The Making of Zombie Wars

by Aleksandar Hemon

  Joshua inhaled. He imagined a fat Weinstein behind an intimidating desk, glowering at him; he also considered getting up and leaving, never to see Graham or endure his knee-jerk bigotry, never to write another line of dialogue. There was a solid case to be made for a screenwriting career entirely organized around avoiding the Weinsteins as well as for a life arranged around the absence of hope and ambition. But Bega was looking at Joshua as though burning to hear what he had to say, and Joshua exhaled. Anything whatever can be the accidental cause of hope or fear.

  “Okay. Okay: The American government has a secret program to turn immigrants into slaves,” he improvised. “The government creates a virus to turn them into zombies who work in factories, chained to the production line.”

  Now they all watched him with apparent interest. Dillon stopped doodling; the blotches on Graham’s forehead merged into a solid vermilion field; Bega nodded at Joshua again, approving of the immigrant aspect. It was difficult to make stuff up in the limelight of their attention, but he’d leapt up and now had no choice but to fall.

  “Things go wrong,” Joshua said. “Things go terribly wrong.”

  “They would,” Graham said.

  “And virus spreads?” Bega asked. “Not just immigrants are infected?”

  “Yeah,” Joshua said. “The virus definitely spreads. Anybody can get infected.”

  “Who’s gonna stay alive?” Graham asked. “Any ladies?”

  “Not sure,” Joshua said. “Probably. Some will pop up as I work on it.”

  “The virus spreads, then what?” Dillon asked.

  “Well,” Joshua said, slowly, to bide his time. “Well, the government sends out the military. To wipe them all out. The army guys just shoot them in the head and blow them up and have fun. It would be a bloodbath, if zombies actually bled. But there are so many undead immigrants that soldiers turn into zombies too, and they start killing everybody, not just foreigners. Things get crazy, killers and zombies everywhere, chaos, no one to trust, nowhere to go. It’s a nightmare.”

  It all just came out, without effort or thinking. It felt like lying, only better, because he couldn’t be caught, and he couldn’t be caught because there was nothing to verify it against. Immersed in the flow of bullshit, they had no reason, or time, not to believe him.

  “But there is an army doctor, Major Klopstock, who believes he can beat the virus. Major Klopstock works on a vaccine—”

  “Wait a minute,” Graham said. “What kind of a name is that? Major Klopstock? Are you kidding me? Might as well call him Major Crapshit.”

  “I actually like Klopstock,” Joshua said. “Klopstock could be a main hero. Why not?”

  “Do you really think Bruce Willis would agree to be named Klopstock? You could never pay him enough for that. Think of something else.”

  This was a chance for Joshua to confront Graham and defend Major Klopstock’s implied Jewishness. On the other hand, the character was not quite alive yet, nor was Joshua married to the name; and strictly speaking, Graham hadn’t actually mentioned his Jewishness. This was neither the time nor the place.

  “Okay: Major Something Else gives the vaccine to himself,” Joshua went on. “At first we don’t know if he’ll make it or become a kind of zombie himself.”

  “And then what?” Dillon asked.

  “And then struggle ensues,” Joshua said. “That’s what the story is about. The major’s struggle.”

  “Struggle is good. Outside the name issue, it’s a start,” Graham said. “Maybe the army can also fight some, like, terrorist zombies, blowing themselves up like crazy. It’s a good time to be thinking about all that, given that we’re just about to tear a new hole in the ass of Iraq.”

  “I didn’t actually think of that,” Joshua said.

  “It could be fun, believe me. We unleash the zombie army at the camelfuckers and then it all flies off the handle and our undead boys come back to feed on our flesh. I think that’s pretty fucking good. Don’t you think it’s good? Let me pat myself on the back!”

  Graham patted himself on the back.

  “I don’t know,” Joshua said. “I don’t want it to be too political.”

  “Why not?” Bega offered. “Look at situation now. Muslim enemies everywhere, every movie, everything on television, everybody happy to invade. Everything is political. Everybody is political.”

  “Hey, they took our towers down,” Graham said. “Revenge is a dish best served with carpet bombing.”

  “Saddam had nothing to do with towers,” Bega said. “No connection.”

  “People say we did it ourselves,” Dillon said, “so that we could like attack Iraq and take their like oil.”

  The red patch flared up on Graham’s forehead, but then he chose to say nothing and the blotch disintegrated.

  “I’d love to bullshit for a living, my friends,” he said instead, “but right now you’re paying me oodles to help you with your screenwriting. You got ten minutes, Vega, if you want to talk about your stuff.”

  “I’m just saying,” Dillon said.

  “Bega,” Bega said. “I am Bega. As I was before.”

  “Whatever. Vega. Bega. You can call yourself Klopstock for all I care. Let a thousand flowers bloom,” Graham said. “Whaddya got? Pages?”

  “No pages. Pages I have when I know everything.”

  Bega rubbed his face vigorously with both hands and then scratched his skull, ruffling his hair, possibly releasing some lice. He grinned as if experiencing a spasm. Something was always happening on his face, some flow of tricky mental states ever visible.

  “It’s basically love story,” Bega said. “Man is from Sarajevo. He was happy there. He was young, he had rock group, had women. War came. He is refugee now. He goes to Germany. They are Nazis there. He works like security in disco, plays his guitar only for his soul. He drinks, remembers Sarajevo, writes blues songs. Comes 1997, Nazis throw him out. He goes back to Sarajevo, but nothing is same. Heartbreak.”

  “Yeah, yeah … We heard that the last time. Got something beyond that?”

  “Can I smoke?” Bega asked.

  “Can you smoke? Can you smoke? Hell no!” Graham said. “With all due respect.”

  “Okay,” Bega said, licking his lips. “Man has no more friends in Sarajevo. Half of his group is dead, other half everywhere. Women have husbands. Everybody talks about the war all the time. He says, Fuck it! and goes to America—country of Dylan and Nirvana and best basketball. But he lost his soul. And American women are all feminists—”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Graham said.

  “—and he works in store that sells guitars. One day mother and daughter come in. Mother is pretty but daughter is fantastic. He plays a beautiful song for them from Sarajevo. Daughter falls in love with him. It is like in love novels, but mother calls police. He is stalker, she says, because she’s jealous.”

  “How old is the daughter?” Dillon asked.

  Bega failed to hear him. At some point his gaze drifted toward the Godfather: Part II poster and he spoke as if pitching his story to Saint Pacino himself.

  “But then mother dies from pills for depression. Daughter thinks he killed her. Police thinks it’s him too. Newspapers think it’s him. He has to prove it’s not him. He’s just immigrant, but his picture is everywhere. All America hates him. Big problem.”

  “Is there a killer?” Joshua asked, returning the favor of attention.

  “Maybe husband,” Bega said. “Maybe not.”

  “That’s pretty good,” Graham said. “Immigrant detective, that’s pretty cool. Like, you are illegal, but you have to go around to figure things out. I would be careful about the detective clichés, though. And also grammar.”

  “Maybe the daughter can help clear his name,” Joshua said. “I’m a little concerned about the ending.”

  “American movies always have happy ending,” Bega said. “Life is tragedy: you’re born, you live, you die.”

  “This could be like a European art
-house movie. Which would be good because you could show tits,” Graham said, pausing to picture the tits. “Anyway, we gotta go. Next time, I’d like to see some pages. Things change when you have pages. It all becomes real.”

  “Real is real good,” Dillon said.

  * * *

  Joshua walked out into the thick lightlessness of Grace Street and was just about to unlock his bike when, somewhat noirishly, Bega lit up his cigarette and called to him, exhaling smoke from the restored darkness: “We go for beer? I’ll give you ride.” Joshua trawled his mind for an excuse to decline. An arbitrary vision of Bega twisting his arm behind his back presented itself, but then he didn’t want to be scared nor did he want to look scared. Bega regarded him with a smirk that might have been a derisive smile, or just a long expression of expectation. Dillon walked out and stood before them, beaming a friendship offer. They both ignored it. “Have like a good night, guys,” Dillon finally said, and got into his rust-eaten vehicle, kept together by stickers expressing someone else’s thoughts: If you want peace, work for justice and such. If Joshua had to put one sticker on his car (which he didn’t have) it would be: Whatever is, is either in itself or in the other. Who on the street would ever understand what that meant? That’s exactly what would be so cool about it.

  “All right, let’s go for a drink,” he said.

  * * *

  Bega was at home, he informed Joshua proudly, at the Westmoreland; he practically lived there, everyone knew him. But there was no one there to know him tonight, as the Westmoreland was desolate: a derelict jukebox in the corner; the Cubs game on TV high above the bar; a drunken couple drool-coating each other’s faces over a far table. It was one of those Chicago watering holes that proudly wore the badge of neglect on their tattered sleeves, reeking of yeast and sawdust. Here, the Westmoreland pronounced, livers have been pickled, marriages destroyed, guts disgorged. Joshua took the stool next to Bega, who rearranged a cluster of beer bottles on the bar as though solving a chess problem. The bartender came over wordlessly (Bega: “Hey, Paco!”), stuck his fingers in the rearranged bottles, and nodded barely perceptibly to indicate he was available for orders.

  “Whiskey,” Bega said. “And Bud.”

  “What kind of wine do you have?” Joshua asked.

  “Red,” Paco said. “White.”

  “I’d like a glass of red,” Joshua submitted. Paco’s face expressed nothing, but Joshua was sure he could detect contempt in his eyes for his unbecoming fussiness.

  “I was thinking, Josh,” Bega said. “Why America now must have superheroes? Why can’t you just have normal heroes? John Wayne was not good enough, now you must have Batman? What do you think?”

  “Actually, Batman is not a superhero, strictly speaking,” Joshua said. “He’s kind of an insanely entitled capitalist with a lot of gadgets. He has no superpower, he just works out like crazy.”

  Paco brought drinks: Joshua’s red wine was in a martini glass. Ordering wine in this place was not unlike ordering milk—he was fortunate there were no real (or any) men at the bar to mock his pussiness. If you want peace, get a Budweiser. He stared at the wine; he’d have to drink it now, even if fully expecting vinegar.

  “John Wayne would throw few punches, break bad furniture, and settle moral argument,” Bega went on, downing his bourbon shot between moral and argument. “These days, you can’t do nothing without special effects.”

  The Cubs were losing by ten runs in the eighth inning, but Paco was transfixed, his head tilted back so far it seemed it might break off and clatter onto the floor. It was hard to tell whether he was expecting a miracle or he’d entered some kind of trance where the difference between victory and defeat was void. On the side of his neck he had a perfectly perfect goiter, glowing under the dim lights like a commercial for cancer. In My Darling Clementine, Henry Fonda asked the bartender at the saloon: “Have you ever been in love?” and he said: “I’ve always been a bartender.”

  “In Sarajevo I knew one fat kid,” Bega said, washing the whiskey down with beer, waving to Paco to request more. “Fat kids were rare, not like here, so bullies loved him, loved to beat him. Once he came up with crazy story: he saw spaceship through his window in the middle of night and aliens gave him superpower. After that, he says, he can lift cars and destroy buildings, so bullies make secret organization against him. They are after him, always ready to attack. One day, he points at one building and tells us: They’re watching me right now. We look, there is nothing. But he is not afraid anymore.”

  “That’s a great story,” Josh said. “That could be a great screenplay.” Bega dismissed the compliment with a flick of his hand. In addition to smoke and cologne, he exuded shapeless contempt for weakness. It was quite possible that he’d been a fat kid who eventually tormented other kids; or a bully who turned fat—his girth was still impressive.

  The Cubs had finally lost their game by twelve runs. All the players looked absurdly inept, as though they were expressly drafted to be humiliated, entrepreneurs in the industry of losing. Paco scratched his goiter and it wiggled a bit under the skin, like a mature fetus. Script Idea #11: A gay pitcher sells his soul to the devil to play in the World Series. The price: he has to turn straight. Title: At the Bat. Joshua took a gulp of his wine and it burned his interiority. It was worse than vinegar, it was like dry-cleaned brine, the taste of rough-edged authenticity: by reality and perfection I understand the same thing. Paco pointed the remote at the TV and switched to the news: George W. Bush spoke to the camera, his face so decisively earnest that it was clear he was lying, his button eyes lit up with amateurish subterfuge. Only truly great men can be adept at shameless lying, Joshua thought. This dude was straining to the point of snapping.

  “Tell me why is that,” Bega said, “last eight presidents have simple names: Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, two with Bush. You used to have Washington, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower, and then something happened. You can’t elect your president with complicated name anymore. Idiot voters have to be able to spell fucking name.”

  Joshua gave thought to the hypothesis but the authentic wine ruthlessly interfered with the thought, which subsequently dissolved like a body in acid. Bega swallowed another shot, then washed it down with beer. What Joshua could not understand was why Bega cared at all. Why would he bother to parse these matters American? Joshua himself didn’t care. Americans would never worry about the names of other countries’ presidents. That’s what’s great about this country. Bega surely was enough of an American now to stop giving a fuck.

  “Dukakis,” Joshua said.

  “Correct,” Bega said. “No chance.”

  On the TV, a retired, Humpty Dumpty–shaped general was now pointing—with an actual pointer—at the map of Iraq. It was clear that he thought it was all going swimmingly, his pointer flying all over the map, as if he were caning it.

  “Rumsfeld—a snowball in hell,” Joshua said.

  “Don’t know about that,” Bega said. “Only two syllables. He could do it.”

  “You’re right.”

  Bega offered his beer for another chin-chin, as if to confirm the achieved mutual understanding, and Joshua raised his brine martini glass to meet it.

  * * *

  Men think, also drink, bond. Deliver lengthy soliloquies built of improvised conviction, incomplete sentences. They touch the biceps of their fellow man, punch his shoulder affectionately; a few bruises—why not?—the marks of shared manhood, of alcohol-enhanced circulation. Men confide, lust rhetorically, copulate hypothetically with women of unacknowledged fantasy. Men outline their life stories and philosophies, relive ball games, take good care not to care visibly about anything. Fuck, they say, a fucking lot. Men don’t even have to be from the same country as their fellow man.

  Paco kept delivering the booze while the two men huddled close. Snout to snout, they shared with each other their identifying obsessions and favorites: The Wild Bunch (Yes! Bega: “Last western ever.”); Led Zeppelin (Yes!); drin
king (they chin-chinned); Dylan (Josh could not stand the whiny voice); women (Bega lecherously licked his lips); Conan the Barbarian, the movie (Josh: “Isn’t it a touch fascist?”); Radiohead (Bega retching); Pantera (Josh had never heard of them), et cetera. Bega sketched in a beer puddle on the bar a map of Bosnia and the bellicose Balkans, deploying cigarette butts for national capitals. Proudly, he proclaimed: “We surf catastrophe!” as Josh refrained from inquiring who exactly the we was. For his part, Josh listed the relevant points in his drama-deprived life: his Wilmette childhood, tolerable except for his parents’ divorce; a complete set of grandparents, all Florida-based Holocaust survivors, Nana Elsa his favorite; college years at Northwestern, three miles away from his parents’ home, majoring in film studies, minoring in philosophy. And Spinoza was da man, the first secular Jew in history. “My man Baruch predicted movies in the seventeenth fucking century!” Josh spoke excitedly. “He said: ‘The more an image is joined with other images, the more often it flourishes.’” Nana Elsa loved old movies and watched them with Josh—“Good movies are like wine,” Nana used to say, “they need to mature.” “Not like this shit,” Josh said and downed his swill.

  Whereupon he proceeded to paint the picture of his hot Japanese-American girlfriend, his beautiful Zen mistress, with the lovely name of Kimiko, Bega’s eyes widening. Josh went on to paint, if with a less colorful palette, his teaching English as a second language to a bunch of Russians and other immigrants at a Jewish vocational school. He watercolored, so to speak, his laptop as brimming with script ideas, none close to being actualized. He finally sketched a bright future in which he would sell a script for a bucket of coin, quit his job, and move in with Kimmy, who had at least once, by her own confession, participated in a threesome.

  Actually, there could never be any reason to believe that there would be a future, Bega retorted. We end up expecting it only because we do not know how not to imagine it. It’s a human deficiency, constantly plotting some kind of future—and from that deficiency comes cinema. Unless you’re watching a movie, it is crazy to expect that the present will continue happening—any moment could be the last moment. In lieu of evidence for his claim, Bega subsequently offered the incoherent highlights of what he referred to as his previous life: his two years in the film academy while working on what he called Top List of Surrealists; the fantastically beautiful women of Sarajevo; the orgiastic euphoria on the eve of the war disaster; the drinking, the drugs, the end of it. Finally the war foreclosing and canceling the future while everybody believed that good life would go on forever. “So here I am!” Bega said and downed his shot.