The Mexican zombies, however, find him and try to drag him out of there. Young Reynolds sees their hungry faces, then the hungry face of the black guy and Julie’s face, watching him, showing no sign of emotion. At this point, Colonel Reynolds, escorted by three of his men, kicks down the door and starts blowing away all the zombies with the special gun. All the time he’s firing, the colonel is calling his son’s name. Here I am, Dad, says young Reynolds.
The nightmare is over.
The next scene shows the colonel comfortably seated in his office proposing to his son that they go to Alaska for a vacation together. Young Reynolds says he’ll think it over. There’s no rush, son, says the colonel. Then the colonel’s on his own and he begins to smile to himself, as if he can’t quite believe how incredibly lucky he’s been. His son is alive. Meanwhile, young Reynolds has left his father’s office and started walking through the underground passageways at the base. There’s a look of deep uneasiness on his face. Gradually, however, distant noises begin to penetrate his self-absorption. He can hear shouts and howls, the cries of people for whom pain has become a way of life. Barely aware of what he’s doing, he starts walking toward the source of the cries. He doesn’t have to go far. The passage turns a corner and there is a door; it opens onto an enormous laboratory, stretching away before him.
He is warmly greeted by some military scientists who have known him since he was a boy. He continues on his way. He discovers a series of glass cells. The Mexicans have been placed in them, each in a separate cell. He keeps walking. He finds Julie’s cell. Julie recognizes him. The colonel’s son puts his hand on the glass and Julie puts her hand up to his, as if she were touching it. In a larger cell some scientists are working on the black guy. He could become a great warrior, they say. They are sending electric shocks through his brain. The black guy is full of hatred and resentment. He howls. The colonel’s son hides in a corner. When the scientists go for their coffee break, he gets up and asks the black guy if he recognizes him. Vaguely, says the black guy. All my memories are vague. And fucking strange, too.
We were friends, says the colonel’s son. We met by the river. I remember an apartment on 30th Street, says the black guy, and a woman laughing, but I don’t know what I was doing there. The boy frees the black guy from his chains. Freed, he walks like a kind of robocop. A zombie robocop. Don’t attack me, says the colonel’s son, I’m your friend. I understand, says the black guy, who goes to a shelf and takes down an assault rifle. When the scientists come back, the black guy greets them with a volley of fire. Meanwhile the boy frees Julie and tells her that they have to flee again. They kiss. The soldiers try to take out the black guy. As Julie and her boyfriend are sneaking away, she frees the Mexicans. More soldiers arrive. The bullets destroy some containers where body parts are kept. Viscera and spinal columns crawl over the floor of the laboratory. A siren begins to shriek. In this pitched battle it isn’t clear which side has the advantage, or even if there really are sides, not just individuals fighting for their own lives and for the deaths of the others. Over the PA a voice is repeating: Block the passages on level five. My son! shouts Colonel Reynolds and rushes down to level five like a madman.
Colonel Landovski shoots the black guy to bits and is devoured in turn by the Mexican girl. The soldiers repel an attack mounted by bloody pieces of human flesh. The second attack, however, breaks through their lines of defense and they’re devoured by tiny scraps of raw meat. There are more and more zombies. The battle becomes totally chaotic. The colonel reaches level five. Through a window he sees his son and Julie, and gestures to show that the passage is still open, there is still an escape route. The colonel’s son takes Julie by the hand and they head in the direction that his father indicated. I’m hurting all over, says Julie. Don’t start that again, says the boy, when we get away from here you’ll feel better. Do you believe me? I believe you, says Julie.
In the passage that hasn’t yet been blocked, Colonel Reynolds appears, unarmed, his shirt drenched with sweat, not only because he hasn’t stopped running but also because the temperature on level five has increased dramatically. Colonel Reynolds’ face has been transfigured. It could be said that his expression resembles that of Abraham. With every cell in his body he calls out his son’s name and repeats how dearly he loves him. His military career, his scientific research, duty, honor and his country are all swept away by the force of love. Here, through here. Follow me. Hurry up. Soon the doors will shut automatically. Come with me and you’ll be able to escape. All he gets in response is the sad gaze of his son, who at this moment, and perhaps for the first time, knows more than his father. The father at one end of the passage. The son at the other end. And suddenly the doors shut and they’re separated forever.
Behind the son there’s a kind of furnace. It isn’t clear whether the furnace was there already or whether the fire caused by the zombie rebellion has spread. It’s some blaze. Julie and the boy hold hands. Come on, Julie, says the boy, don’t be afraid, nothing will separate us now. Meanwhile, on the other side, the colonel is trying to break down the door, in vain. His son and Julie walk toward the fire. On the other side, the colonel beats at the door with his fists. His knuckles go red with blood. I’m not afraid, says Julie. I love you, says young Reynolds. On the other side, the colonel is trying to break down the door, in vain. The young lovers walk toward the fire and disappear. The screen goes an intense red. The only sound is a machine gun hammering. Then an explosion, screams, groans, electrical sparking. On the other side, shut off from all this, the colonel is trying to break down the door, in vain.
SCHOLARS OF SODOM
for Celina Manzoni
It’s 1972 and I can see V. S. Naipaul strolling through the streets of Buenos Aires. Well, sometimes he’s strolling, but sometimes, when he’s on his way to meetings or keeping appointments, his gait is quick and his eyes take in only what he needs to see in order to reach his destination with a minimum of bother, whether it’s a private dwelling or, more often, a restaurant or a café, since many of those who’ve agreed to meet him have chosen a public place, as if they were intimidated by this peculiar Englishman, or as if they’d been disconcerted by the author of Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas when they met him in the flesh and had thought: Well, I didn’t think it would be like this, or: This isn’t the man I’d imagined, or: Nobody told me. So there he is, Naipaul, and it seems that all he can notice are outward movements, but in fact he’s noticing inward movements too, although he interprets them in his own way, sometimes arbitrarily, and he’s moving through Buenos Aires in the year 1972 and writing as he moves or perhaps only wanting to write as his legs move through that strange city, and he’s still young, forty years old, but he already has a considerable body of work behind him, a body of work that doesn’t weigh him down or prevent him from moving briskly through Buenos Aires when he has an appointment to keep — the weight of the work, that’s something to which we shall have to return, the weight and the pride that he takes in his work, the weight and the responsibility, which don’t prevent his legs from moving nimbly or his hand from rising to hail a taxi, as he acts in character, like the man he is, a man who keeps his appointments punctually — but he is weighed down by the work when he goes strolling through Buenos Aires without appointments to exercise his British punctuality, without any pressing obligations, just walking along those strange avenues and streets, through that city in the southern hemisphere, so like the cities of the northern hemisphere, and yet nothing like them at all, a hole, a void that someone has suddenly inflated, a show that is strictly for local consumption; that’s when he feels the weight of the work, and it’s tiring to carry that weight as he walks, it exhausts him, it’s irritating and shameful.