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

by Stephen Bills

  * * *

  Paddington drove past the occasional zombie under the sun’s final hour of light. There wasn’t much activity here, but it was a weak spot in the defences so he was keeping an eye on it. In fact, he’d been so busy controlling the zombie situation, he wasn’t even sure what Mitchell was up to any more. Apparently he’d stormed the duke’s mansion, but Adonis had made no formal comment – of any kind since the zombie outbreak – so people were giving the Mainlanders the benefit of the doubt for now.

  After all, a Mainlander had organised the resistance; maybe more Mainlanders could help put Archi back on her feet. Then they could shove off home.

  Paddington just wished they had more of an idea what was going to happen tonight, or where, or how Mitchell could stop it.

  A zombie waved at him and Paddington waved back, lost in thought. Ever since visiting McGregor that morning, he’d been considering the Three Ends. Unfortunately, vampire myths contained all of them: staking the heart, decapitation, and burning the body.

  Werewolves, in recent tales, were dispatched with a silver bullet to the heart, but the original myths recommended cutting out the heart, decapitation, then burning the body. Which really wasn’t much help.

  But zombies… zombies were always brains.

  But that hadn’t worked! McGregor said the Team had met Harold Brown. Mitchell would have shot both his head, which was the obvious target, and his heart, which was an easy one.

  That left fire. Fire to kill the Third Brother.

  So… head and heart. Was there a reason to pick one over the other? Paddington’s internet investigation had revealed that most vampire stories focussed on staking the heart.

  Just like it was always the head for zombies?

  Paddington wasn’t sure where the thought had come from, but it sent his mind reeling into new territory. What if everything was a lie? What if all the well-known myths were seeded so no one would know how to stop the Browns? It was a lot of effort, but Adonis was devout enough to do it.

  “But why?” Paddington asked himself as he putted along. “Why tell the stories at all?”

  Have you got a story? a nearby zombie asked.

  “Hm? No,” Paddington said.

  Come on, tell me! the zombie shouted as Paddington drove away. I’ll keep it a secret.

  That was why! Secrets got out, they always did. Tales spread, especially tales of monsters and heroes and villains that went well by the fireplace.

  Adonis couldn’t stop the story, so he’d changed the details until it was useless. Then he’d hidden Archi and severed all ties with the places he couldn’t control. Places where people would recognise a vampire and try to stick a chair leg through his heart…

  And over time, the Archians grew to distrust and fear the outside world; they came to believe it was better inside their prison. All to protect Adonis Andraste and his prophecy.

  Paddington slowed the car beside a shambling figure. Quentin had asked Paddington to slaughter the zombies since they didn’t attack him; Paddington had refused. He couldn’t regard the zombies as people – which they were – and kill them in cold blood.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Andrea Paddington around?” he asked.

  The boy shook his head. A heavy snow of dandruff fell around his shoulders. Nope.

  “No, no one has.”

  Where was she? Why was she hiding? Even Norm hadn’t found her, and he had his fing… he had his stump on the puls… on the vibe of the zombie world.

  Paddington shook away the difficult zombie analogies and kept going. He had to find a weakness. There was a pack of wolves out there somewhere, under the leadership of a werewolf; there was a zombie horde with a new king; and what Adonis was planning for Thomas?

  No, that was pointless. Paddington couldn’t put himself in a vampire’s head, especially one as old as Adonis, but he could think like a wolf. What would the pack be doing? Well, Conall would be licking Richard’s boots, and… no, the image didn’t fit. If Richard was as protective of his pack as he had been his cows, he’d see the old alpha as a threat.

  That meant he’d take the leadership by force.

  That meant division: wolves following out of fear instead of loyalty. But real wolves didn’t work like that. Real wolves chose their alphas by…

  An idea struck him and left a hot rush of excitement and terror in its aftermath.

  Was he right? It was a big gamble, and he couldn’t afford to be wrong.

  On the other hand, he was James Paddington and this was what he did lately. He walked into the vampires’ lair and walked out with the rarest book in the world. He escaped torture in the werewolf’s den. He walked unharmed through the zombie horde.

  Paddington plucked the radio from his belt. “Quentin, I’m off for the night. It’s pretty quiet.”

  “Same all over.”

  “Little Red, are you listening?”

  “I hear you, Woodcutter,” his girlfriend said in a passable Archian accent. He’d ensured everyone called her by a codename, just in case the Team were listening in on their transmissions. Why Lisa insisted on giving him a codename – and why she’d chosen Woodcutter – was a mystery to him. She was probably making fun of him.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Around by Quentin’s.”

  “I’ll meet you there in ten minutes,” he said.

  When Paddington arrived at Quentin’s house, Lisa was leaning against the doorframe with a sad little smile. “Any sign of your mother?” she asked.

  “No.”

  In the house, the kettle whistled. They went in and Lisa made tea. “You’ll find her,” she said with little hope.

  Paddington hadn’t come here to talk about Andrea. When someone produced her body, then he’d accept that she was dead. Until then, she was alive. As much as any zombie.

  “Has your mum been evacuated?” Paddington asked. Silly question; he would have heard about it if she wasn’t.

  “Jim…” Lisa hesitated as if deciding something, then said, “My mother died giving birth to me.”

  Frowning, Paddington asked, “Then who was that kindly woman we had dinner with last week?”

  “You’ve heard that Lucy went to a Mainland university when she was twenty? Well, she roomed with a young woman called Donna MacBean whose romances were frequent and… shall we say, ‘transitory’.”

  “You mean she was a—”

  “She was my mother.”

  Paddington zipped his mouth closed and sat on the couch.

  “Wise decision,” Lisa said. “Donna named Lucy as godmother and when Donna died, Lucy offered to adopt me. Donna hadn’t been close with her family and when they met Lucy, they saw that she wanted what was best for me and organised the adoption right then. Lucy caught the next boat back to Archi and never told a soul.”

  “Have you met them?” Paddington asked. “Your birth family?”

  “When you…” Lisa saw Paddington’s expression and shifted her wording. “When I came home in tears and begged mum not to make me go back to school, she explained it all. I wasn’t sure who that made me – an orphan mourning a mother I didn’t know I’d had; the world didn’t make sense. The only person I could rely on was myself. Can you understand that?”

  That was how he’d been for fifteen years: deliberately distant from everyone, even his mother. It wasn’t that no one on Archi had neared his high standards, it was that it was… better this way. Better, having seen what lurked inside him, that no one be close to him.

  Gently, Paddington took her hand and asked, “Lisa, do you think I’ve ever forgiven myself for what I did to you?”

  Lisa laughed in his face. “Oh God, you really take it that seriously? After all this time?” she said. “I got over it in a few months, Jim! It was nothing. Childish stupidity.”

  “My stupidity!” Paddington said, and suddenly it all came out as rage: the years of isolation, the anger at himself, the fear. “I took my best friend and cut
her as deeply as I possibly could. I did it deliberately. And in return I had a glimpse of my soul: of darkness, coiling around itself, waiting to lash out. And don’t pretend it’s not still there.”

  “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic,” she said, rolling her eyes. “So you were an idiot? So you still are? That’s no reason to cut yourself off from everyone. Learn from you mistake and get on with your damned life.”

  Paddington finished his tea, feeling no better for momentarily letting the monster out of its cage.

  “What happened next?” he asked. “After Lucy told you about Donna?”

  “She said we could take a trip together. A month later I met my uncle and I knew who I was. I was Lisa Tanner, not Lisa MacBean. I wasn’t my genetics or my past, I was whoever I wanted to be. Your family doesn’t decide who you become. You do.”

  The clock ticked away valuable seconds. Paddington tried to wrap his head around his next sentence, but there was no cushioning the blow. “Lisa, I’m leaving.”

  “Oh? Where are you going?” she asked, too innocently.

  Paddington hesitated.

  “Ah, you’re being metaphorical again,” she said. “How do you plan to die this time? Frolicking with the other wolves?”

  He really must stop assuming Lisa needed things explained. “I have an idea,” he said.

  “You always do.” Lisa rolled her eyes, then studied his face. Paddington tried to look confident.

  “I can’t dissuade you,” she said, “so just promise you’ll be careful.”

  Paddington pulled her into a tight hug. Perhaps for the last time, he breathed her in and remembered that, for a month, life had been grand.

  “I love you,” he said. “Always have.”

  He felt her smile in the tremors of her body. “I’ve got your heart, right?”

  “Jim and Lisa, sitting in a tree—” he sang softly.

  “Survive,” she said, hugging tighter.

  Paddington stroked her hair. “Howling wolves couldn’t hold me back.”

  “Jim!”

  “Sorry.”

  They pulled apart, kissed goodbye, and Paddington drove toward the Team’s hideout, heart thumping like a bass drum. If Mitchell shot him, all his plans would come to nothing. Or if the wolves killed him. Or if one of a thousand other things went wrong, he’d never see Lisa again.

  Paddington knocked, entered, and stopped. He was used to Skylar’s rifle, but now there were four aimed at him. Skylar, Mitchell, Truman – even McGregor was pointing his gun at him. On the bright side, no one had fired.

  “Hi,” Paddington said. “How’s it going?”

  “Not good,” McGregor said, turning back to his notes. The desk was long since lost beneath them, and sheaves of paper overflowed onto the floor with each new word written. “We’re only hours from the prophecy’s fulfilment and I still don’t have any idea how to stop the Browns.”

  Paddington noticed the jittering of their hands. McGregor had been that way for a while, from sleep deprivation and his herbal teas, but it was terrifying to see it in Mitchell. The man was supposed to be in control.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Mitchell asked, his red eyes surrounded by dark rings. He had a gun in each hand.

  “Holding back a zombie force of about three thousand,” Paddington said. “You know, doing my bit.”

  “Didn’t think to drop by?”

  “I did, this morning.”

  “What was that plant you left us?” Skylar asked with a healthy measure of awe.

  “Nepeta Dynatos,” Paddington said. “Catnip.”

  “Catnip?” she asked. The awe was gone.

  The air suddenly seemed colder, and Mitchell closer, so Paddington explained, “Vampire physiology is a mix of human and feline. Catnip gets them… high.”

  “You knew this would work?” Mitchell asked.

  “Studies have shown lions and tigers reac—”

  “Studies?”

  Paddington stood his ground. “You’d never trust a flower before a gun,” he said. “If you used it, it was because you thought you were already dead.”

  Halfway through “dead”, Paddington realised that Clarkson was missing. The Team was now half the size it had been when it had arrived on Archi.

  Mitchell was close enough to take a swing at Paddington, though that would involve putting down either his rifle or pistol. Paddington fought the dual instincts to step back or release the wolf, who was out of his basket and watching with interest.

  “Is Thomas still alive?” Paddington asked, to change the topic.

  “He was too fast,” Truman said, running a hand through his blond hair. Paddington wondered where his cowboy hat had gone. “One second he’s there, the next he had Clarkson by the throat.”

  “To hell with your island, detective,” Mitchell said. “If I get communications working, I’ll have Truman’s countrymen napalm the whole island, with us on it.”

  “In lieu of that,” Paddington said, “I know how to kill the Browns.”

  “Bullets don’t work,” Mitchell said.

  “Depends where you aim them. Head for Thomas; heart for Richard; Harold you’ll have to burn.”

  “How did you…?” McGregor scoured his piles of paper in frustration. “I haven’t been able to make heads or tails of the Three Ends!”

  Paddington didn’t have time for this. Open season for prophecy fulfilment was in half an hour, when the sun set.

  “I’m right,” he said, “and now I’m off.”

  “Off?” Mitchell asked. “Off where?”

  “To creation’s origin! Of course!” McGregor shouted, holding up a piece of paper.

  There was a stunned silence before Mitchell asked, “What?”

  “The Three Brothers reunite at creation’s origin – they’re going to the Tree!”

  “It’s a bloody rock!” Mitchell was red in the face.

  “It’s a symbol!” McGregor said, shoving most of the papers off the desk and scrabbling at those closest the bottom. “It doesn’t have to be an actual tree. It could be a picture of a tree, or somewhere a tree once stood, or a rock put there as a reminder.”

  Paddington nodded. “The stories of the Three-God talk about a forest where the Three Races lived before disobedien—”

  “Standard religious crap,” Mitchell said. “Doesn’t make it real.”

  “But Adonis believes it,” Paddington said, “so it’s a real threat. Even if they don’t bring about the apocalypse, the Browns need to be stopped and now we know where they’ll be. Do you want to waste that opportunity?”

  “Every time we try to stop them,” Mitchell said, his eyes two beady black points, “more of my men die.”

  “Then act fast, Jerry,” Paddington said, “because you’re running out of men.”

  Mitchell threw his rifle down and raised his fist.

  Paddington stared back; daring him: do the right thing, no matter what it cost.

  Mitchell lowered his hand and exhaled. “You’ve got balls, detective.”

  “Thank you?” Paddington said.

  Mitchell holstered his pistol and hung the rifle on its strap around his neck. Having a plan returned some of his calm. “McGregor, stay here,” Mitchell said. “Radio us the second you find anything useful.” He paused, studying his soldiers. “You ready to die for this?”

  Truman nodded. After a second, Skylar did as well. Finally, Mitchell turned to Paddington. “If we’re going, we’d better go prepared. Detective, take me to your gun shop.”