Greatest Zombie Movie Ever

by Jeff Strand

  “This is really important to me.”

  “We get that. And it’s why you only have to stay home for one day. But that one day is not negotiable.”

  What was Justin going to do? Maybe there was a way he could turn his parents against each other. What was their last argument about? Dad had left the butter on the kitchen counter, right?

  No, creating strife in their marriage would be wrong. He’d have to resign himself to his accursed fate.

  In theory, he could ask Gabe and Bobby to carry on without him for one day. But his rule that he didn’t want to make the movie without Gabe had darn well better work both ways. If they tried to make the movie without him, he’d have the most legendary meltdown in the history of humankind. He wouldn’t even pretend that he was okay with it. He’d just start destroying things. He wouldn’t even faux-suggest it with the expectation that they’d say no, because if they hesitated for even the tiniest fraction of a second before the word no came out of their mouths, he’d totally lose it. Justin understood this about himself, and he was okay with it.

  “Can Gabe and Bobby at least come over?” Justin asked.

  “No,” said Dad.

  “No?” Justin asked, having expected a different answer.

  “No,” said Mom.

  “Why not? Do you think they’re going to bounce a basketball off my concussion?”

  “Because what you need,” said Dad, “is some rest. You’re not going to get any rest if you’re upstairs freaking out about your movie. Cinema will still exist on Monday.”

  “You’re becoming villains in my life story. You realize this, right?”

  “Someday you’ll think back on this with a brain that isn’t permanently damaged because of our excellent parental care and thank us,” said Dad.

  Justin scowled at him. He was too mature to pout, but he decided to sulk for the rest of the ride home. Then he decided that sulking was also beneath him, and he went for a mild, simmering rage. He knew that they were doing this for his own good. He didn’t care. His own good was overrated. He’d worry about his own good when the movie was finished.

  If he lost all of today, his chances of finishing the movie were essentially nonexistent, right? Now that making a good movie was important again, the lack of time was even more problematic.

  He texted Gabe and asked him to spread the message that today’s shoot was canceled.

  I figured, Gabe texted back.

  We’ll make up the time, Justin texted. This movie is going to get cone.

  Cone?

  Done. Stupid autocorrect.

  Why would autocorrect change done to cone?

  Fine. I typed cone by mistake. Are u happy?

  The lies need to stop, Justin. The lies need to stop.

  You probably think we’ll never finish now.

  We’ll figure something out.

  When Justin got home, he took a couple of aspirin and went up to his room. He’d been focusing on his frustration about Dead Skull, but he also had to admit that having a broken arm wasn’t exactly pleasant. It was starting to itch like crazy, and since he wasn’t permitted to crack open his cast and go after the itch with a fork, he just had to sit there and try not to think about how much it itched, which was impossible because of how much it itched, itched, itched.

  He lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. There was nothing interesting up there.

  He’d take a quick nap and then sort things out.

  When he woke up, it was time for dinner.

  He ate dinner and went back to sleep.

  23

  The next day at school was great, or to be more specific, not great.

  “How’s the movie going?” the other kids asked him in a tone that made it pretty clear that they knew exactly how the movie was going. They just wanted to chuckle when he answered, “It’s going fine.”

  “How’d you break your arm?” kids also asked him. They knew how he broke his arm. Everybody knew how he broke his arm. And they all knew about the element of stupidity involved. They had to. They were all grinning when they asked it, and Kid Breaks Arm after Getting Hit by Car was tragic out of context.

  At lunchtime Justin, Gabe, and Bobby sat in the cafeteria, all of them frowning.

  “I wish the story about Alicia beating me up hadn’t circulated so quickly,” said Bobby. “I knew it would get out to the public, but I was expecting maybe sixty or sixty-five percent audience awareness. I think we’re at ninety-eight percent. That kid who doesn’t speak English didn’t know, but somebody mimed it for him.”

  “What’s worse is that you did your job as a sound guy poorly,” said Gabe.

  “No, that’s not worse at all. Do you know what people are calling me?”

  “What?”

  “Guy Who Got Beat Up by Alicia Howtz.”

  “That’s seriously your new nickname?” asked Justin. “That’s the best they could do?”

  “Yep.”

  “A whole school full of kids, and they can’t come up with something inventive? That’s not even a real nickname. That’s just a description.”

  “I know. All day it was, ‘Hey there, Guy Who Got Beat Up by Alicia Howtz.’ I thought they might sarcastically call me Muscles or something like that, but nope.”

  “On the bright side,” said Gabe, “it’s not something people will be calling you twenty years from now. It’s too inconvenient to say.”

  “Do you know what’s weird?” Justin asked.

  “Horses in princess costumes?” suggested Bobby.

  Justin ignored him. “What’s weird is that I don’t regret this. I mean, I regret a lot of the individual decisions I made, and I regret the way most of it has turned out so far. But there’s never been a point where I wished that I’d never decided to make this movie.”

  “I feel the same way,” said Gabe.

  “I feel a bit differently,” said Bobby, “but overall, there were way more moments where I was happy that we were making this movie than there were sad moments that Alicia was hitting me with my own boom mic.”

  Gabe raised his container of chocolate milk in a toast. “No matter how it turns out, I’m glad we’re doing this.”

  Justin and Bobby raised their own chocolate milks and tapped them together.

  Zack Peterson, who used to fling volleyballs at Justin in second grade, walked by and sneered. “Hey, Guy Who Got Beat Up by Alicia Howtz, did your boyfriend break his arm trying to protect you?”

  Bobby flung his chocolate milk at Zack and hit the center of his shirt. It doused him like a water balloon.

  “You little geek!” Zack raised his fist and stepped forward.

  “I fought the worst. Do you really think I’m scared of you?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s a good point.” Zack lowered his fist and continued on his way.

  “Anyway,” said Justin, “we’re going to still try to cram everything into the rest of the shooting schedule. It turns out I can borrow a camera from the media center. I didn’t tell them that I broke the old one, so please don’t mention that in casual conversation. Saturday and Sunday are going to be all zombies all the time. We’re going to get our biggest, most epic shots. Starting with our easiest stuff made it feel like we weren’t accomplishing as much.”

  “So since we failed at the easy stuff, we’re going to switch to the hard stuff?”

  “Exactly. Go big or go home, right? Isn’t that what people say on reality shows?”

  “Constantly.”

  “And that’s what we’re going to do.”

  • • •

  As Justin sat in his room, studying for his history test, his phone rang. It was Bobby.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Justin. Hey, you know how I usually like to have good news when I call?”

  “Do you have good news?�
�

  “Not really.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Maybe you should see it for yourself.”

  • • •

  Justin and Bobby stood outside Uncle Clyde’s house. They kept out of the way of the firemen as they watched the place burn.

  “I wasn’t smoking in bed!” Uncle Clyde insisted. “I was vaping! That’s supposed to be one of the advantages to e-cigarettes. They don’t burn your house down!”

  The house was a complete inferno, including, presumably, the forty-nine hundred dollars’ worth of zombie effects.

  Justin felt like he was being a bit insensitive by recording all of this, but since he’d just lost the entirety of their amazing zombie army, he could live with his lack of empathy. They could easily add a new scene to the script where a house burned to the ground.

  “It was insured, right?” Bobby asked his uncle.

  Uncle Clyde shook his head. “I was in prison for insurance fraud, so no.”

  “I’ll be back,” said Justin. “I’m going to get a wide shot of the fire engines.” Keeping focused on his work was the only way he could resist the urge to drop to his knees and scream, “Why? Why? Why?”

  He got a bunch of shots from various angles, but he was busy filming the Dalmatian when the house collapsed, which gave him another reason to want to scream in frustration.

  “There’s one positive thing about this,” said Bobby.

  “What?”

  “Nobody got hurt.”

  “Oh,” said Justin. “I thought you meant a positive thing for us.”

  “They’re keeping the fire contained, so none of his neighbors will have any damage to their property. Uncle Clyde didn’t own any pets, so no animals were harmed, and no humans had to put themselves in danger to rescue the pets.”

  “I’m glad nobody was hurt. It means that we can focus on our own loss without being selfish and horrible people.”

  “I think we can salvage this,” said Bobby. “What do you think of this new title? Night of the Melted Dead.”

  “Are you kidding?” asked Justin.

  “You don’t see melted zombies very often.”

  “Even if that was a good idea—and I’d like to emphasize that it’s a bad idea—the entire house collapsed into the basement. We can’t rescue what’s left of the burnt-up blobs of the prosthetics. We have no zombies.”

  “Maybe…maybe the twist is that it’s a zombie movie, but we don’t have any zombies. Like they’re zombies of the mind.”

  “No,” said Justin. “Hey, Uncle Clyde?”

  Uncle Clyde took his electronic cigarette out of his mouth. “What do you want?”

  “I still need zombies from you this weekend.”

  “I lost everything, kid. My furniture, my carpet, my collection of Kleenex used by famous people. I’ve got nothing. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I’ll get you the money to buy more supplies.”

  “How?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “Plus labor?”

  “No, you’ll work for cookies.”

  Uncle Clyde shrugged. “If you can raise the money, I’ll make your zombies.”

  “Did you really have a collection of Kleenex used by famous people?” asked Bobby.

  “Yes. Well, no. They were people I hoped would become famous someday. None of them are yet.” Uncle Clyde motioned to the ashes that were whirling in the air. “Their germs are all around us now. Who knows where they’ll end up?”

  “How are you going to get the money?” Bobby asked Justin.

  “I’m going to use an untapped resource,” said Justin. “My possessions.”

  • • •

  Justin would miss his video game system and his awesome assortment of games to play on it deeply, but there were more important things in life.

  He would miss his vast collection of movies even more. Oh, what wonderful times they’d shared. He treasured his memories of even the terrible ones, and losing all of these discs was going to hurt his heart. Still, he had his own movie to make.

  All of his cool horror villain figures were also going to have to go. He’d been amassing this collection since he was nine, and a couple of the figures were impossible to find anymore. But this was something he needed to do. Maybe someday figures would be made from the characters of his movie.

  Doofy, the stuffed bear he had gotten for his second birthday, was not going anywhere. Forget that. Production of Doofys had been discontinued when their noses were found to be a safety hazard to young children, and they fetched a lot of money in online auctions, but…no way. Doofy stayed.

  Justin hated to sell all of his stuff, but he was too young for a credit card. He had three more years before he could get into crippling debt on his own.

  He’d placed the ads and gotten back quick responses. He wouldn’t come anywhere close to making five thousand dollars, but it would be something.

  The doorbell rang. When he went downstairs and answered it, Gabe and Bobby were standing on his front porch. Each of them was holding a cardboard box.

  “What’s that?” Justin asked.

  “Star Wars figures,” said Bobby. “Unopened.”

  “Aren’t those your dad’s?”

  “Yes. Someday I will suffer for this. Let’s make it worth it.”

  “I’ve got Simpsons figures,” said Gabe, “and a bunch of comic books.”

  “You guys don’t have to do this,” said Justin.

  “Yes, we do,” said Gabe. “We’re in this together. Maybe we’re spiraling into disaster, but if so, we’re spiraling into disaster as a team.”

  “Thank you,” said Justin. “This means everything to me.”

  They all stood there for a moment, waiting for one of them to make a stupid comment that would diminish the emotion of the moment, but nobody did.

  24

  On Saturday morning Justin awoke, got out of bed, and did all of the things in his morning routine that now took twice as long since he had a broken arm. At least he no longer felt any pressure to do push-ups.

  He loaded up his red wagon and headed off. The original plan was to film the first set of epic zombie scenes on his own street, but now that Uncle Clyde’s home no longer existed, it provided a better backdrop for a postapocalyptic landscape.

  He met up with Gabe and Bobby, and they walked there together. Uncle Clyde got out of his car, where he now lived, and waved to them.

  “What time do the zombies start showing up?” Uncle Clyde asked.

  “Six.”

  “What time is it now? My watch stopped working after it melted in the fire.”

  “Five till.”

  “Wake me when the first one gets here.” Uncle Clyde got back into his car and shut the door.

  “Let’s get some establishing shots of the street,” said Justin. “I’d kind of expected some of our zombies to be here early.”

  Bobby shrugged. “Zombies are prompt.”

  By the time they got their shots, it was a few minutes after six.

  “Everybody knows it’s 6:00 a.m., not p.m., right?” asked Gabe.

  “Yes. I put 6:00 a.m., and then I put ‘That means six in the morning,’ in parentheses.”

  “Then where are they?”

  “I don’t know! I put flyers everywhere! I put fifty of them just in school, and I put them up all over town! I posted stuff all over the Internet, and I even placed an ad in the newspaper so we could get some old zombies. Last night I followed up with dozens of people who said they’d do it. Where is everybody?”

  “I guess they’d rather sleep in.”

  “What kind of garbage is that? Who in their right mind would rather sleep than be a zombie in a movie? This should be everybody’s dream! We’re offering them this incredible opportunity, and they c
an’t be bothered to show up?”

  “Are you sure they have the right address?”

  Justin reached into his pocket and took out a crumpled flier. He straightened it out, which was not easy with one hand, and held it up. “See? Everything’s accurate.”

  “Yep. That’s disappointing. I hoped it was our own incompetence and not a lack of interest.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Bobby.

  “We’re going to get our zombies.”

  • • •

  “Good morning, sir. I understand that it’s very early, and I apologize for awakening you from your slumber. My name is Justin Hollow, and I’m the director of the upcoming feature film Dead Skull. The title may change, but we’re filming in your neighborhood today. I was wondering if you and your family would be interested in gaining your own piece of cinematic immortality by playing zombies?”

  “Go away,” the man said before he shut the door in Justin’s face.

  “I know that you’re trying to sound professional,” Gabe told Justin, “but when I hear ‘awaken from slumber,’ I think about ancient evils awakening after a hundred years.”

  “Noted.”

  • • •

  “Good morning, ma’am. I would apologize for waking you up so early, but obviously I didn’t wake you up because nobody looks that good right out of bed. Anyway—”

  The woman slammed the door in his face.

  “Compliments before 7:00 a.m. are creepy,” said Gabe.

  “I wasn’t hitting on her! I was trying to be nice!”

  “Be less nice next time.”

  “Noted.”

  • • •

  “Good morning, sir. I apologize for bothering you so early. My name is Justin Hollow, and I’m the director of the upcoming feature film Dead Skull.”

  “You recruiting for a cult?”

  “No, sir. No cult here. We’re just making a movie.”

  “A recruitment film for a cult?”

  “No, there’s nothing cultish about what we’re doing. It’s a zombie movie.”

  “Do you mean like zombies who shave their heads and do everything the cult leader says?”

  “No, no, I assure you that’s not it at all. I mean, our lead actress did shave most of her head, but it wasn’t a cult sort of thing. These zombies are reanimated corpses that feast upon the flesh of the living.”