Chapter Twenty-Two: Reading Between the Lies
Paddington slept a good five hours in his own bed. When he awoke he showered, shaved, changed into a fresh suit, and climbed into his car. His own car. Not Quentin’s. Not Quentin’s clothes. He felt better than he had in three days, when the Team had first arrived.
Sure, he still had no idea which of the Three Ends corresponded to which Brown – and they were virtually invincible until they worked it out – but he was slightly rested, a little refreshed, and that made all the difference.
His yellow Hillman Imp chugged to the station, where Paddington found the desk radio had been stolen. Had McGregor tried to contact the Mainland again, or had someone finally set up a resistance? His mother sprung to mind, but where would she put a base?
Adonis’s castle was the logical choice – it had heavy main gates, was large and defensible, and at the island’s north-most tip it was as far from the zombies as was possible – but Paddington discounted it. If the resistance was there, it was no good to him. Adonis would kill him as soon as he passed the gate.
So where else? The council chambers were tall, fortified, fairly central, and a good symbol.
With a final glance at his half-ruined station – the cell’s bent bars where Richard had broken out; the carpet stained with Thompson and Peterson’s blood; their corpses lying neatly together and covered with a blanket – Paddington journeyed into the late-morning light.
A few hundred feet from the council chambers, he stopped to stare for a minute. The whole area was cordoned off and patrolled. His car was searched – boot included – and then he was waved through. The guards were in casual clothes and their movements were sloppy compared with the Team’s rigid efficiency, but they were doing a good job. Paddington parked in front of Idryo’s Champion, climbed the stairs to the chambers, and entered the chaos.
Inside what had once been the mayor’s office, people hurried in every direction. Motivated people, who knew where they were going. People with roles. Something had clearly happened while he slept. There were maps stuck to every wall, with lines of string pinned on them. A big table in the middle was crowded with radios and telephones and people who didn’t know how to use them.
Then Paddington heard a Scottish voice he’d come to love. At the mayor’s desk sat Lisa, biting her nails, her blonde hair frazzled. “Uh, right. Yes. Is this… Does this lane go through to…? When I was a girl, we’d… Or has it been… blocked…?” She stopped, finished. The guy she was talking to walked off shaking his head.
Paddington stopped beside the desk. “Hey honey.”
Lisa spotted him. “Jim!” She jumped up and hugged him. He kissed her. She kissed back. Behind them, he had no doubt that everyone had stopped to watch.
“So,” he said, “what’s going on?”
“I got sick of sitting around at Quentin’s waiting to die, so I decided to form a zombie resistance.”
“Damn fine idea.” Paddington wandered over to the maps on the wall. “They control all this?” The stringed-off section was more than a third of Archi: the Church of Enanti, the Bleeding Heck, the southern police station, the Church of Tipote, Quentin’s house…
That was a lot of area.
“How are you coordinating the teams?” he asked.
Lisa nodded to the central table. “If anyone spots something, they go to the nearest house and call us. The whole system was already here, waiting.”
“Yeah. Adonis knew all about zombies,” Paddington said. He didn’t mention that Adonis had wanted the zombies; scapegoats wouldn’t help now. “How long have you been out here?”
“About two hours ago, I decided I’d rather die fighting zombies than trapped at Quentin’s, but I’m not much good with a busted arm so I recruited his neighbours to help me.”
There had to be more to it than that. “What was the incentive?” he asked.
“Quentin’s shotgun. I had them call everyone they could and get them here. By the time I arrived, there were three hundred heavily-armed Archians very annoyed at being up before dawn, so I shouted at them to get into groups, or come upstairs if they knew their way around a radio.”
Archians were generally too proud to take orders, but they were far too proud to sit at home while a filthy Mainlander did more to save their home than they did.
“Nicely done,” Paddington said, taking the radio handpiece off a nearby woman and turning it the right way up for her. “Now, what aren’t you telling me?” he asked. “This is your show, so you should be doing all the talking, telling me how it is and proudly displaying all you’ve accomplished, and instead you’re hovering just behind me and only answering direct questions. So what’s up?”
“We’d… we’d better talk.”
He followed her to one of the abandoned offices and sat on a sofa as instructed. Lisa closed the door, sat beside him, and took his hand. After three days as a human, she still had dirt under her fingernails.
“We pulled Quentin in at dawn,” she said. “He’s safe; he’s sleeping right now, but… your mother.” Lisa’s mouth was open half an inch. Paddington prepared himself for the worst. She was dead. Horribly dead. She’d been shot by accident, or torn apart by the horde, or trampled by wild cows. She was gone and he’d never see her again.
There was so much they’d never said to each other. So much he’d thought Andrea knew but, maybe, she hadn’t. Now it seemed the most important thing in the world to tell her that he didn’t hate her, that he was sorry for pulling away from her all these years. But now it was too late.
“I’m sorry, Jim,” Lisa said, “she was bitten.”
Paddington let out a long breath. “Is that all? I thought it was something serious.”
Bovicide, Zombie Diaries, and the Legend of the Brothers Brown Page 57
