The wolf response divided Wolftown into sectors secured with metal walls and fences that neither a wolf nor a person could bypass without permission. Unlike Schuster, Wayne had a key. Schuster relied on his badge, and he refused to explain his backup plan, especially to John.
Outside Holy Trinity through an emergency exit, Wayne and John formed one pair and Schuster and Kevin the other. The rain had slowed. With the flashlights, they could see much further than they expected. When the floodwater flowed too deeply or quickly, they tied safety lines to doors or lamp posts and each other.
John wished he wore the fishing waders, but the cold rain convinced him Wayne needed them. Three-foot-deep rushing water worried him more than the wolves. While water and things in it did not scare him, he disliked aquatic adventures. Cold, wet, and hungry, he waded behind cold, wet, sleep-deprived, stressed Wayne. They said little.
Everybody else in the wolf response sheltered inside people’s homes, businesses, or Holy Trinity. Somebody supposedly watched the fence constantly from a window, but when Wayne and John dragged the fence closed against the current, either nobody noticed, or nobody cared.
Wayne, Schuster, Kevin, and John thought an expedition to Happy Howlers in the current weather conditions was a terrible, dangerous idea for those untrained in wilderness search-and-rescue. Schuster and Kevin thought they had good reasons to not alert other authorities about the lady.
The emergency radio and their weather observations indicated that the thunderstorms had passed, but the flooding and flash flood warnings continued. The severe weather would steadily clear through the morning. Wayne and Kevin said that the 1993 Wisconsin floodwaters flowed deeper than the current flood in Wolftown, but they could not predict the conditions.
The lady could have hiked from Wolftown to Happy Howlers in several hours and good conditions, but Schuster and Wayne doubted she could walk from Wolftown to the campsite to Happy Howlers or navigate without a map in a dark storm and flood conditions.
The lady claimed that she walked alone despite lacking things even totally unprepared tourists brought, such as a t-shirt. It even alarmed Wayne, who tended to feel unsympathetic towards her. (Her clothing washed away after she undressed, but why she undressed remained a mystery to Schuster and Kevin.)
The weather might prevent the male perpetrator from finding the lady or prevent Schuster from hiding the lady somewhere safer. If Schuster, apparently the only police officer she felt remotely comfortable speaking with, and Kevin, her lawyer, remained in Wolftown until the weather conditions improved, the lady might think of somewhere safer and run away or decide to return to the male perpetrator and lie about contacting the authorities.
Sandbags protected the Motorer’s Motel. Wayne and John surprised the desk clerk and squelched to John’s room. Before packing, Wayne made John dry his feet.
“I’m just going to put on wet boots again,” John said.
“You’ll get trench foot, but you can slow it down.” Wayne turned up the radiator. “Thanks for making me borrow your fishing waders.”
“No problem,” John lied.
Eating a container of cold bean salad, John stuffed the waterproof cooler with the one change of dry clothes, tea bags, and shelf-stable vegan food.
“Dennis Laufenberg volunteered at Happy Howlers for a few weeks in the ‘80s,” Wayne said.
“Really?”
“He was going to get bitten, so I made him quit.”
“You’ve been bitten. I saw the scars.”
“Yeah, but except for that, it wasn’t serious. They nip me sometimes. A wolf was going to maul him to death if he was lucky and eat him if he wasn’t. He wouldn’t listen to me, so I stopped letting him volunteer. He is not allowed to do anything except be a tourist.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t respect the wolves or try to understand them. He pretended to. Volunteers can’t be alone with the wolves, but sometimes they hang out near the pens. I let some volunteers interact with the wolves. His attitude was weird. Are you warming up?”
“Yeah. If he is attacking people, why would he hunt the wolves, too?”
“To pretend it isn’t him. I don’t think he is looking for the wolf-like the rest of us are, and he doesn’t make our jobs easier. He hasn’t been very involved with the wolf response for a couple days. Anyway, training wolves to attack people would be full-time work. Maybe somebody else trained them, but he was in charge.”
“I thought you said the trained wolf hypothesis was a dumb idea.”
“It is. You have to be smart to make it work, though. I have to compare the lady’s coordinates, the Vasquez’s coordinates, and the wolf packs’ territories. If the wolves were in the woods, the wolf packs would know. I’d say we could go look, but the rain probably washed away the evidence. Who knows where the trained wolves are now.”
“So, they could have been set loose or gotten loose?”
“If the lady and the kid in the sewer didn’t pass the wolves off to somebody else, yeah. But if the wolves were habituated to people in the woods, they couldn’t be used to a town. If somebody brought them into a town, people would have seen them. Around here, somebody would have known the difference between a wolf and a dog. They would have to be wolf-dogs, but people might recognize them or think the big dogs looked weird.”
Wayne fell asleep again.
Schuster knocked on the door, automatically saying, “Wolftown Police Department.”
“Going rogue,” Kevin said.
John woke up Wayne and opened the door.
“Did you get it?” Wayne yawned.
“We could’ve bought the damn canoe for what he charged,” Schuster said, shivering and bluish.
“Did he rent it?” Wayne asked.
“It’s a business expense,” Kevin said.
“But did you get it?”
“Yeah,” Schuster said. “Come on.”
“You don’t look well,” John said.
“Maybe you should warm up first,” Wayne said.
“I’m fine. Let’s go.”
Following Schuster, Wayne asked, “Why don’t you think Dennis Laufenberg is involved with the attacks?”
“I don’t have any physical evidence yet. As far as I know, there is only one person who says she saw him and named him. So, I have to think of the guy as a suspect. Chief Laufenberg goes into the woods for hours, and Zach and me couldn’t follow him. But a lot of people do that.”
“He was interested in wolves and böxenwolves,” Wayne said. “I got a weird feeling about him when he was near the wolves.”
“There is evidence of public exposure, and the lady says she witnessed it. But I don’t have physical evidence that the public exposure is connected to assaulting people with a wolf, and I don’t have physical evidence that Dennis Laufenberg was involved in the attacks. I haven’t had time to look for much evidence, but I will look for evidence in general. And if the evidence indicates he is the suspect, I’ll arrest him again.”
“You already arrested him?” John asked.
“A couple years ago. If he was involved in the attacks or connected to them, whatever he did was in the woods. Not even the private detective could get that close. Zach and me looked in the woods, but we didn’t see anything suspicious. Maybe we didn’t know what we were looking for. Maybe we were in the wrong place.”
“If he was at work full-time, he wouldn’t have time to train wolves,” Wayne said.
“So could the lady or Mr. Wilson be the trainers?” Schuster asked.
“Maybe. But someone needs to be with the wolves pretty much all the time. And training wolves to do things dogs do is very difficult. Sometimes it works, but it is a lot harder than dogs.”
Schuster failed to reassure the desk clerk about their safety while they left.
The water depth in Wolftown made walking and rowing equally problematic. However, Schuster, Kevin, Wayne, and John reached Kevin’s house, where they gathered things they and the lady would need. John filled his own thermos with hot tea and Schuster filled Kevin’s with hot chocolate.
Schuster explained why he arrested the chief of police: “He was driving under the influence and going to the police station for his shift. No charges were filed, and I was put on unpaid administrative leave for a week. It got hushed up, but I have a witness.”
In the canoe, Wayne, John, and Kevin insisted that Schuster rest, and Schuster, John, and Kevin insisted Wayne rest. Wayne dozed, while Schuster drank the thermos of hot chocolate filled at Kevin’s house. Between navigating, he periodically called Happy Howlers. He asked the lady if her situation developed and then hung up to conserve the spare battery.
The current carried them downriver. John and Kevin rowed and scraped in approximately the right direction, sometimes turning in circles, or lugging the grounded canoe into the river. Kevin barely knew the difference between a frigate and a kayak, and John and the canoe mutually detested each other.
Wearing a life jacket, John fell into the river. He clutched a rock until the other men caught up with him. But to everybody’s relief, nobody quite capsized the canoe.
Finally, Schuster estimated they reached a stretch of river close to Happy Howlers.
Kevin stepped onto the bank and sank knee-deep in mud. The others pulled him out, but he lost a shoe. They canoed several hundred feet downriver and cautiously stepped on the mud. Then they walked in the general direction of the highway, finding it a mile south of Happy Howlers. They trudged up the left side of the highway.
Throughout the walking, Wayne and Kevin argued happily about böxenwolves, including sidetracking into an argument about the proper pronunciation and pluralization.
Until John heard Kevin say, “I’m a böxenwolf,” John would not mention it.
Kevin and Wayne did not believe in magic and thought saying, It’s magic failed to explain anything. They thought scientists continued to discover new things and explain phenomena.
Kevin said that making a wolf strap, which transfigured a person into wolf form, required alchemy and tanning. Wayne considered werewolves scientifically impossible, alchemy almost chemistry, and Medieval tanners unknowing practical chemists. If somebody could make a human look like a wolf, it would require gene editing, biochemistry, surgery, and the like, and time. He did not want to cite pseudoscience (and sometimes the studies fell below the pseudoscientific level) or rely on science predating the scientific method, but none of the böxenwolf experts identified what in the ingredients made matter change its form or that the ingredients had any form-changing properties beyond chemical reactions. If the materials to make a wolf strap contained properties that turned a person into a wolf, they required refinement and special combinations beyond a Medieval tanner’s capabilities.
“And the wolf straps date to the 1300s, so the process would be from a more highly advanced society. I don’t know much about history, but they didn’t get close to the right technology. I don’t believe in aliens, either,” Wayne said.
“Neither do I,” Kevin said.
Kevin argued that a wolf strap could be a natural phenomenon that Medieval people called magic.
“Like the idea that very advanced technology looks like magic?” Wayne asked. “We wouldn’t recognize it if we saw it?”
“Advanced technology wouldn’t look like herbs and Medieval tools and be something you can do in your backyard. Making a wolf strap is primitive technology that does something amazing we can’t explain,” Kevin said.
“Like dreamwalking or a hallucinogen?”
“I’m thinking that the böxenwolf physically changes from a human to a wolf, and it feels like it and looks like it, to someone who is not also using a wolf strap. A group of people taking a hallucinogen might think they saw a böxenwolf, but I’m thinking of uninvolved people looking at somebody using a wolf strap and seeing the person turn from a human form to a wolf form.”
“You think that happens without advanced technology, but I think it happens with advanced technology, right?” Wayne said.
“Yeah,” Kevin said.
“And you think that happens with primitive technology, right?”
“Yeah. Or someone could argue it looks more primitive than it is. Hasn’t it happened before?”
Wayne thought that a natural phenomenon powerful enough to change one thing into a completely different thing would be obvious and verifiable, but confirmed werewolves were rare. Kevin said the witnesses formed a legend.
“Okay, we’re getting close, so start paying attention to the surroundings,” Schuster said. “Get out the weapons and deterrents.”
Schuster and Wayne drew their guns and Kevin John’s air horn. John loaded the tranquilizer gun, wishing they took effect faster than bullets.
“Kevin and John, walk backward,” Schuster said. “And look in opposite directions, away from each other. One of you looks left and one of you looks right. Kevin, look left and John, look right.”
“Do you feel okay?” Wayne asked.
“Isn’t that how to look for a wolf or a suspicious individual?”
“Yeah, but it took you a little while to say.”
“Let’s go.”
Wayne could probably identify every sanctuary wolf by a single loose hair on his pants, but John worried Schuster would see wolves, panic, forget about the wolf-proof fences, and shoot the wolves. Their pens sheltered them, or Wayne evacuated them, and wolves naturally coped with cold and sopping fur, but few loved wet, muddy conditions. Their tetchy behavior might scare Schuster.
At the edge of the parking lot, Schuster said, “If you see evidence of something weird, don’t touch it. If you see the wolf, tranquilize it, and do whatever Wayne says. If you hear shooting or notice an emergency I can’t deal with on my own, get to Thurber and give Sherrif Jordan my report and whatever information you have. If I hear gunshots, I’ll come back and stop the shooting. Just don’t shoot in the general direction of the facility, please.”
“Or the wolf pens,” Wayne said, but John said, “Does that include the wolf pens?”
“And try not to shoot any of Wayne’s wolves. Is it okay if I go inside Happy Howlers?” Schuster asked.
“Here are the keys. Don’t do anything with the wolf enclosure’s fences or gates.”
“I won’t.”
“When you get inside, turn up the heat to maximum.”
“Okey-dokey, I appreciate it.”
“And get into dry clothes and dry your feet,” Wayne called. Quietly, he said, “And if I hear shooting, I’m going to check on him. Everybody else, do what he said.”
With a creepy feeling, Schuster knocked on the wooden front door and said, “Wolftown Pol—Officer Schuster.” He unlocked the door, pushed it, and shoved it open.
Somebody had pushed a bench in front of the door and stacked it precariously with lightweight, clattery, breakable things, like a full pen organizer and an empty coffee mug.
“There was a call about a lady in distress. Is anyone inside?” he asked.
It’s just a big empty dark building, Schuster thought. Mostly empty.
He searched the lobby and museum, warning himself about Wayne’s great-uncle’s awful taxidermy wolf, which startled him anyway.
Then he unlocked the Employees Only door in the museum, but something immovable prevented opening the door. So, he went past the front desk and swung open the Employees Only door behind it.
A chair or other furniture barricaded four of the eight doors in the U-shaped hallway, leaving the employee restrooms, communal office, and break room unbarricaded. But the other side of the doors were barricaded; Schuster tried each one in order and also locked or unlocked them.
The women’s restroom door opened, and a utility knife skittered across the floor. The door slammed and locked before Schuster reached it. He kicked the knife further down the hall.
“It’s Office Schuster. Who’s in there?” He knocked on the door. “There was a call about a female in distress somewhere in this facility.”
The door unbolted.
“Back away from the door.” Reluctantly, Schuster slowly swung it open.
A bedraggled wolf huddled at one end, covered in a damp threadbare blanket, but he thought he also saw a lady. He darted forward to pull the door shut, yelling, “Tie up your wolf!”
Schuster held the door shut and repeated himself, scratching the metal with the key.
Wishing he had been placed on medical leave, Schuster unlocked the door, flung it open, and aimed at the wolf, but instead of a wolf, a bedraggled lady huddled in the blanket with her hands up. The door bounced off the doorstopper without a wolf whimpering behind it.
“Where’s the wolf?” Schuster asked, seeing no wolf.
When he looked at the lady again, fur was spreading over her body from head to feet.
Swearing, Schuster shut the door again. Holding it closed, though nothing pulled it open, he locked it again. Then he began running backward into the lobby.
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