zombie and blizzard as much as you like. You can't—"

An ice harpoon shot past, which would have clipped my head if I hadn't ducked. Jack spun off balance with the force of hurling it, dropping his vial in a green stain upon the snow.

"Laddie! Sic him, boy!"

I didn't think Nicolette would set the dog after Jack. I couldn't argue he didn't deserve it. Laddie plunged through the snow, snarling, fangs bared.

Jack flung a barrage of snowballs at him. Laddie burst through them as if they were puffs of cotton candy. Jack swiveled away and took off running across the snow covered hills with Laddie at his heels.

"Follow them!" Nicolette tugged at my elbow.

Eliza sprinted ahead. Nicolette followed. I tagged behind in their wake, exhausted from battling the zombies. He'll get away in a blizzard. There's no point to this. Higher and higher we climbed, up a steep rocky slope beyond the treeline. I thought Jack was luring us to our doom.

Laddie pressed close behind all the way, not giving him a moment's opportunity to fight. At the mountain's summit, Jack stopped, turning to face him, feet from a sheer cliff's edge. He released a torrent of icy shards. Laddie danced between them, edging ever closer.

"Hey, that's enough," Jack gasped, holding out his hands as he shuffled slowly back. "Stop! I didn't—"

Laddie kept coming, body low to the ground, growling. Wind blasted from the highest peaks. Jack lost his balance and fell backwards, flailing his arms.

"Nooooooo!"

He disappeared down the cliff in a whirl of snow.

Time froze before I approached the edge to look for his remains.

"It's all over." I stepped back, pulling Nicolette close.

"What will become of us?" Eliza quavered.

I gathered the little elf into my warmest bear hug. Laddie squeezed in alongside, tail wagging as we stood under a rippling violet and emerald aurora borealis.

"Christmas will go on, no matter what. Even if we have to rebuild from scratch. We're alive. No more zombies. Everything will be ok."

I had to believe my own words, even if I didn't feel them. The spirit of Christmas depended on us.

Words: 2490.
Written for "The Writing Dead"  and "Horror Writing Contest" 

Prompt one: a zombie outbreak at the North Pole.
Prompt two: a subverted Christmas character. No redemption allowed.

No doubt by combining the prompts I've hardly done proper justice to either of them…