The Making of Zombie Wars (28 page)

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.

Script Idea #200:
A woman is besieged in her house by her demented ex-boyfriend and his insane sidekick. The only weapon she has to defend herself is an ancient samurai sword she inherited from her Japanese father. After much suspense and struggle, she slices the sidekick down the middle, like a dog. In the last scene, she stands over her ex-boyfriend with the sword in her hand, deliberating whether to decapitate or castrate him. Their eyes lock. “Kill me,” he says. She kills him. The end. Title:
Assholes Also Die
.

“Stagger, I beg you, let's forget about this,” Joshua tried again. “I'll come back tomorrow and get your sword. I promise.”

They stood in front of Kimmy's house, away from the porch light, close to some unnameable bush, leafless and devastated by the winter, in which something rustled—a fuckable hedgehog, perhaps, or a nightingale. Ana stayed in the car, calling Esko repeatedly, receiving no answer. Stagger took off his Crocs and gave them to Joshua, as if saying farewell. Then he knelt and rubbed dirt all over his face and shirt and body, including his underwear and cast, which happily retained its blazing whiteness. Joshua longingly looked back toward the car, at Ana, who was pressing her phone against her ear, shaking her head at him, mouthing: “No!”

“If you go in there, Stagger, she'll call the police for sure, accuse you of rape. Unless she cuts you in half first. Please, let's just forget about it.”

“It's behind the washing machine, correct?” Stagger whispered.

“Correct,” Joshua said. “But you don't even know where the laundry room is. I beg you—I'll go get it tomorrow.”

“It's my weapon. It's a marine thing to do,” Stagger said. “No man other than me should fall for my weapon.”

“What are you talking about?” Joshua hissed in lieu of a whisper, grabbing Stagger's cast. “Nobody's going to fall. Come on, man! Let's be grown up here!”

Stagger looked down at the hand on his cast, then at Joshua. Very gently, he removed Joshua's hand. He embraced him firmly and whispered something unintelligible into his ear. Then he slipped up the stairs to the porch, stepped onto the banister, gearing up to climb the downspout under Kimmy's bedroom window. How was he going to do that with the cast?

“Wait!” Joshua hissed. “I have a key!”

“Take your shoes off,” Stagger ordered.

“Wait!” Joshua said, and vomited.

*   *   *

It took him a while to find the key in his jacket pocket: movie tickets, coins, and whatnot—a lot of
whatnot
. Joshua pushed the door open without a single creak or crack, Stagger half-naked in his wake. Not so long ago Bushy had rubbed against Joshua's shins; Bushy used to live here, now he's dead, and his spirit could be anywhere, including nowhere. What did Kimmy do with his corpse? What do you do with dead animals? Once upon a time, Mom had put his green parakeet, his first and only pet, in the freezer upon its demise. For months it had remained among the tubs of kosher ice cream, and then, one day, it too had vanished.

The house was lightless, indifferent. On the tip of his ex-marine toes, Stagger crept into the living room, then into the kitchen. Joshua wanted to stop him, but dared not produce a sound, his heart pounding like the drums along the Mohawk. Stagger finally turned around to spread his arms. The gesture should've meant that it was all clear, but with Stagger you never knew. Joshua followed him to the kitchen, where his hunger came back in a rush so powerful that he opened the fridge without thinking. This time, there was no beer. There was, however, a tray of sushi leftovers that looked reasonably edible and he grabbed it, closing the fridge door noiselessly. He placed a piece of California roll in his mouth, crushed it with his teeth, and swallowed, tasting enough of it to know that it was not fresh at all. He offered the tray to Stagger, who shrugged and grabbed a couple of unidentifiable pieces. The two men, one of them half-naked and tattooed, stood in the cold, mute darkness of Kimmy's kitchen and ate leftover sushi—the little man in the crawl space knew this could make a compelling scene in some script. Joshua opened the freezer, and the smell of ice cream and frozen dead animals washed over him. How about a scene in
Zombie Wars
: A morgue worker takes out a tub of ice cream from an empty corpse-fridge compartment. He hears noise coming from the compartment next to it. Foolishly, he opens the noisy one, the pistachio ice cream still in hand.

Chewing the last piece of sushi, Joshua pointed toward the laundry room and Stagger showed him thumbs up. All this wordless communication: it was well nigh troubling that he and Stagger understood each other so well. It would have to end, this buddy-buddy relationship, tonight, right after they got the sword without getting arrested, right after they tracked down Daughter Except, right after they fully descended from their high, as soon as the new day arrived. By the end of Passover, I'll have moved back to my humble abode on Sanity Street.

The dark house was fragrant of Kimmy's life: the industrial smell of the carpet on the stairs, the shop scent of the tchotchkes on the coffee table, the ubiquitous lavender. He missed them all, all those smells, even the rancid sushi, all the meaningless sensory details of a well-governed life. By next Monday, he'll have begged Kimmy to let him back in; he'll have bought her a diamond ring. He'll have said, again and better: That was not me! That was not me at all!

The problem at hand, though, was that the samurai sword was stuck behind the washing machine and it couldn't be retrieved without moving the cumbersome beast, which at three in the morning would surely be heard all the way to the police station. In the gloom of the laundry room they conferred in susurration: Joshua would go upstairs and keep an eye on the sleeping Kimmy and distract her if she woke up; meanwhile, Stagger would figure out a way to get the sword. “Good teamwork,” Stagger whispered in Joshua's ear, his breath warm and foul.

Step by slow soundless step, Joshua moved up the stairs, ninja-like. His diminishing high was now compounded by somnolent alertness: he touched the banister so lightly it felt half-existent, as if slow in rematerializing. He could hear the wall cracking infinitesimally; he spotted Bushy's toy mouse—a little rubber monument to his absence—just before it squeaked under his foot. Kimmy must've been disabled with grief, unable to touch anything that belonged to Bushy, unable to remove the remnants of his presence—she surely missed him more than she did Joshua. Script Idea #204:
Mr. Grief comes to your house to clean up after the final departure of your loved ones, providing all kinds of grief-management services. To do this, Mr. Grief has to lock up his own grief deep inside—the loss of his wife. But when he meets a grieving widow, his dead wife's doppelganger, his
Box of Grief
(the title?) breaks open
.

He reached the top of the stairs. The bathroom was to the right, Kimmy's office before him, her bedroom to the left. As per his orders, Joshua should've stayed there and watched out for any signs of Kimmy's movement, acting to distract her only if she for some reason headed downstairs. But the door of Kimmy's room was invitingly ajar, just enough so he could squeeze through it. His heart was break-dancing in his chest; his memorious dick made the first step toward erection, pointing in the direction of the ring and handcuffs.

There stood Joshua, unpresent in the breathing darkness, taking in the stale lavender air of the slept-in room, the taste of vomit still in his mouth, his cheek burning. He moved along the wall, toward the deeper shadow, closer to her bed. She looked minuscule under the cover, practically bodiless, except for the dark smudge of her head on the pillow. Joshua froze and held his breath when he heard a screech coming from the laundry room. Still, Kimmy's head did not move.

Script Idea #205:
A stalker creeps into the room of the woman he obsesses over, only to find her already dead. She filed a restraining order against him and now he is the prime suspect. Will he be able to find the real killer before the police track him down?

He missed Kimmy. She was better than him, far too good for him. To be star-crossed, lovers have to belong to the same grade of human quality. Kimmy could love him only out of pity, and he could never believe she wouldn't leave him for the Fourth or the Fifth, or some unnumbered Hummer hunk born into the same rarefied category as herself. Kimmy's grade was honeymoon-in-Tokyo. Joshua's was somewhere between dandruff survivor and leftover sushi.

It was time to say goodbye, even if stealthily. Feeling weightless, closing his eyes—come what may!—he leaned over her to kiss her fragrant shadow. But instead of her silky, thick hair, his lips touched a bag of lavender she kept on her pillow.

She was gone, gone for good.

Tears fogged up his eyes, but he still stumbled through the fog to rummage around her drawer to seek the cock ring and the handcuffs. The cock ring was nowhere to be found; the handcuffs he pocketed like a seasoned burglar.

*   *   *

Joshua spent the ride to the Ambassador imagining all the possible consequences of the break-in, the most probable one featuring Kimmy calling the police and having them arrested for aggravated burglary; and if any of her neighbors had seen Stagger prancing along her lawn half-naked, attempted rape might be added to it. But all that was to be dealt with in the future, in the unlikely case it wasn't already foreclosed. If there is never any reason to believe there will be a future, there is only one way to find out if it's coming.

Stagger stood impatiently behind Ana, clutching his sword awkwardly in his unbroken left hand, waiting for her to unlock the Ambassador's door. If ever a man was entitled to a cape and light saber, it was Stagger. Joshua leaned in to read the backlit names next to the buzzers, but they were nothing if not secret words made of consonants. For all he knew, a coded message about the Messiah's coming was inscribed there: the Bosnian Kabbalah. By the end of time, there will have been no future.

Ana presented no plan of action; she somehow trusted them; she took them as they came. Bosnians, Bega had said, take things as they come, they surf the wave of catastrophe. And here was where Stagger and Joshua's mission brought them now, before a wall of unpronounceable names. If there's one thing the Hebrews should be blamed for it is starting all that unpronounceability madness. Hephzibah, for God's sake, the wife of Hezekiah.

Ana walked up the stairs ahead of them, wearing Joshua's shirt and tight leggings, her thighs rather admirably shaped. Not so long ago, Joshua had thrust himself forth between those thighs, but it all now seemed like a wet dream, yet another inconclusive one. Stagger ascended before him, grunting with effort, using his sword as a walking stick, his teeth clenched, tendrils of his ponytail lingering around his ears in disarray.

“I'm good,” Stagger said without being asked. How old was he, anyway? If he'd been in his twenties for Desert Storm, he would be in his forties now. It seemed probable, but he was somehow older than that, much older. His body was fit and still young, but the rest of him was, shall we say, excessively mature. Or maybe he was just crashing down from his high. “Proceed,” Stagger said, his face ghostly pale. With all the wrinkles and grimaces and madness now bleached from it, Joshua could suddenly perceive the young man Stagger used to be way back before the big party in the desert, before his landlording career and ensuing madness, before all this. Joshua obediently proceeded, but he needed to pee. The body never quits working. The mind goes out, but the body always hums along, proceeding until it stops. The beauty of life is that eventually everybody turns into a zombie, whereupon they die.

Before Ana's door, two large thick-soled shoes with dirty tips stood at an angle, as if turning away in disgust. Ana straightened them with a careful toe poke, out of habit, no doubt. It seemed like a meaningless gesture; yet, Joshua understood, she cared about the way things ought to be; she didn't quite succumb and surf. He, on the other hand, was exhausted as the rococo hopelessness of everything set in. Also, terribly hungry still and in need of urination.

She fumbled for the right key in the batch, and there were a lot of them. What property did she own to have all those keys? The door was unlocked, it turned out, so she walked in. Stagger shuffled sideways in her wake, half squatting like a Jedi, his sword high above his head ready to strike, even if he couldn't fully grip the handle with his cast. Joshua could see the cicatrice stretching between the ridges of Stagger's shoulder blades to reach the base of his neck, where
Semper Fi
was inscribed in blue ink. Joshua had no idea what
Semper Fi
actually meant. How many marines could read Latin anyway? They could've made it more American and vernacular, say:
No quittin'
or
Thrills and Kills
or
Appetite for Destruction.
Everything should be simpler and more American, particularly at this point in time when we must all stand united because we're all falling apart.