The Making of a Zombie Movie

A short story

Photo by Bill Adler

“Rats?” Anne Whelan raised her black baseball cap to lock eyes with Sebastian. She leaned forward in the canvas chair, resting her palms on her legs. “There’s nothing in the screenplay about rats.” She surveyed the set. While scouting for locations, she had found the perfect spot for a zombie movie—the concrete yard of an abandoned seventy-year-old school in Albany, New York.

“I say we need rats,” Sebastian Cole said. “I know it’s not in the script, but the schoolyard looks sparse. It’s bigger than I thought. We need to fill out the space, and rats are just what the doctor ordered.”

“Or what the director ordered.”

“Yeah, and that’s me.” He savored a long look at his Rolex, his pupils widening as he let his vision drift out of focus, the bezel’s colors melting into each other like a rainbow under the thrall of a mighty wind. The Rolex was an extravagance that had cost him twenty thousand dollars he didn’t have. He was paying it off in installments, just as he was paying off his ex-wife in monthly alimony. Sebastian’s Rolex was an artistic masterpiece of red and blue on black. It was his gift to himself for enduring nearly ten years of marriage, bought the day his divorce was finalized.

His director’s salary wasn’t sufficient for both the watch and alimony, but the bonus for completing the movie on time and the potential of a percentage of the profits might be and then some. He hoped. No one ever knew with zombie films. Some days, he thought Zombie Revenge would be the next World War Z. Other days, he felt there was as much chance of this movie becoming a moneymaker as a Hyundai spontaneously morphing into a BMW. God doesn't play dice with zombie films. He had no idea what that meant, but it somehow made sense. 

Sebastian's mission was to complete Zombie Revenge as quickly as possible, but filming it with a paltry $400,000 budget was as tricky as rowing across the Atlantic. 

“You want to shoot the next scene—” Anne paused, thought, and continued “—in a few hours, right? So there’s no time to order plastic rats from Amazon.” 

Sebastian shook his head. “No, no, no, no, no, my fair lady.” He ran his fingers through his thick, auburn-dyed hair. “No plastic rats. Audiences can spot a plastic rat in a horror movie a mile away.” 

“So, what are you saying? CG?” 

“No. Real rats.”

Anne grimaced. “I don’t think so.”

Sebastian clasped his hands together. “Look, Anne, we need all the help we can get. Every dollop of realism we add sharpens our chances of making a splash. We’re all in this for the percentage, so let’s do this, okay?” His fingertips danced over his Rolex’s bezel.

Realism is why he’d hired two amputees as extras. Realism is why he’d hired actors with limps—pre-injured. Realism is why he hired actors with no previous movie roles—they’d be fresh and react naturally to the terrifying scenes. These types of extras and actors were also less expensive than regular ones.

“How am I going to get real rats by this afternoon?” Anne hoped there was no answer to that question.

“Give me a moment.” Sebastian rubbed his hands together and tilted his head up. He leaned back perilously in his director’s chair. “You’re going to make a mash to attract them.”

“A mash?”

“Yes. Isn’t there a butcher shop a block away? I remember seeing it. And a pet shop around the corner? I recall that, too.”

Anne shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I guess.”

“Pork bellies, sheep intestine, mice—yes, you’re going to have to slaughter the mice—some lizards, maybe a big spider or two, a Snickers if you want. Get it all. Lots of protein. Put it in a pail, mash, mix, stir, and then spill it over there.” Sebastian pointed to the yard's far corner, where the crew was setting up the next scene. “If there’s enough protein, sugar, and especially stink, the rats will come out of hiding promptly. We’ll have enough rats to make a sequel to Ben.”

Anne shook her head even more vigorously than before. “This is not in my job description. This is not what an assistant director does.” 

“An assistant director does whatever the director tells her, and she does it fast, without complaint, and with a smile on her face.” Sebastian flashed Anne a smile as an example. “Or an assistant director finds herself teaching acting to spoiled high school students at summer school instead of working on a movie.”

Anne stuck out her tongue. “Yeah, okay. Got it.” 

“Well?” Sebastian cocked his head forward. “Get going.” He shooed Anne. “Git!”

“Whoa. Check out those rats!” Sebastian said. 

“Did you have any doubt?”

“I always have doubts.” Sebastian scanned his watch: 5:05 p.m. There was enough daylight remaining to film the movie’s big panic scene. The swarming rats would make the actors’ and extras’ screams hyperrealistic. 

I can stand on my chair when the rats come, hahahahaha, he thought.

“Let me tell you, Sebastian, of all the work I’ve done in movies, this was the most revolting.” Anne’s voice resonated with a gruff, harsh timbre, belying her youthful, soft appearance. “The butcher shop had pig bellies, sheep guts, and they also had calf hearts. I bought two geckos and six mice at the pet shop, along with a bag of crickets. And I know you want to keep the budget down, so I told the butcher that day-old was fine, and he was happy to oblige. Look.” 

She pointed to the other side of the yard, where raccoon-sized rodents with oily, stringy tails scurried. 

Can rats get bloated that fast from eating in twenty minutes? Yeah, probably. Rats eat until there’s no more food, filling their bellies and fattening like a universe that expands until its fuel runs out. I made them the best meal of their dirty, disgusting lives. 

“Now all you have to do is get the actors and extras to perform close to those rats.”

“They will, they will. Low man on the totem pole works the hardest. Besides, it’s a zombie movie, so what do the actors expect? Puppies and kittens?”

“They expect to be paid and to have their names on the credits in that order.”

“And they will. Are you ready to roll?”

Anne shouted to the cameraman, “One minute to roll.” She then turned to the actors, put the megaphone to her mouth, and yelled, “Everyone in their places. Countdown sixty seconds.”

“Wait!” Sebastian launched himself from his chair. He turned to Anne. “Do you have any of that left? That slurry you made?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, good.” Sebastian smiled. “I want you to smear it on the actors’ pants below the knees.”

“Why?”

“You know why. To summon the rats. They’ll swarm the actors, adding even more realism.”

“You’re joking.”

“Of course not.” Sebastian folded his arms across his chest. 

“Why don’t you do it? I’ve done my bit with rats and bio sludge.”

“Afraid not. Again, director, assistant director thing.” Sebastian glared at Anne as if he were firing laser beams from his eyes. “Put your special sauce on them.”

“What about Leona, Marcy, and Maiko, who are wearing skirts?” Anne waved her arm toward the actors and extras in the yard's far corner.

“Put it on their skin, around their ankles. Now, Anne.” He shooed her with the back of his hand.

“Screw you,” she said.

“My ex has done that many times over, and not in a good way.” Sebastian tapped his Rolex. “Do it now. I won’t ask again.”

As she fast-walked to the actors, Anne shouted, “Everyone, listen up. There’s a small last-minute costume addition. You don’t need to do anything. Stay where you are, and I’ll take care of it.” She slipped on double pairs of nitrile gloves and scooped out a thick, pasty, moist red, yellow, and brown slime muck. The eight actors and twenty-two zombie extras pinched their noses as Anne applied the mashed animal ordure to their pants and legs. 

A few of them gagged and not in an acting kind of way.

“What is that shit?” one of the actors asked. “That smells worse than the men’s room at an interstate rest stop.” 

Anne didn’t answer. She didn’t want to open her mouth. She didn’t want to breathe. 

Anne backed ten feet away before finally separating her lips and inhaling air into her oxygen-starved lungs. “Done.” She exhaled and dashed back to her chair beside the sound engineer. 

“Lights, camera, action!” the director shouted, his voice solid and loud, like a movie director performing in a movie. 

Twenty zombie extras swarmed Lionel Chase and Maiko Kimura, the romantically entwined couple who met while hiding in an aquarium. Lionel had seen Maiko in the shark tank and thought she was dead, but when he realized she was alive, he jumped into the tank and rescued her. This was Sebastian’s favorite scene and the one he believed would shine as a trailer: the hero jumping from one monster, a zombie, to another, a hammerhead shark, and then back to the first monster. It was a great escape, a compelling drama that generated suspense. 

To add to this scene's angst, everyone had fired the last of their ammo, which left them with only knives and sticks to fight off the zombies. Maiko brandished a fountain pen her father had given to her.

As a zombie approached Maiko from behind, Lionel turned, leaned to the side, and thrust a powerful karate kick to the zombie’s knee. 

Sebastian jotted down a note to add a crack sound. 

Maiko spun, dropped to the ground, and sent her fountain pen through the zombie’s eye, killing him. She stood, faced Lionel, gave him an “I want to kiss you now” look, and then leaped into the air, landing at the same time her pen pierced the ear of another zombie that was about to sink its teeth into another actor’s arm. 

“Fuck was that?” Maiko shouted. She dropped the pen and hopped up and down on one leg. “That hurts!”

“Cut, cut!” Sebastian stood. “Maiko, what are you doing?” 

“One of your rabid rats bit me!” She tried to kick the rat, but it scurried away, darting into a crack in a wall. Blood dripped from a deep gash just above Maiko’s left ankle. A flap of skin hung loosely below the open wound. “Does somebody have a first aid kit? Come on, people, hurry. This hurts like hell, and it’s not getting pretty on its own.” She glared at Sebastian, flicked her long, black hair, and screamed, “My agent’s going to sue your ass off. I’m sure your little rat scheme violated a dozen health and safety laws, not to mention AFTRA rules.” 

At the suggestion of a possible lawsuit, Sebastian grabbed the first aid kit. He moved swiftly, hoping that coming to Maiko’s rescue would expel the legal threat from her mind. He wasn’t sure what to do with the kit because he’d never rendered first aid to anyone, but figured going through the motions was better than inaction.

Maiko sat with her right leg folded and her injured leg extended. 

Rats scurried everywhere. 

Sebastian dropped beside her, letting loose an “ouch” when his knees slammed onto the hard concrete. He opened the first aid kit, found a wash bottle with saline, and sprayed the water over Maiko’s wound. “This will clean it out.”

What should I do next? 

Sebastian fished through the kit until he found gauze. 

The power of movie memory. He used the gauze to put Maiko’s skin flap back in place and then bandaged it. When Sebastian rooted around the first aid kit to see what his next step might be, he spotted a pair of rubber gloves. 

I should have put those on to protect myself, he thought. Too late. 

He surveyed the kit for what other potions it might contain and then said, “I’m going to put hydrogen peroxide on now.” He paused for a heartbeat as a line from a movie entered his consciousness. “This may hurt a little.”

“It already hurts a lot, asshat!” Maiko took in rapid, shallow breaths. “Hurry up. It feels like germs are crawling up my leg.” She put her hand on her belly. “Oww! My stomach is on fire, too.”

Sebastian placed his hand on Maiko’s forehead. She was burning, a fast, scorching fever. Her arm was also hot. All Sebastian knew about medicine he had acquired from watching movies, but he was sure that no fever exploded that quickly. He grabbed an infrared thermometer from the kit and aimed it at Maiko’s forehead. 

106 degrees!

“You’ve got a fever, Maiko. Hold on a sec. I’m sure there’s some Advil here.” Sebastian rooted around the first aid kit. “Found it.” He turned to Anne. “Get me a bottle of water.”

Sebastian remembered from a movie he directed, Dr. Joy Tabard’s Chicago Adventures, that a high fever in an adult was dangerous, and it was vital to lower it as fast as possible. 

Or does a fever help kill the germs?

Anne unscrewed the water bottle cap and handed the bottle to Sebastian. 

Sebastian put two Advils on his outstretched palm. “Here, take these.” 

Maiko didn’t respond. Like lava tunnels born beneath the ocean floor, veins rose from under her forehead and cheeks; her once-porcelain skin mutated into a field of purple-blue ropes. Saliva dripped out of her mouth. Her neck snapped back, then forward. Simultaneously, her body stiffened, and her eyes glowed orange. She snarled, opened her mouth, and bit Sebastian’s arm three times in rapid succession, two bites on his wrist, one dead-center on his Rolex. 

The watch’s crystal shattered. 

One of her teeth cracked and lodged in Sebastian’s flesh. 

Sebastian slapped his hand over his wound, spun, and shrieked.  

Maiko wobbled, her legs moving as if filled unevenly with rapid-setting cement. She turned away from Sebastian, staggered several steps to Lionel, snarled again, and bit Lionel in the neck, opening a wide gash from which a torrent of blood spilled. Maiko lurched toward one of the zombie extras and bit her neck. She jerked to another actor, a twenty-four-year-old with golden hair and a lifeguard’s chest, and sank her teeth into his belly.

Sebastian put his hand to his face, trying to stop the bleeding. His spine went rigid as if encased in plaster. He gasped, bellowed, and snapped his jaw. He turned, opened his mouth wide, and sank his teeth into Anne’s cheek, ripping the flesh and swallowing it. 

A few seconds later, Lionel growled, shuffled forward, wrapped his thick arms around another faux zombie, and bit off his ear. Lionel dug his teeth into another actor’s neck, a startled forty-year-old woman with wire-frame glasses.

Screams echoed off the school's decrepit walls. Rats, zombies, and people scrambled everywhere. The camera crew abandoned their posts, but the undead pinned them against the yard’s wall. The zombies swarmed and consumed them. 

The yard’s rusted gate screeched as a half-dozen creatures flocked toward it and broke through the weakened metal. The zombies rushed the crowd of onlookers watching the filming from the adjacent street. The spectators thought that this mayhem, screaming, and blood were all part of the movie, and some hoped they would be in the film. What had been Maiko and Lionel were the first to find new flesh. Sebastian, Anne, and the others were right behind them. 

Gabriella Chase extended her long, tan legs along the thick grass. She focused the camera on the center of the group of four three-horned Jackson chameleons that, with a bit of good camera work she was more than capable of, could double as a triceratops. When edited, this scene would appear like she had traveled back in time to film it. 

This was to be the pivotal scene in Astronauts Versus Dinosaurs, in which three Gemini space program astronauts in 1965 pass through a hole in time orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 410 miles. They splash down to a world that hasn’t existed for eighty million years. Can they survive in the time of flesh-eating dinosaurs?

They would survive because audiences like happy endings, The Planet of the Apes being the exception. But Gabriella's greatest concern was whether audiences would believe the dinosaurs looked real enough. The three-horned Jackson chameleons' scary horns, hungry-looking jaws, and armored skin would fool anyone except a paleontologist. 

Or would they? 

“Gabby!” Alain Withers screeched. Withers poked his head out of his director’s trailer—actually, just a Toyota minivan parked next to third base on the baseball diamond of Albany’s Washington Park. The production company rented the park to film the movie. The park was a bargain; Albany was a bargain. “Gabriella, that last scene sucks. The dinos aren’t realistic. A ten-year-old could see that.”

“What?” Gabby cupped her hand around her ear, pretending not to hear the director, using the few seconds that faux-can’t hear bought her to think of what to say. 

Before she could reply, Bobbie Trax, a production assistant, whispered into Gabriella’s other ear, “I know what to do.”

“Hold on a sec,” Gabriella shouted back.

“No. I need to see you right away in my van.”

Your minivan, she thought. Your tiny, dented, awful white, fifteen-year-old Toyota minivan that doesn’t even have Bluetooth. 

“Can I walk with you? I have a solution,” Bobbie said.

“A solution?”

“You know, to the lizards not looking enough like dinosaurs on the edited film.” 

“They do resemble dinos.”

“Hear me out.”

Gabriella raised an eyebrow toward her young production assistant, Bobbie. A recent M.A. in some field that Gabriella couldn’t recall, Bobbie had zero cinematography experience and could offer Gabriella nothing. The producer hired her because she was his wife’s cousin.

As if reading Gabriella’s thoughts, Bobbie continued, “I know I have no film experience, but I have a master’s degree in developmental biology, and I know how to make those lizards bigger, so you won’t need to film them at strange angles or anything like that.”

“Bigger?”

“Yes.”

“How much bigger?” Gabriella took Bobbie’s arm and walked her to Withers’ van. “Talk fast because we’ll be there in twenty seconds.”

“I developed a compound that accelerates a gene’s evolutionary trajectory.”

“It’s what?”

“Basically, it turns a small lizard into a giant lizard because that’s what the lizard would eventually become in a million years.”

“Are you saying that the three-horned Jackson chameleons we’re using will become as large as an actual triceratops?”

“Yes, and the Intelligent Woodlizard will look like a T-Rex.”

“Did you do drugs in grad school?”

“What? No. I really made the compound. I have the vials back at my apartment. I can do this—change the lizards into enormous creatures that will look great on film because they’ll tower over the astronauts.”

“How long will it take?” The film was on a budget, to say the least, and every day cost money they didn’t have.

“An hour, maybe. I engineered an accelerant into the formula.”

They were close enough to the van for Gabriella to see Withers’ scowl and his angry, narrow eyes. Steam seemed to be wafting off of his bald head.

“Go!” Gabriella instructed Bobbie. “Do it.”

Alain Withers leaned back in his director’s chair as the lizards mutated. When the first three-horned Jackson chameleon became as large as a llama, he scooted back abruptly, his chair scraping against the concrete. He leaped from his chair and cowered behind it when the lizard grew taller than his van.

He almost asked Gabriella—who was aiming her camera toward the beasts with shaky hands, wondering if they’d be steady in time to film the scene—if this really was a good idea and perhaps they should evacuate, but he knew that when the movie was in front of audiences, it would be a grand success and maybe win an Academy Award for best special effects.

Special effects. Very special indeed.

He felt the Oscar’s heft in his hands. 

While the lizards grew to dinosaur-size, the actors playing the astronauts waited inside the Toyota minivan. Sitting in the passenger seat, Carl Hall asked Jill Bream, the lead actor in the driver’s seat, what Jill was looking for as she frantically rooted around the front of the car.

“The keys.”

“Keys? Are we going somewhere?”

“We might have to.”

A thunderous roar rattled the car’s windows and the actors’ nerves. When the Woodlizard stomped, the ground shook, and trees wobbled. 

Harlan Olein, sitting in the van’s back, screamed. 

The Woodlizard took a step toward the car. 

Harlan screamed again, attracting the Woodlizard's attention and drawing it closer.

Three other monstrous lizards turned their massive heads toward the Toyota.

Alain froze in his chair and tried to force his heart to beat slower lest the creatures hear him. 

Better they stay interested in the actors. They weren’t good actors anyway. Weren’t? Alain thought. They’re still alive—though not for much longer.

He dropped the Oscar, imagining it shattering into a hundred pieces.

The three-horned Jackson chameleon that now resembled a living triceratops butted its head against the van, nearly toppling it and deeply denting the door.  

There was a faint and distant rumble that quickly grew louder. 

Unseen stentorian footsteps—hundreds and hundreds—caught everyone and everything’s attention. Whatever was making those loud footfalls was just around the corner.

Alain froze. 

Jill, who finally found the car key, quietly inserted it into the ignition. 

Gabriella aimed her camera at the intersection where she thought the—whatever is coming—would appear. 

Bobbie took notes in her Moleskine.

First one, then two, then dozens and hundreds of zombies rushed the intersection, stampeding toward Washington Park. 

The newly created dinosaurs reared up on their back legs, then dropped, the vibrations shattering windows for blocks. The enormous reptiles moved in lockstep toward the zombies and, in an unrestrained feeding frenzy, devoured every one of the undead. 

Gabriella, who’d seen every zombie movie ever made and who had even started her movie career as an extra in World War Z, held her breath as the dinosaurs devoured zombies, something no filmmaker or writer had ever imagined. They would do it because a zombie was no match for an armored reptile. But then what? What happens to the world when the dinosaurs run out of zombies to eat?

North of Albany city center stood Huck Finn’s Playground. Built in 1951, it boasted its original fifty-foot Ferris wheel, a speck of dust compared to the massive 840-foot Ain wheel in Dubai, but still a delightful ride for children and adults and one of Albany’s favorite family weekend destinations. 

The park’s merry-go-round and original horses vied for the most popular ride.

Closed at night, Huck Finn’s Playground was the perfect setting for Dara Reyes’ budget science fiction movie about an alien invasion of Earth. A hands-on director, she fiddled with the old ham radio on the set, also from the 1950s, rotating dials and listening to the radio’s whirrs and squawks. Occasionally, she’d ask, “Hello, hello, is anyone there?” enjoying the sight of the vacuum tubes' red pulses every time she pressed the transmit key. When she found a radio signal that sounded movie-worthy enough, she’d summon the camera and sound crew, who were lounging on a park bench ten feet away, for a close-up of the radio and its sounds.

Her eyes flitted in and out of focus as she twisted the dials. 

Dara jumped when the radio came alive five minutes later, not with beeps and squeals of signals bouncing off the ionosphere but with a low, guttural constellation of fractured consonants of a language Dara had never heard.

Who is that?

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like my story, Sharks.

I publish another newsletter, too, Stray Cats of Japan.