Aleksandar Hemon: The Making of Zombie Wars

“To be perfectly honest, finding hunkiness in Joshua is a challenge,” Graham said. “I’m just kidding.”

Dillon laughed, relieved that Graham was off his back, and embarked upon drawing houses with smoke-spewing chimneys. Crematoria? Was it a subliminal — or, fuck it, liminal — way for Dillon to align himself with Graham’s latent anti-Semitism? Even before the crematoria tableau, Joshua firmly believed that Dillon’s chubbiness was born of devotion to obscure nineties bands, which required a uniform: flannel shirt, Costello glasses, expensive trucker hat. And who comes from LA to take screenwriting workshops in Chicago? He probably came here to like live for free with his grandmother. Mrs. Alzheimer, née Loaded.

“Now that he brought your ass up, Josh,” Graham says, “whaddya got? Fresh, stunning work? A roller-coaster ride of violence and sex?”

Bega leaned forward to hear Joshua, his eyebrows’ grays now shimmering under the desk light.

“I don’t think I have pages. But I do think I have a new idea,” Joshua said. “The working title is Zombie Wars .”

“What happened to DJ Spinoza?” Graham asked.

“I need to figure some things out. I can’t hear the music yet.”

“And what about your teacher superhero?”

“He can wait his turn,” Joshua said. “The world is full of superheroes.”

“Sure it is,” Graham said, “as it’s just about to run out of zombies.”

Dillon snickered. Joshua imagined smacking him with the back of his hand. That boy could be a tasty snack for a zombie. Bega nodded, as though approving of Joshua’s vision.

“Okay,” Graham said, with exaggerated patience, “let’s pretend you don’t change your mind every week. Let’s pretend we don’t give a flying fuck. Okay. What matters is how good in the room you are. So: pitch me the damn thing! I’m your fat Weinstein. Make me fall in love with you and your story! Sell me Zombie Wars ! I got what you need! I got no brains, but I got oodles of money!”

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.”