Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars

“Excuse me,” Joshua said. “I don’t mean to interrupt your conversation, but could I use the bathroom?”

Ana turned to look at him in what could be adequately described as stupefaction; Esko chuckled as if pleasantly reminded of Joshua’s pathetic existence. “You okay?” Stagger asked, not taking his eyes off Esko.

“I really have to pee,” Joshua said.

“Go pee,” Ana said.

“I got it here, Jonjo,” Stagger said. “You go and pee.”

As Joshua made his first step toward the bathroom, Esko leapt off the sofa, over the chaos on the floor, and rushed at Joshua, who froze in place. He would’ve surely been crushed in a merciless tackle had Stagger not managed to swing the sword and slice Esko with its tip across the curve of his thigh. Ana screamed. Blood gushed instantly out of a gaping crevice, diverting Esko’s acceleration. Stagger was about to inflict another cut as Esko put all of his force into the fist whose trajectory terminated at Stagger’s nose, which, blinding him, exploded. With another punch to the chin Esko felled Stagger, who crumpled to the floor, on top of the beer bottles, announcing his landing with a painful groan. Ana screamed again and grabbed her head as if to throw it at the men. Esko pried the sword from Stagger’s limp hand and turned to point its tip at Joshua, whose bladder miraculously held, even if the air left his lungs rapidly, along with all the words he’d ever learned to utter. Esko said something in Bosnian to him, pressing the tip against his chest. There was already blood at Esko’s feet joining with what was coming from Stagger’s blown-up nose, but Esko couldn’t have cared less. He repeated whatever it was he’d said and now offered the sword handle to Joshua. Stagger looked pretty dead, except for the blood steadily flowing from his nose.

“I don’t know,” Joshua mumbled with effort. “I don’t know what you’re saying to me.”

“He wants you to kill him,” Ana said. “With that thing.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” Joshua said. “I’m okay. Really.”

Esko paid no attention to what Ana was saying to him and pressed the tip of the sword against his own throat. Joshua could see the deep indentation, and the vein it was pushing into. “Please,” Joshua said. The tip of the sword now opening the skin on Esko’s neck, a trickle of blood emerging; he was glaring at Joshua, but looking into something beyond his face, beyond him. I don’t want you to die, so I may live and recount the deeds of God. Ana was talking in Bosnian, sounding calmingly reasonable. Esko was a hairbreadth away from cutting his own throat and Joshua closed his eyes, resigned to a shower of blood. Lord, please save us! Or at least, Lord, save me ! But then Esko grabbed the handle again, Joshua flinching, and smacked the sword against the floor; it snapped like a bread stick. The blade fell in the blood puddle as Esko tossed the handle away, and fell on his knee, bowing his head like a knight before the king.

It took Joshua an instant to realize that Esko was crying, pressing fingers against his eyeballs as if trying to gouge them out. Ana moved to put her hand on Esko’s shoulder, reluctantly, carefully, lest it be interpreted as reconciliation. Esko sobbed louder and louder, forcing Joshua to stumble in retreat, as if his tears were acid that could burn him. Ana knelt down next to Esko and put her arm across his shoulder. “It will be okay,” she must’ve said to him. His wound was agape now that he was kneeling, but Esko in no way showed he was aware of it. The velvet blood bubbled out of the wedge in his denim, darkening instantly. Joshua’s knees gave out and he floundered farther backward and dropped onto the sofa. His prostate was painful. Was this how survival was supposed to feel? There was a light hook right above the TV, available for hanging. He needed to pee really bad.

Stagger grunted and sat up. He grabbed a filthy napkin from the floor and pressed it against his nose. Ana kept repeating some Bosnian word, something, Joshua knew, she would never say to him. He wanted her to reconcile with Esko, thereby restoring some semblance of order, thereby allowing him to return from this exile to the land of the before, where there was no humiliation, no blood, no frogs, no lice, no locusts, no clotted darkness or pain, no chaos, let alone the possibility of urine-soaked underwear. Script Idea #1: Two or more people. Love, life, betrayal, hurt. Title: God Help Us All.

EXT. OUTSIDE THE PRISON — DAY

Jack is on Major K’s back, holding on to his shoulders with some effort. Major K slouches forth under the burden. Ruth stumbles through the mud, occasionally falling down, but still getting up. They’re followed by Alicia and a large herd of refugees, a few of them nursing gunshot wounds. Children BAWL. The prison fort is visible on the horizon, its high walls with watchtowers. The people are exhausted, but they know they’ve almost made it. GUNFIRE in the distance, zombies LOWING.

LATER

Major K BANGS at the steel door, exhausted, intermittently gasping for air. There is no response. He anxiously looks at the crowd behind him, huddled together in hope. Jack and Ruth are fixated on the door, desperate for it to open. Major K bangs again. The peephole slides open. A pair of anxious eyes.

MAJOR K

We’re all human.

In her demolished living room, her wounded husband in her care, Ana took charge of the entire catastrophe. She extinguished the drama in a most unequivocal way, its meaninglessness now perfectly self-evident. Even Stagger was compelled to comply, although that required his getting the hell out on the stairs to calm down. She then interrogated Esko, who was bleeding soundlessly on the sofa, pressing a towel against his thigh to stop the blood: Alma, she translated for Joshua, was at Bega’s. Joshua stood, confused, waiting for further instructions, but all she said was: “Thank you. You can go away now.” She pulled her bra straps up, no smile or dimples on her face, no love for Joshua; she had crossed back into the before. He received his order unquestionably, not least because he simply didn’t know what else to do.

But there was one last thing he needed before he embarked upon returning to his previous life: a moment to urinate. Releasing the stream, he stared at the water stain on the wall above the toilet: it resembled a werewolf version of a Hasid. Script Idea #300: Jerusalem is besieged by rapacious vampires … No! Fuck it! Enough of that, he decided.

* * *

He had to roll up the bottoms of his pants because they were bloody, which somehow resulted in their being too big at the waist. They hung on him like clown pants; to get into the car he had to pull them up, not unlike Bernie, well past his navel. Swordless, Stagger slid into the driver’s seat, failing to buckle up. Dried blood coated his neck and the tattoos on his chest, his jaw tightened into a painful grin of anger. He would’ve looked like a commercial for a pitiless warrior if it wasn’t for the two red-splattered Kleenex pluming out of his nostrils. He had to be in his mid-fifties, at least. The Lord supports me through my allies and so I face my enemies, and my enemies are just ecstatic to see us guys together. The sun emerged from the lake, as if from hiding; finger-fucked dawn crept over the building tops and bare tree crowns and the city in which some kind of violence was always afoot.

Devon Avenue was vacant, as before a zombie assault, except for a sole, inexplicable Lubavitcher, grim under his black fedora, vast as a fucking sombrero, walking speedily toward something, only to make a sudden turn and step onto the pedestrian crossing, just in time to be barely missed by Stagger. Joshua envied the comfort that comes with the Messianic promise, the life of someone whose story had always already been told, the ending the same through eternity, the future vouchsafed.