The Making of Zombie Wars (31 page)

JANET

(to Noah)

All right, Noah: ask!

NOAH

I don't want to!

RACHEL

Come on, Noah!

NOAH

I don't want to do this! I don't care about this kind of food.

JOSHUA

Oh, come on, Jan! Leave the boy alone! I'll ask the goddamn question.

RACHEL

Joshua! Watch your mouth.

JANET

Ask the question, Noah, or there'll be consequences!

NOAH

I don't want to ask the goddamn question!

RACHEL

See what you've done now, Joshua?

JOSHUA

Why is this night different from all other nights? All right? Pray tell what the big difference is between this night and all other nights. Can't wait to find out.

Stagger watches it all in mild amazement, unclear whether this bickering is also part of the bizarre Jewish ritual. He goes for more matzoth.

BERNIE

(snapping out of his slumber)

Chaim? Is that you?

MOMENTS LATER

Stagger pours himself another glass of wine, thereby violating yet again the age-old tradition, but it's too late to care. Somehow, the Levins have granted him a dispensation.

JANET

The scriptures dictate the story must be told in ways that will be understood by sages, by the wise and the wicked, by the moron and the mute. And I'm going to tell the story if it's the last thing I do. So, listen up.

Joshua sighs with the impatient anticipation of the same old, same old. Rachel lashes him with a side glance. Noah is off somewhere, having with Joshua's help defeated the pressure from his mother. Bernie is unconscious. Stagger, however, pays attention, sipping his wine.

JANET

Long ago, in Egypt, a new pharaoh elected himself for life. The Jews became slaves, building pyramids and such. But instead of dropping dead from all the mortar and brick production, they bred like immigrants. Being fairly new to his responsibilities, the pharaoh freaked out and said, as many of his ilk would, “Let's wipe out the Jews before they take over!” Had he been nuclear, it would've been easy, but his dumb actual plan was to drown all the baby boys. He didn't care about the girls, mind you, just the boys.

Stagger takes another sip of the wine.

STAGGER

(whispering to Joshua)

This is some good shit.

JOSHUA

(whispering back)

Prime Bordeaux. Not very kosher.

Stagger fake-punches Joshua's shoulder to show he got the joke, but Joshua winces in pain.

JANET (CONT'D)

(getting into the story)

Well, the girls had plans. Luckily for Moses, his sister was a strong, smart, upstanding woman and she also got along with the dictator's daughter. It's always been about who you know, and Miriam knew that, deep down inside, the princess had a kind heart.

STAGGER

(whispering)

Who's Miriam again?

JOSHUA

(also whispering)

The sister.

STAGGER

Right! I knew that. It's in the Bible too.

JANET (CONT'D)

Well, Jochebed had birthed Moses and hidden him for three months, but she couldn't hide him forever. Now, you might wonder where Moses's father was at this time. He bailed out, that's where. A full-blown abandonment of his family. He went about his own business, probably whoring all over the Middle East …

RACHEL

Janet! Calm down. Not the time.

JANET

I know. Not the time. Okay.

MOMENTS LATER

JANET (CONT'D)

Moses says: “Let my people go!” And Pharaoh says: “No way in hell!” So Moses's boss unleashes ten weapons of mass destruction, real mean stuff: blood, frogs, lice, wild beasts, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, clotted darkness, death of the firstborn. Now, what do you think of that, Mr. Pharaoh?

MOMENTS LATER

JANET (CONT'D)

So Moses puts together the Exodus. Think of it as Operation Hebrew Freedom: an orderly transfer from slavery to the Promised Land, quite a leadership challenge. But that's not where it ends: the pharaoh is an inveterate flip-flopper, so he changes his mind and chases the Jews all the way to the Red Sea.

Stagger appears rapt. He licks his lips and dilates his nostrils, his body taut with attention. Even Noah has come back to listen and manages not to be disruptive. Rachel, whose attention never falters, kneads her hands on the table. Even Bernie seems alert to the story—or at least awake. Joshua watches them all with a mixture of annoyance and love.

JANET (CONT'D)

Now water is lapping at their ankles, then it's at their knees, and then at their very noses. The Red Sea is big and deep, and they can't swim for crap. The Egyptians arrive, raring for the final solution. The Hebrews appear doomed. But Moses has a boss and protector who happens to have created the universe. Turns out the Egyptians can't swim either. They drown like ants in a kitchen sink.

MOMENTS LATER

JANET (CONT'D)

Well, Miriam perished as the Jews wandered, an unmarked grave, that kind of thing. Moses did get a wonderful panoramic view of the Promised Land, but the boss didn't let him cross over, God knows why. He died in the desert, alone too, as everyone eventually does. It was right there, his dream, he could see it, yet it was beyond his reach. After all that leadership, no dice. There, but not there. Ponder that for a moment.

Everyone ponders.

JANET (CONT'D)

The rest of the Jews did all right, though.

Bernie drops his chin to his chest and starts crying. Rachel reaches across the table to squeeze his hand and he squeezes hers back.

JANET (CONT'D)

Anyway, drink your wine now. For Elijah.

Joshua gets up to open the door.

STAGGER

Who's coming?

No one responds to him. Everyone sits in silence, waiting.

 

The place used to be a high-security prison, with thick, high walls, double gates of reinforced steel, and looming watchtowers at each corner of the hexagon, plus one in the center. The prison yard was now teeming with living humans in all their tragic variety: men, women, children, white, black, blue—all emaciated and exhausted, having lived with constant terror for so long. All of those people had seen their loved ones be torn to pieces or turn undead. The survivors were alive only because they were not dead, but that was subject to change at any moment. They were running out of food, they had little ammo, even less hope.

Jack, still not fully recovered, had a hard time climbing the stairs in Major K's wake. He realized he hadn't gone up stairs in a very long time. When they reached the top of the central watchtower, he was panting and had to sit down to catch his breath on the floor glittering with glass shards. A piece of sky with a sweetbread-shaped cloud was framed, indifferent, by the broken window.

“You all right?” asked Major K. His body seemed unaffected by all the recent peregrinations. He was as strong and wiry as ever, having developed an ability to survive without food and sleep. But Jack could tell that his spirit was well eaten into, and that what used to be a will to fight was now merely an inability to quit. The body keeps doing what it does; the body outlives the soul. Major K maintained a semblance of hope only because there was nothing else left to hang their future on: not on the vaccine, which worked on Jack and himself but could not be reproduced; not on the army, which was now pretty evenly split between the killers and the zombies; not on other humans, as there had been no communication with anyone outside their group for a long time.

Picking shards out of the palms of his hands, Jack finally caught his breath and stood up. From the central tower he could see far beyond the walls. All the way to the horizon, the fields were thick and lousy with zombies stumbling aimlessly, sniffing vague traces of life in the air. They would linger outside the walls, howling and rotting through the end of time, immortal because undead. What the prison protected the people inside from was the knowledge that the world had come to an end. What it provided was a space for hope, which, feeble as it was, would still live on until every last person perished. Even zombies hoped, except they hoped for one thing and one thing alone: fodder for their endless hunger.

Major K looked down on the mass in the yard, the aggregated stench of the apocalypse rising all the way to his nostrils. He bit his lip, as if refraining from saying something that shouldn't be said. He looked at Jack.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Give me a second,” Jack said.

“Do take your time, but there's nothing to be afraid of.”

“Too late for that,” Jack said. “Fuck it! Let's roll.”

Jack stepped forth to the broken window and leaned forward so he could be seen by the people below. He raised his arms and shouted, summoning every particle of energy, his voice booming in the void of the prison yard and beyond:

“People! People!”

Major K could see the mass of zombies outside shifting their random currents to turn toward Jack's voice. The people in the yard groaned and rumbled in surprise and anticipation. Parents shushed their hungry children. Some fell on their knees.

“Last night I had a dream!” Jack lowered his voice, because now everyone listened. “A dream heartbreaking and terrible. But also beautiful.”

Major K closed his eyes and passed both of his hands over his face as if washing it. It reappeared devoid of frowns and wrinkles, stripped of despair. Even as Jack was speaking, he recognized that what had just emerged on Major K's face was peace.

“It was a beautiful, big dream. Big enough for all of us,” Jack went on. Before he could say anything else, somewhere below, somewhere in the silent human crowd below, a cell phone rang. First once, and then it rang again. The silence between the rings was crushing.

“Pick it up!” someone cried, but nothing happened. The sea of zombies slowly funneled toward the entrance to the prison. The first wave to reach the closed gate simply stopped. They didn't really know what to do, so they just stood there, uneasy, rumbling with hunger.

 

Acknowledgments

Love and gratitude to:

Etgar Keret (for the immortal cousin story);

Lana and Lilly Wachowski (for reading and laughing when needed);

Jasmila
Ž
bani
ć
(for letting me try my hand at comedy);

Velibor Bo
ž
ovi
ć
(for being himself, indestructible);

Colum McCann (for friendship and loyalty and songs);

Rabih Alameddine (for finding time to read the book despite his fantasy-soccer responsibilities);

Vojislav Pejovi
ć
(for being persnickety);

Catherine Peterson (for research help and the poisoned dogs story);

Duvall Osteen (for the reward of her sunny telephone voice);

Agent Aragi (for many things, but particularly for not moving a muscle in her face when I told her I'd written a book she'd known nothing about);

Sean McDonald (for patience, friendship, and appreciating the funny);

Deborah Treisman (for not allowing me to get by with lesser efforts);

Teri Boyd (for everything, but particularly for endless love and supportive giggling);

and Ella and Esther (for existing).

 

A Note About the Author

Velibor Božovic

Aleksandar Hemon
is the author of
The Question of Bruno
,
Nowhere Man
,
The Lazarus Project
,
Love and Obstacles
, and
The Book of My Lives
. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a “Genius Grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature, the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award, and, most recently, a 2012 USA Fellowship. He lives in Chicago. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

ALSO BY
ALEKSANDAR HEMON

The Book of My Lives