Breathers (28 page)

My parents’ bedroom is where I presume I ambushed them before dismembering them in the bathtub. The bed is in disarray, with the pillows on the floor and the bedding pulled halfway off. I find a few drops of blood on one of the pillowcases, so I remove it and its twin and stuff them into a plastic garbage bag, then strip the sheets and throw them into the washer while Rita puts a fresh set of linens on the bed.

Fortunately, my father is a preparation freak, so his and my mother's suitcases are packed and ready to go. Even the clothes they planned to wear for the drive to Palm Springs are hanging on the back of the bedroom door.

I'm a forty-four long while my father is a forty-two regular and Rita's at least a size smaller than my mother, but appearance is all that matters. And so long as the rain sticks around, no one's going to get a good look at us anyway.

Of course, if we can't get Jerry out of bed then we'll have to wait another twelve hours and I'd just as soon get this over with while I'm on a Breather high.

In addition to its restorative properties, fresh Breather provides an increased confidence, like a rush of adrenaline, only longer lasting. Kind of like Viagra. Of course, if I start to come down, I can always help myself to another serving of Mom or Dad. I have to get rid of the evidence eventually. But I'd prefer to take care of this part of saving my ass with the cover of rain and in the less-traveled hours of early morning.

By the time Rita and I get dressed and pack my parents’ BMW 740 with the suitcases, the garbage bag, and the ice chest, it's pushing five in the morning. My left leg and arm still aren't better than sixty percent, so Rita has to drive.

Dressed in an Ann Taylor lavender pantsuit and ivory London Fog raincoat with matching gloves, Rita looks eerily like my mother, so I have to remain focused on the task at hand to keep from grossing myself out.

It's one thing to broil and eat your mother with homemade minute sauce. It's another to imagine taking her clothes off with your teeth.

We back out of the garage and into the rain. None of the neighbors are out before five on a Saturday morning, but I'm not worried about anyone witnessing our departure. My father always did like to get an early start. I just don't want anyone who knows my parents to flag us down for a chat.

Before we head to Jerry's, we swing by 7-Eleven. I wait in the car and watch through the store windows while Rita goes inside. The woman behind the counter doesn't give Rita a second glance. So far so good. And I doubt the clerk would suspect that the woman who just drove up in a BMW and walked into the store at five in the morning on a rainy December Saturday is one of the undead.

While I'm waiting, ready to join Rita if anything goes wrong, I notice a vibration, faint at first, but growing stronger. The vibrations are spaced out about every ten to twelve seconds, but there's no doubt where they're originating.

They're coming from inside me.

Less than two minutes after entering 7-Eleven, Rita walks out the door with her purchase and I pop the trunk. Once she puts the block of ice into the ice chest, she's back in the driver's seat.

“Piece of cake,” she says.

I lean over and kiss her, taking her hand and holding it against my chest. When she tries to pull away to start the engine, I hold her there and she gives me a look of surprise.

“Isn't this a little …”

I put my fingers to her lips. A moment later, she realizes what I'm doing and when she feels my heart beat, her face breaks open in a beautiful smile and we embrace, our two hearts beating irregularly, but together.

Both of us would like to have more time to enjoy the moment, but time isn't a luxury we have. Number one, the sun will be coming up in less than two hours. And number two, we need to get to where we're going before the block of ice melts.

It's only a few minutes’ drive to Jerry's, but every time headlights appear on the road ahead of us or in the sideview mirror, my heart starts racing. True, it beats once every nine seconds instead of ten, but when your heart hasn't worked for more than four months, “racing” becomes a relative term.

Fortunately, Jerry's awake. I don't know what he's doing up at five in the morning, but when I tap on his window, his face appears from behind the curtains within seconds. At first he has his scary face on, the one zombies use to chase away lookie-loos, until he realizes it's me.

“Dude,” he says, opening the window.

I hold my finger to my lips and then motion for him to come outside. He disappears behind the curtains again, then reappears in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and black Converse All-Stars and climbs out the window.

“What's going on?” he whispers.

“I need your help,” I say.

The fact that he doesn't ask me what the help is for lets me know that he's going to give it no matter what. And I realize that Jerry is one of the best friends I've ever had.

“Hey, Rita,” says Jerry, once we're in the BMW. “Nice ride. Is this yours?”

“Andy's parents’,” she says, putting the car in drive and pulling away.

“Dude,” he says. “Won't they be totally pissed?”

Rita and I look at each other and smirk.

“What?” says Jerry.

As we drive, I fill Jerry in on what happened and what we plan to do. When I'm finished, Jerry sits in the backseat, picking at the healing scabs on his face, staring at me.

“Dude, you ate your mother?”

I nod.

He's silent again for a few seconds.

“What part?”

I tell him.

“How did she taste?” he asks.

“Better than what Ray gave us,” I say.

Jerry doesn't say anything for nearly a full minute and I'm beginning to think that maybe this was too much for him to absorb. Sure, we're zombies. And yes, it turns out we tend to have an affinity for human flesh. But they were still my parents. They were still family. Maybe that's taboo even among the undead.

Then Jerry leans forward between the two front seats and says, “Can I come over for lunch?”

We pull up behind the granary at a quarter after five. No one is around when we arrive and I hope we can get out of here before any Breathers drive past. Ray's Lumina is still parked behind the bushes. So long as the keys are in the glove box, we shouldn't have a problem.

“We have a problem,” says Jerry.

I glance back at the granary. A few days ago, I wouldn't have been able to see anything but rain and darkness surrounding the dilapidated building. But with my improved vision, I can make out smoke rising through the broken roof.

When we enter the back door of the granary, I expect to see Ray sitting on the other side of the fire, drinking a beer and eating some Breather meat out of a jar like a scene out of an old western. Instead, Ray is joined by Zack and Luke. A fourth figure is lying on the ground between them. He's not moving.

“Howdy,” says Ray, his mouth half full. “Pull up a seat and join the party.”

The three of them are roasting limbs over the open fire. A makeshift curing rack sits above the fire with thin strips of meat hanging from hooks. Several jars of freshly packed meat sit off to the side next to a bloody saw and several curved hunting knives. While the limbs are roasting, Luke reaches into the body cavity of the dead man on the ground, pulls out what looks like the liver, and bites it in two, giving the other half to his twin brother.

Rita and I had a snack before we left, so we're not hungry. Jerry, on the other hand, is salivating.

“Dude, is this what you did with your parents?”

Not exactly, I tell him.

Ray finishes cooking the dead guy's right arm and starts
tearing into it with his teeth. Zack and Luke follow suit with the lower right and left legs, ripping off pieces of blackened flesh and washing them down with beer.

Not to mince words, but watching the three of them roast and devour human limbs over an open fire seems less civilized than broiling my mother's ribs and eating them by candlelight with a steamed artichoke while listening to Billie Holiday.

Or maybe it's just me.

Jerry approaches the fire and helps himself to a piece of partially cured meat.

“Guess you kinda figured out it wasn't venison in those jars after all,” says Ray, talking around a piece of forearm.

“Kinda,” I say.

“Hey,” he says. “That's pretty good. Your limp seems mighty improved, too. I think it took less than a week for my gunshot wound to heal up once I started eatin’ Breather regular.”

It occurs to me that Ray's wife probably never kicked him out due to the fact that she couldn't stand the smell. Or if she did, Ray went back and packed her into Mason jars.

“Ray,” says Rita. “We need to borrow your car.”

“Sure thing,” says Ray, picking at his teeth with an exposed finger bone. “Keys are in the storage bin. You folks got some cleanin’ up to do?”

“Something like that,” says Rita.

While Rita grabs the keys, Jerry grabs a piece of Breather jerky and stuffs the whole thing in his mouth, then grabs another piece for the road. Never once does he ask to see any of Ray's
Playboys
.

As we leave the granary, I glance back inside and Ray waves a hand at me—not his own, but the dead guy's left hand, which he then skewers and holds over the fire. Next to him, Zack and Luke gnaw on a fibula.

So much for your kinder, gentler zombies.

ighway 1 south of Santa Cruz winds through Monterey and past Carmel before becoming a truly coastal highway. Trees and cliffs line one side of the two-lane road, while on the ocean side, waves crash against the rocks more than a hundred feet below.

About fifteen miles past Big Sur, all signs of community vanish and there's nothing but uninhabited highway, almost deserted just before sunrise. It's still raining, which makes the road a little treacherous, perfect conditions for an accident.

At a turn in the road where the guardrail gives way to a natural overlook, the only barrier between the road and the fifteen-story drop to the ocean below are some shin-high rocks. After checking to make sure there aren't any cars coming from either direction, we double back to a spot in the highway just before the overlook, pull over, and keep the cars running. We transferred the ice chest, my backpack, and the garbage bag with my parents’ contaminated bedding into the Lumina before we left the granary, so all we need to do is grab the block of ice and hope no one shows up.

Rita gets in behind the wheel of the Lumina while Jerry
carries the block of ice over to my parents’ BMW. After I make sure the car is pointed straight at the turnout, I disengage the emergency brake, put the car in neutral, then roll down the driver's side window and get out of the car. I realize leaving the window open might look suspicious considering the weather, but I'm just trying to buy some time, not commit the perfect crime. Besides, I can't figure out any other way to get the car into drive while I'm standing outside of it.

Jerry places the block of ice on the gas pedal and the tachometer needle pushes up to over 4,000 rpms. As soon as he's out of the way, I slip a piece of cord around the automatic gearshift in the center console, then take both ends and slide them out through the window after closing the door.

Part of me thinks I should say something to mark the occasion, or at least ask someone to forgive me for what I've done. So I tell my parents I'm sorry and that I hope they can understand. Then I pull on both ends of the cord until the shifter slips into drive and I let go of one end of the cord as the BMW's rear wheels spin on the wet asphalt for a few seconds before the car takes off, racing toward the overlook.

I have a moment to consider what I'm going to do if the car veers off course or if the block of ice falls off the accelerator, but then the BMW zooms onto the overlook, hits the rocks, and flies out over the cliff before it starts to nosedive and disappears from sight.

Jerry runs over to the edge and looks down. I know we should probably get out of here before someone comes by, but I have to look. I get there just in time to see the BMW hit the water roof first with a distant crunch. For a few seconds it floats there, tires spinning, undercarriage pointing toward the sky, then it vanishes beneath the waves.