Extreme Zombies, page 45
The crew is working feverishly to rig everything for the climax.
The DIRECTOR lingers after the rest of the crew have gone home. At 4 a.m. he finishes checking every detail. The zombie dummies are propped up on armatures behind the tombstones, the oil-smoke pots are ready, the crosses are tilted just so. Nothing left but to call “action” at dawn. For now, he’ll catch an hour’s shuteye in his trailer.
“It won’t be long,” she said when the footsteps passed.
He shook his head sadly. “It’s been such a long, long time,” he said at last. “I’d almost given up hope. But you are the one, aren’t you? Yes. You are.”
“I’m the one,” she said. “Now listen . . . ”
He waved the stuffed heart. “I’ve been carrying this around, trying to find the right person to give it to.” He made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a shudder. “But no one would take it.”
“You didn’t need to do that,” she said. Something to recognize him by? She could not remember any mention of it on the phone. It was a good idea, of course; it would have made him easier to spot. Or was it a gift? “What is it?”
He stood and came closer, holding it out. “What does it look like? I wanted to give it away, but there were never any takers. I wonder why that is? But now you’re—”
“Yes, of course. There isn’t much time. I don’t know where to begin. You must be wondering why I brought you here.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I see a lot of people . . . ”
“So do I,” he said. “Or I did. That’s all over now.”
Somehow he had gotten across the floor and was now only inches from her. She couldn’t see his face; in the shadows he could have been anyone. She recalled a brief flash on the stairs: kind features, pained eyes, a hangdog expression. That only made her feel worse. She forced herself to go on. She could make things right. It was not too late.
Before she could speak, he braced his hands on either side of her head and leaned in to kiss her.
At first she was too dumbfounded to resist. Then she thought, Oh Christ, not at a time like this. Then she thought, What did he imagine when I called him, led him here . . . ?
My God.
“Wait,” she said, breaking and turning aside.
But he pressed her and enfolded her mouth again.
At that moment someone pushed on the other side of the door at her back, trying to gain entry. Her front teeth struck his with a grinding like fingernails on a blackboard.
“Sorry,” mumbled a voice from the hall.
She spread her hands against his chest. “No,” she said, “please, you don’t understand. That’s not what this is about.”
“What is this about, then?”
“Will you hurry up in there?” said the voice from the hall.
She was shaken, confused. But there was no time for that. The clock was ticking.
Now there was a pounding on the door.
“This way,” she said, and dragged him through the connecting door to the bedroom.
“I wish you’d make up your mind.”
“Listen,” she said, “my name’s—”
“I don’t care.”
“You sent me a story, right? I showed it to my producer. He liked it. So much that he wants it for next season. But not to buy it. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not making myself clear. It’s my fault, too. I’ll tell you about that later. But you’d better get down to WGA Manuscript Registry first thing in the morning. File whatever you’ve got—preliminary drafts, notes, anything.”
“Why should I do that?”
“I’m trying to help you! They’re going to steal your story. When Milo comes up here, I want you to tell him who you are.”
She took the pages of the original version from her purse.
“I had to warn you. Whatever he says, don’t back down. We’re in this together. Now any minute all hell’s going to break loose Regardless of anything, know that I’ll stand up for you. I want to make it up somehow. Maybe you’ll end up hating me, I don’t know. But I’ve got to try. I’m truly sorry. Believe that.”
She inhaled, exhaled, wishing her heart would slow down. In the bathroom a few feet away, someone locked the doors.
The bedroom was quiet, the lighting cool. On the nightstand the contents of a lava lamp flowed together, heated up and broke apart again into separate bodies, endlessly. Her mouth hurt; it was warm and wet. There was a sound of water running.
“What, may I ask,” the man said, “are you talking about?”
“I’m trying to tell you that I’m all for you,” she said, “no matter what.”
Impatience flared in his eyes.
“Make up your mind,” he said.
11. AT HIS TRAILER
The graveyard is spooky—he almost feels that he’s being followed. He’s about to enter the trailer when a ghoul appears. It’s the GIRL, in full ghastly makeup.
He tries to get rid of her, knowing she’s not really needed. But this time she’s coming on differently. Not whining and needful, but happy as a puppy dog and all set to please. See? She’s ready, and she’s going to be perfect. She’s even worked out a little something extra for her moment of death. It’s her own idea and she’s sure he’s going to like it. If she can just try it out on him first.
She seems to have accepted reality. She really wants more than anything else for the picture to be good, after all. The same thing he wants. It’s all that matters. She realizes that now.
“You’ve taught me a lot. More than you know. Now let me give you something back—what you really want. I want it now, too.”
12. IN THE TRAILER
She runs through her expressions as he stands in for her lover. She screams on cue. Almost perfect. She needs to try it with the shotgun. She’s brought it with her, already loaded with wax blood bullets. She’s thought of everything.
“You want it to be real, don’t you?” She presses him to take the prop gun. “We have to do it right. I want you to see how much I’m willing to give you. Let’s do it all the way. And this time you’re going to get everything you want. I promise.”
He’s reluctant, but he plays it out. When she starts screaming, he fires the shotgun. The look in her eyes is one of peace at last, as blood explodes and she sinks down the wall to the floor. “Jesus, that was great! What a take! If we’d had a camera . . . ”
He leans down, shakes her. “Cut. That’s it. You’ve finally got it. Hey, what’s the. . . ?”
He touches the wound. It’s real. When she handed him the gun, it had a live round in the chamber. She had planned it that way.
He cleans up frantically to get rid of the evidence— no one will believe what really happened.
What about the body?
A desperate plan. He’ll replace her dummy on the set with the real thing, propping her up behind the tombstone like all the other dummies. The evidence will be blown to hell, then burned to a cinder. When the flamethrower hits her, the rubber makeup will burn like napalm. There won’t be anything left. He’ll put her into position himself. No one will notice.
“I’m doing you a favor,” she told him. “At least that’s what I’m trying to do. If you’ll let me.”
“Are you the one?” he repeated more forcefully.
”Yes. I mean no.” She evaded his grasp once again. “I mean . . . ”
“But you said you’re the one.” He waved the heart-shaped pillow.
“Not like that,” she said. “This is about something more important. Don’t you see?”
“I should have known. You’re not who I thought you were.”
“Yes!”
“Which is it?” he said, angry now.
“Just—not the way you mean it!”
He was about to leave.
“This is very important to me,” she said.
“To you,” he said. “It always gets down to that.”
“And to you! What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying? Can’t you . . . ?”
He glared down at her. He tapped the pillow into her chest. “It never changes. You’re just like all the rest.” He tapped her again more aggressively. “It’s always me, isn’t it? Isn’t it.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you mean?” he said fiercely, directly into her face.
Her scalp began to crawl. Who is this man? she thought. I’ve made another mistake, the biggest one of all.
“Wh-who are you?” she said.
“Who are you,” he said, “to ask that? Who the fuck do you think you are?”
She tried to dodge him as he lunged for her, a lifetime of disappointment igniting his rage. He grabbed her and flung her against the hall door before she could get it open, pushed himself in front of her. The pillow thrust up under her chin, forcing her head back. It wasn’t soft, after all. It had something dangerously hard inside it. In fact it wasn’t a pillow. It was an elaborate, padded Valentine gift box.
He raised it high. She saw the red heart poised to strike her, the satin covering worn, tattered, stained but still a deep crimson, like his face and the roadmap of years there, like the blood that ran from his cut lip. She didn’t know who he was. He could have been anyone.
He was a madman.
Suddenly the door rattled. It rammed into her spine as someone tried to open it. She was driven into his arms.
“Huh? Oh. Sorry.” Milo’s voice through the crack, and behind him the sound of hysterical, theatrical weeping. “Come on. There’s another phone down the hall.”
“Wait!”
“Have fun . . . ”
The man in front of her hesitated. In that moment she made her move and sprang for the doorknob. But he was on her. She twisted around and snatched the heart, heavier than she had imagined, and hit him with it. When he would not let go of her she swung it at his face again and again. She heard a dull breaking sound as she struck bone. The box broke and lumps of candy went flying, shriveled and hard as rocks. He dropped to his knees, a mystified look in his eyes, and toppled forward.
Then other people were in the room, Rip leading the way. Cheerful whispers turned to gasps.
“What have you done?” someone said.
“I didn’t do anything! He—he was—”
“He was what? What did he do?” A tall woman moved to comfort her. She smoothed Chris’s hair, saw the bruised lips, the torn buttons, the wild look. “It’s all right now. He tried to assault you, didn’t he? I’ve seen his kind before. The bastard.”
“Who is that guy?” someone else said. “Who invited him?”
“I’ll call a doctor.”
“It was self-defense,” said the woman, holding Chris too tightly. “Don’t say a word to anybody. Do you understand? You had no choice. Who knows what he would have done to you if he’d had the chance? Something much worse. You know that, don’t you?”
Chris had never seen her before. Now she could not remember any of the other faces, either.
She tore free and rushed to the stairs.
Below, in the empty living room, the music had stopped. One solitary young man remained. He stood up self-consciously.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but do you know a Christine Cross?”
She stared at him dumbly. She could not think of an answer.
“Well, if you see her, would you mind telling her that I’ve been looking for her? My name’s Roger. I’m supposed to meet her here. Hey, is something wrong? Is that blood on your . . . ?”
Without breaking stride she ran outside, the taste of blood, her own or someone else’s, drying to salt on her lips.
13. DAWN
All is ready: backlight through fog, tilted crosses. Zombies propped up like shooting gallery targets.
The DIRECTOR tells MARTY to use extra-strength charges. He doesn’t want to see anything left when the smoke clears, not even the animal blood and guts inside the dummies.
“ACTION!”
The boyfriend, the NIGHT MANAGER, runs like a soldier through a minefield. Dummies are shotgunned one by one, then blown up, then torched. All except the GIRL. She will be the last shot. Where is she for her close-up?
We don’t need her, says the DIRECTOR, winking at MARTY. She’s not on the set? Who knows where she is—probably on the bus back to Indiana. Who cares? This is my picture and I say we don’t need her. We’ve got a perfect dummy. Just blow it up—now.
“ACTION!”
The NIGHT MANAGER advances on her, shotgun ready. But before he can fire, her head lolls to one side.
“Wait,” calls the SCRIPT GIRL. “Her head’s out of position—it won’t match.”
“I’ll fix it,” says MARTY.
“No!” The DIRECTOR can’t let anyone handle her—they’ll discover it’s a real body. He’ll have to do it himself.
“Watch your step!” yells MARTY.
The DIRECTOR threads a careful path to her tombstone. Tries not to look at her face as he adjusts the head. There. He stands back.
Ready?
“Hold it,” says MARTY. Now there’s blood running out of her mouth. The shot still won’t match.
“Just get it, will you?” says the DIRECTOR. He grabs the shotgun and prepares to fire the blood pellet into her himself. But before he can pull the trigger, her head lolls again as she starts to come to. She’s not dead!
He pumps a shot into her, another. But the bullets aren’t real this time. Her eyes open and look at him, seeing him there in her moment of triumph. She smiles.
“Die,” he mutters, “die . . . !”
She raises her arms, zombie-like, as if to embrace him.
He lunges at her, his hands going for her throat to make it right for the last time. Her arms go around him, pressing him to her in a final paroxysm—and the wires attached to her body make contact, setting off the charge. They are blown up together, married in blood for all eternity.
It’s the last shot, the best effect of the film.
END
Dennis Etchison’s stories have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies since 1961. He is a three-time winner of both the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award. His collections include The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss, The Death Artist, Talking in the Dark, Fine Cuts, and Got To Kill Them All & Other Stories. He is also a novelist (Darkside, Shadowman, California Gothic, Double Edge), editor (Cutting Edge, Masters of Darkness I-III, MetaHorror, The Museum of Horrors, Gathering the Bones) and scriptwriter. In 2002 he began adapting the original The Twilight Zone television series for radio, followed by further scripts for The New Twilight Zone Radio Dramas and Fangoria Magazine’s Dread Time Stories. Forthcoming are a career retrospective from Centipede Press’s Masters of the Weird Tale series and a volume of new short stories from Bad Moon Books.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to all the editors who originally commissioned, solicited, and/or accepted these stories and first published them.
“Charlie’s Hole” by Jesse Bullington © 2002. First Publication: The Book of More Flesh, ed. James Lowder (Elder Signs Press).
“At First Only Darkness” by Nancy A. Collins © 2011. First Publication: Zombiesque, eds. Stephen L. Antzak, James C. Bassett & Martin H. Greenberg (DAW).
“The Blood Kiss” by Dennis Etchison © 1988. First Publication: The Blood Kiss (Scream/Press).
“We Will Rebuild” by Cody Goodfellow © 2009. First Publication: Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, ed. John Skipp (Black Dog and Levinthal).
“Dead Giveaway” by Brian Hodge © 1989. First Publication: Book of the Dead, eds. John Skipp & Craig Spector (Bantam/Mark V. Ziesing).
“Zombies for Jesus” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman © 1989. First Publication: Strained Relations, ed. Alan Bard Newcomer (Hypatia Press).
“An Unfortunate Incident at the Slaughterhouse” by Harper Hull © 2010. First Publication: Sick Things: An Anthology of Extreme Creature Horror, ed. Cheryl Mullenax (Comet Press).
“Captive Hearts” by Brian Keene © 2009. First Publication: Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance, ed. Lori Perkins (Ravenous Romance).
“Going Down” by Nancy Kilpatrick © 2006. First Publication: Mondo Zombie, ed. John Mason Skipp (Cemetery Dance).
“On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks” by Joe R. Lansdale © 1989. First Publication: Book of the Dead, eds. John Skipp & Craig Spector (Bantam/Mark V. Ziesing).
“Susan” by Robin D. Laws © 2001. First Publication: The Book of All Flesh, ed. James Lowder (Eden Studios).
“Makak” by Edward Lee © 2010 by Lee Seymour. First Publication: Brain Cheese Cafe (Deadite Press).
“The Traumatized Generation” by Murray Leeder © 2003. First Publication: Open Space: New Canadian Fantastic Fiction, ed. Claude Lalumière (Red Deer Press).
“Meathouse Man” by George R. R. Martin © 1976. First Publication: Orbit 18, ed. Damon Knight, (Harper and Roe).
“Abed” by Elizabeth Massie © 1992. First Publication: Still Dead, eds. John Skipp & Craig Spector (Mark V. Ziesing and Bantam Books/Falcon).
“Home” by David Moody © 2005. First Publication: The Undead, eds. Elijah Hall & D.L. Snell (Permuted Press).
“For the Good of All” by Yvonne Navarro © 2009. First Publication: The Dead That Walk: Flesh-Eating Stories, ed. Stephen Jones. (Ulysses Press).
“In Beauty, Like the Night” by Norman Partridge © 1992. First Publication: Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales (Roadkill Press).
“Romero’s Children” by David A. Riley. © 2010. First Publication: The Seventh Black Book of Horror, ed. Charles Black (Mortbury Press).
“Viva Las Vegas” by Thomas Roche © 1997. First Publication: Funeral Party #2, ed. Shade Rupe.
“Jerry’s Kids Meet Wormboy” by David J. Schow © 1989. First Publication: Book of the Dead, eds. John Skipp & Craig Spector (Bantam/Mark V. Ziesing).
“Aftertaste” by John Shirley © 1996. First Publication: Bones #1, Fall 1996.
“Tomorrow’s Precious Lambs” by Monica Valentinelli © 2011. First Publication: The Zombie Feed, Vol. 1, ed. Jason Sizemore (Apex).
“Provider” by Tim Waggoner © 2003 Tim Waggoner. First Publication: Book of Final Flesh, ed. James Lowder (Eden Studios).
