Nick and Tesla's Special Effects Spectacular

by Bob Pflugfelder

  DeMarco, who was leading the group, moved around the nearest trailer—the biggest, sleekest one on the set—and dared to peek out at the P.A.s and technicians hurrying this way and that.

  “Uh, maybe we ought to stay on this side of the trailers,” said Nick.

  Silas opened his mouth and said, “Mr.—”

  “Don’t say it,” Nick said.

  Silas closed his mouth.

  “Stop being so jumpy, Nick,” DeMarco said. He took a bold step around the trailer, gesturing for the others to do the same. “If you just relax, we’ll blend in and—”

  “Hey!” called a gruff voice.

  The kids turned to see the burly Teamster, the man who had given them a hard time earlier. He was walking toward them holding a huge tool box.

  “Keepin’ outta trouble, nephew?” the man asked DeMarco.

  “Trying to,” DeMarco said, giving a strained laugh.

  “Right on,” the man said. As he passed, all four kids let out their breath.

  But instantly they sucked it back in again.

  Not thirty yards away, DeMarco’s Aunt Zoe was engaged in a heated discussion with the executive producer, Bob Ortmann.

  DeMarco and the others whipped around, but there was Abby, the P.A. who’d driven them home earlier, and she was headed their way. She carried a tray filled with steaming coffee cups and had not spotted them yet, but in mere seconds she surely would.

  “Guys?” Nick said.

  He jerked his head at the trailer next to them—specifically, at the door, which was just a few steps away.

  No one had time to say anything. Tesla quickly spread her arms and shoved the boys toward the door. A second later, they were inside.

  “Whoa,” Nick said.

  Everyone else was speechless.

  The interior of the trailer didn’t look like a trailer at all. It looked like a cross between a deluxe suite in a fancy hotel and a Toys ‘R’ Us.

  There was a basketball hoop and a pool table and a Metalman pinball machine and a long mahogany bar and a living room with plush couches and, taking up half a wall, the largest large-screen TV any of them had ever seen. Hooked up to the TV via a tangle of black wires and cables were an Xbox 360, a Wii U, a PlayStation 4, a DVD player, a Blu-ray player, a VCR … and a squat, flat, boxy machine with the word BETAMAX written in white letters across the front.

  In one corner were spiral stairs leading up to a second floor. (A second floor? In a trailer? Tesla thought.) In another corner was a hot tub with a beach ball and an inflatable shark floating in the water.

  “Swanky!” Silas said.

  “Yeah,” said DeMarco, looking down at a Fritos bag lying on the couch, golden crumbs covering the cushions around it. “Real classy.”

  Tesla walked to one of the windows and peeked outside to see if they’d been spotted.

  “This must be Damon Wilder’s trailer,” she said quietly. (The window was open, and she didn’t want the sound of her voice drifting out to Aunt Zoe or anyone else.)

  “If this is Damon Wilder’s trailer,” Nick said, “doesn’t that mean Damon Wilder is probably—?”

  “Hello?” called a voice from the second floor. “Is someone down there?”

  “—here?” Nick mouthed the word silently.

  No one bothered answering Nick’s question because the answer was obvious.

  Damon Wilder was walking down the stairs.

  “Hide,” whispered Nick.

  “Where?” asked DeMarco.

  “Quick. Into the hot tub,” said Silas.

  Tesla didn’t say anything. She just grabbed Silas by the arm and started dragging him toward the wooden bar, trusting that Nick and DeMarco would follow.

  They did.

  A second later, the four of them were crouched behind the bar. Which was fortunate, because exactly two seconds later they heard Damon Wilder say, “I could’ve sworn I heard something.”

  “Probably just some Teamster ‘accidentally’ banging a boompole against your door,” said someone else. It took Tesla a moment to place the voice: it belonged to Jack Wiltrout, the writer who had been supplying Wilder with terrible dialogue.

  “Yeah,” Wilder said dismissively. “You’re probably right.”

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Wiltrout was following Wilder down to the first floor.

  “So,” Wiltrout was saying, his nasal voice even clearer—and closer—than before. “You had notes?” He made his way across the room and was standing on the other side of the bar. The kids could see his back and the curly brown hair atop his head. If he turned around …

  “I love the new draft,” Wilder said, “but it’s missing something.”

  Jack Wiltrout stood stock-still.

  “Like what?” he said.

  “I want more angst.”

  “I’ve given you plenty of angst.”

  “Not enough. I want more. Lots more.”

  Tesla felt a tug on her shirt. She glanced around to find Silas staring at her, a confused look on his face.

  He raised his hands, palms up, and shrugged.

  What’s “angst”? he was asking.

  Tesla scowled at him and raised a finger to her lips.

  (Angst, by the way, is a feeling of dread or nervousness.)

  “And where will all this extra angst come from?” Wiltrout said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. What if I were blind?”

  “Blind?”

  “Yes. Blind. And mad about it. There’s a big bunch of angst right there.”

  Wiltrout finally moved away from the bar.

  “Damon, that would change everything, ” he said.

  “Yes,” said Wilder. “For the better.”

  A long silence ensued. They could hear one of the men sit down on the couch. That was followed by a loud rustling and series of crunch, crunch, crunch noises. Wiltrout had opened a bag and was snacking on something, probably pretzels or chips.

  “Fine,” he said at last. “I’ll get started on a new draft immediately.”

  The crunching resumed, and next came the distinctive sound of someone quickly flipping through crisp new paper. “Here, on page fifty-one,” Wilder was saying. “In the scene where I’m seeing my therapist. You need to add more—”

  “Angst?” Jack said.

  “Exactly! Angst! Now, you’re—oh, my God, what is that smell?”

  Tesla pinched her nose.

  Nick and Silas hurriedly pinched theirs, too.

  DeMarco hung his head in shame.

  “Oooh,” Wilder said. “What happened, Jack? Did you load up on too many doughnuts at the craft service table?”

  “Oh, please,” Wiltrout said, his voice even more nasal than before (because he was pinching his nose, too). “In the immortal words of the Bard: ‘he who hath smelt it, dealt it.’ ”

  “No way, man. I’ve never dealt anything that smelled like—wait, does that saying really come from Shakespeare? No, never mind. Let’s continue this conversation upstairs in my office, where the air is fresher.”

  “Fine,” Wiltrout said, sighing.

  Tesla and the others could hear the spiral staircase creaking as the two men stepped onto it.

  Nick, Tesla, and DeMarco slowly began to stand.

  “By the way—”

  Nick, Tesla, and DeMarco ducked again. (Silas hadn’t moved.)

  “I had a phone call from Bob Ortmann today,” Wilder said. It sounded like the two men had stopped walking halfway up the staircase.

  “Oh, really? And what did our executive producer have to say?”

  “Only that certain people—”

  “Meaning, studio executives.”

  “That certain people were unhappy with the all problems this production has been having.”

  “Meaning, they’re worried about making money.”

  Wilder resumed walking up the stairs, followed by Wiltrout.

  Nick, Tesla, and DeMarco stood again; Nick wiped his brow, signaling a silent “whew.”
DeMarco gestured for Silas to get up, but Silas seemed to be having trouble pushing himself off the floor.

  Near the top of the staircase, the men’s conversation continued. “So, what did you say to him?” It was Wiltrout’s voice.

  Yet again, Nick, Tesla, and DeMarco ducked back behind the bar.

  “Oh, you know me, Jack. I told him the show must go on. No itchy-powder prank is going to stop Damon Wilder. Then I let him know that if certain people want this production to go more smoothly, they ought to fire Cash Ashkinos and Zoe Helms and get some A-listers in here.”

  The two men chuckled. Nick heard someone moving behind him. He turned his head and saw a frightening spectacle …

  DeMarco was standing up. And his face was boiling red with anger.

  Nick’s jaw dropped. He tugged on his sister’s shirt.

  In full panic mode, Nick kept swiveling his head back and forth, looking at DeMarco, then at Tesla, then DeMarco, then Tesla … He could see that Jack Wiltrout was standing on the stairs with his back to the bar, but Damon Wilder was a few steps higher and within the sight line of their hiding place. With the curve of the spiral staircase, he might just see DeMarco from the corner of his eye. He had only to turn his head slightly to the right …

  “SIT DOWN, DEMARCO! ” Nick mouthed the words, folding his hands together in a silent plea. “PLEASE. ”

  “SIT DOWN, DEMARCO! ” Tesla demanded silently, frowning with her angriest face and stabbing at the floor with both index fingers. “NOW. ”

  But DeMarco clearly wanted to flatten Wilder for badmouthing his aunt. His fists were clenched, and for the first time since they’d known him, Tesla and Nick saw the same terrifying expression on their friend’s face that they’d seen many times on the faces of his sisters: that of someone prepared to dish out serious punishment. DeMarco took one step to move past Nick …

  And then, in an instant, he sat down again.

  In fact, DeMarco was yanked down. Silas had grabbed him around the waist and pulled him backward; DeMarco tumbled directly onto his large friend with a muffled thunk.

  “Did you hear that?” Wiltrout said.

  “What?”

  “It sounded like a muffled thunk. ” The stairs creaked as Wiltrout took a step down.

  “Jack!” Wilder said. “Let’s focus on the work, okay? We’ve got lots of rewriting to do.”

  “Meaning,” Wiltrout muttered, “I’ve got a lot of rewriting to do.” He sighed his heaviest sigh yet as he followed Wilder up the spiral staircase and out of sight.

  No one moved.

  A minute ticked slowly by.

  Then Tesla rose confidently to her feet.

  Nick rose cautiously to his feet.

  DeMarco rose nimbly to his feet.

  Silas was lying on his back, like a turtle.

  “They’re gone,” DeMarco whispered to Silas. “You can get up now.”

  “No, I can’t,” said Silas. “I think I’m permanently curled.”

  “Come on,” DeMarco said.

  He and Nick each took one of Silas’s arms and pulled their friend upright.

  Click-click-click-clack went his back.

  “Thanks,” Silas said.

  “Thank you for stopping me from blowing my top,” DeMarco said, keeping his voice low. He and Silas did their quick, secret handshake, the one that even Nick and Tesla didn’t know about. “I kind of lost it there for a second.”

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” said Nick.

  He started toward the door, with DeMarco and Silas on his heels.

  Tesla followed, too, but slowly, thinking hard. She felt like they’d been trying to do a connect-the-dots drawing that didn’t have any numbers, only dots. Now there were a bunch of new dots on the page. She still had no idea where to draw the lines. If she could just figure out where to start …

  As she passed the couch, she noticed something lying next to the crumpled Fritos bag. A stack of white paper, bound together. The side facing up was blank.

  It had to be the script that Wilder and Wiltrout had been discussing. She remembered hearing Wilder drop it during the “odor incident.”

  Something told Tesla that this might be the dot she was looking for.

  She took a step to grab it.

  “Stop!”

  It was Jack’s voice, hollering from upstairs.

  “Stop with the instructions, Damon. Diet Coke with a wedge of lemon, lots of ice. I know, same as always.” And then, a little louder: “I’ll be back with it in a minute.”

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  Silas and DeMarco quickly slipped out the door.

  Nick stayed in the doorway, staring wide-eyed at his sister as he pinwheeled an arm wildly. She was halfway between the couch and the door and seemed unsure which way to go.

  “Let’s go, Tez,” he said in a hiss.

  Tesla spun away from the couch, and then she and Nick burst out into the sunshine together.

  Silas and DeMarco had already begun casually strolling away from the trailer, hands in their pockets and innocent looks on their faces. Nick and Tesla quickly caught up.

  “That was weird,” Silas said as the four of them trotted away from Damon Wilder’s trailer. “Real weird. Why would Metalman go blind? He’s got cybernetically enhanced senses. And why would Metalman see a therapist? That doesn’t sound like any superhero movie I’ve even seen. And why do they want so many ants?”

  “Angst,” Tesla corrected him. “But you’re right, it was weird.”

  “Never mind all that,” Nick said. “We gotta find somewhere private to get ready for phase two.”

  “Leave it to me,” said DeMarco. “ ’I know one place where we can go. I had an idea while we were hiding.”

  “Was that before or after you decided you wanted to punch Damon Wilder?” Tesla said, annoyed. “You almost blew everything! Don’t think we’re not going to talk about that, because—”

  But DeMarco seemed not to be listening. Instead, he walked up to a P.A. passing by with a binder full of forms and files.

  “Excuse me,” DeMarco said. “Where’s the restroom?”

  “The honeywagons?” said the P.A. He was a twentysomething with tattooed arms and a beard so long and thick that it was almost as large as his head. He pointed at a large white truck nearby. “Go around that and turn left. You’ll see ’em.”

  “Thanks!” said DeMarco.

  “And with that bit of brilliance, DeMarco Davison totally redeems himself,” Tesla said. The four friends started walking toward the truck.

  “Honeywagons?” said Nick.

  DeMarco shrugged. “That must be what movie people call the bathroom.”

  “I wonder,” said Silas, “what they call the trucks that deliver honey.”

  When they reached the other side of the truck, Nick, Tesla, Silas, and DeMarco found out that a honeywagon wasn’t just any bathroom. It was, to be more specific, a portable outdoor toilet. In this case, five blue plastic boxes lined up side by side.

  Nick shuddered.

  “I hate these things,” he said.

  “Me, too,” said Tesla, waving away a fly.

  “I almost fell into one once,” said Silas.

  Nick and Tesla looked away. Neither wanted Silas to continue with his story.

  “Hey, don’t complain—we needed privacy, and now we’ve got it,” DeMarco said.

  He shrugged off his backpack, unzipped it, and pulled out Bald Eagle’s grappling hook and wrist launcher.

  “You brought that? It’s not part of phase two,” Nick said.

  “I know,” said DeMarco. “But the way this day is going, who knows what phase three is going to look like.”

  He set aside the grappling hook and launcher and started pulling out the stuff they really needed.

  “Doesn’t anyone want to hear my port-a-potty story?” Silas said.

  “Can’t talk,” Nick said. “Have to work on phase two.”

  “I’ve heard that story anyway,” DeMarco
added. “It stinks.”

  NICK AND TESLA’S

  HORRIFYINGLY HORRIBLE

  ALIEN ZOMBOID MAKEUP

  THE STUFF

  • Unflavored gelatin packets (these are usually found in the baking aisle of the supermarket)

  • Small bowl and spoon for mixing

  • Measuring spoons

  • Hot water

  • All-purpose flour

  • Green and black washable poster paint

  • Plastic spray bottle

  • Baking soda

  • White vinegar

  • Dish soap

  • A responsible adult to help with mixing the geltain

  THE SETUP

  1. Pour a packet of the gelatin into a small bowl.

  2. WARNING! ADULT HELPER NEEDED!! Ask an adult to heat some water on the stove. Carefully measure 2 tablespoons of warm water and add to the bowl.

  3. Add a teaspoon of flour to the water and mix with a spoon until the mixture is smooth, similar to thick syrup.

  4. The gel will thicken as it cools. Ask an adult to make sure the goo has cooled enough to touch. When it’s warm, but not hot, it’s ready for use.

  THE FINAL STEPS

  1. Use a spoon (or a pop stick leftover from the robo-arm project) to apply the zomboid makeup while it is still warm. Create textures, bumps, and scars. Be careful to keep the makeup away from your eyes.

  2. If needed, mix up more small batches to cover as much skin as you want. If you make too much at once, the makeup might cool and solidify before you can use it.

  3. For an extra-grotesque effect, use a sponge or cloth to apply washable green and black tempera paint, or face paint, to add color to your zomboid look. Experiment with other colors to create different zombie and alien hybrids. Use makeup borrowed from your mom (don’t take it without asking!) to add dark circles around your eyes and fill in blank spots.

  BONUS EFFECT

  You can make your zomboid skin foam!

  WARNING: USE FOAMING ZOMBOID MAKEUP ONLY ON YOUR HANDS! If you use it on your face, the vinegar will sting your eyes.

  Here’s how:

  1. As the makeup sets, sprinkle a generous amount of baking soda onto the gel. (Do this step over a sink because the baking soda is likely to get all over the place.)