Greatest Zombie Movie Ever (9 page)

“Sorry if any sludge got on you,” said Christopher, and for an instant Justin thought he was talking to him instead of Veronica Chaos. “My name is Runson Mudd, and I've embraced this dark new world that we live in. Yeah, I miss the luxuries of running water and catering. But in this world, only the strong survive, and I am one of the strong. And I can see that you are one of the strong, so let's be strong together!”

A chill ran down Justin's spine. Gabe brushed a fingertip against the corner of his eye as if he was wiping away a tear.

“Thank you,” said Justin. “Is it all right if my associates and I have a quick discussion?”

“Sure.” Christopher left the room, shutting the door behind him.

“We're making a huge mistake,” said Bobby. “He could change his mind while we're wasting time sitting here talking!”

“Everybody's cool with casting him, right?” asked Justin.

“Yeah,” said Gabe. “He makes me want to be a better person. And that's perfect for the character.”

Justin got up and opened the door again. “We'd love to offer you the role of Runson Mudd,” he said as Christopher walked back into the room.

“Hey, great! What does it pay?”

“Screen credit and free sandwiches,” said Justin.

“Bottled water?”

“Tap water in a bottle.”

“My own trailer?”

“A place on the sidewalk where nobody else is standing.”

“A personal assistant?”

“The world is your personal assistant.”

“Cabbage?”

“You want cabbage?”

“No, not really.”

“Okay.”

“Do I get to be on the poster?”

Gabe fielded that question. “That's a creative decision that will be made by our marketing department, but yes.”

“Who's playing Veronica Chaos?”

“Alicia Howtz,” said Justin.

Christopher's already bright eyes lit up. “Really? She's playing my girlfriend?”

Justin coughed. “Well, we're still doing the final polish on the script. We're going to test out multiple variations of their relationship and see which one best suits our theme.”

“That would be awesome if she played my girlfriend. I can totally see us being together. It just feels right.”

“Yes,” said Justin, “it would be delightful. I hope you like purple Mohawks. Anyway, we'll get back to you on that detail, but for now we're thrilled to have you on board.”

“Soooooo,” Justin said as he, Gabe, and Bobby sat in his bedroom and worked on their laptops. “What if we tweaked the Veronica-Runson relationship so that they were brother and sister?”

“This is supposed to be the first time they met,” said Gabe.

“Then long-lost brother and sister.”

“Most of my character development is about their love story.”

“We can work around that.”

“No.”

“We'd get rid of everything icky.”

“Justin, do we need to have a discussion about priorities?”

“Nah.”

“I feel like we do.”

“No, no, no, you're right. You're right. You're right. It's
good
how easily I can picture them together. It's what we want. It's super way cool.”

“I don't think they'll have that much chemistry,” said Bobby.

“Of course they will! They'll have
scorching
chemistry! Every review will talk about it! I'm surprised they aren't already married!” Gabe declared.

“Maybe he'll have bad breath,” said Justin.

“His breath is like roses. You smelled it,” Bobby reminded him.

“It
was
pretty nice,” Gabe admitted. “I wonder if he was chewing gum. Anyway, it's not like they're slobbering all over each other through the whole movie. There's one kiss at the very end, and they're both covered in guts, so Alicia probably won't be that into it.”

“Yeah, I know. I have to focus on what's right for the movie. But can we get rid of the part where they cut off that zombie's head together using the same sword?”

“Would that change be right for the movie?”

Justin lowered his head. “No.”

“Don't worry about it. Even the ugliest of directors have girlfriends. If we truly do make the greatest zombie movie ever, all three of us will have lines of women outside of our homes stretching for miles. We'll go broke buying new shirts to replace the ones that get ripped off our bodies by our adoring fans.”

Justin grinned. “Then we should just go shirtless.”

“No, we'd get all scratched up.”

“The love story stays,” said Justin. “I'm sorry about that. I won't have any more fits of jealousy.”

They went back to working on the screenplay.

And by the time Gabe and Bobby had to leave, the three of them agreed that the script sucked quite a bit less.

• • •

“My nephew says you're looking for somebody to kill zombies for ya,” said Uncle Clyde, who made everybody call him Uncle Clyde, nephew or not. He inhaled from his e-cigarette and blew some vapor into the air.

“Movie zombies, yes,” said Justin.

“You didn't need to clarify that, son,” said Uncle Clyde. He took a sip from his latte and grimaced. “Ugh. I can't believe this is what passes for coffee these days. Disgusting. Why would anybody drink this?”

“You wanted to meet at a coffee shop.”

“Yeah, because if somebody is going to buy me coffee, it might as well be expensive. Doesn't mean I like the taste.” He took another sip, swished it around in his mouth, and swallowed.

“Anyway,” said Justin, “Bobby and I are making a movie.”

Uncle Clyde stroked his gray beard, which was practically long enough to conceal a sasquatch. “The noblest of professions.”

“And like Bobby said, we need somebody to do the special effects.”

One of the baristas walked over to their table. “Excuse me, sir. You can't smoke in here.”

“I'm not smoking. I'm vaping.”

“We don't allow either.”

“There's steam coming out of my coffee!”

“I understand, sir, but you'll have to put it away.”

“Fine, fine.” Uncle Clyde tucked the e-cigarette back into his pocket and then looked over at Justin. “Do you smoke?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Nasty habit. Turns your lungs into sacks of black tar. I've smoked since I was twelve, and every morning I wake up hacking and coughing up blobs of this thick, oozy stuff that I'm sure is mucus but doesn't look like any mucus you'd find in nature.”

“What does it look like?” Justin asked.

“You don't want to know, son. You don't want to know.”

“Then why do you smoke?”

Uncle Clyde pointed to his face. “Do I look smart to you?”

Justin was unsure how to answer that and opted for the safety of silence.

“These days I vape. Comes in different flavors, every one of them vile. I'd get better flavor from chewing the armpits of a ninety-year-old baboon. And the nicotine addiction turns me into the kind of person who would snap at a coffee shop employee who's just doing her job. Don't smoke, Justin.”

“I won't.”

“Back to the topic at hand. Lucky for you, I'm between jobs at the moment.”

“How far between?” Gabe inquired.

“Don't sass your elders, kid.”

“That wasn't meant to be a sass.”

“I am ready, willing, and available to work on your little movie, and I'll make the best zombies you've ever seen. I'll make zombies that'll make the ones on
The Walking Dead
look like a child's doll.”

A lot of children's dolls were terrifying, but Justin didn't point this out. He knew what Uncle Clyde meant.

“I've run the budget, and for materials and labor, I can give you the super-special friend-of-my-nephew discount price of forty-nine hundred dollars.”

Justin stared at him for a moment.

“Did Bobby tell you how much my grandmother gave me?”

“He might have. I don't recall.”

“That's almost our entire budget.”

“Okay, then if there's some left over, I'll throw in a fantastic Zombie Nose vs Apple Peeler effect.”

“No, I mean, we need to save some of our money for other stuff.”

Uncle Clyde took a sip of his coffee. “Ugh. This coffee is like dunking my tongue in a sewer rat's bathwater. Listen, son. You're trying to join the big leagues. Do you know what five grand will get you on a major production?”

“No, sir.”

He held up his pinkie finger. “One finger. One
small
finger, not your index finger or anything like that. On a union movie, I paint this finger gray, and that's your five-thousand-dollar zombie effect. What you have to decide is if you're trying to make a real movie or you're goofing around with your buddies. Goofing around with your buddies is fine. I have fond memories of my buddies and me flinging firecrackers at seagulls. But call it what it is and don't act like you're trying to do something important.”

Justin wasn't sure what to do. On one hand, Uncle Clyde was right. On the other hand, Uncle Clyde was a creepy, untrustworthy ex-con who would probably take the money and flee to another state.

“I won't be able to commit to allocating that much of our budget to special effects until I discuss it with my partners,” said Justin. “I'll send you a copy of our final script in a couple of days with the effects portions highlighted. You tell me what materials you'll need, and we'll do some pricing.”

“A real director wouldn't need to rely on his crew to make decisions.”

“Technically the money part would be the producer's job.”

“Don't act like I don't know the duties of the key filmmaking personnel. Do you know what a gaffer does? Do you?”

“He does the lighting.”

“Well, hello, Mr. Wikipedia. I guess you're just a great big fountain of knowledge. I've got three other productions waiting on me for an answer, so if you're just here to waste my time, I'm going to have to consider my other options.”

“Okay,” Justin said.

“You're acting like you don't believe me.”

“No, I believe you.”

Uncle Clyde stroked his beard, shaking out some loose crumbs and an olive. He took another sip of coffee. “Ugh. This tastes like unwashed dirt. All right, I'll keep myself available for your cute little movie. I wouldn't do this for just anyone, but I like my nephew. Compared to my other nephew, he's pretty great. My other nephew, though…jeez. Bread changes color to help you know when it's not okay to eat, but does he understand that? Nope. Kid eats moldy bread. Does the taste clue him in that he's not doing the right thing? Nope. I once sat there and watched him eat seven slices of moldy bread. And he's an honor student. I think he needs more attention from his parents. He's sure not gonna get it from me.”

“Uh, thanks?” said Justin.

“I once saw Kevin eat a bunch of moldy bread too,” said Bobby. “It was pretty cool.”

• • •

“Your uncle is weird,” said Justin.

“Yeah,” Bobby said with great pride.

“I won't lie and say that I don't have reservations about blowing almost our entire budget on zombie effects,” said Gabe. “But the zombies are what it's all about, right? If we can talk him down to forty-five hundred so that we've got money left to rent prop weapons, then we should reluctantly do it.”

“He won't let us down,” said Bobby.

• • •

As they reviewed their latest rewrite of the script, Justin, Gabe, and Bobby were all thrilled to discover that it sucked even less.

They were not yet at the point where they were comfortable sharing their work with other human beings, but it was close enough that they could start putting together a tentative shooting schedule.

Midway through trying to figure out the schedule, which was about ten thousand times more complicated than they'd anticipated, they all despised one another, but they were friends again by the time they were done.

• • •

“My mom is letting me cut and dye my hair,” Alicia said over the phone. “So thank you. This really means a lot to me. Your movie is going to change my life.”

“You're welcome,” Justin told her.

“I'm going to do it Friday night so it's fresh.”

“Sounds great.”

“Okay, talk to you later.”

“Good-bye,” Justin said since he couldn't think of a way to artificially lengthen the conversation. That was a skill he'd try to improve in the future.

• • •

Justin had to work on Thursday, so he scowled his way through an evening of manual labor while Mr. Pamm yelled at him. They needed to write a part in the script for Noisy Guy #1. As he worked, he revised scenes in his mind, trying to make the dialogue sparkle. He tried to occasionally sneak away so that he could write down some of his most clever ideas, but that was almost impossible with Mr. Pamm's extrasensory perception for slackers. Many of his thoughts were lost forever. RIP.

When he got home, Justin's body ached, but fortunately he didn't ache too much to move a mouse around and click some buttons, so he reviewed the newest drafts that Gabe and Bobby had emailed to him.

They sucked even less than before and almost sucked enough less that they didn't suck at all.

“We're actually going to do this,” he said out loud.

“What was that?” Mom asked.

“Nothing. Just being creepy and talking to myself.”

“All right.”

Justin's palms were sweating. The screenplay wasn't perfect. It wasn't even close to perfect. Parts of it were still kind of terrible, especially the part Bobby wrote about a zombie goldfish. But with some on-the-set ingenuity and contributions by their talented cast, Justin was positive that they could turn this film into something truly spectacular.

He gave copies of the script to Alicia and Christopher, informing them that some parts were awful on purpose so that if the screenplay was leaked, they could identify which version of the script had been leaked and thus trace it to the leaker.

They were going to start production very early Saturday morning. Mr. Pamm had given him the day off…angrily. Justin would rather start on Friday night, but they'd be working sixteen-hour days Saturday and Sunday, and he didn't want to wear out his cast and crew. They probably didn't have the same level of endurance that he did.

These were going to be long days. Undoubtedly something would occasionally go wrong. He was prepared for that. His cast had no film experience, so he knew that one of the actors would mess up a line every once in a while, and he couldn't count on every single special effect working exactly as planned the first time. As good as Bobby was at holding up the boom mic, its shadow would get into the shot at some point, and Justin wouldn't lose his temper. He'd simply inform everybody that they would be doing a second take.

He hadn't quite figured out what to do about the school, but they wouldn't be using that location the first weekend, so he still had time to work it out. He was confident that the problem would be resolved in a completely satisfactory and legal manner.

Justin was ready to face any challenge. Solve any problem.

Justin Hollow was ready for anything.

• • •

“What history test?”

“I texted you a reminder last night,” said Gabe.

“Didn't we just have one?” Justin asked. “How much history is there for Mr. Dzeda to test us on?”

“Did you study at all?”

“I can't do everything. Oh well, I guess I don't get to be a famous historian now.”

“Don't be sarcastic. If we called Steven Spielberg, he'd tell you that you should've studied for the test.”

He was right. Spielberg would be polite but firm. Justin needed to maintain his focus on academics, or the only movie he'd be making would be a documentary about living in a cardboard box in an alley, scavenging half-eaten lizards for his dinner, and burning his hair to stay warm.

“You've got to take this seriously,” Gabe insisted.

“I am. I'm joking on the outside, but on the inside I'm throwing up.”

“Um, throwing up, by definition, happens on the outside.”