Free The Making of Zombie Wars by Aleksandar Hemon Page B

There is GROANING in the hallway, then more zombies roaming. He pushes the door open and slips in, pointing the gun at CANCER PATIENT (37), bald, skinny, and wearing a hospital gown.
    MAJOR KLOPSTOCK
    (whispering)
    Do not make a sound!
    She shakes her head and stays silent. She shifts her gaze to look at something behind Major K. Still pointing his gun at her, he turns to see NURSE (55) and a chubby BOY (12), both shivering in fear. There is a FOREIGNER (40) kneeling next to them, holding a cell phone, from which a cord stretches to an outlet.
    FOREIGNER
    Power out.
    MAJOR K
    Everything’s out.

 
    Ana lived way out in Lincolnwood, in a building that looked like a depressing dorm, what with its dun color and standard-issue windows, but was called the Ambassador. She buzzed him in, but didn’t tell him her apartment number. On his way up, Joshua pressed his ear against suspect doors, each of which offered the sounds of myriad lives: a radio gibbering in an obscure language; Mexican oompah-oompah music; a desperate, barking dog; the hum of an empty space. Ana’s place was up on the Ambassador’s top floor. There was a crowd of shoes in front of the door, lit dispiritingly by the skylight. Some were lined up, some thrown together: men’s shoes, wide and deep and brown; Chuck Taylors; fine Italian leather shoes. There were women’s high heels too, and flat ballet shoes and even flower-patterned rain boots. Visions of the Holocaust shoe heaps came to Joshua and in their wake a memory of Nana Elsa’s Florida plastic flip-flops, conforming to her bunions perfectly. She’d had them for at least fifteen years and wouldn’t hear of getting rid of them. In fact, she never got rid of any of her shoes; Papa Elie disposed of them behind her back, so she never let her precious flip-flops out of sight. She wanted to be buried with those flip-flops. Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.
    Joshua took his tennis shoes off and placed them at a distance from all the others. Then it occurred to him that that might be interpreted as his being a snob, and moved them a little closer, but still not touching any other shoes. He walked in, somewhat embarrassed by his white tube socks—his grandmother’s grandson, he too had a hard time getting rid of things. A teenage girl walked out of the bathroom, her purple shirt severely tucked into a pair of latex-tight jeans. She considered Joshua and said, “Hi!” with a ladylike nod. “Hi!” Joshua nodded back. She was lanky, her long mane brushing her skinny, half-pubescent behind. She had narrow, awkward-looking feet and a constellation of pimples on her chin, but she seemed to be at ease with herself. You could tell she was Ana’s daughter: the same green eyes, the same long neck, the same, if unripe, sadness.
    â€œI’m outta here,” she said. “You kids have loads of fun.”
    Her English was purely American, no accent whatsoever. Should she not have a Bosnian accent? She slipped past Joshua, picked her shoes off the pile, and scuttered down the stairs. In Joshua’s memory of his adolescence, there was no need to worry about the ease: he’d spent much of his teenagehood watching old movies in the basement, thus escaping the ubiquitous unease.
    In the center of the dining room there was a long table, thick with plates of food and bottles of booze. Everyone crowded around it, teeming like wildflowers, no space between the chairs. On the far side of the table, Captain Ponomarenko and his faithful wife drowned in a sofa, their chins nearly touching the edge of the table. Bega was there too, fully present in his Bad Brains T-shirt, Corona in hand, pontificating to a woman slowly backing away as he leaned into her to make his indisputable points. What was he doing there? Had she invited people Joshua knew? Why would she do that? She had invited Stagger too—or so he’d claimed—to this