What's Today, My Fine Fellow?

Probably the horror film that made the biggest impact on teenaged me was DAWN OF THE DEAD.  The concept fascinated me, not just of the dead coming back to life, but the end of civilization with all the trappings of civilization still being there.  Some of the first stories I wrote as a teen were of me and my friends hunkered down at our school or in a shuttered spook alley (sorry) or the barn near Steven's house, while the zombies took over the world outside.

I have written a couple since then, such as one set when I worked in a call center, one set in a Toys R Us, and this one, "Christmas Day of the Dead," set in a sporting goods store.*  It's another of those tales where the POV character is a girl, which pretty much guarantees I'll never narrate it for my podcast, but I did sit down and record it for inclusion in my first Christmas story collection.

If you're inexplicably interested, check it out HERE.

*It's the one with the name that best describes the drivers of Cybertrucks, though I never spell it out in the story.

May Sweeps - Day 472

Big Anklevich got back to me with the cover for "Two Month Retreat."  Behold:

I only wish the darn story were as good as that cover is.

But ah well.  Live and learn.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 1838

My cousin and I went to see ARMY OF THE DEAD tonight, the epic zombie movie by Zack Snyder.  I had wanted to see it ever since hearing the fun premise (Las Vegas is overrun by zombies, and the government plans to nuke the city, but a team goes in right before to raid the vault of one of the casinos of its two hundred million dollar cargo), but I felt weird asking my cousin to go see it with me, since he had really wanted me to go see MORTAL KOMBAT 2021, and I outright refused, having seen MORTAL KOMBAT 1995 in the theaters and never quite being able to get the stench out of my clothes.

But he seemed willing to go, and the local theaters have started to do the discount five dollar Tuesday shows again, so I drove over there and grabbed us tickets.  Half of the theater had been set up for vaccinations, so I had to buy the tickets from the concession stand.*  The girl who rang me up wore a mask, so I can only imagine what she looked like, but her name was Ashton.  I've never known a female Ashton before, but the names of young people tend to be both vexing and fascinating to me.

You might be asking, "Rish, why would you pay to see a movie when it will be available for free on television in three days?"  To which, I say, "Well, I don't have HBO Max, so I wouldn't be able t--"  To which, you say, "No, Rish, it's on Netflix.  You pay twenty-three bucks a month to have Netflix, despite never watching it."**  To which, I guess I have to say, "Really?  It's not on HBO Max?  Huh."  

But the thing is, I love going to the movies.***  I love the history of it, the darkness of the theater, the experience of being whisked away on a journey of laughter, tears, and sticky floors.  There's a laundry list of movies I love that I never saw again after the theater because that is the way I'd prefer to see them (and dang, during the pandemic movie season last summer, I should've gone to more re-releases, instead of the four that I did see (RAIDERS, EMPIRE, JURASSIC PARK, and SUPERMAN).  Going to the movies is one of my favorite things, and I'm happy to pay money to support the local theaters and ticket-takers that were born in 2004.  

The movie itself was very long (I guess you could call it "epic," if you wanted to praise it, but two and a half hours is more than we've ever gotten for a zombie flick), and to call it excessive would be to call THE WIZARD OF OZ colorful, or SE7EN a little dark.  It was fun, though, and super violent and mean-spirited, and had a lot of fun ideas I'd not seen in a zombie movie before (though granted, I haven't seen one since probably WORLD WAR Z, which was even more expensive than this one, though not nearly as enjoyable).  

The film it most reminded me was ALIENS, and after two or three scenes that directly paralleled that classic, it made me wonder what James Cameron would do with a zombie movie.  Besides rack up an unprecedented budget, that is.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In May: 2011

As far as writing goes, I got nearly none done.  I took the work I'd done on Sunday and tried to drop it into the main document, but somehow, I'd written one of the same scenes either on Thursday or Friday or so, and had to find a way to make it fit.  

One of the things they teach you in screenwriting (not quite up there with Show, Don't Tell and Get Into The Scene As Late As You Can) is to Kill Your Darlings.  That means to not be precious with the stuff you write (the scenes, the dialogue, the descriptions, the characters), because to make a good screenplay, you'll have to change and/or cut out quite a lot, even stuff you've grown to love.

I never learned that lesson.  At least, not very well.  It would take six months or longer before I'd be able to do an edit on my scripts with anything like objectivity.  

And I apply that lesson to my prose writing not at all.  Screenplays, by their very nature, require honing and trimming, sometimes endless rewrites, and it was always hard to lose stuff I had worked very hard on, because you feel like you're throwing it out.  In my stories, I end up writing scenes over again when I lose them ALL THE TIME, and occasionally, I'll find the previous scene, and I always try to keep everything from both of them.  In a laundry list of bad character traits I carry around with me, it's annoying, sure, but not one I'm particularly interested in eliminating.

I was talking to my friend Jeff about comic books last night (he called me at nearly two am, because of the time difference), and he was complaining about how Stan Lee wrote comics, packing every single page with two to five pages' worth of dialogue and action.  And today's comics now do the opposite.  I have read modern books where the same story would have been told, in the Silver Age of Comics, in three or four pages.  The sweet spot should be somewhere in the middle, I realize, and my stories probably should be too.

I always complain, when I write a story for a contest, that I have to cut too much out to make it fit into the 1000 or 500 word limit, but I tend not to bat an eye when a two thousand word idea ends up as a four or five thousand word story.

Words Today: 334
Words In May: 10,670

*Oh, this was a weird little thing I noticed.  There was a big sign in front of the two bored medics waiting for people to get their shots that read "VACCINATIONS ARE BY APPOINTMENT ONLY."  But underneath that, in Spanish, it read, "No appointments necessary."  I found that really strange, and I wonder if they were just trying to be accommodating to Hispanics, since they are less likely to come in to get the shot.  That's just a guess, though--I don't know why they'd turn anybody away at this point, since they're surely going to have to throw out vaccine doses that go unused, now that the demand is far outweighed by the supply.

**This is actually true.  I did start watching that ENOLA HOLMES movie about two months ago, but turned it off about halfway through because I was enjoying the accents a little too much, if you know what I mean.  And I never turned it on again.  Every two weeks Netflix sends me an email that says, and I quote, "Don't forget to finish Enola Holmes!"

***Years ago, my friend Kristina told me that I would never, ever get laid if I spent my weekends going to movies, and Bossk bless her, she was a true precog.  

May Sweeps - Day 457

Well, moment of truth, kids.  It's the third of May, getting kind of late, and I haven't written any words today.  BUT, it's the third of May and I haven't recorded my Patreon address for the month yet.  Kind of leaning toward doing that instead.

Ah well.  I ran, did push-ups, and sit-ups today.  And worked a pretty full day too.  I finished editing "Dying Is Easy" today as well.  Not gonna lie, I think it would be okay to record my address and call that good.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In May: 311

I still ended up writing a bit.  During my run, I had two ideas for the same scene in the story--one in which Layla talks to her mother about how her sister isn't the same (and is not believed), and one where she talks to another student whose boyfriend went on the same trip as her now-changed sister to see if he's changed too (and is not believed).

I chose the latter, and then thought, "Well, it's only natural that later in the story, the student--who I named Maysie--approaches Layla and tells her the boyfriend has indeed changed."  So I wrote that scene as well, despite them being a chapter or two separate.  To my surprise, it was plenty of words*, especially since I absolutely wasn't going to write anything tonight.

Push-ups Today: 69
Push-ups In May: 284

And here's one last thing: I tend to stay up EXTREMELY late at least one day a week (or ten days), usually recording or editing or falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole.  And that's fine--with how much exercise I do, I find myself less tired after fewer hours of sleep--except that I end up paying for it a day or two later.  If I stay up till four on a Tuesday night, on Wednesday or Thursday, I become a bit of a zombie** and end up taking a nap whether I want to or not.

And then, when it came time to put an image on today's post, I did a Google Search for "Romero Zombie," and was surprised to see mostly gross Photoshopped images of George A. Romero as a lumbering zombie, rather than one of the undead from his movies.

Lower down, there they were, but which one would I pick?  Maybe the little girl from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (that's on the posters), maybe Bub from DAY OF THE DEAD, maybe the Cemetery Zombie from NOTLD that prompts Johnny to say, "They're coming for you . . . look!  There's one of them now!"  Or maybe the zombie nurse from DAWN OF THE DEAD, who always struck me as memorable.

There are a bunch of zombies in that movie, but there are two or three that show up multiple times, and get close-ups for some reason (including both Flyboy and Roger, and the super fat one with no shirt on that does a header into one of the mall's fountains toward the end).  But as soon as I saw the Zombie Hari Krishna, that's the one I chose.  It's just so weird that the filmmakers picked one of them to be among the living dead, and it amused me and my friends, who didn't know what a Hari Krishna even was, every time we watched it.

Words Today: 729
Words In May: 1417

*Not a ton, no--at this point, anything over 999 qualifies as a ton.

**Romero Zombie, not one of these shitty 28 DAYS LATER/Zack Snyder marathon running ones.

December Sweeps - Day 308

Wow, this has been a hard day.

I suppose you caught my announcement/confession yesterday that I tested positive for the Coronavirus.

I didn't expect to spend the whole next day feeling sorry for myself.  

But of course, that's my character.  Nobody feels sorry for themselves better than I do, it's practically a superpower.  I ought to ask Fake Sean to do a parody of Carly Simon's James Bond theme about it.

But this was different.  I felt lonely and dirty.  I was relegated to my room, and my nephews were told not to go near me.  I wore a mask when I was outside of my room, but what is a mask to a leper?

You get that, don't you?

For the last eight or nine months, I've heard people talk about how hard it has been to self-isolate, to stay away from friends and parties and concerts and the genitals of previous-strangers.  And introverts like me thought, "Why is it such a big deal?  Just go straight home from work, and wake up to find nobody there--the rest of us do it all the time."

But I get it now, at least a little bit.

There's that girl that I've thought about to a sickening degree in 2020, and it's highly likely that I'll not see her again this year (or ever, I suppose), and that's a vivid, awful concept.

Death is a pretty vivid concept too.

Well, I might as well keep up the theme:

My favorite scene from 1978's DAWN OF THE DEAD is when Roger, infected by the bites and getting sicker and sicker is about to die.  He tells his friend Peter that, when he goes, he's going to try not to come back.  "I'm gonna try . . . not to," he says.

There's something really human in this moment, especially since Roger was the loudest, most careless of the four main characters during the rest of the film, and now, he is at his most vulnerable, and there's no hope left for him.  Or for any of us.

Actually, it's not fair to call that my favorite scene.  That movie is filled with favorite scenes.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In December: 569

This was the first Saturday in a long, long time I've not gone to the library on.  I even went last week when Jeff was in town, because I felt like I had to (and ended up never seeing him again because of my choice).  So, it was disappointing, as far as writing goes.

In fact, I keep asking myself what's the point of writing?  And blogging?  There's a reason I haven't published this yet, and we're nearly a week later.  Guess I'll go ahead and do that now.

Words Today: Now, that's strange--I don't remember what I worked on, only that I wouldn't let myself go to sleep until I got my writing done.  

Oh, yeah, now I remember.  I sat down and started another "Dead & Breakfast" story where Mason Bradley's seventh grade teacher comes to the B&B and he is tempted to warn her about the ghosts.  But I didn't know where it was going (still don't).  Still counts as writing, though.

Words Today: 853
Words In December: 3257

December Sweeps - Day 306

Time and energy enough to do my exercise (but not write, NEVER write!).

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In December: 291

Okay, okay, maybe I'll write something.  There was a guy named Cameron who used to be a big fan of the Dunesteef, and he would put on his own Broken Mirror Story Contests, first on a website he maintained, and now, at a college he's at.  He sent me a notice for another one the school is doing (open only to people associate with the college, unfortunately), and the premise for this one is:

When the smoke cleared, what was left?

I appreciated him sending me the announcement (and the prompt), and I honestly would've written something for the contest, had it been open to everybody.  But then I thought, what the hey, I have to write today anyway.  Maybe I'll try to do something with "When the smoke cleared, what was left?"

So, I sat down and started writing, not knowing where it was going, and didn't get far.  But it was far enough.

Words Today: 424
Words In December: 1085

Roger looks . . . okay

So, in just about every zombie movie ever made (and about a quarter of vampire movies), there's a moment where one of the characters gets bitten or infected . . . and decides to keep it a secret from the rest of the characters.  Every time we see this, we yell at the screen, trying to understand why somebody would do such a selfish, illogical, dangerous thing.

But I think I get it now.

You see, I was starting to feel a lot better yesterday, even going as far as doing a hundred sit-ups and a hundred and one push-ups.  But then, this morning, as soon as I woke up, I felt terrible again.  But I had to go about my day as best I could, working through it once I'd taken my temperature and seen that I didn't have a fever (one of the most tell-tale symptoms of the pandemic).

But then, I made myself some soup and took a bite . . . and tasted nothing.  It was like how you hear when you've stuffed your ears with cotton, only I'd stuffed my mouth full of it.  Loss of sense of smell and taste is the other tell-tale symptom of the pandemic.  And I grabbed the little pine tree air freshener from my car and held it right up to my nostrils to see if--

Nothing.  No smell at all.

Oh no.  

I can't have the Coronavirus.  I have so few friends or social outlets, and I wear my mask, and social distance . . . I'm too young to die!  

And my first inclination was not to tell anybody, to keep it a secret, to try and ignore these symptoms and see if I could, I dunno, get away with stuff, at least until I'm well across state lines and there's no way the mob will find me once they discover their money's gone.

Zombie movies.  Who knew?

R.I.P. George A. Romero

I went to the Beverly Center mall in 2004 with my friend Matthew after work one afternoon. We weren't going to buy anything--we had no money--but wandering around the mall was a good way to kill a couple of hours, look at girls, and talk. Up on the third floor was a movie theater--a fairly crappy one I think I only ever saw one film at in all the years I lived in Los Angeles. But eventually we went up there, and I saw a familiar face walking around.

"Is that George Romero?" I asked.

"Who?"

"George A. Romero. He's the director of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD."

"Uh, how the heck would I know?" (Matthew tended not to use profanity)

I watched the old guy a moment. The same super-thick glasses, the same tan vest, longish grey hair. Yeah, I was pretty sure it was him.

The man basically had a costume that made him recognizable.

So I went up. "Mr. Romero?"

He turned. He didn't acknowledge that that was him.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Just visiting. Seeing a movie." He had an assistant with him, standing impotently by (after all, Romero towered over a skinny-fat kid like me), jarred that someone knew who his boss was.

"I wondered if you saw the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD."

He nodded. "Sure."

"And what did you think?" I was genuinely curious. It was a pretty good film, but it was no 1978 version.

He paused, shrugged, and said, "Why would you care what I think?"

I don't know if that meant he hated it and didn't wish to say so, or had been asked that question too many times, or what. But that's my big George Romero memroy--actually running into him in a mall.

Romero is the creator of the modern zombie mythos--now a billion dollar industry. Director of CREEPSHOW, THE CRAZIES, NOTLD, DAWN, and DAY OF THE DEAD (all remade in the past decade or so?), I saw Romero speak once, on Fantasy in a series of lectures at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Hollywood, where he spoke about his career and influences.  And you know, he stayed afterward and signed autographs for everyone who wanted one.

 He'd always sign "Stay scared, George Romero."  I've got it on a couple DVDs and a poster, and saw him recently at a San Diego show where he was promoting a comic book series about, you guessed it, the living dead.

As recently as this year, I went to a comic-con panel and asked if Romero would be ever recognized, (during his lifetime or after) as the creator of the modern zombie.  The panelist said, "Fuck yeah!  He totally is!" which was exuberant, but didn't answer my question.

Well, now the man is gone, and it's hard not to make some kind of comment about that fact and his greatest creation.

There was not much media coverage of his death (at least to me)--he was seventy-seven, died of lung cancer, and it's too bad. If not for the unfortunate snafu causing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD to be declared in the public domain, he might have had some kind of recognition (and dollar signs) as the father of the ghoul/flesh-eater zombie, and I always wondered if he'd be one of those guys only appreciated after he was gone.

Maybe I'll find out now.

Here's George signing my CREEPSHOW poster.  He laughed when I told him I was too young to see it, but my mom rented it because it looked like a comic book movie.

Stay cool, George.  We'll stay scared.

Rish Outfield

Rish Performs "Night of the ZomBEES" by Kevin David Anderson

Years ago, Kevin David Anderson published a book called "Night of the Living Trekkies," and he's never let us forget it.  But now he's back, with a brand new work, entitled "Night of the ZomBEES," and yours truly narrated the audiobook.

"ZomBEES" tells the tale of a couple of James Bond-loving teenagers who live in a town that so love honeybees that they have a yearly festival dedicated to them.  But the local mad scientist creates a sort of mutated mega-bee that once loosed, turns the townpeople into mindless horde of zombies . . . dressed in homemade bee costumes.  So, Shaun, Toby, and the world's nastiest redhead must team up to survive the plague, and see if they can't figure a way to make things right.

Kevin has always been a friend to the Dunesteef, and seeing his success gives me encouragement with my own work.  Maybe it’ll do the same for you.

You can buy the audiobook RIGHT HERE at Audible, or, if you're still not convinced, you can listen to the first three chapters at Kevin's website: www.kevindavidanderson.com/ZomBEEs.htm

Zombie Tough Guy (a post-script)

So, I was doing my write-up (of yesterday's extra work) after getting home, and this happened:

For the most part, everybody in the group of zombies was very cool and easy-going.  Sure, there was some complaining about the make-up and the heat (which, when combined with the smoke machines, was worse than any mugginess I've ever experienced in this country), but the participants seemed to understand that it was a rare opportunity, and even though we were not given any instruction beyond "You ever watch 'The Walking Dead?'  Yeah, you're like that," the performances were pretty-much Romero-quality.

Oh wait, I forgot.  There was one moment that bears mentioning.  The group sitting immediately next to me was a funny, frat-boy-type quartet, talking about drugs and objectifying all the women they saw, passing the time playing Poker or Spades or Hearts or Blackjack (they'd even thought to bring Poker chips).  They made each other do push-ups and make animal noises (sometimes simultaneously).  They mocked each other pretty relentlessly, calling each other "faggot" and "tree-monkey" and "pussy" and "mongoloid" and the like, the harmless fun males partake of when they've got too much testosterone and nowhere to go.

When one of the guys called the dude next to me "dickless," he took it in stride, saying "That's not what your mother found out last night," and it was the next guy's turn to take a swipe.  

But he didn't.  He froze, his nostrils doing that thing the T-Rex in Jurassic Park did.  Apparently, a line had been crossed.  He said, "You don't know nothin' about my mama," in a tight whisper, staring daggers at my neighbor.  The offender shrugged and said, "Alright," then meant to go back to his game.  But the offendee's friend shook his head, and the look in this guy's eyes was nothing short of murderous.  "You say you're sorry," he muttered.  "What?"  "Say you're sorry about what you said."  The guy next to me suggested, "Let's just let it go."  

And the friend stood up and went around the table, facing him.  "You say you're sorry right now."  Now, I know that they say "boys will be boys," and pissing contests exist, and a bunch of stereotypes are always flying around, but this was not cool.  Everybody within range picked up on what was going on, even those who hadn't been paying attention before, and any and all camaraderie and easy-goingness (if that's a word) had fled the room.

To the guy next to me's further credit, he said, "It was just a joke.  Forget it."  But dude if the defender of a full-grown man wasn't out for blood now.  "I'll give you one more chance to say you're sorry," he growled, like something out of a really bad Godfather knock-off.  He looked like an enraged bull with two swords already in its back . . . unless that sounds racist.  In which case, he looked like an enraged convict with a shiv in a prison movie who wears a do-rag and sports a wide array of colorful gangland tattoos.*

I don't know if I mentioned that these guys were friends, had partied together the night before, and had all driven to the set together that morning.**  Finally, the guy next to me, who was half the size of the bull/convict, put his hands up and said, "Yeah, I'm sorry.  It was a bad joke."  The two who'd been upset (they were cousins), left the set because they needed a smoke, and didn't come back for a long while.

There's a full moon out tonight.  Maybe he was bitten by an asshole in the woods years ago, and now, every time the moon is full and bright . . .

And here's the thing: as scary as that was, I don't know if I would've apologized either, if I'd been the guy next to me.  The reaction these two--sorry, I've gotta say it--douchebags had was so out of proportion with the wrong they'd been dealt, and the fact that, had there been some kind of extenuating detail we didn't know about (such as his mother being dead, or jail for a crime she was framed for by The Man, or a simple crackwhore, or a saintly sweet woman who ne'er did nobody no wrong) that would have explained his macho posturing and near-homicidal demeanor, it would have been perfectly alright to explain it, instead of just demanding the apology because he was the Alpha Male.  It was so ugly, and so unwarranted, I too might have stood my ground, if only to say, "You may be stronger than me, but what you're doing right now is one of the weakest things I've seen."

Of course, those would've probably been my last words, and in the moment, I may well have caved, but considering the good-natured ribbing and over-the-line name-calling that had been going on all weekend long, it struck me as the complete opposite of being a tough, admirable example for males to follow.

Now, I had a cousin who was a bit like that growing up, and sometimes I think I'd like to hit him with a brick, just to see what color his blood is, but he never frightened me the way this psycho did.  If he had, well . . .

Let's change the subject.

Dang, talking about this has bummed me out.  I think I might delete all this, or at least put it in its own post, because it ruins the fun of playing a zombie in a movie. 

At least a little.

Rish Outfield

*And if I still sound racist, how 'bout if I suggest that I saw that same look in Kirk Cameron's eyes one time when an interviewer suggested the earth was more than six thousand years old?

**Afterward, the guy sitting next to me said that the only reason he backed down was because they were his ride home, but if he had driven them there as he had the day before, he'd have just let them find their own transportation.  And I gotta wonder what that drive home was like, though it's more than likely that both cousins never brought it up again and acted as though nothing ever happened.

All You Zombie

One of my aspirations (dreams, really) when I was a film and TV extra was to be a zombie in full makeup.  Another was being in a hot tub with Alyssa Milano.  Despite working on "Charmed," neither of those ever came to pass.

So, I jumped at the chance to be a zombie in a low-budget flick shot locally.  It was scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, then they bumped it to Thursday and Friday, and finally, Saturday and Sunday.  Guess it says something about my social calendar that there was minimal juggling necessary to accommodate their production schedule.

The shoot was on an indoor soundstage (a converted warehouse in the industrial area of the city an hour's drive away), but made to look like slums and back alleys after the shit has hit the you-know-what.  I was really impressed with the sets, and the detail of the playbills and overflowing dumpsters, the downed lightpoles and trashed cars, and the layer of filth on practically everything (but not REAL filth, which makes all the difference in the world.  I remember shooting in downtown L.A. subbing for New York, and the strewn garbage and urine puddles were just as genuine as if they'd been produced on the east coast).

Basically, all our scenes were either approaching the main cast, attacking soldiers, or being killed by soldiers (though there were a couple of scenes where we were just standing around, crossing, or lying on the ground, having already been killed).  The 1st A.D. did most of the directing of the actors (and his words had to be translated when addressing the Russians), while the real director seldom left his chair behind the monitors.  Hey, not every director can be Sam Raimi, kids.

I didn't get a head count, exactly, but it looked like about twenty-five to thirty zombies were on the shoot (with the fog machines in overdrive, it sometimes seemed like a lot more, but sitting around eating or playing cards, it seemed like way fewer).  I had gone out and bought a new ensemble for the project, because my friend and I are always talking about doing a zombie walk in August (instead of just missing it like we do every year), and I could wear these clothes for that.  I don't know anymore, though, since the clothes are so filthy and matted with fake blood that it would be a crime not to burn them.

Most of the outfits the zombies wore were provided by wardrobe, and for some reason, there was a distinctly Seventies vibe to the clothes.  Honestly, I always think of Dawn of the Dead whenever I think of zombie movies, but it would surprise me if anybody else does (still, the two movies everyone kept referring to yesterday were Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead--so you could do worse). 

Oh, I'm writing this early in the morning of the second day. Yesterday, I was so blooded up that everything I touched became stained or marked, and it was hard to even read, let alone let my hands pass over a notebook again and again. I wanted to document this like I used to--before I found out that somebody somewhere didn't like it--because the background work was something pretty unique I did/do, and honestly, some of those film shoots aren't even memories anymore.

The wardrobe department did what they called "distressing" of my outfit, which was white shirt and tie, dress slacks, and shoes, and tore them up in practically no time, then patting them with phony dirt and grime, grease, and copious amounts of fake blood.  And that, kids, was the worst part of the whole experience.  That red liquid--made up of corn syrup and food coloring, as you Scream fans know--gets into your clothes, into your skin, hair, and mouth, and makes you feel unclean and sticky.*

Then it was time for the makeup department to do essentially the same thing to my face.  The makeup chair wasn't unpleasant, and both days I was the first one in.  My makeup girl was attractive and smelled nice, and she started with a grey cream all over my face and hands, then used a red/purple for my eyes and lips.  She put on a prosthetic the first day of a tear/scar in my forehead, but the next day, she just used thickening face blood to create a tear-like effect (and that's preferred, since I had to have a makeup guy remove the prosthetic at the end of the first day.

First sitting down, I told her of my exuberance to do this project, mentioning that I would've done it for free.  She wilted a little bit and said, "They're paying you?"  Apparently, she was doing zombie makeup for college credit and the value of the experience. 

By the end of that first day, "I would've done this for free" was no longer true.  I was really glad they were paying me.  Especially when my alarm went off before six on the second morning.

Even so, I remember the time I was paid to be Lucky the Leprechaun with that oddly-fitting, hot suit and that giant, hot head.  That was way less comfortable than being a zombie.  And it's nice to have highs and lows to measure things against.

Somebody just asked me what I was writing here, and it made me self-conscious.  I remember on the Dreamgirls set, there was a woman who was super convinced that I was writing about her.  She said, again and again, that I couldn't put her in a book or mention her in my report to the mothership.  The only reason I even remember interacting with her instead of staring at Beyonce's bosoms was because of the irrational paranoia of that strange woman--and again, here I am writing about it.

Man, it's so weird what you remember from these experiences.  For example, I remember a bunch of us extras passing around a flask on a basketball game set, but not what it was for, and I remember this dude's insanely-lame Sci-Fi costume on that Leonard Nimoy commercial, but not what I wore or what the commercial was even for (Alleve . . . it just came to me).  Entire series I worked on that I no longer remember, but I can still see Heather Locklear's legs on the one day I was on the "Spin City" set.

I don't know what to write about here, because I'm too close to it.  I think I'll recall what it was like to have all that blood on me, and maybe the gunfire, but who knows?  I might remember the bald guy who played a zombie, but wouldn't let them put blood on him and insisted on wearing his glasses (he really stood out).  Or the woman who stood about four-two and they covered her face in blood, so she looked like a child every time the camera was on her.  Or kicking a dude in the hat.  Or the Russian girl in the pink shorts.

Oh, the first shots I worked on were done with a camera, like a little pocket Nikon or Canon.  I kept waiting for the real camera to come in, and when it didn't, I wondered what kind of quarter-assed production this was.  But it turned out that was the stunt coordinator ordering us around, recording footage for the director to look at, since we ended up doing it again with more zombies, smoke, and live ammo.

Wait, what do you call blanks?  Are they live ammo?

In L.A., because the unions look out for the extras--even the non-union ones--there are all sorts of "bumps" (or bonuses), for any unusual work aspect.  So, I'd have gotten a makeup bump, a smoke bump, a wardrobe change bump (though I never ended up switching to another character), a hair bump, and a stunt bump--maybe even a blood bump.  Here, I have only my self-inflicted bumps or my unlovely lady lumps. 

Usually, an extra sits in holding (the relaxation area off the set, designated for us "background artists") most of the day--sometimes the WHOLE day--but there wasn't a heck of a lot of that with this shoot.  I read my Harry Turtledove book (my first), but only thirty pages or so.  The zombies beside me played a few hands of Poker (the losers had to do pushups), but kept having to abandon their games to go back to the set.  A couple zombies simply splayed out on the floor and went to sleep, but the one time I tried that, I kept touching my tie or my face, getting my hands all bloody (and when I had to stand up, my back was stuck to the floor).  Oh, and holding was just a couple of tables in the same stage, so we heard every line delivery and every gunshot.



I had a surreal conversation with an also-undead woman standing around waiting to see if they'd use us or not where she wondered why, if the only way to kill a zombie was to destroy its brain, they always moaned "Braaains" and wanted to eat brains.  And if you ate somebody's brain, why would they become a zombie?

Sometimes I really hate Return of the Living Dead.

Another first for me was being close to guns being fired.  The soldiers killing the zombies had pistols, automatic weapons, and in one case, a shotgun.  Because the latter was so deafening, all of us were given earplugs, which had to be painted by the makeup department to either match our skin, or look like bloody wounds.  Unfortunately, once those earplugs were in, we could no longer hear our cues, or the shouts of the assistant directors and P.A.s.  Everything became muffled except for my own breathing and internal sounds, which became amplified, kind of like when you dunk your head in a bathtub when you're a child (or in my case, a very fat adult).  And I have to admit that, in the lead-up to the very first firefights, I was getting nervous, or at least anxious enough to hear my own heartbeat.  Partly this was due to the adrenaline of the scene, but partly because there were many things to keep straight (the order of my death, for one, and falling onto the ground in a safe, yet still realistic way, for two), not to mention the fear of screwing up the take, when resetting would take an hour.

The stunt zombies died way harder than we did, including one who fell from a scaffold onto the roof of a car . . . twice.  They got hit with squibs and bloodpacks and fake machetes and a real briefcase, and impressed me with their willingness to not only do the stunts again, but to get killed in a new way an hour later as a different character (there were only three or four of them).

The blood spraying out the squibs was hot, as I guess real blood would be.  In one scene, I was pretty sprayed with it, and that meant there was all the more red on my face and costume for the rest of the shoot.  I didn't really understand how they'd reset if one of the squibs didn't work (which happened once) or the shot wasn't right (which happened more than once), since the detonation seemed to blow a hole through the stuntman's clothing.  Did they clean it off and paste over it somehow, or have to provide a whole new outfit?

Anyhow, the shoot went really long, especially on the second day, when we showed up earlier and stayed later than on the first day (the actors were going back home the next morning, so we had to get the work done that day, even if it meant shooting longer than anticipated).  Even so, it was a good experience, and writing it up has been more of an ordeal than getting the makeup off was. 

Sure, the 1st A.D. seemed a bit of a screamer, but the crew was pretty great. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing a lot them again in the future (especially the cute ones). And the extras were all pretty cool to work with, and seemed pretty dedicated (although a couple of them were doing it for the first time, and said they'd not ever be doing it again).

The film has gone without a name, mostly because I am now a coward when it comes to my blog, but also because there is virtually no chance it'll be released in this country (and literally no chance it'll get a theatrical release here).  When I went to Walmart afterward to buy wet-wipes to clean my hands and arms, the cashier asked me what the movie was and when I told her, she seemed disappointed for some reason.**

Like I said, it was a long shoot, and were I in Los Angeles, in a union production, wow, the money I would have made for what we went through.  At the same time, the unions in L.A. would've prevented common extras from participating in what I did today and yesterday.  About a decade ago, I asked stunt coordinator Peter Diamond how many times he thought he died in the Star Wars films.  More times than he could count he perished, playing aliens and stormtroopers and Rebels and Imperials getting shot and blown up and dropped and lightsabered.

Well, I don't know if any of it would be in the finished product, but I died again and again these past two days, and not only in multiple takes of the same death.  In all the time I was an extra in Hollywood, I never got to be killed.  I never had blood spatter me from others being killed, or had candy glass rain down on me from stuntman deaths.  So that was cool.

You know, it may be that people in California are just spoiled.  I suffered through a couple of unpleasant shoots, one or two even more uncomfortable than this one (the only time I've caught pneumonia as an adult was on the beach in Santa Monica, pretending it wasn't cold and windy until the wee hours of the night), but people would have pitched a fit about being forced to lay on the ground while soldiers run back and forth, or breathe in surely-poisonous fog banks while being covered with sticky, skin-staining (and Harry Turtledove book-staining) fake blood. 

Because when you work in the circus, you don't ooh and ahh when you see elephants.

And if I have complained, more so than I should have, I apologize.  I was lucky to be able to work on this project and realize one of my dreams, and with overtime pay, I can probably see Prometheus next weekend, instead of just rolling my eyes at those that do see it.

And hey, now I have an outfit for that zombie walk I've been planning to go to in August.  Probably the grey makeup on my arms and in my ears will be faded by then.

Rish "Night of the Flesh-Eaters" Outfield

*Then, taking it off at the end of the night, you find it got in your chest and leg hair, and taint.  As pleasant as it sounds.

**That reminds me of something Kevin Pollack said once.  He said people will always come up to him when he's shooting on the street and ask him what the movie is.  When he'd tell them the title, they'd always seem unimpressed that they didn't recognize the title of a movie that hadn't come out yet, often saying, "Never heard of it," so now, whenever somebody asks him what movie he's making, he always says, "The Godfather."  It's a funny story, and I can totally see some guy responding, "Hey, that's a great movie!" and walking away impressed.

Z Day Report (13 June 2007)

Boy, today was strange. I guess you remember, right? I mean, everybody will have their June 13th stories (I wonder what they'll call this day in the history books), and ask, "Where were you? Who did you lose? How close did you come?" But hey, this is my blog, so I'll tell you about my day. I hope this doesn't get too out of hand.

Where do I begin?

I guess it really started on the way to work this morning. I was driving along, a little bit late as usual, and noticed a homeless guy walking on the side of the road. He looked pretty out of it too and I really only looked at him as long as I did because there's not so many homeless guys around here. Odd.

My job is fairly new and is north a couple of miles in a squat, offensive-looking two story building at the base of the hills by the cemetery. I work at ChotusLink, which is the name of a bunch of buildings in that area, each one making products or selling services. Basically I work in the AT&T phone center, answering incoming calls about products, sales, and new equipment rebates. It's not my favorite job . . . in fact, I knew from the first week in that department that it wasn't going to be for me. But I need money, and have stuck with it, hoping somebody somewhere will offer me a better job and take me away from all this.

I got into work and sat at the first free computer pod on the far row, logging onto my phone as quickly as I could. They check to see what time we come in, so I'll often log on, then boot up my computer, take my lunch in to the fridge, and sit down a few minutes later to start taking calls. Depending on my mood, that can take me up to fifteen minutes. Eventually one of the supervisors will find out about it, but it hasn't happened yet.

I looked at the queue and saw we weren't red-lining (which is what we call it when there are more than seven calls waiting for service), and answered the first call that came through.

I began my oft-repeated spiel. "Thanks for calling the AT&T high speed internet rebate center, my name is Eric, can I get your DSL telephone number please?"

To be frank--and there's no point in being anything but--it was a terrible job, listening to people complain over the phone, or wondering why they hadn't received their rebate yet, or worse yet, listening to them explode when I told them they'd missed the expiration date and they no longer qualified for a rebate. I'd been thinking about quitting since I'd transferred over to this department from data entry, but I'd been planning on starting up a pretty serious drug habit when I turned thirty-five, so I figured I ought to start saving now.

The department micro-managed everything we did, from length of our phone calls to what we wore on Fridays to the time we were gone on breaks to whether we offered customers the chance to take a brief survey on how their needs were served by our telephone representative.

A few minutes later, a blond almost-surfer dude named Rick (or was it Dick?) came in, talking loudly into his cellphone. I hadn't made any real friends at this job, but Mick (?) was at the bottom of my list.

Just my luck, he sat down in the pod across from me. That meant I'd be hearing his cheery "I'm yer bud!" voice for the next seven hours. The guy next to him said, "So, what happened, Nick?" Nick (whoops) began jabbering to the people around him how he just paid off his truck and then nearly hit into a skinny old woman walking in the middle of the street, "like some kind of tard."

He'd probably scared some rest home escapee half out of her mind and he had had the temerity to roll down his window and yell at her. "The lady didn't even bat an eye, just kept walking, wobbling a little like she was drunk," I could hear him saying. I glanced down at my phone, sure I had taken it off Available, but no, there just weren't any calls coming in.

That continued for the next couple of hours and I mostly read through my "Princess Bride" paperback and ate peanuts all morning, glancing at my phone to make certain it wasn't ringing without me hearing it. I was waiting for it to be breaktime (where I would get away from my desk and read my book like I was doing now) or for Denisse to come in, whichever came first. I got online to look something up on Wikipedia (it was Wang Chung, if you must know), when my rebate line rang.

"Thanks for calling the AT&T high speed internet rebate center," I said, "My name is Eric, can I get your DSL telephone number please?"

A man with a heavy Southern accent began speaking immediately. "And the ground did open and every unclean thing did wander, and the secrets of men walked outwardly where none could shield his face--"

"Hello?" I interrupted. Sometimes people didn't realize I'd picked up, or worse, they thought I was a recording.

"Where none could shield his face, though in his guilt, he may try," the man finished.

"Excuse me?" I said, trying to be polite. After all, every call was apparently recorded for quality purposes.

"Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Chapter seven," the man said. So, he had been quoting a creepy ass scripture. Should've guessed. "Are you a believer, Eric?"

That he knew who I was unnerved me, and I thought about that old movie where the girl is getting calls from some guy watching her from outside the house. But then I remembered that I give my name at the start of every call. I shifted in my seat. "Uh, I really only help people with their rebate questions. Did you want to check the status on your--"

"Haven't you been watching the news?" the man said, his voice getting higher. "The dead were gibbering in their resting places, and outward they came, to seek out those who knew not the Lord. And as the unrighteous saw the sharpness of their fate upon them, they were fearful in their sin."

"That's not from the Bible, sir," I said.

He continued, in something of a fervor now. "For they knew not the Lord, and the graves opened up their dead, and those that were still did walk."

I glanced three pods down and saw Denisse Ortega, just logging onto her phone. She was small and shapely, unbelievably sexy yet somehow innocent. Today she was wearing a pair of stone-washed jeans and an undersized white t-shirt. Except for the paycheck, she was the only thing keeping me at ChotusLink.

"Eric?" the man on the phone said. I looked away from the Hispanic jailbait and to my computer monitor.

"Yes?"

"Do you know the Lord?"

"Not on a first name basis. Do you have a rebate question?"

"I did, I wondered why I hadn't received my check yet. But after what's been going on in the world, it doesn't seem so important anymore."

"I can understand that," I said, though I really couldn't. All I knew was that I hated working there and was a stubborn little masochist for still sitting in that chair and taking calls.

"I'm going to hang up now, Eric," the man said. "It's probably too late for you to repent, but you'd better try it just in case."

"I'll do that," I lied and thanked him for calling the rebate center. About once a week I'd get a call from a crazy person or a really angry lawschool dropout. I logged the call (Code 11 - Wrong Number/Transferred By Mistake) and did my internet search. The phones were barely ringing, which was a nice change.

***


Ms. Endora walked by, saw I wasn't on a phone call, and asked me if I had seen Wade the day shift junior supervisor. I hadn't. Ms. Endora was a squat mannish lady with black hair with a white tuft in the front, like Rogue if she turned fifty and let herself go. She had hired me in my original position at ChotusLink, which was a pretty good job when it first started.

Still no new calls. A half hour passed. I would get to go to lunch soon. Something I'd eaten the day before was making me fart.

Wade the day shift junior supervisor came in, sweaty and exasperated. He was clutching at his hand and even from where I was sitting, I could see blood there. He had had some kind of accident coming back from a bagel run, evidently, though I didn't hear details. A Level Three and a couple of his friends rushed to his side, asking him what happened and what they could do. I think I caught ". . . jumped on me" as they kept moving.

I guess I should have followed them to the bathroom, but I had just logged onto the Hollywood Stock Exchange at my desk and was looking to see how my Blockbuster Derivatives were doing.

I farted again, then looked up and regretted it. Denise was walking over. God, what if she actually needed to talk to me (unlikely, I know, but it had to happen one day) and she got there at its most pungent?

But she just walked on by. I saw people around me rising in their pods. I took my headset off and looked where they were looking. Ms. Endora walked up to our row, and signaled to us. "Come over here, people," she said. "Look at this."

I went to the window, where a handful of people were congregating. We were located on the second floor of our building, so there was a pretty good view of the cemetery two blocks away, where there were a few people gathered. Except there was something wrong with them. Two or three were crawling, but they were all moving in a jerky, unhealthy manner. They almost didn't look like people anymore.

"They said something about this on the news," a small woman I didn't know said to the lady beside me. "Something about people in a trance."

"Creepy," the lady breathed.

And it was. Down on the ground, the people moved like sleepwalkers, like the dizziest of children, like blind men. They were leaving the cemetery, and they were, without exception, wearing suits or dresses: church outfits . . . or funeral clothes.

My heart lurched to a stop as a pulsing buzz started down near my genitals. It was the cellphone in my pocket, set on vibrate since we weren't supposed to even have them on at work. It scared the hell out of me, frankly.

It kept ringing, and I pulled it out and checked it before I answered. It was my best pal Joe, who called from time to time, but not during work hours. I would never be Employee of the Month anyway, so I pushed Talk.

First Joe asked if I had heard the news. Then, not waiting for an answer, he told me that there was some kind of rabies epidemic that was spreading all over the country. "It's happening all at once," he said, "People are getting attacked all over. It's spreading. You get it like the flu, except faster."

"Joe, I--"

"You get it if they touch you. Then you get infected with the . . . the madness as well."

Normally I would've told him he was a poor practical joker and an asshole, but there were crazed-looking people below us on the street, and I'd already seen one person with a bite or gash on his arm.

Suddenly, the people around me gasped. Down below, a pickup truck had apparently come around the corner, and slammed into one of the lurchers. The body hit the pavement like a sack of potatoes, and the pickup screeched to a halt.

"Somebody call 911," a girl cried, and a dozen cellphones suddenly came out of pockets and purses. Down below, the accident victim was rolling on the pavement, trying to get up, it looked like. Hadn't Rick almost hit someone on that exact same road earlier today? The pickup driver got out of his vehicle, presumably to help, and two of the sleepwalkers approached him. They didn't wait for him to explain, they just attacked him immediately. There were shrieks from the people around me, not all of them female. Joe was still on the phone at my ear, saying my name.

"What?"

"Dude, I'm coming over there," he announced.

But I had brought my own lunch. "Here? Why?"

"They just canceled work. Anyone who wants to go be with their families can leave."

That made sense. Except it didn't. "But why are you coming here?" I asked him.

"You wanna stay there?"

"No."

"I'm on my way. I'll call you when I get there." He hung up. So did I.

People beside me were crying, glued to the window, or vomiting. No one was talking to 911 operators. Out of service. Busy. On hold. All operators are currently busy with other customers, please wait. Just ringing.

Denisse Ortega walked past me. "That's it, I'm outta here," she said to a friend of hers, a droopy-eyed Latina girl with more cleavage than Denisse, but less everything else. The friend, whose name I didn't know, agreed and they strode toward the stairs. They were leaving, going out into the dangerous world outside.

I should say something, I thought as she rounded the first bank of pods. Or take Denisse in my arms and stick my tongue down her throat. Or at least let her know that she's the hottest thing since tabasco sauce and I often fantasized about making such passionate love to her that our pelvises burst into flames.

But I just watched her walk to the exit and disappear. Pussy, my conscience told me. It, oddly enough, has a different voice than my thinking brain. A snootier, more disgusted voice. You're going to die alone.

"Denisse is way too young for me," I told my conscience. "And regardless of that, a girl that sextastic has many boyfriends, all higher up in the food chain than me."

You suck, my conscience reminded me. You're never gonna see her again and she won't even remember your name.

"Yes, but she'll probably remember me as the guy who salivated when he looked at her. It's better she not know what my name is."

Pussy, it said again. I don't like that word. I never have.

And then Denisse was back. She walked through the door, quickly, and went to her pod, grabbing her keys from beside the computer monitor and telephone headset. She took a breath and started back the way she'd come.

"Denisse," I said, and she looked at me. Gosh, she was well put together. "You're one of the best-looking people I've ever seen," I said. "You take care of yourself."

She smiled a little bit and I liked what it did to her eyes. "You too," she said, and was gone.

Alright, that was pretty good, my conscience said. But you're still a pussy.

"Thanks," I said aloud, and went to grab my own stuff from my desk.

I took my bag of snacks, pens, vending machine change, and napkins, and started to log off my computer. All around me, people were either sitting in stunned silence, or getting ready to leave. Or already gone. The crowd at the windows was bigger than ever, but nobody seemed to be taking rebate or sales calls. I glanced at my phone. There were only two calls in the queue.

I signed off my telephone.

I took a few steps toward the door, then turned around. Joe had not yet called me and I had to pee. I went to the other end of the building where the restrooms were. I passed a group of employees in the training room. I thought they didn't know what was happening outside, but when I paused to look in, I saw they were all bowing their heads in prayer.

They knew.

I entered the men's room and hit the urinal. I smelled vomit in there too. Somehow it was worse mixed with the urinal cakes. I flushed and turned to wash my hands. I saw blood in the sink and some on the mirror in front of it. There was a still-wet trail of blood leading down to the handicapped stall. There was a lot of it, on the wall, on the closed stall door, on paper towels all over. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. This was like a bathroom at a rugby stadium, not a call center.

"...nnnngghhh..."

The noise came from the far stall. My body tightened up at the sound, like I'd been shocked turning on a desklamp. It had been a moan of some kind, though like nothing I'd ever heard outside of medical dramas. Or really bad dreams.

"Hello?" I said softly, aware that I was breaking men's room protocol by addressing someone in a toilet stall, but uncaring.

The moan came again. Strained, low, suffering. The sound made snowcones from my blood.

"Dude, are you alright?"

At the sound of my voice, the guy in there banged on the stall door. It wasn't locked, but it opened inward and the man was pushing on it. He moaned again . . . not the sound of a normal man. This was what Joe was talking about.

I had to get out of there.

I left the bathroom at a half run, expecting a hand to close around my arm before I could reach freedom. I still heard the moaning as the restroom door swung shut behind me and scooped up my bag where I'd set it.

My cellphone vibrated again. I was sort of expecting it this time, but it still startled me. I didn't stop walking as I pulled it out of my pocket. It was Joe. "I'm on my way," I said at the same moment he said, "I'm pulling in now." I glanced back at my workplace. Ms. Endora was holding someone in her arms. I could hear muffled wailing, but I didn't know if it was her or the woman she was holding. I hit the stairs.

Normally there was a security guy who would go through our bags before letting us leave, but there was nobody there now. The door to where the time clock was located stood closed, but there were people in there . . . some lady had her face to the window in the door, looking out at me. She shook her head as I walked by. I didn't know if she was telling me not to go outside or that I couldn't come in where she was.

Either way, I wasn't listening.

***


Joe's gray Pontiac was parked by the main entrance, the engine still running. It was a warm day, but his windows were all closed. I could hear sirens and horns honking and some kind of intercom voice, but I couldn't make out what it was saying. I could see smoke in the distance, by the freeway entrance.

I tried to get into the passenger seat, but Joe's doors were locked. He pushed the button to unlock them, but I had been holding onto the handle and it didn't work. As I tried again, I saw a girl walking our way in the parking lot. I didn't know if she was one of the infected or not, and I told Joe to hurry and unlock the door. He shouted something from inside the car and I have to admit that I was close to panicking. The girl in the parking lot looked my way, took a couple of steps in my direction, then reached her own car and began fumbling for the keys.

Joe's door unlocked and I got in. "Thanks," I said.

"Lock the--" Joe started to say, then locked the doors himself. He backed out of the parking space, a little faster than usual. "Dude, this is way beyond insane."

I nodded, though I didn't really know what he meant, exactly. "What's up with Maggie?"

Joe lived in Praisden, a few miles south, with Maggie, his long-time girlfriend. Er, fiance, I guess, since--and this is something of a secret--she was a few months pregnant now and they were going to get hitched at the end of the summer.

"Maggie's fine. She's at her sister's. I told her to wait for me."

"Us."

"Right, us." Joe drove out of the parking lot, turned right, then immediately hit the brakes. There were three columns of stopped cars headed toward the freeway entrance, even though there were only two lanes. No one was moving.

"Damn," Joe said. "We'll have to go anothe--"

"That's fine," I said, distracted by the sight before me.

ChotusLink was at the top of a hill, and I could see at least three car accidents from where I sat. One of them looked horrifically bad, with a UPS truck on its side, half crushing a PT Cruiser.

Joe turned the car around, turning down a side street, and heading subtly southward.

I turned on the radio, but there was only the emergency broadcast signal. I turned it off again.

"Man, Center Street was a mess," Joe said. "Wrecks are everywhere. Somebody actually hit into a fire hydrant, like in the movies."

"I've never actually seen that before," I told him.

We drove on, passing a major intersection (the stoplights were blinking red). We drove through, slower than usual, and I could see people walking here and there, in the Albertson's parking lot, outside of McDonalds, on the sidewalk. The people with blood on them, their faces unnaturally grey, walking the way the homeless guy had, the way the people from the cemetery did.

"I've never seen anything like it," Joe muttered.

"Maybe in movies," I suggested. "Like a vampire movie or somethi--"

"These aren't vampires. They . . . I don't know what they are."

And then there was one moving toward us, stepping right into the street from the Del Taco entrance and heading for my window. He was a middle aged man, dressed in a t-shirt and jogging shorts. His hand was all mangled . . . a couple of fingers missing. And also missing was the life in his eyes, the humanity. He looked like a maniac, a Holocaust survivor, a lobotomy patient.

The man gritted his teeth at us and kept moving toward the car. Joe hit his brakes to not hit the man, but the man hit into us anyway, walking right into the Pontiac like he hadn't seen it was there. The blood from his injured hand spattered the glass beside my face.

"His hand," I said. "I think he'd been bitten."

"That must be how they're spreading the infection," Joe said. "It is like vampires."

The man pounded on the window, trying to break the glass to get at me. I swear, he didn't look human anymore. I guess I keep repeating that, but I can't really get over it.

Joe drove on, having to go around a banged-up Camry abandoned in the middle of the road. Behind us, the lurcher was following, stumbling along too slow to ever catch us.

Joe switched the radio on. The emergency signal was still blaring and he changed the station. It sounded like a news bulletin. It turned out to be a CDC spokesman reading a statement. We were supposed to stay in our homes and not answer the door for anyone. If we came in contact with strangers or people behaving in a violent or unusual manner, don't touch them. Get away. The rabies spread quickly. There were also reports--unsubstantiated at that time--of cannibalism in those infected.

At that, Joe and I shared a look. "Man, I have to pee," he muttered. "Praisden never seemed far before, but it is."

"Why did you come and get me?" I had to ask.

"I don't know. It was on the way."

True enough, but it wasn't exactly an explanation. I kept glancing at the blood on the passenger window, as afraid of it as I was the creature it came from. I wished Joe could wash it off somehow.

I turned our attention to the other side of the road, where a bicyclist was speeding along, going much faster than we were. A pale man in a suit and tie lunged at him and the cyclist hit into the sidewalk. His bike flipped over, and he hit the pavement hard, laying there stunned. The pale man leapt upon the bicyclist. He very much appeared to be eating him.

Don't worry, my conscience told me, This may just be a dream.

I turned to Joe. "Is this really happening?"

"I think so. Cody at work was saying this might be some kind of germ warfare. It's all over the country, all at once."

"I don't know Cody."

"Sure you do, he's the guy who named his kids after Pirates of the Caribbean."

"Oh yeah." He had named a son Jack and a daughter Sparrow, at least according to Joe. Joe swore he was a sane, even cool guy, other than that.

My throat felt very dry and I wished I had taken a drink before leaving work. "What did Cody say?"

"He said it was maybe in our water supply, or an airborne virus."

"How come we don't have it, then?"

Joe shrugged. "Cody thinks that it was just in major cities, and now it's spreading through saliva."

Saliva made me think of Denisse Ortega, for some reason, but I shook that thought off. "So, terrorists, then?"

"I don't know. Some girl at work was saying this was the end of the world."

"End of the . . ." I started to repeat. "You mean, like in the Bible sort of way?"

"Yes.  Eric, she was hysterical, she said that the world got too corrupt, so Jesus hadn't come after all, that we were all gonna burn as sinners."

"Yeah, a guy on the phone said something like that too. I didn't know what he was talking about at the time, but--"

"Maybe he was right," Joe said quietly, and it gave me the shivers to hear him say that. I'm not a religious person, and the concept of Armageddon was one of the least comforting aspects of that sort of belief system. That, and Hell, I guess.

Joe slowed the car once again. A semi was jack-knifed in front of us, blocking off ninety percent of the road. We had to drive up on the sidewalk to get around it. I heard the undercarriage of the Pontiac scrape and thump under us. Joe's was a nice car too.

Just past the semi, a woman with no lower half was dragging herself out from under a crushed car, a smear of gore beneath her. Joe kept driving.

"Did you see that?" I asked, my mouth drier than it had ever been.

"No. What was it?"

I didn't say. That had been impossible. Nobody could survive that. You'd either bleed to death, or be dead instantly. But she was moving, like a squashed cockroach somehow pulling itself along, defying death right in front of you.

I'd heard somewhere that a cockroach could live a week without a head.

The sounds of sirens were loud and omnipresent. I didn't see any police cars or fire engines, but they were all out and about.

"We could go to my dad's cabin in the mountains," I suggested.

"Maybe," Joe said.

"It's in Fairview, miles away from any cities or towns. Probably even farther away from . . ."

Joe waited for me to finish. When I didn't, he tried to answer for me. "From what? Anybody with this infection?"

I had been thinking cemeteries. But I just nodded and let him drive.

***


We were just about out of town, not going fast, but making fairly good time when Joe tensed up. Ahead, there was a little boy, walking in the road in front of us. Joe slammed on the brakes, bringing us to a stop right in time. The child was in the middle of the intersection, with a little suit and bowtie on, like a miniature gentleman. But one look at the way the boy was walking told me he was either severely intoxicated or one of them.

I looked over at Joe. He was eyeing the boy with a cross between nervousness and concern. Joe had a son in Montana about his age, so I understood him being a little freaked out. I looked back at the boy. It turned, slowly, and looked toward us. There was nothing childlike about the boy's face. Its teeth were beared like a snarling dog, its eyes rolled up to the whites. God.

I looked back at Joe, about to tell him it was too late for this kid. But I couldn't say anything. On his side, a big black pickup truck was hurtling toward us, much faster than necessary. It was too late for us too.

A remember seeing a flash of white, and the sensation of sudden falling, like the feeling you get right before falling asleep sometimes. I opened my eyes and saw the windshield opaque with cracks in front of us. My shoulder hurt where the seatbelt had dug in, but I thought I was alright.

Joe seemed to be knocked out, from what I could see of him. Joe had taken the majority of the hit, his window shattering and the airbag obscuring my view. Fat lot of good it did. Side impact airbags, folks, look into them.

Beyond him, the black pickup was rolling slowly away from us. I didn't know if the driver was backing it up, or if it was just drifting. My ears were ringing, but I was in no pain.

I unlocked my door and went outside. I thought I was alright, but the truck's driver might not be. The pickup truck's front end was smashed in, both headlights broken, the grill hanging halfway off. But it was drivable, apparently.

The pickup shifted into Drive, making a grinding sound I could hear even through my ringing ears.

"Hey!" I shouted, and the pickup pulled away, driving as best it could down the road. I had gone out there to see if the other driver was hurt, and there he went.

I swore and got back into the car, closing the door behind me.

"Joe, you okay?"

He didn't say anything, he just moaned and pressed himself harder against the still-deployed airbag. Like he was trapped in a particularly bad dream.

"Joe?"

I knew he was alive, just dazed, or whiplashed, or concussed. Fat as I am, Joe outweighed me by a good forty pounds. There was no way I'd be able to support, pull, or carry him to safety.

"Joe," I said louder. I shook his arm.

He turned his head my way, still leaning forward like the airbag was a pillow. His glasses were broken and there was a cut where they rested on his nose. His nose might've been broken, but it wasn't bleeding.

"Hey Joe, can you hear me? We gotta go. Does the car still work?"

He moaned louder, definitely in pain, and pulled his head back. My point of view shifted from Joe to the person standing at the window, his little blond head previously hidden from my sight. It was the infected boy. There was fresh blood all over his mouth and nose. It looked almost black on his pale skin.

"Joe!" I shouted. He stirred again, raising his arm. The one the boy had been feasting on. A half dozen silver dollar-sized bites had been taken from Joe's meaty flesh. It bled copiously and--

That meant my friend was infected.

"Oh shit, Joe," I said, fumbling for the door handle again.

Joe said, "Ehh?" and looked at me sleepily.

Seeing his movement, the boy made a quick snapping movement, like a junkyard dog. I didn't see what it did until it pulled away. There was a wet clacking sound--the infected boy's teeth coming together--and when I could see the boy again, he had something in his mouth . . . part of Joe's ear.

I was on my own.

I wished I had stayed at ChotusLink, at least it was on the second floor and you could only get in with a by swiping your keycard. Why hadn't I told Joe to come in with me? I guess I was scared, 'cause I was so near the cemetery. And that's where they had been coming from, of course. But it had been a mistake to run.

Now Joe would be dead soon.

Then he'd be one of them.

And he'd try to bite me as well.

I left the car and ran.

I'm pretty out of shape, but adrenaline was coursing through me now. And the lurchers were even slower, lucky for me.

The ringing in my ears had faded and I looked up to a new sound. There were helicopters in the sky, passing overhead. They weren't news choppers, but the bigger, uglier military type. I should have been happy to see them, since it might mean rescue, but I don't know what it was--maybe too many bad movies--but I was scared to see them there.

I kept running south for one, two blocks. I saw one or two people running around in hysterics, and several more hiding in their cars. But mostly the streets were empty. Empty of live people, that is. The creatures were recognizable by the way they staggered around, by their dazed slowness, by the blank expression on their faces. And the fact that most of them were spattered, smeared, or covered with blood.

There was a high school up ahead, and as I ran toward it, a voice shouted, "Over here!" I looked her way and saw a middle-aged woman holding a big steel door open a few inches so she could wave me over. She looked motherly enough, so I turned and ran in her direction.

As soon as I slipped through the door, she pulled it shut after me. It was cool inside, the air conditioner blowing away. Apparently, there had been summer school classes going, and the school was fairly secure.

A janitor named Hector asked if I was alright, looking me over before I could go any farther into the building. After seeing Joe back at the car, I knew what he was looking for. Hector deemed me acceptable and led me down the hall. I breathed heavy as I followed him, pausing to gasp over the drinking fountain and splash cool water on my face from the restroom. Two classrooms had people in them, and I joined one of them, sitting at a desk, my body sweating and my nerves thrumming like an overstretched elastic.

The school currently held four teachers, twenty one students, Hector the janitor, and seven people like me, in from off the street. They had been watching the news for hours and filled me in on what was happening so far.

Law enforcement was mobilizing. Word was, they had some way of containing the disease. Or whatever you called it.

From the people who wanted to talk about it (and there weren't many), a surprising few would admit the truth: this wasn't some sickness or contagion. Those people had been dead.

And a lot more were now.

Though "dead" is a relative term, isn't it?

***

In the end, I wasn't involved with any of the newsworthy stuff. The soldiers came in and loudspeakered for people to stay in their homes if they didn't want to get shot (this they did in English and Spanish), and spent the next three days fixing the problem, most of which I wasn't a witness to. The military seemed to do something good for a change, and all of that Red State/Blue State nonsense went away for a while.

I never went back to that job at ChotusLink. Life just seemed too important--and too damn short--to waste it somewhere I was that unhappy. I've done a lot of thinking, a lot of reading (turns out there isn't a seventh chapter of Ephesians), a lot of pondering about my existence, about life after this one, and about the point of it all.

In the days since I started this post, the world has gone through some significant changes, but just like every major shake-up, I'm sure things will return to normal soon. At night, when the shadows get thick and I'm left with my thoughts and a lot of images that seemed burned into my eyelids, I wonder if the world will ever truly be like it was before. I wonder if there might be something lurking in my room (they can't have gotten ALL of them, can they?).

And I wonder about Joe--did he stay in the car? How long did he last before changing? How long did he last after that? What was he thinking at the end? Did he feel abandoned by me? Angry? Sad? Did he come looking for me after he changed? And what if he didn't change? What if he . . .

Well, there's lots of things now to fill my normally empty head.

I think about all the people whose lives June 13th affected, and if they will ever forget. I worry about the children who experienced this thing, and who now will think about death differently than any of us ever did. I wonder if they'll grow up used to the new status quo, the way my parents grew up thinking television was no big thing, and I grew up thinking videos were common. I hope that this event will make the next generation better than Generation X or Y, that there's some positive to get out of everything.

The plague only lasted for a few hours. The infection stopped spreading before nightfall, and even those infected that were not "dealt with" by the military laid down and died that evening or the next day.

What if they hadn't? What if it had continued like it did, into the 14th, into the next week, into July? Would I have survived?

Would any of us?

Something that bothers me, though it seems to bother other people less is . . . why did it happen? Doctors and scientists and researchers and government-sanctioned panels say that it will take some time to nail down the source of the "reanimation epidemic," but they'll let us know as soon as they find out. A lot of people seem satisfied by that explanation, figuring that since the danger is over, it's something to put behind us, like an earthquake or a fire.

But I lie awake at night, worrying about the implications of the dead not being that way anymore, listening for that awful sound of moaning, and wonder if it will happen again.

Time will tell.

The End

"I will never say the word procrastinate again,
I'll never look myself in the mirror with my eyes closed."
They Might Be Giants