Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

“We drank water out of our boots. Man!” Stagger shouted. “Out of our blasted boots! We rolled weed in lettuce. We died standing. We fucked standing. We shat standing.”

“What?” Joshua was finally compelled to ask. It wasn’t that he wanted to understand — understanding, he understood, wasn’t going to happen right now, or anytime soon; in fact, it seemed to be permanently out of his reach. “What are you talking about?” It was that he couldn’t afford to be further discombobulated, because discombobulation made him dizzy. Dizzy and voraciously hungry, and giggly, and discombobulated.

“Fucking sombrero,” Stagger said.

There were far too many things bombing him presently with care and precision. He needed Stagger to slow down, he was not cool. Stagger was now thrusting the three-finger-barrel gun at Joshua’s feet, as if shooting them off.

“Freedom itself was attacked, Jonjo,” Stagger said quietly and slowly, so Joshua could comprehend. “We’re talking about things that matter.”

“What things are we talking about?” Joshua asked, dropping the obese hashish motherfucker on the porch floor. What did matter a lot was the fattie, so he went down on his knees to look under his chair, but only darkness was there and then the light came, everything down there was flashing and moving. He saw a mouse scurrying along the wall, but it was a blue plastic bag with the phone book and coupons. There was a coin, a quarter possibly, shiny. Kimmy, Ana, and Joshua, a happy threesome in a perfect world, the three sides of the same coin. The healthy, happy Body family, living right across the street from the miserable, terminally ill Thought family. How good would that be? Stagger was barefoot and his toes were misaligned, his feet not symmetrical at all, the whole pedal anatomy completely fucked. He wore Joshua’s American flag underwear; the stars on it shone too. Was it summer already? Where was the fattie? And while we’re at it, where’s everything? The moment you lose sight of it, it vanishes. Where are people when they’re not here? Where does time go when it passes? What is the home of death? What is a nightingale? Where is Bernie, where is he going? He needed to find the fat motherfucker.

“Do you even know how huge that Iraq place is? And it keeps growing, like a tapeworm. I’m not kidding.” Stagger was back to speaking at the top of his voice, clapping his hands, as if to reduce the mysterious huge place into a patty-cake. “He was the first man I ever cared about. That’s God’s honest truth.”

“Fuck” was all Joshua could say. He still could not find the joint and he decided that giving up and getting up wouldn’t be honorable. The Pottery Barn rule: you fuck it up, you’re a fucking idiot. Don’t fuck it up.

“What’s down there?” Stagger asked and, moving his head like a turtle, joined Joshua on his knees to look under the chair, only to roll onto his back with a grunt.

“I can’t find the dope,” Joshua said. “I lost the fattie. It just disappeared.”

“Oh, man!” cried Stagger. “Do you want some of mine?”

Only then did Joshua see that Stagger had in his hand a joint, which in its rewarding overweightness definitely looked familiar. Joshua rolled onto his back as well, took the blessed joint, and inhaled as if his life depended on it, which it did. They were blowing smoke at the undersides of their respective chairs. If someone had been sitting in those chairs, they’d be blowing smoke up their asses. Being alive is nothing if not a bunch of discombobulating possibilities. And sweating.

“What is this?” Joshua asked, exhaling. “This cannot be just pot.”

“There’s a touch of pot. Some homemade stuff too. Plus some of those head pills, cooked down to very potent chemicals,” Stagger said. “Old Desert Storm recipe. It’s what got us all through.”

The front door opened and they could see a woman’s feet: narrow, graceful toes painted in heavenly colors. Mindlessly, Joshua sat up straight and therefore banged his forehead against the chair. There had been a time when the independence of his teenage room was not respected by his mother, who would barge in as his arm was in his crotch. And now he was hungry and his forehead hurt.

“Joshua?” Ana said, softly.

Stagger must not have noticed her, for he kept rambling:

“The sand, man. The fucking sand. Everything you put in your mouth was crunchy. I hate crunchy. I’d rather eat ass than crunchy cereal.”

“Alma is not here,” Ana said. “Alma is somewhere and I don’t know where. I am worry.”

Joshua kept stretching his jaw, as if it were out of joint and if he put it back in place everything else would follow, beginning with processing the basic inflow of sensory information. The recollection machinery would soon be working; he could hear the screeching in his head. He couldn’t remember where he’d got the pair of underwear Stagger was wearing. Present from Mom? Or an ironic college-era acquisition? Also, Ana’s last name. Karenina? I must be dreaming, Bond-James-Bond said.

“Fucking sombrero,” Stagger said.

“Give her some time,” Joshua said, inhaling adagio and exhaling staccato. “She’s probably coming down somewhere. When she comes down, she’ll come home.”

“It is two in the morning,” Ana said. Her level-five English as a Second Language protected her from Joshua’s sinister insinuations. Suddenly he remembered the lost fattie and returned to looking for it. It didn’t bother him that he was at the same time hiding from Ana and her demands. He didn’t want her to know he was high out of his mind. He was going to find the fattie and compose himself under the chair and then reemerge to face Ana in the shape of the man she’d become miraculously attracted to, a steeled dandruff survivor. Except was her last name! Ana Except loves him so much that they’ll go together and make a proposition to Kimmy. I am surrounded by all nations and loaded with evil cells, in the name of the Lord, I will crush them like dried leaves.

“All right, let’s go find her!” Stagger said. He managed to get out from under his chair without banging his head. He was skilled at this. Pretty good at crawling on the ground intoxicated. Must be his marine training.

“It’s two in the morning.” Joshua spoke from under the chair. “Who knows where she could be?”

“I go find her,” Ana Except said. “You stay here and wait if she comes.”

“At two in the morning every creep in the city is out,” Stagger said.

The fattie was nowhere to be found and Joshua was now worried that it had rolled under the porch, on a pile of dried leaves or rat bones or whatever was down there, which must’ve already started smoldering and would soon ignite the porch. They needed to get off the porch, he needed to get off the floor and then down the stairs and then to safety, from where he could watch the spectacular blaze. The Greater Chicago Fire. Once everything burned to the ground, the rebuilding could start. Operation American Freedom.

He looked up to urge Stagger and Ana to run for their lives when he saw the fattie, now diminished to a roach. Stagger was sucking on it as if it were a pacifier. It was flummoxing how Stagger kept pulling out those joints, the resourceful bastard. They would disappear, then reappear in his hand, all part of a magical cycle of being and nonbeing. Fucking sombrero. Joshua got up and plopped into a chair. What was it that Stagger made him smoke? Good shit. The Lord shall always provide the good shit, the things that matter. I will not die so I may live, and recount the deeds of God with care and precision.

“I been calling,” Ana Except said. “Esko is not pick up the phone. I worry.”

“All right. Let’s go!” Stagger said without moving.