The Making of Zombie Wars

by Aleksandar Hemon

  The old man stopped by at the door of Bernie’s room and looked in. He was akin to an emaciated buzzard, complete with long fingers and uncut nails. He just stood quietly, observing, smelling death. Bernie’s neck was thin, his earlobes meaty and big, his ears enormous. The body laid down on this hospital bed should not belong to the father that Joshua knew. Where did the real Bernie go? He’d actually been born as a Shmuel, but back in his high school days his shtetl name had practically served as a contraceptive device, so he’d introduced himself as Bernie to his first goy girlfriend. In the beginning, and steadily thereafter, our fathers worshipped idols.

  “Where I live, it’s all figuring out, all day long. It never stops, not for a moment,” Janet said. “There’s so much more to figure out and I’m so damn tired.”

  The old man turned to walk away at a mortally slow pace. There was a dried streak of blood on the inside of his thigh. Noah stood up to follow him, but Janet glared at him until he sat back down and returned to the comforts of Spider-Man.

  “You know what Noah asked me the other day?” Janet whispered.

  “‘Where do tits come from?’”

  “Oh, shut up! No! Shut up! Come on! He’s sweet. No! He asked: ‘Who made the first person?’ And then: ‘Was the first person a boy or girl?’”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said it was complicated. And he said: ‘I think every person is the first person.’”

  “You should be saving money for his therapy,” Joshua said. “It’s going to be very costly.”

  “Don’t you think that’s sweet, though?” Janet said. A tear in the corner of her eye twinkled and then evaporated. “Every person is the first person.”

  “He can be sweet,” Joshua said. He’d never seen Noah being sweet, not since he’d been a cooing baby, and even then describing him as sweet would’ve been a stretch of imagination.

  “Did you talk to Constance?” Janet asked.

  “I don’t think they’re together anymore,” Joshua said. Bernie was grinning and drooling in his sleep, rehearsing for a future life in pain-free oblivion.

  “When it rains, it pisses,” Janet said. “Poor guy.”

  She pushed her hair behind her ear to lean over and kiss Bernie. The heavy earring stretched the hole in her lobe and it appeared enormous—she had Bernie’s ears. She’d been Father’s girl; he’d taken her to baseball games, even fishing; he’d interrogated and vetted her boyfriends, none ever worthy of her. When Doug had salsa-ed his way into her life, the brawny ass first, Bernie had thought him unworthy but had failed to share his opinion with Janet, because she’d seemed so happy. Now she couldn’t remember what okay looked like, and Bernie was out like a light.

  “There’s another thing,” Janet said. “His prostate is rotten.”

  Joshua turned to stare at her in disbelief.

  “I know,” he finally said.

  “You know?”

  “He told me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He asked me not to tell you. I thought it was the kind of a secret only men can share.”

  “Right. Men and their secrets. Where would we be without them. Except he asked me, too, not to tell you.”

  She sat down on the edge of Father’s bed.

  “He texted me,” Joshua said. “Imagine that. He learned how to text. Constance would be proud.”

  Bernie began to snore, his breathing achingly even and so loud that they couldn’t help but recognize—and confirm it with eye contact—that one day, very soon, Shmuel Levin would end that whole breathing business and withdraw finally from the earthly domain of cruise ships and suffering. Every person is the first person; every death is the first death. Janet’s face was suddenly, soblessly, wet with tears. The TV now showed a trailer for a Batman movie and Noah looked up: a grown man who liked to dress as a bat stood facing a clown in some kind of a showdown. Spandex defeats death: those bastards manage never to grow up, let alone die; ridiculous costumes stave off mortality. Janet put her face in her hands to sweep away the tears.

  “You coming over for Seder?” she asked.

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll come.”

  She grabbed the remote and turned the TV off, then pressed the call button, then did it again, but there was no response.

  “Could you do me a favor?” she said. Whenever Janet demanded a favor, Joshua would normally cringe in trepidation, but there was no way he could deny her at a time like this.

  “Name it,” Joshua said.

  “Doug is coming to pick Noah up. Can you take him down?”

  “Take Doug down?” Joshua asked. “Like, off him?”

  “Funny,” Janet said, without laughing. “Would you really off him for me? That’s so sweet. The only thing is that, as far as I’m concerned, he’s already dead.”

  It must be taking enormous energy to do her Janet-did-it-again shtick every day; no wonder she was so worn out.

  “Could you take Noah down, then, so I don’t have to lay eyes on that dick?” Janet sat down next to Bernie’s bed and commenced pressing furiously on the call button. “Please!”

  * * *

  One day Noah would recall his boyhood in full Technicolor, wherein he would be a thinking, reading, sensitive boy whose parents’ painful rift turned him into a lifelong little patient, for which he’d be entitled to resent them to his grave. It was a safe bet that he wouldn’t be capable of recalling himself as a selfish little scourge who showed no desire to consider others. He would certainly edit out the long ride down in the hospital elevator with his distraught uncle, made all the longer by his pressing twenty-two buttons before said uncle could intervene to stop him.

  What was I really like as a kid? Joshua wondered as, floor after floor, the elevator leapt, sped up, stopped. He routinely recalled himself as a pensive boy, who liked to read in quiet corners, who in the movie theater hid under his grandmother’s seat sneaking peeks at Doctor Zhivago. But he was also a lonely boy whose wrath at his warring parents was expressed randomly: hiding Bernie’s wallet behind the wilted ficus; pissing into the paper shredder; dropping Rachel’s car keys into the garbage; reading anything but the Torah at temple; sabotaging Seder by using the Goofy voice when it was his turn to read. It had never occurred to him that he’d done all that simply because he’d always just been himself, a congenital asshole perhaps, that he would’ve done it all even if his parents’ marriage hadn’t imploded so ignominiously. The American story: we reinvent ourselves in order to punish others for what we believe has been done to our previous version. For his part, Joshua was sure that the scourge of Noah had nothing to do with Doug and Janet, yet the boy’s sinister nature would end up buried under the alternating layers of his self-pity and his parents’ guilt. Kimmy would know what to say about all that, as she understood the mysterious ways in which little patients ruthlessly turned into themselves.

  “Hey, Noah, let me ask you a question!” Joshua said as they stopped on the twelfth floor. “What are you going to be when you grow up?”

  Noah looked at him, not so much surprised by the question as by his uncle asking it at all.

  “I don’t know,” Noah said. “What can I be?”

  “You could be a firefighter,” Joshua offered.

  “Firefighter? Who wants to be a firefighter?”

  “Many kids. It’s a very noble profession. They fight fire. They save lives. On nine-eleven, they saved hundreds of people.”

  “Why aren’t you a firefighter?”

  When Joshua was Noah’s age he wanted to be a speedboat racer, piano tuner, nuclear physicist, monkey wrangler. Never a firefighter. South Side Irish became firefighters. Not North Side Jews.

  “When I was your age I wanted to be a firefighter. It was my dream. But then my mom and dad got divorced,” Joshua said.

  A flash of pain on Noah’s face caused a surge of shameful pleasure in Joshua’s chest.

  “Well,” Noah said on
the seventh floor. “I don’t think I want to be a firefighter.”

  The boy did indeed have some feelings; he hadn’t turned into a sociopath quite yet. They lurched between floors on their way down amid the whooshing and screeching of the machinery.

  On the third floor, Noah said: “I’m going to be a doctor.”

  * * *

  Doug the former hip-flexing competitive dancer; Doug the manager of some shady money-laundering fund that made him spend months at a time in Dubai; Doug the wiry charmer, the casual prick. Doug the Dougster. What did she ever see in him? What was it she didn’t wish to see now? There had been a time when Doug had offered to his young brother-in-law sagely advice on the various means of getting laid; another when he’d shared a line of Wall Street–quality coke. There had been a time when Doug would wink at Joshua randomly across the family dinner table, as if to confirm the feasibility of some conspiratorial plan. “It will be okay,” Doug’s twitching eyelid would signal. “Don’t you worry about any of it.” But the conspiracy would never pan out, simply because Joshua could never understand what exactly it was supposed to be.

  “How’s Bernie?” Doug asked. He wore a snazzy suit, his tie rakishly loose, his sunglasses pushed up above his tanned forehead. It was actually him that Billy/George resembled, Joshua abruptly recognized: he could now see the same subcutaneous wiring, the same energetically deceitful sheen on their respective surfaces. Noah was leaning into Doug’s hip, hugging his thigh, eager to get away from his passive-aggressive uncle. A little convoy of overweight people in scooter chairs progressed glacially across the vast foyer.

  “Not that good,” Joshua said, in the vain hope that Doug might feel guilty, which he most obviously didn’t.

  “Poor guy,” Doug said.

  “Let’s go, Dad,” Noah said.

  “I want him to get better soon. I like him,” Doug said.

  “Me too,” Joshua said.

  “I’m sure the doctors are taking good care of him,” Doug said. “This is a top-shelf hospital.”

  “And how are you doing?” Joshua asked. Noah was watching the scooter convoy advance toward the elevators, his back now turned to Joshua, Doug absentmindedly stroking his head.

  “I’m good,” Doug said. He was trying to read Joshua, assuming—correctly—that Joshua didn’t really care about his well-being.

  “Janet is good too,” Joshua said.

  Doug nodded faintly wistfully, as if remembering her name from way back. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad.”

  “She’ll destroy you,” Joshua said. “She’ll rip you apart.”

  Doug laughed. He laughed like someone who had just been told good news, stroking his son’s blond hair all along.

  “I seriously doubt that,” he said. “And it’s not something you yourself should worry about.”

  As the scooter convoy reached the elevators, Noah turned to look at Joshua with what could be interpreted only as bitter contempt. How is this nightmare different from any other nightmare?

  “Let’s get out of here,” Noah said to his father. “Let’s go see a movie.”

  Doug pulled out a wad of dollars, peeled off a twenty, and handed it to Noah. “Go get yourself a little bit of whatever you want,” he said. Noah considered the twenty then took off toward a TCBY store, where for his money he could get gallons of high-fructose yogurt.

  “Okay,” Doug said. “Let’s talk to each other like men.”

  How did men talk? Bare-chested? While arm wrestling? Nodding a lot?

  “I know this is hard on the family,” Doug said. “But it’ll pass.”

  “Of course it’ll pass,” Joshua said. “The way a tornado passes, leveling entire communities.”

  “I don’t need a lecture,” Doug said.

  “What do you need, then?” Joshua said.

  “I’m off to Iraq,” Doug said.

  “You joined the army?” Joshua said. Doug had it in him; it had never before occurred to Joshua, but he did have soldierness in him. Perhaps it was the way he stood before Joshua: straight as an arrow, hands on his hips, feet apart, chin pointing out. He could see him barking at his underlings, in desert camos, the sunglasses under the helmet, the hand gun on his thigh, spitting out the sand. He’d love the smell of napalm in the morning.

  “Fuck, no! I’m not that crazy,” Doug said. “Don Rumsfeld and his people are setting up a team to get the economy running. I used to do stuff for him when he was in Chicago. We’ll be handing out money, pretty much. We’ll provide the camelfuckers with a starter kit for market capitalism. It’s a dream job. They need people like you wouldn’t believe it.”

  There was Doug, winking at him again, as it were, across the divide, including him even if he didn’t have to.

  “I suppose you’ll need buckets of cash for the divorce,” Joshua said.

  “Yup. There might be reparations aplenty,” Doug said. “You should come along with me, make some dough. Then you can write your scripts for fun.”

  “Does Noah know you’re going?”

  “I’m about to tell him,” Doug said, looking toward TCBY.

  The end of the heavy convoy was filing into the elevator that would take them up to some kind of disinfected heaven. Noah was on his way back, digging yogurt out of a tub, licking his lips before and after he deposited a lump in his mouth.

  “I’ll be coming and going, but looks like I’ll be gone a lot. I was going to ask you to watch out for Noah. Jan can be a little, you know, overwhelming. He needs a man in his life.”

  “Sure,” said Joshua, the man.

  “It’s not like I’m gonna shoot at the towelheads and sleep in a tent. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Don’t get too killed.”

  “Nah!” Doug said. “It should be a cakewalk.”

  EXT. CORNFIELD — DAY

  A vast field. Ruth parts the jungle-like greenness of corn, while Major Klopstock has Jack firmly strapped to his back. They move fast. Ruth occasionally checks if Young Woman follows in their wake. Young Woman drops to her knees, then rises to go on walking. She glares at Ruth to indicate that she is determined to make it.

  A choir of zombie GROANS AND HOWLS somewhere in the distance. An overhead shot shows that Major K, the women, and the boy are in the center of the cornfield, while stick-thin zombies are all around, wandering aimlessly. Neither Major K and his group nor the zombies are aware of a well-armed unit surrounding all of them. Two concentric circles, at the center of which is Major K.

  What do you do after you see your very own father fallen and helpless, after you find yourself caught up between your sister and her Iraq-bound spouse, after you’ve been promoted against your secret wishes to the rank of a responsible uncle? What do you do? What do you do instead of going home (home?), where a refugee and her daughter are squatting, taking their time to figure out what to do next? What do you do if there are decisions to be made, penitence and rebuilding to be done after you were carpet-bombed by life? What do you do? You do what you must: you have a drink at a fount of manhood, because that’s what you know, because that’s where the central fear booth is located.

  The Westmoreland was more crowded than usual, which is to say that there were two tables taken, and there was Bega at the bar, reading the newspaper again. Paco was still behind it, apparently unmoved from his posture of TV-watching, except the TV was off. The goyter looked a bit bigger, the new head evidently ready to hatch.

  Spitefully, in Bega’s full and derisive sight, Joshua sat at the far end of the bar. Bega didn’t bother talking to him, not even when Paco walked over to take a double-bourbon order from Joshua.

  “Hey, Paco,” Bega said, “did you know that Homeland Security tells you what to do in case of terrorism if you call them?”

  Paco shook his head for Joshua to see, and it was hard to know whether that meant No, I didn’t know or I can’t believe that guy’s trying to talk to me.

  “Listen.” Bega read, “‘The time to prepare is now. The fight against terror
begins at home … Store heavyweight garbage bags and duct tape to seal windows, doors, and air vents from outside contamination. While there is no way to predict what will happen or what your personal circumstances will be, there are things you can do now.’”

  Kontamneyshn is the way Bega pronounced it. Paco returned to deliver Joshua’s drink, shaking his head again, a motion no doubt limited by the growth—if it wasn’t for his goyter, he’d probably be swinging his head around like a mace. This time he seemed to be expressing some kind of disbelief. Bega was looking at both of them to detect their respective reactions, but Joshua avoided eye contact.

  “‘We can be afraid or we can be ready,’” Bega finished, chuckling mirthfully.

  He stood up and limped along the bar to sit on the stool next to Joshua.

  “Be afraid or be ready, Josh!”

  “Consider yourself nonexistent,” Joshua said.

  Bega shrugged, lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply, leaning on the bar.

  “Why is the TV off?” Joshua asked Paco.

  “Cubs already lost,” Bega said. How did Paco decide when to speak out?

  “I can see you’re limping,” Joshua said. “I hope it’s horribly painful.”

  “War injury,” Bega said, letting the smoke out of his mouth and nose. It floated past Paco, toward the dark TV, like a half thought. “Leg gets dead after I sit for long time. I have to keep moving. Like shark.”

  Joshua downed his bourbon and coughed as the alcohol burned its way through his gullet to his stomach. He considered getting up to finish his drink at one of the empty tables, but that would’ve been a statement involving too much drama, attracting too much attention. He wished he had a knife; he’d pin Bega’s hand to the bar. And then they would talk through the torture, Joshua slicing off Bega’s fingers until he understood what needed to be understood.

  “What are you going to do?” Bega asked as Joshua was experiencing a flash of déjà vu.

  “About what? What exactly do you want from me, Bega?”