Breathers (33 page)

The only one of our original group who didn't get busted is Helen, though when she stopped by for a visit she did confide to me that she keeps thinking about eating her sister.

“She just looks so succulent.”

Yes. Succulent. My mouth salivates at the word.

Instead of eating her sister, Helen took down a homeless
person with help from Zack and Luke, then they cut him up and stored him in a freezer in Ian's garage.

If green is the color of envy, then I'm split pea soup.

For a great green pea Breather soup, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a large saucepan, blend in 2 tablespoons flour, add 1 pint each milk and Breather broth and bring to a boil. Smooth in chopped Breather and green pea puree, salt and pepper, then cover and simmer 5–10 minutes. Makes six servings.

Helen told me not to worry, that she and Ian were working on a way to get me out of this. I hope they figure it out soon so I can get some fresh Breather because I keep picking pieces of my brain out of the exit wound in the back of my head.

ay five of my captivity.

Jerry was released two days ago. I can't say I miss his constant wheezing and coughing, but at least it broke up the monotony of hissing.

The red Persian in the cage next to mine is the worst. He doesn't hiss at me as much as the others, but since his face is mashed in, his respiratory system is apparently dysfunctional, causing him to have sneezing fits twice a day that spray me with globs of orange mucous.

When Jerry's parents showed up to claim him, I expected them to react in typical Breather fashion. But whereas my mother would have refused to touch me and my father would have berated me with the expense and inconvenience of my condition, Jerry's parents smothered him with affection and apologized for not being able to pick him up sooner.

And I thought everyone wanted to eat their mother and father.

So I'm all alone now, unless you count the ninety-three cats and twenty-four kittens currently sharing the kennel with me.

After Jerry's departure in the morning, Carl and Naomi
left later that afternoon. Rita, Leslie, Beth, and Tom went home yesterday. Rita stopped by on her way out and slipped me a kiss along with some dried Breather, but it didn't help much. I'm beginning to deteriorate. My fresh wounds are suppurating, turning black, and my heart has slowed to less than five beats per minute. It's hard to tell if my flesh is starting to rot because of the overwhelming litter box odor. That and a couple of the new arrivals in adjacent cages have sprayed me.

And I'm developing cramps.

If you've never been confined to a five-foot-long, three-foot-wide, three-foot-high cage for five days, then you probably wouldn't understand.

Right about now, my parents’ wine cellar looks like the penthouse suite at the Ritz-Carlton. What I wouldn't give for a bottle of 1999 Arietta Merlot and back-to-back episodes of
Spin City.

On the bright side, according to Helen, several personal effects belonging to my parents washed ashore just south of Big Sur, prompting the police to switch their investigation to the stretch of ocean from Carmel to San Simeon. With any luck they'll find my parents’ BMW and rule their deaths accidental and let me go, which I realize is about as likely as a good Hollywood movie based on a bad television series. But at least it gives me something to think about other than whether I'll be dissected, chopped up, or flambéed.

Ian petitioned the county for an injunction on my behalf in an attempt to keep me from being destroyed until the police investigation regarding my parents’ disappearance has been
resolved. He thinks he has a good chance of making it happen. He even contacted the
Santa Cruz County Sentinel
hoping to get some local media coverage. I don't exactly know what he hopes to accomplish by pissing off a bunch of Breathers who will complain about their tax dollars being wasted on a subhuman, but Ian seems to think it could help my cause.

All I know is that unless my parents show up in the next two days, which isn't likely considering that they've been completely digested and passed through my system, then I get a full scholarship to Cadaver College.

I hear the entrance exams are brutal.

ndy! Andy! How are they treating you?”

“What's it like being a zombie?”

“How are you dealing with the disappearance of your parents?”

It's day nine of my captivity and I'm fielding questions from more than half a dozen reporters standing outside my cage, which is actually more of a deluxe private kennel than a cage.

Measuring ten-feet long, ten-feet wide, and eight-feet tall, my new accommodations come with a sofa that pulls out into a queen-sized bed, a mini-refrigerator, a microwave, a portable toilet with privacy veils, a DVD player with a nineteen-inch flat-screen monitor, and my own personal attendant. Circuit City donated the DVD player and flat-screen, but all of the other accessories came from local organizations who wanted some good PR. The personal attendant is a kid named Scott who volunteers for the SPCA but who wants to be an actor and thought this might be a chance for him to get discovered.

When you're suddenly famous, everyone wants a piece of you.

Two days ago, I awoke to the sound of sirens pulling up out
in front of the SPCA. I figured that was the end of me, that I'd wind up rooming with Ray in a dormitory for the harvested undead, which was beginning to look like a pretty attractive option considering that I'd spent the last couple of days with cat litter stuck to my ass.

Turns out one of the regional media outlets picked up on a local story about an outbreak of civil disobedience among Santa Cruz County's undead and sent someone to investigate. When they discovered that one of the undead was an orphaned zombie who had sent a petition to a member of the House of Representatives asking for the government to restore his constitutional rights and that a local lawyer was fighting to save said orphaned zombie from destruction, the story went national.

Turns out my petition was completely disregarded by my would-be representative and instead was posted outside his office as a running joke on Capitol Hill. But when my name showed up on the news and someone figured out I was the author of the petition, the joke became a public relations nightmare.

So far my story's been reported on
World News Tonight
, the
CBS Evening News
, and
Headline News
, debated on
Crossfire, Real Time with Bill Maher
, and NPR, and even made it into a press conference given by the president's press secretary. I think the official stance taken by the president was “No comment.”

On the morning I was scheduled to be discharged to the county, the media descended upon the SPCA with a convoy of television vans, video cameras, satellite feeds, and dozens of reporters. Protesters lined up on both sides of the issue, yelling at each other. And hundreds of local citizens showed up to either voice their opinions or to see if they might catch a glimpse of Andy the Zombie. Apparently, it was quite a circus.
The police showed up to try to keep it from turning into a zoo.

“Andy, what do you think is going to happen to you?”

“When do you think you'll get out of here?”

“What are your favorite foods?”

Next question.

When the media arrived, the SPCA locked down the building for the first twenty-four hours, preventing reporters from having access to me—in part because they didn't want to disturb the other animals but also because they realized they would have their own public relations nightmare on their hands if any images were broadcast of me cramped up inside my coffin of a cage, with nothing but a water dish, a bowl of kibble, and a bag of catnip. Which, by the way, tastes like dead grass but really packs a punch.

So in the middle of the night I was moved into one of the large cages the SPCA keeps available for livestock and game animals. Some of the volunteers even pitched in to supply me with some pillows and blankets.

In spite of the fact that they're Breathers, most of the volunteers genuinely care about the fate of their undead charges. I think it's that sentiment that has helped to fuel the growing support for me and for zombies across the nation over the last couple of days.

All of the donated accoutrements started showing up within hours of my first television broadcast on network news. My current accommodations showed up this morning, courtesy of a local entrepreneur who builds custom cages and figured he could boost his sales with my constant media exposure.

“Andy, how did you die?”

“What was your life like before you became a zombie?”

“Do you feel like you've been abandoned?”

The police investigation into my parents’ disappearance is
still ongoing, but that hasn't prevented stories from circulating in tabloid magazines, on Internet Web sites, and on shows like
Entertainment Tonight
that my parents either committed suicide because they could no longer deal with having a zombie for a son or else they faked their deaths in order to avoid the responsibility of caring for me.

Some of the other claims being reported about me:

I spent the last three months enslaved in my parents’ basement, where I was sexually abused by corpse fetishists.

I had my internal organs sold off one by one to pay for Mom and Dad's heroin habit.

My parents cut off my genitals and kept them in a jar because they thought it would help them to win the lottery.

I guess you can lead the media to a story but you can't make them report it accurately.

In spite of their speculative reporting, the tabloid news stories have more credence with the public than the truth, so I've been turned into this tragic, sympathetic zombie figure.

A human interest story about a nonhuman.

A cult hero for a society that abhors me.

I think about how I sat on my parents’ lawn and picketed in front of the mortuary and sat on a bench in the park trying to give Breathers something to think about, trying to give a dissenting point of view. I think about how I got urinated on and spit on and bombarded with food and insults, how I got carted off by Animal Control time after time for my efforts and how nothing I did seemed to make a difference.