Read Breathers for Free Online

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 UnitedStates 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.
    “Camille, no!” shouts the woman. “Bad girl! Bad …”
    When the woman realizes I'm a zombie, she backs away in revulsion. I try to tell her that I'm not going to hurt her, but sometimes I forget that I speak in grunts and menacing gasps that tend to freak Breathers out.
    The woman screams and runs off. A moment later, Ca-mille stops rolling on me, gets up, pisses on my lap, then runs off after her owner.
    So much for making a statement.

riday's