* * *
By sunlight, the night’s horrors were easier to accept. The cruel chill lost its grip in the golden pink light and the sight of a helicopter on the horizon warmed Paddington’s heart as he waited with Mitchell, Skylar, McGregor, and Truman on a high clear paddock on Richard’s property.
“You’ve worked out your cover story?” Paddington asked Mitchell. He’d had less than an hour’s sleep, but he’d shaved and the wolves had returned his clothes. All things considered, he felt pretty good.
“Collapsing ruin,” Mitchell said. “Normson, Thompson, Peterson, and Clarkson were crushed under the rubble. We spent a few days excavating the site – with the generous help of the townspeople – then buried the bodies. Good enough?”
Paddington noted the edge in Mitchell’s voice. He wouldn’t keep the secret once he was off Archi, but Adonis’s friends would make sure the truth never got out. At least, not all the way.
“Any ideas to explain the radio silence?” Paddington asked.
“No doubt McGregor will come up with something so technical even they won’t understand it.”
The helicopter was a fat black monstrosity slowly lowering on them. Paddington ran to McGregor as the wind ruffled clothes and satchels, but McGregor was too busy with Skylar to notice him.
“I still can’t believe you saved me,” Skylar was saying.
“So I’m not just a, uh, pretty boy,” McGregor said.
“Pretty face, I think you mean.”
“You think so? Thanks.”
Skylar smiled; Paddington hadn’t been sure she knew how to. Her face softened, her forehead flattened, even her stance was more relaxed than Paddington had ever seen it.
McGregor noticed Paddington. “Are you sure it’s okay to take the Book of Three? What about all the secrecy?”
“Who’d believe it?” Paddington asked. “Besides, it corroborates Mitchell’s story and – let’s be honest – you’ll get more out of it than I would.”
“But it ends with this prophecy,” McGregor said. “How much can I learn?”
“I’m sure you’ll have fun finding out,” Paddington said, smiling. The helicopter was close now. “Don’t forget: any ideas you have on preventing Lisa’s transformation or curing the zombies.”
McGregor nodded. “It’d be easier with some samples.”
“Nothing leaves Archi,” Paddington shouted.
The helicopter touched down. McGregor started toward it, but Paddington laid a firm hand on his shoulder. “Nothing leaves Archi,” he said. “Including Lisa’s blood sample.”
McGregor hesitated, like a deer caught in headlights.
“Did you think I’d forgotten?” Paddington asked.
McGregor glanced at the helicopter. “I wasn’t going to show it to anyone.”
He wouldn’t, either, but he’d probe until every drop was spent and someone might notice the tests and Paddington didn’t trust Lisa’s safety to McGregor’s ability to lie.
“Hand it over,” Paddington said.
His ginger brows knitted in sorrow and annoyance, McGregor withdrew a test tube filled with dark blood from his flak jacket. Paddington slipped it into the inside pocket of his long tan coat and nodded at the helicopter, where Mitchell was motioning for McGregor to hurry up.
As the doctor ran toward the helicopter, Truman ran away from it and stopped in front of Paddington. “Someone should say thank you for saving our asses,” he said with a thick Southern twang.
Paddington glanced at the chopper. It was thirty feet away and chnking a storm. No one would overhear. “Drop the accent,” he said.
Truman squinted into the sun. “What’s that, friend?”
“I know you’re not American.”
“How’d you work it out?” Truman’s accent was now English, educated, and non-dialectical.
“In the store, you said ‘mum’ not ‘mom’. You slipped, just for a second.”
Truman shook his head, smiling. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”
“Nothing I can stop,” Paddington yelled above the helicopter’s roar. “Why the deception?”
“I moved to America when I was fifteen. I trained there, then transferred to the Supernatural Help and Investigation Team. When I arrived, they’d hung a banner: Welcome to the motherland, you colonial git. So I put on the accent, the swagger, pretended I was some big-shot yank, fully intending to stop once Mitchell read my file.”
“How long ago was that?”
“About a year,” Truman laughed. “Joke’s on me, I guess.”
Paddington nodded back at the helicopter, where Mitchell was pointing at his wristwatch. “You’d better get back on the horse, cowboy.”
Truman slapped his hand into Paddington’s and gave it a hard shake. “Sure thang, partner.”
When the chopper was a speck in the sky, Paddington drove to Lisa’s house. She’d stayed at the council chambers to help Quentin coordinate the sentries, the cleanup in the garden, the zombieproof blockade, and all the other loose ends left because the world hadn’t ended, but she’d promised to go home and sleep as soon and for as long as she could.
Paddington wanted nothing more than to fall asleep beside her.