All-Day Breakfast (44 page)

Dear Josie & Ray,

You can ignore the letter that shows all the chunks I've had taken off me, because that was a downer. Instead let's look on the positive side with an inventory of my even-less-fortunate stablemates:

1. In the terrarium across from me, a tabby cat with what looks like a salmon for his back half. His tail's splashing the greenish water while his poor wet paws cling to the sand. Panting like he just ran two hundred miles, he stares at some spot out ahead of him.
   
2. A bunch of foot-long squid zipping around the tank under him. Might not be anything weird about them but it's more likely they've switched brains with the architects of the Third Reich.
   
3. Whistler. A liones
   s/
   lion pacing in a square cage, lapping he
   r
   /
   his water, sniffing the air, acting like any lion does in a zoo when it's not passed-out asleep. I've watched he
   r
   /
   him two minutes, and three times the half-dozen black wings she
   /
   he has sticking out of either shoulder sprang up all at once and flapped without any synchronization but with enough lift to pull Whistler three feet in the air before dumping her
   /
   him onto a trash can of dog food. Whistler has the same black balls as another lion, Hopper, but not the udder, thank god, and without that udder it seems Whistler is thriving.
   
4. Some kind of big green snake, twisted back and forth all over itself. Maybe it's six snakes.
   
5. A large caramel-brown sea lion, twisting and turning in the tank of water beside the squid's, and the tank must be a good size, kids, because half the time he disappears back into the murk. If there's something called
   Bacon of the Sea
   he's getting plenty.
   
6. A black-and-white calf and a black chimp, both seemingly intact, in a cage right against my deli case. I have to twist my head almost backwards to see them, but their shaved hips are clear enough. The calf lies on its side next to a scattering of hay, its head sometimes up and sometimes down, and the monkey scampers up and down its carpeted Wal-Mart cat tree, throwing poop at the calf and sometimes swinging off to stand and pat the calf's head or sit abjectly on its hip while it sleeps. But then the calf springs to its feet like it's been electrocuted, and the chimp darts for its tree but isn't quick enough. The calf whacks him with the top of its little head so the monkey flies six feet and clangs its teeth against the bars. The calf shrieks like an air-raid siren. The air feels thin in here.
   

Hope it cheers you up to never receive this horrible letter written inside my head,

Dad.

Mike ran up, gumboots flapping against his shins, and put his hand between the bars into the calf's cage. It licked red powder out of his palm then slid onto its front knees. Mike whistled, wagging his sharp little beard, and the monkey came out from behind its tree to creep toward him.

“Hey, man!” I yelled, thumping my bound feet against the top of the deli case. “What the hell?”

“Shut up, zombie dipshit,” he said. “Wait your turn.”

“You too big a pussy to just chop my head off, is that it?”

I was a strategic genius. I was goading him into opening the case. He crouched in front of me, rapped a knuckle against the plexiglass.

“Can't get out, hey?” His tattooed forearm read
it's clobberin' time!
“We found Dean upstairs, ya see, and Dean was like the little brother, and we're so
happy
right now that we're moving up your schedule, good, right? What's not good is that Tyrone's not much of a surgeon. Doc gave him a chance a couple times but, God, it got gross. Hold on.”

He moved to the left to crouch beside the cat-salmon, its paws thrashing the sand while its tail dragged it further into the water.

“See the Cat from Atlantis? Isn't he pretty, hey?”

“How long until I fight the lion?”

“Whistler? She's a
griffin
.”

“A griffin's half-lion and half-eagle.”

“Yeah, body mass was incompatible for that.”

“Let me go home,” I said.

Which didn't sound tough at all.

“This is all going to be big, man, you're on the fucking cusp—think of the military applications for the shit! Baboons flying around with machine guns! We'd kick Congo's ass! And look who's here! Ol' Roger!”

The sea lion pressed his whiskers against the glass then darted off into the murk.

“That's going to be
you
—your back end, anyway.” Mike straightened up and twisted his hips to crack some vertebrae. “Then you'll be able to sit out on the rocks and call to sailors, you lucky dipshit. Suck some Filipino cock.”

“Prep me, nurse. I can't wait.”

“Har, har.”

“Zombies don't float, either. Watch and learn.”

He walked off behind the tanks. I could hear him muttering.

“Really?” another man shouted. Distorted somehow. “Let me—”

Then quiet.

Mike reappeared carrying a slab of ham and threw it between the bars to Whistler, but instead of gobbling it down she put a paw on it and looked over at me. Her wings shivered. Mike knelt in front of me.

“How long since you had bacon, zombie?”

“A zombie eat brains, and I don't eat brains,” I said. “Bring me some bacon.”

“Or to quit being a zombie maybe you
ought
to eat some brains, you ever think of that? Paradoxical reasoning like that might've got you out of this, but instead you get to be the first zombie mermaid to suck a Filipino cock.”

“Yum,” I said.

“Think I'm kidding? Roger's got more compound in him than any animal here, he pisses the stuff, and you know how a piece of a zombie falls off, zombie snaps it back on like Lego, right? Your arms've got more scars than Frankenstein, man, so you know what I'm saying. The FBI figured that out for us, Christ knows how.”

“LRA detainees.”

“Amen to that!” Mike stroked his little beard. “The doc figured out it worked for other species, too, so Penzler wrote him a blank check, then Doc got the idea that if
two
species fell apart you could put them back together wrong and it would
still
work, so Penzler wrote him an even
blanker
check.”

“What in hell for?”

“Make his daughter happy.”

“She said the horse didn't come out right.”

“Shit, you're not wrong. You think that's ham the griffin's eating?”

Though the lion wasn't eating her meat. She'd laid down beside it.

“Get your jaw nice and loose,” Mike grinned, and ambled off behind the tanks.

The Cat from Atlantis stretched on the sand, its shimmering tail raising dust. The snake slept. The chimp dangled from his tree by one hand, his dart-shaped penis gripped in the other. My nearest ally. The tarp flapped over us, sounding like distant helicopters.

It'd been a mistake to do this last stretch on my own. If I'd had the brains to bring Amber she'd be breaking Mike's head open with her good right arm; Franny would say, “Buck up, G, you're in sunny California and you're not even dead, and what're the odds you'd still be alive dressed like that? And this feels like a really special time in our lives, et cetera,” even though those two were young girls who were dead now.

Colleen would've watched, wrinkle-cheeked, and waited for me to get on with it.

Lydia? My Lydia would tear my prison to pieces, lift me on her mighty shoulders and carry me off to the burst of white light she'd been inhabiting, six long months for me but still just a heartbeat for her. She could crush my fingers in hers as I kissed her brown neck and we told each other how lucky we'd been and ever would be.

Josie and Ray? There was no way I could spin that. I'd tell them run, get out of here on your mosquito-bitten legs, hold tight to your pretty lives.

“Right, right, right,” Mike was saying. “Here's your big chance!”

I heard a rumble, something rolling across cement, then Mike pushed in some kind of aquarium on a cart, a round shape inside it—maybe a puffer fish. He plugged a dangling cord into a power bar and the tank immediately filled with bubbles and light.

“Fine, good!” Mike stomped out of view. “So socialize!”

The tank contained a man's head. It bobbed toward the surface then descended, smiling at me from behind the clear plastic mask it wore over its mouth and nose. A hose connected it to a tank strapped to the leg of the cart. Smiling. I'd seen roughly the same thing at Carver's, sure, but I retched a little anyway.

“Hey, hey, you know why I'm happy? This is Sprite!” the head grinned. “Get a sugar high right through my pores! Warm as spit.”

A plastic G.I. Joe walkie-talkie lay on a towel in front of the tank, its talk button taped down. He was familiar as hell. Not the voice but the rest of the package.

“So,” rasped the walkie-talkie, “maybe you're the shy type?”

Holy god.
My feet shook involuntarily.
It's George Reid.

All forehead and beard, my floating head of the Hoover High corridor. The George of Duffy's story. Twenty-five years he'd worked hand and glove with Penzler, then during his absence he'd mysteriously sent his class to Dockside? Where a pipe had coincidentally burst?

“Okay,” he said, “I've been in here since the weekend—how'd the World Series turn out? I hear every molecular detail of the workings of Penzler Industries, but I don't hear shit about the World Series!”

“Last Monday the Red Sox tied it two all.”

“Speak up!”

I repeated myself.

“Screw the Red Sox!” he yelled. “Fuck them, did St. Louis take it?”

He started to cough and bubbles filled the tank. The chimp watched him and hopped up and down at the bars, then ran a lap around the cage and mounted the calf from behind.

The Sprite became less turbid. George Reid got his breath back. He gazed at me without the trouble of having to blink.

“That was a bad start,” he said. “What's your name, kid?”

“Peter Giller!” I yelled.

“You shit me. The substitute?”

“Yes!”

“How the hell'd you get here?”

How much story did he want?

“You splashed us with that pink crap on purpose. You just wanted to see what'd happen, that was why?”

“Yes, wasn't that great? Arm's-length study of your progress!” He bumped against the front of the tank. “Jones is keeping an eye on all of you, how's that going?”

“He chased us out of Hoover, now everybody's dead but me.”

“Ah. Shit. That'll compromise the findings. I heard the FBI might sniff around, nosy customers. He must've had to disperse you.”

“But why'd you do it to
us
?”

“You don't fool me, Peter Giller.” He bobbed up six inches. “I had those kids for three years. They're vicious fuckers.”

“Franny Halliday is a vicious fucker?” I yelled. “Harv—”

I couldn't get his name out.

“Jordie, Todd, Devon,” he said. “That's who I'm talking about.”

“Jordie, Todd, Devon didn't go
on
the field trip!”

“Not likely, they went. I'm changing what
needed
changing.” A stream of bubbles came out his ear, and he settled in the back corner. “We set up geothermal science fair displays at the retirement home. And what? They pull the fire alarm. Deserve what they're getting.”

“Sure. Sounds completely fair.”

“Peter Giller, wait. Why'd you tell me you got splashed with pink crap?”

“Because that's what, I don't know—
infected
us! Pipe #9 broke open, and all the guys who—”

“What Pipe #9?” George smiled through the oxygen mask. “It was hot dogs.”

“What?”

“You got served a free lunch, am I right? You must have, or you wouldn't be here. Peter Giller, there is
no such thing
as a free lunch.
And
they splashed you with crap? That's too crazy! That was emulsifier for Pink Pearl erasers or something.”

I stared at the fish-cat. My pan of thought had been spilled on the floor.

“You never knew it was the hot dogs?” George went on smiling. “The concoction is this sawdust kind of stuff, right? Unless they're on a feeding tube you've got to make a subject sit and eat it, that's what I did myself—but sawdust in a hot dog, who'd notice? They're phone books and anuses at the best of times, but so delicious, right?”

“They said guys with beards set up the pipes. It had to be that pink stuff.”

“That might've been Duffy, sure, last spring they had him in Velouria for new garbage bags—fifty percent less groundwater pollution, he's entirely eco-friendly.”

“I ate the veggie dog,” I said.

“Veggie, anus, they were one and the same. Get us as wide a sample as possible—they even gobbled that shit up at the company picnic!” He sat flush with the glass so his eyes magnified until he looked like Japanese animation. “We share a passion for education, Peter Giller, so glean one lesson from this,” the walkie-talkie rasped. “Never eat a government wiener.”

“Tell me how to get out of this box.”

“
Je ne sais pas
. I don't like to ponder arms and legs.”

So what next? I banged my fists and feet against the deli case, the back of my head too, then I made a high-pitched whine from behind my back teeth. Not sure what inspired that but it got the lion and the calf to their feet. What other resources did I have?

“Hey, shut up, shut up!” George yelled. “You bother everybody!”