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"And action," called Christine, and Jamie kicked Adam under the table and they were off.
"What are you doing with that handful of brains?" Jamie said, and Adam squeezed the mess of lamb's brains in his gloved hands.
"This week, Jamie," Adam said, "we're looking at the myths around zombies. We all know they love brains because they haven't got any of their own, right?"
Adam lifted his hands up towards the camera, and icky bits dripped down onto the sheet of blue paper they were leaning over.
"We do," Jamie said, stepping back fractionally. That would be because, in the first take of the shot, an hour ago, Adam had leapt on Jamie and stuffed the first batch of lamb's brains down the front of his shirt.
"But what about the myths about how to disable zombies?" Adam said. "Let's take a look at them."
He dropped the brains back in the bucket and wiped his hands on his shirt and Jamie began to scribble.
"Myth says that filling a zombie's mouth with salt is the best method of disposing of one, but Hollywood would have us believe that a baseball bat or a nail gun is the weapon of choice."
"And this is the good part," Adam said with enthusiasm. "We're gonna go find some zombies and try out these methods, as well as a few of our own."
Jamie put on his serious face and looked into the camera. "Remember, we're trained professionals. If you encounter zombies, run away, as fast as you can, and call your local sheriff or police for assistance."
Adam nodded. "Zombies are dangerous, and we'll be taking back-up with us, as well as all the explosives that are in the store room."
Jamie beamed. "Are we going to blow things up?"
"I hope so," Adam said.
*
The rent-a-cop they'd hired said, "You're fucking lunatics."
Jamie and Adam grinned at each other, and both of them had the mad gleam in their eyes that they got just before things got messy.
"Oh yeah," Jamie said.
"It's our job," Adam said.
Jamie was humming 'Gasoline Alley Bred,' under his breath, and Adam had to admit it was appropriate.
The alley they were creeping down was dank, shadowy, lined with rusty dumpsters, and the gutter down the middle stunk of urine. Things, hopefully rats, were scurrying around, deep in the shadows, and the camera guy was breathing hard behind them.
They were both wearing night vision goggles, and the camera was running on night vision too, at least until they found themselves a zombie.
"There," Jamie whispered, and Adam waved a hand over his head, gesturing to the rent-a-cop, safely locked in his mock patrol car with the heavy artillery, so he'd know they were about to enter the warehouse Jamie had pointed to.
Next time, they were going to make sure that the rent-a-cop wasn't afraid of the dark.
Jamie hefted his baseball bat and pushed the door ajar, creaking on its ancient hinges, and the darkness was like squid ink.
Behind them the camera guy whispered, "Fucking hell," but they could edit that out of the final footage.
Jamie's reflexes were good, ducking behind the pile of packing cases, free hand clamped around Adam's wrist, dragging him out of sight as the first zombie loomed up out of the darkness.
The bright white light of the camera flooded the warehouse and Jamie was off, out into the blaze, baseball bat swinging through a long arc and impacting solidly with the zombie's head.
Adam heard an icky squishy noises, and Jamie shouted jubilantly.
"Yes!" rang out through the warehouse, proving what an idiot Jamie was after all, and Adam took the safety off his nail gun and stood shoulder to shoulder with Jamie as the deafening shuffle of ex-people who wanted to eat their brains filled the warehouse.
It was dirty, it was messy, and not particularly successful, and Adam tossed aside the nail gun and pulled his machete from its holster.
"Remember, we want to take one alive," Jamie shouted above the moaning and scraping. "Or at least, not decapitated."
"The last one," Adam shouted back, machete swishing through the fetid air of the warehouse as he sliced and chopped at vertebral columns and rotting flesh.
Camera guy leaped around them as they hacked and swore and bashed, and Adam would have taken the head off the last zombie if it wasn't for Jamie's shout of warning.
"Last one!"
Restraining the zombie took both of them, with a helping foot from the camera guy, and Adam used a screwdriver from his tool belt to prise the zombie's mouth open without losing any fingers. The zombie thrashed and groaned, struggling harder as Jamie upended a zip lock bag of salt into its mouth. Holding a zombie down while Jamie sewed his mouth shut wasn't a good prospect, so Adam reached behind him, across the slime of the warehouse floor, groping around until he found the nail gun.
Nailing the zombie's mouth shut took a moment, just six hard bangs with the nail gun, and the camera guy pulled in for a close up of the zombie's death… undeath… end.
Then they blew up the warehouse.
*
Back in the workshop, they leaned tiredly against the work table, bits of zombie still clinging to their coveralls, and Adam fished a random piece of flesh out of his moustache.
"Opinion?" he asked Jamie.
"The Hollywood myth that a baseball bat and a nail gun are weapons of choice against zombies hasn't been disproved," Jamie said, scribbling on the sheet of blue paper. "Baseball bat, providing you've got room to swing and a strong set of shoulders, works just fine, if messily. The nail gun, however, didn't come into its own until it was time to secure the zombie's mouth. But the plastic explosive was definitely the most efficient method. We could have blown up the warehouse at the start, and avoided all the mess."
"I concur," Adam said. "Baseball bat is proven, nail gun is plausible, plastic explosive is best."
"You need a shower," Jamie said, flicking bits of flesh off Adam's shoulder.
"So do you," Adam said, flicking lumps of gore off Jamie's bald head.
"I can't believe we get paid for having this much fun," Jamie said, beaming widely, making Adam grin too.