Breathers (7 page)

She turns to look at me and I'm transfixed. Her dark eyes pierce me as the rain drips down her pale face. In the diffused glow from a street lamp half a block away, she looks almost ethereal. Like a zombie Playboy angel.

“Or do you think I'm just full of shit?” she says.

I shake my head, a little too eagerly, and Rita laughs, her eyes holding mine, the rain a distant nuisance. When she smiles at me, for the first time in months, it feels like my heart is glowing.

Up ahead, Jerry dives headlong over a bush and slams into a telephone pole.

Rita hooks her left arm through my right. “Come on,” she says. “Let's catch up with the secret agent.”

Jerry is on his back next to the telephone pole, his mouth open to catch the rain. His red beanie and devil horns are on the ground next to him and his brain is getting wet. Just past him is a yellow traffic warning sign with a black arrow indicating a reverse curve.

“It's a good thing I'm already dead,” says Jerry, smiling. “Otherwise, that would have hurt like a bitch.”

“You're not dead,” says Rita, reaching down with her right hand to help Jerry to his feet. “You're undead.”

“Whatever,” says Jerry. “You live in your world, I'll live in mine.”

I watch the two of them converse with envy. I want to say something clever. Or witty. Or profound. I want to say anything at all just to be a part of the conversation instead of a silent bystander. I can't even pull out my dry erase board because I left it at home. So all I can do is stand and watch and smile until I want to scream.

So I scream.

Jerry and Rita look at me, startled into silence. For a few beats we all stare at each other and I feel like an unruly child waiting to be rebuked by my parents. Then Jerry starts to laugh, which gets Rita going. Before I realize what's happening, I'm laughing, too. I sound kind of like a sick sea lion, but it's the first time I've laughed in over three months and it dawns on me that I'm having a good time.

“Hey!” a voice shouts.

The three of us turn and see a figure coming toward us across the field on the other side of the street. In the darkness behind him, two other human forms follow his lead.

Thunder booms above us like special effects in a B-horror film.

“Let's get out of here,” says Jerry.

“Good idea,” says Rita, taking my arm and pulling me back toward town.

“Hold on there!” the man shouts.

There are no houses nearby. No bars or restaurants or businesses of any kind. But then, they wouldn't exactly be places where we could seek refuge.

We're halfway to the cemetery and, other than the field, a vineyard, and an abandoned stone granary, there's nothing out here. Just a single streetlight, darkness, and rain.

The man's running now, almost to the road, and his friends aren't far behind. He shouts out something else but it gets lost in another round of thunder.

Jerry is running ahead of us, saying “come on, come on, come on,” as if we're not aware of the urgency. Rita is holding on to me, looking back over her shoulder, trying to get me to move just a little bit faster, but I'm going as fast as I can.

I glance back and see the man crossing the road, not fifty feet behind us. He's dressed in cowboy boots and jeans and a brown leather jacket. Just past the field, headlights flash around the reverse curve and a car appears, fishtailing as it accelerates out of the turn.

At the sound of the approaching car, the man turns and slips on the wet asphalt and falls to the ground. Before he can scramble to his feet and get out of the way, the car slams into him, sending him through the air, limbs flailing, until he hits the shoulder of the road and tumbles head-over-heels three times, finally coming to a stop on his back less than ten feet from us.

The car, a beat-up Chevy Nova filled with drunk high school kids, flies past without stopping. Seconds later the car is gone, its one working red taillight disappearing around another turn, and all we hear is the rain on the asphalt and the sound of approaching footsteps.

Rita and I back slowly away from the lifeless body lying on the shoulder of the road as the other two figures cross the street and come toward us. Without warning, Jerry appears behind Rita and me, causing both of us to jump and yelp and grab on to each other.

Jerry looks down at the corpse and says, “Is he dead?”

The corpse sits up, raising himself on his forearms, and shakes his head like a dog after a bath. “Nope. And I aim to stay that way. So why don't we all get the hell out of here before any more Breathers show up.”

This is how we meet Ray Cooper.

early three stories tall and made of stone, the granary on Old San Jose Road has been abandoned for more than thirty years. Most of the roof is gone, as are any other signs of the farming operation that existed before the winery took over the land across the road and replaced the wheat with grapes. A faded assortment of graffiti covers the granary's circular walls, while weeds and wildflowers have overgrown the land surrounding it.

Ray has lived in the granary since September, when his wife kicked him out because she couldn't put up with the stench. His wife must be overly sensitive to odors because other than Rita, Ray is the only zombie I've met who doesn't have the telltale underlying smell of roadkill.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” says Ray with a twang that smacks of overalls and cow pies.

Ray leads us through the back door of the granary. Jerry goes first, followed by Rita, then me. Behind us come the other two zombies who were with Ray in the field—Zack and Luke, adult twin brothers who died from neck and skull injuries when they dared each other to dive head-first from a railroad
trestle into the San Lorenzo River. They did this in the summer when the river was two feet deep.

Ray told us their story. Zack and Luke haven't offered up more than grins, nods, and a couple of “Howdy's.” They're kind of creepy. But then, who am I to judge?

Inside, Ray turns on a propane lantern, the light from the flame flickering off the stone walls. The interior walls cut in about four feet from the curved exterior walls, creating what would have been storage areas for the threshed wheat. A square sliding door in each wall sits at about shoulder level, while iron ladders attached to the walls climb up to the top of the granary.

A single door leads from the back to the front, where another door large enough to accommodate a vehicle is boarded up from the inside. Other than the six of us, a couple pieces of charred wood, and an old, dirty tennis shoe discarded in one corner, the granary is empty.

Behind me, Luke whispers something to Zack, who giggles.

The rain has stopped, which is nice since most of the roof is gone. The remaining portion of the roof covers one of the grain storage areas, which Ray has converted into his own personal sleeping space and pantry—complete with shelves lined with canned goods and Mason jars and bottles of Budweiser.

Just because we're the undead doesn't mean we don't like creature comforts.

Ray also has firewood, matches, and old issues of
Playboy.
He pulls out several pieces of wood, some kindling, and one of the
Playboy
s, which he hands to Jerry. “Just tear out the articles, ads, and interviews,” says Ray. “Anything with nudie pictures stays.”

While Jerry alternately peruses the contents of the
Playboy
and tears out pages for Ray to use to start the fire, I glance over at Rita to see if she's uncomfortable about any of this and find her flipping through an old
Playboy
with Charlize Theron on the cover.

Within minutes, Ray has a fire crackling in the middle of the floor, the smoke drifting up and out through the open roof. In the darkness of night, it's doubtful any Breathers can see the smoke rising from the granary.

“Anyone hungry?” asks Ray.

Zack and Luke raise their arms fast and rigid like Hitler youth. Rita voices her desire while I grunt.

“How about you, Jerry?” asks Ray.

Jerry is sitting cross-legged on the ground near the fire with a
Playboy
in his lap and a stack of magazines next to him. “I'm good,” he says, not looking up.

From inside the storage area, Ray pulls out a couple of Mason jars, two forks, a sealed plastic Baggie, and five bottles of Budweiser. He hands one of the jars to Rita and another to Luke, who takes it like an eager child accepting chocolate. Luke opens the jar, the lid unscrewing with the
hiss
of a vacuum seal, and seconds later he and Zack are taking turns shoveling hunks of meat out of the jar and into their mouths.

I'm sitting next to Rita, who is looking at the contents of the Mason jar in the light from the fire. “What's in here?” she asks.

“Venison,” says Ray, opening up the Baggie and pulling out a piece of jerky. “I used to shoot deer a lot. Not always legally, of course, but I was good with a rifle, so I had to can a lot of what I killed. It's a little gamey,” he says, taking a bite of the jerky, “but it's still fresh.”

Rita unscrews the lid, which hisses open, then reaches in
and digs out a forkful of venison. She holds the fork up to her nose, sniffs it, then puts the fork into her mouth.

“Wow,” she says, her jaws working. “That's good. It actually tastes like meat.”

“The food of t he god s,” say s R ay, his mouth full of deer jerk y. He cracks open a bottle of Budweiser and takes a swallow.

Rita takes another bite, then holds the jar out and hands the fork to me. In spite of the fact that Rita has already given it her approval, I hesitate, mostly because I've never eaten deer and never had much of a palate for game meat. That and I have a hard time believing it tastes like anything other than marinated tofu.

Across the fire from me, Zack and Luke have already finished their venison and are wiping the inside of the jar with their fingers.

“Try it,” says Rita. “It's good.”

Now I'm not one to look for religious symbolism in simple gestures or unexplained events, but as Rita sits there in her Playboy Bunny costume holding the venison out to me, I'm reminded of Eve holding the apple out to Adam. Then again, this isn't exactly the Garden of Eden. And if there is a paradise, then we've already been kicked out. So I take the apple.

Rita's right. The first bite actually has more flavor than I would have expected, considering I haven't tasted much of anything since the accident. The second bite tastes even better. I take four bites before I realize that I'm supposed to be sharing with Rita.

“You sure you don't want any, Jerry?” asks Rita.

“Not hungry,” says Jerry. He's pulled away a little from the fire, his back against the wall, a bottle of Budweiser and the propane lantern on the floor next to him, his nose buried in a centerfold.

While we eat venison and drink beer, Ray asks us how we all ended up in our current condition. Since I don't have my dry erase board, and with Jerry preoccupied, Rita does all the talking—explaining how each of us died and how we all meet twice a week with a support group. Ray, in turn, explains that he met his living end hunting deer nearly one year ago. He trespassed on private property and the land owner claimed he was simply firing back in self-defense.

“Self-defense my ass,” says Ray. “My gun was leaning up against the tree next to me.”

“What were you doing when he shot you?” asks Rita.

“Taking a leak,” says Ray. “Son of a bitch plugged me with my pants down.”

I take another bite of venison and grunt.

By the time we finish eating, Zack and Luke are asleep, curled up against each other like cats, the empty Mason jar and two bottles of Budweiser on the ground next to them. Jerry is still lost in a world of soft-core pornography.

“So tell me about this group of yours,” says Ray, putting another log on the fire and cracking open another beer.

Rita gives a quick rundown of the group, its members, and its purpose, one of which is to expand our numbers by bringing other survivors into the fold.

“Survivors?” says Ray. “Sounds like a pretty way of saying 'screwed over’ to me.”

“Helen is kind of New Age,” says Rita. “She likes to help us feel better about ourselves.”