Animal Nature

Chapter 30

Shy sagged against the door, exhausted from two long hours of listening to Mara tirade against the government and society and also trying to be a hostess to Chester and the rest of the club, offering them cookies and chips and soda, all of which made her feel the hunger deep in her stomach. The chicken her mother had pulled out to thaw for tonight's dinner kept drawing her attention. Normally, the idea of eating meat would make her stomach turn. Raw meat especially.

But now she had a strange urge to bite into that raw pink flesh.

She picked up the markers and scraps of poster board. Mara had Chester design a flyer that he would Xerox at work and post around the school, protesting the school's suspension of the Animal Rights Club. And Mara had needed new posters for the protest she planned to hold if the wolf was caught and killed, as well as posters for protesting the town relaxing the gun laws solely for one animal.

She was barely done cleaning when her mother came home, arms full of bags. "Oh, Shy, I have something for you," Mrs. Brown said, dumping all the bags on the counter. They seemed heavy.

A small rectangular white box was placed in Shy's hands.

"A cell phone?" she asked.

"An iPhone 11," her mother replied, and pulled out an identical box. "The town suggested that people keep a cell phone at hand until this wolf is caught, and you don't even have one! And also this."

Another box, bigger and black and much heavier, slid towards her on the counter.

"Mom, I can't..."

"Honey, it's for your own protection!" Mrs. Brown tapped the picture. "A .22 is a smaller gun. And it came with a cute holster..."

"Mom, I don't know how to shoot a gun!" Shy protested. She still hadn't touched the box.

"Dad or Billy can show you. Or I can, after I get dinner started. I wasn't going to buy it for you, but Billy wanted me to pick up more bullets for his guns while I was out, and I saw this and... well, everyone else in this family has a gun. It's for your protection. You've been so close to these attacks so far, I wouldn't be surprised if that wolf knows your scent and is hunting you."

Mrs. Brown bustled around, putting away the groceries she had bought and pulling out the food for dinner.

Her mother had a point. The wolf did know her, and he would be coming back for her. Shy just didn't know if David was able to control himself as a wolf or not. From the look of things, she was leaning toward not. And hadn't she just been thinking earlier that she needed some weapons? She'd been thinking more along the lines of silver bullets and wooden stakes, but a gun could slow a wolf down.

She brought her new phone and gun up to her room and looked at them there, side by side. She felt like she'd slipped into some alternate universe. Where was the girl she used to be, the one who had little use for technology and who despised guns and hunting enough to start an Animal Rights Club?

Taking out the phone, she followed the instructions to get it started. While it loaded, she rifled through her papers. She had written down a list of ways to kill a werewolf, according to the lore.

1. Silver bullet (blessed by a priest, if possible)

2. Silver blade (requires close combat, not recommended)

3. Silver-tipped arrows or crossbow bolts

4. Wolfbane/monkshood

5. Mountain ash (tree – use leaves)

6. Rye grains

7. Mistletoe

8. Fire

9. Drowning (werewolves often said to not be able to swim??)

10. Decapitation

Shy didn't know if she could do any of this. She didn't have any silver to make a bullet, never mind a bullet mold or smelting equipment. Her chances of being able to shoot a bow and arrow were even worse than shooting a gun. She could probably try to get a hold of rye or mistletoe or mountain ash...

Listening to her mother in the kitchen downstairs, Shy glanced up at the door to Billy's room, which she could see from her own room. He wasn't home, which meant he was either at work (unlikely) or out riding around with his buddies looking for a wolf to shoot (more likely). His room was such a mess, he probably wouldn't know if Shy had gone snooping around to see what kinds of weapons he had.

She tiptoed in and looked around.

At first glance, she saw nothing. He probably had all his guns with him. She opened one drawer and closed it when she saw it was his underwear and porn drawer. "Ugh," she muttered, wiping her hands on her pants. She looked at the mess on his desk, then she noticed something glint on one of his bookshelves. He had no books, of course, but there were plenty of gamer magazines and old gaming systems and CDs and other crap. And a hunting knife.

Shy knew it wasn't silver, even if the color was silver. She turned the serrated blade over in her hands. Stainless steel. Steel had iron, though, and in a lot of faerie stories iron was poison. Maybe that was the case with werewolves, too. Shy took the blade and its leather holder and brought it back into her room.

She still had the bottles of bane water. She wasn't sure if that would be enough to kill a werewolf, or cure him. The lore seemed mixed on what wolfsbane did, but from her own research, it seemed to repel David, and that leaned toward being a poison that could kill him. She would just need to figure out how get him to ingest it.