Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies

by Bevill, C. L.

  Simone generously allowed Bubba to shake his head. He hadn’t thought bringing his dog was a good idea at all. Someone might take Precious’ presence as Bubba flaunting his freedom. Or she might have tried to eat someone. Either one would have been bad.

  “Bring her by tomorrow,” Schuler said. “She was so good in the first take, we’ll use her in a few more. She can be Farmboy’s bosom companion.” He smiled wanly and wandered away, stopping to critique another artist’s work in progress. “God, that needs more blood. Did you look at your Polaroids? Do you want to get a Razzie for worst makeup?” There was a pause and Bubba was sorry that he couldn’t turn his head to look. “Are you crying? Makeup artists DO NOT cry! Mascara running!”

  “Scarfie is just the biggest bitch today,” Simone said quietly. “I don’t know what crawled up his butt and died, but it must have something with sharp claws and teeth. He totally needs a good humor enema.”

  Scarfie doesn’t have his scarf today, Bubba observed when Simone moved to the other side and he was able to move his eyes to where Schuler still chastised a hapless makeup artist. The man’s neck was oddly empty, which is why the crew member had asked about it. What makes a man so temperamental that he hits a fella when he asks about something like that?

  “He’s generally so-so,” Simone went on, “but ever since Kristoph got murdered, he’s been a pure pain in the ass. Well, who wouldn’t be? Not me, but I’m easy. Everyone is nervous about their jobs. No one wants to hear that the studio is freaking and is thinking about axing the movie dead in its tracks.” Simone paused. “That wasn’t a pun. Oh, that sounded terrible.”

  Bubba understood. It was something about people dying that did it. You wanted to make a joke so you wouldn’t have to cry instead. Some people didn’t understand that, but Bubba did. He also wanted to ask Simone where she was when Kristoph was getting stabbed in the back or whatever it was that had killed him, but then another thought occurred to him. He should have asked Doc when Kristoph died. Doc could usually put a time frame on those sorts of things. It might be hours but it might put another completely different spin on events. It could clear Bubba irrefutably or it could damn him even more. But Bubba had forgotten to ask and now he couldn’t even talk.

  Bubba concluded that he was a terrible detective. He needed the Purple Singapore Sling or Daniel Lewis Gollihugh or Brownie. He needed someone.

  “BUBBA!” someone yelled and Simone jumped. She swore under her breath.

  Bubba could only look into the mirror. Bam Bam Jones appeared behind him, his hands gesturing wildly. “Yo, homes,” he said. “I be thinking and all that. I expect a fella needs to know what the dealio is. And seeing as how you were the main suspect and all—”

  The charges WERE dismissed! Bubba yelled in his head. If there was ever a time that he needed a sudden psychic ability brought on by a nuclear accident and chemical experimentation in an era of free-love, it was now. Alas it was not to be.

  “—well, you be the man who needs to find out who the real murderer is,” Bam Bam concluded. He spared a long glance at Simone. “Hey, baby, I wish you were DSL so I could get high speed access.”

  Simone shoved Bam Bam aside. “If I don’t get his face finished in ten minutes I’m going to be history, so step away from the zombie.”

  Bam Bam smoothly stepped back and then presented a card. “Bam Bam Jones, sweetness. Entrepreneur, businessman, investor.” He grinned widely at Simone.

  Simone took the card and dumped it on her work bench. “Simone Sheats, makeup, wardrobe, and bitch. You can talk to him but don’t expect him to answer. His face is mine.” She resumed her work with a vengeance.

  Unruffled by Simone’s rejection, Bam Bam looked at Bubba and said, “Dah-amn, Bubba. You look like you be ready to tear into somethin’ like it be fresh brains on toast.”

  Simone grunted approvingly. “He should be.”

  “Well, I just wanted to say that I think we should get together and start interrogating all the film crew,” Bam Bam said. “I’m shore the po-lice ain’t doin’ a proper job and all. Of course, I don’t mean your girl, the deputy.” He glanced at Simone again. “Sorry, baby, but that deputy girl melts me like fudge on a sundae.”

  Bubba growled.

  “Okay, big man,” Bam Bam soothed. “I just be thinking that we don’t want this film to fold, am I right, brotha?” He didn’t wait for Bubba to answer. “So we be asking folks, who be wanting to kill Kristoph? Like you, sugar lips,” he said to Simone, “who do you think would do poor Kristoph in?”

  Simone frowned. “Everyone is thinking about that very subject, you know.” She brushed something across Bubba’s forehead and then checked the Polaroid shots on the work bench. “Bubba is the one who just got fired. So he’s suspect number one, except the charges get dismissed on account that they couldn’t find any fingerprints on the knife.” They found Simms’s fingerprint.

  “Maybe Bubba used gloves. He’s a smart white boy,” Bam Bam suggested.

  Oh crap balls! Stop trying to help me, Bam Bam! Bubba thought hard. He also grunted eloquently.

  “In his own house with his own knife?” Simone asked sarcastically. “That seems unlikely. Besides what was he doing in Bubba’s house?”

  Bubba would have answered if he’d been able. Risley Risto said something about Kristoph wandering into weird places in the name of filming unusual shots or somethin’ like that. It had gotten him in trouble before. Mebe that was why Kristoph had been in my house.

  “To frame Bubba, of course,” Bam Bam declared. “If I was a bad guy, and I can be, you know. If I was a bad guy, I would call Kristoph up and say, ‘Yo blood, meet me at the redneck’s house because we need to deal.’”

  “I don’t think our killer talks like that,” Simone said.

  Bam Bam’s eyes rolled. “Okay.” His voice mimicked an average Middle American accent with no inflection. “‘Please, sir, meet me at Bubba’s residence promptly at four p.m. so that I can stab you in the back.’”

  “Kristoph wouldn’t have come to that,” Simone sneered.

  “It’s just for example,” Bam Bam said. “I’m just saying a fella would have to be a little clever in order to get the man over where he wanted him to be and then it was a done deal. Where you be at when the man be getting stabbed, Bubba?”

  Simone and Bam Bam both looked at Bubba. Bubba grunted again.

  “Oh, he cain’t talk,” Bam Bam said understandingly. “Mebe we should get him something to write with. We need an alibi for when the director got shanked. You know, I know a gal who would vouch for you. She’s like a professional alibi person. She provided one for Knobby Knees Macaroy back in ’10 when he robbed that bank.”

  But Bubba was thinking about what Bam Bam had actually meant. If one needed a fall guy for a murder, then who better than a man who went in and out of jail faster than a hound will swallow a boiled egg. Everything about Bubba practically screamed “SCAPEGOAT!”

  And where does a fella find a scapegoat? Why, Pegram County’s got all the best ones. They fall right out of the trees there.

  * * *

  “Here’s your mark,” the redhead said. One day Bubba was going to have to take some time to ask what her name actually was. “In this scene, you’re about to eat Alex,” she indicated Alex Luis, who winked at Bubba again. Bubba was afraid to blink lest it be misinterpreted as something it was not. He didn’t have anything against a man or a woman’s sexual proclivities, but unfortunately he was a product of his culture and upbringing. “You go from here to here. Then you have to hurry. No saying brains. A little moaning. Remember you died from a shotgun to the face that missed your spinal cord and didn’t disconnect your central nervous system. Shuffle, shuffle, bite, bite.”

  Okay, Bubba thought. They were in the high school’s gymnasium. The lights were flickering on and off above them and it appeared as though the room had been under attack by people throwing mud. It was possible that Bubba didn’t really understand the genius that was the art of speci
al effects.

  On one side of the gym, Risley Risto perched on a director’s chair watching the redhead and the others get organized. Finally the redhead backed out of the scene and called, “Okay, Risley.”

  “Shake and bake,” Risley called. “Cameramen!” The cameramen, er, persons, because one of them was a woman, started filming. Then he motioned at the baldheaded kid with the multiple piercings. He rushed in, used the clapboard, then rushed out. Risley gestured at the actors. “Action!” he said.

  Alex held a shotgun and pumped it loudly. The bullet casing ejected and flew through the air and hit Tandy North in the eye. She caught herself before saying what was obviously going to be a vicious and four-lettered word. “Sorry,” Alex said.

  Risley said a bad word.

  “Sorry,” Alex said again. He pumped the shotgun again.

  “Don’t stop,” Risley commanded.

  Alex took a deep breath. He aimed the shotgun at Bubba and the three other zombie actors who loomed and leered at the two “live” people.

  “Dakota,” Alex said to Tandy North. Bubba took that to mean that her character’s name was Dakota. He couldn’t remember if he had heard it before. He didn’t think much of it but then he was named Bubba so he supposed he couldn’t complain much. “We’re in a corner here.” His tone was urgent, determined, and ready for his big denouement.

  “Riker,” Tandy, er, Dakota said, which Bubba also took to mean that Alex’s character was named Riker. (Perhaps after a jail or a first officer from the Star Trek universe, not that Bubba would ever admit to watching the entire series of Star Trek: The Next Generation in a marathon session over a long holiday weekend.) “We knew that it was a long shot.”

  “You know, I have a hankering to go back to Jamaica and lose my necktie,” Alex, er, Riker said suavely, clearly lost in the moment of being the hero who was about to die a wretched cinematic death.

  He ain’t wearing a necktie, Bubba thought and moaned. Risley shot Bubba a quick look. Too loud?

  “You’re not wearing a necktie,” Tandy, er, Dakota shot back wryly.

  Bubba stumbled forward. The other zombies followed suit. He tried to remember if he was supposed to drag his leg and went ahead and dragged it some anyway. No one screamed “CUT, you big dumb goober!” so he figured it was okay.

  Alex and Tandy tried to back farther into their isolated corner. The flickering fluorescent lights above were similar to strobe lights in a dance club. The on and off actions showed their desperate faces, waiting for something to happen, for someone to save them.

  “I just wanted to say that I think I love you,” Alex said to Tandy.

  It was a little hard to see his mark, Bubba stumbled another step forward. He could see Risley leaning forward to see him better. One of his hands was twitching a gesture at him. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me something?” Alex demanded.

  “When we’re not in a shadowy gym with a bunch of dead freaks!” Tandy said forcefully. “I want candles and a table with a real cloth tablecloth.” She brought up her shotgun and pumped it once. It was clear to everyone that she was trying to aim the ejecting shotgun shell at Alex but she missed abysmally. “I want you on one knee and by god, I think you can find a two carat rock in a ring my size.” She jerked Alex’s head down to hers and kissed him hard once. “But now, we’ve got other things to do.”

  They brought their shotguns up in unison and aimed at the approaching zombies.

  Bubba saw Risley clamp his hands together in anticipation.

  There was a loud clicking noise and a boom. Bubba saw flashes of light coming from the ends of the shotguns and there was an immediate burning on his arm. Almost instantaneously there was a huge explosion of breaking glass and Bubba swung his head around to see one of the lights behind him burst into pieces. He looked forward again and saw both Alex and Tandy staring horrified at the shotguns in their hands.

  “Oh snap,” Tandy said. “You know, I think this gun had real bullets in it.”

  Risley had been frozen and then he said, “Cut, cut, cut!”

  The special effects supervisor rushed in to see what Tandy was saying.

  “I’ve fired shotguns before at the range,” Tandy said, “and this felt like the real deal. I think I hit the portable light. Damn, I’m good. I was aiming at the redneck zombie like I was supposed to.”

  “Of course it’s not real,” the supervisor said, “it’s just a special load that we—”

  Alex sniffed. “Smells like the real thing to me.”

  “Uh, Risley,” the supervisor said, carefully taking both shotguns away from the two lead actors and examining them closely, “we got a problem.”

  Bubba looked around at saw people staring. A lot of people staring. And there was McGeorge, watching him with a funny little twisted smile on her face, just like the cat that ate the zombie canary.

  One of the zombies glanced at Bubba and her eyes went very large, even with the pale white contacts. “I think you’ve been shot, guy,” she said. Bubba didn’t know her except as Zombie #64, and she wasn’t someone he recognized.

  Bubba wanted to say, Shore, I’ve bin shot. That’s what the good guy and gal are supposed to do. They’re supposed to shoot the bad, hungry, brain-eting zombie. Right? Bubba looked down at his stinging shoulder. There was blood on his face that was fake. There were some spots on his shirt that Simone had reapplied. But there hadn’t been a large spreading patch of bright crimson blood on his upper left arm. There also hadn’t been a stinging that was rapidly turning into a fierce scorching of his flesh.

  He brought his hand up to cover it and then brought it away to see the redness dripping from his palm. Crap, he thought. I mean, Carp.

  Chapter 16

  Bubba and the Heinous Hospital

  Tuesday, March 12th

  So this is what the hospital looks like when I’m coming in while I’m actually conscious, Bubba thought. The ER people weren’t particularly impressed with the shotgun wound in his upper arm. (Hunting season in east Texas brought a whole other level to Cheney-like “accidents.”) They thought the face prosthesis was real for a brief time until one nurse experimentally poked him in the face. I shore hope the movie people are goin’ to pay for this visit. It wasn’t my fault the gun was loaded. It wasn’t—

  Wait.

  Bubba mentally rewound what Tandy North said, “I was aiming at the redneck zombie like I was supposed to.” The character was aiming at Zombie #14/Farmboy. The character was supposed to specifically shoot Zombie #14/Farmboy as was stated thusly in the script. In another take he would be filmed falling down as blood exploded out of his chest. Bubba assumed that meant they would put the same kind of thing on him that they had put on David Beathard. I had no idea the movie bizness is so dang dangerous.

  The hospital staff threw him on a gurney and rolled him into a back area. It was a large room with rooms separated by curtains hanging from the ceiling. A child was coughing and an elderly man was arguing about his diagnosis. “I don’t have no gallstones, dagnammit! It’s my lumbago!” he screamed at a clerk.

  And Bubba remembered the special effects supervisor saying something like, “It’s just a special load that we—” and his words had stopped because he had been staring at the weapons. His words had trailed off because he recognized those had been real bullets. There had been real bullets in the scene where Bubba’s character was supposed to have been shot.

  Someone tried to murder me. That’s just ducky.

  The staff got busy on Bubba’s arm while the redhead tried to tell some other staff that what had happened was just a tragic misadventure.

  “Do you feel lightheaded, Bubba?” a nurse asked. Bubba didn’t recognize the nurse but they were used to having him in the hospital so that was a no brainer. (Groaner.) (All the nurses knew him, but he didn’t always recognize them because usually he was unconscious in the hospital.)

  Bubba shook his head.

  “How do we get this cr
ap off his face?” another one asked.

  The shirt was neatly sliced up the sleeve with scissors and exposed the wound. The nurse blinked. “That’s a nice little shot pattern. Notice the expanding pattern of beads around the main wound. He caught only half of it. We’re going to have to pick out each pellet and then do an x-ray to make sure we got all of them.”

  Bubba understood about shotgun wounds. Tee Gearheart had been shot by his cousin, catching most of the pellets across his buttocks. He hadn’t sat down for a full month and his cousin had his shotgun returned to him with a bow tied barrel. (Tee was mostly genial but he hadn’t liked being shot in the ass at all, which had inspired a bout of creativity involving a vise clamp, a blow torch, and a hydraulic pipe bender.)

  “Let’s get an IV in him,” one nurse said. “Call the doctor and have him take a looksee to make sure he doesn’t want anything else done. Bubba,” she said to him, clasping thick white pads of gauze across the wound, “are you hurt anywhere else? Side?”

  Bubba shook his head.

  Simone Sheats appeared on the other side. She stared at Bubba and then at the gauze on his upper arm. “It looks just like the fake blood, except it’s not. Oh, Bubba, I’m sorry. I think people are just really ticked off about the thing with Kristoph and you’re the one they’re blaming.”

  Someone tried to murder me because I might have killed Kristoph? But the charges were dismissed! Wait, how does Simone know that?

  “Let me just take the prosthesis before the staff whacks it off with a scalpel,” she added, plopping a plastic box on top of his stomach and deftly opening it. It looked like a tackle box but had makeup accoutrements inside. “The clothing is history.” She looked around and saw the pants in a neat pile on a table. “I can take those and I’ll remove the jaw piece so we can use it again. I’m pretty sure we have a bunch of those shirts that we can use.”

  Simone got to work and then a person in scrubs came in to start an IV. Bubba would have scowled when he saw that it was Dee Dee Lacour, the dourest nurse on the face of the planet, but Simone had his jaw fixed in one hand.