Fratricide Werewolf Wars and the Many Lies of Andrea Paddington

Fratricide, Werewolf Wars, and the Many Lies of Andrea Paddington

  By Stephen Bills

  Copyright 2013 Stephen Bills

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

  Prologue: Departure

  James Paddington opened his eyes, opened his maw, and yawned. Then, since that hadn’t eliminated the night’s torpor, he stretched out from nose to tail. Something didn’t smell right.

  He sat up on the bed, ready to bolt or fight, and spotted the intruder: Lisa, curled up on her side of the bed. She’d turned back into a human during the night.

  Pity. James always enjoyed when Lisa was a wolf; it was like a holiday from the world. Two werewolves together with the whole island to play on. Now it was over; back to the drudgery of the everyday.

  Lisa’s face scrunched in the half-sneeze she always did when she’d changed in her sleep. She woke expecting a long snout and instead had a short nose. Everything was out of shape and size and it took a moment for the brain to fit inside the body.

  She blinked away the sensation. “You’re awake, then?” Lisa ran a hand through his fur then picked her wedding ring off the bedside table and slipped it on. “Come on, Jim. Big day.”

  James closed his eyes and focussed on the dark place inside him and felt himself shift. Not twist or distort. Just… change. His hands and feet extended, shoulders widened, snout receded, fur retracted until all that was left was a two-week growth of beard. One of the odd side-effects of being a werewolf: even if he’d been clean-shaven beforehand, he always had a full beard when he turned back. Once he’d tried changing just for a few seconds: instant beard.

  Half an hour later, dressed in his best uniform and bereft of beard, Paddington drove them to the cemetery and stood with the officials before the thousand-strong crowd of mourners.

  “Today we remember the events of two years ago,” Mayor Quentin Appleby said. “We remember the zombie horde and the fight at the Tree. We remember those we lost and what it cost us.”

  There was an understatement. Nearly half of the island had become zombies. Everyone else had helped contain the horde, which in most cases had meant putting an axe into a neighbour or childhood friend.

  “We pray that the Three-God keep us safe,” Quentin continued. “May Idryo warm our lives, Enanti grant us community, and Tipote watch over us.”

  That… that Paddington had a problem with. After all, it was to fulfil a prophecy of the Three-God that the Duke of Archi had created the zombie horde in the first place. It was only because Paddington had called outsiders from off the island that they’d been able to stop it.

  “And may we always remember our loved ones the way they would want us to remember them,” Quentin finished.

  Speeches over, the crowd moved away, most to the pubs to spend a raucous morning “honouring” the fallen. A few drifted into the graveyard to spend time in silent remembrance. Lisa and Paddington walked to his parents’ graves: two grey marble tombstones side by side.

  His father’s was old; moss explored its face and the letters were worn by the weather. He’d died just after Paddington’s birth. His mother’s tombstone looked fresh and new by comparison, the embossed letters still black.

  Greg and Andrea Paddington. Both gone now. James and Lisa were the only Paddingtons alive on Archi.

  Little did they know that in six months, there would only be one Paddington left to stand and mourn three graves.