Sausagey Santa by Iii Carlton Mellick Page B

many of them get through. They dive into the hollow bodies lying in the snow and we find ourselves surrounded by more zombies.
    Asian Elf shrieks as a rotten claw rips into her stomach. Teeth tear into her neck and rip open her arteries, spraying black blood into the wind. Elves have black blood?
    Skull Tattoo Elf points his mouth at her attacker and sucks the coffee bird out of its eyes, but he’s too late. She’s already dead.
    “Into the grinding station,” Skull Tattoo Elf says.
    We fall back, dodging the zombies to get into the black metal building. The corpses tower over me. I’m hobbit-sized now and won’t have the strength to break free if any of them clutch onto me. Unibrow Elf and I clear the horde, but Pig Nose Elf becomes entangled in a forest of rotten arms.
    “Help!” he cries. “Not me!”
    Skull Tattoo Elf turns back, but there are too many of them. Pig Nose Elf disappears into the sea of massive corpses. His screams become choking coughs as black blood fills his lungs.
     
     
    “Santa, come on!” I yell.
    Santa is just standing there as corpses attack him. They rip open his sausage casings. Meat goo empties out into the snow.
    “It’s no use, me lad,” he cries. “The sleigh is destroyed. The children won’t get their presents this year.”
    “Come on!” I say.
    Skull Tattoo Elf pulls me away as he sucks coffee birds out of eye sockets.
     
     
    We circle the metal structure until we find the entrance. It’s electronically locked, but Unibrow Elf cracks the thirty-eight digit code so fast that it looks like he has twenty hands at work on the lock.
    When the door opens, he winks at me and gives me a finger-gun with a click of his thumb.
    That was pretty sly of him.
     
     
    Once inside, we shut the door behind us to keep the zombies out. The others are still out there but they didn’t follow us. I don’t know what Decapitron’s problem is. We’re here to save our kids, not kill a bunch of zombies to impress an elf with a Burt Reynolds mustache. I feel like we’ve really been growing apart ever since she died.
    There is a spiral staircase leading up to the brain of the facility.
    “Come on,” Skull Tattoo Elf says, leading the way up the steps.
     
     
    Upstairs, we arrive in a large dark room. There is crying coming from the shadows.
    “What’s that?” Unibrow Elf asks.
    We following the crying to a big box in the center of the room. There are barred windows on the sides of the box. The crying comes from within. I recognize that sound.
    “Angelica?” I ask, peeking through the window.
    I see her in there, curled around her big sister.
    She looks up at me and jumps to her feet.
    “Hi, Sly Fry!” she cries.
    “My angel! ” I say. “Don’t worry, the Sly Guy’s here to rescue you!”
    Nora doesn’t say anything. She’s weak. It looks like her wound has drooled a lot of blood. A puddle fills the floor of the box.
    I look at Unibrow Elf. “How do we open it?” I ask him.
    Unibrow Elf examines the cage, looking it up and down. “The top,” he says.
    We can’t reach the top of the cage. The window is near the bottom, but the top stretches twelve feet into the air.
    “I’ll get it,” Skull Tattoo Elf says.
    He grips the vacuum tube with his mouth and climbs the side of the box. Once he gets up there, he examines the top. Doesn’t see anything. He crawls across the lid and then looks at me and shrugs.
    “Angelica, how did you get in?” I ask. “The top?”
    She shakes her head.
    “Where then?” I ask.
    She points at the window in the back.
    Unibrow Elf and I circle their prison to the back window.
    “Ahh,” Unibrow Elf says, nodding at the barred window here.
    He pulls a latch and the window unlocks. But as it unlocks the room fills with a clanking sound.
    “What’s that?” Unibrow Elf says.
    We listen carefully. It is coming from the cage. It sounds almost like . . . music.
    I look up. A crank on the side of the box is turning, almost like a . . .
    “Get off