‘What about you, when you die, Snake?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Won’t you be trapped in a zombie’s body when you die? I mean, you have been in close contact with Wainwright, what makes you think he hasn’t infected you already?’
The man got up from his chair and made a move to the exit.
‘Where are you going?’ Fergus said.
‘To die in peace,’ the man said.
‘We aren’t infected. Wainwright isn’t contagious yet, is he? If we remain a little longer, then we will become infected.’
At the door, the man attempted to open it. Unable to turn the knob, he gave up. ‘Open this for me,’ he told Fergus.
‘No.’
The man turned around and stared at Fergus. ‘What do you mean, no?’
‘I don’t want to open the door. I want you to remain here. I want you to experience what it feels like for a man to turn into a zombie.’
‘You are brave, Fergus. Now open the door for me.’
‘How long will it take for Wainwright to become contagious?’
‘Not long at all.’
Wainwright started to rock backwards and forwards. He moaned softly as if he was trying to speak, but was unable to find the words.
‘If we don’t leave here soon, we will both be infected,’ the man said.
‘Even if we leave, I will be infected eventually. But you will die before the contagion spreads quickly enough to reach you. Isn’t that right?’
‘What if it is?’
‘You are in a straightjacket. You are weak. I think I will keep you here, with Wainwright, until you die. Or should I say, until your body dies and you become zombified? Imagine that, Snake, you being unaware and ignorant of everything around you.’
‘Who are you Fergus? Are you one of his new angels? One I have never met?’
‘I am just a man. A man with a family I will do anything to protect.’
The man frowned. ‘You need to burn Wainwright right now,’ he said.
‘Why do I need to do that?’
‘Because there is still time to stop the plague from spreading. But you need to be quick. Cover him in vodka and set him alight. Do it now.’
Fergus stared at Wainwright. He grabbed the bottle of vodka they had drank from earlier and poured it over Wainwright. ‘I don’t have a match.’
The man sighed. ‘Wainwright has a lighter in his trouser pocket. He doesn’t smoke; he just likes to flick the lighter on and off. He will smoke soon enough though. And bring the other bottle, we can drink it together while I wait to die.’
Fergus checked Wainwright and found the lighter. ‘Shouldn’t I take him outside,’ he said to the man.
‘Not enough time,’ the man said.
Fergus pressed the lighter button. He placed the flame against Wainwright. The flame took hold of the vodka and whooshed it into life.
Fergus backed away from Wainwright.
‘We should get out of here, Fergus.’ The man said.
Fergus walked towards the door and twisted the knob. He exited the bar with the man close behind. Standing in the middle of the road, he watched Wainwright burn inside the bar. ‘I should call the fire brigade,’ he said.
The man stood beside him, watching the spectacle unfurl inside the bar. ‘You’ve already ruined my zombie holocaust. At least let me enjoy a good burning.’
Fergus called the fire brigade on his mobile and reported the fire.
The man shook his head. ‘Take me to Blackwell,’ he said. ‘I want to die near a river.’
They got into Fergus’ car and he drove them to the path leading to the River Tees at Blackwell. The man remained silent during the drive and when they arrived, Fergus helped him out of the car and support his weight as they walked from the road, along the path, until they came to the riverbank where the man slumped down exhausted. Fergus sat down beside him.
It was a while later before he spoke. ‘Dying like a man is beautiful,’ he said in a sedate voice.
‘What makes it beautiful?’ Fergus asked.
Daybreak was forming in the sky and Fergus thought about being home, in bed with his wife. Her body heat when he first got into bed and lay beside her each morning after finishing night shift was one of his favourite moments.
‘The way it makes you feel differently about everything that’s ever happened in your life.’ The man suddenly murmured. ‘All of those experiences take on new meaning.’
‘What are you thinking about now?’
‘Flying through the Xibalba Nebula circling a death star with a seraph I used to call friend at my side. Afterwards, our wings glistened with morning dew as we rested in the treetops of a nameless rainforest waiting for two suns to rise. I could taste the wind in those days like I can taste vodka these days. Trust me Fergus, you need to die soon. You need to feel things differently, like I feel things right now.’
‘How do you feel things differently?’
The man breathed in deeply. ‘Right now, it feels like I am becoming all of the moments whenever I ever felt…’ He fell backwards and lay on the ground staring at the sky. He closed his eyes.
A short while later, Fergus saw the man had stopped breathing. He pulled the bottle from his pocket and opened it. He took a long swig on the vodka. He waited until the sun started to rise. When it was low but full in the sky, he stood up. He poured the remainder of the vodka over the man. He lit the lighter and set the man ablaze. Turning away from the man before he burned out, Fergus walked back to the car. Driving home he wondered how it was possible for death to be beautiful. He thought about his wife’s body heat in the morning. How he would feel about her warmth when it was time for him to die and he remembered back to cold winter mornings.
MR. EXPENDABLE
Peter N. Dudar
Peter N. Dudar has been writing and publishing dark fiction for over a decade. His debut novel, A Requim for Dead Flies, has been officially nominated for a Bram Stoker Award(R) and continues to garner critical acclaim. His short fiction can be found in several anthologies and webzines, including the soon to be released Nightscapes, Volume 1. His first collection of short fiction, Dolly and Other Stories, will be released in July. Dudar is a proud member of the New England Horror Writers. He lives in Maine and wants to be an astronaut when he grows up.
Bruno DeAngelo was both surprised and irritated to see so many faces at his retirement party.
He let his eyes scan across the dinner tables set up in the Gleason Theater, taking in the sight of nearly two hundred friends and colleagues from his working days. Some were dressed to the nines in their fancy tuxedos and evening gowns, as if this was some kind of award ceremony. Others wore fancy suits and expensive shoes and designer cocktail dresses (there was always an air of competition among these people, always a need to steal the spotlight). Bruno glanced down at his own apparel; a charcoal-grey number at least a decade old. He’d bought it on the occasion of his wife Lydia’s funeral, after a bout with breast cancer drained the life right out of her. He’d thought about purchasing a new suit for tonight, but eventually decided it just didn’t matter all that much.
After forty-five years of appearing on the small screen, he could at least say he worked with some of the best in the business . . . and even if most Americans didn’t know his name, they could at least recognize his face. He was the character-actor T.V. Guide once dubbed, “The Man Who Died One Thousand Deaths,” and had appeared and died on virtually every televised drama, mystery, or crime show since 1968.
His first job had been a big one, and as his mind drifted back through time to that first gig (just after he dropped out of his senior year of high school and caught the Greyhound bus for Hollywood), a man pushed through the crowd to his table and held out his hand.
“Bruno . . . great to see you. Congratulations on an amazing career!”
Bruno extended his own hand and shook with the guest.
“Good to see you too, Bill. I’m absolutely amazed that you
made it out here to join me tonight.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it,” the man answered. “You know what they say . . . Nobody gives ‘good death’ like Bruno!”
This was true. Bruno DeAngelo absolutely had star-quality. He had the rough, chiseled face of Rock Hudson and the body of Rocky Marciano. He could remember the way the young woman at the portrait studio all but drooled on his toes as she snapped the face shots for his portfolio, and how she’d whispered to him, “You’re gonna be a star someday,” as he forked over the last of his money from washing cars in the daytime and washing dishes in some greasy Hollywood dive at night. There were times in his career when he’d work with an actress and she would be wearing the very same perfume as that gal in the portrait studio, and his heart would ache to be seventeen again. He never got that photographer’s name, but he’d thought about her a lot through his career. He spent many nights (as Lydia lay sleeping beside him) wondering where she was and if she would still remember him if he suddenly got the courage to go back to that portrait studio and find her.
Now, shaking hands with William Shatner, Bruno’s mind raced back to the dressing room, back to when he got his first acting gig on Star Trek. He remembered the wardrobe lady handing him the “red suit.” He remembered the way she chuckled as she explained that the “red suit” was the kiss of death and that he should be expecting to get vaporized by a phaser blast before the episode was even half over. Bruno snatched the script off his table and began thumbing through it, severely dismayed and disappointed at the news. From the next room over, he could hear the voices of famed show creator Gene Rodenberry and writer Harlan Ellison bickering over plot points (and quite frankly, the little writer fellow frightened him). Shatner and Nimoy were already on the set working through their dress rehearsal. Bruno scanned through the script and found his one and only line,
“Captain, they’re coming this way!”
. . . and then, just as the wardrobe lady told him, he gets blasted to smithereens. He scarcely had time to set the script back down when the production assistant leaned in the door and said, “They’re ready for you.”
Bruno was coached all the way to the set; some intergalactic planet scene where other extras dressed in rubber suits were milling about, waiting for their inclusion in the final dress rehearsal.
“You don’t talk while you are on the set,” the production assistant began. “You don’t approach the cast members. You don’t interfere with props, equipment, or set design. You may move about freely behind the yellow line while we’re not recording, but once the director calls ‘action’ you are to remain on your mark and wait for your cue. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” the eighteen-year-old version of Bruno replied, still in awe at appearing on television’s biggest science-fiction program.
The cast did two dry-runs of the scene, and then the director yelled “Action!” and Bruno died his first on-air death. His screen time lasted only five seconds, but what a five seconds it was! When the scene was over, both Shatner and Nimoy extended their hands and picked him up off the ground. Nimoy dusted him off with a smooth Vulcan hand and commented, “I hope that looked as good on film as it did in real life.” Shatner smiled and nodded. “Yeah, this kid’s got a hell of a future ahead of him.”
It was only five seconds, but that gig led to another gig. And that gig led to another. And another. And another.
At some point Shatner had moved on, and Bruno found his eyes scanning around the room. He saw a lot of fellow character actors mingling about and hoisting drinks and making small talk. Working stiffs just like him, that had gotten a break in show biz but not that fabled Big Break that led to fame and fortune. A few of them had landed bit parts on the big screen, but those big moments were always peppered with the harsh reality that most of the footage shot of them ended up on the cutting room floor, and the brief nanoseconds they saw of themselves on-screen were instantly forgettable moments, where they were either eclipsed by the celebrity actors or the roles they were cast in just weren’t all that important to the script. At least for Bruno, on those few occasions he did make it onto the screen, his role as the “guy who got shot/stabbed/poisoned/strangled” had some import to the movie or to the program. He was relevant even if his screen time lasted only about ten seconds.
Bruno had to laugh as he picked up the pamphlet and glanced over its contents. The pamphlet read: BRUNO DeANGELO; CELEBRATING THE CAREER OF MR. EXPENDABLE. This whole retirement party had been his agent, Walter Merrill’s idea. Bruno had fought and protested it, but Wally was insistent that both Hollywood and Television owed it to America’s favorite victim to pay their homage and respect to a man who elevated the standards of the dramatic demise. Wally had gone so far as to have his research assistant track down all the shows and films Bruno died in, and listed his credits right in the pamphlet. Bruno ran down the list of character names and sighed.
“Soldier 3”—M*A*S*H*
“Victim 5”—Kolchack, The Night Stalker
“Deceased Husband”—Murder, She Wrote
“Desert Victim”—CSI
This list went on and on. Over two hundred television programs and a dozen movies (and a far cry from the 1000 deaths he was credited with). Sometimes his credit had a character’s name listed, but mostly just a non-descript term to denote that Bruno DeAngelo had played somebody, and that somebody died before they could utter a single phrase and become crucial to the story.
And that was their trick . . . speaking roles pay better than non-speaking rolls. How much had the business cheated him out of by relegating him to non-speaking parts?
But I DID have some speaking parts. Not a lot, but enough to have been discovered. Enough to be recognized by people . . .
This was true as well, but the speaking parts came mostly after he joined the union. The Screen Actors Guild was just one more hand in his pocket, and based on those bit parts he kept getting, he could scarcely afford it. But at least the roles he was getting improved. He’d had speaking parts on S.W.A.T., Miami Vice, NYPD BLUE, and ER just to name a few off the top of his head. Bruno also had a very good role in a made-for-television movie about Leon Ray Hickey, the serial killer from Albany, New York. That one was called, Cold Blooded Beast, and had Bruno credited as “Deputy Crane.” In the movie, Deputy Crane had been one of the cops that had chased Hickey back to his apartment on Ontario Street, but was stabbed to death with a butcher knife after kicking down the door and rushing in.
“You forget to check your blind-spot,” the assistant producer explained (he’d been a cop, himself, and had been hired onto the project as a technical advisor). “Hickey will come up behind you with the fake knife and slit your throat. You just drop on the floor and convulse as your blood leaves your body. But don’t drag it out too long . . . we want to keep it real.”
The paycheck from that gig barely covered the rent, but he gladly took it. Just like every other check he’d received. And that was back in 1981.
More guests made their way to his table and shook his hand. He recognized and shook hands with a lot more celebrity actors than he’d first calculated. Some were from shows back in the early seventies, shows that most of the current programming demographic of viewers had never even heard of. Others were folks that he’d worked with just this past season; kids, practically, that he knew in his heart had a lot less talent than he had.
So Why hadn’t it been him? Where did he go wrong in his career?
Because at some point you became a running joke. For every leading man and starlet in Hollywood, a thousand lives are broken. You were a casualty, just like a lot of other folks like you, who tried to follow their dream and failed.
It wasn’t fair! It just wasn’t fucking fair!
Kind of like tonight.
Bruno wasn’t sure at what point he’d decided to go through with it, but now here it was, far too late for anything to be done about it.
At some point in his career, he’d just given up. He wasn’t sure at what
point it was, but there eventually came that final realization that he was never going to be a leading man, never going to catch that big break that he kept thinking was just around the corner. Fame was so elusive, and even if people did recognize his face on those off occasions where he was out shopping at the grocery store and that woman in line behind him gasped and asked him if he was that guy, it meant nothing. It meant that he faked another death in front of the camera, and someone recognized his face. The Facebook community was still abuzz with the episode of Criminal Minds that aired two weeks ago (his very last paying gig), where the victim’s head was severed clean off, and how real it looked as the head rolled across the linoleum floor. Gruesome. And memorable enough for that lady at the Social Security office to have her jaw drop as he passed her his retirement paperwork.
“I know you!” she blubbered as she stamped and signed his papers. “It looked so real when the killer chopped off your head. How do they do that?”
Bruno DeAngelo was never going to be a star. But just this once, this one time, he was going to be the last person standing.
At some point, Wally (who’d agreed to be the emcee for the evening) stood up at the lectern and began to speak. Bruno didn’t pay much attention to his lifelong agent (who’d failed him time and again at landing him the prime roles . . . this was Wally’s fault as much as it was his own) as the man began to rattle off some rosy speech about the great Bruno DeAngelo, Hollywood’s beloved MR. EXPENDABLE, who’d died more deaths than the victims of The Alamo. The speech went on, arousing some tittering laughter and occasional applause. And then Wally was lifting his glass in a toast to the Man of the Hour, nodding and smiling politely right at Bruno as he finished his little spiel, held his glass to his lips and began to drink.
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