The Making of Zombie Wars Read online

  “I’m writing a movie script about zombies,” Joshua said.

  “What’s it called?”

  “Zombie Wars.”

  “You gonna make a movie?”

  “Highly unlikely at this time,” Joshua said. “Or ever.”

  “You ever made any movies?”

  “Do I look like someone who’s made movies?”

  “Why are you doing it, then?”

  “It’s what I do. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “If you need any help with the wars part, I’d be happy to help. Or if you need a stuntman.”

  Joshua picked up a loose stethoscope to listen to his own heart. What would a heartbreak sound like? His heart was working all right, but there was the noise of the stethoscope scraping against his clothes and the hum of his blood. There were living layers to him, the body always the last one to quit.

  “Zombies are cool, but if I had to choose my undead, I’d still go for vampires,” Stagger said. “For one thing, they can have sex, and a lot of it too. I think that’s what Cindy liked.”

  “There’s that,” Joshua said. “Sex is one reason not to go all undead.”

  Stagger groaned and adjusted his position, nearly kicking the duffel bag off the gurney, so Joshua put the stethoscope away and picked the bag up.

  “Why aren’t they giving you some painkillers?” Joshua said. “We should ask for some.”

  “This is nothing,” Stagger said.

  “You have a broken arm. It’s quite something.”

  “It’s nothing, believe me. I knew this maggot, the only one who ever stepped on a land mine in the entire Operation Desert Storm. Lost his legs, his hard one too. Wheels himself around these days like a welfare pro. Lemme tell you: that’s something.”

  Desert Swarm, Stagger slurred. Joshua could feel Bushy’s rigor mortis in the duffel bag; the weight was distributed differently. He couldn’t find a place to put him down.

  “Probably no push-ups for a while,” Stagger said. “That’s the worst thing for me.”

  A young resident walked in through the triage room curtain. The name tag said Dr. Ehlimana K, as if she’d been named after a homeopathic remedy. She wore a head scarf and looked unhealthy, thoroughly pallid and drained from dealing with other people’s injuries and complaints. Could she recognize and diagnose her own illness? The ability to imagine all the worst outcomes, always calculating the probabilities of your own suffering and death—that would be terrifying. To monitor yourself as you die, to understand what is happening. The Lord is the guardian of the innocent; I was brought low and he provided me with oodles of oblivion.

  “What does K stand for?” Joshua asked.

  “It’s a Bosnian last name,” she said. “You could never pronounce it.”

  “Are you Muslim?” Stagger asked.

  “I’m a doctor,” she said. “That’s all that should matter to you.”

  “I had a Bosnian friend once,” Joshua said. “A long time ago.”

  Dr. Ehlimana K put the X-rays up on the light board and turned it on. Stagger’s arm looked demolished, so badly broken that Joshua gasped in shock. You could pulp a body with a crowbar and it would still live. Bega’s drunken war joke: a mortar shell hit his unit, fell at the feet of the sergeant and took him apart. Nothing was left of him except the asshole, and now he’s a captain.

  “Good news. Clean break! No surgery needed, so putting the cast on should be nice and easy,” Dr. Ehlimana K said. “How did you do this to yourself?”

  “Fell off my bicycle,” Stagger said. Dr. Ehlimana K ignored the sarcasm. She kept looking at the pictures, as if recovering some lost beauty from them.

  “I bet you were not wearing a helmet,” she said.

  “Do I look like my brain is not damaged?” Stagger said.

  She touched his face to look at the superbruise, then pressed against his cheekbones and temples. He tightened his grin into a grimace of enduring pain.

  “Is this from the tricycle fall too? A CT scan might be a good idea.”

  “You don’t wanna know what’s inside that head,” Joshua said.

  “It’s nothing,” Stagger said.

  Dr. Ehlimana K pointed at the duffel bag.

  “What’s that? Were you planning to stay in the hospital? It might not be necessary.”

  “It’s the most valuable thing in the world,” Joshua said.

  “It’s a dead cat,” Stagger said.

  * * *

  Once Joshua took responsibility for Stagger, it became difficult to be rid of him. And it didn’t help that Joshua felt that if he hadn’t distracted Stagger, the standoff with Esko would’ve ended up in a stalemate, or, at worst, Esko being cut up. What could’ve been is what never happened, Nana Elsa used to say. She never wanted to talk about her experience of the Holocaust. What should’ve happened would’ve never happened. Only what happened happened. Everything else is drek.

  Joshua was tired of lugging the Bushy bag, but he couldn’t leave it behind either. His mind refused to engage with the future in which he’d have to confront Kimmy. Right now, he was hungry and cranky. Stagger had finally calmed down only after he’d been given some strong painkillers, but all they’d had to eat while waiting interminably for the CT scan had been bags of animal crackers the nurse provided. After forty-five minutes of convincing the claustrophobic Stagger to lie down and slide into the CT tunnel, his brain looked surprisingly undamaged and sane.

  The cabbie’s neck was not unlike a tree trunk with hair vines crawling toward the bald crown. The hospital made Stagger wear a gown, lest he be arrested in Joshua’s shorts for public indecency. His right arm was in a cast extending to his biceps, bending at his elbow. The cab crawled to a stop along Lake Shore Drive, stuck in the Cubs-game traffic. It was evening already, the lights were on, the city sparkling with despair.

  “Jonjo!” Stagger said. “I gotta say something.”

  “Please, don’t,” Joshua said. “And stop calling me Jonjo.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “What wasn’t my fault?”

  “That guy busting my balls.”

  “Was it my fault?”

  “No, it wasn’t. Even if you should’ve let me cut him.”

  In an obscure language the cabbie spoke to someone who could have been anywhere on Earth, or—why not?—another planet. Suddenly, everywhere around him, everyone around him—other than Stagger—was a foreigner. Script Idea #142: Space aliens undercover as cabbies abduct the fiancée of the main character and he has to find a way to a remote planet to save her. Title: Love Trek.

  “Also,” Stagger said. “I’ve never been married. I was just fucking with you.”

  “Were you this nuts before Desert Storm?”

  “Desert Storm was a holiday in the sand,” Stagger said. “But there did use to be a life before it.”

  “You need help, Stagger.”

  Stagger shrugged, as if it all had already been tried. His cast was on top of the duffel bag between them, no doubt crushing Bushy’s stiff body. Joshua was bothered by it, but couldn’t formulate anything to justify a complaint. Stagger was pitiful in the stinking hospital gown, his fingers swollen and white from the cast.

  “Where’s my sword?” Stagger suddenly asked, and Joshua groaned with annoyance.

  “It is behind the fucking washing machine. Did you want to take it to the hospital and discuss the incident with the police? We’ll get you your sword in due time, I promise. Let’s just get out of this situation safe and unharmed.”

  “Washing machine? Why washing machine?”

  “Why the hell not? It’s where it is and I’ll get it when I can. Right now, I’m exhausted. God! Take another pill!”

  Stagger opened the pill bottle with his teeth and tipped it back to suck in another dose of painkillers. They sat in heavy-breathing silence as the cab crept up Lake Shore Drive. Joshua watched the waves spurred on by a northwest wind, crashing into the concrete ramparts, foaming in fury. As a kid, he�
�d liked to see ice cover the lake all the way to the horizon. On insanely cold, sunny days, when flesh fell off the bone and there was no bird in sight, the frozen lake surface would blaze with perfect iciness. Even if it didn’t really freeze all the way to Michigan, the lake somehow managed to complete itself, to reach its outermost possibilities and then stop there. When the cold grip was released, the ice would start cracking and floes would be pushed against the shore, forming ice mountain ranges. And then it would all thaw and return to its routine grayness. Any given point is the end point of something. Nothing is ever a beginning.

  “I’d like to say something,” Stagger said, but Joshua’s cell phone rang just then. Joshua checked the phone screen: Kimiko M. Home. He ignored it, but something inside him—his prostate, maybe—cramped.

  “I like the way you smell,” Stagger said. “There, I’ve said it.”

  “Okay, you’ve said it,” Joshua said. “Could we not talk about it, please?”

  “Okay. Not a word. I’ve shut up.”

  Kimiko M. Home. Script Idea #144: A man saves the life of his comrade, which impresses his girlfriend so much that she suggests a threesome.

  “I just want you to know that I’m not a homo,” Stagger said.

  “I didn’t ask, so you don’t have to tell,” Joshua said. “That’s something you’ll have to sort out all by yourself.”

  There was a runner on the bike path along Lake Shore Drive, trudging along with obvious effort as if it were his twenty-sixth mile, throwing his head to one side to pull his body forth. A homeless man stumbled—not unlike a zombie—toward the runner to bum something, but the runner just sped by. Joshua turned to look at the runner’s face as they passed him and he could see the pain. My soul, return to your resting place.

  “Do you think we could find another cat like this?” Stagger said, tapping on the duffel bag with his cast.

  “Where? It’s not like I can go to a cat shop. He’s not a vacuum cleaner. She would know,” Joshua said. “And Bushy would know.”

  Stagger unzipped the bag to look at the stiff Bushy, whose eyes were wide open.

  “He was a fine cat,” Stagger said.

  “He was a slut,” Joshua said. “Please zip up the bag. He’s looking at me.”

  “My arm is broken,” Stagger said.

  Joshua’s cell phone rang again and it was, again, “Kimiko M. Home.”

  “Oh, man!” Joshua said and took the call.

  * * *

  Kimmy waited at the top of the porch stairs, her position and pose promising nothing good. Kimmy in her sharp work clothes: the narrow skirt, the wide-shouldered blazer, her arms akimbo, her hair in a tight ponytail. Joshua had always liked the smoothness of her jawline, but now it looked like she was concealing razors under her skin. He stood at the foot of the stairs, the duffel bag in hand, unsure whether to dare going up as if everything were as usual. At the center of him, where his modest guts used to be, there was now a vacant, overheated chamber.

  “And who’s your wounded friend?” she asked. A step behind Joshua, like a bodyguard, Stagger attempted to stretch his tumescent lips into a grin.

  “That’s Stagger,” Joshua said. “My landlord.”

  Kimmy stared at Stagger the helpless martyr: damaged face, broken arm, bare feet, snotgreen gown, ridiculous pigtails. She had a lot of questions, but she didn’t ask any of them.

  “I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Stagger,” she said.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Home,” Stagger responded.

  “I can’t find Bushy,” Kimmy announced. This was the moment to come clean and face the consequences, not least because Kimmy glanced at the New Balance bag. Rather than come clean and face the consequences, however, Joshua stepped up to the first stair without going farther. He was close enough to smell her: her lavender-scented perfume could not conceal a wet-cloth smell of anxiety and frustration, as when she was menstruating.

  “He must have run after a squirrel or something,” Stagger said.

  “Please stay out of this, Mr. Stagger,” Kimmy said. “This is between my partner and me.”

  Partner, as if they were a law firm. Joshua moved up a couple more stairs and reached Kimmy’s eye level. He foolishly considered kissing her cheek.

  “Howdy, pardner,” she said, the ice in her voice stretching all the way to her own private Michigan. Her eyes were dark and—as they’d say in a novel—foreboding. “Your friends have stopped by to see you.”

  INT. UNDERGROUND LAB — DAY

  A desk lamp casts a narrow circle of light on the desk, where there is a syringe and a notebook. Major K is hunched at the desk, his head in his hands. He sits up, punches himself in the face.

  MAJOR K

  Do it, goddamn it! Be a man! You gotta do it!

  Finally, he grabs the syringe and stares at it. He cleans with a wipe a spot on his forearm and plunges the needle into it, emptying the syringe. He pulls it out, carefully dismantles it, and disposes of it. He sits back and closes his eyes. His jaw is clenched to the point of breaking.

  MOMENTS LATER

  Major K opens his eyes, takes a pen, and opens his notebook. He writes the date at the top of the page.

  INSERT

  Major K’s handwriting.

  MAJOR K

  (v.o.)

  Muscular tension. Irregular breathing. Despair. Suicidal thoughts.

  Joshua stepped into Kimmy’s living room as into a furnished nightmare. Everything was overwhelmingly familiar yet disturbingly misarranged—the flowers in the vase appeared positively aggressive, the books on the coffee table growled at him—not least because Ana and her daughter were seated on Kimmy’s sofa. Her face ashen and devoid of dimples, Ana kneaded her hands, wearing the white shirt with leg-of-mutton sleeves, minus the chocolate smudges. Her daughter (what was her name?) stood up to offer her hand to Joshua, as if welcoming him to a scheduled appointment.

  “We have met once before, but you might not remember me,” she said. “My name is Alma.”

  Joshua shook her hand—firm and confident—but he couldn’t muster any words. You kids have fun, she’d said to him at Ana’s place before prancing off. Stagger extended his encased hand and they exchanged warm, nearly conspiratorial smiles. Perhaps they knew each other. Nothing was beyond Stagger, or this day, or this nightmare. The Lord is a great plotter, the clever tormentor of the innocent. Ana didn’t look up or say anything to Joshua, who was grateful for her restraint.

  “Perhaps you’d care to tell Teacher Josh what brings you here,” Kimmy said. Ana rose and took a deep breath, Alma looking up at her, eager to hear her next line. Joshua set the New Balance bag on the table with a flower vase, as if preparing to be slapped around. Ana’s eyes were a different, darker shade of green in the diffuse light of Kimmy’s living room. Perhaps if they all remained silent for as long as possible, they’d slip out of this moment into the next one, and then the next one, until all the preceding moments were erased from memory and everything could start all over again. The ultimate American dream: the eternal present, where nothing has ever happened before what is happening now.

  “This is what I’ve learned, Teacher Josh, while we were waiting for you to enrich us with your presence,” Kimmy said. “Her husband threw them out of their house. He said he no longer cared. He’s done with being a stepfather and a spouse.”

  Alma nodded, confirming the general outline of the unfolding catastrophe.

  “A most complicated family situation, this. A plot worthy of a fat Russian novel,” Kimmy went on. “The trouble is I can’t stand Russian novels.”

  “They’re not Russian,” Joshua offered. “They’re Bosnian.”

  “Whatever. They’re strangers,” Kimmy said. “In my living room. In my home.”

  A centrifuge of terror spun in his stomach. He couldn’t have imagined that the fear booth could offer services like this. Neither the vase nor the flowers moved, nor were the coffee-table books in any way affected by what was transpiring. Joshua’s m
ind was burning to reach a perfect state of blankness—he could be approaching satori, if it weren’t for the mean little man in the crawl space, making notes, gloating: one day, when we’re all dead and gone, this will be a page in a script.

  He didn’t like it that Kimmy’s arms were crossed at her chest. It rendered her determined to inflict the most brutal punishment in abeyance of any forgiveness. Meanwhile, Stagger drifted toward the bookshelf and bent his neck to browse through the book spines. Joshua could learn a lot about the art of psychotic detachment from Stagger, who was rubbing his forehead presently, as if to stimulate a dormant thought. Kimmy was too self-possessed to be forgiving; ever confident she could tell right from wrong, she hated the wrong. Joshua really needed to sit down. Perhaps he could escape and join the marines, go to Iraq, lose his mind honorably. Become like Stagger, a man inoculated against suffering and sanity. Where was the samurai sword? In the laundry room, yes, he left it there. It might come in handy for a future hara-kiri.

  “What do you think you should do here, Jo?” Kimmy asked. “’Coz I’m plain flummoxed.”

  Everyone waited for him to say something. Everyone could see he was clean out of explanations or ideas. Whereas Kimmy was flummoxed. He did think that flummoxed was an odd word to use in this particular context.

  “Why don’t we all just sit down and talk it over,” Joshua said. “I’ll try to explain.”

  “Esko also said that we were now free to go and live with Teacher Josh,” Alma said. Somehow, she seemed blithely untroubled by all this. How early can you learn to stay out of your own life? To watch it as if it were taking place on the screen? Ana barked something in Bosnian at Alma but she ignored her with ease. Stagger grinned at some sinister book on the psychology-of-sex shelf. Flummoxed. What the fuck? Joshua clawed at his head, aware that his paralysis combined with his anxious gestures indicted him. When I find myself bound by death’s ties, I call upon the Lord to make me completely catatonic. Coppola had once faked an epileptic seizure in a meeting with rapacious film executives. Joshua’s mouth, however, was much too dry for foaming. Ana leapt up from the sofa toward Alma, as if to slap her, but the girl stepped back, disobediently and dexterously, to continue her testimony.