Sausagey Santa by Iii Carlton Mellick Page A

grinding station and electrocutes the steel structure until its gears lock up and its jaws droop open with chained harpoons drooling out down its chin.
    We might have lost the sleigh and the reindeer but at least we’ve paralyzed the grinding station.
     
     
    We regroup around the flaming sleigh. Burnt deer flesh fills the air.
    “How are we going to get home?” I ask Santa.
    “Me poor darlings,” he says, his eyes lost in the fire.
    “We must push on,” Unibrow Elf says.
    “Let’s focus on recovering the bag first,” Asian Elf says. “Then we’ll worry about getting home.”
    The other elves nod at her in agreement.
    “Frosty’s going to pay for all this,” says Burt Reynolds Elf, as the living dead fill the streets.
     
     
    The zombies come at us from all sides, emptying out of the icy buildings nearby.
    “There’s too many of them,” squeals Pig Nose Elf. “We should run.”
    “No way,” Burt Reynolds Elf says. “We’re going to fight!”
    Burt Reynolds Elf pulls two sawed-off shotguns from holsters on his thighs. Unlike the other elves, he doesn’t much care for the Dungeons and Dragons thing. He wears boots and a navy blue shirt tucked into his jeans.
    The zombies dive towards him as he steps out into the open, but Burt Reynolds Elf dodges out of the way and blows their heads off at point blank range. He kills them two at a time. Their skulls become splatters of red mulch sprayed across the fresh snow. When the shotguns need to be pumped, he slams the butts of the guns against zombie foreheads while holding the pump, cocking it in the process. Then he shoots two more.
    I hate to admit it, but:
    Burt Reynolds Elf = fucking awesome.
     
     
    Decapitron joins him. She takes a candy cane from her back and pulls on the crook of the cane. A blade slides out like a cane sword. A candy cane sword?
    She charges into the zombie crowd head-first and skewers one of them with her antlers. Then she decapitates another with her candy cane sword. The twins are strapped to her back, giggling as she slices off heads and severs limbs.
    The other elves don’t seem to be as tough as Burt Reynolds Elf. They stay behind, like me. They have swords and axes in their hands, but they don’t have any idea what they’re supposed to do with them. Well, except for the one with the skull tattoo. He is fidgeting with some kind of gadget in a backpack. Maybe it’s a bomb or something.
    “What do we do?” I ask them.
    They look at me like I’m supposed to have the answers.
    “Fight for Christmas?” Pig Nose Elf asks.
    I shrug at him.
    “You do something,” Unibrow Elf says. “You’ve got the cabbage suit.”
    “Do you know how to use it?” I ask.
    “No,” he says.
    He looks at the other elves, but they all just shrug at him.
     
     
    Skull Tattoo Elf gets his gadget working and buckles his backpack on. It makes a loud whirring noise like that of a lawnmower. His gadget is some kind of vacuum cleaner. A hose leads from its mouth into his backpack.
    “Rock!” he tells me.
    I wonder if Skull Tattoo Elf listens to adventure rock . . .
    He points his vacuum on the horde of zombies and they back away from him. His weapon sucks the black coffee out of the corpses’ eyes. He goes after several of them at a time. Once all of the black coffee is pulled out of a zombie its body goes limp and falls to the ground.
    “This guy knows what he’s doing,” I tell the other elves.
    They nod and we stay close behind him for safety.
     
     
    The bodies pile up in the snow as Skull Tattoo Elf sucks the life out of the undead creatures. I can’t see Decapitron or Burt Reynolds Elf, but I can hear gunshots and the whooshing of swords on the other side of the burning sleigh. Zombies swipe at Santa as he continues to cry for his fallen reindeer, but he doesn’t seem to care.
    Coffee birds that have exited the bodies of Decapitron’s victims fly over the sleigh towards us. Skull Tattoo Elf tries to vacuum them up in midair, but