Page 2 of Plaidypus
I didn’t look forward to testing their open-door policy or confessing I was the reason my brother was a vampire.
Only chocolate could salvage my day, and as I loved my brother, I asked, “Want any hot chocolate?”
“Sure. I thought vampirism would have put an end to all eating, but I’m glad to see I can still handle hot chocolate. I’m not brave enough to try a beer, though. I can’t find much on the internet about vampires, oddly enough. There’s some mention there are a few vampire chefs, so maybe I can have something other than your blood?”
“What happened the first time you tried that?” I demanded, shooting my brother a glare.
“I got a little snappy.”
“Literally. You tried snapping those pearly whites at my jugular. No. We are not trying that experiment again. I’m able to keep up with you, so we will not fix what’s not broken. We’ve got this figured out for the moment, and unless something changes, we aren’t fiddling with the routine.” I’d have to fiddle with the routine eventually, as I would need to find worksomewhere. I held some hope I could get a remote job for some cable company or something. Half the town worked remotely, as many of the in-person jobs had left within a year of the hotspots churning out an unusual number of undead. The town on the other side of the border suffered from similar difficulties, although those from Quebec tended to be more inclined to deal with the undead in violent and permanent fashions, essentially creating a defensive perimeter around their town center.
I gave it a few months before the competitive nature of the two provinces reared its ugly head and hunting season opened on anything that moved without breathing.
That worried me, as Matthieu struggled with the breathing thing. Upon rising, he’d stopped, although if he concentrated, he could pretend he still lived and breathed.
The foxes sometimes breathed, especially after a successful hunt. For a while, they resembled the living well enough to fool just about anybody. In a way, I liked the vampiric foxes.
They left me alone.
I thanked the lycanthropy virus for my newfound ability to scare off the local critters. The scent of platypus rarely inspired anything other than interest. The lycanthropy virus had a more predatory edge, one that convinced most of the local wildlife and undeadlife to give me a wide berth.
“I’m really sorry about that,” my brother muttered.
“I’m not mad at you for being a blood sucking vampire out for your next taste of delicious, tasty sister. But we do not toy with my jugular. You may snack from my arm, and that’s that.”
We’d learned early on one of the fleshier bits of my arm hurt a lot less than the wrist, and it meant he drank slower. When he drank slower, my virus had half a chance to keep up with him, especially when I ate while he topped up his tank.
From as far as we could tell, a pint a day kept the vampire at bay, although he could get through on only half a pint in a pinch. He tried to take only half a pint once a week to give me a chance to rest and recover.
Neither of us were brave enough to skip a day, not after the first time he’d gone for my throat.
I waited for my kettle to whistle and inform the local wildlife I was about to indulge in chocolate. Glaring at the shiny metal didn’t make the stove heat my water any faster, and I tapped my foot in a futile effort to circumvent basic science. “I still think the water should boil faster because I’m watching it.”
Matthieu laughed, and because he knew better than to argue with me on the science of boiling water being watched, he returned to the living room to watch the undead invade our front lawn. “This should be interesting. The beavers are back.”
“No. There are no beavers in our front yard. Do you know what happened the last time the beavers came over?”
“They thinned the fox population by three, the squirrel population by at least twenty, and did a freaky little beaver dance around the corpses? I’m not sure they’re undead beavers, though. Maybe they’re superhero beavers.”
“I am not going outside to find out if they are undead beavers, superhero beavers, or undead superhero beavers, Matthieu. Only an idiot goes outside to face off against beavers capable of taking out a zombie moose. You better say your goodbyes to your zombie moose, though. She’s toast if they decide they’re taking her out.”
“That’s sad. I actually like her.”
He would. “Tell me if the beavers actually do something interesting.”
“They’re in a standoff with the foxes right now. There are three foxes and six beavers. What are groups of beavers called again?”
“Colony,” I replied. “The foxes are skulks, and we don’t discuss groups of moose.”
“Mating or pissed off we’re near her baby,” my brother replied in amusement. “The moose is minding her business, and the beavers seem interested in the foxes. The foxes are chittering threats at the beavers. The beavers are snarling.”
Only someone with a death wish bothered a snarling beaver. To bother six snarling beavers? We had a skulk of suicidal vampiric foxes on the loose, and our front yard was doomed to become a warzone. “I’d say tell them they have to wait for my hot chocolate to finish, but the beavers might win, and I amnotinviting any other vampires into my home. The one vampire I have is enough for me.”
“Says the platypus with a lycanthropy infection.”
“I was born perfection. Because do you know what the platypus is? Perfection, my dear brother. And the hotspot was just making it so I could keep the neighbors from decapitating you upon discovery of your new nature. The magic understood I would go on a one-woman mission to eradicate it for all eternity should you be decapitated as a result of its shitty idea of a joke.”
In reality, I had to thank the hotspot; without it, my brother wouldn’t have survived the crash at all. I’d gotten off lucky with minimal cuts.
