* * *
They were out in the middle of a field again, just outside of town. It was darker now, of course, but luckily the full moon lit up the area nicely.
"Well, I don't see it," Will said. "Our dot is here, its dot is here. Where's our friggin' anomaly?"
"Testy, aren't we?" Emily asked. She was smiling. Despite the fact that she had wanted to go home before, this was kind of fun. What new crazy thing would they run into now?
They looked around, turning, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. But they both stopped suddenly as they heard a panting noise. Like an animal panting. Like something was running towards them. Like a dog or a—crap!
They both realized at once what it must be. Full moon, dog sounds.
"Werewolf!" Will yelled as he finally spotted it. It was coming from a thicket of trees 50 feet away. Emily let out a scream and they both began to run. It was running on both legs like a human, but looked like a giant wolf. A human shaped wolf.
Will pulled out his pocket guide as they ran. But it was too dark to read. "Shit!" he said.
Emily dug around in her pockets and in the backpack. She handed him a pen light as they ran. He grabbed it and tried to shine it on the book and read, all while he was running. "Page 73..." he muttered as he frantically flipped through the pages.
"Why don't I just shoot it with the pellet gun?" Emily yelled.
Will read the page. "No, don't!" he shouted. "It takes about 20 shots of that stuff to knock him out!" He read further. "Oh!" he said, excitedly. "Silver bullet BB gun!"
She began digging through the bag in the dark as she ran. Apparently speed wasn't a big part of werewolfism. A real wolf or any wild animal would have caught them by now. That was something.
"It looks like a pistol!" Will shouted as he looked at the drawing. "And—" at that moment, he tripped on a gopher hole and quickly fell face down in the dirt with a loud 'thwump!'.
Emily gasped, "Will!" The werewolf ran up to Will, but Emily had found the BB gun pistol. She shot it at the werewolf's chest. It yelped like a dog and fell over backwards and laid still on the ground.
"Pthlp!" Will spit dirt out of his mouth as he got up. "I am not enjoying this day," he said through gritted teeth.
Emily helped him up, and began to brush dirt off his clothes. "Poor baby," she said, and kissed him on the cheek. But she smiled too, because it was damn funny. Now that he wasn't eaten by a werewolf anyway, and hadn't broken any bones.
"Ohhhh!" Will said, disgusted with her laughing eyes as he brushed off his jeans and readjusted his glasses. "Woman."
"Now what?" Emily said. "We just leave him here like this?"
"No, see, what I was going to say is—"
Just then the werewolf suddenly began to shake and convulse, and then something weird happened. Like a cloud of soot or dust just a few inches around his body, the werewolf seemed to shake off his werewolf nature. And underneath it was a man. The dust of the werewolf lay on the ground around him.
"—that," Will finished.
"Wow," Emily said. "You mean he isn't dead?"
"No, he's not dead," Will said.
The man now lay perfectly still, and must have been sleeping.
"And, uh... he's nude," Emily said.
"Yeah, he is," Will realized and covered Emily's eyes. She snickered and wiggled away from him.
"I'll get a blanket out of the car," she said as she walked away.
The former werewolf seemed to be a yuppyish man in his mid-thirties, clean cut, dark brown hair. He was kind of short, a lot shorter than he had seemed as a werewolf. And in good shape. Not Olympic swimmer shape, but no beer gut either. Something in between.
Emily came up behind him with a chuckle, "Stop staring at the nude man," she teased.
He realized he was doing it again. Over analyzing everything. Sheesh.
Emily covered the man with a blanket and they both stood back and stared at him.
"So, do we just leave him here, or—" Emily started.
Just then the man gasped and his eyes popped open. Emily and Will jumped a little, this was so startling.
The man sat up with a snap. A cold sweat broke out all over him. He clutched the blanket to him and stood up. He was shaking a little. He looked at the two of them, "W-where... am... I?" he asked.
"In a field outside of town," Will answered. The man looked around, still confused.
"I must have been sleep walking again," the man said.
"Oh," Emily said. "Yeah."
The man nodded with a shiver and smiled at her. "So who are you?" he said to them.
Will realized how weird it must seem to wake up to the two of them standing over you. "Uh... " then Will broke into a character, "Me and my girlfriend were like out here looking for aliens." He almost had a valley girl accent. Emily stared at him.
The man said, "You don't really believe in that stuff, do you?"
Will said, "Yeah."
Emily added, "Totally," in her own valley girl type accent.
Will gave her a strange look.
The man chuckled good-naturedly at them. "You kids should get home. There are wild animals out here, you know."
Emily and Will exchanged a knowing look.
The man tightened the blanket around his shoulders. "I can't tell you how many mornings I've woken up outside with cuts and claw marks—" he stopped himself and smiled an embarrassed smile. "Say, I uh," he peeked under the blanket, "seem to be naked under here. This your blanket?" They nodded. "You mind if I uh... take it with me?"
"No," they said at once. "Go ahead," Will added.
The man nodded and smiled, and started walking gingerly through the field, in his bare feet, back toward town.
When he got out of earshot, Emily thwacked Will on the arm, "'Girlfriend'?"
"What? I was play acting," he said, flipping through the pocket guide again.
"Hm," she said. "So, he has no memory of being a werewolf?"
Will turned a page in the pocket guide. He read aloud, "'There is no need to use the Memory Eraser on former werewolves, as werewolfism automatically erases the memory of everything that happens when someone is in werewolf form.'"
"Huh," Emily said. "Imagine that."
They started walking back through the field to the car. Will said in a scary low English accent, "It's spooky out here tonight on the moor."
"Quit it," Emily snapped.
He poked her in the side and tickled her a bit. She swatted his hand away but smiled. Then he put his arms around her from behind as they walked and she giggled. He let her go and they held hands as they continued walking. He stared at her. She looked over at him and they both smiled.
Then she started to skip happily and he said, "No." They let go, "No skipping." She giggled. "Ugh," he said as she skipped to the car.
From behind them suddenly they heard a voice, "Hey."
They turned, startled. "Hey, I know you," the man said. It was Henry. Just walking back from waking up in the field, probably.
They both looked surprised. "You know us?" Will asked. Emily began turning pages quickly through the pocket guide.
"Yeah," Henry looked like the light was dawning. "I chased you two with a gun or something... through a building or—" Plunk. He fell to the ground as Emily shot him with a pellet gun.
"Why does he remember us?!" Will asked, bewildered. He took out a memory eraser. "Is this thing broken?"
"No..." Emily said, reading from the book, "Oh, look here, 'Possession splits the memories into layers, which makes it difficult to erase the possession victim's memory. Repeated memory erasing should work.'" She gave Will an exasperated look.
"Damn," he said as he bent down to erase Henry's memory again. "Do we get overtime?" he asked Emily seriously as he looked up from his work.
She shrugged her shoulders.