Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

“Where?” Joshua asked.

“To find the girl.”

“We don’t have a car,” Joshua said.

“We got a car,” Stagger said.

“What car?”

“I got a car.”

“When did you get a car?”

“Maybe you can call Bega,” Ana Except said. “Maybe he can go to see.”

“I’ve always had a car,” Stagger said. “Exactly for situations like this.”

“I’ve never seen you driving a car,” Joshua said.

“Bega maybe can see if she is home,” Ana pleaded. Why can’t she call Bega? Joshua began thinking, but then he stopped. Thinking without producing a thought, that’s what he was good at. That and nightingales.

“I’ve never had a situation like this,” Stagger said.

“That’s true,” Joshua said.

“I am worry,” Ana Except said. “I call Esko. I don’t have Bega’s phone.”

“I can call,” Joshua said. “But I don’t have his number.”

“We gotta go. I need my weapon,” Stagger said.

“Let’s call first,” Joshua said. “Let’s think straight.”

“We gotta go. We can’t just sit here and do nothing. We gotta do what’s right,” Stagger said. “I need my weapon of ass destruction.”

“You don’t have to go. Joshua can call,” Ana Except said.

“Who’s he gonna call?” Stagger said. “Who’re you gonna call, Jonjo?”

“I don’t know,” Joshua said. “Bega. I don’t have his phone number.”

“See?” Stagger said. “We gotta go.”

“Fucking sombrero,” Joshua said. “I can’t think straight.”

“Let’s roll,” Stagger said.

EXT. CORNFIELD — NIGHT

Suddenly, Major K hears a zombie HOWL of a different quality, communicating something. Another HOWL responds. Ruth freezes, as does Young Woman. Major K slowly unties the straps and lets Jack down onto the ground. He makes him lie facedown, then signals to the women to do the same. He listens closely: the RUSTLING of corn, the TRUDGING of the zombies, the HOWLING. Abruptly, everything goes silent except for an obscure NIGHTINGALE. Jack’s eyes open wide.

Stagger had quite a bit of trouble getting the car out of the garage, not least because it was buried under a mountain of boxes and crates of beer bottles and Cubs paraphernalia. It was an ancient lily-colored Cadillac, as wide and graceful as a hovercraft, the license plate reading STAG. He then had trouble getting out of the alley, because all the garbage cans had been pushed out to the middle by some local teenage prickster, so Stagger just barged through the cordon of cans, spilling the trash for rats to enjoy. I am surrounded by my enemies, in the name of the Lord, I will spill their guts like alley trash.

“Go straight,” Joshua demanded, even if there was no street to turn off to. Stagger was practically levitating above his seat, his chin every now and then hitting his chest, which helped him snap awake. He was going maddeningly slowly, the weight of his forearms, one of them in a cast, pressing the steering wheel and the axle and the wheels and Joshua, who could smell the burning steel. The night was menacingly dark, as if some powerful force had switched off all the street lighting, setting the stage for a hedgehog-fucking invasion of rabid zombies. Script Idea #196: A rock star high out of his mind freaks out during his show, runs off the stage, and finds himself lost in a city whose name he can’t recall, but whose streets are crowded with his hallucinations. A teenage fan discovers him trembling behind a garbage container, begging the Lord to get him out of his trip. The teen decides to keep the rock star for himself for the night. Mishaps and adventures follow. This one could be a musical: Singin’ in the Brain.

Now that they had some kind of a goal to focus on, the buzz was fading, and for the better, except that nausea set in. Ana occupied the backseat in anabashedly judgmental silence. Joshua feared turning to look at her, after he’d done it once and her face was obscure; his revolution nearly made him sick. Did she understand how high they were? He received the wavelengths of anxiety Ana’s body emitted, her loneliness and angry worry, but did she understand? He should be doing something about all that. He should turn and understandingly squeeze Ana’s hand, rub her knee, say something funny. But his cheek hurt, and he was sure she’d have nothing but contempt for his empty gestures. And he couldn’t bear moving his head back and forth. His brain must have shrunk and was now rattling around in his cranium like a pea in Tupperware whenever he altered his position.

Nana Elsa had once sat at Seder in absolute silence, except to read her lines from the Haggadah, every one of which had targeted Bernie and sounded as if coming directly from the very pissed Lord himself. All because she’d just learned that Bernie had squandered his family on a mistress. Perhaps he could tell Ana about Nana Elsa, about her being the toughest woman he’d ever known, surviving a camp, losing all her family, trekking across Europe, sailing across the Atlantic, to come to Chicago without a person in the world and work in a button factory. But it wasn’t clear how that could be comforting to Ana. Besides, turning back and forth was not a good idea, he was nauseated. He could think of no other thing to do, so he did nothing, and was thus forced to recognize that when seriously stoned he was in no way presenting his best self, even if Ana couldn’t see he was high. His best self was way out of town right now, pretty much crouching somewhere in the cornfields of Iowa. His second-best self was helpless, deployed solely to keep the food down. He held on to the dashboard. A speed bump alerted Stagger to the existence of the street and the car he was driving, if ever so slowly. The burst of unexpected consciousness allowed him to put down the hand brake, whence the car lurched forward and sped up.

Somewhere along the way, Stagger and Joshua had come up with a plan: they’d first find out if Alma was abducted by Esko, who was still not picking up the phone. There was no way Ana could say no to that, because they were superdetermined. But their plan was immediately amended, because Stagger wouldn’t even consider going on a search mission without his weapon. Ana begged him to forget about it. Stoned as he was, Joshua knew it wasn’t a good idea, but Stagger was adamant about his goddamn sword. Adamant! Ana tried to convince him in her heartbroken English that Esko wasn’t violent (yeah, right!), that Stagger shouldn’t be handling a sharp blade with his broken arm, whereupon Stagger pressed the heels of his palms against the center of his steering wheel and honked furiously, exploding the nocturnal silence. So they were on their way to get the goddamn sword.

“Go forward,” Joshua said.

“Always straight, never forward,” Stagger said.

Kimmy’s house was only a couple of blocks up the street, yet it took them forever to get there, during which time Joshua listened to Ana whimper, redial, and gasp in the backseat. He kept working on a statement of comfort for her, but all that his fattie-addled mind could in the end come up with was: “It will probably be okay.”

She wore Joshua’s flannel shirt and looked, somehow, Midwestern. Probably was the wrong word. It will be okay was what he should have said. It shall be okay even better. Or: While there is no way to predict what will happen or what your personal circumstances will be, there are things we can do now . Kimmy would know what to say, and what to do, but she was the one person he could not call at this time, or ever again in his life. Stagger slammed the brakes and Joshua nearly cracked his nose against the dashboard. As long as the drive took, it wasn’t long enough for Joshua to figure out a way to get a samurai sword from behind the washing machine without waking Kimmy up. “Let’s think about this,” Joshua said. I remember what okay looks like and this is the exact opposite.