The Making of Zombie Wars (27 page)

“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.

“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.”