[Apocalypse Roulette] Alex Cadena Hall: On The Wire

[Fayth]

"Quiet on the set!" The director snaps at two giggling extras. They quickly adopt solemn looks, though their composure vanishes when he turns back.


Alex's first day on set has been uneventful thus far. Makeup and costuming took way longer than usual; the director wanted him to be made up identically to the male lead, whom Alex was doubling for. The casting director had nearly fainted when he'd found a stunt actor who was very close to identical to their ideal male lead, and while the goal was for the audience to see as little of Alex's actual face as possible, the directors as a whole are determined that if they do, he will look as close to the original actor as possible.


Also, the male lead is some sort of weird alien-psychic hybrid thing, and has crazy face makeup and an outfit that is so strange as to defy easy description. The Alex in the mirror after makeup had been almost square-faced, with dramatic shadows drawn into his cheekbones and purple contacts making him look surreal.


The current scene is one where the male lead falls from a building and makes a crater in the ground upon impact. It's a classic superhero-type scene, one that Alex has done time and again. The lead-up to the dramatic fall has already been filmed, all that's left is for Alex to fall like a limp rag roughly a dozen times. They're trying to do some Matrix-esque 3D camerawork, and he has to fall just the right way for that to come out right.


He's wired up to within an inch of his life since the fall is from an actual height (only fifteen feet, but still), and there's a ridiculously thick and fluffy pad underneath him to take the brunt of the impact. The lead has just been shot with a special bullet that contains the definitely-not-kryptonite-because-that's-copyrighted rock that is the one thing that can kill the guy, and he's due to stagger off the rooftop.


"Annnnnd- Action!" The director yells. The set goes still, all eyes on Alex.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

A few years ago no one would have believed Alex if he had said he would be paying the bills by jumping off a building in costume, but that reality was upon him this very day. Here we go he said to himself before taking a deep breath; with calculated steps, he stumbled backwards with visible pain, his hands clutching a wound that surely was leaking with some outrageous colored liquid, those guys from visual effects sure loved their blood. With a groan of agony, his feet reach the edge of the roof, and just as his body leans over the edge he exhales the last of the breath in his lungs and lets his body fall. As gravity takes hold of him completely, he fills his lungs with fresh air once more, the adrenaline rushing through his body as he plummets into the landing pad. As his body drops faster and faster, a quick thought crosses his mind as a las minute joke from himself: Hope I don't miss the cushion.

 

[Fayth]

With a pronounced whumpf! Alex hits the cushion. It's probably a vicious-looking impact from the outside, but the pad beneath him is soft as a marshmallow, cradling him. It's actually very comfortable, and smells vaguely of chalk.


The director declares it a good take, but they haul Alex up to the top of the platform again anyway. There's no doubt that this director has a frankly ridiculous amount of money and time to spend on things; grumbling around the set says that they're already over budget and schedule and it's only the fourth day of shooting.


"Hey, get the hell off the set!" The director yells, gesturing angrily. In front of him, one of the giggling extras from before is stumbling forward. She's hacking a deep, phlegmy cough, bent over almost in half as she moves drunkenly forward. "Get her the hell off the set, and then off the lot!"


Security rushes forward, drawing up short when she falls to her knees and vomits up her bagel. There are spots of blood in the vomit, and she hacks some more, spitting more blood onto the set. The on-set medic runs up, security hovering anxiously as the medic tries to talk her to her feet so he can treat her away from the scene.


"Do you want to take a break so we can get that cleaned up?" The director's assistant asks anxiously, hovering just behind the director himself.


"No, leave it," he brushes her off, "it'll all come out in post."


It's only one take later when there's a scream. It's a high-pitched, terrified scream, more real than any scream this studio has ever seen. Even the great faces of horror, the female actors with hours of screaming practice behind them, even audio manipulation cannot duplicate the raw emotion behind this scream.


Everyone present exchanges uneasy glances, and one of the security guards lifts up his radio. "What's going on?"


There isn't an answer. He asks again, and the rest of the set is silent, even the director. A feeling of dread descends, daring someone to break it, to do something.


Then, from one of the exits of the room, comes a scraping noise. It's cloth-on-pavement, like a body being dragged across a parking lot. The security guard with the radio tries to call out something like, "who's there?" but his voice falters halfway through.


A few seconds of dragging later and someone comes into view. It's the extra from before. Alex remembers her as a decently-attractive, giggly brunette with a DD bust and a valley girl accent. Now, she's deathly pale, leg bent at an impossible angle for it to be intact, eyes listless and clothing ripped. An unearthly moan begins to issue from her mouth, and her unfocused eyes zone in on the person closest to her- the director.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

"This isn't in the script, is it?" Alex whispers to the nearest crew member as he the sees extra coming back into the set.


Alex knew there were eccentric directors with unusual techniques to filming, and the first thought that came to his mind was that this was some weird improvisational strategy of this director, a way to capture real emotions from their actors by going beyond the script, it had to be, although her make up did seem slightly out of context with the rest of the movie, maybe there was some big twist in the plot, and this would be it.


One thing that did jump into Alex's mind was the quality of said makeup, it was simple yet emotionally powerful, and in record time too, it usually took the special effects crew a few hours to give you such a makeover; he could smell an oscar nomination for them.


Regardless, it was time to get back into action, if anything could be said of Alex, was that he was a professional, and he would not disappoint. He prepared himself mentally to whatever the director would bring into scene, although, something seemed....odd... How the hell did they manage to get her leg like that?

 

[Fayth]

"Nnnnno," the crew member dragged out, voice barely at a whisper. "And he isn't the kind of guy to enforce method acting."


"Didn't-" The director's voice breaks, then he shakes his head in annoyance, visibly forcing his arrogant expression back on. "Didn't I tell you to get off the lot? I don't have time for your prima-donna shit!" He turns back to the set, folding his arms over his chest. "Fucking actors and their drama."


Security steps forward to grab her, visibly uneasy. Her eyes refocus on the nearest security guard, and her moaning gets louder. He spreads his hands in front of himself, wide and placating, as the other security guard pulls out a taser and steps behind her just in case.


"Come on, honey, you gotta go, don't make me call the real cops," he says, trying to be soothing. She steps closer, and he steps back, swallowing hard. "Come on, just-"


She lunges forward, jaws opening wide enough to cause small cuts to open at the corners of her mouth. He yelps and jumps back, but she gets one of his arms, her hand coming forward to grasp at his jacket. The other security guard jabs the taser into the small of her back as she bends her head to sink her teeth into the arm in her grasp.


The unarmed security guard screams and drops, his free hand flailing at her to try pulling her off. She falls with him, twitching only a little as she keeps her grip on his arm. The other security guard stares, eyes flicking between the taser in his hand and the woman mauling his partner.


"Oh shit, this is going straight to youtube," the crew member next to Alex is very nearly giggling, whipping out his phone and starting to record.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

What the hell? Alex froze watching the strange event unfold in front of his eyes. This was too bizarre, yet it was happening, a woman was actually biting the security guard right in the set. Could she be high, drunk or both? Perhaps, all of this was slowly sinking into Alex's brain, it was almost as his blood started flowing back into his head and into his limbs.


He instinctively reached for his cellphone only to find he lacked pockets in this costume, realization dawned on himself telling him that he didn't bring it to the set, he looked around towards no one in particular before fixing his eyes on the guy recording the whole thing "Dude! Stop that and call 911!"

 

[Fayth]

The crewmember rolls his eyes, but hits the stop button, waiting until it saves to punch in the number for 911.. "It's just bath salts. He'll be fine." He reluctantly calls, putting the phone up to his ear.


After a few seconds - in which the second security guard attempts to pull the woman off and realizes that the 120llb girl is somehow stronger than a man with arms thicker than her head - the crewmember frowns, then swallows, taking the phone off of his ear. "911 is... busy. How does 911 get busy?"


The bitten security guard screams, and now multiple crew and cast have their cell phones out, all trying to make calls. They all end in the same way, with people looking around in similar states of bewilderment. One of the more muscular extras runs in and starts to try helping the security guard to get the woman off, to little effect.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

This is ridiculous!


The weirdness of the situation started to irritate Alex, he loomed over the edge and made his voice heard across the set "Somebody help restrain that girl!", he then started to take off the straps and locks of the wire harness from his costume.


He turned back to the crew member "Keep trying to reach 911, we're gonna need an ambulance and the cops!" Just as the last of the straps was unlocked, he got rid of the harness and proceeded his descend back to the ground, always glancing back to the bizarre scene of the rabid girl and the guard. What the hell was wrong with that woman?

 

[Fayth]

The crew member continues to try calling as Alex works the harness off of his costume, his face slowly growing pale.


Finally shocked into action by Alex's voice, a few more people jump in to help, and together they get her off the security guard. Someone produces a length of rope, and someone else displays the bizarre but helpful ability to hog-tie a human being. The extra manages to bite one more person before someone rips the tablecloth off of the snack table and wraps it around her head to close off her mouth. The rest of the tablecloth is ripped apart to bandage both the security guard and the additional bitten person.


By the time Alex reaches the ground, they seem to have it in hand, though the security guard's eyes are rolling back in his head and he's limp in the other guard's hands.


"C'mon, Rick, you can't go to sleep..." The second security guard tells him, shaking him to try keeping him awake. "People that're hurt can't go to sleep!" Rick doesn't respond.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

Once back in the ground, Alex heads to the snack table, he remembers leaving a small back pack with a few of his belongings hidden lightly below the table and between some equipment boxes.


Once he finds his bag and recovers his belongings, he reaches for his cellphone and gives the 911 a try of his own, as feared, the lines are busy. A drop of sweat runs down the side of his face, he decides to put the phone away. He walks towards the big bulk of people around the guards, once again he rises his voice to be heard by everyone.


"Guys! We need to get the injured some medical attention but the emergency lines are not responding, anyone with a car willing to drive them to the nearest hospital?" He turns and looks at the faces of the people around him, someone had to be able to help.

 

[Fayth]

Rick begins to spasm in the other man's arms, head jerking from side to side. The other security guard tries to keep him still.


"I've got a truck in the parking lot," one of the camerawomen speaks up, grabbing her hat from a nail hammered into the wall. "It'll fit all three of them in the back."


The second security guard lifts Rick in his arms, face drawn and distressed. Two of the crewmembers get a hold of the rabid woman, carefully keeping away from her head. She's still trying to bite, and her moaning hasn't stopped. She hasn't even stopped to draw breath, just kept moaning in an unsettling display of inhuman lung capacity.


From the same direction the first woman came, another moan begins to be heard, higher-pitched but just as steady and unceasing.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

Great, now what?


Alex looks towards the exit where the rabid girl came from, wondering who else was behind. Could it be there was someone else under bath salts influence? Once again, Alex speaks up for the group to hear, his eyes not leaving the direction from where the moaning is coming from "Where's the on-set medic from before?"


As soon as the words were out of his mouth, a feeling of dread invaded him, as the moaning behind the exit increased, so did the fear for the answer to his own question.

 

[Fayth]

As if his words summoned her, the medic appears, mouth hanging half-open and a moan issuing from her mouth. Her shirt is saturated with blood from a gaping bite-wound in the side of her neck, and one of her sleeves has been ripped off completely. The hog-tied woman starts to struggle harder, and one of the people holding her drops her arm in surprise. She takes advantage of the situation by biting the other person carrying her, and all hell breaks loose.


The director bolts for one of the other exits, the medic lurches forward, the security guard carrying his friend backs away toward the camerawoman with the truck. Several of the extras scatter, one of them attempting to get past the medic only to be caught by a lightning-fast lunge on the medic's part.


"Fuck, let's go!" The camerawoman snaps, starting toward one of the hallways leading away from the set.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

Shit! Alex's body reacts instinctively, his feet starting to move before his mind has a chance to process the severity of the situation, he joins the camerawoman through the hallway, and as he runs, he tears the upper part of his costume away and drops the pieces as he leaves the set with no regard to any prosthetics.


Once he has gotten free of the majority of the costume, he makes sure to still have the few belongings he had brought with himself, he reaches once again for his cellphone and dials 911 with no hope for an answer, and in this regard he is not disappointed, he puts the phone away and runs after the camerawoman as they both escape.


Where was he supposed to go now? This was spiraling out of control alarmingly fast, the only option that he had at the moment was to stick with the woman, if she had a vehicle he could tag along for now, he could decide what to do later, or so he hoped...

 

[Fayth]

The halls are mostly empty; the directors ridiculous scheduling brought them to the set at an unsociable hour. Alex's phone reads 0527 when he pulls it out of his backpack to try calling 911 again.


The camerawoman leads the way, quick on her feet and easily able to dart through the twists and turns of the labyrinthine hallways. The security guard follows, thundering along the floor at a slightly slower and much louder rate. They reach an emergency exit, and the camerawoman only hesitates for a second before pushing through and out into the early morning.


The parking lot is very nearly empty. The very few vehicles in sight are clustered near the non-emergency exit, ranging from the serviceable-but-plain cars and trucks likely belonging to the extras to the more luxurious vehicles that are probably the big-name cast members'.

The camerawoman zones in on her truck, a big pink monstrosity that despite looking like a drunk's hallucination nevertheless seems to be well-maintained and sturdy. She lets down the back flap and gestures to the security guard, who doesn't hesitate to jump in.


She doesn't bother to look to Alex, instead hopping in the cab and starting the truck.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

As the pink truck comes into view Alex can't help but smile at the bizarreness of the situation, escaping a human rabid attack in such a vehicle, now more than ever he realized that reality could shadow fiction at any time.


He was about to jump into the back of the truck when he decided to look back towards the way they came from, perhaps there would be others escaping, and they might need a vehicle to get away as well, he lingered there just a second before he decided to try the passenger door in the hopes it would be open, or she would open it for him, he could not help but feel somewhat exposed in the back, exposed to what exactly? He couldn't tell, but nevertheless he would rather have steel around himself, even if it was such a horrible shade of pink.

 

[Fayth]

The camerawoman pops the lock open and throws her truck in reverse, waiting only long enough for Alex to get in before swinging out of the parking spot and heading toward the entrance to the parking lot.


In the bed of the truck, the conscious security guard braces his legs against the other side of the bed, holding Rick tight against his chest. His face is set in grim lines as he moves with the bouncing of the truck. His eyes are zoned out, mind clearly elsewhere.


The camerawoman speeds through the empty parking lot, swaying around the barrier put up to keep riff-raff out without slowing. The streets are eerily empty, strobing police lights visible in the distance. A police barricade looms just ahead, and the camerawoman frowns. "Shit. Going around that is gonna put another fifteen minutes on our travel time."

 

[Lord-Leafar]

Alex peered through the small window in the back towards the two security guards, trying to see how Rick was holding up.


"You think the police might let us through if they see we're carrying an injured man? They might even escort us to the hospital." He allowed himself to hope this much, but a little voice in the back of his head whispered a terrible truth he wished to ignore, this was only going get worse from now on.

 

[Fayth]

"They might," the camerwoman says, glancing back through the window toward the men in the bed. "And that might be the only chance Rick has."


She taps the gas, moving the truck forward just far enough to catch the officers' notice. The gesture for her to come forward, and she does, rolling the truck to where one of the officers can walk up to the window.


"This road's closed off, ma'am, you're going to have to go around," The officer, a balding, slightly-overweight man with a bad moustache tells her.


"We need to get to the hospital, there's a guy in the bed of my truck who's bleeding out," the camerawoman says, hands tight on the wheel.


"He's going to have to settle for what we've got here, the hospital's under quarantine," he tells her, gesturing for his partner to come up. He turns to holler over his shoulder, "we got a wounded guy in here-"


His yell is cut off by a high-pitched scream from the bed of the truck, and suddenly the truck starts rocking as a struggle takes place.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

Alex was taken back to the window by the scream. "What the hell?"


No doubt he sees now both guards struggling with each other, but why? Rick's condition must have worsened, maybe he started freaking out, Alex proceeds to step out of the vehicle to assess the situation more clearly, and intervene, if needed, at least there were cops around, they should be able to help.

 

[Fayth]

Rick is now moaning the same endless drone of the extra in the medic, only lower-pitched. The other security guard pushes at him, trying to get out from under him, as the police officers rush forward, one of them speaking into his radio to demand backup.


The camerawoman slams the truck into park and perches in the back window, unwilling to get involved in the fray.


"Sir, please step away," commands the second officer, a dark clean-shaven man whose nametag says he is "Officer Amala". The first officer rounds the truck and steps onto the back bumper. After only a second's hesitation, he leaps into the back, grabbing Rick and trying to pry him off of the other security guard.


The second officer joins in after giving Alex a look, and the two of them struggle to restrain Rick while constantly trying to talk him down.

 

[Lord-Leafar]

Alex kept his distance, it wasn't natural for someone who was unconscious just a minute before to be this aggressive, and this strong.


"He'll try to bite you, watch out for his mouth!"Alex warned, he could hardly believe the words coming out of his mouth, bath salts could not explain this behavior, not after seeing the medic act the same way as that girl before, could it really be something like... rabies? A quick thought crossed his mind, but he dismissed it just as fast, he dared not indulge in this horrible possibility, yet he had been working in movies for too long, and that outrageous idea crept back into his mind like a dark parasite, crawling through his thoughts silently, devouring the rational mind and leaving nothing but fear, a disturbing fear of the unknown.


Could it be? He couldn't bring himself to say it out loud.

 

[Fayth]

The officers manage to wrestle Rick into submission, but his friend lays unmoving in the bed of the truck. His eyes stare listlessly upward, his chest still, blood seeping out of his body in several places where Rick managed to bite or claw him.


"This your friend?" Amala asks the camerawoman.


She shakes her head, swallowing hard. "Coworker."


As they cuff him, Amala asks Alex, "what about you? You just a coworker too? You know his name, at least?"

 

[Lord-Leafar]

"I'm just a coworker too, we heard that this guy's name was Rick" He points to the rabid man, then he gestures towards the other security guard.


"I don't think we heard his name though, he helped us get Rick on the truck so we could get him to the hospital, there's..." the words stuck in his throat for a second, it was still hard to describe what happened without sounding like a mad man. "He was attacked by a couple of people, I think there are more injured people where we were working, we had to get out of there!"


He wanted to say it, but a part of him could still not believe his own thoughts. "Officer, could you...restrain him as well?" He glances at the now calm security officer, but the blood dripping from his visible wounds was all Alex could see.

 

[Fayth]

Amala takes a notepad and pen out of his chest pocket, and jots down a few things. He nods through Alex's recitation, pen moving quickly to get down his thoughts. The camerawoman chimes in with the security guard's name, Morgan, and her own, Davina. During the narration, the other officer manhandles Rick into the back of one of the cruisers, somehow without getting bitten. He speaks softly into his chest radio, then steps up to stand just behind and to the side of his partner.


When Alex asks him to restrain the clearly-still security officer, Amala looks up, eyes troubled. "Son, I, uh, I'm not sure how to make this soft, so I'll be straight with you: he's gone. He's not getting back up. Now, where did you say you were working?"