Breathers (5 page)

Like I have a choice.

I listen to Jerry and Rita run off, and then make myself comfortable in the warm, gooey substance spreading across my face. It feels like glue but smells more like motor oil. Not exactly the way I envisioned spending my Tuesday night.

Less than ten seconds later, footsteps come around the corner of the building, approach the Dumpster, and continue past, racing off in the direction of Jerry and Rita. At least most of the footsteps race past. One of the fraternity members stops right outside the Dumpster.

When your heart's not pounding and adrenaline isn't pumping through your system, you feel oddly at ease during moments of duress. Still, that doesn't mean I'm not afraid of being found. I just don't experience the physiological effects of fear the way I used to. It's more like a memory. And right now, my memory is telling me I'm pretty much screwed.

Helen suggests that each of us find a creative way to deal with our feelings of hopelessness, a sort of artistic therapy to cope with the challenges of being one of the undead—like painting or sculpting or writing poetry. The idea is to create something beautiful that transcends our less-than-glamorous existence.

I used to pen an occasional haiku just to give the right side of my brain some exercise. I don't know if it matters anymore, considering my brain is gradually liquefying, but old habits don't die even when you do.

So as I'm lying in the Dumpster coated with industrial goo, thinking about immolation and dismemberment and toxic waste, this is the thing of transcendent beauty I come up with:

shattered life dangles

a severed voice screams in grief

i'm rotting inside

After several minutes of hearing nothing, I finally roll to one side and wipe some of the goo from my eyes so I can look out the open lid. At first all I see is darkness, then I make out the silhouette of what looks like a face peering down into the Dumpster.

“Randy!”

I don't know who jumps more—me or Randy. But the silhouette disappears beyond the edge of the Dumpster.

“What are you doing?” asks the approaching voice.

“Nothing,” says Randy. “I was just …”

He must whisper because I can't hear the rest. Seconds later, two silhouettes are looking down at me. One of them raises a long, thin object and then plunges it into the Dumpster.

“Over there,” says Randy, pointing.

The probe comes down again, closer this time, barely missing my arm. I think it's a steel rod, or maybe a piece of re-bar. Whatever it is, it's going to do some damage if it strikes home.

When it comes down again, it plunges into my side, tearing through my clothes and flesh and snapping one of my ribs.

Definitely rebar. Three-eighths inch. Sharpened by the feel of it.

It comes down again, catching me in the thigh. The next one misses me, but the one after that pierces my palm and I wonder if this is how Christ felt on the cross.

While there's no pain, the sensation isn't pleasant. It's more invasive than uncomfortable, with a hint of humiliation.

If you've never been in a Dumpster coated with industrial waste while someone stabs you with a piece of sharpened re-bar, then you probably wouldn't understand.

Part of me wants to just let them find me, to let this be done with so this existence can come to an end and I can be free of the memories that still tuck me into bed at night and greet me at dawn, sitting on my chest like a weight that never leaves. Except even in undeath, when faced w it h your potential demise, there's a self-preservation instinct that kicks in, that compels you to fight for your survival, that won't allow you to just give up. Besides, if I'm going to be destroyed, it's not going to be at the hands of a bunch of drunk college boys.

The next stab lands inches from my head. Just as the rod raises again for another go, a voice in the distance shouts out, “We got one!”

The silhouettes turn and vanish, their footsteps racing away. I lay there a moment, oddly thankful to still be undead, then pull myself up to the edge of the Dumpster and peer out into the night, hoping that whoever they found isn't Rita.

In the wash of a parking lot light more than a hundred yards away, several figures are moving in rapid motion, swinging objects, beating on another figure struggling to get away. At first I think it's Jerry and I'm surprised to discover how much that thought depresses me. Then the figure shouts out with a voice that sounds like a water bong.

“Help! Somebody help!”

The frat boys pounce on Walter, drive him to the ground, and beat on him. One of his arms is ripped away. Then the other. Within minutes, he's dismembered and dragged off to the fading hoots and hollers of drunk fraternity boys. No one comes to his aid. Not the police. Not the animal control. Not any other Breather who might happen to be passing by. And certainly not a fellow zombie with one useless arm and one useless leg.

I drop back down into the Dumpster and listen to the shouts drift away until I'm alone with the silence and my
feelings of inadequacy. But when you spend most of your existence in your parents’ wine cellar drinking bottle after bottle of wine and watching reruns of
Joanie Loves Chachi
while you gradually decompose, feelings of inadequacy are part of the room and board.

Problem is, even if I would have tried to help Walter, even if I
could have
helped, it wouldn't have mattered. Presuming I wouldn't have been dismembered along with him, any form of aggression by zombies against humans is considered grounds for immediate destruction. Even if it's in self-defense. And as I've suddenly discovered, I'm more interested in self-preservation than I thought.

It's times like this that make you question the values of a society that allows this to happen. That permits the random mutilation and dismemberment of someone who used to be a living, breathing person without consequences. I know it's no one's fault that I reanimated, that any of us came back from the dead, but someone should have to be held accountable for what happened to Walter.

I wait in the Dumpster for the return of Rita, Jerry, and Helen, wondering how long it will be before they come back for me, hoping they show up before the Waste Management truck, thinking about Walter. You hear about things like this happening all the time to other zombies who live in another town or another state or another country. But when it happens to you, to someone you know, it becomes something personal.

Something that affects you.

Something that inspires you.

Something that makes you want to take some action.

'm sitting on the front lawn of my parents’ house next to a homemade sign that says:

ZOMBIES AGAINST MUTILATION.

I'm the only non-Breather in the vicinity, so technically it should read ZOMBIE AGAINST MUTILATION, but I thought the message would carry more weight if it was written in the plural.

The sign is on poster board attached to a four-foot wooden tree stake that's stuck in the lawn. Mom helped me make the sign and attach it to the stake. I don't think she had any idea what I planned to use it for. Just thought it was something cute I wanted to do and she was always eager to help me with projects when I was in school, so she dove right in. Of course, she screamed when I tried to hug her and she nearly vomited after I sneezed and a piece of my brain came out my nose, but it's what passes for quality time around here lately.

It's a nice afternoon to be protesting. The sun is out, the sky is blue, and the abuse is flowing.

A car drives past filled with teenagers who yell derogatory comments laced with expletives, like Fucking Decomposing Freak and Abortion-Sucking, Brain-Dead Fuckstick. I just
smile and wave with my right hand as if their words don't bother me, but you can't help but take it personally when someone says you're brain dead.

So far I've been out here for nearly an hour and have seen about half-a-dozen cars drive down the street. While most of the Breathers ignore me, some of them actually take the time to stop and take pictures with their camera phones or shower me with slurs and zombie epithets and whatever garbage they have handy. Granted, I'm only getting my message out to the people who live on my parents’ street and in their neighborhood, but even zombies who make themselves a public nuisance are jeopardizing their existence. This way, by staying on my parents’ property, I can make a social statement without taking too much of a risk. I don't know if it will change anyone's mind, but considering everything we're up against, you have to start somewhere.

In addition to getting mutilated and dismembered, zombies are used as crash dummies for impact tests, get farmed for donor organs and spare body parts, and are left out to rot in various conditions to help with the research of criminal forensics. As if that isn't enough, we can't vote, get a driver's license, apply for credit, or run for public office. We're not allowed in grocery stores, restaurants, movie theaters, or any other public venue where we might disturb the living. No one will hire us, we can't apply for unemployment, and we can't collect food stamps. Even homeless shelters turn us away.

I don't really understand it. I mean, it's not like we're any different than we were before we died. We crave security, companionship, and love. We laugh and cry and feel emotional pain. We enjoy listening to Top 40 music and watching reality television. Sure, there's the whole eating-of-human-flesh stigma, but that's so George Romero. Outside of Hollywood, the undead typically don't eat the living.

Once in a while, you hear about a rogue zombie or a couple of delinquent zombies who devoured a homeless person or a neighbor or a U.S. postal mail carrier, which is actually a federal offense. Not like it matters. You eat any Breather, even if they don't work for a government agency, and the next thing you know, your head is in a disposable aluminum chicken roasting pan at a face-lift refresher course for plastic surgeons.

Across the street, at a house with a For Sale sign in the front yard, a neighbor comes out to get his mail. When he sees me, he picks up several rocks from his immaculately landscaped yard and hurls them at me, hitting me twice in the chest and once in the head, shouting in triumph each time.

I don't understand why Breathers get so bent out of shape when the dead come back. I know we bring down the property values and that the living, in general, find us repulsive, but it's not like they haven't had a chance to get used to the idea of us.

Zombies have been around for decades, blending in with the local homeless population of just about every town in the country since the Great Depression—though the majority migrated to the coasts and to the cities where they were less likely to get noticed.

New York City has the most zombies per capita in the nation, while California boasts the largest zombie population of any state. In general, states along the West Coast are more tolerant and progressive when it comes to the undead. You don't find many zombies in the southern states, since heat tends to speed up decomposition. That and when you're a zombie in a region that has a reputation of prejudice against minorities and outsiders, you tend to stick out like good taste in a country-western bar.

While there are no official records of zombies in the United
States prior to the 1930s, you can find historical eyewitness accounts of resurrections as far back as the Civil War. But for the most part, society didn't begin to address the growing zombie population until the last couple of decades. With Undead Anonymous chapters popping up all over the country and creating local communities for zombies that never existed before, we've become a more accepted part of society—if you can call being denied basic human rights being
accepted.

A woman comes down the sidewalk taking her standard poodle for a late afternoon walk. The street isn't heavily traveled and the dog is apparently well trained, so it's not on a leash and comes running up to sniff me. With only one working hand, I can't do more than try to push the dog away. Before the woman can reach us, the poodle has started rolling on me.

This isn't exactly the kind of exposure I was looking for.