Bovicide, Zombie Diaries, and the Legend of the Brothers Brown

  * * *

  Three weeks later, outside a different house, a hundred plants slowly died. Each pot had a small tag indicating species and genus, and each plant was missing a leaf, or a limb, or its roots. Right beside the back door, however, were half a dozen lush and green plants. Inside the house, the floor was littered with stalks and leaves and branches. The carpet had the consistency of dirt, not that the owners had minded. Even when they’d been alive, they’d been content to debate philosophy and, toward the end, religion.

  “How’s the latest batch?” Paddington asked, bearing tea. Lisa sat at the table, crossing out the next plant on her list. The list was long. And it was nearly all crossed out.

  “No effect.” Lisa rubbed her face and took the tea.

  Three weeks of fourteen-hour days of testing different plant extracts on every zombie who would volunteer his living corpse to science hadn’t yielded even the start of a cure.

  Lisa set down her empty mug and picked up her pencil. “McGregor could solve this in a day, the way he talks…”

  “Maybe,” Paddington said, “but he’d take souvenirs.”

  Lisa continued scratching out ingredients and adding others.

  “Lisa… we need to talk about it,” Paddington said.

  “I’m not taking oestrogen suppressants.”

  “McGregor said they were safe.”

  Lisa smile sweetly. “James, do you remember that conversation we had about who’s right when we disagree?”

  “You are, dear,” he said.

  “That’s right. Now hush, I have work to do.”

  Paddington washed the mugs. They’d been here nearly a month, but it was still a foreign sink. How could it be home when they were deep in zombie territory and far from friends?

  “A-ah?” Lisa said. Paddington ran to the living room, where Lisa had thrown off her shirt and was staring at her shrinking hand. She looked at him with an expression between wonder and excitement. Then her nose extended and her face sprouted fur. Only her eyes stayed the same throughout the change. There was no malice in them, but Paddington approached the wolf with caution.

  “Hello girl,” he said, running his fingers through her thick fur and unclipping her bra. She was soft, her outer coat silky and the one beneath crimped.

  Lisa licked him.

  “Pluh!” Paddington wiped his mouth and glared, but Lisa had her head cocked down and to one side. “Okay, I deserved that,” he admitted, “but now we’re even.”

  She growled, a soft hum that came up at the end: an invitation.

  Paddington glanced at his watch. “I suppose I can play for a few minutes.”

  Lisa bounded forward, then hopped back. Paddington ran his hands around her head and she followed them, darting from hand to hand, nipping at his fingers. After a minute, she bore him to the ground and lay across his chest, still.

  “Oh, so that’s how it is, is it?” Paddington asked, hands running along her back. “I’m yours now?”

  When the doorbell donged, Lisa was up and at it in seconds. Paddington took considerably longer to reach and open it. “Hello constable,” he said. “I believe you know Lisa.”

  Beside the door, Lisa sniffed the visitor. Paddington knelt and cupped her maw, forcing her to look at him, not the constable. “I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t go anywhere.” Lisa bounced toward his face, but Paddington had been expecting it and stood before she could lick him.

  “I love you too,” he said, and closed the door behind him. The two policemen climbed into the new squad car and drove farther south under the crescent moon.

  The radio clicked and buzzed. “Jim?”

  Paddington plucked it off the dashboard. “What’s up Quentin?”

  “Just finishing today’s ledger,” Quentin said. “How many zombies are left?”

  “Total?” Paddington sucked air through his teeth as he considered. “Maybe five hundred.”

  Quentin yawned over the radio. “Okay. You have a good night, detective chief constable.”

  “Shut it, mister mayor,” Paddington said.

  “Right you are.”

  The radio fell to silence and Paddington put it back on the dashboard. After a few seconds drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, Clarkson said, “So she’s a wolf now, huh?”

  “Is that a problem, constable?”

  Archi’s newest recruit shrugged. “No.”

  “She doesn’t crawl inside your spine?” Paddington baited. “You don’t have to resist the urge to attack her?”

  “I’m too lazy to attack anything, sir,” Clarkson said. “And I still don’t like the uniform.” He tugged at his black button-up jacket, but couldn’t get it to his satisfaction.

  “I’m not letting you wear an evening suit,” Paddington said. It seemed being an actual vampire wasn’t good enough; Clarkson needed to look the part. “Besides, it’s not like you have standards.”

  “I do so,” Clarkson said.

  “You once ate chewing gum you found in the bin.”

  “It was mine.”

  “The bin.”

  “And it was still warm, boss.”

  Clarkson parked the car and they climbed out, pulled on surgical masks, and entered the square. A few bodies lay in the street, but most had been collected by the wolves and driven by the truckload to the mortuary, which had been expanded considerably. Paddington might have felt bad for Ian having to deal with so many corpses if he hadn’t been responsible for creating them by murdering his girlfriend. He could work off his debt the hard way, by being useful.

  Paddington stared at what had once been a hotel. Now it was where zombies lived out their last days, together. “Have a look around,” he told Clarkson.

  “For what?” the vampire asked. “Littering violations? ‘Sir, is this your arm?’”

  “Being a cop isn’t all saving the world. Now stop complaining or I’ll put you on day shifts.”

  “That’s not funny, sir!” Clarkson yelled as Paddington entered the hotel.

  McGregor had been in touch today, explaining that the Book of Three was actually the Book of Tipote, given the rune on its cover, and espousing his theory that zombiism was the root of every illness in the world and that by studying them he might not only cure all disease, but also discover how they read each other’s minds and be able to replicate it without all the mental or physical impairments. It might have been true, but it was also bait, so Paddington refused to bite. It was better that everything die here. No taking chances.

  No exceptions.

  Paddington opened the door to his mother’s room. Zombies didn’t sleep, drink, eat, had no possessions, and preferred conversation to silence, so the room had been cleared of everything except one chair. Once the room had housed ten; tonight Andrea was alone.

  “Hey mum.”

  Hi love, she said, her face set in the wide grimace of her smile. Her once-thick hair had become lonely strands on a mottled scalp. White eyes spun in sunken sockets as she looked around him.

  No Lisa?

  “She’s in no state to see anyone today.” Paddington sat on the chair. “No Baldwin?”

  Dom took him this afternoon.

  “Oh,” Paddington said into his hands. First Norm, then Gladys, now Baldwin. “Why don’t you move rooms?” he asked. “There are others who’d like the company.”

  Are you happy? Andrea asked quickly.

  Paddington hesitated. Usually when Andrea asked him that he’d lie and she’d try to set him up with another girl anyway. It was as close to a personal conversation as they’d come for fifteen years. This time, Paddington told her the truth.

  “Yes. I am.”

  Andrea exposed two rows of gums and black teeth. Paddington checked that his surgical mask was still on, but there was only so much it could do against such an odorous assault.

  I’m glad, she said. And I’m glad you’d tell me.

  Paddington looked at his mother, swaying there in her ragged police uniform. Its once-s
hiny silver buttons were now filthy, its right sleeve now empty.

  “Even if it took your slowly dying to make it happen?”

  Everyone’s slowly dying, Andrea said.

  Trust a zombie to think like that.

  Most of us are ready to shuffle off anyway, especially if the alternative is Mainland help.

  “Speaking of the Mainland,” Paddington said, to change topic, “Mitchell’s review came back: Truman’s taken over the Team. Jerry’s just a private again.”

  Who?

  “Mitchell,” Paddington explained. “His name’s Jermaine.”

  His mother’s face contorted, but he couldn’t tell if it was deliberate. Jermaine? she said.

  “I know,” Paddington said. “I thought ‘Jim’ was bad; he must have been teased rotten. Some parents are so cruel.”

  Let’s talk about you, Andrea said. Has the duke knighted you yet?

  Paddington hadn’t told his mother what the Andrastes really were. He didn’t want her accusing him of making up stories or resurrecting old arguments. For once, he placed being happy before the truth. “I’m not sure I want Adonis holding a sword at my throat.”

  He wouldn’t hurt you, Andrea said.

  Paddington doubted that any crowd would stop Adonis’s revenge. Certainly no crowd on Archi; they’d probably find Paddington’s “accidental” decapitation quite entertaining.

  He needs you, James, Andrea continued, swaying on the spot.

  When she fell, Paddington was ready. He’d seen it happen before, knew the signs, and caught her.

  Are you there?

  “I’m here, mum. I’ve got you,” he said, but there was nothing else he could do. No stroking of hair, no reassuring patting of hands: zombies couldn’t feel it and every touch pulled another piece off their frail form. So Paddington held her and waited for her body to go still.

  Tell Lisa… she’ll have to look after you now.

  “I will. I love you, mum.”

  You’ve made me so proud, James, she said. My little Jimmy.

  “It’s okay mum.”

  Andrea’s breath came in ragged gasps, like she was scraping the air from the room. Her tremors slowed. In another second or two, her eyes would close, her breath would cease, and she would glide gently into the afterlife.

  Instead, Andrea lurched up and stared into Paddington’s eyes from an inch away.

  Tell Adonis… I was right.

  Then her eyes closed and she dropped, limp. Paddington felt hot tears on his cheeks and found that he was rocking back and forth, staring at her body and weeping. She was gone. All that was left of his mother were deeds and pictures and memories.

  Then her words penetrated his grief, grounded his tremors, and left only a dead calm.

  “What?” he said.