Midnight Movie: A Novel (25 page)

So while all this
ding
fucking
dong
ing was going on, I reached under the bed for my gun, but, as usual, it wasn’t there. Still in my damn office in the coach house, still in my damn safe. But the doorbell didn’t care; it kept right on ringing. So without putting on a robe or anything, I walked downstairs, snuck out the back door, and went out back to rescue my firearm. It took me five tries to get the damn combination of that safe dialed in properly, a
fact that you might blame on my minor buzz. And sure, the buzz might’ve had something to do with it, but that little lockbox was a piece of shit—you get what you pay for, man—so you can’t put it
all
on the drink.

At any rate, I finally got it open, and I reached in there, and there was
nothing
. Okay, not
strictly
nothing: My emergency five g’s were there in a big yellow envelope, but the gun was gone. The doorbell was still dinging and donging, and I was weaponless and wearing only my boxers, and you can imagine how freaked I was.

I ran back upstairs, went into my bedroom, got down on my hands and knees, and dived under the bed, just in case I missed the gun the first time. Nothing. I banged my head while I was crawling out. Raised a pretty good knot. A little trickle of blood, even. But just a little one.

And then it dawned on me: I’d gone to the shooting range the week before. That’s a can’t-miss, every-other-week thing for me, because you have to stay sharp with the trigger in case you need to protect yourself in a crisis. The thing is, it doesn’t matter one goddamn bit how good of a goddamn shooter you are if your goddamn gun is in your goddamn glove compartment.

The bell kept ringing and ringing, and I had a feeling that fucker wasn’t leaving, so I called 911 and told the dispatcher what the deal was. I thought I sounded calm, but apparently not: The dude told me to stop screaming at him and to lay low, and they’d have a man there in a few.

I lay on the floor for three or four or five or ten minutes, and nada. No screaming sirens, no tires burning rubber in my driveway, no bullhorns telling the doorbell dude to stand down. Just
ding dong ding dong ding
damn
dong
. Finally I thought,
Screw it, you’ve had a nice life, Tobe, now go deal with this yourself
. I tiptoed down the stairs; made my way through my living room, twice stubbing the shit out of my toe; then peeked out the front window and was greeted by a vision that weirded me out like a motherfucker.

There, on my porch, pounding my doorbell with both of his fists, was Gary Church, looking like he’d just walked through a minefield. As I walked over to the door, I kind of laughed at how freaked I’d gotten. I mean, just because someone unexpectedly shows up at your doorstep in the middle of the night doesn’t mean they’re there to kill you.

I opened the door and said, “Gary, what the fuck, man?” He didn’t stop punching the doorbell:
ding dong ding dong ding
damn
dong
. I had to yell at the dude:
“Gary, what the fuck?!
”

He didn’t answer. He moaned. And I was wrong about his appearance. He didn’t look like he’d walked through a minefield. He looked like he’d spent three years in the shit in Saigon.

When your stomach is bothering you, sometimes somebody’ll tell you that you’re looking a little green. Well, Gary was a
lot
green, like almost olive, the color of army fatigues. His hair—what little of it was left—was matted and clumped; it looked like he’d tried and failed to grow dreadlocks, or maybe like he had on a really shitty Medusa wig. His mouth was wide open, and he was missing most of his teeth, and his tongue appeared to have been, I don’t know,
forked
or something, as if he’d had a tongue piercing go really fucking awry. His right ear was dangling by the lobe, and his left arm was hanging off by what looked like a single piece of skin, but that wasn’t the worst part, if you can believe it. No, the worst part was the boils on his face. I swear to God, those fuckers were alive. They were erupting, like miniature volcanoes, and the shit that was oozing out of those volcanoes was steaming, and that steam smelled like roadkill to the fiftieth power.

I wanted to invite him in, but I
didn’t
want to invite him in, you know what I mean? This
was
Gary Church, but it
wasn’t
Gary Church, and I didn’t want the not-Gary to bring his bad juju into my living room.

He finally realized I was standing there and stopped ringing
the bell. I said all quietly, “Gary, what’s happening, brother? Actually, what
happened
?
”

He ripped off his arm and pointed it at his face, then moaned again.

I told him, “I don’t know what that means, man.” I gagged a little bit. The smell was getting to me.

He then hit himself in the head with his arm. Some of his facial ooze splashed onto my drawers, and I jumped out of those boxers quick-like, right before the ooze touched my skin. This made for one hell of a tableau: me, bare-assed at my front door, and my dearest childhood friend holding his dismembered left arm in his right hand, and some sort of molten pus leaking from his cheeks, and forehead, and nose, and chin, and his ear swaying in the wind like a pendulum.
Wonderful
, I thought,
this is what you get for making
Chainsaw,
asshole. Ain’t payback a bitch
?

Finally, Gary said something I could make out. Kind of: “Shoooooooot me.”

I said, “Um, pardon me? Could you repeat that?”

He did, except louder and longer.
“Shooooooooooooooooooot meeeeeeeeeeeee
.”

I said, “Brother, I don’t get what you’re saying.” I actually got what he was saying loud and clear, but I didn’t want to tell him that. I then continued. “Nine-one-one’s on the way, man. They’ll get you to the hospital. We’ll get you fixed up.” I didn’t know if Cedars-Sinai had a treatment center for explosive face goop and leprous limbs, but they’d sure as shit be able to do more than I could.

Before I could go on, Gary tore off his own left leg and, while hopping on one foot, started beating himself on the chest with that damn leg. Each time he hit it, he’d say,
“Shoot me
.” He sounded like an Indian chanting around a campfire: “Shoo-hoo-hoot me! Shoo-hoo-hoot me! Shoo-hoo-hoot me!” The pus was flying
everywhere, so I said, “Screw this, man,” and ran out to the car to get my gun. I mean, who am I to refuse a friend’s dying request?

Naturally, right at that moment, who rolls into my driveway? You guessed it: a police car and an ambulance. Great timing, right?

Two cops ran up to the front door, a big Asian dude and a bigger black dude, and what a scene they came upon: naked film director and almost-limbless actor. One of the cops pulled his gun—which I can’t say I blame him for; I’d have probably done the same thing—and asked to see some ID. I patted my pockets—or where my pockets would’ve been had I had some damn clothes on—and said, “I seem to have left my wallet in my other pants, detective.”

Before I could tell them who I was, Gary hopped over to the cops and, blurry-fast, used his dismembered leg to break both of their necks—two quick swings,
pow, pow
. After they fell to the ground, Gary decapitated the black cop with his bare hands, then stuck his tongue up through the cop’s neck and slurped, and slurped, and slurped.

My dude was eating the other dude’s brains. My dude was a zombie. A motherfucking zombie.

I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to get a video camera. But mostly, I wanted to put on some clothes. As it turned out, I did none of the above.

While Gary was pigging out on the second cop, I said as calmly as I possibly could, “So, um, Gary. How long you been undead?”

He tossed the black cop’s head across the lawn, leaned over, ripped off the Asian officer’s noggin, and again said, “Shoo-hoo-hoot me! Shoo-hoo-hoot me! Shoo-hoo-hoot me!”

I noticed that the dudes in the ambulance were staying put; I hoped they were calling for backup, or maybe somebody who could do an exorcism, or maybe my pal Stephen King, because if anybody on earth could figure a way out of this mess, it’d be Uncle Stevie.

I
really
wanted to shoot him, but
really
I
didn’t
want to, you know what I mean? I told Gary, “That’s asking a lot, man.”

He said it again:
“Shoo
-hoo-hoot me!
Shoo
-hoo-hoot me!
Shoo
-hoo-hoot me!” Yeah, man, it was a goddamn Indian chant.

I wanted to put him out of his misery, but it was still Gary’s face, and, well, shit, you try shooting your oldest friend. It’s a bitch to pull that trigger, even if he is a motherfucking zombie. I said, “I can’t. Can’t do it. Nope. No way. No how. We’ll get somebody to help you.” I pointed at the ambulance. “Those guys are on the case.” I didn’t believe they were on the case—my guess was that they were hiding under the dashboard, which is the same thing I would’ve done—but I had to say something to make him feel better.

It didn’t make him feel better, not one bit. Hell, at that point, he probably didn’t even have any feelings. He finished up with the second cop, then fell to his knee, lifted his dismembered leg to the sky, and bayed at the moon. I thought,
Great, now he’s a werewolf zombie
.

But he was my friend, and I had to at least try to help out, and going to the car, pulling the gun out of the glove compartment, and plugging him in the brain stem would’ve been the easiest and probably the most merciful way out. I said, “Okay, Gary, settle down. We can fix this. I promise.”

He got up, hopped over to the ambulance, and banged his face against the front windshield. Then he did it again. And again. And again, until the thing finally shattered. The whole time he was yelling,
“Shoo
-hoo-hoot me!
Shoo
-hoo-hoot me!
Shoo
-hoo-hoot me!”

At this point, I figured it was time. It would be best to put us both out of his living hell. So I went to the car, pulled out my pistola, and put one bullet through my oldest friend’s heart and another through what I hoped was his brain stem.

My aim wasn’t too good. After all, I was crying the entire time.

One of the paramedics poked his head out of the broken window and said, “Can we help you?”

Right then, I heard the phone ringing from back in the house. I told the paramedic, “If you can come up with some way to help me right now, you are a saint. I’m going to grab this call.”

If rule number one in the Hooper household is “No visitors,” rule number two is “No phone calls after ten o’clock.” If you call at 10:01, you’re getting the machine. But there were all kinds of rules being broken that night, so I picked it up and said, “What?” And I said it
loud
. Some would say I even barked it.

I heard a second of heavy breathing, then a guy’s voice: “Toeb?”

I said, “It’s Toe
-bee
, you dildo, not Toeb. Who’s this?”

“I don’t know if you remember me. Dude McGee. Via Austin, Texas. The
Destiny Express
guy. And I’m pretty sure it’s Toeb, not To-bee.”

Before I could get out a single word, the smell of rancid luncheon meat filled my nose, and I passed the fuck out.

When I came to, I had one of those it-must’ve-been-a-dream moments. There was no way that I shot and killed a zombied, rancid, pus-covered version of Gary Church in my driveway … and while I was naked, yet. Then I looked down at myself and realized I was indeed naked, and I was lying on the floor, and the telephone was right next to my shoulder, and the earpiece was alive, and it was all real.

The phone started yelling at me: “Hello?! Hellooooo?! Mr. Hoopster? Helllllllllooooooooo?!”

I said, “It’s Hooper. Not Hoopster.”

The voice said, “No, I’m pretty sure it’s Hoopster.”

Then I remembered: Dude McGee. I said, “Why in the name of fuck are you calling me at who-knows-what-time-it-is
A.M
.? It’s the dead of morning in Austin, asshole.”

McGee said, “Oh, I’m not in Texas anymore. It smells something awful down there. Too many fires.” I chuckled despite myself. When you hear a guy who smelled as bad as Dude McGee complaining about the air quality, you can’t help but laugh, no matter how many zombies are decomposing in your front yard. He said, “I’m up in Vegas now.”

I said, “Why Vegas?” I didn’t really care why Vegas, but, like I mentioned before, us southerners are polite even when we don’t want to be.

He said, “It’s one of the only cities west of the Mississippi that seems to be completely virus free.”

I said, “What do you mean ‘virus free’?” I wasn’t being polite this time. I’m not a fan of germs, so when the topic of pandemics comes up, I’m all ears.

He said, “What do you mean ‘what do you mean’? Don’t you surf online? Don’t you like crackpot websites? Don’t you like conspiracy theories? Don’t you pay attention to the world
around you? You’re a filmmaker. How can you make movies for the people if you don’t know what the people are doing?”

I said, “I’ve been busy.”