Christmas with the Dead

Calvin leads a quiet, ordinary life with his wife Ella and their daughter Tina in the fictional East Texas town of Mud Creek. The holiday season arrives with the usual small-town pressures—Ella wants homey cheer and Christmas decorations, while Calvin would rather rest. When a freak lightning storm, born from strange electrical currents hurtling toward Earth, sweeps through the area, everything changes in an instant: those who witness the storm collapse and die on the spot. Calvin awakens to a nightmare, finding his wife and daughter seemingly dead. Grief weighs heavy as he lays them out, only for Tina to rise first and creep away through an open window, followed by Ella, who returns as a zombie and attacks him. In the chaotic aftermath, Calvin learns from his neighbor Ray that Tina had bitten him and he killed her with a hammer. The town’s residents are not merely knocked unconscious by the storm; they begin to turn, and Mud Creek descends into a zombie-filled landscape.

Two years pass in this bleak new world, and Calvin has adapted to life among the undead. He keeps Ella chained on the back porch of his house, which has become a stubborn little fortress, and he feeds her dog food because he cannot bring himself to kill her. He keeps a radio vigil, broadcasting from the local station in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will hear his message. The isolation is brutal but steady; he even passes by Ray, now a zombie, as he goes about his errands. A striking moment comes when a living man encounters Calvin, mistaken for a zombie at first; the man is quickly disabused of that assumption after Calvin asks what he’s doing, only to hear him quip, “Shooting the shit out of zombies.” This glib remark is a stark reminder of how tenuous human connection remains in Mud Creek. On a rooftop with GM—who insists on wearing his iconic 3D glasses—Calvin and GM share a loud, pounding soundtrack that lures the zombie horde from the woods, and the undead “dance” to the heavy beat as if compelled by the rhythm itself.

Calvin’s broadcast eventually attracts attention beyond his small circle: former inmates from a state mental hospital hear the message in their car radios and arrive armed, seizing both Calvin and GM. Their captors are led by Reverend Mac, a magnetic, cult-like figure who exerts a fierce control over the inmates and their zealous devotion. The situation worsens as the living are forced into a precarious alliance with the dead, creating a perilous maze of threats. Now Calvin and GM must navigate not only the relentless zombies but also the Reverend’s fanatical flock, who seem to be expanding their reach while the undead remain a constant, lurking danger. The two men must plot a way to escape the double menace—the Reverend and his followers, and the ever-present threat of a town overrun by the reanimated.

As the tension builds, the narrative tightens around a singular question: can two survivors outwit a charismatic purveyor of fear and a world overtaken by the undead, or will Mud Creek claim them as another casualty in a town where every corner hides a new peril? The story stays focused on Calvin’s fragile hope for human connection and a chance to reclaim some sense of normalcy, even as the landscape of Mud Creek remains haunted by the storm’s lasting, deadly aftereffects.

Last Updated: October 03, 2025 at 10:33