his girlfriend from zombies. Just don’t let it go to your head. At least not until we see how you do parallel parking.”
Chapter 15
When Fred had gotten home, he had immediately locked the door, turned out all the lights, and headed into the basement. He rummaged around in the basement bedroom closet until he found his dad’s old hunting rifle and a partial box of shells. It was only a .22, which his father had used to shoot squirrels and for target practice. It was the first gun that Fred’s father had let him shoot. It wasn’t powerful by a long shot, but, as his father had explained a long time ago, the ammo was cheap.
Fred loaded the twenty round magazine, shoved it into the rifle’s underbelly, and chambered a round. He plopped down on the basement couch and switched on the TV. Every channel was broadcasting the same thing: an EAS alert.
He rooted through the DVDs on the shelf next to the TV. They were mostly horror flicks, all the classics he had grown up on; all the Living Dead movies (including remakes), C.H.U.D. was there, along with Night of the Comet , The Evil Dead, Night of the Creeps , and several dozen others. He slid Night of the Living Dead (the original black-and-white version) into the DVD player. He had always thought it was a little cheesy. He had first seen it when he was six, which would have been back in ’88 or ’89, and at that point it had been out for nearly twenty years already. Even the movies that had come out in the 80’s and 90’s, the ones that had shaped his young mind, seemed cheesy now.
Back when he was in high school, before he had resigned himself to the fact that he would be taking over the family business, he had toyed with the idea of making movies; about making the same cheesy schlock flicks he and his friends had loved growing up.
The problem was, he wasn’t all that creative. A shining example of this was a concept he’d had about a psychopathic delivery guy that went around murdering his customers. Instead of getting their pizza, the would-be victim would be killed in some creative, over-the-top way. Fred had come up with the highly original title of Pizza Delivery Man . The movie’s catchphrase was: Delivering murder – with extra cheese!
The villain of the movie, Guido Rossi, was a man who had been picked on and bullied relentlessly when he was in school. Ten years later, he still worked at his father’s pizza joint, but after all that bullying, something had snapped inside of Guido, and he was now a homicidal maniac. His entire purpose in life revolved around seeking revenge on all the jocks, cheerleaders, and cool kids that had picked on him in high school. The twist was that these innocent (or not so innocent if you looked at it from Guido’s point of view) customers would order a pizza, but instead of getting their pizza, they would find Guido on their doorstep, and end up getting killed in any number of gruesomely clever ways (the best of which was Guido using a pizza cutter to cut the former head cheerleader’s body into equal slices). Afterward, to really rub it in, he would camp out near the victim’s body and eat their pizza.
Needless to say, Pizza Delivery Man had never seen the light of day. Fred had written a detailed treatment, shoved it in a drawer, and had mostly forgotten about it. Every once in a while, he would pull it out and read it, absently wondering if there was any way to salvage it. Fred had always blamed it on lack of funding, but it really came down to something his mother always told him: you never follow through, Freddie. You’re perfectly content to half-ass your way through life. When I first met your father, he was the same way. Always starting, never finishing. But he eventually came to his senses, so maybe there’s hope for you yet.
Hours passed. He polished off a six pack of Keystone Light without ever letting go of the rifle. He tried not to think about
Chapter 15
When Fred had gotten home, he had immediately locked the door, turned out all the lights, and headed into the basement. He rummaged around in the basement bedroom closet until he found his dad’s old hunting rifle and a partial box of shells. It was only a .22, which his father had used to shoot squirrels and for target practice. It was the first gun that Fred’s father had let him shoot. It wasn’t powerful by a long shot, but, as his father had explained a long time ago, the ammo was cheap.
Fred loaded the twenty round magazine, shoved it into the rifle’s underbelly, and chambered a round. He plopped down on the basement couch and switched on the TV. Every channel was broadcasting the same thing: an EAS alert.
He rooted through the DVDs on the shelf next to the TV. They were mostly horror flicks, all the classics he had grown up on; all the Living Dead movies (including remakes), C.H.U.D. was there, along with Night of the Comet , The Evil Dead, Night of the Creeps , and several dozen others. He slid Night of the Living Dead (the original black-and-white version) into the DVD player. He had always thought it was a little cheesy. He had first seen it when he was six, which would have been back in ’88 or ’89, and at that point it had been out for nearly twenty years already. Even the movies that had come out in the 80’s and 90’s, the ones that had shaped his young mind, seemed cheesy now.
Back when he was in high school, before he had resigned himself to the fact that he would be taking over the family business, he had toyed with the idea of making movies; about making the same cheesy schlock flicks he and his friends had loved growing up.
The problem was, he wasn’t all that creative. A shining example of this was a concept he’d had about a psychopathic delivery guy that went around murdering his customers. Instead of getting their pizza, the would-be victim would be killed in some creative, over-the-top way. Fred had come up with the highly original title of Pizza Delivery Man . The movie’s catchphrase was: Delivering murder – with extra cheese!
The villain of the movie, Guido Rossi, was a man who had been picked on and bullied relentlessly when he was in school. Ten years later, he still worked at his father’s pizza joint, but after all that bullying, something had snapped inside of Guido, and he was now a homicidal maniac. His entire purpose in life revolved around seeking revenge on all the jocks, cheerleaders, and cool kids that had picked on him in high school. The twist was that these innocent (or not so innocent if you looked at it from Guido’s point of view) customers would order a pizza, but instead of getting their pizza, they would find Guido on their doorstep, and end up getting killed in any number of gruesomely clever ways (the best of which was Guido using a pizza cutter to cut the former head cheerleader’s body into equal slices). Afterward, to really rub it in, he would camp out near the victim’s body and eat their pizza.
Needless to say, Pizza Delivery Man had never seen the light of day. Fred had written a detailed treatment, shoved it in a drawer, and had mostly forgotten about it. Every once in a while, he would pull it out and read it, absently wondering if there was any way to salvage it. Fred had always blamed it on lack of funding, but it really came down to something his mother always told him: you never follow through, Freddie. You’re perfectly content to half-ass your way through life. When I first met your father, he was the same way. Always starting, never finishing. But he eventually came to his senses, so maybe there’s hope for you yet.
Hours passed. He polished off a six pack of Keystone Light without ever letting go of the rifle. He tried not to think about
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