Greatest Zombie Movie Ever by Jeff Strand Read Free Book Online Page B

minutes, which would have become just the first forty minutes except that they completely lost track of time until the movie was over.
    â€œAre we all inspired now?” asked Justin.
    â€œI’m kind of hungry,” said Bobby.
    â€œMe too,” said Gabe.
    â€œDo you think your mom would make spaghetti?”
    â€œI’ll ask,” said Justin.
    They sat at the dinner table, eating spaghetti and meatballs. Justin noticed that one of his meatballs kind of looked like a brain, but he didn’t share this observation with anybody because he didn’t want to be asked to leave the table. Neither Mom nor Dad appreciated it when dinner was compared to internal organs.
    â€œHow’s the script going?” Dad asked.
    Bobby said, “Good.” Gabe said, “Fine.” And Justin said, “Eh.”
    â€œFive thousand dollars. Wow. Your grandmother never gave me five thousand dollars. I thought that she was going to give you forty bucks. Maybe fifty. Five thousand dollars. That’s crazy.”
    Justin knew what was coming next. Three…two…one…
    â€œWhat you should do is put that money toward your college education,” said Mom.
    â€œShe wants it back after the movie comes out,” Justin told her. “She’s an investor, not a donor.”
    Dad, who’d been about to shove a large bite of spaghetti into his mouth, set his fork back down on his plate. He’d suddenly gone pale. “It wasn’t a gift?”
    â€œNo. I told you that.”
    â€œOh. I assumed it was a gift.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly. He reopened his eyes and looked at Justin. “You are going to finish the movie, right?”
    â€œYep.”
    â€œOkay. Good.” Dad shoved his plate away as if he’d lost his appetite. “Good.”
    After dinner they returned to Justin’s room. They weren’t anywhere close to finishing the script. Perhaps it had been too ambitious to think that they could write an entire feature film screenplay in one sleep-deprived day, especially a film that was supposed to redefine the genre for a whole new generation.
    Still, he didn’t have to wake up for school until 7:00 a.m. That left plenty of time if he didn’t squander any of it by being unconscious. They could do this.
    Clack clack clack clack , went Justin’s keyboard.
    Clack clack clack clack , went Gabe’s keyboard.
    Clack....................clack , went Bobby’s keyboard.
    â€œI think I need to get going,” said Gabe, closing his laptop.
    â€œAll right,” said Justin. He sighed. “We’re off to a good start anyway. I mean, there’s cool stuff happening in literally every paragraph.”
    â€œI kind of went with more character development.”
    â€œThat’s fine,” said Justin. “Character development can be cool too. So we’re still going to do this, right? All-nighters for everyone?”
    â€œYeah,” said Gabe and Bobby, and they almost sounded like they kind of meant it.
    His friends left, and Justin sat at his desk, staring at his computer screen. He’d wanted to write thirty pages today. He’d written eight. Well, seven and three-quarters, rounded up. Not bad for a regular day’s work. But this was no regular day, and eight was not thirty. Twenty-two pages left to go. That seemed like a lot of pages.
    It was six o’clock. That left thirteen hours until the alarm went off. Thirteen whole hours! So he didn’t even have to write at the rate of two measly pages an hour to finish on schedule. Anybody could write two pages an hour. That was a full half hour per page. No problem at all. And if he wrote three pages an hour…or even four, he could get some sleep.
    By seven o’clock he’d written another page and a quarter.
    Not a big deal. He didn’t have to write two pages every single hour to finish on time. He just needed to average