Thirty-Four

At night, the old Bombay Beach drive-in looked even scarier than the horror movies it once played. Empty but for a few rusting wrecks facing a silver screen that hadn't shown a flick in decades, it brooded.

So patient, as if waiting for the movie to begin.

And if it awakened, carnival music would sound again from pole-mounted speakers while cartoon hot dogs and popcorn boxes leered from the screen. A psychedelic pattern heralding coming attractions.

And the winding countdown would start.

Five, four, three, two, one—

Letting his imagination roam free, Max finished mounting Arthur Golden's occult machine on a tripod. He aimed it at the grounds, whistling a happy tune. This space wasn't on his shot list, but he'd hauled over and jury-rigged a few bell lights to create an illuminated area near the tattered silver screen. He hadn't intended for this scene to happen at all, but fate had other plans, and with Frampton and Farmstead already in the can, he enjoyed being ahead of schedule.

He also hadn't intended to put the camera on sticks tonight, but lugging the machine around along with the sound gear had grown tiring. Otherwise, he liked shooting handheld. Sure, the result would look shaky and amateurish on a big screen, but so what. This was guerrilla filmmaking, gritty and raw, a home movie that turns into horror. He could picture a whole genre based on it.

And here comes my leading lady, Max thought.

"Action," he said softly.

Penny enters the frame, body trembling with electric terror, ready to bolt at the slightest threat. In the moonlight, her face glows beautiful and pale as it swivels in search of both enemy and sanctuary.

Like the silver screen, the surrounding darkness, emptiness, and stillness serve as a blank slate for what she fears.

The screaming stopped minutes ago.

She arrived here an angry young woman determined to fix her horrible mistake and make the world right again. The night stripped all that away. Now she is an animal being hunted.

Because the hungry thing she unleashed wants them all.

"Brad?" In a stronger voice: "Jerry?"

She winces at the sound she made. A classic horror movie error, calling out for your friends. Letting the monster know exactly where it can find you.

Still, she does not want to be alone.

Behind the viewfinder, Max watched, spellbound. He'd resolved to shoot these death scenes with the actors working at peak performance, and Ashlee Gibson did not disappoint. She was giving it everything she had and then some.

Oh, the plans I had for you, he thought.

After sacrificing the cast to the camera, Max had intended for Ashlee to join him on a grand tour of the mutilated bodies to score some juicy Final Girl reaction shots. After that, he'd have no choice but to creatively partner with her to gain her buy-in on finishing the film.

He'd pictured her sobbing to the police how the actors had disregarded the safety rules. How Nicholas had forced Max to keep shooting.

A perfect acting role for her, really, covering up a massacre.

Then Ashlee changed the script. She'd caught him by surprise while he loaded fresh film, calling out, Max!

Her voice electrified him with panic. Hands on her hips, the actor had glared at him from the doorway of the ramshackle ruin.

His eyes darted to Frampton's and Farmstead's corpses. Hers followed his gaze, narrowing as they took in the grisly scene.

With a disgusted huff, she demanded he shoot a scene with her.

Max stared at her. "You want what?"

"A scene, Max." Enunciating as if he were hard of hearing or stupid. "You're the director. I'm the lead. I want to do a scene."

"But you're not dying tonight," he told her. "We'll get reaction shots later."

"I'm sick of watching everyone else work while I do nothing!"

"Believe me, you don't—"

"We'll shoot now. I don't care what it is. We shoot now or I walk."

After a few quick mental calculations, Max smiled. It morphed into a fit of laughter.

"You're the star. Whatever you say, my dear."

This solved all the problems that had nagged at him throughout principal photography. With this elegant solution, he no longer had to sacrifice Sally. Last on the kill list, she would realize her dream of becoming a Final Girl, as long as he could keep her away from the lens.

It didn't hurt that he'd also escape Raphael Rodriguez's wrath.

"Good." Ashlee again regarded the corpses with disgust. "I thought we weren't doing makeup tonight."

"It was part of the surprise."

"You want a reaction shot while they're here? That shouldn't be hard."

"No, no," Max said. "I have something else in mind."

Ashlee aimed her trademark mischievous smile at him.

"What's your vision?"

Penny's voice becomes a strangled whisper: "Anyone?"

Only the wind blowing off the lake answers her with its briny stink of dead things.

She says, "It wants us too. It won't let us go."

The terrible screams came from behind. She considers going that way to help, but the amulet lies in the opposite direction. Her face hardens with resolve as she digs deep, past the anger she always relies on, and finds an even deeper spring of strength she never knew she had.

Someone might have died out there at the end of that final scream. They all might be dead, leaving Penny alone with the thing that is hunting them.

But not her. She is not dying, not tonight. She is going to make it.

She is not charismatic like Michael, pure like Katie, strong like Wanda, or smart like Jerry. But she is tough. Tough as nails.

Fists clenched and unafraid, Penny marches off through the rusting hulks straight onto a moonlit patch of earth near the big screen—

"Cut," Ashlee called out. "Let's do it again."

Behind the viewfinder, Max blanched in a flash of white-hot fury that virtually blinded him. He stopped the camera.

"What's wrong?" he yelled back.

Ashlee pointed up at the sky, now filling with the faint aerosol roar of a commercial passenger jet clawing to full altitude out of LAX.

None of it mattered to him. This was the type of moviemaking where you mitigated what you captured as best as possible in postproduction or you learned to live with it. That included ambient sounds.

No one yells "cut" except the director, he raged.

He said, "It's fine. Pick it up anytime!"

"Not ‘pick it up,'" she shouted back. "I said I want to do it again!"

"Just pick it—"

"I'm doing it again! From the top!"

Camera rolling.

Ashlee Gibson is evil. She also isn't.

The whole thing is an act, actually, though over time the cocaine changed that. Over the years, her nasty habit consumed her until the act took over her identity. Deep down, however, she still has the same good heart.

It's all a very sad story, one he'd finally learned after weeks of patient probing into what makes Ashlee Gibson tick.

Years ago, doctors diagnosed her little brother with cancer. They warned the family he had perhaps months to live. Back then, Ashlee was just another hungry nobody, soon to win her lucky break in a lead role in an upcoming indie horror movie about a vengeful spirit named Jack.

She found herself facing a choice of doing the movie or spending time with her brother. A choice of changing her life or supporting someone she dearly loved as his own life rushed to its end.

Ashlee chose her career.

And she never truly forgave herself for it.

Now she sponsors cancer charities and gives as much money as she can. Ashlee Gibson might be a vicious player in the game of Hollywood, and Max and plenty of actors came to hate her guts. But to a whole lot of kids, she matters.

To them, she's a star.

The camera whirred on the sticks, eating film. Hands clenched at her sides, Ashlee stood in the light, a little off to the right so that the composition followed the rule of thirds, with the drive-in screen in the background.

"Max! Hey, I'm talking to you!"

"What?" he called back, stalling.

"I said we're shooting until it's perfect! All night if we have to!"

All the children will be crying when you're gone—

A flash in the ether, followed a moment later by a single cosmic boom.

Max assumed it was more lightning, but it wasn't. Some colossal thing in the sky ripped the air in its descent, producing a heavy whoosh.

He glanced up from the viewfinder to catch a spinning arc of fire and sucked in his breath in anticipation, knowing something wicked this way came but not what form it would take.

From the sound alone, he knew it'd be superb.

Ashlee pointed up into the dark.

"Hey! Max! What is that—"

He saw it tumble out of the black.

His mind blurting: This is going to kill it in the movie trailer.

The burning turbofan plane engine hurtled down like a meteor.

In an instant, the silver screen disappeared in a cloud of high-speed confetti. A moment later, the engine crashed into the earth with a heart-stopping WHUMP and skidded in a dusty avalanche straight into the screaming actor.

The camera jumped a foot off the ground. Ashlee splintered and vanished in the impact with two tons of fast-moving sizzling metal.

Then the engine kept going, rolling past to demolish a chain-link fence and cinder-block shack until at last it slid to a stop atop an exposed foundation.

Stones sheeted down in a crashing, crackling rain.

His heart still stuck in his throat, Max remembered to breathe.

Holy mother, he thought. Unable to say it out loud.

He got it on film. The whole thing.

Overhead, the passenger plane veered to either crash or make an emergency landing back at LAX.

Then the vast brown cloud surged over him.

Coughing on dust, Max said, "Cut!"