Chapter 4

The scooters required some minimal service because we had been a bit rough with them yesterday. There was nothing seriously wrong, but the track did need some adjustment because we had hit some tree roots a bit harder than was prudent. Hopefully, we will do a better job of driving today.

Today was something of a repeat of yesterday in that we were going to check out the rest of the registered campers to make sure they had made it through the night in good shape. If we had time, we were also going to stop off to talk with the two religious nuts, and I could not help but think of them that way. I hoped that we could talk them into cutting short their camping trip. Hell, if necessary, I would tell them that the werewolves were just ordinary, but very large wolves that liked to attack and eat people.

Dammit, on second thought, I asked John if it was okay with him if we went by the fanatics’ camp first, just in case they could be talked into going home. He agreed, as he usually did with my suggestions. Uh-oh, as we approached their camp I began to get the feeling of danger. As we pulled up to their tent, I could hardly make myself dismount from my scooter. The only way I could get full control of myself was to draw my pistol and have it ready to shoot. John looked a little bit surprised, but drew his pistol when he saw me draw mine.

I walked toward the tent, which was unusually large for just two people. I assumed that it had been borrowed from his or her parents. The closer I got to the tent, the more I felt danger. What was going on? I said, very loudly, “KNOCK, KNOCK! IS ANYBODY HOME?”

That was the last thing I had time to say as a very large werewolf came charging out of the tent, and it was headed directly for me. There was no question of what to do. Both John and I fired at it, and we each hit it with several shots. The werewolf collapsed at my feet, never to move again of his own volition.

The woman stuck her head out of the tent opening and said, “Bill, what is going on? Is everything okay?” At that moment, she saw the werewolf lying dead at my feet and John and me both holding our pistols. She screamed out, “OH, NO!” and in what seemed like milliseconds, turned into a wolf. Her body change was so fast that I could not follow it. It was a case of starting off in the body of a young woman and switching to the body of a huge wolf so fast that my eyes could not follow the change.

I guess it made no difference how fast she made the changeover because John and I were expecting something like this. I would bet that our fingers were tightening on the triggers as soon as we saw her head. Actually, seeing the young woman was the surprising part—we had been expecting a werewolf after seeing the other one come out of the tent. Okay, we no longer had to worry about this couple. I hoped that they were happy where they were now.

John called the headquarters with his radio and told them what had happened. He also said that we were leaving to search for the three werewolves that we had seen last night. He did recommend that someone come by to clean up the bodies and the campsite. It would not do for some animal scavenger to try to eat the werewolves and become infected.

The people at headquarters were startled by this suggestion and asked us to wait until a ranger showed up to guard the place. The ranger should arrive in 15-20 minutes. John agreed that we would hang around that long. We sure as hell did not want other were-animals to show up in the forest.

While we were waiting for the ranger, we looked around to see if we could get a good estimate of the number of werewolves that had been at this campsite last night. No luck. The ground was very dry from the lack of recent rain, so there were no tracks that we could find. Counting paw prints would have only given us an educated guess in any case.

The ranger finally showed up on a scooter. He had a pump shotgun, and he said that he had steel shot, so we figured that he was safe enough. He was going to keep an eye on the campsite until the two bodies were picked up. Before we left, there were puffs of smoke and the bodies were converted back into the shape of humans, a man and a woman.

We headed toward the next campsite and hoped that we would find humans and not werewolves. Oh, damn! The closer we got, the more danger I felt. I flagged down John and told him about my feelings. There wasn’t anything else that we could do but keep going. As we continued to get closer to the campsite, my feelings of danger suddenly began to fall off. What the hell was going on? It was as if we had rode close to danger, but were now leaving it behind.

Here we go again. I flagged down John again and told him my suspicions that we had just ridden past one or more werewolves lurking in the underbrush. I proposed to ride back toward where I felt the most danger and make a search for werewolves. The problem was that we would have to do that on foot because the trees were too close together to drive the scooters in there.

John agreed to humor me, but insisted that we move far enough apart so that we did not make a target that a werewolf could hit that would knock us both out of the hunt at one time. Our armor should protect us; after all, it did work wonderfully well in protecting me when my ankle was bitten. He was sure that we could take care of one werewolf with no trouble, but we might well find more than one hiding in the brush.

I had to agree with that, but I could not think of any other way to flush out the werewolf that I was sure was in there somewhere. John couldn’t come up with any better ideas either, so we drew our pistols and carefully worked our way into the brush.

We had our guns in one hand and our knives in the other. That combination had worked well for us in prior skirmishes, so we went with them this time. There was no way we were going to move through the underbrush quietly, so we just bulled our way through and trusted to luck and our armor.

We were both using our combat radios for communication so that we could talk quietly and not have to shout. That probably made no difference to the werewolves, but it did make us feel better, so that was the way we went. After about 10 steps, John said, “I can see a patch of black fur, and it doesn’t look like a bear, so it must be a werewolf. I’m not going to take a chance, I’m going to shoot at it from here.”

“Go ahead. When our lives are at stake, I think that we can afford to be free with our bullets.”

“Okay, I have fired three shots into the black fur, so I am going to approach it to see what I got ... Yeah, it’s a werewolf all right, but it is not as big as most of the ones that I have seen. Do you suppose that it once was a child?”

“Dammit, I hope not, but you certainly could be correct. We’ll have to come back after it changes over to human form so that we can be sure. Keep going for now.”

Hardly had I said that, than I came across a huge werewolf that appeared to be sleeping. I didn’t hesitate to shoot it. I reported to John what I had done, and we continued to move through the brush. I told John that my feeling of acute danger had started to fade, and I thought that we should turn around and head back toward our scooters.

I had hardly moved about 10 feet when I was hit from the rear by a leaping werewolf. How in the hell had that thing managed to get so close behind me? The force of the impact was enough to knock me down, but I managed to hang on to my weapons. The werewolf had hit me a little to one side, so I was able to roll a little bit when I hit the ground.

The werewolf was not quite as large as the one I had just shot a few minutes ago, but it was plenty big enough to be a significant foe. When I rolled to one side, it happened that my left side was the one that was given the freedom to use my weapon. That was the knife. The werewolf tried to bite me on the forearm, and I was able to shift my arm enough to have the monster bite down on the knife blade instead.