"Darren!" Linda's voice was raised several notches above her usual petulant whine. "I absolutely cannot work under these conditions! I can only do so much with someone whose skin is naturally blue. And when I tried putting lipstick on her, she bit me!" Linda dramatically held up one hand to show a smallish bite mark. The medic looked at it worriedly.

"Add a mortician's makeup kit to that list," Phil said thoughtfully. "Hell, bring a mortician. Might make more sense and we won't have to pay Union scale."

Linda started to sputter in outrage and Phil snarled, "Listen, Linda. If you can't do your job, I'm going to get someone who can. Give me any shit and you'll be working Craft Services. And I'm not talking about behind the table."

"Maybe we could sew Mara's lips shut," the makeup assistant suggested with the air of one used to being ignored.

Darren considered the idea, grateful for even this token safety measure with which to salve his increasingly battered conscience. "Just might work!"

The makeup assistant looked absurdly gratified.

"Darren, it has to look like she's really talking," Phil protested. "How the hell are you going to loop in her dialogue realistically if her mouth doesn't move?"

Darren shot Phil a resentful glance, hating the fact that his producer was right.

"Okay," he amended. "Let's try sewing the corners so she can't get a good bite radius going." Phil nodded his approval and Darren continued, "Melissa, talk to wardrobe and see what they can do." Turning back to the mousy assistant he said, "Good thinking, honey. Do you think you can do something with Mara's makeup so we can get the next scene shot before we lose the light?"

The assistant nodded, eager to prove her worth. She scurried back to Mara's trailer as the protesting Linda was led off to be treated by the medic.

Darren resumed his conversation with Melissa and Phil. "We can sew the new extras' mouths completely shut. They don't have to talk. And make sure the PA who are we using?"

Melissa checked her list. "Tony."

"Good. He's smart. Make sure he's got a decent gun."

"Got it." Melissa set off to make sure everything on her list was done with her usual efficiency. Then she stopped and turned back. "Darren, shouldn't we send someone to ride shotgun with Tony? They'd stand a better chance of getting back safely."

"Phil, can we spare the extra hand or-" Darren stopped abruptly. "Jesus, I don't believe I said that. Of course we can spare someone else. Whatever it takes to bring them back safely."

"And more quickly," Phil agreed. "It'd be hell to try and find more good production assistants."

Darren ignored that. "Okay, let's get moving."

"Yeah," Phil said. "We should get going on Derrick's death scene while he's still got some life in him."

The scene went well. Derrick shivered with a real fever no amount of acting (at least on his part) could emulate. His skin was pasty, sweat poured off of him in rivulets, and he seemed to be suffering from as much pain as a plague victim in the last stages of bubonic plague would have felt. Darren was delighted with the results ... on a purely artistic level, of course.

The medic stood at the sidelines throughout, wearing an expression that alternated between disapproval and downright horror. She had vehemently protested the decision to shoot a scene with the sick man but Derrick himself had insisted. He was a professional, by God, and he would act as long as he could breathe; a state lasting approximately ten minutes after they finished shooting his death scene. Darren immediately had someone from Wardrobe stitch the dead actor's lips partially shut, consoling himself with the thought that he'd given Derrick the chance to die with his acting boots on, so to speak.

"You are using buttonhole thread, aren't you?" he asked the woman pushing a needle in and out of Derrick's lips.

She looked up in annoyance. "Please. I do know my job."

Several hours later the production assistants returned from their run, loaded down with all the items on their list, including a dozen large coolers full of dry ice, several intimidating rifles, and a star-struck mortician. The mortician was sent off to see what he could do with Mara as the young assistant hadn't been able to make her look life-like.

The medic appropriated the medical supplies and immediately injected a shivering Linda with a hefty dose of antibiotics as she asked, "You're not allergic to Penicillin, are you?"

Linda shook her head and promptly passed out.

Darren, in the meantime, sent several coolers of dry ice over to Mara's trailer to try and slow down the natural rotting process. He figured three more good days ought to see the film finished. Then she could rot at will. He turned his attention back to Tony and the rest of the supplies. "You got the collars?"

Tony grinned and held up a handful of heavy steel collars. "I know a couple of dominatrices who didn't mind lending their gear. What are we using 'em for?"

By the time Tony and another P.A. rounded up a dozen extras from the outside and locked them in one of the steel-sheeted storage units, the mortician had finished his makeup job on Mara. He beamed proudly as the actress was led out on a leash by one of the heftier grips.

"One of my better jobs, if I do say so myself," the mortician bragged. "Doesn't she look peaceful?"

She did indeed.

Darren rolled his eyes. "That's just great, but I don't need peaceful. She's supposed to be reacting to the death of her lover, not going for a drive in the country. Get my drift?"

The mortician sniffed. "I'll see what I can do."

"All right, people," Darren yelled. "Let's call it for the night. We'll pick this up tomorrow. Call time is six a.m.!"

A brief listen to the radio told Darren that things were not getting any better. The ratio of dead to living in Los Angeles was rapidly favoring the dead. Citizens were advised to make their way to rescue shelters set up around the city. Darren thought the walled confines of Plateau Pictures were about as good a protected shelter as anywhere else, and the other members of the production seemed to feel the same way; no one had left the studio when they'd wrapped for the day. Darren was happy that he could offer some safety to his cat and crew. He figured they deserved some compensation for the notoriously long hours that low budget productions demanded.

Tomorrow would be another sixteen-hour grind. Darren just hoped he'd be able to tell the live members of the production from the dead ones by the end of it.

The next day's shooting went relatively well although controlling the dead extras proved somewhat difficult. Several of the live extras were scratched and a production assistant bitten before all the ghouls had their mouths sewn shut. One of them ripped out the thread and managed to make a healthy lunch out of the makeup assistant. Phil took good look at her corpse and decided there was enough left to reanimate. "Someone put her in the extras pen."

Darren winced, but tried to look at it from the angle that it would save Tony from having to procure more bodies from the outside. He really didn't want to risk losing the kid to the extras en. Tony was the best P.A. Darren had ever worked with and he had that spark, the same sort of idealism that he, Darren, was rapidly losing. Darren wanted to see that spark (not to mention Tony's health) preserved.

All in all Darren was quite pleased with the acting jobs he was getting from his ghoulish thespians. They were easier to deal with than some of the crew, who were complaining about the smell. Wardrobe was especially vocal when it came to costuming the dead.

"Do you know how hard it is to get blood stains out of this material?" snapped the wardrobe girl who'd stitched Derrick's mouth shut. Darren hoped she'd become eligible for the extras pen. She wasn't that good of a seamstress either.

The medic, meanwhile, frantically tried to treat those who'd been bitten or scratched by the zombies, but the antibiotics didn't seem to be working.

On the upside, the dry ice was working well enough to prevent Mara and Derrick from degenerating too quickly. The hot lights were a bit of a problem, but that was what stand-ins were for.

Darren was coming to the reluctant conclusion that the zombie plague could be the best thing that had ever happened to his career.

At the end of the day Darren eagerly ran the dailies to see if they lived up to his expectations. Even Phil and Melissa were impressed with the improved quality of the stars' performances.

"Mara really looks horrified," Melissa commented during one scene.

"I think she was really hungry, " Phil said. "That was the scene we shot before lunch."

Darren felt a warm glow suffuse his entire being as the certainty that this, the end result, really was worth all of the ... unpleasant things he'd had to do; the compromises he'd been forced to make. Sometimes true art could only be born out of the womb of horror.

Ignoring the pretentious tone of that last thought, Darren continued to watch the screen.

When they'd finished watching the dailies, Phil and Melissa headed off to get some supper while Darren resound the reel to view his masterpiece again in private. He'd only gotten through five minutes of footage, however, when the door opened and the light switched on.

Darren turned around in annoyance. "Didn't you see the red light?" he snapped before his eyes adjusted to the brightness. He put a lid on his temper as soon as he registered who'd entered the room.

It was Gerald Fife, dressed in his usual relaxed-fit jeans and silk shirt that did nothing to hide his middle-aged paunch or create the desired effect of borrowed youth.

"Gerald," Darren said expansively, confident that he at last had something of quality to show his executive producer. Have a seat and check out the dailies."

"Sorry, ain't got the time." Gerald sat down despite his words. "I'm just here to give you the news in person. Didn't want you to hear it through Phil." He pulled out a cigar and lit it.

Darren's heart plunged down into his stomach. "What news?" he asked, although he thought he knew the answer.

"I'm pulling the plug." Gerald took a long pull on his cigar, exhaling with obvious relish.

"What? Why?"

"This whole dead thing, Darren. It's depressing. The investors aren't going to want a movie about the plague when the viewing public is already down about the zombies. No percentage in it."

"Jesus Christ, Gerald, you've got to take a look at these dailies!" Darren gestured toward the screen. "We've really got something here!"

Gerald shook his head with finality. "Sorry, Darren. No go. We're in this business to make money. No one's going to want to see a movie with a bunch of rotting bodies when they can look out their window and see the same thing for free."

"But-"

Gerald held up one hand, sending a plume of cigar smoke wafting in Darren's face. "But me no buts, kid, I ain't got the time. I wanna get out of here while I still can. Traffic's a bitch out there." He took a puff of his cigar." Sorry, kid. But you know what they say; when the going gets tough, the tough get going. And I'm getting the fuck out of Dodge." Gerald stood up. "Now where's Mara? I wanna give her the news myself."

Staring bleakly at the screen, Darren said, "She's locked in her trailer."

"Locked in?" Gerald's voice rose in outrage. "What the hell are you talking about, locked in?"

Darren started fumbling for an explanation. Suddenly his train of thought jumped to another track as something irrevocably snapped in his brain. He wasn't sure if it was his conscience or his sanity-maybe it was both-but it no longer mattered. Only the film mattered.

He stood up. "Sorry, Gerald. I meant she's locked herself in her trailer. Maybe you can help out."

"Jesus!" Gerald stubbed out his cigar. "What the hell did you do to her?"

"She's unhappy with the quality of the food we've had lately," Darren explained as he followed Gerald out of the screening room bungalow towards Mara's trailer. "It's been hard to get Cristal these days."

"On your budget it should be impossible, " Gerald snapped. "Damn good thing I'm shutting this down. The investors would have my balls for breakfast if they saw shit like that on the budget sheets. Jesus, what the hell is that smell?"

They were passing the warehouse housing the extras. Despite the heavy steel walls, the smell and the noise of the rotting extras gave the area a distinctly charnel atmosphere.

"Some meat gone bad," Darren said vaguely.

"What the hell are they doing in there?"

"Rehearsing one of the big crowd scenes."

"What a reek! How can anyone eat around here?" Gerald stepped up his pace. Darren matched it.

Mara's trailer sat before them, a steady unsatisfied moan emanating from inside.

"Jesus!" Gerald exclaimed. "She sounds like she's starving!"

Darren bounded up the steps before Gerald could see the industrial strength padlock on the trailer door. As he inserted the key, he tapped on the door and called, "Mara, Gerald's here to talk to you about a few things. You're going to have to unlock the door and let him in."

A rising moan answered him, along with the sound of Mara lurching through the trailer towards the sound of fresh meat.

"Let me up there, you asshole." Gerald pushed his way up the stairs just as Darren managed to remove the padlock. Slipping it into his pocket, he retreated to the ground and out of Gerald's way.

"Mara, baby, it's Gerald. Open the door, sweetheart! Uncle Gerald will take care of you."

Mara scrabbled at the door from the inside, moaning pitifully.

"Chris, she can't even talk!" Gerald said in horrified tones. He grabbed the door handle and turned it. "Don't worry, baby, I'll feed you."

"I bet you will," Darren said cheerfully as Gerald opened the door. He watched as Mara grabbed hold of the executive producer's arms and pulled him inside. Darren helped with a well-placed push on Gerald backside, then quickly slammed the door shut and replaced the padlock with a decisive snap.

"You know what they say," Darren called out as Gerald began screaming. "When the going gets tough, the tough get eaten!"

Darren smiled to himself. His first film, and it looked like he'd even get final cut.

THE END.

Belinda Frisch PAYBACK.

ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY EDITION.

By Belinda Frisch Copyright 2012 by Belinda Frisch All rights reserved. This e-book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Edited by A.J. Brown This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this e-book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead (unless explicitly noted) is merely coincidental.

When those closest to you break your trust, the only option is payback.

Six months before an outbreak of viral plague turned the residents of Strandville into a mob of flesh-hungry undead, Max Reid was a new father struggling to overcome a gambling addiction for the sake of his family.

Desperate to keep his secret, out of work, and on the losing end of a debt large enough to get him killed, Max turned to Mitch, a Nixon Center guard and the closest thing he had to a friend, to make the money he needed to break-even. What he didn't know was why Mitch was so eager to help him or how far he'd have to go for the cash.

Max Reid is about to find out a terrible secret that will change his life and push him to destroy others'.