Santa Vs. The Living Dead by Josh Hilden

Prologue
     
     
                  This is the story of the Christmas that almost wasn’t. The Christmas when the question of whether there is a Santa Claus was finally decided in Virginia. The Christmas when the dead rose to devour the living and only one person had the strength to rally humanity and lead us to victory. This is the story of the Christmas when Santa Claus fought the Zombies.
                  Very few people were aware of the coming danger.
                  When the outbreaks of Ebola occurred in Western Africa a year earlier, nations panicked. When the American Centers for Disease Control contained and eliminated the threat it was logical to assume the citizenry would calm down.
                  This was not the case.
                  A wise person once said that an individual human is rational and smart, while the human race as a whole is composed of frightened ignorant beings that’d trample their own mother for a buck. The same could be said for the human desire for power and control over one another. The idea was the brainchild of a cadre of the world’s ultra rich and their global political lackey’s. It’d seemed so obvious, use the global fear of Ebola to seize total control of the world.
                  The plan was simple.
                  First they would release a highly contagious but mostly harmless virus in isolated areas causing the citizens of the first world to panic. Then once the population was properly terrified they’d quietly declare a state of emergency and offer free vaccinations for everyone. But what the people believed to be vaccinations would be a new virus designed to render them docile and open to suggestion. Meanwhile, the chosen elite would be vaccinated against the real virus.
                  Does this seem like an overly complex and stupid plan to you?
                  It was and like every overly complex plan—the creators screwed it up.
                  For ninety percent of the population given the “Vaccination” nothing happened. They were protected from nothing and they were not rendered passive or easily controlled. The remaining ten percent seemed to be affected in the intended way. They became passive and easily swayed.
                  It all changed on Christmas Eve.
                  Nobody knew the radiation was coming. In an invisible and virtually undetectable wave it washed across the planet in the blink of an eye. Was it from space? Was it from within the Earth itself? Nobody would ever know but that didn’t matter because the effects were instantaneous.
                  Every one of the ten percent of the human race affected by the vaccination, almost three quarters of a billion, instantly dropped dead. They hemorrhaged from all openings, convulsed violently, and ceased to live.
                  Then… they got back up.
                  Like a bad horror movie the now reanimated dead attacked the living. They were driven by an unquenchable need to feed on the warm flesh of the living. Panic ensued and in a matter of hours the human race was brought to its knees.
                  On that night, the snow fell on the American Midwest in buckets. Cities were shut down, interstates came to a halt, and for many the power ceased to flow. Despite the record amounts of white stuff pounding the center of the United States, children all over were excited for the Christmas holiday.
                  While the dead were hungry and on the prowl.
     
     
     

Chapter 1
     
     
    Christmas Eve
     
    Lucy’s House
                 
                  “Daddy I don’t want to go to sleep.” Lilly pouted, standing rooted in her bedroom doorway. “I want to stay up and see Santa!”
                  “Lilly, if you stay up Santa won’t come,” Eli