Sean E. Britten

Christmas Eve after the nuclear apocalypse. A strike force put together by what remains of the military baits a trap for a very special and unique target who has proven too dangerous to live.

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Strings of colourful lights entwining the house blinked and strobed in premeditated patterns. In the front yard, nine glowing reindeer pulled a red sleigh covered in glitter. Festooned with hundreds of Christmas decorations, the two story family home appeared to be the only source of artificial light for miles and miles and miles. Surrounding it were rows and streets of identical or almost identical houses, all of them dark. The streetlamps remained off, no electricity. Behind the target house, a humming generator kept the decorations lit. Clouds hung dense and heavy overhead but in the distance there was enough moonlight to see the ruins of the nearest city skyline, burned, fused skyscrapers blacker than the black of the night.

“Strike teams, report in,” Stevens said. “Over.”

“Strike Team Cupid, in position, no change, over.”

“Strike Team Blitzen, in position, no change, over.”

“Strike Team Dancer, in position, no change, over.”

All of the teams checked in, none reporting any issues. It did little to settle Colonel Stevens’ nerves. Young for a special forces colonel, Stevens was in his mid-forties, tall, piston straight, steel fraying in his hair. Each strike team was composed of three men or women, lightweight but capable of moving fast and hard. It wasn’t like they had a lot of soldiers to spread around, they had pulled in all they could for this op. The teams were spaced between the houses surrounding the target home. Waiting in darkness behind blackout curtains, night vision goggles and assault rifles ready. A wall of monitors surveyed the target house and the rest of the street, including those houses where the strike teams were hidden. Given the area used to be housing for an army base, the homes and yards had a repeating pattern of sameness that would put any section of civilian suburbia to shame.

Professor Fowler leaned past one of techs to peer at the monitors. More visibly nervous than Stevens, his left leg jiggled even while standing even though he’d insisted on being there. Despite being in his early thirties, the professor looked barely old enough to drink. He was reedy and baby faced with a shock of ginger hair.

“You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry,” Fowler said softly.

“Stow that shit!” Stevens snapped, more harshly than he’d intended.

“Sorry, Colonel.” Fowler sounded sincere.

“That’s fine, just, we know why we’re here. We don’t need to belabour it.”

A few techs watched Colonel Stevens from the corners of their eyes. Their mobile command post had been set up in the dining and living area of an empty house only a couple of blocks from the target house. None of them wanted to be there, the techs, the strike teams, the others on standby. Professor Fowler and Stevens were the only ones who’d volunteered. It wasn’t the strangeness of the mission that bothered them but the unpredictability. Many of the people under him, counting on his orders, had loved ones and families to think of.

Stevens didn’t have a family. He’d given his heart, along with his body, mind and soul, to his country. A year and half ago he’d still had doubts about whether he’d made the right decision regardless of where his career had taken him. But then REO26 began appearing in cities all over the world. A vicious retrovirus, it tore through populations with a speed and ferocity that COVID-19 could only dream of. The virus caused cancerous growths in those victims it didn’t kill too quickly. With global supply chains crippled, border skirmishes escalated into military dogfights and then short and sharp nuclear exchanges, leaving much of the world empty, infectious, and radioactive. The United States barely maintained a working government and military.

Professor Fowler joined the colonel, eyes still on the screen at the head of the room. “Going to find out who’s naughty or nice? Sorry, I can’t help myself, I’m just nervous.”

“It’s a first for all of us,” Stevens replied.

“We can’t be sure if he, it, whatever it is, can be killed.”

“You’re the expert.”

“In this? Hardly. I simply put forward a theory that if he is, in fact, real, his existence and current condition may be due to the fact that he exists in a state of quantum flux. In between different strands of possibility.”

“I read your paper, professor, doesn’t mean I understood it.”

“Well, the classic example would be a coin toss. At the moment of the toss, the coin is in flux, it could be either heads or tails, right? Like Schrödinger’s cat, dead or alive, effectively both at the same time since both probabilities are equally true. If you could manipulate the quantum flux, you could make it so that both results were true. One coin, both heads and tails simultaneously.”

Stevens frowned. “I have a hard time picturing something like that.”

“To use an example specific to our subject, one of the arguments made against his existence would be how could he possibly visit every single house in the world in a single night? He couldn’t, not without moving at impossible speeds. But what if he wasn’t moving at great speed but instead moving in a state of quantum flux? That as he approaches one street, there is an equal possibility that he visits one house, or the next house, or the next house, and then in doing so he visits all of them simultaneously?”

“And the presents? How does no one notice the extra presents from him showing up?”

“It’s possible the presents he delivers are in fact the same presents the child’s parents would have bought anyway in different circumstances. And when he delivers them and moves on, both possibilities become true. They were both purchased, and delivered.”

“Sounds a hell of a lot like magic to me.”

“Magic is only insufficiently explained science.”

In order to survive both the virus and nuclear war, the government had been forced to retreat to bunkers deep underground. Secrecy had been just as vital a component in their construction as the millions of tonnes of concrete and steel. Very few individuals knew where they were located. As such, they’d remained undiscovered and were believed impregnable until late in the previous year when one individual, one single, impossible individual, had infiltrated the bunker where Stevens was stationed as easily as sliding down a chimney. While their intentions were unclear they carried with them the deadly retrovirus and had passed it onto others in the bunker. They’d done the same in several other safe places around the country, infecting and killing dozens, and it was only through luck and strict quarantine procedures that the populations of those places hadn’t been completely wiped out. It was clear that the individual in question was too dangerous to live.

One of the technicians interrupted. “Sir, we have movements on the satellite.”

Immediately, Stevens was across the room and bearing down on the monitors. Several showed satellite feeds either as live video or animated representations. On one, a yellow marker flicked in and out of existence along with strings of GPS coordinates.

“It’s like we can’t get a good fix on them,” the tech said. “But it’s heading in this direction at incredible speed.”

“Steady, nothing for us to do until the target is in place. Assuming this is the target.”

Updates rattled out through the radios. Colonel Stevens’ eyes tracked across the screens. He almost thought he could hear sleigh bells as a streak of red appeared at the edge of one screen, vanished, and then crossed onto another.

Dozens of cameras covered the target house. Christmas lights blinked on and off in sequence. Snaking through the air, a flickering brown and red blur appeared in the sky behind it and took on more form and detail as it descended for a landing.

Hooves clattered against the rooftop and came to a complete stop in a remarkably short space. Steam rose off the animals in the crisp air. They looked very different from the glowing reindeer arrayed across the house’s lawn. Bestial and hulking, almost insectile in places, bristling with limbs and hoary tissue, heavy with tumourous growths. The sleigh they drew looked old, ancient, but well maintained until recently. Burns scarred the dark red paint. The sides warped.

“We have confirmation on target,” one of the techs said.

“On the move,” another said.

Dragging an enormous sack, something, it wasn’t quite clear how to categorise it, emerged from the sleigh. Its hunched shoulders were wrapped in a ragged, red cloak. Pale claws emerged from its sleeves to grasp the bulging bag. The fur trimmed brim of a red hat sat low over the gleam of eyes, too many eyes, while a matted cloud of white beard exploded from the lower half of the target’s face. As its gaze flicked in the direction of the camera, those many eyes caught the light and gleamed like the eyes of a wild animal.

“Steady,” Stevens said, unsure if he was talking to himself or to the room.

Their target reached the house’s chimney. What happened next didn’t quite translate from Stevens’ eyes to his brain in a way that made sense. The creature folded its way into the opening of the chimney flue like an octopus or some very flexible insect, bending in such a fashion as to squeeze its bulk into an impossibly small space. But the transformation wasn’t purely physical, its movements somehow bent the air and the angles of the physical world around it. Its hulking frame, its clothes and boots, even the bulging sack twisted and disappeared into the chimney.

“Jesus,” Professor Fowler said.

“Are those birds in the air?” Stevens asked.

“Air support in the air and en route,” one of the techs confirmed.

“We have cameras inside still live?”

“Up on main.”

The feed Stevens was watching switched to a view from inside the house, positioned in a corner of the living room ceiling. The room was decorated much like the outside, lit by electric candles and colourful, blinking lights. A Christmas tree surrounded by fake presents sat on the opposite side of the room. Stockings hung by the chimney with care. There was even, perhaps most importantly, a glass of milk and a plate of cookies left as bait.

A pale hand with gnarled fingers appeared at the top of the fireplace. Then a second, and then a third, covered in rashy bumps. A red cap dangled from the mouth of the chimney. Hanging upside down, a head emerged with a suggestion of weight and insect movement behind it.

Steven hesitated for just a moment as the room watched. The order caught in his throat. If the blow was successful, and of course he hoped it was, this new world’s history would remember him. Regardless of what the legendary figure had become, Stevens would always be remembered as the man who killed Santa Claus.

“Detonate,” Stevens said.

Waiting on the order, one of the technicians made a single keystroke. The feed from the inside of the house went white and died. The thunder of the explosion caused the walls of their command centre to shake. Other cameras, from outside the house, showed the blast. There was very little flame. The house was simply there one moment, strung with Christmas lights and decorations, and then, in the next moment, turned into a black cloud. Strings of lights sparked and died as they were tossed aside. The shockwave swept the house’s yard clean of decorations and snow. Up on the roof, Santa’s reindeers and sleigh disappeared behind the wall of debris. A coruscant of shrapnel flung itself in all directions. Any recognisable portion of the house broke apart in midair until it was too small to be identified. Surrounding houses were pelted by debris. In an expanding wave, windows shattered up and down the street. The centre of the explosion boiled with expended energy, lapping and overlapping. It was hard to imagine any living thing that could stay intact, remain living, in the heart of that conflagration.

Stevens was on the radio as soon as the echoes of the blast faded. “Strike teams, all teams, move in! Move in and confirm, over!”

Three-man strike teams poured from the battered houses surrounding the target. Most of the screens reflected POVs from their helmet-mounted cameras, night vision turning the world ghost green. All that remained of the target house was a crater, cluttered and broken foundations surrounded by debris. Smoke, burning dust, and falling snow filled the street. Visibility dropped to only a couple of arm lengths in front of them. The soldiers raised weapons from the shoulder, barrels bobbing in the frames of their camera feeds.

One of the men stopped at the edge of the target house’s yard, the air thick. Looking down, Stevens saw him nudge a large, broken wedge of wood with his foot. In the night vision it was colourless but Stevens knew it would be a dark red with golden filigree, albeit battered and scraped. The ornate scrollwork along the unbroken edge showed that it had been part of the sleigh parked on the home’s roof when the explosion triggered. There was no sign of the beasts that had been strapped to said sleigh.

“Team Dancer, report in, over,” Stevens radioed.

“Nothing yet, no sign of target.”

On the screens, the feeds from Team Dancer were lost in a swirling mass of smoke and vapour. Their cameras jolted as they stumbled over uneven ground and ruin.

A hulking shadow loomed out of the dusty, green miasma. It moved unnaturally, lurching, with spidery limbs that rose and fell. Team Dancer reacted instantly, jerking back on the triggers of the M4s.

“Contact! Contact! Contact!”

Gunfire crackled over the feeds, spiking the audio. Bullets cut whorling holes in the smoke and chewed into the hulking shape. It staggered backward but appeared unharmed. The shadow was big and unnatural but the frame looked human enough to identify it as Santa Claus. Being caught in the epicentre of the house-levelling explosion had failed to kill him, it seemed unlikely guns would do the job.

Other strike teams closed in on Team Dancer’s position, following the sound and stabs of muzzle fire through the smoke. On Dancer’s feeds, the target, Claus, lunged. From three different angles, Stevens got a view of the man, the creature, the Saint, mutant, whatever the hell he was.

Head and shoulders taller than the tallest of the soldiers in spite of his hunched posture, Santa Claus’ frame was wrapped in an enormous red cloak. Trimmed with white fur, it hid much of what was wrong with him but tatters showed disturbing glimpses of what was moving underneath. Patches of skin were blackened, burnt, bleeding, but Claus appeared to be in one piece. From one sleeve emerged a hand so big it could have wrapped around a basketball and had the fingers touch, scaled in hard, scabby growths. The other sleeve hid at least three arms, spidery, skinny and pale, covered in puckered scars.

Claus seized one of the soldiers by the head. Their camera was crushed and cut out. From the POVs of the other two members of Team Dancer, Stevens saw the man heaved off his feet. Santa Claus hauled them around, ripping the gun out of his grasp with two other hands, and then tossed them into the dust and snow. With impossible speed, the mutated giant was onto the other members of the strike team. He punched and clubbed the two of them, flinging them backward. From within his tattered red cloak, a fleshy tentacle with a slab of calloused flash on the end lashed out and knocked one of the men sideways.

In fleeting moments of horror, the men’s cameras captured glimpses of their target’s face. No rosy cheeks and paternal smile to be found. The filthy fur collar of his robe rode high on his neck and his hat, a sagging red and white cap, fell low on his brow. Between them, however, was a thick snarl of matted beard. In the midst of it, Claus’ mouth distended, a chaos of molars and canines and whatever else that didn’t look entirely human and didn’t all belong in the same mouth. From the left side of his throat swung a huge wattle of tumorous flesh. Craters ate into Santa’s nose and face, blackened at their edges. Above his beard, half a dozen eyes of various sizes glittered, gleaming green in the night vision cameras, as they fixed on the soldiers in the seconds before crashing into them and sending them flying.

Other strike teams closed in, firing in short bursts. They couldn’t really unleash their full firepower or employ grenades with Team Dancer so close. More rounds ripped into Santa Claus’ cloak but  did nothing to harm him.

“Fall back, fall back!” Stevens shouted into his radio. “Pop smoke for air support!”

Teams Prancer, Donner, Vixen all backed up, guns chattering in overlapping barks. On the screens, the members of Team Dancer with surviving cameras could be seen trying to get away. Someone hurled a smoke grenade into the chaos. Thick, chalky, vibrantly red smoke began to spew from the cylinder as soon as it landed at Claus’ feet, climbing through the fog of burning dust.

“He can’t be killed!” the scientist, Fowler, said with rising panic. “He can’t be killed!”

“Stow it!” Stevens said.

“I’m sorry, but the mutations, it’s the quantum thing! Cancer is just cells dividing out of control. For anyone else, the virus and the radiation would have just killed them long ago but for him, whatever he is, the cells just kept dividing and growing into alternate states until you get-, this thing! He can’t fucking die!”

Huey gunships thundered overhead. A column of red smoke rose out of the ruins of the blasted house. The gunships turned sideways, machine guns bristling from open doorways. Gunners opened up, splitting the air open. Every third round was a tracer, burning a brilliant orange as they fell like lightning, chopping up the smoke and each landing like a small bomb. They slammed Santa Claus sideways and churned the ruins around him to further pieces. Bits spewed into the air and then fell, scattering.

“Fall back!” Stevens said.

Strike teams retreated to a safe distance as crisscrossing machine guns chewed up everything that wound up between them. Establishing defensive lines, they opened up on full auto. Underbarrel grenade launchers boomed like cannons, sending RPGs into the anarchy as well. Explosions sent shrapnel ripping through the surroundings. Smoke billowed and collapsed.

The mutated beast that used to be Santa Claus rampaged through the smoke. Bullets tore gouts of flesh out of his frame but nothing downed him. Gunships cycled through the air overhead.

Suddenly, a mess of creatures all roped together with jingling straps swooped out of the sky. Brown and hairy, deer-shaped but bristling with extra legs, eyes, and extra antlers, they ran on thin air as if it was solid ground. Falling through the smoke, they dropped on top of their master, Claus.

In spite of the fact he seemed to be at no risk of losing this fight, Santa hauled himself onto the back of at least two of the mutant reindeer. Straining, bells ringing, the reindeer took to the air again. They showed no logical source of their ability to fly, their hooves simply caught the air and kept climbing. Arcing into the sky, they angled toward one of the choppers seemingly more out of confusion than malice. The pilot scrambled to get out of the way but they weren’t fast enough. The leading deer smashed into the helicopter’s tail and ripped it clean off. An arc of blood hosed through the air as one of them was clipped by the tail rotor but it failed to slow them down.

Slaloming sideways, the Huey dropped from the sky. It spun, out of control, into another of the identical houses that lined the street while the second chopper and ground forces scrambled to get clear. The front of the house crumpled as it was hit, first and second floors folding in on themselves. The aircraft ripped itself apart. Glistening fuel caught the light and then something sparked. The resulting fireball consumed the aircraft and ballooned through the house it had crashed into, tearing the roof back like a bad hairpiece, and erupting onto the street.

“Goddamnit!” Stevens hurled his radio into a wall across the room where it shattered.

Screens in the command centre picked up glimpses of Claus and his reindeer as they climbed, bells jingling along their sides. Soon, the reindeer and their passenger were only a sparkle of light against the night sky.

xXx

Ultimately, the only casualties of the night were the crew who’d gone down with the gunship. The three members of Team Dancer were badly injured but none of the injuries proved fatal. Two other soldiers were downed but not mortally, one through apparent friendly fire and the other by shrapnel.

They’d retreated to the bunker as dawn broke. Stevens delivered report after report after explanation, trying to justify the travesty, and received the associated dressings down with stoicism.

“We can try again next year, learn from what went wrong,” Stevens said. “Hit him harder, faster, smarter.”

By the time Stevens returned to his room in the bunker, he felt dead on his feet. His eyeballs retreated into his skull and every step felt leaden. The lights flickered on in a windowless and utilitarian room not far removed from a prison cell. A bench and sink against one wall, metal lockers for storage, and white sheets on a cotlike bed. His mind was still on the failure of the mission and the things Professor Fowler had said about their target’s quantum abilities and mutated cancer. It took him a few moments to notice something out of place.

A lump of dusty coal sat on the middle of his mattress, atop the crisp, white sheets.

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Sean: No Dungeons & Dragons’ inspo for the last story of the year, but this one was definitely inspired by this absolutely killer image from Stefan Koidl. I suspect a lot of writers probably do this but over the years I’ve saved hundreds and hundreds of images to serve as inspiration in my writing. I very rarely ever look back on them but some of them, like a few from his work, stick with me. At one point, I was thinking I should move on from Dungeons & Dragons and maybe just do a bunch of stories inspired by specific images I’ve collected so maybe consider this story the first of that theme? I don’t know what to call it… A Thousand Words? As in a picture says a thousand words? That’s pretty good actually, I just came up with that. Probably would have to do something fancy and make them all one thousand flash fiction or something though, and I’m fucking terrible at that kind of thing.

If you haven’t checked it out already, you can find last year’s Christmas story right here. It’s a favourite of mine, I love a good zombie tale, but it’s not one you can really recommend all year round!

Merry Christmas, happy new year, all of that! I’ll be back in the new year with more stories and maybe some other projects I’ve been working on. You can keep track of me here on the site or on Facebook and Twitter, Reddit, Instagram or Threads! I’m diversifying if not terribly active on any particular one.