Breathers (6 page)

“Camille, no!” shouts the woman. “Bad girl! Bad …”

When the woman realizes I'm a zombie, she backs away in revulsion. I try to tell her that I'm not going to hurt her, but sometimes I forget that I speak in grunts and menacing gasps that tend to freak Breathers out.

The woman screams and runs off. A moment later, Ca-mille stops rolling on me, gets up, pisses on my lap, then runs off after her owner.

So much for making a statement.

riday's meeting is somewhat subdued, what with Walter's dismemberment and the emotional residue from his attack. The first real rain of the season doesn't improve the mood. That and Carl didn't show up for the meeting.

Carl's missed meetings before. We all have. Except tonight is Halloween, so we're a little paranoid. It's bad enough that we've all been transformed into the ghoulish archetypes that children use to frighten themselves and each other with on the spookiest day of the year, but then you hear stories about Breathers driving around on Halloween, dismembering stray zombies or stuffing firecrackers into their orifices.

Still, that hasn't prevented everyone from observing the occasion. Putting on a costume can be therapeutic and empowering by pretending to be someone or something you're not. It's also good camouflage. Who expects zombies to get dressed up for Halloween?

Helen is dressed like a fairy godmother, complete with blue hair, wings, and a tiara. On the chalkboard behind her, beneath HAPPY HALLOWEEN! and a couple of cartoon bats is:

HOPE IS NOT A FOUR-LETTER WORD.

“Continue to breathe deeply,” says Helen, leading our
guided meditation. “With each exhale, let go of all of your fears and concerns.”

Jerry has fallen asleep in the chair next to me. His costume is nothing but red sweatpants, a red long-sleeved T-shirt, a red knit beanie, and a pair of devil horns held on with elastic. He's painted his face red, but it's hard to tell where the paint starts and the road rash ends.

“Empty your mind of all thoughts,” says Helen as she walks around the room, her voice a soft, maddening whisper. “Imagine nothing but a blank screen or a canvas devoid of images.”

We're supposed to keep our eyes closed during meditation to help us focus. I keep opening one eye to see what everyone else is doing. It's not that I don't respect what Helen is trying to do, but all I can focus on is the rain drumming against the roof of the community center and the sound of Jerry snoring.

Rita is sitting directly across from me. She's wearing a black one-piece bathing suit, bunny ears, and Satin Red lipstick—most of which she's consumed during the meditation. A white dog collar and leather wrist cuffs conceal her scars. She looks just like a Playboy Bunny.

Once the meditation has ended, Helen rings a little bell and I nudge Jerry to wake him up.

“Would anyone like to share how they feel about what happened to Walter?” asks Helen.

“It sucked,” says Jerry. “I say we go kick some fraternity butt.”

Naomi, who is dressed like a pirate with a head scarf, a black-and-white striped shirt, and a patch over her empty eye socket, nods her head in vigorous agreement. “Right on.”

“Really?” says Tom.

Tom is painted white with a toga draped over his shoulders
and a laurel wreath around his head. When he sits or stands completely still, he looks like a Roman sculpture.

“No, not really,” says Helen. “As soon as someone spotted you, they'd call the Sheriff's Department and the next thing you know, you're all in restraints in the back of a van on your way to the SPCA.”

“Or Dr. Frankenstein's,” says Rita.

That would be appropriate, since I'm dressed up like Frankenstein's monster. Mom bought an old suit from the thrift store and even did my makeup. I'm pretty convincing, which doesn't exactly thrill me considering the monster gets torched by a mob of angry townspeople.

We spend the next thirty minutes trying to lift one another's spirits while discussing what action we can take and how we can help one another deal with the loss of one of our own. Though this isn't the first time we've lost a member. We had a burn victim in the group, a young guy named Spencer, who got drunk one night when he was still alive and thought it would be fun to try his hand at pyrotechnics with a lighter and a can of Raid. Nearly burned his entire face off. He hasn't shown up to the meetings in a couple of months and no one knows what happened to him. Naturally, we all think the worst.

Although zombies can't technically die, contrary to the popular urban myths, we are not immortal.

It's true we can't bleed to death, since our hearts are no longer pumping blood through our arteries, but we can gradually decompose until we're not much more than a skeleton. At that point, your existence pretty much comes to an end. Not exactly a pleasant way to go.

If you've never been staked down on the side of a hill and left out to rot at a research facility for human decay, then you probably wouldn't understand.

So theoretically, we can be killed, which is a bit misleading since we're already dead. Destroyed would be a more appropriate description, though Helen prefers to use terms like “dispatched” or “removed” or “permanently processed” because she's fond of euphemisms.

Destroying a zombie isn't easy. Bullets, knives, poisons— none of these have any adverse effect. You can't smother us, drown us, or beat us. Disemboweling or dismembering us just empties our body cavities or turns us into undead quadriplegics. Decapitation would probably do the trick. As would immolation, though you'd have to use gasoline or a good quality lighter fluid. Without a decent accelerant, zombies tend to burn like wet firewood, smoldering for hours.

“I know we're all saddened by the loss of Walter,” says Helen, “and that we all have our own problems to contend with, but there are others like us out there, some of them worse off than we are, and they need help. So I want each of you to find another survivor to bring to our Friday meeting in three weeks.”

“You mean, like homework?” asks Jerry.

“Yes,” says Helen. “You could call it that.”

“Oh man,” grumbles Jerry. “I fuckin’ hate homework.”

“Now, does anyone else want to share about how they're personally coping with the attack on Walter?” asks Helen.

Everyone looks around at each other and no one says anything. I consider raising my hand, but every other time I've tried to communicate at the meetings it's been laborious and most of my attempts have turned into frustrating games of Charades, so I decide to keep my failed protest to myself. Besides, in addition to getting pissed on by a poodle, when my father came home from work and saw me sitting in front of the house, he didn't say a word but just turned on the outdoor
hose and sprayed me with the power nozzle until I got up and went inside. Either he wasn't happy with me or he just wanted to water the lawn.

At least I didn't have to take a bath.

The rest of the meeting sort of sputters to an end, with no one in much of a mood to talk about what happened to Walter and everyone struggling to stay positive, though I do get to pair up with Rita for the honest emotional contact, so the evening isn't a total loss.

I've never paired up with Rita before, and the sensation of having her this close to me, of having this level of intimacy, would bring me to tears if my tear ducts were still functioning. I don't think I realized how much I needed the comfort of a woman's embrace until now.

I still miss and love my wife, but any heterosexual man, alive or undead, would rather get hugged for ten minutes by an attractive, twenty-three-year-old zombie in a Playboy Bunny outfit instead of being hugged by the likes of Tom or Jerry. The best part about being so close to Rita is that she doesn't have an overwhelming odor of death. That's hard to pull off. Even the most heavy-duty perfumes and disinfectants can't completely cover the smell of decomposing flesh.

I know I can't smell good. Even in life I had a fairly strong natural body odor. And lately I smell anything but natural. But Rita doesn't seem to mind. Instead, she holds me close enough and tight enough to make me feel self-conscious, so I try to distract my thoughts by making up haikus. None of them work. I keep getting the number of syllables wrong. Finally, I come up with one that I call “Recipe for the Undead”:

When we're done, Helen gives us each a bag of Halloween candy and reminds us all about bringing another survivor to the meeting next month, then she casts a fairy godmother spell over us before getting a ride home from her sister, leaving the rest of us to walk home together in the rain.

I never cared much for the rain when I was alive. Didn't like driving in it and hated getting wet. Kind of like a cat. Or the Wicked Witch of the West. Now, the rain provides a protection that even a heavy police presence doesn't. As a general rule, Breathers are less likely to cause themselves physical discomfort in order to give the undead any grief. On a rainy Halloween, they're more likely to be at a party or in a bar than out hunting a Playboy Bunny, the devil, and Frankenstein's monster.

At least that's what you tell yourself.

“Hey,” says Jerry, after we part with Naomi and Tom and are walking along the back streets to avoid the traffic. “Do either of you have someone to bring to the meeting next month?”

“No,” says Rita, adjusting her bunny ears.

I shake my head and grunt.

“You wanna see if we can find someone tonight?” he asks.

“Sure,” says Rita, pulling out her lipstick and applying another coat. “Why not?”

Jerry puts one arm around me. “How about you, Andy old pal?”

After what happened to Walter, I should probably play it safe and go home. But if I do that, then I'm just giving up. Plus I can't really go out and find someone on my own, and other than
Halloween, Halloween II
, and
Halloween III
, there's not much on TV tonight, so I give Jerry the thumbs up. Or in my case, the thumb up.

There's not a lot of traffic and once you get out of the Soquel Village there aren't any storefronts, but we still have to be careful, even with the rain and our costumes, so we keep to the shadows and hide whenever a car comes by.

Jerry seems to find the idea of ducking into shadows to hide from Breathers entertaining. It's like a game. Even when there aren't any cars around, he hides behind garbage cans or trees or telephone poles, darting from one to the other, then pressing himself against a wall or a fence before diving for cover behind some hedges. He's like a demon with ADD.

The most likely place to find other zombies at night is a cemetery and the closest haunt is the Soquel Cemetery, about a mile up Old San Jose Road. That's where Rachel is buried. I used to visit her grave several times a week but I haven't stopped by in a while. Almost two weeks. I think I should feel guilty, but for some reason I don't. Maybe it's a natural progression of the grieving process. Maybe I'm learning how to move on with my undeath. Or maybe I've been distracted by a certain twenty-three-year-old zombie.

“Hey, Andy,” says Rita, slowing down to keep pace with me as Jerry races from one side of the road to the other ahead of us in the rain. “Do you ever think about God?”

This is the first time in the three weeks we've known each other that Rita has asked me a question directly. Even if I could talk, I would probably stumble over my own words trying to come up with a reply.

Instead, I just shake my head. I was a borderline atheist before I came back from the dead, so I can't blame God for what happened to me and I'm not about to thank him because as far as I'm concerned, this isn't exactly a divine miracle.

“I think about him,” says Rita. “I think about him sitting in his La-Z-Boy recliner, drinking ambrosia or mead or a pint
of Guinness, watching us on his widescreen television, waiting to see what happens next. Like an experiment.”

As if in response, thunder rumbles across the black sky. I glance at Rita. Her hair is drenched and her bunny ears are drooping, but she doesn't seem to mind.

“Sometimes I wonder if this whole planet isn't one big experiment, one big maze, and we're the mice trying to find the cheese.”