Twenty-Two

Max blinked in surprise. "Jordan?"

"Who else?"

No monster, though this was bad enough.

"What do you want?"

"I was wondering if you were up for a general."

Max sat against the door in stunned silence.

"Um," he said. "Sure. Okay."

No Beast. No vengeful spirits. He found this strangely disappointing.

Rising to his feet, he opened the door.

It was Jordan—a torso propped upright on shattered legs, the whole grotesque heap piled atop a litter borne by four charred, roughly humanoid mannequins. Sparks fluttered like fireflies around the walking corpses.

The producer leaned to light a cigar from the embers glowing in one's shoulder. He smirked behind his mirrored shades while he puffed.

"Even dead, I look healthier than you. You're in over your head, Max."

"The camera is offering—"

"I'm not talking about the camera. I am talking about your movie."

The faceless corpses shuffled forward with the crude litter they'd lashed together out of pine saplings, bones, and rags. Bits of burnt flesh crumbled like charcoal onto the carpet as they all squeezed through the doorway and perched the producer on the dinette table. Then they shambled back out into the dark.

Even among the dead, Jordan ran the show.

"I honestly thought you'd hate my guts," said Max. "You know, for, um…"

"Having me murdered?"

"Yes." He swallowed with an audible gulp.

Jordan shrugged with his one working shoulder.

"Yeah, that's something the genre gets all wrong," he said. "When you're dead, you just don't care. It's liberating not to be consumed by want."

"Sounds wonderful." Max shivered.

"I highly recommend it. I think you'd like it yourself. In a lot of ways, you're more like us than you are them."

He frowned. "What's that supposed to—?"

"Anyway, I wouldn't have guessed you'd have the balls to take me out like that. I actually admire the will it took. Maybe you aren't a hack after all. I hope you drained the account before my creditors froze it."

"I did." All the funds were now committed to the project.

"Any trouble with that?"

"I've got lawyers on it. Otherwise, there's this maniac cop who's onto me. He hassled me about your death, but he's nothing I can't handle."

Jordan's face twisted into an ugly grin. "So, the camera. Am I correct in assuming you're going to use it in your new movie?"

"That's the plan," Max replied. "A horror picture that ends with real horror."

"Terrific vision."

"Oh." He'd never heard Jordan so quickly excited about a pitch and was equally surprised at the warm glow it gave him. "I'm happy you think so."

"Even with the original script treatment you sent me, which I'm sure you're using. The end result will be a perfect blend of commercial and art. It's gonna change everything."

"It'll get me arrested. I'll never work as a director again. And the picture won't see the light of day. The MPAA won't rate it, New Line will disavow it, no self-respecting theater will show it. At best, it'll wind up an underground video nasty. We'll be lucky to earn our money back on residual—"

"It's gonna be huge." The producer chuckled.

Max stared at him. "The entire principal cast will die. On-screen."

"Well, yes, except the one that gets away, of course."

"The Final Girl. Right."

"Let me tell—who do you have for it, by the way?"

"Ashlee Gibson."

God help him. If there were any justice in real horror, she'd be the first to shuck her mortal coil and join the camera's witching-hour family. If such justice existed, Sally would be the Final Girl, surviving to face any sequel, just as he'd planned before the camera changed everything.

"Good choice. Now let me tell you about a little picture called Noah's Ark." Jordan toked again on his burning cigar. "One of the first silent pictures with some talkie scenes. Came out in 1928. One of John Wayne's first gigs; he played an extra. For the biblical flood, the filmmakers pumped six hundred thousand gallons of water onto the set to make it real. Three extras drowned. Others suffered broken bones, one so bad his leg wound up amputated. Dozens of ambulances hauled away the injured. The picture grossed two million—fifteen in today's dollars. Fatalities happen, Max. Indie video, porn theaters, private collectors: Who cares where your movie goes to earn out? Plenty of people will hunt it down and pay you anything to see it. The country's full of jaded sickos who can't not look. America is ready for this. What I'm saying is this is going to be a landmark film."

"Well." Max waved away Jordan's smoke cloud. "Either way, I'm committed to this picture. But you're right, I'm in over my head producing as well as directing. I'm running myself ragged, and we only just started shooting."

Starting tomorrow, things would really get rough. Weeks in the woods, a soundstage in Burbank, and finally the desert, where he planned to hunt his cast among the ruins of Bombay Beach.

The producer smirked again. "It was almost worth dying just to see you realize I actually worked for a living. Who have you got?"

He told Jordan he'd hired as director of photography Spence MacDougal, who was talented if unreliable, being an irascible alcoholic. The round, cheerful, and perpetually sweaty Frank Boston as his soundman. The list went on: first assistant director, production designer, wardrobe, prop master, key grip, gaffer. None of them the best but certainly the best he could recruit on short notice.

From there, he talked schedule, budget, permits. The more Max detailed the production, the more excited he became, until he felt a little light-headed. Sharing all these mundane details aloud gave his new project substance and form.

His movie was happening. His dream movie, his perfect horror movie.

Yes, it did show terrific vision.

Inspecting his dwindling cigar with growing impatience, Jordan responded with a vague grunt. He may have died by exploding manhole, but some things hadn't changed. When Max finished talking, the producer recommended experienced line producers to help with the hiring, contracts, and other particulars, and then he got to what he really wanted to talk about.

"The whole project hinges on you being able to use the camera," Jordan added. "Nobody would ever call you a touchy-feely kind of guy, babe. You're not exactly brimming with brotherly love. It's making us nervous."

"Us?"

"All of us here. Well, most of us." Judging by his irritated tone, he'd met Helga Frost. "We're interested to see some fresh faces around the campfire, so to speak. The only thing the dead truly want is company."

"I learned some acting techniques to foster empathy," Max said.

"Will that be enough?"

"Well, it more or less worked with, um, you."

Jordan stabbed the air with his cigar. "You have to be absolutely sure. I suggest looking into yoga techniques designed to inspire universal love. Hypnosis, maybe. Get to know your cast on a personal level and develop some real empathy—outside your wheelhouse, I know, but you need to make the effort."

Max frowned again. "Hey—"

"What I'm telling you is go full spectrum. Explore. Hollywood is filled with cranks and cults loaded with brainwashing expertise. Find the best that works for you. And then run another test before the big night at Bombay Beach."

"Another test?" The prospect had Max blanching, caught between loving the idea of making a horror movie with real death but still revolted by real murder.

"Pick an actor you deem particularly annoying and tell him you want to do a screen test for another project coming up after Wishes wraps," the producer told him. "Then see how good you are at using the camera. Don't focus on the result, only the caring. Learn how to love your fellow man. The camera will do the rest."

Max thought maybe he should visit Dan Womack again.

"I might have someone in mind," he said.

"How about Sally Priest?" Jordan smacked his lips. "A very lively lady."

"No."

"No?"

"She deserves her chance to be on-screen first. I owe her that much."

Max had planned it all out—keeping his promise by inviting Sally to the audition for the role she wanted, after which Dorothy would drop the hammer that she wasn't busty or tall enough for the role, whatever worked. He'd give the cast to the camera, she'd go on living, everyone would win.

Then he'd watched her perform her scene. At first, it was satisfying enough—she'd grown quite a bit as an actor since Mutant Dawn—but then near the end, she appeared to dig deep and bring real fire to the lines.

I want to be in this movie, she'd said. More than anything.

He simply couldn't say no to her.

"You like her, don't you," Jordan said.

"She's special," Max blustered.

"What I mean is if you like her, you can save her for later. Pick someone you hate and don't mind replacing. Knowing you, that should be a sizable pool to choose from. Then get it done, and quick, or you'll have to do reshoots. Wishes is gonna be a blockbuster. Then we make it a franchise, baby. A whole new art form."

We're gonna make a killing, Max expected him to add, but he didn't. Instead, the producer whistled. The meeting was over.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" Max asked.

"I'm gonna go haunt MGM," said Jordan. "Oh, before I take off, I should mention you have one more thing to track."

"What's that?" Even dead, Jordan imposed his conditions.

"I sold a product placement contract with Frito-Lay. You owe them a scene where their new Italian Cheese Potato Chips are displayed in a prominent way. If you could make the character an Italian American stereotype, that'd be terrific."

Shedding ash everywhere, the scorched crew shuffled back into the room and hoisted the producer's litter onto their crumbling shoulders.

"Best of luck, babe."

Then he was gone, leaving the cigar stub still pluming in a motel coffee mug.

Max breathed relief. Jordan held no grudge against him. He wanted to help. Despite his grating personality, the producer knew all the right people and how to twist their arms. With his invaluable knowledge, Max would get If Wishes Could Kill shot, cut, and even distributed.

He frowned, irritated at the gnawing idea that he still worked for the man. And now doubly annoyed he had to put goddamn potato chips in his movie.

The door pounded again. The hinges cracked.

Max rose from the bed.

"Okay, okay," he groused. "You know, you can just knock like a normal—"

Loud as a gunshot, the door popped off the frame to fly across the room. Raphael stomped inside in leather jacket and boots, his square ghoulish face a mask of fury, the lawn dart bristling in his eye socket.

"I am very disappointed with you, Maximillian."

Max cowered on the mattress. "What the hell, Raph?"

"All month, I went to parties and watched. I watched people do enough drugs to kill elephants, I watched an orgy, I watched an actress accidentally murder this dude, and then I drove out to the desert with her to watch her bury the body."

"Okay—"

"Then I went to the movies and saw everything that's out now."

"Okay," Max repeated.

"Actually, it wasn't that different than when I was alive."

"That's good, right?"

"I had nobody to share it with. Nobody cool. Have you seen the mopes out there? Being dead is lonesome, man. Even more lonesome than living."

"I'm sorry, but—"

"You promised me companionship. You said you'd give me Ashlee Gibson."

"I can't," Max said. "I'm sorry! I had to cast her as the Final Girl."

Raphael stared at him with his undamaged eye.

"Why would you do something like that, Maximillian?"

"Because after working with her on three Jack pictures, I honestly can't stand her—"

Max yelped as the special makeup effects artist gripped the front of his robe and hauled him upright as easily as hefting one of the lowbrow beers he'd favored while alive. In death, Raphael had superhuman strength. The puckered wound around the dart leaked a dollop of bloody jelly that slid down his stubbled cheek.

Corn syrup, cocoa powder, and food coloring, Max's brain blurted. Only this wasn't fake, it was grossly all too real.

"You owe me, you son of a bitch," his old friend growled inches from Max's face, which froze in a silent scream. The man's breath smelled rank as an open grave. "That wasn't a Hollywood promise you gave me, it was a real one. I don't care if you hate her guts. Figure it out. Fall in love with her the way you did with Sally Priest—"

Max gasped, "I'm not in love with Sally."

"Yeah? Then why didn't you cast her as the Final Girl?"

"It's complicated."

"Remember what I said I could do to you? What I could tear off, and where I might shove it?"

"Please don't," Max said.

Raphael dropped him back onto the bed and patted his shoulders, smoothing out the wrinkles he'd made in the bathrobe. "Take it easy. I won't hurt you, Maximillian. You're the only real friend I got."

"Thank you. I'll figure something out. I swear to God."

The man already had begun walking back to the door. Pausing, he said softly over his shoulder, "I know. I know you will. In a town of liars and phonies and frauds, Max Maurey stands alone as a man of his word."

He vanished into the night, where he let out a piercing whistle. A bestial growl filled the air, loud as Jack's Corvette.

"Oh no," Max groaned.

A furry rust-colored shape bolted into the room and blurred toward him, its flapping head emitting a bloodcurdling snarl.

"No, Suse! Bad, bad girl—"

He screamed as teeth sharp as razors chomped into his ankle and dragged him bouncing and flying through the night and past the pines straight into the flames.