The Making of Zombie Wars (12 page)

“What's up, Bernie?”

Father pushed the bean across his plate, creating little blood waves.

“Nothing. Nothing really.” He put his fork down first, then his knife. Now he was unarmed. “It's just that Constance was at a mall and some fat old geezer was throwing a penny into the fountain and just collapsed. He was so big they couldn't get him out of the fountain. They had to bring in a forklift.”

“Did he die?” Joshua asked.

“I have no idea. If he didn't, he will. Either way, Connie came back home to tell me she couldn't stand to watch me perish. I assured her I wasn't going to keel over anytime soon. She has a life coach now. She's discovered she wants to live in Florida year-round. She wants to spend the rest of her life suntanning. She wants a new life, she says. The fact is, I don't have much of it left.”

“Sturdy guys like you don't keel over so easily, Bernie,” Joshua said. “You'll be like Chaim. We'll have to take you out to the woods, tie you to a tree, and leave you there for the wolves.”

Bernie wasn't quite convinced. He finally put the blood-soaked bean into his mouth and chewed it listlessly. With another overloaded tray, Kelly flew out the swinging kitchen doors, as if about to break into song and dance. It was an entirely wrong time for her to be so young and merry. Script Idea #85:
A mob informer, knowing that his lunch partners will take him out after dessert to clip him in a forest preserve, leaves a million-dollar cocaine package as a tip for the pretty waitress. She is forced to go on the run from the mob. Title:
To Insure Promptness
.

“I was taking so much Viagra, I was at constant risk of a heart attack,” Bernie said. “Lately I've been just eating her, and losing my breath at that.”

“Way too much information, Dad! You talking to me like that is too weird.” Joshua pushed his plate away. “Did something happen in Israel? Did you even go on a cruise?”

Bernie pressed the napkin into his face and shook his head. Joshua considered getting up and coming around the table to rub his back. Instead, he put his hand on his father's forearm—his skin felt cold and clammy.

“Bernie! Goddamn it!” Joshua said. “Dad! Don't.”

His father whimpered and sighed. He wiped his tears with his bloodstained napkin and stopped crying. Young and innocent, Kelly arrived with a pitcher of ice water.

“How are we doing?” she asked blithely, topping off their glasses.

“Fantastic!” Bernie said, wiping his mouth. “And I think I'm ready for my bread pudding.”

*   *   *

Joshua promised he'd pay back the two hundred dollars Bernie loaned him, but they both knew it would never happen. Outside Charlie's Ale House, standing by the cruise-ship-sized Cadillac, they hugged, slapping each other's back masculinely.

“We don't spend enough time together,” Bernie said. “I like talking to you.”

“I like talking to you too.”

“I don't know enough about your life. What you want, what you do. One day you left home and became a stranger.”

No, Joshua thought, one day Bernie left home and became a stranger. But this was no time for settling truth debts.

“I'm no stranger. I tell you stuff. I'm teaching, writing, hanging out. A simple life,” Joshua said. “And you'll be okay. You're a tough Hebrew, hard as a nail.”

“Sure. The Levins are survivors,” he said and squeezed Joshua's face between his big palms, kissing his forehead, like the patriarch he wasn't.

The car beeped and its doors unlocked, as in a dream. One leg inside, Bernie asked: “How's Kimmy?”

“Fine,” Joshua said.

“Don't screw that up. She's a catch.”

Normally, Bernie would lean out of the window and wave at Joshua before he'd drive away, doing it exaggeratedly, as if he were about to go on a cross-country trip. Joshua waited for him to do so, unable to let go without the ritual, like a kid before sleep. But Bernie was taking his time playing with his phone and Joshua watched his hunched back, pathetically diminutive behind the wheel. On their family trips he'd loomed large, driving with blatant, if undeserved, confidence, complete with shouting along with the music from the radio and cursing at other drivers. “How's it that I can remember things that took place fifty years ago,” Bernie had once asked him, “and I can't remember what I did this morning?”

*   *   *

Joshua was the first one at Graham's place, so he lingered alone in the living room, browsing the bookshelves. He picked up
The Climax: The Art of Resolving Conflict
and flipped through it.
Rule #24: Not every revelation deserves screen time
, he read. His phone buzzed with a message in his pocket. He decided that, today, if it came to that, he would point out the anti-Semitic implications of Graham's anti-Weinstein rants. Enough was enough. He sensed that his newfangled decisiveness had something to do with his father—if need be, Joshua could be a tough Jew too.

Graham walked in with the same pretzels and soda bottles from last week. It was as though he were just plugging the products: no one ever ate pretzels; no one drank whatever was in the bottles, it may well have been dyed toilet-bowl water.
Rule #33: Tension must pay off, otherwise it's torture
. Joshua, gearing up for a hypothetical fight, glared at him without a greeting.

“I like your zombie stuff, Josh,” Graham said unexpectedly, settling in his armchair. He instantly applied his thumb to his cleft chin, rubbing it with pleasure. Did he have a residual clit there? “I do think you have a few good ideas in that pumpkin of yours. I was thinking of putting you in touch with an agent guy I know. He's a bit of an insufferable prick, and most of his clients are actually actors. But he's always wanting to expand into screenwriters. And you might get to practice your pitching. What do you think?”

Rule #45: What you see is what you get.
A flock of butterflies fluttered up in Joshua's stomach. “I think that's great,” he said. The phone buzzed again. He put the book away and sat down. Other than
Zombie Wars
, he couldn't remember any of his other ideas at that moment. Saint Pacino watched over him benevolently. An agent, even of Graham's breed, was something. Once again the phone buzzed, and then buzzed one more time.

“Are you going to look at that phone?” Graham asked. “It's really annoying.” Joshua checked his phone.
Rule #50: Plot don't stop
. The message was from Bernie.

Spaking of hard, has check up
, the message read.
Some leevel too higg. Ha anotjer tes. My prstte Prostate like roc. Hello cancer. Don tell Jan Rachel. Lov ypu.

Joshua's first thought was: Bernie learned how to text. He then waited for another thought, but it was slow in coming.

*   *   *

“Why you want to have zombies?” Bega asked. “Do you have good reason? Or is it just because Hollywood?”

This time around, Bega's T-shirt had a Ford logo, except it read
Fuck
instead of
Ford
.

“Well, there's something about people just turning into consuming organisms,” Joshua said. “So that the living appear more human in contrast. They love, they suffer.”

“Who?” Dillon asked.

“The humans.”

“Have you seen
28 Days Later
?” Dillon asked.

“No,” Joshua said. “It hasn't come out in the U.S. yet.”

“Joshua watches only old movies,” Bega said. “For him good movies are like wine, they need to become old. Everything after
Star Wars
is shit. He doesn't want to be influenced by shit.”

Joshua must've stated this to Bega back at the Westmoreland, but he couldn't quite recall it. Still, the mocking tone hurt.

“I hate all of the Star Wars movies. Particularly
Star Wars
,” Joshua clarified defiantly.

Dillon assembled his face into an expression of unmitigated shock and offered it to Joshua.

“The thing with zombies,” Graham said, “is that they don't fuck.”

“Really?” Dillon feigned shock again. “Like
really
?”

“Really,” Joshua said. How does one become a Dillon?

“And they don't fuck,” Graham continued, “because they have no functional bodies.”

“They could fuck,” Joshua said. “They could do anything I'd like them to do.”

“Zombies are not real,” Bega said. “When you see zombie in a movie you think: This is bullshit.”

“The way I see it is they're the living dead,” Joshua said. “Their human biology is not dead, it's just suspended, they're in a kind of a coma. So that their bodies are not necessarily dead. There's struggle inside them at the cellular level—good cells versus evil cells. That's why Major K is developing a vaccine for the virus. If it works, good beats evil, and they can just return to being human. It will be a little bit like resurrection.”

“I always wondered how they digest the flesh they eat,” Graham said. “I mean, how much of it can they actually eat? Do they get overstuffed? Do they crave fresh protein? Can they eat raw steak too? Do they shit?”

“Well, you do have to suspend some disbelief,” Joshua said. “You have to accept that zombies are mythological creatures. Greek gods don't shit.”

“Greek gods do fuck, though, as far as I know, and a lot,” Graham said. “They are jealous, they do all kinds of wacky stuff to each other, they cheat on their wives, they change shapes. They don't just totter around howling.”

“It's not about the zombies, it's about the living,” Joshua said.

“But living don't do nothing in your story,” Bega said. “They just kill lot of zombies. Good thing about zombies is you can kill million and nobody cares. You just shoot, they explode, nobody cares. It is for Americans to feel better about killing to make it easy.”

“They're like terrorists,” Dillon said.

“Maybe there is one zombie your hero cares about,” Bega suggested. “Maybe he tries to save his wife or something.”

“There's that family that Major Klopstock found,” Joshua said. “He wants to save them.”

“The name Klopstock is a bad idea, I promise you,” Graham said. “He can have a Jewish name, but could he at least be Major Abraham or Major David or something? Actually, Major David is pretty good—as in David versus Goliath. Let me pat myself on the back!”

He reached for the spot between his shoulder blades. One day his joint will pop.

“I like Major Moses,” Dillon said. “He takes them to the promised land.”

“I don't want biblical names. I prefer Major Klopstock. It means nothing. I don't think it's even particularly Jewish. He's just an ordinary guy with an ordinary name,” Joshua said.

“I don't think that Klopstock is an ordinary name anywhere outside Brooklyn,” Graham said.

“Where is sadness?” Bega asked. “He lives in the world that is absolutely destroyed. He lost family. He lost his house, his city. Why is he not sad?”

“He is quite sad,” Joshua said. “He just doesn't have time to stop and reflect upon it. Sadness will come after he survives.”

“Fuck sadness, movies are not about being sad,” Graham said, the red hand of excessive excitement emerging on his forehead. “Look anywhere around you, no sadness. Americans are proud people but we're not sad people. We're either deeply depressed or insanely happy. Either way, we don't care to see other people's misery. What we want to see is how to overcome the shit. We shall overcome! Overcome the shit! That kind of thing.”

“But how do you overcome death?” Bega was getting upset. “That's why you have zombies. They are dead little bit so when you kill them you kill death.”

“I think death is part of life,” Dillon said.

“That's depressing,” Graham said. “Who is going to watch a movie as depressing as that? You need to get a winner in there, Mr. Levin. Not the gentle Major Chickenstock. Someone who makes hard choices and goes for the kill if he needs to. People are losers, so they identify with the winner.”

“But that is not real,” Bega said.

“The real is for pussies,” Graham raved, rocking. “People want better than real. I got plenty of real at work, where my boss is fucking me. Or at home where my real kids are really screaming their real heads off. If you want more real, go and live in Iraq. They got shitloads of real. They got so much real they blow themselves up with it all day long.”

“I don't care about the real or the unreal,” Joshua said. “I just want to tell a story.”

“Exactly,” Graham said. “Tell the fucking story.”

 

 

EXT. A CHICAGO STREET — DAY

Major Klopstock opens his eyes and sees a herd of zombies surrounding him, GROANING and HOWLING. They include a few children in school uniforms, torn and bloodied. The circle narrows as the zombies advance. He has a twelve-gauge in his hand, a heavy bag on his shoulder. The zombies totter forward to reach for him. He blows a few zombie brains out, creating an opening in the circle big enough to escape. He moves toward the opening, shooting a couple more in the head. He shoves the zombie children out of his way, shooting continuously as they drop to the ground. He destroys all of them, but just as he's about to relax, one of the zombie kids on the ground grabs his ankle and tries to bite into it. Major K blows its head off, then wipes the mess off his shoes with its school uniform.

MAJOR K

Bad boy! Bad boy!

Sears Tower is looming on the horizon. Above it a helicopter hovers. The top of the tower explodes.

 

The basement classroom was empty, except for a faint fungal scent and the scrambled rows of school chairs.
Think, thought, thinker, thoughtful, thoughtless
, read the chalkboard, authored by some other teacher confounding his students in some other class. A word family:
think
and
thought
the spoiled, bickering children,
thinker
the drunk uncle doing who-knows-what in the small upstairs room,
thoughtful
and
thoughtless
the divorced parents.