Page 1 of Plaidypus
ONE
The zombie moose was back.
The zombie moose was back, shuffling around my front yard in search of something to eat. Since the night I’d hit her with my truck, resulting in more chaos, mayhem, and tragedy than I needed in my life, she insisted on following me around. I suspected she wanted to eat my brother, who’d emerged from the crash with a severe case of vampirism. Unlike my brother or the moose, I’d come out of the accident still kicking and breathing.
Fortunately for my brother, rather than fall over dead, I’d come down with an advanced case of the lycanthropy virus to go along with my natural-born shapeshifting tendencies. Thanks to the virus, my brother still lived, as in the hours following his rise from the grave, he’d drained the poor moose dry and had done some serious damage to my blood pressure before returning to his senses.
Without the hotspot, I would have been like the moose: dead, dead, dead. With a zombie moose and a frenzied vampire to contend with, I suspected I would have ended up deader than either of them. I resented my status as grateful for the hotspot preserving my life. While being a shapeshifter improved my general durability, the lycanthropy virus had helped me survive through a thirsty vampire fresh from death and in dire need of blood.
My life would have been much easier without the damned moose paying me a visit every day, likely seeking out revenge for her early demise. Taking out my truck should have counted as revenge enough. While the insurance payout would keep us fed for a while, there’d be no new truck in my future.
I wanted to cry over that, as I’d saved every penny for years to buy my baby, the perfect truck for the harsh winter conditions of our northern Ontario town.
Oh, well. I could save up again—assuming I survived through my brother’s thirst and my lycanthropy infection.
As I hadn’t quite been bold enough to go to the CDC about my infection status, I had no idea what counted as normal or not. I’d done my due diligence researching my new situation on the internet, studying how I needed to protect others from contracting my infection.
My fledgling virus worked overtime to supply me with enough blood to keep my brother as alive as a vampire got. If anyone in our small town discovered he’d come down with a severe case of vampirism and bit me on a daily basis, they’d take him out back and execute him for the sake of everyone around us. They’d be polite about it, apologizing even as they pulled the trigger, cut off his head, staked him, and reduced Matthieu to a truly dead corpse. That was how they handled all the undead running around town, thanks to the hotspots that kept popping up and killing off the local wildlife.
Then the townsfolk would try to pamper me and match me up with one of the local men in an effort to cure me of my grief.
Sooner than later, we needed to get the hell out of town, and I gave it until the next time I tried to get a job, went to a doctor’s appointment, or otherwise needed to be scanned before our ship was sunk.
There was only one problem: I’d sworn I’d never leave home, and I’d meant to keep my promise. If it meant protecting my brother, I would, but it would only happen if we lacked any other options. My brother being turned into a vampire meant we would run out of options sooner than later, especially considering how the people in town reacted around the undead.
I heaved a sigh and stared out the window at the moose. In some ways, I wouldn’t mind somebody coming over to escort her to her final rest, assuming I could figure out how to trick them into believing my brother hadn’t become a vampire. Rather than do whatever it was moose did at the start of winter, she loitered in our yard and plucked at our grass.
In reality, I could dig out my hunting rifle and take care of the zombie moose problem myself, but my guilt kept getting in the way. While I’d accepted there hadn’t been anything I could have done to prevent the crash, the hotspot had given the moose a second chance, and I refused to kill an animal I didn’t intend on eating.
When I hunted, I made certain to steer clear of any hotspots.
The last thing I needed was my dinner getting up and seeking out revenge.
Instead of dealing with the zombie moose, I worried what would happen the next time I needed to go to town, as the CDC liked springing surprise testing on us, which they paid for.
I couldn’t blame them for keeping a close eye on things, although I resented how difficult a time I’d have convincing them I could be a shapeshifteranda lycanthrope. I wrinkled my nose, staring out into the trees in the general direction of the nearest magical hellhole infecting our area with the undead. On the other side of town, the hotspots liked turning the townsfolk into living, breathing predators, capable of killing off the undead they generated with little fuss and their natural weapons if necessary.
No matter which way I turned, I just couldn’t win.
Life in rural northern Ontario along the Quebec border left a lot to be desired if one wanted to enjoy nature. With a zombie moose snuffling around my front yard, peace and quiet were things of the past. Add in the vampiric foxes, the death beavers of doom, and the other undead life roaming the hotspot-infested forests surrounding the house, and it amazed me we’d survived for as long as we had.
Heaving a sigh, I observed the moose from my perch in the bay window, grateful she was too damned stupid to charge the house. If the zombie moose charged our home, she would win, and the last thing I needed was an undead animal wrecking everything we owned.
The destruction of my truck had been bad enough.
“This is all your damned fault, Matthieu,” I complained, getting up from my spot to wander into the kitchen and put the kettle on so I could enjoy a warm beverage to go with my show of a zombie moose rummaging around my yard. With my luck, the vampiric foxes would come out to play along with the beavers. The beavers scared the shit out of me; whatever the hell type of undead they were, they could take out wolves and bears without much of a fight.
That the wolves and bears often got back up after being killed didn’t help matters for us.
I didn’t need some mutant beavers coming after me along with a pack of undead wolves and angry, rotting bears.
My vampire of a brother strolled into the kitchen, and when he yawned, he showed off his pearly fangs. “Eh? What did I do now?”
“The moose is back.”
He headed into the living room to check out the window, returning while I was digging through the cabinet for my hot cocoa supply. “Until she starts stinking the place up, I can’t say I mind. The ice starting to build up on her coat is a little weird, but if she’s standing in the right light, she shimmers. Iamjealous she can go out in the sunlight and I can’t, though. I’m somewhat grateful for my gamer tendencies now. Nobody has any trouble believing I’d send you to town to do everything while I rot my brain playing some new game.”
With the insurance payout from the truck, I could pay the rent for a few months, keep me fed, and keephimfed. Once the insurance payout ran out—or the dinky piece of shit the neighbor had given us died—we’d both be in a lot of trouble. While I didn’t want to leave home, I would—assuming our parents would be willing to come to the rescue. I assumed they would, as they insisted we could call them for any reason at any time.
