Zombies are in the Valley; invade Lazy Mountain

PALMER — As we walked into a semi-dark garage Saturday afternoon, a voice called out from the other side of the cavernous, three-car space.

“Are you guys zombies?” Holly Hardwig, a senior at Colony High School, was asking.

“He is,” I said, pointing to my 11-year-old son, Gabe.

“You can be one, too, we need more,” Hardwig replied.

We’d arrived there with two purposes in mind. I wanted to see what these kids were up to, creating a web series called “Dead North” about high school kids trying to survive after a zombie apocalypse. And Gabe? Well, Gabe wanted to be a zombie.

First step? Head into the bathroom, make sure his face is clean enough to receive the makeup.

There, we met Zack Pfeiffer. He seemed to be doing much better than I would expect. Just a few minutes prior, I’d heard one of the stars of the show, Ella Davis, say in response to director Trevor Farnsowrth telling her she’d done a good take in a scene were she fends off zombie Pfeiffer: “I kicked him in the neck, that wasn’t good!”

Pfeiffer had been sent into the bathroom to remove his makeup. Though the stuff was pretty thick, he said it hadn’t taken that long to apply.

“Holly’s really good, so it probably took maybe 30 minutes,” he said.

So how was it falling from the top of a staircase onto foam padding and a futon mattress after receiving Davis’ kick to the throat?

“I thought I would feel the ground more, but it was fine,” he said.

Farnsworth was running around the house like a man on fire, pausing as he went to make sure everyone was taken care of. On a break, he talked about what he was up to.

“I’m an aspiring director,” he said.

He’s working at a retail store now, trying to build up a reel and apply to film school.

“I’ve done videos by myself,” he said, but “this is the first big project that I’ve been able to do.”

He said his hope is to do 10 episodes over the course of the school year; that would mean roughly one per month. The plot surrounds a group of teens trapped in the Valley, their parents on the other side of a wall keeping the zombie infection out of Anchorage.

The location Saturday was his brother-in-law’s house in the Lazy Mountain area. Sunday they planned to shut down a section of Alaska Street in Palmer to film there.

The cast came from Colony, where he is a recent graduate. He said when he got the idea to shoot “Dead North,” he approached the drama teacher there. “I said, ‘hey, I need a cast. Can you give me one?’”

A few auditions later and the production was ready to roll. An invitation for zombie extras caught our eye here at the Frontiersman and led to Gabe getting the gig.

That same invitation drew in Jeremiah Combs, whose seat Gabe took when it was time for him to get his makeup done.

Combs recently moved back here from a stint living in Orlando, where he did some television production-type work. This isn’t his first time being a zombie. So, is he a fan of zombie movies?

“Yep. All kinds of horror,” he said, red-dyed corn syrup (simulated zombie blood) dripping from his hair.

With a need for so many zombies, Hardwig eventually sat down with a mirror and zombied herself up. She’d been reluctant to, saying she was going to have to clean it all off for a trip to the airport immediately after the shoot. Why not go in costume?

“I’m afraid to go outside as a zombie in Alaska because everybody’s packing,” she joked.

As we talked, she fanned her face to speed up the drying of the liquid latex she’d just applied.

“This stuff burns,” she said.

Like Pfeiffer, she’s hoping to use her work here in applying to college. She wants to go to art school to study special effects. That day, she’d been applying makeup since 7 a.m. and didn’t stop until at least 2 p.m. But it wasn’t a drag.

“I enjoy it so much,” she said.

What about it does she enjoy?

“The fact that I can make a person not even be able to recognize themselves,” she said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.