Greatest Zombie Movie Ever

by Jeff Strand

  Justin massaged his forehead. “How are we going to get back on schedule?”

  “Not having more disasters might help.”

  “Postpone it by one hour. I want to keep moving forward. We’ll just try to get Alicia and Christopher’s stuff in longer takes instead of setting up so many shots.”

  “All right.” Gabe began to send the texts.

  “Okay,” said Justin to Alicia and Christopher, “you’ve been doing a great job so far. I can’t promise that you’ll both become movie stars, but I guarantee that your pictures will be used in memes. We’re pretty far behind because of clown interference, so what I most need from you is to not stop during these next few scenes. Stay in character. If you forget your line, make up a different line. If you trip and fall, trip and fall like your character would. We’ll fix it in the edit.”

  “Understood,” said Alicia.

  “Can we have a quick private discussion?” Gabe asked.

  “We just had one.”

  “This is about something different.”

  “Okay.” Justin and Gabe walked over to the teeter-totter, though they did not do any teeter-tottering while they were there. “What’s up now?”

  “Are we still trying to make the greatest zombie movie ever?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Because comments like ‘If you trip and fall, trip and fall in character’ feel like there might be some compromising of our creative vision.”

  “I don’t need this now, Gabe.”

  “No, no, no, I’m not trying to be negative. I’m making sure we’re on the same page. If our goal is still to make the greatest zombie movie ever, I’m going to offer different feedback than if we’ve revised our mission statement to make just a pretty good zombie movie.”

  Justin thought about that for a while. “Okay, we’re going to make the greatest zombie movie ever that was shot on weekends in a month for almost no money. I think we can still accomplish that.”

  “I agree.”

  “So maybe we won’t make the next Night of the Living Dead. Either way, we’re going to finish this movie, and it’s going to be entertaining enough that nobody involved will be embarrassed by the final product. That’s our goal—lack of embarrassment.”

  “Awesome. Let’s do it.”

  Everybody got in their places.

  “Action!”

  Alicia and Christopher began their dialogue scene. Christopher immediately scooted closer to Alicia, which technically wasn’t in character because at this point in their relationship, Runson Mudd would still be worried that Veronica Chaos might rip off most of his lower jaw. Justin didn’t call, “Cut!” though. They had to keep moving. Maybe in postproduction he’d digitally add a few inches of space between them.

  Bobby was doing a good job with the boom mic. Three different people had independently made jokes about supergluing the pole to his hands, and though they were all clearly kidding, the serious message behind the humor was not lost on Bobby.

  As always, Gabe was flawless with the camera work. The actors were perfectly framed and in focus. Everything was going smoothly. They were going to make up the lost time. The only possible little glitch that Justin could see was that a great big fire ant was crawling on Gabe’s neck, but Justin hoped Gabe wouldn’t notice until the shot was through.

  Gabe’s eyes darted downward. He couldn’t see his own neck, but he knew something was crawling on it.

  But Gabe was a master cinematographer, and no ant crawling on his body was going to distract him from his craft. Though he was twitching a bit, he maintained his concentration on the task at hand.

  Justin considered reaching over and brushing it off, but that might be more distracting. As long as the ant didn’t sting Gabe, it was no big deal. An entire army of ants had been swarming on Bobby, and only two of them had stung him, so the odds were very much in favor of this ant not feeling any particular reason to sting anybody. Why would it? Gabe had done nothing to hurt the ant or its kind, so unless it had vowed revenge against all of humanity for that one time that Bobby lay on an anthill, there was no reason for concern.

  Justin realized that he was watching the ant instead of the performance of his actors, which was not the mark of a good director. He ignored the ant and returned his attention to Alicia and Christopher.

  “Your hair is the most beautiful shade of lavender I’ve ever seen,” said Christopher.

  “It’s not lavender,” said Alicia.

  This was nowhere close to any dialogue that appeared anywhere in the script. Justin had encouraged their artistic freedom, but only when they weren’t saying dumb things. He pointed to his hair and shook his head, hoping that it conveyed the message, “This dialogue is lame. Say other dialogue.”

  “It is lavender,” said Christopher. “To me, it’s lavender. We’re in a whole new world now, Veronica Chaos, and in this world we get to make up our own colors.”

  I should probably say, “Cut!” now, thought Justin.

  No. He’d give them a chance to get back on track. Real people said idiotic things all the time, as evidenced by several of the conversations he’d had this very morning. This might give his movie an element of realism that was lacking from other films in the genre.

  “Then what color are my eyes?” asked Alicia.

  “They’re lavender.”

  “But they don’t match my hair.”

  “Don’t you see? They don’t need to match your hair. In this new world, all colors can be lavender if we want them to be. That tree over there? It’s lavender. When we chop the head off a zombie, a glorious lavender spray of blood comes out. It’s an entire universe of lavender.”

  “That’s really, really stupid,” said Alicia.

  “Yes, it is,” Christopher agreed, “but isn’t it wonderful that we have the power to control how stupid the world is? Before, other people were in charge of stupidity, but not anymore! Not anymore!”

  Yep, better call, “Cut!”, thought Justin.

  The ant had now crawled up onto Gabe’s cheek. He was trying to ignore it, but a thin trickle of sweat was running down his forehead. Justin reached over and brushed the ant off his face.

  The ant dropped onto Gabe’s neck and then crawled under his shirt collar.

  Gabe yelped in pain.

  He dropped the camera onto the grass.

  Or to be more specific, he dropped the camera onto a rock that rested on the grass.

  Justin was sure that the sound of the crack did not actually echo. It was all in his mind.

  He crouched down and picked up the camera. Much of it, at least eighty percent, was in fine shape. No damage whatsoever. If you ignored the fact that the lens was completely shattered, dropping it onto a rock hadn’t been bad at all.

  Everybody was very, very silent.

  Justin stood up. He tried to turn the camera back on. The only thing that happened was that the bottom of it dropped off, landing on the rock.

  Everybody continued to be very, very silent.

  Justin picked up the other half of the camera and cradled both halves to his chest like it was an infant.

  “The ant went down my shirt and stung me,” Gabe explained.

  “I know.”

  “Are you mad?”

  Justin shook his head. “No.”

  “It’s okay if you are.”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “A little numb.”

  “Maybe that is for the best.”

  “I also kind of feel like I want to start cackling with laughter. You know, when you just sit in the corner and you rock back and forth and you hug yourself and you just laugh and laugh and laugh and you can’t stop? That kind of scary, high-pitched laugh.”

  “Like the Joker?”

  “Way crazier than
that.”

  “If you need to do that, go ahead. We’ve all been there.”

  “Nah. It’s sufficient that I’m doing it in my mind.”

  “Let us know when you’re done.”

  “I will.”

  Everybody went back to being very, very silent. Finally Bobby said, “This is worse than when I dropped the boom mic, right?”

  “Not now, Bobby,” said Gabe.

  “Really? I thought the question was perfectly timed.” Bobby glanced around at everybody else as if he was trying to see if they agreed with him, but nobody spoke.

  “One,” said Justin.

  “What?” asked Gabe.

  “One.”

  “One what?”

  “One rock. As far as I can tell, there is only one rock on the ground in this entire park. Everything else is soft grass. Soft, fluffy grass. If the camera had dropped literally anyplace else on the ground, it probably would have bounced right back up into your hand. One rock. Just one.”

  “How badly is it damaged?” asked Alicia.

  Justin shook the camera. Several pieces fell out.

  “You have another one, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Can you borrow Spork’s?”

  Spork shook his head. “My dad said to not let anybody else touch it.”

  “Can you buy another one?” Alicia asked Justin.

  “We didn’t budget for a new camera.”

  “Can you get it fixed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you rent one from somewhere?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you still laughing in your mind?”

  “No. Now it’s this black void.”

  “We can’t let this stop us,” said Bobby. “We’ve got too many sandwiches left.”

  “This isn’t the end,” said Justin. “All I need is five minutes to have a complete meltdown. When I’m done, I’ll come up with a solution, and we’ll move forward. Daisy, may I borrow your car for my meltdown?”

  “Are you going to break any windows?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to rip the upholstery?”

  “There won’t be any destruction.”

  “Will you practice proper bladder control?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. It’s unlocked.”

  Justin walked over to Daisy’s car, opened the door, climbed into the front seat, shut the door, checked to make sure that all of the windows were closed all the way, and then let out a loud, long bellow.

  It was the loudest and longest bellow of his entire life. He was not typically one to indulge in bellowing, so it wasn’t as if there was much to compare it to, but this was twice as loud and at least three times as long as any previous bellow he could remember.

  He was pretty sure that everyone could still hear it, but he didn’t care.

  He bellowed and yelled and screamed and cursed and shouted and hollered and accidentally yodeled and coughed, but he didn’t cry. His tear ducts were too manly for that.

  “AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!”

  He should have set a timer so he knew when to conclude his meltdown. Oh well. He’d estimate it.

  “AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!”

  He wished he hadn’t promised not to destroy the upholstery. Gnawing on the seats would help relieve some stress.

  Justin bellowed for a while longer, but since he was feeling particularly mature, he decided not to go for the whole five minutes. He got out of the car and returned to the cast and crew.

  “We don’t have time to get a new camera,” he said. “If we lose any more time, we’ll never catch up. Therefore, we’re going to make this movie with our phones.”

  He looked at Gabe.

  “Why are you looking at me?” asked Gabe.

  “Because I know you’re going to say something.”

  “I have no comment about that.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. I just didn’t want to be the first one. But since you put me on the spot…I’ll say no. I’m not making this movie on a phone. I don’t want people to say that it looks like we shot it with our phone. They’ll mean it as an insult.”

  “It’ll be fine…because now we’re making a found-footage movie.”

  “We are?”

  “It’s the perfect solution. In a found-footage movie, you don’t have to worry about good camera work or keeping things in focus or even if people can tell what’s happening.”

  “But those are all elements that improve a movie.”

  “We’ll still have good acting and cool zombies and guts flying everywhere. We’ll just pretend that the characters are filming it themselves.”

  “We didn’t write the script to be found footage.”

  “Yeah, and we didn’t write the script to be made with a camera that got dropped on a rock!”

  “This whole time I’ve been the one saying we should scale things back,” said Gabe. “I just don’t want to scale them back to crap.”

  “We’re finishing this movie.”

  “This isn’t the movie we wanted to make anymore.”

  “It’s the movie I still want to make. If you don’t like it, you can quit.”

  “Then I quit.” Gabe turned and walked away.

  18

  “Fine! Quit, you quitter! Quitty McQuitterson! Go ahead and take all your stuff and go home!”

  Gabe stopped walking and turned back. “I’m not taking my stuff. You’re still welcome to use it. Just make sure you return it when you’re done.”

  “Oh no, we wouldn’t want you to worry about your precious equipment! Let the baby take his ball and go home!”

  “No, seriously. You at least need the clapboard, or else the scenes and takes won’t be properly labeled when you’re assembling the footage for editing. It’ll be a nightmare trying to figure out which is which. Also, the light is mine, and you’ll need that to make sure the shots are properly lit. If you’re shooting the movie on a phone, adequate lighting will be more important than ever.”

  “Fine. We’ll borrow your stuff, quitter!”

  “If you have any technical questions, just call me or send a text.”

  “I think we’ll be okay without your vast expertise, quitter!”

  “And I’ve worked long enough today that I’ve earned one of those peanut butter sandwiches.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Fine, I agree that you’re entitled to one of those sandwiches. But that’s all you get.”

  “And a cookie.”

  “People who break cameras don’t get cookies.”

  “I get as many cookies as Bobby did, and I saw him eat at least twelve. If you subtract the two cookies I’ve already eaten, I get ten.”

  “No way are you taking ten cookies,” said Justin. “I mean it. You can have four, and that’s being generous.”

  “If you think I’m going to walk out of here with only four cookies, you’re crazy.”

  “Well, then clearly you weren’t listening when I was screaming in Daisy’s car because I’ve already made it clear that I’m crazy.”

  “Ten cookies,” said Gabe. “I’ve earned them.”

  “If you walk away from my craft services table with ten cookies, you’re going to have zero fingers to hold them.”

  “Guys, we’re supposed to be a team!” shouted Bobby.

  “Shut up, Bobby!” yelled Justin. “If you hadn’t eaten so many cookies, then Gabe wouldn’t be trying to take so many of them!”

  “Don’t tell me to shut up.”

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t cool.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Gabe walked over to the craft services table and began to take co
okies. “One…two…three—”

  “You’d better stop at four,” Justin warned him.

  “Four—”

  “That better be where you stop.”

  Gabe looked at the remaining cookies, bit his lip, and then put back the four he’d taken. “You’re right,” he said in a quiet voice. “I don’t deserve any cookies.”

  “Oh, sure, you say that after you’ve already put your grubby hands all over them! Take those four cookies! Nobody wants them now!”

  Gabe sadly walked away from the table.

  “At least separate them from the others! We don’t know which is which!”

  “Good luck with your movie,” said Gabe.

  “Good luck with being a jerk! We don’t need luck! We have skill! You were the one holding us back! I think that clown hated you the most! So you just go home and suck your thumb or whatever it is that quitting babies do and leave us to make our movie in peace!”

  Gabe walked away from the park. Justin wanted to shout additional negative comments at him, but the one about sucking his thumb had been a pretty devastating blow. Plus he didn’t want to shout something less brutal that might detract from its impact.

  “You wanna quit too?” Justin asked Bobby.

  “No, I barely avoided getting fired.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Nobody wants to quit,” said Christopher. “But is this movie really more important than your friendship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Because—and I mean this in the nicest possible way—so far it doesn’t feel like a real movie.”

  “What…did…you…just…say?”

  “Don’t get me wrong. We’re all having fun making it. But you guys have been friends for a long time, and I don’t think this movie is worth ruining that.”

  “You’re fired,” said Justin. “Bobby, you’re playing Runson Mudd.”

  “Sweet,” said Bobby.

  “Then who’s doing sound?” Christopher asked.

  “Daisy can do sound. She watched Bobby do it. It’s not that hard.”

  “And who’s running the camera?”

  “You are.”

  “You’re firing me as the lead actor but hiring me as the cameraman?”

  “Yes. No, wait. That’s ridiculous. No, you’re completely fired from the movie. I’m operating the phone. That’s how we should have been doing this in the first place.”