The Making of Zombie Wars Read Online Free PDF Page B

its natural habitat. His groin and pant legs were completely wet, his left hand sticky with panic and urine. With his right one he groped for his cell phone to call the police (another siren wailed up Clark), only to recall the very motion of dropping the keys and the phone on the front-hall table. He rolled up into a squatting pose of pain, but then unrolled like a fern in sped-up footage, because a cab hit the brakes not to run him over. The cabbie, grim as a nightmare, stepped out of the car and said: “Hey, man!”—and Joshua, his mind loosened by the combination of alcohol and Stagger, retorted: “Hay is for horses!”
    *   *   *
    Naturally, Joshua wished he could reverse the flow of time and make everything the way it had been before he found Stagger sobbing into his filthy underwear. But the before was no longer available, nor would it ever be, while the after was mercilessly launched between the glad ding of Kimiko’s bell and its despondent dong . It was well past midnight, so that when she came down to open the door and look unpleasantly surprised, he was wise enough to appear apologetic. Bushy welcomed him by rubbing his fat-cat ass against his ankle. My fair girlfriend is innocently sleeping , Joshua thought. What would love be without mutually assured oblivion?
    Bushy would not quit and Joshua picked him up. He stroked the cat pantingly telling Kimmy what had happened, minus the details of self-urination, though her smirk indicated that she might’ve found his odor disagreeable. She wore a large Chicago Fire T-shirt, its hem touching her knees. It was a man’s shirt.
    â€œWhat are you going to do?” she asked.
    â€œWhat can I do? He’s my landlord. I can’t go back there. He lives on the first floor.”
    â€œYou could call the police,” she said. She was beautiful, even if her calmness could be interpreted as indifference. He was aware, of course, that the reasonable course of action would indeed be to call the police. But he couldn’t bear the thought of the CPD, ever happy to go gun crazy, confronting the batshit Stagger. Going back was also impossible. Stagger might be trashing his place, for all he knew, wearing Jonjo’s underwear on his head to the soundtrack of “Welcome to the Jungle,” armed with his Desert Storm trauma and samurai sword.
    â€œWhat do you want to do?” Kimmy asked again. What he wanted to do was nothing, every day, all day long, until the glacier of time ground everything back into its smooth shape. The force by which a man perseveres in existing is limited, and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. He wanted to press up against Kimmy’s warm, soft back and stay there until things sorted themselves out. Music was coming from her bedroom—she liked to read and fall asleep listening to Bach’s cello suites. Everything about her was gentle and sovereign. There was always a self-evident reason for whatever she did, even if he seldom knew what it was.
    There was a reason for the shirt she was wearing as well. His groin and inner thighs were now beginning to itch. The Fire-shirt hem was fondling her knees.
    â€œI think,” Joshua said, “I need to take a shower right now.”
    â€œWhatever you want,” Kimmy said. He wanted her to embrace his bepissed body, to kiss him, slipping her tongue into his mouth, to approve of him as he was, to take him unconditionally. It didn’t seem likely at that moment. Bushy suddenly swung his declawed paw at Joshua’s face, missing his eyeball by a missing claw. Joshua dropped him on the floor to trot toward the promise of food.
    â€œIs that your shirt?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” she said. Why would she wear a soccer shirt? Foreigners wear soccer gear, particularly foreign men. He waited for her follow-up elucidation, but she stayed silent, as if daring him to ask whose shirt it was. He wasn’t so much