Page 7 of Plaidypus
The three women spotted the zombie moose grazing in the front yard, and they squealed their delight. Then, in what I could only call blatant stupidity, they ran across my yard to pet her.
The zombie moose didn’t seem to mind the attention and kept on mouthing at the ground in search of grass.
Like me, the man with them lifted his hand and rubbed his temple. “What are you three idiots doing?”
“Petting her,” the trio announced in unison.
“Look, we’re not here to play with a zombie, even if she is a docile moose. We’re looking for evidence of vampires.”
Fuck. Well, if they wanted vampires, I’d direct them to the foxes, and hopefully that would distract from my brother’s existence. I opened my window more and called out, “If you’re looking for the vampires, they live off that way.” I pointed in the direction the foxes tended to head off to whenever they visited. “Just don’t cross the mummy ice wolf; that one took out the beavers, and until the wolf came around, the beavers were the crowned champion of the local undead. It’s a group of foxes, and generally, if you leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone. They prefer to hunt regular animals rather than people, but I can’t say they won’t make dietary changes if you go into their turf.”
The quartet stared at me, and they all blinked as though I’d slapped them.
“Did you just say there’s a mummy ice wolf here?” the handsome stranger asked, and he tilted his head back for a better look at me. “I couldn’t have heard you correctly.”
I took a few more sniffs to catch his scent, pleased when the smell registered as somewhat familiar. According to my nose, the handsome stranger was likely a wolf of some sort, either a shapeshifter or a lycanthrope—either that or he’d rolled around with the mummy ice wolf before paying me a visit. “You heard me correctly. There’s a mummy ice wolf. We even caught it on video. Wait there a second.”
Entertaining the strangers—and figuring out why they were in our reclusive neck of the woods—would alleviate some of my boredom. Not only that, if my brotherdidneed to meet them, the clouds might protect him.
I closed my window, grabbed my jacket, and headed to the basement to claim my brother’s phone. Matthieu glared at me. “Who is outside?”
“Some crazy chicks and a dude who are playing with the moose and are interested in vampires—plural. Probably the foxes. I need your phone.”
Heaving a sigh, my brother handed it over. “Don’t get me staked, charbroiled, roasted, grilled, or otherwise turned from a not-quite-living man to a very dead one. If the girls are pretty, take pictures for me so I can mourn my status as single and undesirable. I don’t think girls are into dead dudes.”
I rolled my eyes, as my first searches on the internet had revealed some vampires hunted with sex demons for partners so they could feed and have a good time in the process. “I’m sure Mom will help you with your dating woes.”
“You are just mean, Nadine!”
“It’s the platypus in me,” I replied, heading to the front door armed with his phone. As the zombie moose hadn’t bothered the women or their companion, I stepped outside, closed the door behind me, and strolled over, unlocking my brother’s phone with his passcode to locate the video I’d taken of the undead drama. “Once upon a time, I wanted to be a sports announcer, so when the local undead decided to have a party in the yard, I did a play-by-play.”
As the handsome stranger had taken the initiative, I went to him, held out my brother’s phone, and tapped the play button.
The three women came over to watch, huddling over the screen, and the zombie moose followed them.
To my dismay, the zombie moose came straight to me and rested her head on my shoulder. As the other women had gotten away with petting her, I took my chances. The zombie moose stayed calm and docile, and to my relief, her fur stayed intact and didn’t brush off as I expected.
I wondered if the dropping temperatures helped slow her decomposition—or if zombie moose naturally stayed at the state of obviously dead but not stinking up the entire neighborhood.
The quartet watched the entire video with wide eyes.
“The vampire reports in this area arefoxes?” the man blurted.
“Hotspots,” I told him, pointing in the direction of one of the hotspots known to produce vampires when something died in its field of influence. “There’s one a few klicks that way with a reputation of producing vampires.” I pointed in the direction of a different hotspot. “That one is pretty random, so that’s probably where the mummy ice wolf came from. They’re all around here. Anything that dies in the range of one of the hotspots gets turned into an undead. Unfortunately, there’s a hotspot or two right under the nearest hospital, and it’s a doozy; not everyone comes back, and it doesn’t always happen right away, so things can get a little exciting at the funeral home.”
The man stared at my brother’s phone, tapped the screen to replay the part where the mummy ice wolf had taken out the beavers, and spluttered. Once he recovered, he asked, “Have there been any human vampires raised by these hotspots or at the hospital?”
“Sure.” I thought back on the past year or two. “I’d say we’ve had ten or so pop up out of their graves over the years. They’re not common, at least not in people. Among the wildlife? Common enough. The vampire hotspot is a pretty big one. I take it you’re not from around here, are you?”
“No, we’re not. We came up from Toronto after getting some calls about vampires spotted in the area.”
I heaved a sigh and pointed at the foxes. “My brother loaded the video to the internet, so that’s probably where you’re getting the reports. Everyone around here knows the foxes are vampires, and my brother probably mentioned it in the video description.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” he blurted.
“Sorry about that, but if you’re out hunting vampires, I wouldn’t even bother coming here.”
That earned me a raised brow. “Why not?”
