Zombies-More Recent Dead

by Paula Guran (ed)

  “Well, before I met you I dated other people.”

  “Sure. I’ve been known to do the same.”

  “Well, some four months ago I was seeing Alex Stoner and—”

  “Stoner? The grand old man of the silver screen? Ain’t he a bit old for you?”

  “He was only fifty-six.”

  Hix straightened. “Was? According to Louella, Hedda, and Johnny Whistler, the old boy is still above the ground. Fact is, he’s over at your very own Paramount about two-thirds of the way through starring in their big budget historical fillum of the year, The Holy Grail. He’s cast as King Arthur.”

  She took another slow breath in and out. “Alex died early in March,” she said in a low voice. “Three weeks into The Holy Grail.”

  “So how come he’s still acting in the darn film?”

  “They brought him back to life,” she replied.

  It was a little over an hour later that Hix got knocked cold by a conk on the head.

  He and Marlys had retreated to the small living room of the small cottage that Hix was renting on the ocean side of Santa Monica. The starlet had become convinced that it wasn’t safe to keep talking at a public place like the Carioca.

  Pacing the venerable flowered carpet he’d acquired at a rummage sale over in Altadena last fall, Hix was going over what details the young actress had thus far provided. “So you were sleeping with this old coot when he shuffled off?”

  Marlys was sitting on the lime-green sofa. “Yes, I woke up at seven in the morning and the poor guy was stone cold dead next to me,” she said. “That was really unpleasant.”

  “Tell me some more about what you did next, kid.”

  “I was alone at his place in Bel Air. Alex had given his two servants a few days off,” she said. “I was darn certain he had kicked off, so there sure wasn’t any reason to call an ambulance.”

  Hix sat on the wobbly arm of his only armchair. “And what about the cops?”

  “Spending a night in bed with a dead major movie star doesn’t give you the kind of publicity I need,” she answered. “Besides which, Alex was already partway through shooting the King Arthur flick and I figured Paramount might not care to have his dying made public right away.”

  “How come you phoned this guy Wally Needham?”

  She looked toward the draped window, frowning. “Did you hear something outside?”

  “Relax, kiddo. Nobody followed us here from the Carioca,” he assured her. “Having penned a bunch of Mr. Woo pictures, not to mention three Dr. Crimebuster epics, I know a little bit about how to avoid being tailed.”

  Sighing, Marlys continued. “Well, I first met Wally at Schwab’s when I stopped in for a cup of coffee one afternoon a few months ago.”

  “Another of your beaus?”

  “We were friends, sure. It doesn’t hurt to have a friend who works in publicity at Paramount Pictures.”

  “No, that could sure be darn helpful to anybody’s career.” He stood, crossed to the lemon-yellow drapes, and pulled them a few inches open to look out into the approaching twilight. “Nobody around. By the way, I’m not crystal clear on how I can help you rise in show biz.”

  “C’mon, Hix,” she told him. “I’m simply fond of you.”

  “Well sir, that’s a relief.” He turned his back to the window. “Explain to me a bit more about what this publicity lad did.”

  “Well, he got to Alex’s mansion less than an hour after I telephoned him,” she said. “After making certain Alex was dead, Wally asked me if I’d like to sign a movie contract with Paramount.”

  “Provided you kept your mouth shut about Alex Stoner being dead.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I couldn’t very well pass up an opportunity like that to graduate out of Poverty Row quickies,” she replied. “Then Wally went into Alex’s office and phoned various people, higher-ups at the studio. I heard him tell somebody, ‘Dr. Marzloff can do it. We’ll use him.’ ”

  “They hired Dr. Sandor Marzloff? Quack physician and phony self-proclaimed sorcerer to the stars?”

  “Not so phony, it seems, Hix. He brought Alex back to life, after all,” the actress pointed out. “He told me once that he’d lived for several years in Haiti and learned—”

  “You dated him, too?

  “We had a few drinks a couple of times. Long before I met you, Hix.”

  “Um,” commented Hix.

  “I have the impression that Alex Stoner wasn’t the first defunct actor he reanimated,” she said. “In fact . . . Holy Christ!” She had risen partly off the sofa and was staring past the writer.

  Slowly he turned. “Oops.”

  Two large men, wearing pinstripe suits and with cloth sugar sacks over their heads had silently entered his living room and were pointing large revolvers at him and the young actress.

  “You couldn’t possibly have tailed us here,” Hix told them. “I dodged any—”

  “You forget that you’re one of the most famous hacks in Hollywood, Hix,” explained the larger of the intruders. “One of our people spotted you with this dame at the Carioca. We didn’t follow you, we just looked up your address in a phone book.”

  “Ah, the price of fame. Now, I suggest you—”

  That was as far as he got. The other hooded intruder had returned his gun to its shoulder holster, withdrawn a substantial-looking blackjack from a side pocket and lunged to bop Hix on the skull.

  He heard Marlys scream as he was dropping down into oblivion.

  Birds were twittering and chirping, in a cheerful Disney-like manner, to announce the advent of a new day. Morning sunshine was beaming in through the opening between Hix’s tacky yellow drapes. With an awakening groan, he sat up on his living room floor.

  “Oy,” he observed, feeling suddenly dizzy. “One doesn’t usually experience a hangover after two glasses of ginger ale.”

  Then he recalled that a hooded intruder had conked him on the coco last night. Slowly and carefully, he glanced around the small room. It didn’t appear to be in any worse shape than it had been prior to the intrusion.

  “Marlys?” he said in a voice that vaguely resembled his own. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Marlys?”

  Tottering some, Hix arose to a standing, albeit wobbly, position. He stumbled through the entire rest of his cottage. Outside of a scraggly stray orange cat who’d snuck in through the open kitchen window to explore the substantial collection of dirty dishes in the lopsided sink, there was nobody else in the entire place.

  “Shoo,” he suggested half-heartedly as he returned to his living room. “I reckon I better call the police to report—”

  His phone rang. It was residing on a sprawling stack of old copies of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

  After swallowing and blinking a few times, he made his way to the telephone and snatched up the receiver. “Forest Lawn Annex.”

  Marlys, somewhat breathlessly, inquired, “Hix, dear, are you okay?”

  “I might ask the same of you.”

  “I’m fine, perfectly fine,” said the starlet, inhaling and exhaling. “That whole business last night was simply a misunderstanding.”

  “Those hoodlums really meant to coldcock somebody down the street from here?”

  “No, silly. See, they weren’t hoodlums at all. But a couple of Paramount Pictures executives.”

  “Oh, so? Is that the current style for Paramount execs? Flour sacks over their heads?”

  “Actually those were sugar sacks.”

  “Even so,” he said. “What in the hell is going on, kiddo?”

  Taking another deep breath, the young actress told him, “See, dear, they got the foolish idea that you had kidnapped me. What happened was a sort of rescue operation.”

  “Your value to Paramount has apparently increased a lot since yesterday.”

  “They reconsidered my proposition and decided it was in the best interests of the studio to comply,” she said. “It’s very exciting.”

  “Sounds l
ike.”

  “Oh, and I wanted to let you know, dear, that I won’t be able to go with you to that Korngold concert at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday.”

  “Are they shipping you off to Guatemala?”

  “No, just to Arizona for a few weeks. They’re picking me up at noon,” she said. “I’m going on location. Paramount wants me to play the dance hall singer in the new Randolph Scott Western. It’s a real step up for my career. I get shot in the final reel.”

  “A painful place to be shot,” he said. “Now explain what the devil is going on?”

  “It turns out that quite a few people at Paramount were unhappy that I was unhappy. So they—”

  “I bet you’re going to have to forget all about Alex Stoner and Dr. Marzloff.”

  “Not exactly forget, just simply keep mum about what I may or may not know,” Marlys explained. “Oh, and you don’t have to worry, Hix. I convinced everybody at the studio last night that—”

  “That’s where they dragged you?”

  “I went voluntarily once I realized what was up. This is the first time I was at a meeting with so many important movie people,” she said, still sounding a bit breathless. “As I was explaining, dear, I convinced them that you and I were simply shacking up for a one-night stand. I never mentioned anything about Dr. Marzloff or poor Alex to you.”

  “There goes my reputation for celibacy.”

  “At least you won’t get conked on the noggin anymore . . . Gosh, I just looked at the clock, Hix. I really have to finish packing.”

  “Well, it’s been swell having this little chat,” he assured the actress. “It’s sure taken a load off my mind.”

  “One other thing,” she cautioned. “I don’t think it’d be a wise idea for you to talk to anybody about zombies for a while.”

  “The word zombies will never cross my lips again,” he promised. “Bon voyage.”

  “Same to you, darling.” She hung up.

  Hix cradled the phone, picked up the receiver again, and made a series of calls.

  A few minutes past two that afternoon, Hix was seated at one of the huge oaken tables in the vast dining hall of Camelot. He was finishing up the second half of the baloney on rye sandwich he’d found in his box lunch and conversing with the two former chorus girls who were working as extras in The Holy Grail. Like the writer, they were dressed as Hollywood’s idea of Middle Ages peasant folk.

  “I hear,” Hix said, setting aside the remnants of his sandwich, “that Alex Stoner has been feeling poorly of late, Exine.”

  “You can say that again, sweetie,” she replied as she scratched at her bosom through the coarse gray material of her tunic. “Yesterday they had to do thirty-seven takes of the scene where he’s supposed to be knighting Ray Milland. He kept dropping his goddamn sword.”

  “Only thirty-three takes,” corrected the redheaded peasant girl on Hix’s left. “By the way, Hix honey, how come you’re working as an extra on this flicker?”

  “I’m really not an extra, Mindy,” he explained, lying. “I’m doing research for an A-budget Hollywood murder mystery George Marshall wants me to script for Alan Ladd.”

  Exine observed, yet again scratching her bosom, “That’s good news. It’s about time you quit writing those crappy Mr. Woo programmers.”

  “Actually, the Mr. Woo films are considered by many an astute and discriminating critic to be stellar examples of the mystery cinema at its absolute best.”

  “C’mon, where the hell would an astute and discriminating critic find a job in this pesthole of a town?” asked Mindy, who was now scratching her bosom, too. “Geez, everybody in the Middle Ages must’ve spent most of their time scratching their boobs.”

  Before Hix could provide an answer, a uniformed guard came striding into the immense hall, causing some of the colored banners on the imitation stone walls to flutter. “Okay, kids, nobody’s supposed to eat their lunch in here,” he informed them. “Please, scram.”

  “As soon as we finish our after-dinner mints,” Hix assured him.

  The plump guard did a take. “Hix? What the hell are you doing in that getup?”

  “I’m going through an unexpected slow period in my usually spectacular writing career, Nick.”

  “Sorry to hear that, pal. You and the dames better toddle along, though,” advised the guard. “Stoner’s going to do the scene where he addresses the village peasants in about fifteen.”

  Hix stood up, gathering the scraps from his meal and dumping them in the white cardboard box. Among the phone calls he’d made earlier was one to a photographer friend at the L.A. Times. He’d asked him to use his connections at Paramount to get him a job as an extra in The Holy Grail in some scenes featuring Alex Stoner. He wanted to see for himself if Stoner acted any differently now that he was dead.

  He soon found out.

  The fog machines were sending a gray mist swirling across the wide stone courtyard of Camelot Castle. A young extra put her fist up to her mouth and coughed loudly.

  “Don’t do that when the damn cameras are rolling, sis,” warned a nearby assistant director loudly.

  Hix, standing between a redheaded girl in a Gypsy costume and a bearded fat man who was clutching a shepherd’s staff, was watching a sort of reviewing stand a few yards away. The stand had a wooden throne in the center of a row of carved chairs and was bedecked with brightly colored pennants. He lifted his weathered peasant cap to scratch his frizzy hair.

  One of the director’s assistants was assigning some of the bit players to chairs. There were lesser knights wearing chain mail, some ladies-in-waiting, and not one but two jesters.

  The door of one of the dressing room trailers that sat just beyond the enormous set now swung open and Queen Guinevere, wearing a low-cut gown trimmed in ermine, regally descended the stairs. The crowd of more than a hundred extras murmured as she was escorted to the stand.

  “So that’s Sylvia Thompson,” observed a pretty blonde milkmaid, shifting her grip on her pail. “Not all that pretty in real life, is she?”

  “What makes you think this is real life?” inquired Hix.

  The milkmaid glanced back at him. “Hix? Have you sunk even lower?”

  “Doing a favor for DeMille.”

  The door of another one of the other trailers came flapping open. Alex Stoner, a thin white-bearded man, came stumbling out into the misty afternoon. He teetered on the top step, then went tumbling down to land on a tangle of cables and wires at the set edge.

  His ornate gilded crown popped free of his gray head and landed on the booted foot of a wide, broad man dressed as a yeoman.

  “Drunk again,” said a chubby friar.

  The milkmaid shook her head. “I think the poor guy’s sick. He’s looked like crap since Monday.”

  “Booze can do that. I ought to know,” said a husky blacksmith.

  Two large men in business suits came hurrying down out of the trailer in the fallen actor’s wake.

  “Eureka!” said Hix to himself. “I’ll wager that these two gents are the same pair that broke in on me and the ambitious Marlys last evening.”

  They tugged Stoner to his feet, restored his crown.

  “Fell . . . down . . . getting worse,” muttered the actor.

  “Chin up,” advised one of the men. He sounded like the one who’d done the talking last night.

  Slowly the two alleged studio executives guided Alex Stoner to the stand. “I’ve got bunions,” the actor was saying in a fuzzy voice. “I never had bunions until Dr. Marzloff worked his—”

  “Button your lip, sir,” advised the one who’d bopped Hix.

  When Stoner reached the next to the last step of the wooden stairway, his legs suddenly went limp.

  The two executives yanked him upright, hustled him over to the gilded throne he was supposed to sit on.

  A lean prop man materialized to hand the swaying actor an Excalibur sword made of balsa wood.

  Grabbing the sword, Stoner held it high, tip of the blade poin
ting skyward. “People of Camelot,” he started reciting, “I wish you to join . . . um . . . to join me . . . um . . . Now, what in the hell do I want these halfwits to join me for?”

  Excalibur fell from his now shaking hand. He dropped to his knees. He fell forward and hit the planks with his face, producing a resounding smack. The jeweled crown left his head again, rolled off the stage and landed hard on the cobblestones of the courtyard, losing at least three sparkling fake jewels in the process.

  The two executives picked up the now unconscious actor. They deposited him, with a thump, on the gilded throne.

  The one who did the talking picked up a megaphone. “Mr. Stoner seems to have had a mild fainting spell.”

  From where Hix was standing it looked as though Stoner had ceased to breathe. “They’re going to have to get him back to Dr. Marzloff,” he concluded.

  The executive said, “We’ll be escorting Mr. Stoner to his personal physician. I’m sure it’s nothing serious. Today’s shooting is canceled. Call casting about what time to show up tomorrow. Thank you one and all.”

  When night started closing in on the town of Santa Rita Beach, Hix, wearing dark gray slacks and a black pullover, was stretched out on a patch of hillside forest just above Dr. Marzloff’s small private sanitarium. The address of the two-story slant-roofed place he found simply by checking a couple of Greater Los Angeles phone books. The floor plans of the joint he borrowed from a former singing cowboy who’d gone into real estate after first Republic and then Monogram had tossed him out on his ear. The infrared camera and the night binoculars he got from the same L.A. Times photographer who’d fixed up the extra stint at Paramount. The bagel with cream cheese he’d just finished eating he’d picked up at Moonbaum’s delicatessen while passing through Hollywood en route to this beach town.

  By the time the screenwriter had gathered up this assortment of stuff it was nearing seven in the evening. As the evening darkened it also grew increasingly overcast. Parked down in the white-graveled parking lot at the back of the sanitarium was a panel truck with the Paramount Pictures logo on the passenger-side door. There was also a big color poster for The Road to Morocco on the side of the vehicle, with portraits of Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour.