Breathers (25 page)

“Holy cow,” he says.

“Kind of makes you rethink being a vegetarian, doesn't it?” says Jerry.

This time, Tom doesn't offer up a retort.

After dropping off Tom and Naomi, Helen asks Jerry, Rita, and me if we'd mind walking home so she can get the minivan back before her sister realizes it's gone. When Helen pulls up along the side of an uninhabited stretch of road to let us off, I get out and approach the driver's side, where Helen rolls down her window.

“What is it, Andy?”

I lean through the window and kiss her on the cheek. “Hank yoo, Lllen,” I say. “Hank yoo or eh-ee-hing.”

She looks up at me and offers a smile filled with compassion and understanding. “You're welcome, Andy.”

The three of us watch her drive away, then head off in contemplative silence. I don't know about Rita, but I can't stop thinking about how long all of us can manage to keep our little revelation a secret. As for Jerry, chances are he's just thinking about busting out a clean towel and a brand new bottle of hand lotion.

After a few blocks, Jerry breaks away and heads off to his parents’ with his backpack full of
Playboy
s, while I insist on walking Rita home before getting back to the wine cellar. She declines my offer initially, until I convince her that I'd just follow her home one way or another.

“Like a puppy dog?” she says.

“Oof,” I say, then start panting.

She stops me from panting by pressing her lips against mine, her tongue probing the inside of my mouth. Sensations and feelings that I'd assumed were lost forever overwhelm me—warmth, desire, passion. Standing there in Rita's embrace, it's as though I'm intoxicated with heat.

For the second time tonight, I'm aware that my pores are releasing fluid.

“I'm edding,” I say.

Rita pulls away and gives me a questioning look. “You want to get married?”

“Oh,” I say, shaking my head. Although I can't see myself, I swear I'm blushing.

I lift up my right arm and show her my armpit, which is a little damp. I heard once that humans don't technically sweat. Cows sweat and we perspire, but it's hard enough for me to say “cow.” Besides, I'm not technically human.

“I'm
etting.
“

An odd smile steals its way across Rita's lips. “Tell me if this makes you sweat.”

She takes my right hand and places it against her chest. I feel her nipples growing hard beneath my fingers, feel the soft flesh of her breast giving in to the weight of my palm. The longer she holds my hand there, the harder it is for me to keep from sliding my hand under her shirt.

Then I feel something else, a faint vibration that occurs every five to ten seconds. I press my hand firmly against her chest, holding it there, forgetting about her breasts and her nipples, waiting for the next vibration. When it comes again, I look up at Rita and see that her eyes are filled with tears.

Her heart has begun to beat again.

t's not often you reconsider your stance on something as fundamental as your belief in a higher intelligence. An omnipotent deity. A supreme being.

But only a higher intelligence could have made Breathers taste so good. Only an omnipotent deity could have given human flesh its healing power. Only a supreme being could have been ironic enough to allow the walking dead to impersonate the living by eating them.

That's what I'm here to determine, anyway.

Not that I'm trying to impersonate anyone. I still have a patchwork of stitches across my face and a stilted walk that makes Frankenstein's monster look like a dancer in the Joffrey Ballet. But at least I'm able to sit in one of the pews at the back of the Congregational Church of Soquel without anyone gasping or screaming or scrunching their face up in disgust.

Not the type of confirmation that generally evokes a case of the warm fuzzies, but I'll take what I can get.

There aren't any services taking place on a Wednesday evening, so it's not like I have to contend with a church full of worshipers. Only a handful of Breathers are present and people
don't tend to bother you if your head appears to be angled in prayer. But praying isn't what I came here to do.

After feeling the miracle of Rita's heart beating, I wondered if perhaps there wasn't something inexplicably religious going on here. The only miracles I've ever heard about have all been attributed to either God or Jesus, so I figured I'd check it out, see if I believed in the possibility that a supernatural presence was responsible for the healing taking place within us. Not that I'm looking for validation or excuses. It's more out of curiosity. Just in case I've been wrong all this time.

I don't expect to have any revelations or get struck by lightning or hear the voice of God. I'm just here to see if there's something I missed. After all, when you've started eating human flesh, even if you've never believed in God or heaven, you still tend to wonder about eternal damnation.

In spite of how good Breather tastes, it's not something you just accept without question, being a cannibal. I'm sure when it's the lifestyle for a society and you're born into it, you take to it like a piranha to a drowning cow. But when you've spent more than thirty years as an omnivore, having dinner parties and barbecues with your friends and neighbors, and suddenly you begin to wonder how your friends and neighbors would taste between two buns with a little mustard and ketchup and maybe a slice of tomato, the idea takes a little getting used to.

Which is probably why Ray introduced us to eating Breather the way he did.

Had I known definitively what I was eating, what was being offered to me, I doubt I would have dug into it with such enthusiasm. But to be honest, even that first jar of Breather, I think I knew what it was. I just didn't want to consider the possibility. I wanted to consume it in blissful ignorance. Except
it's kind of hard to ignore what you're eating when your undead girlfriend's heart starts beating again.

Which brings me back to why I'm here.

I'm hoping that our gradual transformation can be attributed to a divine miracle, to the hand of God—not to the salubrious nutritional benefits of my friends and neighbors. If it's the former, then I'm hoping I can find the willpower to forgo these cravings I have for human flesh. If it's the latter, then I'm hoping I can find a good meat tenderizer.

Of the half dozen Breathers in the church, one is a woman praying several pews ahead of me, two are a couple discussing their upcoming wedding in the vestibule behind me, while a fourth, a man, sits on the left near the front pews. Another woman who appears to be upset about something is talking with the minister at the altar—the minister being the sixth.

For the past thirty minutes I've been trying to ignore them. To pretend they're not here. So I just close my eyes and bow my head and continue with my pretense of praying, waiting for the sign I've come here hoping to find. But every now and then I get a whiff of one of them and I find myself wondering how they would taste.

I probably should have eaten something before I left the house.

I think that's been the hardest part to get used to. My appetite. Before I started eating human flesh, I tended to eat more out of habit than hunger and I would crave anything that had any flavor, anything that didn't taste like steamed rice or white bread or plain pasta. Now, more and more, I find myself craving steamed rice with stir-fried Breather, a Breather and cheese sandwich, and spaghetti with Breather sauce.

This isn't how I imagined I would end up. I didn't ask for
this. I didn't ask to reanimate. I didn't ask to eat human flesh from a Mason jar. But now that I have, I'm finding it's hard to turn back. Something inside me has changed. Something more than physiological. Something instinctual. I can feel it growing, wanting to take over. And I can feel myself succumbing, seduced by this new feeling.

But there's still a part of me that wants to fight against it. That wants a reason to believe that there's another way. That I can exist among Breathers without thinking about how succulent they would taste. But that part is steadily growing smaller and more silent.

So I sit here in this church with my eyes closed and my head bowed and I realize that in spite of my spiritual skepticism, in spite of my pious artifice, I'm praying. Hoping for some kind of sign, some indication that divine intervention is at work within me, healing my injuries, bringing me back to life. At least that way, I can treat my Breather cravings as an addiction, a lifestyle choice, something to overcome. Otherwise, I'm going to have to accept the fact that eating Breathers is necessary for my survival.

Behind me, the voices of the couple discussing their wedding have suddenly grown silent. When I open my eyes and glance up, I notice that the woman and the minister who were standing at the altar are no longer in the church. Neither is the man who was sitting near the front pews on the left. The only Breather remaining is the woman a couple of pews ahead of me, her head still bowed in prayer. I have to admire her devotion. She's been at it since I showed up. But in the silence of the church, with only the two of us in attendance, I finally hear the snores and I realize she's been faking it, much like me.

I'm still waiting for my sign when I hear a commotion outside the church. I can't tell what's going on and I don't recall
hearing any sirens, so I figure it doesn't have anything to do with me. Then the back door of the church opens and the minister walks in, flanked by two men from Animal Control.

“There he is,” the minister says, pointing at me. “There's the blasphemous abomination.”

So much for divine intervention.

ndy, can you come upstairs for a minute, dear?”

When I woke up this morning, two inches of stitches running down my cheek had come loose, so I cut them off with a pair of scissors. Now I'm putting on makeup to make it look like I'm trying to cover up my stitches when I'm actually trying to hide the fact that I'm healing.

“Andy?” my mother calls again.

Without the makeup, I still wouldn't pass for a Breather, but I would definitely look like a new and improved Andy to anyone who's seen me before. Like my parents.