The Making of Zombie Wars (24 page)

“Undead, strictly speaking,” Joshua said.

“I know, but his brain was dead, right?” Graham said and pressed his forefinger against his mandibular cleavage. He never used any other finger to help his chin climax. “Don't know much about history, or zombie physiology, but humans can't live without the brain. If he was dead, or undead, then his brain was dead. Am I getting this wrong?”

“Zombie brains are infected by a virus that makes them undead,” Joshua said.

“It's like it's shut off, like in deep-sleep mode,” Dillon said.

“My point is that the boy's brain might well be beyond repair,” Graham said. “He can't just wake up and ask for a fucking sandwich.”

“Suspension of disbelief,” Bega said. “There are no zombies unless you believe they are there.”

“It's the power of love,” Alice said.

“The power of love?” Graham looked at Joshua, then at Bega, then back at Joshua, like a lawyer before a jury. Saint Pacino gloomily observed the scene. Then Graham exploded in snickers, and Bega joined in and even Dillon chuckled. Alice did not laugh, but she did doodle. I'd fold up in her like a foal, Joshua thought. Graham wiped away his tears of laughter.

“The power of love!” he said. “I'll be damned.”

Heroically, Alice ignored the insult and asked Joshua: “What happens next?”

“The boy recovers, but they have to escape because the soldiers find the lab. They all go looking for his father.”

“Are they going to find him?” Bega asked.

Joshua didn't even bother to look in his direction.

“They might. They'll have to make it out first,” Joshua said.

“Well, let us know what happens,” Graham said. “Nearly everything in the world hinges on it.”

“I think they should find him,” Alice said.

*   *   *

Graham slipped out without asking about the lunch with Billy/George; he must have received a full report and was pissed for wasting his influence. Joshua took his time packing his computer and his notes. Dillon lingered too, pretending he was browsing through Graham's paperbacks, until he abruptly turned to Joshua and said:

“Can I like ask you a question?”

Joshua looked up and Dillon was blushing to his ears, biting his lips compulsively.

“Would you like to have like a drink? Maybe?” he asked, grinding his teeth in a grin of awkwardness. His trucker hat was at an angle; there was a visible smudge on his thick-rimmed glasses; he was sweating.

“I don't think so,” Joshua said. “I don't think we can go on a date or even be friends, Dillon. Because I think you're an idiot.”

His phone buzzed and he finally took it out of his pocket to read the goddamn message. Dillon sat back down on the futon, looked up at Joshua, and said:

“You know what, Joshua? You're an asshole.”

 

 

EXT. WOODS — DAY

Major K, Ruth, Boy, and Cadet leap over rocks and logs, branches whipping their faces. The refugees stumble forth in their wake, all pursued by zombies who, extremely skinny and slow as they are, come from all directions. We can recognize Goiter among them, as well as Cancer Patient. Boy trips, slams his head against a rock and goes out. Cadet stops to help him, as Major K and Ruth hesitate, then turn around to rush back. The zombies begin to close in on them, which allows the refugees to keep running and escape. Cadet looks at Major K, who understands instantly what needs to be done. As Cadet takes his rifle off his shoulder, Major K picks up Boy and runs on, followed by Ruth. Cadet faces the advancing zombies, picking them off one at a time with precise shots that blow off their heads. Many zombies drop, but more keep coming. In no time they are too close for him to shoot. He swings at them, smashing a few heads with his rifle, until the undead snatch it out of his hands.

From a distance, Major K and Ruth watch in shock and trepidation.

RUTH

I didn't even know his name.

MAJOR K

Angel. Angel Rodriguez.

Major K puts Boy down and takes the rocket launcher off his back. The ravenous zombies pile on Cadet Rodriguez, who HOLLERS in terror. Major K loads his launcher with the only grenade he has and rushes back. The zombies are unperturbed, too busy tearing into the fidgeting flesh, Goiter the most voracious of all. Cadet Rodriguez keeps SCREAMING as Major K comes close enough to be able to aim at the heap. In the mayhem, for a brief moment, Major K's and Cadet's eyes meet. Major K launches the grenade. Cadet Angel Rodriguez and the zombies are all swallowed by apocalyptic flames.

 

Bernie was on his back beetle-like, his left leg immobilized, his arm attached to a despondent drip, the rest of him tucked under a blanket like a shameful secret. Something somewhere beeped occasionally, petulantly. The hospital window looked out at roofs strewn with air-conditioning behemoths, at all the unreal estate and other windows, at solid, reflective, downtown nothingness. Bernie's eyes were half-closed; still, he smiled when Noah attempted to break into the red medical-waste box on the wall. A TV set in the upper corner showed Saddam's statue coming down like a lost erection. This year we are slaves. Next year, may we all be free. And the year after that we'll probably be slaves again.

“Leave it. Noah! Leave it,” Janet barked and pressed, impatiently, the call button on the bed remote.

“You're too young to fall in the shower,” she said to Bernie. “The minimum age for that is seventy-nine.” Then, without even looking at Noah: “Leave it, I said!”

The boy finally abandoned his attempt, only to turn his attention to the bathroom, into which he troublingly disappeared. Bernie's smile remained unchanged, even if he closed his eyes to indicate that he heard her.

“Yes!” the screeching voice of the nurse came through the speaker.

“Could I talk to Dr. Hashmi again?” Janet said. “This is the third time I'm asking. Did he go back to Pakistan or something?”

“He'll be there as soon as he can,” the nurse said. “He has many other patients, you know.”

“I just need to talk to him about my elderly father. Are his other patients elderly?”

“His other patients need his attention right now,” the nurse said. “He'll be there as soon as possible. Thank you!”

Bernie was thoroughly out now, loaded with painkillers to his contented gills. Despite all their philosophical differences, the Levins had always been firmly united in their faith in pain management. The consensus was that pain was no gain, whereas absence of pain was a great gain. There was the sound of the shower coming from the bathroom and Janet hurried to limit the damage, which, this time, was only Noah's Northwestern University sweatshirt becoming soaking wet. Janet ordered her firstborn to sit down in the chair under the TV and not move. He did sit down, still eyeing the red box with a mixture of mischief and malice, plots ever hatching in his head. As his not moving was obviously of a very temporary nature, Janet excavated a Spider-Man comic book from her purse and shoved it into his hands. When could she find time to simply love him, always so busy with getting him under control?

“Dr. Osama says Bernie's hip is bruised but not broken. He will need replacement down the road, though,” Janet whispered, as Joshua provided a requisite brotherly squeeze. “Whereas I need a martini drip presently.”

She was taller than Joshua, so that she had to bend down to put her head on his shoulder. They were both uncomfortable in that position, but the rules of sibling consolation demanded that they stay attached for a while. An old man, thin as a stick, regressed down the hallway, pushing very slowly the walker on which his half-full colostomy bag hung. His hospital gown was not closed in the back, so his withered, doughy ass was there for all to behold. Noah's face lit up with the joy of bearing indecent witness. Script Idea #185:
A teenager discovers that his girlfriend's beloved grandfather was a guard in a Nazi death camp. The boy's grandparents are survivors, but he's tantalizingly close to achieving deflowerment, so when a Nazi hunter arrives in town in pursuit of Grandpa, he has to distract him long enough to get laid. A riotous Holocaust comedy. Title:
Righteous Lust
.

“It will be okay,” Joshua said.

“Don't tell me it will be okay,” Janet said, pulling away. “I can't even remember what okay looks like.”

“It's just a bruise,” Joshua said. “He looks good.”

“He looks good? This is not a beach pageant. He almost smashed his hip to pieces. And, soon to come to a life near you, dementia and diapers and daily guilt trips to the nursing home.”

Bernie was blazingly pale, which allowed his age spots and moles to multiply. He was drooling on the pillow, a wet spot growing under his cheek. Everything in Joshua wanted to call Kimmy to tell her about his father having stepped into his dotage as on a land mine. She'd had to take care of her parents as they slipped out of life, breaking their half-desiccated bones along the way. She was the kind of person who could talk him through all this—in her wise therapist voice, she could tell him what to do, how to do it. But he'd never dare to ask her for advice or succor, or call her again, as a matter of fact. And then he also wanted to watch Ana's lips telling him life was not misery. In a perfect universe, he could talk Kimmy and Ana into a permanent m
é
nage
à
trois and be forever snug as the meat in the comfort sandwich. This was not a perfect universe, however; it was barely a world.

“We'll figure something out,” Joshua said. He knew he should be brave enough to tell Janet about Bernie's prostate, but the doctors were surely going to find the diagnosis in his file and tell her all that needed to be told.

“Jackie, I love you. I'd give you my liver if you needed it,” Janet said. “But don't tell me we'll figure something out. You do not figure things out. That's not what you do.”

The old man stopped by at the door of Bernie's room and looked in. He was akin to an emaciated buzzard, complete with long fingers and uncut nails. He just stood quietly, observing, smelling death. Bernie's neck was thin, his earlobes meaty and big, his ears enormous. The body laid down on this hospital bed should not belong to the father that Joshua knew. Where did the real Bernie go? He'd actually been born as a Shmuel, but back in his high school days his shtetl name had practically served as a contraceptive device, so he'd introduced himself as Bernie to his first goy girlfriend. In the beginning, and steadily thereafter, our fathers worshipped idols.

“Where I live, it's all figuring out, all day long. It never stops, not for a moment,” Janet said. “There's so much more to figure out and I'm so damn tired.”

The old man turned to walk away at a mortally slow pace. There was a dried streak of blood on the inside of his thigh. Noah stood up to follow him, but Janet glared at him until he sat back down and returned to the comforts of Spider-Man.

“You know what Noah asked me the other day?” Janet whispered.

“‘Where do tits come from?'”

“Oh, shut up! No! Shut up! Come on! He's sweet. No! He asked: ‘Who made the first person?' And then: ‘Was the first person a boy or girl?'”

“What did you say?”

“I said it was complicated. And he said: ‘I think every person is the first person.'”

“You should be saving money for his therapy,” Joshua said. “It's going to be very costly.”

“Don't you think that's sweet, though?” Janet said. A tear in the corner of her eye twinkled and then evaporated. “Every person is the first person.”

“He can be sweet,” Joshua said. He'd never seen Noah being sweet, not since he'd been a cooing baby, and even then describing him as sweet would've been a stretch of imagination.

“Did you talk to Constance?” Janet asked.

“I don't think they're together anymore,” Joshua said. Bernie was grinning and drooling in his sleep, rehearsing for a future life in pain-free oblivion.

“When it rains, it pisses,” Janet said. “Poor guy.”

She pushed her hair behind her ear to lean over and kiss Bernie. The heavy earring stretched the hole in her lobe and it appeared enormous—she had Bernie's ears. She'd been Father's girl; he'd taken her to baseball games, even fishing; he'd interrogated and vetted her boyfriends, none ever worthy of her. When Doug had salsa-ed his way into her life, the brawny ass first, Bernie had thought him unworthy but had failed to share his opinion with Janet, because she'd seemed so happy. Now she couldn't remember what okay looked like, and Bernie was out like a light.

“There's another thing,” Janet said. “His prostate is rotten.”

Joshua turned to stare at her in disbelief.

“I know,” he finally said.

“You know?”

“He told me.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“He asked me not to tell you. I thought it was the kind of a secret only men can share.”

“Right. Men and their secrets. Where would we be without them. Except he asked me, too, not to tell you.”

She sat down on the edge of Father's bed.

“He texted me,” Joshua said. “Imagine that. He learned how to text. Constance would be proud.”

Bernie began to snore, his breathing achingly even and so loud that they couldn't help but recognize—and confirm it with eye contact—that one day, very soon, Shmuel Levin would end that whole breathing business and withdraw finally from the earthly domain of cruise ships and suffering. Every person is the first person; every death is the first death. Janet's face was suddenly, soblessly, wet with tears. The TV now showed a trailer for a Batman movie and Noah looked up: a grown man who liked to dress as a bat stood facing a clown in some kind of a showdown. Spandex defeats death: those bastards manage never to grow up, let alone die; ridiculous costumes stave off mortality. Janet put her face in her hands to sweep away the tears.