Bubba and the Zigzaggery Zombies

by Bevill, C. L.

  “Hoops the size of Cheerios!” Risley yelled. “You wouldn’t believe how my balls get caught!” He demonstrated with his index finger and thumb the size of a Cheerio, or possibly the size of his balls.

  Bubba winced.

  “It’s just this whole thing!” Marquita yelled. “And that guy almost getting killed, too! You know damn well, dummy bullets don’t just magically get replaced by real rounds. If that Bubba guy decides to sue us, he’s going to own the film and then where we will be?”

  I can sue the film? Bubba shook his head. More lawyers’ fees. Mebe ifin they just pay the hospital bill.

  “Mar, honey,” Risley said entreatingly, “we’re getting lots of yummy publicity. If we can just get through the shooting this week, we can film the rest on the sound stage. We can let those local police officers sort the whole thing out with Kristoph and we can move on. This can be our tribute to Kris. They’re going to catch the person. I just know it.”

  Marquita began to cry and Risley grimaced. After nearly a minute he enfolded his sister in a brotherly embrace.

  Bubba sighed. No one was going to confess anything in front of his house. What was wrong with those people? He glanced back at the vans and saw Schuler carrying makeup cases toward the tents. He also saw the redhead staring at the brother and sister in a very odd manner.

  Just then Precious stuck her cold, wet, and demanding nose against Bubba’s groin and he bonked his head against the bottom of the window.

  Risley glanced up and frowned. Bubba waved weakly.

  * * *

  Bubba got dressed. He disregarded the sling, let his dog outside with the admonition to not eat any of the film crew and/or zombies lurking in the vicinity. Precious’s ears drooped more than they typically did but she trotted outside to do her dogly business.

  He stopped to make himself a pot of coffee and thought about what he was supposed to do. There was the old standard. Find the bad guy/girl. Figure out what Ma was up to. Straighten things out with Willodean. It hadn’t changed.

  Oh, yes. Working as Zombie #14/Farmboy. I got one line. One stupid line. “If it weren’t for that dagnammed sprocket.” What does that mean, anyway? I might as well say “Hey, there’s a friggin’ zombie about to bite my tushy.”

  Bubba checked the Kit-Cat clock and saw that he wasn’t late yet. But he might be if he stopped to take a shower. He had been tired the night before. The previous day had been chock full of unpleasant surprises and the inability to get the job done, which had translated into going to be early.

  I ain’t myself lately, he admitted. I feel like my feet are slogging through molasses in December and it ain’t but March.

  Then he looked out the kitchen window and settled on Snoddy Mansion and specifically the red curtains in the window of the room where the Garcias were staying. He saw the curtain twitch again and knew that Pilar was watching again. She had seen the same thing as Bubba. The brother and sister had been loudly fighting and she was probably trying to get the babies to go back to sleep.

  But the kids are up with the sun. Isn’t that what Alfonzo said? Yep.

  Bubba frowned and took the entire carafe of coffee with him. Why mess with a mug?

  * * *

  Bubba found himself in the makeup tent a half hour later. Since he had the single line to say he knew he was playing the Farmboy as opposed to Zombie #14. This was good news because Farmboy had a lot less makeup to be applied than Zombie #14. This also meant that he wouldn’t have a physiological reaction to the glue the artists used and he would be able to speak coherently for the rest of the day. This was a good thing.

  Simone was doing his makeup while she chattered nonsensically. “How’s that shotgun wound? I don’t think I’ve ever known someone who got shot before. Except my Uncle Sebastian. But he tripped while he was hunting and shot himself in the foot. He used to bring a baby food jar full of shotgun pellets at Thanksgiving and rattle it at the kids as an object lesson. Did you know that those pellets are like little mouse droppings? It made me afraid of guns because Uncle Sebastian was a little messed up in the head. I don’t think it had anything to do with being shot in the foot. Of course, one of those pellets could have traveled through his blood stream and deposited itself in his brain. Hmm. I’ll have to run that one by my mom. I bet she would know. She’s a registered nurse, you know. Did you pee?”

  Bubba took a moment to realize that Simone was actually waiting for him to answer. He nodded. But there was that empty carafe sitting on her makeup table and his bladder said something nasty to him. It went something like, “Go ahead and wait, dumbass. I double dawg dare you. No, I triple dawg dare you.”

  “I’ll go now,” Bubba said instead of actually responding to his bladder, which was always the right thing to do.

  So Bubba went and took care of coffee inspired business. On his way back he paused by Schuler, who was cooing over Precious. He noticed that the purple-headed man wore a scarf tied jauntily around his neck. It was a different color this time. Blues shot with greens swirling about. Bubba was quite certain he could never get away with wearing a scarf around his neck. He’d be shot as soon as he stepped onto Main Street.

  Bubba couldn’t think of a way to ask a man if he had killed another man without sounding like an utter jackass, so he said, “You like dogs.”

  “I do like dogs,” Schuler said. “I have five at home. All rescues.”

  “Precious was kind of like that,” Bubba said. He’d gotten her from a breeder of hounds. She wasn’t apt to hunt when she was supposed to, but it didn’t really matter to Bubba. She was a good dog, even when she was chasing folks with metal detectors through the Sturgis Woods. (Her legs were stubby and she usually gave up before the people did, so it was all gravy.) “Fella gave her to me because he wasn’t goin’ to be able to sell her as a hunter.”

  “Is that right?” Schuler asked. He scratched under Precious’s jowls. She tilted her head to properly maximize the human’s marvelous fingers.

  “She did okay, though,” Bubba said. “Found a woman who went missing.” Precious had found Willodean. Precious is a dang fine hound. Dang fine.

  “You found a missing woman?” Schuler asked Precious. Precious drooled down one side of her mouth. One of her back legs thumped in time with the man’s scratching. “Aren’t you the queen?”

  Bubba was at a loss. He was supposed to make some smooth transition from discussing canines to what had happened with Kristoph, but nothing was coming to his mind.

  “They found a scarf on Kristoph,” Bubba said quietly, because they were still in a tent with a few other people. “Was it yours?”

  Schuler froze and Precious whined in an annoyed fashion. The human had ceased scratching the sweet spot, and she was not happy about it.

  “What do you care?” Schuler all but snarled.

  “Well, they found my daddy’s bayonet in the fella’s back and they say that dint kill the man,” Bubba said. “So someone stuck it in the poor bastard after he died from something else. They also said he wasn’t strangled. So mebe that same someone took one of your scarfs and put it around his neck to point the finger at you, too. That’s perty much why I care.”

  Schuler looked up at Bubba. “The police didn’t say that he hadn’t died from strangling.” His tone was a whole less snarly.

  “Mebe they was hoping you would confess,” Bubba said. “Same as me.” He scratched at the side of his nose and Simone called across the tent, “BUBBA, DON’T TOUCH YOUR MAKEUP!”

  “It was my scarf,” Schuler admitted. “It was the one Liza Minnelli signed. I loved that scarf. I saw her in London when she did ‘Liza’s Back.’ I had a friend who introduced me to the fine actress and singer. Such a lovely lady. So sweet.”

  “I saw Cabaret once,” Bubba said.

  “I think she gets much better with age,” Schuler said with a wistful sigh, “like a fine bottle of wine.”

  “Where did you keep your scarves?”

  “In my kit,” Schuler said. He gave P
recious a last scratch and stood up. He waved at a massive Craftsman tool chest that was moved around on rollers. Bubba had a similar one, but his was about thirty years old and looked like it had been pushed down the side of a mountain. Schuler’s had rainbow stickers on it and one bumper sticker that said “Marriage is SO gay!”

  “Do you keep it locked?”

  Schuler shook his head. “The artists are always coming and going, borrowing this, that, and the other. It would be stupid to keep it locked. I told the police that anyone on the set could have helped themselves to the scarf. Especially if they wanted to frame me.” His expression revealed the innate bitterness. “I didn’t miss it until the sheriff asked me about it the next day.”

  “Why would they want to frame you?”

  “Because everyone knows how much I hated Kristoph,” Schuler muttered.

  “And you hated him because…?”

  “He killed my dog.”

  * * *

  “Kristoph did not kill Schuler’s dog,” Simone whispered in Bubba’s ear when he was back in her chair. “At least, not on purpose.” Schuler vanished from the tent as soon as Bubba had stepped away from him, unsure what to say to the other man. Why Simone was whispering, Bubba didn’t know since Schuler was gone.

  Bubba was about to ask her what she meant when Simone just went ahead and answered him.

  “Schuler brought his dog on the set and Kristoph was backing up in his Mercedes. Didn’t even see the dog. But Kristoph has never liked dogs so Schuler said it had been done on purpose. Schuler even sued Kristoph for the cost of the dog, the cost of the funeral, and mental anguish. The dog was buried in the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park. They have Hopalong Cassidy’s horse there. Also Rudolph Valentino’s dog.”

  Simone efficiently powdered Bubba’s nose. “How could you possibly have messed this up in five minutes?” she asked.

  “Why would Schuler still be working on Kristoph’s film ifin there was so much bad blood between them?” Bubba asked.

  “On account that Schuler’s company, the company I work for, has a contract with the studio, not with Kristoph. Kristoph didn’t have a choice. So they avoided each other like the plague. Kristoph couldn’t fault Schuler’s work with makeup and wardrobe.”

  “What happened with the law suit?”

  “Kristoph settled with Schuler out of court. I suppose it was a payoff to shut the man up. Who wants someone running around bitching about the director running over his pet dog?” Simone sighed. “Good dog too. Looked kind of like Benji. That dog would do a dance for a treat and Schuler had her trained to stay in her crate during prime working hours. Never bothered anyone.”

  “But the dog was out of the crate and Kristoph ran over her,” Bubba surmised. “Doesn’t sound quite right.”

  “It was an accident,” Simone said. “The guns were going off and the dog freaked out. The cage wasn’t latched. That was Schuler’s own fault. The dog ran and Kristoph was sorry about it afterward, although he did try to blame it all on Schuler.” She sighed again. “I thought I was going to have to move back in with my mother because we weren’t going to get any work from the studio ever again. The people in this business are such drama queens.”

  “So you know Schuler perty well,” Bubba said.

  Simone dabbed a little on his eyebrow. “Jeez, the hair on your brows won’t stay in place. Let me put some hairspray on that. Yes, I know him pretty well.”

  “You think he might have killed Kristoph?”

  Simone sprayed something on Bubba’s face and he choked because of the fumes.

  “I don’t think so. He might have stomped on Kristoph with his size 13 stiletto heels, but strangling. No. It’s way too masculine.”

  Bubba choked once more. What does that mean?

  * * *

  Either Bubba was getting better at the acting business or he had gotten incredibly lucky. The single line was said in one take. Risley nodded at the actors and said, “Cut! Great job. One take. I love it.”

  Bubba didn’t understand why a dagnammed sprocket was integral to the story line but then he wasn’t a writer and he didn’t think he could write his way out of a paper bag. That was the same for most of the situations in his life. He was simply glad that one single thing had gone right for a change. But he grimaced as he thought about what he had just done. He had probably jinxed himself.

  “Yo, dude,” Tandy North said to Bubba. A Marlboro dangled out of the side of her mouth and puffed happily after she spoke.

  Bubba looked at her expectantly.

  “Sorry I shot you,” Tandy said.

  “You dint change the bullets, did you?” Bubba asked.

  “Of course not,” Tandy said. Her face transfixed into a frown. “Is that what the law thinks? That someone did it on purpose? Whoa. Intense. Death by actor. That’s like Agatha Christie extreme.”

  “You dint happen to notice anyone messing around with the guns, did you?” Bubba asked, as if he was discussing the weather or whether or not they would eat pie after lunch.

  Tandy puffed furiously. She blew a ring and then another ring that went through the first one. “This have something to do with the DEA?”

  Bubba frowned. “Prolly not.” He thought of his mother. She might pseudo frame him to get him and the DEA out of her way for the moment, but she wouldn’t have messed with a shotgun. Furthermore, she didn’t think Bubba getting shot was funny.

  “That was H in your truck?”

  “Flour,” Bubba said succinctly.

  “Flour?”

  “Self-rising,” Bubba said. “Whole wheat, too.”

  A smile quirked across Tandy’s lips. “There’s always something going on during filming. So and so sleeps with such and such. So and so got into a fight with such and such. I gave this one actress a black eye once. She was such a bitch, she had it coming. I had to write a check with five zeroes on it. But this place has been making new records for weirdness.”

  “Pegram County has a way of doin’ that,” Bubba said. Sadly it was true.

  Tandy puffed again. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at Bubba consideringly. “They don’t think you did Kristoph, right? That’s why they released you.”

  Bubba nodded.

  “And if that had been H, that much H, then you’d be in jail until the next decade rolled over. Living la vida loca with Horace the Biker as your cellie.”

  Bubba shrugged. He didn’t know who Horace the Biker was and he probably had never been arrested in Pegram County.

  “So someone tried to kill you on the set,” Tandy said. “I thought it was just an accident. That’s wicked bad.”

  Bubba thought of McGeorge. She’d been a little too happy weird after he’d been shot. He hadn’t seen the executive assistant around much since he came back to the set. But he’d like to know why she’d thought that him getting a hole was amusing.

  “You see McGeorge that day I got shot?”

  Tandy puffed as she appeared to think about it.

  Bubba looked around them. Most people were busy doing whatever people did on a film set. Risley was talking to the redhead. The redhead had her hand on Risley’s shoulder and was gently caressing his deltoid muscle. Did executive assistants do that? And hadn’t the redhead done something similar to Marquita? And Bubba thought Pegram County was weird.

  “She was there,” Tandy said. “She was near the weapons, too. As a matter of fact, she shouldn’t have been near the weapons.” Her pretty mouth opened into a wide O of surprise. “You think the McGeorge did that?”

  Bubba didn’t reply. Someone had said something about McGeorge working in special effects before becoming Kristoph’s executive assistant. What that meant to Bubba was that she had the knowhow to try to do Bubba in. But why?

  “The McGeorge had a thing for Kristoph and she was there right after you found his body, so damn, she could have been waiting for you to find him so she could pretend to find you and frame you.” Tandy nodded admiringly. “She went all Lucrezia Borgia
on you. Except without the poison ring.”

  It could have happened that way, Bubba acknowledged. But Kristoph hadn’t been strangled to death. He hadn’t been stabbed to death. Marquita said he was alive when she left. That meant that someone else went into his house before Bubba came back.

  A cameraman came past, hauling a large Red One unit over his shoulder.

  Bubba had a thought. It was the first time he actually thought that his thought was a good one.

  Chapter 22

  Bubba and Oblivious Obfuscation

  Thursday, March 14th

  It didn’t take Bubba long to find the person he was looking for. Mike Holmgreen was lurking around the catering van, chatting up a pretty server, telling her all about his experience in the “film” industry. He waved his compact camcorder around in an effort to impress the lady. “It’s a Canon full HD camcorder. It has 32 gigabytes of internal flash drive.” He nodded firmly, emphasizing the coolness of what he was telling the young woman.

  Bubba approached with Precious trailing at his heels. She sniffed appreciatively. A blackboard with words scrawled across it sat in front of the van. The “Zombie Special” featured bacon, avocado, and arugula. There was also a vegetarian alternative. The “Zombie Lite” had avocado, arugula, bean sprouts, and mushroom pate.

  “Hey, Bubba,” Mike said. “You wouldn’t believe the footage I got this morning.” He leered at the young woman in an apron as she leaned out of the van’s window. “I was just telling Clara about it. Marquita and Risley arguing their butts off. I already uploaded it to YouTube. Too bad there wasn’t a smack down.”

  Clara’s eyes rolled. “You want something?” she asked Bubba.

  Bubba was still in his Farmboy outfit and it was obvious that Clara knew he was one of the so-called actors. (Bubba didn’t feel like an actor. He felt like a doofus standing in front of a person with a camera saying a stupid line that didn’t even make sense.) He shook his head.

  “Mike,” he said, “kin I have a word?”

  Mike looked mildly alarmed. It was clear that he was going over recent events to see if there was something he had done or hadn’t done that would have ticked Bubba off in some manner. Ultimately he must have decided that he was clean for the moment because he nodded and gestured for Bubba to lead the way.