Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

“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.”

“I don’t care about the real or the unreal,” Joshua said. “I just want to tell a story.”

“Exactly,” Graham said. “Tell the fucking story.”

EXT. A CHICAGO STREET — DAY

Major Klopstock opens his eyes and sees a herd of zombies surrounding him, GROANING and HOWLING. They include a few children in school uniforms, torn and bloodied. The circle narrows as the zombies advance. He has a twelve-gauge in his hand, a heavy bag on his shoulder. The zombies totter forward to reach for him. He blows a few zombie brains out, creating an opening in the circle big enough to escape. He moves toward the opening, shooting a couple more in the head. He shoves the zombie children out of his way, shooting continuously as they drop to the ground. He destroys all of them, but just as he’s about to relax, one of the zombie kids on the ground grabs his ankle and tries to bite into it. Major K blows its head off, then wipes the mess off his shoes with its school uniform.

MAJOR K

Bad boy! Bad boy!

Sears Tower is looming on the horizon. Above it a helicopter hovers. The top of the tower explodes.

The basement classroom was empty, except for a faint fungal scent and the scrambled rows of school chairs. Think, thought, thinker, thoughtful, thoughtless , read the chalkboard, authored by some other teacher confounding his students in some other class. A word family: think and thought the spoiled, bickering children, thinker the drunk uncle doing who-knows-what in the small upstairs room, thoughtful and thoughtless the divorced parents.

And Bernie had goddamn prostate cancer. My prstte Prostate like roc. Hello cancer. Joshua had texted back: Fuck! Sorry! That was it. Fuck and Sorry , the Laurel and Hardy of filial empathy. What could he say? What was there to say? He was going to find something to say and then he was going to call Bernie and say it. Right now, however, he had to prepare for the class.

Ana startled him when she materialized in tall black boots, a knee-length red skirt, and a cloud-patterned shirt. She stood at a distance as if to allow him to take in the beautiful apparition.

“I have your wallet,” she said. “I find your wallet.”

Joshua waited for her to pull it out of her purse. His cards were canceled, but he had no driver’s license, no PRT Institute ID, no wine-shoppe punch card with three more purchases before he could get a free bottle. Script Idea #88: An American is mugged and pistol-whipped. When he wakes up, he discovers he was mistaken for an illegal immigrant and deported to Mexico. He has to find a way to come back home. Drug gangs, desert, border patrols, adventures, Conchita the illegally seductive immigrantess. Title: The Pale Coyote.

But she didn’t open her purse. Instead, she put it down on her chair and moved toward him until their thighs touched the opposite edges of the desk.

“Thank you,” Joshua said. “Very much.”

They faced each other across the desk as if about to break into an operatic duet.

“I don’t have it now,” she said. “I have it in my home. Esko find it.”

There was a space for reasonable questions—“Why didn’t you bring it?” or “Why didn’t you call me back?”—but Joshua decided not to enter it. She glanced away and he knew that she was not telling him everything. The purse was tan fake leather; it slumped on the chair like a deflated heart, and just as full of secrets. Ana the mysterious immigrantess.

“Thank you very much,” Joshua said. She gripped her elbow like John Wayne at the end of The Searchers . He imagined the tips of his fingers moving up her forearm and then up her biceps and then deeper into the vast, fragrant meadows of her body.

“I must give it to you first,” she said. “And then you will own me.”

Joshua was now leaning on the desk and it moved toward her an inch, with a screech.

“You mean to say, ‘You will owe me,’” Joshua said. “I already do. I owe you.”

“You owe me, yes,” she said, with a smile. How would he describe those lips? They were far more than full, much better than thick. Lips, like clouds, forced clichés upon you. All the lips and clouds in the world had already been described.

“I will think of a way,” Joshua said, “to return your kindness.”

* * *

Captain Ponomarenko leaned back in his chair against the wall and spitefully shut his eyes. The class felt endless and devoid of meaning or purpose, like a Spielberg movie. Joshua kept pointing at the conjugation chart on the chalkboard, forcing the students to come up with their own ludicrous examples. “By the time I am sixty-five, I will have lived for very long time,” Ana said and licked her lips. The desk had moved between them, as if his lust had telekinetic properties. “Beautiful, Ana,” Joshua said, a bit too supportively. You own me , she’d said. It was possible that she knew what she was saying; it was possible it was an offer. Captain Prick, ever attuned to his enemy’s fragility, asked: “Teacher Josh, maybe we go home early?” Not opening his eyes, he pronounced it as errlyi.

He gave in to Captain P without even pretending to think about it, not assigning any homework, which they never did anyway. By the time the world ends, everything will have happened; nothing will have happened just as well. We’ll have soon run out of happening, and then there’ll be nothing but being in a void. Very slowly, he picked up his papers off the desk so that he could furtively glance at Ana’s knees and boots and her skirt, so that he could see her forearm and the dangling bracelet and her long, piano-player fingers. The lump was in its place, lodged firmly, ready to choke.

When he looked up, Ana was shutting the door, foreclosing all retreat routes. She stood in front of him, taking deep breaths.

“My heart hits very much,” she said.

“Beats.”

“My heart beats, Teacher Josh.”

“Joshua,” Joshua whispered, but only because all the wind was gone from his windpipe.

“Joshua,” she repeated. “You want to touch it?” She took his hand and put it on her left breast. He could feel her heart, somewhere underneath the cloud pattern; she was alive all right. He plunged his mouth into the curve of her neck and pulled her stumblingly toward the Israel map. Their bodies knew what to do in such a situation, as they knew how to walk or open a door: his hand ran deftly under her blouse; she unfurled her tongue beyond the overbite, into his mouth; he released the saliva; she laid her long-fingered hand on his bulging crotch, raising her pelvis toward him, her moves determined and lustful, her pate rubbing against the Sea of Galilee. The lump was now throbbing inside his skull, exterminating the entire extended family of think .

But just as Joshua started pulling down her panties, just as he was to touch her famous clitoris, she gripped his wrist to stop him.

“What are you doing?” Joshua whimpered, bending over to ease the pain of severe erection.

“It’s crazy. We’re crazy,” she said. “Esko is waiting for me.”

“I don’t want to know about Esko!” Joshua said. “Please don’t talk about Esko.”

Now he could hear the students lingering in the hallways, the din from a remote universe. She pulled up her panties, straightened out her skirt. She fixed her bra, buttoned up her shirt, and fixed her hair. The way women restore themselves — it was something that had always mesmerized Joshua: the care, the patience, the clear purpose. Ana did it with a composure that was well beyond Joshua’s panic and comprehension.