People often ask what is next, and while everyone in Night Zero has other projects to work on, it’s likely that we’ll all come back together to continue the story in the coming years. To stay apprised, friend us on Facebook.

It’s been a heck of a ride. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading Night Zero even a fraction as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it. Thank you.

-Anthony van Winkle

But there’s another class of rule to consider, often raised among fans but rarely (if ever) addressed on screen: impossible rules. For “living dead” zombies, the biggest impossible rule is the rate of human decomposition—within 20 days, all non-bone mass is on its way out. After a month, there’d be no zombies left. For the “infected” zombies, the biggest impossible rule is that the infected should have no clothes on.

The infected would have no tolerance for anything that inhibited them, so any extraneous clothing would be gone immediately. Anything that tore, snagged, or slipped would similarly be shed. And no sentient creature tolerates being near its own feces, so pants would promptly disappear. Within a month of the outbreak, all the infected would be pantless and shoeless, and nearly all would be shirtless as well. For a live production, though, there’s just no way we could do that. We accepted that our infected would be “unrealistic” in that respect, and pressed forward.

As I was putting together ideas for Episode Six, one thing I spent some time considering was the long list of ideas we’d had over the years but never got to execute. I pondered our early conversations and the prospect of acknowledging that scratchers should be naked, and thought that if ever there was a time and place to try it, it would be the very last scene out in the middle of the mountain wilderness.

The scouting process for this location was extensive, because I wanted to find a location that would (1) provide a magnificent vista of the Cascade mountain range, (2) be close enough to Seattle that the cast and crew could reasonably travel there and shoot in one day, (3) be close to vehicle access, since we couldn’t trek all our gear for miles, but (4) be secluded enough to allow us to shoot undisturbed for a full day.

We rented or borrowed SUVs for a number of excursions, first looking up north towards Mount Baker then heading due east into the I-90 corridor. After more than a year of looking and uncounted hundreds of miles driven, including a number of less-than-totally-safe trails and switchbacks with the Jurassic Park soundtrack in the background, we finally found our perfect spot. We marked it, retraced directions, measured mile markers, and prepared to close the book on Night Zero production with a last big hurrah.

Four years, nine months, and twelve days after the first Night Zero shot was taken, the team unloaded our gear at Base Camp Alpha, the first location of the day where our intrepid heroes would encounter, at long last, realistically naked scratchers. This was a new challenge for Jana, who had much more surface area to makeup, but her work was phenomenal and these four scratchers, while different in style and tone because of age and isolation, are hands down some of our best infected. The weather was in our favor, providing warmth and generally even light, and we had crew enough to mostly diffuse the shadows when necessary (but fortunately it wasn’t too bad). As more of the cast made their way up the mountain, the scene in the meadow expanded to include the full troupe of characters you see now.

And this is just about it, we’re in the home stretch here at nightzero.com. In less than two weeks, it will all be over. Thank you for coming with us this far, I look forward to sharing the conclusion with you.

Base Camp Alpha, established around our trusty white canopy

The cast and crew mingle as costumes, makeup, and tasks are delegated

One important aspect of our chosen location was its proximity to enough parking

An army of crew redshirts kept production moving swiftly despite the complexity of the operation

As actors rotated through makeup, those available got shot in “b-roll” footage for the montages

We’d never dealt with so much foliage before, or models without shoes on, which slowed things down a bit

While many of the shots were too wide to try battling the sun, close-ups benefitted from diffusion and blockage

The makeup needs were more volumous but also more stringent, needing to withstand more exposure than our typical scratchers

His character now deceased, Flynn was on hand for lighting, camera, and any other assistance needed

With up to three production cameras and two BTS cameras running simultaneously, the day netted a very, very large number of photos

Finally, Edge gets himself some real firepower but no nemesis to use it on

Eli finds a hat in the form of scratcher food