by Jeff Strand
Bobby looked as if he wanted to start tearing out his hair, but he made the choice not to. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll eat the raccoon paw. I’ll chew it if that’s what it takes, and I’ll even eat the fur and the claws. All I ask is one thing. Please don’t let the raccoon watch.”
Uncle Clyde laughed and slapped him on the back. “Haw haw haw! I was only kidding. I’ve got plenty more zombie materials upstairs. I wouldn’t swindle a bunch of kids. I only rip off adults. I just want extra screen time in the bonus features on the Blu-ray.”
“You’d probably get along really well with my grandmother,” said Justin.
Uncle Clyde raised an eyebrow. “Is she hot?”
20
Uncle Clyde showed them the various zombie faces and wounds he’d created, and Justin felt his eyes tear up with emotion at the beauty of it all. Uncle Clyde was a genius. A bizarre genius, yes, but it was okay for geniuses to be weirdos as long as they did cool stuff.
Justin and Bobby set up the green screen (the bedsheet he’d brought with him) against the basement wall. While Uncle Clyde put zombie makeup on the actors, Justin would shoot the scenes that would require them to digitally insert the backgrounds later. Sadly it was impractical to think that they could shoot inside of a volcano or a destroyed city or Iowa.
The doorbell rang. Somebody cried out in pain.
Uncle Clyde hurried upstairs and returned a moment later with Butch Jones, who would be a zombie victim in Iowa. He walked over to Justin, staggering slightly.
“Thanks for being in my movie,” said Justin, shaking his hand.
“Anytime. I’ve always wanted to get killed by a werewolf.”
“It’s a zombie movie.”
“Eh. Same thing.”
“I notice that you’re wearing a green shirt.”
Butch stroked the front of his shirt with pride. “Yep. My favorite shirt. Birthday present from my grandfather before he died. I tore it up just like you wanted.”
“But it’s green.”
“It is. Very green.”
“The way a green screen works is that we shoot you against a green screen,” Justin said, pointing to the sheet. “Later we combine this footage with different backgrounds. The computer removes everything in your shot that is green and replaces it with images from the background. So technically the only color you could wear that would mess up what we’re trying to accomplish here is green.”
“Oh.”
“That’s why I told you that your scenes would be shot against a green screen. I didn’t want you to unnecessarily tear up a shirt that your grandfather gave you before he died.”
“You’re going to reimburse me for the shirt, right?”
“No.”
“I think you should. I wouldn’t have ripped it up if it weren’t for your movie. I’m not destructive.”
“I explained the situation.”
“No, you didn’t. Why would a civilian like me be expected to understand how the process of green screen technology works? Not everybody is a film geek. Some of us just watch movies without understanding how they’re made. If I was not provided with a layman’s explanation for what we’d be doing today, that’s your failing as a director, not mine as a performer.”
“How much was the shirt?”
“Twelve bucks.”
“Fine.”
“Plus two bucks for the sentimental value.”
“Fine.”
“And I guess I’ll need another shirt that’s not green.”
“Would you be willing to do the scene without a shirt?”
“Absolutely! Why didn’t you ask that in the first place?”
• • •
They began shooting the many scenes that they needed to finish against the green screen. It went faster than Justin could have ever imagined. Even when Alicia and Christopher messed up the occasional line, it didn’t matter. Thanks to the found-footage format, he could just add in some static and edit around the mistake.
Making a movie was easy. Why had anybody ever said that it was difficult? He was crossing scene after scene off his list, and even adding plenty of new ones because his cast was so good at improvisation.
The actors walked across the green screen, ran across it, walked toward it, walked away from it, kicked things on it that he’d add later, survived a helicopter crash against it, and on and on. Sure, not everything made sense, but everybody in the business knew that movies were truly created in the editing room.
“Your first zombie is ready,” Uncle Clyde announced.
Duane Parker, a sophomore Justin barely knew, strutted over to the green screen. He’d been cast in the pivotal role of Zombie with Inflatable Zebra around Its Waist. Dead Skull was still emphatically not a comedy, but if you wanted to be realistic, you had to acknowledge that somebody probably would have died with an inflatable zebra around his waist.
“You’re going to be one of our slow zombies,” Justin explained. “Do a practice walk for me.”
Duane walked across the basement.
“Okay, that’s more like a dance.”
“I don’t feel like I’m dancing.”
“Maybe you’re not dancing, but you’re walking with musical rhythm. Are you thinking of a song?”
“I’m always thinking of a song.”
“Well, try walking without a song in your head.”
Duane walked across the basement again.
“See, the problem is that you’re bouncing a little. You’re bobbing your head, and you’re snapping your fingers.”
“I was snapping my fingers?”
“Yes.”
“That’s interesting. I didn’t realize that about myself.”
“So what I’d like you to do is sort of shuffle across the room like a reanimated corpse and not dance like a theater student.”
“Will do.”
Duane walked across the basement once more.
“Better,” said Justin. “Still snapping your fingers though.”
“I swear I’m not aware that that’s happening.”
“It’s no big deal. How about when you walk, you look down at your hands, and if you see your fingers starting to snap, you can make them stop?”
Duane walked across the basement for what Justin suspected would not be the last time.
“Okay,” said Justin, “the fingers have stopped, but the head-bopping is still very much a thing.”
“It’s just so strange. I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned this to me before.”
“Well, unless they were directing you how to walk like the living dead, it probably wouldn’t have come up.”
“That makes sense.”
“What I want you to do is think of your absolute least favorite song, something you can’t dance to, and I want you to sing it in your head while you’re walking.”
Duane nodded. Then we walked across the basement slowly and sadly with no rhythm.
“Yes!” Another directing challenge overcome! Justin would never suggest that he was one of the ten best directors working today, but he knew he wasn’t one of the ten worst either. “Are you ready for your scene?”
Duane scratched at his chin. “Is it bad if my skin feels like it’s on fire underneath the latex?”
“Yes, it is actually. Are you having an allergic reaction?”
“Nah. Uncle Clyde told me to say that. He’s one amusing dude.”
“He certainly is. The first thing I need you to do is just shamble across the green screen. This is the very first scene we’re shooting with a zombie in it, so you’ll be a trivia question one day.”
Duane got into place. Bobby held up the boom mic. Justin pressed Record on his phone camera. Daisy did the clapboard, and Justin said, “Act—”
He stopped before he could finish the word. He l
owered his phone.
“Were you telling me to act, or were you starting to sneeze?” asked Duane.
“Neither. Give me a minute.”
This was the first shot with a zombie, and Gabe wasn’t here.
It was wrong.
Gabe was his producer. Gabe was his friend. Yes, he’d dragged Gabe into this whole project despite his many protests, but this was a movie they were supposed to make together.
If Gabe wasn’t here, then Justin didn’t want to make this movie.
No, wait. Yes, he did. It would be silly to dump it after all the work he’d put in. But he’d much rather make it with Gabe, if at all possible.
“I have to go,” he said.
“Where?” asked Bobby.
“To get Gabe.”
“You could just call him. You’re holding a phone.”
Justin shook his head. “That’s not the cinematic thing to do.” He walked over to the stairs. “Everybody wait for me. Practice your lines and your walk. I’ll be right back.”
“Can I follow you with the camera?” asked Spork.
“Yes! That’s a perfect idea. We’ll preserve this moment.”
Justin and Spork ran up the stairs and out the front door.
“Gabe!” shouted Justin as he ran down the sidewalk. “Gabe!” They weren’t anywhere close to Gabe’s house, but since Spork was recording this, Justin felt like he should be yelling his friend’s name.
Justin continued running. He was in pretty good shape for a filmmaker, which meant that he was in pretty bad shape. He didn’t want Spork to record him slowing down, so he forced himself to keep running. He shouldn’t have eaten so many cookies.
“Gabe! Gaaaaaaabe!”
“Yeah?” asked an old man taking a walk who was presumably also named Gabe.
Justin felt bad for not sparing a few minutes to talk to him since the old man looked kind of lonely, but he had a mission. He sped down the sidewalk, ignoring the stitch in his side and the lack of oxygen in his lungs.
“Gabe!” he squeaked.
He could hear Spork running right behind him. He wished Spork were falling behind so that Justin had an excuse to slow down, but the younger kid seemed to be doing just fine.
Justin could no longer say, “Gabe!” anymore. He could dub it into the video or add subtitles later.
Oh, he was feeling the pain. He should’ve worn better shoes. This was dumb. He wasn’t a runner. He was going into a career where you paid other people to run for you.
They wouldn’t want to include the unedited video of him running anyway, so he could stop now. After all, he’d gone almost two blocks already. When they got closer to Gabe’s house, he’d run the last fifty or sixty feet, and they’d edit it together so that it looked like one continuous sprint.
He glanced back over his shoulder to tell Spork the plan. Or at least make random gasping sounds that Spork would hopefully translate as the plan.
If this were a movie, this was the part where a car would come out of nowhere and smack into him. The “vehicle coming out of nowhere” trick had been used in countless movies, and even though it happened in a split second, you could always kind of tell that it was about to occur. From Final Destination to Mean Girls to The Devil’s Rejects to Whiplash to Fat Kid Rules the World to the Dawn of the Dead remake to Meet Joe Black to Bride of Chucky to Dreamcatcher to Constantine to Identity and on and on and on, the trick of a vehicle flattening a character without warning was a common one.
And technically, since Spork was following him with a camera, this was a movie.
The car—a small one but still a car—smacked into him, and everything cut to black.
21
When Justin opened his eyes, he wondered if this was a dream sequence.
Since he was floating above a lion pit in his underwear while turnips with monocles played xylophones, he decided that he probably was.
• • •
When Justin opened his eyes for real, he was lying in a hospital bed. His body hurt all over. Mom and Dad were sitting next to him, looking concerned, which was much better than them looking like, “Boy, do we have a dumb kid.”
“What happened?” Justin asked.
“You got hit by a car,” Mom told him.
“Am I okay?”
“You broke your arm.”
“Off?”
“No. Just a fracture. Tons of bruises. Probably a mild concussion. It could have been a lot worse. You could have died.”
“So no splatter?”
“No splatter.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Is the driver okay?”
“She said that you just ran in front of her driveway while she was backing out without looking where you were going.”
“That doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”
“It’s in the video. The one made by that kid, Snork.”
“Spork. Don’t be disrespectful.”
“It shows you running down the sidewalk shouting like a crazy person,” said Dad. “I feel like maybe filmmaking and your brain don’t mix well.”
“I was playing to the camera for entertainment value,” said Justin. “I’m not going to pretend that it’s the smartest thing I’ve ever done because it’s clearly not.”
Justin looked around. He could get a lot of good production value out of this hospital if somebody brought him a camera, though he didn’t think this was the best time to make such a request.
“We could have lost you forever,” said Mom, wiping away a tear.
Justin started to make a joke about how he would have come back as a zombie, but again, poor timing.
The doctor, a middle-aged man with a neatly trimmed gray mustache and goatee, walked into the room. “How are you feeling, Justin?” he asked.
“I’m in a lot of pain.”
“Of course you are. They make medicine to help with that, but then how would you learn your lesson? Let’s talk about your arm. You’re a fan of zombie movies, right?”
“Yes.”
“During the zombie apocalypse, if you broke your arm like this, you’d be dead. Zombie apocalypse survival tip #127 says, ‘Try not to break your arm.’ If a zombie is coming at you with its mouth wide open, a broken arm is just going to flop around, and you’ll drop your gun. That’s a helpful little tidbit you can share with your friends.” The doctor gave him a friendly grin.
“Uh, thanks?”
“You can thank me by not running in front of any more moving vehicles. Zombie apocalypse survival tip #398 says, ‘Don’t run in front of cars.’ That’s sound advice even when there’s not a zombie apocalypse happening. What I’m saying, Justin, is that there are smart things we do in life, and then there are things we do that aren’t so smart. They’re all learning opportunities, but in particular we can learn from the ones that aren’t that bright. I’m not actually going to poke at your arm because that would be unprofessional. But if I did, it would hurt even more than it does now, and it would help drive home my point that you should pay attention when you run.”
“I will from now on. I promise.”
“No need to promise me. Poor life choices are what keep me employed. But when paramedics bring in a dead kid, nobody enjoys that. It ruins everybody’s day. So in summary, when you have the option to do something unintelligent, such as, say, running in front of a car, or the option to do something less unintelligent, such as, say, not running in front of a car, I hope that you’ll think back to your current level of discomfort and make the right choice. Thank you for your attention.”
The doctor left.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Justin told his parents. “It won’t happen again.”
Mom gave him a kiss on his forehead. “Your friends are also worried about you. They’re in the waiting room. I’ll send them in to say hi, and then you can get s
ome sleep.”
“Get some sleep…at home, right?”
“No, they want you to stay overnight for observation. Concussion, remember?”
Justin didn’t remember. Maybe that was a sign of a concussion.
“I can’t spend the night here,” said Justin. “I’m supposed to be making a movie!”
“You have more important things to worry about right now, sweetheart.”
“If I don’t finish the movie, my mangled arm will be all for nothing!”
“It’s not mangled.”
“I have to finish what I started, or I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I’ll be branded as the kid who didn’t finish his movie. That’s not the brand I want, Mom!”
“We’ll discuss your movie later. But your behavior before the accident was enough to justify staying in the hospital for observation, so you’re lucky it’s only one night.”
“All right. I understand. I won’t try to escape.”
“I never said anything about you trying to escape. Were you really thinking about trying to escape?”
“No, Mom.”
“Anyway, I’ll send your friends in, and then we’ll be back to tuck you in.”
Mom and Dad left. If he wanted to, Justin figured that he could sneak out of the hospital pretty easily. But if he did that, his parents would ground him for two years, and he didn’t want that to happen until after the movie was done. He’d stay here tonight.
Spork hurried into the room. “Whoa! You got creamed by a car! Wham! I’ve never seen anything like that before!” Spork’s expression grew very serious. “As soon as you got hit, I set down the camera and tried to help you. I’m sorry. I should have gotten more footage, but I wanted to make sure you weren’t dead.”
“It’s okay.”
After Spork left, Bobby came into the room. “How are you feeling?”
“Cracked.”
“Well, we all miss you back on the movie set. It’s just not the same without a director or producer or cameraman. It feels less like making a movie and more like just standing around and wondering what’s going on.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Justin assured him.
“Did you hear about the lady whose car you hit with your body?”