Shooting the Zombie Apocalypse
Credit to Author: U Z. ELISERIO| Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2019 21:00:09 +0000
Last of two parts
MAYBE he should drop the acting thing altogether. He can be honest with himself. The white man was actually a blessing. His teeth were grinding even before Leo flashed the light on his face. The champagne didn’t calm him.
Thom looks to the top pod of the Ferris wheel. The white people are still there.
“I was good with the equipment, though,” he tells himself. He should shift to film. Be a director. He can still party and dance and go on adventures. He should shift to film. Movies are big business, his father knows that.
His cellphone rings. It’s his father. Speak of the devil. Or rather, think of the devil.
He rejects the call, walks back to Leo and the car. Leo isn’t caressing the bead necklace anymore. He’s talking to a man. At first Thom thinks it’s the white man who attacked them. But this man
isn’t tall. He isn’t fat. And he isn’t white.
Seeing him up front, Thom sees that the man isn’t a man at all. He has red skin, horns and a tail. And a goatee, which is a tail for chins.
“Thom, Thom, see, I’m handling it. This is my friend, the devil. It’ll take care of the white people for us.”
Thom scratches his face. His face is itchy. It’s eczema, he knows. Either he buys his ointment or he buys his beer, and what kind of a choice is that? Maybe he can ask the devil to cure his face? Or at least scratch it.
“I was at the cafeteria a year ago. The radio was playing loud, and this guy,” Leo points his thumb at the devil, “he’s singing the songs out loud. He was off-tune, but he got the lyrics right. I take my plate to him, and I’m about to start a conversation, and the songs stop, and the DJ comes on, and just like with the songs, he starts reciting the DJ’s spiel. Eh, can you believe it? To the letter!
Turns out he was the devil, wanted my soul.”
“Sir.” The devil bows to Thom.
It looks like Leo is going to continue with his story, so Thom interrupts. “I like your energy, Leo. Let’s finish our take, right?” He gestures to the amusement park.
“Right, right.” Leo closes his eyes and fists. When he opens them again, he looks around, his nose wrinkling. “What’s the big deal?”
“Sir, I’m sorry, sir. I can’t just kill people. But I can give you guns to kill them with.”
“I wasn’t asking you to kill them!” Leo shouts.
“You were asking him to kill them?” Thom shouts at Leo. He turns to the devil. “No guns. And no killing. Look, we just want them…relocated. Say, a hundred kilometers from here. How’s that?”
“I can only take orders from Sir Leo, sir.” The devil turns to Leo. “Sir?”
Leo says, “I wish —”
“Wait!” Thom says.
“What?” Leo and the devil ask.
“I have a better idea,” Thom says. “Can you make them our extras?” His mind is a machine. “It’ll have to a real specific, uh, wish.” He looks at the devil, who does somehow resemble a genie. “You have to protect us from them, of course. Some kind of invisible barrier is needed. And then make them only able to groan and moan. They kind of already do that, anyway. What do you think?”
Leo looks shocked that Thom asked for his opinion. “I,” he says, “I thank you, my friend. And I think your idea is great.” His eyes stay locked on Thom, he mouths his wish. “It is done?” he asks the devil.
“It is done, sir,” the devil says.
Leo continues his story as they walk back to the amusement park. It turns out he outsmarted the devil; his first wish was for immortality. “Now he’ll never get my soul,” he says to Thom, “he’ll have to obey me forever.” He sets up their gear. “Don’t worry, I’m not a bad person. I only asked for a little money. I just want to be a star, and do it on my own. That’s why I took up the class. Snap of a finger, I could be in a superhero movie. But would it really be me? No, no. I already have it in me,” he pounds his chest, “I just need the equipment.”
Thom looks around. The white people are still there, but they can’t go near them. They drag their feet and moan, just as he told Leo. Perfect. Should he request the eczema cure? Or at least, makeup? But Leo is right. Thom doesn’t want everything. Just more of the life he already enjoys. “All right then,” he says. “Remember your lines?”
They shoot until early evening. It seems the devil can’t create sunlight, either. “He’s full of excuses, the devil,” Thom says to himself, but as they drive away from the amusement park he sighs, pleased. Surely he can edit a funny, 10-minute clip from the hours of footage they have. He’ll work on sound and color correcting for two days, after which he and Leo will meet and watch the first cut. “It’ll be excellent,” he says out loud.
It is not excellent. The volume is too low; the white people’s groans drown their dialogue out. His lovely lines! The shots are terrible, too. There are minutes and minutes of Leo’s back and Thom’s elbow, and the scenes where his face is seen, it’s all red from eczema!
He manages to extract two minutes of adequate material, and that is what he shows to Leo five days after their shoot.
“It’s good, it’s great,” Leo says, drinking beer. “It’s wonderful!”
“Maybe we can use it as a teaser,” Thom says. They are in Leo’s mansion, lying on matching lifebuoys, floating on Leo’s infinite pool. The devil stands by the diving board. It is wearing a uniform, matching the lifebuoys: “Zombie Park.” Their logo is a lion. Thom doesn’t ask why.
“You’ll post this, Thom?”
“I’m not sure.” He put his cellphone down. It slips, dives into the pool. “Oh, come on.”
“It’s not waterproof?” Leo asks. “My friend, turn Thom’s cellphone waterproof.”
“Done, sir.”
“And give it back to him.”
The devil takes off his uniform, walks on the water. When he gets to where the phone is, he parts the pool, and the gadget floats toward him. He dries it on his legs before handing it to Thom.
“Thanks, uh…”
“Just call me Devil, sir.”
“Thanks, Devil.” Thom winks at it.
“Don’t worry too much, my friend,” Leo says. “We’ll shoot again. It’ll be better next time. Come on, cheer up.” He brings out his cellphone. “Did you hear? They had some problems at the Macbeth set. Someone let loose a pig backstage!” His belly jiggles as he laughs. Thom decides that Leo looks better bald. “What do you say? Beer and entertainment!”
Thom smiles. “Maybe we can get some chips?”
“There it is, there’s my good friend Thom.” He waves a hand, and a bowl of chips appear right in front of them, floating on the water. “We’ll make a great series, the best zombie series.” Leo hands Thom the bowl. “And all it will cost is your soul.” His belly jiggles as he laughs. “What do you say?”
Thom grabs a handful of chips. He lifts his bottle of beer. “To ‘Zombie Park’!”
They shoot again three days later. They start early this time. Thom couldn’t have imagined how difficult it was to wake up at eight in the morning. He always took afternoon classes to match his party schedule. But the project is too important. Maybe more important than having fun? Maybe his father had him brainwashed. Thom doesn’t care. He just wants “Zombie Park” to be great.
They don’t stop shooting until one in the afternoon. Leo has the devil conjure a truck for him, but Thom insists on working right at their set. He has his laptop open. He reviews their previous takes. He had Leo have the devil lower the white people’s volume, so this time the audio is just right. This time, too, the camera is actually pointed at their faces. It looks good. No, it looks adequate. But with a bit of editing, he can make it look good.
He notices something in the background. A girl about twelve or thirteen. She’s wearing the same dusty jacket as the rest of the white people, but she is not shuffling around. She is holding a sign. Thom can’t make out the words. He turns from his laptop to the moaning mass. He finds the girl standing near a broken horse.
He walks toward her, but the white people move with him. For every step he takes, they step back. His mind wanders back to the edits he needs to make. The girl is a distraction. But he knows his humans, and he knows himself. He won’t be able to work straight with this, this thing bothering him. He calls Leo. It’s a brand new cellphone he’s using. The devil made his old phone waterproof, but only after the water in Leo’s pool broke it. Stupid wish structure rules. “Come on, Leo, pick up.” He looks to his friend’s truck, considers just walking back and pounding on the door.
“Hello?” Leo says. “Is something wrong, my friend?” There are voices in the background.
“Leo, hi. Can you ask the devil to make it so that I can walk to the white people without them walking away?”
It takes Leo a minute to answer. “It’s done,” he says. “Everything good?”
Thom walks to the girl, and she doesn’t walk away. “Everything’s good. Shoot’s on in 10 minutes, OK?”
“Fifteen minutes, yes.” Leo hangs up.
Thom puts his phone away, walks up to the girl. They meet by the broken horse. “What’s your problem, girl?”
She’s not all white, her skin has brown in it. It reminds Thom of a mocha-colored couch. She has big saucer eyes and a backpack. She hands him her sign. It’s crayon written on cardboard. “You are a fool,” it says.
“Talk, this is silly.” Thom hands her back the paper.
She brings out a notebook and a pen. She tears off a sheet and writes: “Your friend silenced us.”
“Oops,” Thom says. He thinks about calling Leo, asking him to make the devil restore the white people’s speech. He decides it’ll take too long. “So I’m a fool. After we finish the series, we’ll get out of here. I’ll make Leo give you back your park.”
She writes again. “The devil has you fooled. Soon, you’ll be just like us.”
“Like you?”
She writes again. “The damned.”
Thom considers this. Based on what he knows about devils, he’s pretty sure Leo is screwed. He doesn’t feel guilty, after all, Leo made the deal with the devil long before Thom made his pitch. Thom knows he’s safe, after all, he’s made no pact, no promises. The devil wouldn’t even grant him his wishes, he had to ask Leo. “Oh crap,” he says to himself. “The horned one isn’t the devil, no?”
The girl shakes her head.
* * *
Thom knows his humans, and the devil does, too. Thom pours the goo at the nearest water reservoir, and makes his way back home. His father’s mansion is as every bit as big as Leo’s. He wanders around, carrying the drum, quoting Macbeth in his head.
Thom finds his father in their library. The old man is screaming into a telephone, his eyes fixed on a desktop computer. Honestly, who uses those anymore?
Thom looks around the shelves, stopping at a corner that was designated his back when he was younger. He drops the drum, pleased that he was right about his father. The old man hasn’t always been a jerk to him.
Thom pulls out a copy of Fahrenheit 451, goes to his father’s table. He reads the first few sentences before putting it down. He takes the telephone off his father’s hand. “You know books don’t actually burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit? Bradbury just liked the sound so he made that his title.”
His father’s face is red. “What are you blathering on about?” There is a cigar on the table, unlit. “Didn’t you read the news? It’s the zombie apocalypse! Civilization is about to collapse!”
Thom taps his fingers on the novel’s cover. “Yes, dear father. Tell me, what’re your stocks worth now? Zombies don’t exactly worship money, eh?”
“You have something to do with this? You, you what, doomed the world, just to spite me?”
Thom throws his arms open. “No, no. You misunderstand. I don’t hate you. I love you. And I want you to live a better life. No more rat race. I brought beer and chips to last a lifetime. We’re going to party as the world burns.”
The old man’s faces shifts from red to pale. He slumps on his chair, eyes still fixed on Thom.
“Oh, don’t be so glum. We have work to do, too. We’re going to shoot the damn thing.”
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