A Zombie Holiday Trilogy

By Anthony Renfro

3 stories of survivors keeping the holidays alive during a Zombie Apocalypse.

 

A Zombie Thanksgiving: A woman risks life and limb in a Zombie Apocalypse in order to keep the Thanksgiving tradition alive.

 

A Zombie Christmas: Three men risk life and limb in a Zombie Apocalypse in order to bring happiness to surviving kids on Christmas Morning.

 

A Zombie New Year's Eve: Becky and Joe are separated in a Zombie Apocalypse and risk life and limb in order to reunite for their New Year's Eve kiss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony Renfro
• Release date: Jul 3, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393585411

Anthony Renfro

Anthony lives in Apex, North Carolina. He is a self-published author, reader, writer, runner, husband, father, and stay at home dad - one of the toughest jobs anyone could ever do.Contact Anthony: [e-mail]

Book preview

A Zombie Thanksgiving

Dawn stopped at the edge of the parking lot. What she saw in front of her was an apocalyptic nightmare. It was a picture of mass panic frozen in a time of chaos.

The parking lot looked like a war zone–cars burned to metal bodies, cars crashed together, cars turned over, shopping carts everywhere and in all kinds of positions, (food and supplies in these carts long since looted), and bodies, lots and lots of dead bodies. Most of them had been laying out here rotting in the hot sun for far too long, and they were now decayed and gooey, slipping back into the Earth one second at a time.

She closed her eyes, held the gold cross on a chain around her neck, prayed, and then crossed the parking lot.

She stopped when she reached the double doors that led into the grocery store. Sunlight gleamed off what was left of the glass in the frame, shards on the ground twinkled like stars. Two zombies shuffled out of the store, heading in her tasty direction. Dead things. Rotten things. Been walking around for a long time now as a corpse things. A couple of quick pops of her gun and both of them went down hard. Perfect, clean, head shots. Blood splattered ground.

Dawn looked to her left and right, back to the store in front of her, and then she turned around to make sure nothing was behind her. No other zombies shuffled about in the late fall heat, at least not from where she was standing; but there was a man, she did see a man, coming across the parking lot towards her. He stood about medium height, not too pudgy, not too thin. He had to be about 40 years old, she thought, as he put his hands up to show he wasn’t a threat.

Who are you? She asked, as she aimed her gun at him.

The guy looked down at her gun with the silencer on it, pointed directly at his gut. A nasty shot that would not end him instantly. My name’s Mike, Mike Beem. You?

Dawn Sprig, she replied, and paused. Have you been following me?

I haven’t, just happened to see you crossing the parking lot. Thought I would walk over and see if you needed any help.

I’m fine. She wasn’t, because she was terrified of being out here on her own without her boyfriend. So, she faked it the best she could. Just need to do a little shopping. I hope my credit is still good, she replied, smiling, hoping to ease the tension.

Store’s probably picked over.

Probably, but there might be something left for the Thanksgiving Holiday, she replied, lowering her weapon.

I’m stuck on Christmas.

Any luck?

Some. He paused. You sure you don’t want me to go in with you? I can help if the store is overrun. Always nice to have back up.

She wanted to say yes, she really did, but even though she had lowered her gun, stranger danger still popped into her mind when she looked at him. He might seem like a nice guy out here, but in there, in the dark, he could be someone totally different. I’d rather go it alone. If you don’t mind? I’m better that way. No offense.

None taken. I Understand.

Thanks, though, for the offer.

Sure. Good luck and Happy Thanksgiving.

You too, Mike.

He made his way out of the parking lot, and Dawn took another quick scan. No zombies about, just Mike evaporating into the distance. She turned back to the store, steadied her nerves, and turned on her light (this light was on a strap that ran around her head, so she could keep her hands free).  She made sure her weapons were ready to do the job they were meant to do, knife in place and gun ready to fire. She started to walk, ever so slightly, crunching on broken glass, moving from the light into the dark.

The smell inside the store wasn’t pleasant. All kinds of putrid things in a state of decay mingled and danced together in the non-air-conditioned air. Those smells were having a nice party in this tight enclosed airless space. Dawn tried to hold her breath and not breathe in too much of it, as she stopped just inside the double doors. She kneeled down in front of two bodies that were dead, flat, and squished. These bodies (elderly man and woman) looked like they had fallen down and nobody had bothered to help them up as the crowd trampled over them in a mad rush for supplies. She said a prayer for them, and then stood up. That’s when she heard it. It was a clicking sound, silent electronic keys being punched over and over again, hard to hear unless you were inside the store. She turned her light in the direction of that sound.

Standing at one of the cash registers was a zombie, still dressed in her pink and grey County Supermarket uniform, partially eaten, name tag askew. Most of her face was gone, and she had huge chunks of flesh taken out of her neck and arms. She was still doing her job, punching keys on the register and scanning a can over and over again across a silent sensor. She didn’t even notice Dawn, as Dawn stood there smiling at the absurdity. The light on Dawn’s head also showed a dead body lying over the conveyor belt, a can of something in his hand. A can of something he would never need. Dawn wondered if this guy was one of the tramplers. Stepping on that elderly couple at the front of the store, ignoring the pleas of the two dying underneath the charging crowd. If he was one of those tramplers, then what good had it done him to ignore them? His life was just as wasted as those two flattened corpses.

Dawn raised her gun, and the zombie cashier stopped for a moment. They locked eyes, but the zombie didn’t charge.

Go in peace, Dawn replied, as the gun popped.

The zombie’s head exploded in a shower of blood that drenched the cash register, and then she fell to the floor in a heap with the can of peaches still held tight in her hand. Her undead cashier days were over.

Just to be safe, Dawn stepped up to the man lying over the conveyor belt. A soft pop from the gun, and the man’s lifeless head exploded in cold grey dust.

Dawn stood there a moment, surveyed with her ears, listening for shuffling, listening for anything that disturbed the peace and quiet. She heard something. It was faint, coming from the rear of the store. She would have to keep her wits about her, as she tried to find food that was still edible for a Thanksgiving feast.

She stepped past the dead man lying over the conveyor belt, and paused in front of the candy section, which hadn’t been looted. Dawn grabbed a bag of hard candies and ripped it open. She started to munch on the rainbow of flavor, as she slung her backpack off her back and dropped it onto the conveyor belt. She unzipped the big front pocket, opened it wide, and emptied the candy shelf into it–making sure to get only candy that wouldn’t melt.

Dawn finished up her candy treat, took a pause, reloaded her gun, and gulped down a bottle of water. When she felt rested, she zipped up the big front pocket on her backpack and slung the bag onto her back.

Well, let’s hope this store has what I’m looking for, she replied to herself, as she started walking, gun forward, light splashing across the dark store, eyes darting down each aisle, looking for food, looking for zombies in the dark; and it was dark. The spotlight in front of her and the late afternoon light coming in from the front of the store barely pierced the blackness.

The inside of the store, she noticed, had the same result as the parking lot. It looked like a mob of animals had just bulldozed its way through, knocking over shelves, people, carts, busting out the glass in the frozen food sections. Dead bodies were scattered everywhere. Most of them looked like they had died fighting for supplies or fending off zombies. She gave each dead body she found a good ole knife to the brain just to make sure that dead body wouldn’t get up and come after her.

After exploring for a few minutes, Dawn stopped to take a sip of water when she found a shelf with a couple of cans of cranberries on it. She took off her back pack and dropped it onto the floor. She kneeled down, opened it up, and put a can of cranberries into it beside the sweet potatoes, the box of stuffing, the oyster crackers and canned yams she had found earlier that day.

She paused when she heard the shuffling again. Too close for comfort. However many zombies that were still left in the store were definitely on to her. They could sense her warm presence, and they were hungry for it.

Dawn scanned the area she was now in, back of the store, near the once bustling fresh meat section, meat that was now rancid and rotten. She noticed something, as she squatted there, the smell of rancid meat seemed to be moving closer to her somehow. How a smell could move in her direction she wasn’t sure. There was no breeze in the store to push it. The air was dead and calm.

She zipped up her bag, stood up, and hoisted the bag onto her back. She grunted a bit from the weight when it landed on her shoulders. It wasn’t so heavy that she couldn’t run or walk with it on, but she was approaching her weight limit.

Dawn looked up the aisle, light splashing on empty shelves, and an empty store. Seeing nothing moving, she turned around, and the smell of rancid meat engulfed her, wrapped her in its vomit-inducing embrace. The thing causing the smell was a zombie, and he was wearing a butcher’s outfit with all kinds of rotten body parts stuffed into the pockets of his butcher’s