The Making of Zombie Wars

by Aleksandar Hemon

  “So then after the war he made it to Israel and there he had a family and then a stroke, so went into a coma. But he couldn’t die. He could be still alive, for all I know. He might stay comatose forever. God is patient.”

  “Nice story,” Joshua said. “What’s your point?”

  “Maybe it’s not the virus. Maybe it’s that zombies lost faith.”

  “You are something, Bernie!” Joshua said. “Zombies are self-hating Jews? If you don’t stand with Israel, you are one of the living dead? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Bernie shrugged in the manner that was part of his annoying repertoire: slanting his head to the side, scrunching his shoulders, his face signaling, Maybe I know nothing, but I’m just saying—the shtetl shrug.

  “It’s just a virus, all right?” Joshua said. “It’s a convention. Suspension of disbelief. Those who care about the story accept that it’s a virus, they don’t question the goddamn virus. It’s like these weapons of mass destruction—Saddam has them because he’s Saddam. If there are zombies there is a virus. The zombie virus. That’s it. Can we drop the fucking virus?”

  * * *

  Bernie read the menu, squinting—another annoying thing—and moving his glasses up and down his curled-up nose to zoom in and out. Joshua knew that what he hated about the moments like this would end up being precisely what he missed about his father when he was gone—his irritating tics would be converted into heart-wrenching recollections. For instance, Bernie liked to announce his nutritional choices, as though everybody was on the edge of their seats to find out whether he intended to take salad or not.

  “I’ll have some soup,” he informed Joshua. “And also lamb. What are you going to have?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Joshua said. “I misplaced my wallet. So you’re buying.”

  “Okay, I’m buying, no problem. Get whatever you want,” Bernie said. “Have a steak if you want. Two steaks. You’re pale. You look like a zombie.”

  The cute, big-eyed waitress was working today—her name tag read Kelly—and just her twinklesome smile was worth the lengthy digestion of the slop available at Charlie’s Ale House. As Joshua watched her walk over to them, he tried to think of some clever, flirtatious thing to say to her. But she was far too fast a walker, and when she pulled out her notepad, he just ordered a glass of rosé and a grilled cheese, while his father ordered soup (with extra crackers), lamb (rare), salad, and bread pudding. On the TV above the bar, there was Bush the beady-eyed president, ever stuck in the middle of incomprehension. Cheney, fresh from cocksucking, stood right next to him like a maleficent stepfather.

  “How was the cruise?” Joshua asked.

  “Israel really is a promised land,” he said. Normally, Bernie looked bronze after returning from a cruise, but today he looked waxy.

  “Did you stop anywhere else?”

  “Oh, some sunny islands. I wasn’t feeling too well until we got to Haifa. Constance loved it!”

  “And how’s Constance?”

  “Great! Her boobs grow with age,” Bernie said, shaking his head in appalling admiration. “When she’s in the double Ds, I’ll be double dead.”

  Kelly brought soup and Bernie emptied five little bags of crackers into the bowl. Will I be like this when I grow old? Joshua wondered. Will I turn into a man who eats as if hurrying to finish before the food is snatched away? Bernie cradled the bowl with his left hand, looming over it. He learned that from his parents, it was a habit they’d acquired in the camp. You had to eat quickly and there was no talking while food was being disposed of. Bernie slurped a few spoonfuls, but then stopped to clear his throat, as if about to say something important.

  “How’s your mother?” he inquired.

  “She seems fine,” Joshua said. “She asked about you too.”

  “Did you tell her Connie and I went on a cruise?”

  “She knew. She was hoping you were cruising on the Titanic.”

  Bernie chortled: “A funny girl, she is, your mother.”

  Kelly brought the rest of their lunch on a big tray, holding it high, so Joshua could see her nicely shaped biceps. Now that the food had arrived, the conversation was over for a while: Bernie cut into the lamb and it bled. Joshua watched Kelly swing her hips, slipping with ease between chairs, turning to push the kitchen door with her back. Women’s presence in the world, Joshua realized, reliably provided torment for him, for his fatigued, unyielding flesh. He couldn’t eat; he just sipped his rosé, far too dry, watching Bernie torture his undead meat. Normally, his father looked down on the plate while eating, as if any eye contact would slow down his chewing, his fists clenched around the knife and fork on either side of the plate, never letting them down. But this time he moved his jaw fitfully, glancing up at Joshua only to return his gaze to the lamb, presently swimming in its own blood. He stabbed a green bean, brought it to his mouth but didn’t take it. A single tear snowballed down his left cheek.

  “Oh, man!” Joshua whimpered. He hadn’t anticipated this; this was supposed to be a routine Monday lunch with his father. “What is it now?”

  “I don’t feel well,” his father said. “I haven’t been feeling well.”

  Joshua had once watched Bush the Elder address the nation from the Oval Office. He was about to send our troops to some godforsaken place and highfalutin drivel was required to placate further the already indifferent American people. He was front-lit, the better to deliver the platitudes, so the Oval Office window behind him looked unreal, like a painted set. But then, in the middle of presidential bullshit, Joshua sensed a slight motion behind Bush and spotted a tree leaf falling, twirling through the frame of the backdrop window, which hence became real. The deciduous leaf suddenly made Bush look terribly old, and getting older by the instant. Mr. President was going to die and no troop deployment could ever stop that.

  “What’s up, Bernie?”

  Father pushed the bean across his plate, creating little blood waves.

  “Nothing. Nothing really.” He put his fork down first, then his knife. Now he was unarmed. “It’s just that Constance was at a mall and some fat old geezer was throwing a penny into the fountain and just collapsed. He was so big they couldn’t get him out of the fountain. They had to bring in a forklift.”

  “Did he die?” Joshua asked.

  “I have no idea. If he didn’t, he will. Either way, Connie came back home to tell me she couldn’t stand to watch me perish. I assured her I wasn’t going to keel over anytime soon. She has a life coach now. She’s discovered she wants to live in Florida year-round. She wants to spend the rest of her life suntanning. She wants a new life, she says. The fact is, I don’t have much of it left.”

  “Sturdy guys like you don’t keel over so easily, Bernie,” Joshua said. “You’ll be like Chaim. We’ll have to take you out to the woods, tie you to a tree, and leave you there for the wolves.”

  Bernie wasn’t quite convinced. He finally put the blood-soaked bean into his mouth and chewed it listlessly. With another overloaded tray, Kelly flew out the swinging kitchen doors, as if about to break into song and dance. It was an entirely wrong time for her to be so young and merry. Script Idea #85: A mob informer, knowing that his lunch partners will take him out after dessert to clip him in a forest preserve, leaves a million-dollar cocaine package as a tip for the pretty waitress. She is forced to go on the run from the mob. Title: To Insure Promptness.

  “I was taking so much Viagra, I was at constant risk of a heart attack,” Bernie said. “Lately I’ve been just eating her, and losing my breath at that.”

  “Way too much information, Dad! You talking to me like that is too weird.” Joshua pushed his plate away. “Did something happen in Israel? Did you even go on a cruise?”

  Bernie pressed the napkin into his face and shook his head. Joshua considered getting up and coming around the table to rub his back. Instead, he put his hand on his father’s forearm—his skin felt cold and clammy.

  “Bernie! Goddamn it!” Joshua said
. “Dad! Don’t.”

  His father whimpered and sighed. He wiped his tears with his bloodstained napkin and stopped crying. Young and innocent, Kelly arrived with a pitcher of ice water.

  “How are we doing?” she asked blithely, topping off their glasses.

  “Fantastic!” Bernie said, wiping his mouth. “And I think I’m ready for my bread pudding.”

  * * *

  Joshua promised he’d pay back the two hundred dollars Bernie loaned him, but they both knew it would never happen. Outside Charlie’s Ale House, standing by the cruise-ship-sized Cadillac, they hugged, slapping each other’s back masculinely.

  “We don’t spend enough time together,” Bernie said. “I like talking to you.”

  “I like talking to you too.”

  “I don’t know enough about your life. What you want, what you do. One day you left home and became a stranger.”

  No, Joshua thought, one day Bernie left home and became a stranger. But this was no time for settling truth debts.

  “I’m no stranger. I tell you stuff. I’m teaching, writing, hanging out. A simple life,” Joshua said. “And you’ll be okay. You’re a tough Hebrew, hard as a nail.”

  “Sure. The Levins are survivors,” he said and squeezed Joshua’s face between his big palms, kissing his forehead, like the patriarch he wasn’t.

  The car beeped and its doors unlocked, as in a dream. One leg inside, Bernie asked: “How’s Kimmy?”

  “Fine,” Joshua said.

  “Don’t screw that up. She’s a catch.”

  Normally, Bernie would lean out of the window and wave at Joshua before he’d drive away, doing it exaggeratedly, as if he were about to go on a cross-country trip. Joshua waited for him to do so, unable to let go without the ritual, like a kid before sleep. But Bernie was taking his time playing with his phone and Joshua watched his hunched back, pathetically diminutive behind the wheel. On their family trips he’d loomed large, driving with blatant, if undeserved, confidence, complete with shouting along with the music from the radio and cursing at other drivers. “How’s it that I can remember things that took place fifty years ago,” Bernie had once asked him, “and I can’t remember what I did this morning?”

  * * *

  Joshua was the first one at Graham’s place, so he lingered alone in the living room, browsing the bookshelves. He picked up The Climax: The Art of Resolving Conflict and flipped through it. Rule #24: Not every revelation deserves screen time, he read. His phone buzzed with a message in his pocket. He decided that, today, if it came to that, he would point out the anti-Semitic implications of Graham’s anti-Weinstein rants. Enough was enough. He sensed that his newfangled decisiveness had something to do with his father—if need be, Joshua could be a tough Jew too.

  Graham walked in with the same pretzels and soda bottles from last week. It was as though he were just plugging the products: no one ever ate pretzels; no one drank whatever was in the bottles, it may well have been dyed toilet-bowl water. Rule #33: Tension must pay off, otherwise it’s torture. Joshua, gearing up for a hypothetical fight, glared at him without a greeting.

  “I like your zombie stuff, Josh,” Graham said unexpectedly, settling in his armchair. He instantly applied his thumb to his cleft chin, rubbing it with pleasure. Did he have a residual clit there? “I do think you have a few good ideas in that pumpkin of yours. I was thinking of putting you in touch with an agent guy I know. He’s a bit of an insufferable prick, and most of his clients are actually actors. But he’s always wanting to expand into screenwriters. And you might get to practice your pitching. What do you think?”

  Rule #45: What you see is what you get. A flock of butterflies fluttered up in Joshua’s stomach. “I think that’s great,” he said. The phone buzzed again. He put the book away and sat down. Other than Zombie Wars, he couldn’t remember any of his other ideas at that moment. Saint Pacino watched over him benevolently. An agent, even of Graham’s breed, was something. Once again the phone buzzed, and then buzzed one more time.

  “Are you going to look at that phone?” Graham asked. “It’s really annoying.” Joshua checked his phone. Rule #50: Plot don’t stop. The message was from Bernie.

  Spaking of hard, has check up, the message read. Some leevel too higg. Ha anotjer tes. My prstte Prostate like roc. Hello cancer. Don tell Jan Rachel. Lov ypu.

  Joshua’s first thought was: Bernie learned how to text. He then waited for another thought, but it was slow in coming.

  * * *

  “Why you want to have zombies?” Bega asked. “Do you have good reason? Or is it just because Hollywood?”

  This time around, Bega’s T-shirt had a Ford logo, except it read Fuck instead of Ford.

  “Well, there’s something about people just turning into consuming organisms,” Joshua said. “So that the living appear more human in contrast. They love, they suffer.”

  “Who?” Dillon asked.

  “The humans.”

  “Have you seen 28 Days Later?” Dillon asked.

  “No,” Joshua said. “It hasn’t come out in the U.S. yet.”

  “Joshua watches only old movies,” Bega said. “For him good movies are like wine, they need to become old. Everything after Star Wars is shit. He doesn’t want to be influenced by shit.”

  Joshua must’ve stated this to Bega back at the Westmoreland, but he couldn’t quite recall it. Still, the mocking tone hurt.

  “I hate all of the Star Wars movies. Particularly Star Wars,” Joshua clarified defiantly.

  Dillon assembled his face into an expression of unmitigated shock and offered it to Joshua.

  “The thing with zombies,” Graham said, “is that they don’t fuck.”

  “Really?” Dillon feigned shock again. “Like really?”

  “Really,” Joshua said. How does one become a Dillon?

  “And they don’t fuck,” Graham continued, “because they have no functional bodies.”

  “They could fuck,” Joshua said. “They could do anything I’d like them to do.”

  “Zombies are not real,” Bega said. “When you see zombie in a movie you think: This is bullshit.”

  “The way I see it is they’re the living dead,” Joshua said. “Their human biology is not dead, it’s just suspended, they’re in a kind of a coma. So that their bodies are not necessarily dead. There’s struggle inside them at the cellular level—good cells versus evil cells. That’s why Major K is developing a vaccine for the virus. If it works, good beats evil, and they can just return to being human. It will be a little bit like resurrection.”

  “I always wondered how they digest the flesh they eat,” Graham said. “I mean, how much of it can they actually eat? Do they get overstuffed? Do they crave fresh protein? Can they eat raw steak too? Do they shit?”

  “Well, you do have to suspend some disbelief,” Joshua said. “You have to accept that zombies are mythological creatures. Greek gods don’t shit.”

  “Greek gods do fuck, though, as far as I know, and a lot,” Graham said. “They are jealous, they do all kinds of wacky stuff to each other, they cheat on their wives, they change shapes. They don’t just totter around howling.”

  “It’s not about the zombies, it’s about the living,” Joshua said.

  “But living don’t do nothing in your story,” Bega said. “They just kill lot of zombies. Good thing about zombies is you can kill million and nobody cares. You just shoot, they explode, nobody cares. It is for Americans to feel better about killing to make it easy.”

  “They’re like terrorists,” Dillon said.

  “Maybe there is one zombie your hero cares about,” Bega suggested. “Maybe he tries to save his wife or something.”

  “There’s that family that Major Klopstock found,” Joshua said. “He wants to save them.”

  “The name Klopstock is a bad idea, I promise you,” Graham said. “He can have a Jewish name, but could he at least be Major Abraham or Major David or something? Actually, Major David is pretty good—as in David
versus Goliath. Let me pat myself on the back!”

  He reached for the spot between his shoulder blades. One day his joint will pop.

  “I like Major Moses,” Dillon said. “He takes them to the promised land.”

  “I don’t want biblical names. I prefer Major Klopstock. It means nothing. I don’t think it’s even particularly Jewish. He’s just an ordinary guy with an ordinary name,” Joshua said.

  “I don’t think that Klopstock is an ordinary name anywhere outside Brooklyn,” Graham said.

  “Where is sadness?” Bega asked. “He lives in the world that is absolutely destroyed. He lost family. He lost his house, his city. Why is he not sad?”

  “He is quite sad,” Joshua said. “He just doesn’t have time to stop and reflect upon it. Sadness will come after he survives.”

  “Fuck sadness, movies are not about being sad,” Graham said, the red hand of excessive excitement emerging on his forehead. “Look anywhere around you, no sadness. Americans are proud people but we’re not sad people. We’re either deeply depressed or insanely happy. Either way, we don’t care to see other people’s misery. What we want to see is how to overcome the shit. We shall overcome! Overcome the shit! That kind of thing.”

  “But how do you overcome death?” Bega was getting upset. “That’s why you have zombies. They are dead little bit so when you kill them you kill death.”

  “I think death is part of life,” Dillon said.

  “That’s depressing,” Graham said. “Who is going to watch a movie as depressing as that? You need to get a winner in there, Mr. Levin. Not the gentle Major Chickenstock. Someone who makes hard choices and goes for the kill if he needs to. People are losers, so they identify with the winner.”

  “But that is not real,” Bega said.

  “The real is for pussies,” Graham raved, rocking. “People want better than real. I got plenty of real at work, where my boss is fucking me. Or at home where my real kids are really screaming their real heads off. If you want more real, go and live in Iraq. They got shitloads of real. They got so much real they blow themselves up with it all day long.”