Staring at the stained cuff, Lexi realized she had made a mistake. The fake cotton on Santa’s sleeve glistened with a gummy yellow fleck of whatever he had hawked up, and a string of the revolting glob oozed near Miss Wreaths-and-Bells’s brunette curls. The mucus broke free and landed on the girl’s head, and Santa gave her an encouraging pat.

Fucking hell, he’s rubbing it in, Lexi thought. She placed a protective hand on her son Eli’s shoulder and mentally kicked herself. Not only for the hour they’d wasted standing in this line, but also for not insisting they go to the Walmart Santa.

Miss Wreaths-and-Bells offered Santa a glassy smile. Overhead, “Jingle Bells” gave over to “Feliz Navidad,” but the cacophony of phlegmy coughs and sneezes that echoed through the food court sapped the music of any festive appeal. Lexi scanned the tables. At least half the diners were coughing something up, blowing their noses, or worse, wiping snot onto their sleeves.

At Lexi’s side, Eli clasped her hand and swung it in wide, excited arcs. His eyes danced from the chipped and faded gumdrops of Santa’s roof to the four-foot peppermint sticks and their timeworn pink and amber stripes. Eli saw the magic. Lexi saw tetanus, norovirus, and RSV. He glanced up and caught her looking.

“What’d you say, Mommy?” His smile was eager. In the eye of the plague-storm, he seemed small and frail. But after an eternity of waiting, one kid remained between him and Santa. Leaving now would piss off even a sweetheart like Eli.

“No. Nothing.”

At a nearby table, an octogenarian hacked into a napkin, a full, wet sound despite his attempt to muffle it. The usual cabal of retirees filled the food court, all of them seeking social interaction and most showing signs of illness. Runny nose, sneezing, bundling too warm for indoors—the gamut. Compounding matters, the season had matched their number in fidgeting children and phone-absorbed parents.

Lexi focused on what was in front of her.

Miss Wreaths-and-Bells hopped off Santa’s lap and speedwalked to her waiting mom. The child’s wrinkled brow and unblinking, watery stare begged for an explanation of what had just happened. She bounced with every step as if still riding Santa’s jittering knee. Lexi thought about the early gift Santa had smeared into the girl’s hair and shuddered.

The line moved. The buffer between Eli and Pandemic Santa dwindled to one last child, a boy, maybe eight, buzz-cut blond hair and heavy snow boots. Lexi’s teeth clamped down on her bottom lip.

Another loud, wet cough from Santa on his throne. Little Buzz Cut hesitated on the threadbare red carpet.

Lexi’s eyes widened. Jesus.

Santa pulled from an opaque water bottle and pounded his chest with a clenched fist. After a moment’s inspection to ensure nothing had shaken loose, he straightened and thrust his arms wide to invite his next visitor into a warm embrace.

Little Buzz Cut glanced over his shoulder.

His mother made shooing gestures. “Go ahead, sweetie. Santa can’t make you sick.”

Lexi considered Santa’s pallid, moisture-beaded face and wished that were true. Her fingers curled into the puffy fabric of Eli’s coat.

Fuck this. Santa will be back next year, minus the Ebola.

“Miss?”

A shadow wriggled across Santa’s brow, against the light.

“Excuse me, miss?”

Lexi ignored the voice behind her, willing the shadow to reappear, to move again and shatter her sanity. Because she could not have seen what she thought she saw. Little Buzz Cut, now perched on Santa’s lap, hadn’t seen it, or he’d be back in his mother’s arms this instant.

“Alexandra Ramos?”

The sound of her full name broke the spell. Lexi followed the voice to a diminutive woman in her seventies—maybe a fit eighty—who nodded in satisfaction.

Lexi rummaged through old memories. “Mrs. Howard?”

Satisfaction became delight—the pleasure of a teacher remembered by a former student, not forgotten when eighth grade English crashed into summer vacation. Mrs. Howard’s gray eyes sparkled, as shrewd and attentive now as they had been a dozen years earlier.

Behind the old teacher, Mr. Howard seemed worse for wear. Hunched under the weight of his fur-lined coat, he dabbed his brow with a wrinkled tissue. His mouth hung open, protrusive lower lip shivering.

Mrs. Howard leaned close, emitting the aromas of roses and orange blossoms over patchouli and age. “I noticed you backing away. I want to reassure you that I know Santa quite well. You needn’t worry. He got the new whole-brain vaccine the same day Jonathon and I did.”

Lexi tried to internalize her reaction, an effort that felt like swallowing a football with a straight face. She cherished her memories of Mrs. Howard teaching Greek mythology, discussing Animal Farm, reciting what she called “Edgar Allan Poems.” Lexi didn’t want those memories sullied over a chance encounter at the mall and an offhand comment about hurried vaccines.

Population control, one white-haired pundit had called the new shot, which he referred to as the Right-Wing Vaccine. The human brain responds to six viruses the same way it responds to one. The idea of triggering a whole-brain response because the viral load is enormous isn’t science, it’s genocide.

If Mrs. Howard sensed Lexi’s hesitation, the old woman proved to have the better poker face. She peered at Lexi, pleasant smile implacable. Before it could turn into a staring contest, Lexi glanced away.

Not far off, between the Happy Panda and Taco Bell, Miss Wreaths-and-Bells folded at the waist, clenched fists pressed to her stomach. Her mom crouched at her side, one hand firm on the girl’s back, the other stroking the curls where Santa’s gift had landed. Mom’s gaze darted toward Santa then back to her daughter.

Mr. Howard sneezed.

At the back of Lexi’s mind, a clock began ticking away the seconds. Any moment, Little Buzz Cut would finish reciting his Amazon Wish List and make it Eli’s turn, and here she stood, bouncing between distractions. She thought again of the shadow crossing Santa’s face, moving the wrong direction as he turned into the light.

It occurred to her that Mrs. Howard might be running out the clock. The idea should have been ridiculous, but she couldn’t shake it. There was something in the old woman’s posture, her too-congenial smile. But why would she give two shits whether or not Eli sat on Santa’s lap?

“Excuse me,” Lexi said, forcing a smile.

Mrs. Howard did not look away. Her lips moved. “‘Tis a gala night within the lonesome latter years.”

The old teacher’s gaze flicked toward Eli in a way that made Lexi reach out protectively.

Eli wasn’t there.

Whirling, Lexi found her son at the edge of the worn carpet. An elf watched his approach with a librarian’s eye, ready to stop him if he came too close. At the throne, Little Buzz Cut climbed down from Santa’s lap.

The elf made a circling motion. From full stop to go-go-go.

“Eli.” Lexi realized her hand still hovered where his shoulder had been. Mrs. Howard and her fucking gala night.

As if moving in slow motion, Eli looked over his shoulder. The elf’s hands cycled faster, his eyes silently counting children. Lexi saw Eli’s excitement, and her heart sank.

“It’s okay, Mommy. Santa can’t make me sick.”

A dad, somewhere behind her in line: “Come on, lady.”

Goddammit. Lexi’s hand closed nearly into a fist. She dropped it to her side. She rationalized. Eli had all his shots. And the thing passing across Santa’s face had been a shadow, nothing more. And it’s Christmas. What could happen in thirty seconds on Santa’s lap?

She moved her head, down then up in a slow, uncertain nod.

Her uncertainty did not seem to register in Eli’s widening eyes. Her consent did. Eli cheered and leapt on her. “Kissee!” His lips smacked against hers, and he raced down the carpet so fast, the elf stumbled back. Santa’s helper adjusted his pointy hat, his long-suffering gaze falling upon Lexi before returning to the poor souls waiting behind her.

Mrs. Howard said, “The orchestra breathes fitfully the music of the spheres.”

Poetry? Lexi let the old woman’s words push her forward, into the cordon of plastic fencing. The gray cotton snow, seeded with used tissues, candy wrappers, and what looked like actual road salt, reminded her of the snowplow mounds in the parking lot. Getting some distance from Mrs. Howard, even if it meant stepping closer to Pestilence himself, felt good. Lexi’s old English teacher may have aged gracefully on the outside, but she was not well.

Santa reached down from his throne, flexing his fingers in anticipation of the hug Eli intended to lay on him.

Lexi froze. There it was again, zigzagging a trail across Santa’s brow. Not a shadow. Under the skin. Panic welled inside her as another shadow rose, rippling a yellow cheek. A thought came to her, landing with the force of revelation. His cheeks are supposed to be rosy, not yellow. Santa’s mouth opened in a smile, and Lexi saw them inside. Multitudes.

A heat like the ever-burning sun lit her forehead and rolled down her scalp in scalding waves. She opened her mouth to scream, but someone else beat her to it.

Past the Taco Bell, Miss Wreaths-and-Bells’s mom backpedaled. She held her hands in front of her, fingers spread. Viscous black fluid covered her from head to waist. It drizzled down her body, swinging in ropey strands from her outstretched arms. And, to Lexi’s horror, it moved. The liquid was full of them.

“ELI!”

Lexi’s little boy froze at the steps to Santa’s throne, staring up at the man in red.

Santa loomed above him, his hands balled into fists, knees bent as if intending to drop the mother of all loads right there in the food court. His breathing came in loud, angry huffs matching the pulse of the false veins lining his face. There were so many, so close to the surface, that Santa’s flesh had darkened from yellow to dull gray. His eyes crawled.

Lexi willed herself into motion. Her legs propelled her body forward, but the collar of her shirt yanked tight against her throat with savage force. One foot flew out in front of her, and the other lost traction. Cloth ripped. She landed hard on the cracked tile floor, pain shooting in electric bursts from her right hip.

Scrambling to her knees, she looked up into the grinning face of Mrs. Howard, still reciting her weird-ass poem, her wrinkled hand clenched in a fist.

Bitch.

The thought came and went in a bewildering flurry of terror as she took in the scene in the food court. Little Buzz Cut held his belly. Miss Wreaths-and-Bells hurled herself at her mom in a tangle of black, writhing things that might have been intestines. The elderly shuddered and clutched the edges of the tables where they sat. But none of that mattered. Eli. Only Eli. She scrambled forward, pushing Mrs. Howard into the gray, fake snow. Lexi focused on her son as Santa pumped his legs and vomited.

The gorge rose from his shuddering boots through his immense belly, which was made not of pillows or stuffing but something vile and alive. Inside his baggy red pants, his legs deflated, as if his entire body were emptying out. In the span of a heartbeat, the mass rose through Santa’s chest, shattering ribs with crackerjack pops, bulging his neck in a violet spare tire before erupting from his mouth with enough force to unhinge his jaw and blow out all his teeth.

The firehose blast of syrupy, clingy fluid sprayed ten feet, toppling decorative signposts and poster stands with QR codes for picture discounts. It ejected with such force that it left a two-foot arc untouched around Santa. But Eli had stopped at the bottom of the steps.

The stream knocked him flat. The fluid rushed and splashed but more of it clung, wrapping Eli’s tiny shoulders in an eager embrace, forcing him down. His head struck the tile floor with a sickening thud. His fingers straightened, then rose in lazy curls.

Lexi screamed. The sticky mess sucked at the bottoms of her shoes. The surface writhed, not choppy seas but a shallow pool teeming with hungry swimmers.

A bitter, sulfurous odor rolled over her, blurring her vision with hot, stinging tears. Green and red shapes sped past her, Santa’s elves in full retreat. Their screams distant under the din of breaking bones and violent regurgitation.

Lexi dropped to her knees at Eli’s side. Sludge covered him in a thick, congealing shell. He wasn’t moving. She swiped at the goo covering his mouth. Tiny forms wriggled against the palm of her hand. Their cousins on the floor tickled her ankles as they crawled up her pantlegs, but she ignored them.

She scooped muck, trailing weblike strands from Eli’s lips and cheeks. He opened his eyes, shining lights in the oil slick of his face. His mouth sprang open, and he drew in a deep, shuddering breath. An instant earlier that breath would have filled his mouth and lungs with worms. But she had cleared them all away.

Thank God for tender mercies.

“Come on, Eli. We’re going now.” Lexi flicked her fingers. A few of the things remained, stuck to her palms, and she snapped her hands in sharp, flinging gestures until the last one spiraled off. Trying not to think about the tiny mouths chewing bloody paths up her calves, she scooped up her son and rose to her feet.

Eli made no sound, just wrapped his arms around her neck the way he used to when he had fallen asleep in the car, trusting her to carry him to bed.

She peered around for a clear path to the exit, and her heart sank. Halfway between them and the glass doors that opened onto the parking lot, Miss Wreaths-and-Bells’s mom lay under a tangled cocoon while her daughter chased another family. With every stride, small, squiggly things leapt from the girl’s body. Around the food court, misshapen forms hunched and heaved in wet, lurching sounds while holiday tunes piped through the speakers.

The elderly, who haunted this place in hopes of finding companionship—every one of them eligible for the new all-in-one vaccine.

Genocide, the white-haired pundit had called it. But he hadn’t elaborated, and at the time, Lexi had vaguely wondered why, before her thoughts moved onto the next thing. Now, the gravity of the talking head’s words sank in. Using the old to weaponize the young. The vaccine had turned the mall into a slaughterhouse.

Lexi glanced at Mrs. Howard. The old teacher stood at Santa’s gate, continuing her rote recitation as if unaware that Mr. Howard had dropped to his knees behind her, shitting up worms from his distended mouth. His fingers clawed the air in desperation.

Cradling Eli’s head, Lexi set her sights on an archway that read “Santa’s Workshop.” The space beyond—a collection of shelves, tables, and chairs—appeared untouched by the melee. And on the other side of the workshop lay a fence. She would have to pass the wretched throne to get there, but if she made it to the workshop, she could leap the fence and find a way out.

I hope.

She moved on tiptoes, each step bringing new pain from her throbbing hip. At Santa’s throne, she edged around the blood and urine spreading in a slow circle from the jolly old elf. His disembodied jaw lay flat on the tile beside him, torn gums facing up, connected to the rest of him only by a thin length of twisted flesh. One eye had filled with blood. The other locked onto Lexi.

Jesus Christ, he’s alive.

“Kllllll … eeeeeee…”

She hugged Eli tighter and stepped back. Her heel came down on a spongy mass she recognized as Santa’s beard. In his eruption, the damn thing had flown off his face.

From the corner of her eye, Lexi caught movement. She looked up and blinked as something emerged from Santa’s body. A gore-covered worm, slender and maybe two inches long, hauled its way free of one ear, tasted the air, and nibbled cartilage like a caterpillar on a leaf.

She shook her head. Not a worm. Not entirely. Her eyes focused on the globular head, mouth dead center, and contentedly chewing. Below, a corrugated midsection thinned into a long, coarse tail wending into Santa’s skull. Gray matter. Fucking brain worms. And she had a dozen of them crawling up her motherfucking legs.

A voice, thick and choked, near enough for the breath to tickle the back of Lexi’s neck: “The curtain, a funeral pall, comes down with the rush of a storm.”

Mrs. Howard.

Lexi forced herself to face her former teacher, angling one shoulder between the old woman and Eli. She felt his breathing through the bulk of their winter coats, shallow and fast.

Mrs. Howard’s dress clung to her, the back soaked through. Her husband lay by the gate, hollowed out like Santa, and Lexi understood it was his fluids that drenched his wife’s clothes. Mrs. Howard smiled and orated. Black flecks filled the deep grooves of her molars.

Lexi understood that, too. Mrs. Howard was chewing the brain worms as they slithered into her throat. It wasn’t elation in her eyes. It was madness.

But Lexi had no time for the half-formed questions roiling in her mind. How the Right-Wing Vaccine had turned elderly brains into voracious eating machines. How the cure for everything from gingivitis to childhood illnesses to seasonal influenza (but no mention of Covid, because they insisted that wasn’t real) had led to men and women emptying their guts onto the floor. How one batshit old lady rode the wave instead of drowning under it. Lexi had time for one thought (Genocide) and one action (Get the fuck out of here).

Tightening her grip on Eli, she turned toward Santa’s Workshop, away from Mrs. Howard, intending to pass through the archway, scale the fence beyond it, and keep going.

“And the angels, all pallid and wan…”

With damnable speed, Mrs. Howard thrust a foot between Lexi’s ankles.

Lexi twisted, coming down on her right hip and shoulder and skidding through the pool of Santa’s sick. Pain shot through her body, meeting in her lower back and exploding in a searing burst that filled her vision with coruscating stars. Her elbow jounced against the floor, and Eli shot out of her grasp. She continued to slide. Something snapped against her shoulder, and a rough edge sheared through her winter coat, stippling her back.

An unyielding plastic fencepost brought her to a sudden, jolting halt.

Lexi couldn’t catch her breath. It didn’t matter. She needed to get to Eli.

Using her good arm, Lexi pushed herself upright and blinked. She wanted to shake her head to clear it, but her spasming muscles and growing nausea warned against the action. A few inches in front of her lay the jagged stub of a four-foot candy cane. The razor-sharp tips were wet with her blood. More than three feet of striped, curving plastic lay next to her.

Lexi’s burning lungs inflated. She scanned the chaos. There. Eli’s momentum had driven him into and through the fence. He lay unmoving on the other side. Setting her jaw, Lexi gripped the fence post and pulled herself upright. As she rose, she saw that she wasn’t alone. Mrs. Howard loomed, hooked fingers wavering at her hips, knees bent slightly as if ready to spring forward. At the old woman’s left stood Little Buzz Cut, covered in black ichor all the way to his snow boots. Unspooled brains crawled along the front of his shirt and down his pants.

Behind them gathered half a dozen more kids, all recipients of Santa’s gift—or the many gifts of the dozens of sagging elderly donors lying around the gore-stricken food court. Out there, still-healthy parents and children continued to flee from Miss Wreaths-and-Bells and a cadre of other infected kids. But here, Mrs. Howard remained fixated on Lexi, her former student, like a dog worrying a bone.

Squirming shapes dribbled past the old woman’s lips, and her eyes bulged from within. The children at her flanks tilted their heads in unison, training their eyes on Lexi. Pack hunters receiving an unspoken command.

“The play is the tragedy, ‘Man,’ and its hero…”

Some distant part of Lexi’s mind identified what Mrs. Howard had been reciting: one of her damn Edgar Allan Poems. It didn’t matter. None of it did—unless she got to Eli.

The kids came forward in a rush. Lexi scooped up the broken length of candy cane and hopped onto the fence, ignoring the pain lancing from the soles of her feet to her aching neck. She swung her legs over and continued spinning, swinging left-handed with all her strength.

Three kids followed her, leaping atop the fence. Lexi’s plastic cane struck one puke-smeared youngster in the face, splitting his cheek. Undulating black gobbets spattered the fence and fake snow. The force of the blow drove him into the other two, toppling all three. Bones crunched as they landed, eliciting pitiable, gurgling cries.

Four more took their places, one of them Little Buzz Cut.

Lexi screamed, in fear, in rage, in horror over what she had done to a child. And as the kids crouched to take flight from their perches, she swung again. The blow connected, and Little Buzz Cut slumped onto the tile at her feet. Another kid teetered and fell back into the workshop. The other two sprang at Lexi, wrapping wet arms around her body, covering her in trails of brain tissue.

She managed to avoid falling and began to turn, attempting to fling the children—the creatures—off her. Her mind dissociated with a tangible cracking sensation. She saw the kids laughing as their feet flew out from under them, parallel to the floor, fingers clawing for purchase as they rode the human swing. At the same, time Lexi was aware of herself wielding the candy cane, clubbing the horrid monsters until they let go.

A larger shadow descended on Lexi. Mrs. Howard, slicked dress still sticking to her body, wobbled as she climbed onto the fence. The old woman’s eyes throbbed and pulsed before rupturing with brittle pops. Glistening brain tissue tumbled down her cheeks. The worms wriggled from her nose, swam and snapped teeth in her open mouth.

Lexi screamed and jumped forward on pure instinct, delivering a single thrust with the candy cane before her senses got the better of her, and she leapt the other way. The diversion was enough. Off balance and stiff with age, Mrs. Howard fell backward. Her hips struck the floor first, cracking like eggshells, followed by her shoulders. The back of her head came down over the broken stub of a candy cane still anchored on the workshop floor. It shifted, scraping the base of her skull before tearing through her throat, its tip emerging in a soup of blood and biological tar.

Little Buzz Cut pushed himself to his knees, but Lexi didn’t care. She spotted a path beyond the fence and through the chaos. It led deeper into the mall, but she could find an anchor store and escape from there. She ran to Eli and knelt at his side, crying out from agonies across her body as she dropped. Her legs burned from countless bites. Her blood-soaked shirt clung to her back.

She lifted him, thanking God as he stirred. She thought again of the nights when he fell asleep in the car and she carried him gently upstairs, her sleeping prince.

Eli leaned forward, eyes unfocused, sensing her familiar presence.

“Kissee, Mommy.”

Voice thick. Garbled. Words only she could understand.

Lexi’s breath caught. What could have been a vein throbbing in her son’s forehead moved, swimming beneath the smooth layer of his young flesh toward his eye. The eye sprang open, bloodshot, and a grooved head squeezed through his tear duct along with a trickle of what could have been motor oil. It snapped fangs and withdrew to the warm confines of Eli’s body.

Eli opened his mouth. Lexi saw the infestation.

“Kissee.”

She did not pull away.

About the Author:
R.E. Dyer has worked as a teacher, trainer, and curriculum developer. His weird tales and supernatural yarns appear or will soon appear in Carnage House, Fraidy Cat Quarterly, and Dungeon Magazine, as well as anthologies like Stories to Take to Your Grave: Tattoo Edition, The Best of Carnage House Year Two, Spirits and Spreadsheets, Feral Lands, and Dolls in the Attic. A member of the HWA, he lives in the wilds of Pennsylvania with his wife and two children under the eye of a large, hungry cat.