“Security! Get him out of here!”
Bing had a moment’s satisfaction thinking that Walter was pointing at Gator… only he wasn’t. As Bing spun around, Gator was already sauntering away while sucking on his beer pack. “It wasn’t me,” Bing said as the security guard grabbed his arm.
He looked back at Walter, but there was no help there. And no love either. Just a dark fury that hid his embarrassment at being unable to do the scene. Bing wanted to help him. At that moment, he wanted to share a dozen techniques that might have helped Walter come through.
He didn’t get the chance. He let the security guard escort him out while his thoughts darkened to frustrated rage. This wasn’t his fault! He’d been betrayed by the grand master, transformed into a werewolf and kidnapped, and then brought here by phantom kangaroos. And now he was being escorted off the set of his own movie. The injustice of it all burned through his gut like acid.
Then he saw Gator leaning against the shower building as he looked at his cell phone. “You,” Bing said as he stomped over. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?” Gator answered, his expression stupidly happy. “I’m just passing through. Was out taking pictures of the doomsday lake, but it’s all quiet over there. Seemed like I could pick up more action here. A real-life movie set! Pretty cool, huh?”
Suddenly it became clear. “You’re a tourist.” In Wisconsin? What was a tourist doing here? Then it hit him. “You’re adisastertourist.” The kind of person who showed up wherever there was bad stuff happening just to gawk at other people’s misery. “Get out of here.”
He held up his hand. “Now don’t get your shorts in a knot. I didn’t mean no harm.”
They never did, but somehow the tourists always seemed to make everything worse. “You need to leave—”
“How about you say something to my fans?” He held up his phone. “Tell us why you let that awkward geek kick you out of your own movie?”
“What? He didn’t! Put that thing away.”
“Are you sure? Because you’ve been away from social media for a while, guy. I mean, with all the chatter about Red Wolf, you should be all over the internet. Probably how the weenie in there got away with replacing you on the set. But I could help with that. Really stir up your fans, you know? Then he’d have to step aside.”
It was tempting. The logic of it slipped into his thoughts as he remembered the original Batman. Would that have happened if there’d been social media back then? Some way to stir up his fans to declare that he was Batman and everybody else was an interloper?
Bing could do that with his fans by letting this obnoxious disaster tourist declare that Bing was the one and only Red Wolf. The temptation ate at him. Meanwhile, Gator grinned.
“Have I mentioned that I’ve got millions of fans?”
This guy? Not possible.
“Well, they’re not directly following me. I’ve got a few hundred thousand on just me, but the others pick me up, you know? All the networks, of course, though it’s not often. Vloggers and commentators love me. They grab some of my video and put their own take on it. It’s a viral kind of thing.”
Yes, he understood the concept. But this guy? “Millions?”
“Several millions,” he said with a conspiratorial wink. “But what do numbers mean anyway? And it’s not like you’ve been anywhere on the internet lately.”
Not for the past eight weeks, because he’d been turned into a werewolf. And not for a few weeks before that as they ramped up for filming.
“You need every eyeball you can get, big guy,” Gator continued. “Even if it’s just my mama and her cousin.” He laughed heartily at that. “I promise you, it’s way more than that. You’ll see. You’ll go viral.”
Bing was busy thinking fast. He knew about social media because fans, vlogs, and paparazzi were everywhere in this business. This guy was no better and no worse than any other, and Bing had been around them his entire adult life. The question was: Could he figure out a way to use media attention to force Monkey out of Walter?
Right now Walter needed Monkey to help his performance. If he got ousted as Red Wolf, then there was no need for him to have godlike martial arts skills. Bing didn’t want to start a media campaign against his best friend, but he was running out of options. He needed to get Monkey out of Walter ASAP, and if using this vlogger would help him accomplish that, then he had to go for it.
“I’m not going to trash-talk the film or Walter,” he said firmly.
“You don’t have to,” Gator said with a grin. “Talk about being Red Wolf. About how you live the role.”
“More than you know.”
“Exactly!” Gator said as he held up his phone. “Go with that.”
Bing did. He was experienced at giving interviews, so he let the words roll off his tongue. He talked about how the role of Red Wolf meant everything to him. It was his first serious acting job, and he explained how he lived and breathed the character. No one but a few would know it was the literal truth. And he invested all his passion in it.
He was taking a breath to make a plea to his fans. He had a website. If they flooded the site with hits, he could take that information to Walter and show him, with simple math, that Bing was the only one who could play the role. He wouldn’t have to say anything about Walter sucking at the job.
As he started to give the call to his fans, a shrill cry cut through the air. He jerked back and looked around. It was Sand running fast at him, her hand outstretched as she pointed at them.
