Wolftown, Part Nine

John generally left the wolf responders alone; they seemed too tired and bedraggled to answer questions, and a few treated him with suspicion or as an intruder.

But he learned that Mayor Dwyer reluctantly mobilized the Wolf Guard in the early morning of March 11. Most had neither hunted wolves before nor joined the Wolf Guard before March 11, but they tended to own guns and patriotically worry about Wolftown’s safety. They relied on the authorities’ instructions.

Due to the flood, some responders sheltered in houses or businesses, ready to patrol the streets once the water level lowered, but most people rested in Holy Trinity. Some people preferred living in damp houses without electricity or plumbing to venturing outside and encountering the wolf.

Phil, the town plumber, and Gary, Holy Trinity's, acquired potable warm water and improvised ways to relieve people. They asked John not to describe their methods to inspectors.

Most wolf responders were male and unaffiliated with Holy Trinity, but Lutheran women popped up, apparently prepared for anything. They scrounged water-tight containers and laid out the locker rooms’ towels and washcloths in the science lab. Their hot food and coffee wafted from the Fellowship Hall, which John avoided. If he asked, “What brand is it? What’s in it?” somebody would ask why, and speaking with people all day made him too tired to explain veganism.

Eating a granola bar from his pocket, John re-read and organized his notes at the gymnasium’s folding table.

Officer Billy Schuster trudged to him. “Hi, Mr. Dalton.”

“Hi. You don’t need to call me mister,” John said, four years older than Schuster.

Previously, John had been too preoccupied to think about Schuster’s appearance, but now he noticed Schuster’s red eyes. He assumed Schuster had cried; he forgot if his eyes were red earlier.

“I’m on duty, so I call all men mister,” Schuster said. “I’m looking for Wayne.”

“He’s taking a nap, but I don’t know where.”

“Let him sleep. Half the wolf responders are too old for stuff like this. While I’m here, do you have questions for me?”

“I was told to be careful what I asked you because you answer whether or not you have authorization.”

He snorted a laugh and said, “It depends on the topic. I’ve asked Phelps and Mayor Dwyer what I’m authorized to tell you. Has Wayne told you about the attack on Foster and I?”

“Not yet.”

“It’s important to things I have to ask Wayne. I’m assuming you would be listening, so you need context. You can chime in if you want. Do you want me to tell you?”

“Sure, but I can’t help you if you intend to kill the wolf. I don’t know how I could help anyway.”

“Okey-dokey. If you want to listen but decide not to give any advice, that’s fine. It’s up to you and I won’t pressure you. With the kind of ideas we have, we need multiple perspectives. And you seem to be available.”

“I’m a lot less experienced with wolves than Wayne is. And a lot of other people.”

“I also don’t have a good way to preserve my account of what happened. I think you’d write down what you heard and it would be difficult to get the only copy from you.”

“Because of the police corruption?”

“Making multiple copies of things and stuff like that is a reflex at this point. It probably isn’t a big deal.”

“Sure, I’ll listen.”

To avoid somebody inconvenient overhearing, Schuster led John to the principal’s office, which much of Holy Trinity’s activity would bypass. Normally, John would have dubiously gone with him, especially alone, but Schuster seemed ethical.

“Just so you know, I’m not looking for revenge. I don’t care if the wolves get captured or killed or whatever, but they need to stop killing people,” Schuster said.

“I agree that they need to stop,” John said. “And most mayors would have authorized killing them.”

“You won’t like what we did to the wolf.”

“It might be acting normally for a wolf, but I feel sorry for the victims. I don’t want wolves to attack people.”

“We didn’t, either. Officer Foster and I were on unpaid administrative leave for accusing Chief Laufenberg of misconduct. We volunteered for duty because the wolves were attacking people and somebody was going to die sooner or later. We became cops to protect people and sometimes animals are involved. If Wolftown had a bigger force, we probably would’ve been given duty today instead of last night.”

The Wolftown Police Department issued officers with pepper spray, also called OC, 92 Beretta handguns, and, against the wolf, tranquilizer guns with ketamine darts. Pepper spray and grappling subdued the average unruly person in Wolftown, but Wayne was highly theoretical about pepper spray’s effects on wolves. They carried guns because many citizens owned guns and some visitors hunted. The semi-automatic handgun fired 9mm rounds and one magazine held fifteen rounds. Thus far, every attempt to tranquilize a wolf failed, but Schuster and Foster expected somebody to sedate a wolf sooner or later.

“But this morning, you shot seventeen times before reloading,” John said.

“Stephanie made me switch to my Glock,” Schuster said. “I don’t think it changes anything, but it makes her feel better.”

Left-handed, Foster carried the gun and pepper spray on his left side, but Schuster on his right. They could use weapons with the opposite hands, but less accurately.

In his briefing, Wayne essentially said, that the wolves would win a grappling match except against Tarzan.

Corporal Karl Henry advised policemen to bring bandages and tourniquets in their pockets, instead of leaving them in the patrol cars’ first aid kits, and to use the injured policeman’s first aid supplies.

On March 10, the Marshals worried Ms. Parker and her boyfriend or their friends might be unaware of a wolf near the children or unable to protect them during a wolf attack. Mr. Tyrone Marshal offered to board up Ms. Parker’s dog flap. She had already barricaded the dog flap.

On March 11, at approximately the same time as the wolf attack on Schuster and Foster, police officers and animal control nearly caught Barker and Charlie.

At 5:00 AM on March 11, Mr. Marshal woke up, letting his wife sleep in. With children inside and a wolf outside, in order to smoke a cigarette, he ran the stove’s ventilation fan and stuck his head out a kitchen window. His kitchen window faced Ms. Parker’s backyard.

Mr. Marshal looked out the backyard. Seeing a large dog different than Ms. Parker’s mutt, Rowdy, he turned on the back door’s light. He thought the animal seemed less doglike. It pushed halfway through the dog flap, paused, backed out again, and walked between the houses.

Worried about the wolf attacks, Mr. Marshal warned the homeowners. Ms. Parker told Mr. Marshal they preferred animal control over the police and asked him not to call anybody. Because the wolf left, and their quick search showed no wolves, they felt safe. He worried the wolf could have returned or would in a few minutes.

Mr. Marshal called 911, brought his shotgun and buckshot shells to the kitchen, and through the window, watched for the wolf. Also, he warned the dispatcher about his shotgun and promised when police arrived, he would store it in the master bedroom’s closet.

Schuster and Foster responded to the 911 call and saw a wolf further down Ms. Parker’s street.

The policemen woke up Ms. Parker, and Schuster assured her that the Wolftown Police Department focused on the wolves and fatal situations, disregarding everything else. Her family’s and friends’ safety concerned Schuster and Foster. Foster pointing out wolf eyes across the street changed Ms. Parker’s mind.

As if looking for a human, having little idea how else to conduct a house search for an animal, Foster and Schuster cleared the messy, dirty one-story two-bedroom house. They gathered Ms. Parker, her boyfriend Mr. Lyons, her children, and Rowdy into the master bedroom and told them to lock the door.

To block the door, Ms. Parker had piled stuff around a broken chair that Schuster considered junk but Ms. Parker might consider a legitimate piece of furniture. The pile had been scooted and toppled towards the kitchen like something shoved it from the dog flap.

Because of people smoking, Ms. Parker’s gas stove, and a cluttered house scattered with flammable things, plus Schuster and Foster’s unexpressed dubious feeling about the smoke detectors, the policemen offered to board up the dog flap themselves. Ms. Parker thought their barricade worked well; she cared slightly about damage to the door.

Ms. Parker kept Rowdy inside because of the wolf, and she and Mr. Lyons said the front door was shut when Mr. Marshal called. They wondered if he called the police on Rowdy again.

The family intended to go to sleep when the police left. Schuster and Foster thought Ms. Parker might agree to boarding up the dog door if Mr. Marshal’s description did not match Rowdy, but disturbing her sleep again would irritate her.

Meanwhile, Mr. Marshal saw the canine and heard a wolf.

Schuster and Foster picked their way back-to-back around Ms. Parker’s house to the Marshal’s house. The upkeep levels clearly marked the boundary between their properties, and less so the other neighbors.

“Do you feel like somebody is watching us?” Foster asked along the way.

“They could be,” Schuster said. “Do you think we get that feeling from animals?”

“No idea.”

Foster and Schuster asked Mr. Marshal to leave his gun inside the closet until they left and warned him that firing a gun within Wolftown’s city limits was illegal. He said, “I won’t go near it, no way. I don’t want a misunderstanding where somebody gets shot.”

They asked Mr. Marshal about their dog flap idea. He was willing to lend tools to Schuster and Foster, but absolutely never to Ms. Parker’s family or her guests. “And don’t bring the toolbox with you,” he said. For extra wolf resistance, he suggested the drill, and he volunteered to unscrew the board later.

Schuster and Foster apologized to Mrs. Marshal for waking up her and the children. Taking Mr. Marshal’s statement, they heard gunfire near Ms. Parker’s house. They told him to stay inside, lock the doors, and keep everybody away from the windows, and radioed dispatch again.

Cautiously, Schuster and Foster returned to Ms. Parker’s house, both with drawn guns. Schuster saw a wolf’s glowing eyes, but the wolf ran away.

According to Mr. Lyons, a wolf jumped near the window several times. Standing inside the bedroom, Mr. Lyons fired through the window, breaking the glass; police determined he completely missed the wolf. Schuster considered this surprisingly clear thinking compared to Mr. Lyons’ thought processes on previous calls. He and Foster warned Mr. Lyons about various laws and recommended telling officers he had a gun. To his and Foster’s relief, Ms. Parker’s family would go to a friend’s house.

Schuster and Foster intended to escort the family safely to their car, but Foster saw the wolf across the street. It bolted behind a neighbor’s house.

Instead, they decided to search for the wolf and ask Mr. Marshal to warn his neighbors.

So, Ms. Parker’s family locked themselves in the windowless bathroom, waiting for the police to either catch the wolf or chase it away.

The wolf vocalized closer to the Marshals’ house than Ms. Parker’s house.

On the dash to the Marshals’ house, Foster said, “Sometimes I really hate the Second Amendment.”

Mr. Marshal opened the door in time for Schuster and Foster to run straight inside. They still asked for permission, though. He began phoning his neighbors.

Mrs. Marshal said she saw something towards the front of their house.

Schuster slung his tranquilizer gun over his back and drew his handgun, while Foster held the tranquilizer gun in one hand and had his other hand on his handgun. They walked with their backs to the walls, and when going between houses, they moved back to back. Schuster could not tell John what they said during radio transmissions, but they remained in contact with the dispatcher.

Over a couple minutes, the wolf returned to Ms. Parker’s and Marshal’s house. The dispatcher said that Mr. Marshal said the wolf explored the dog door again. By the time Schuster and Foster reached Ms. Parker’s house, the wolf had moved out of sight along the wall with the broken window.

A pair of wolf eyes glowed in front of Schuster for several seconds; he doubted his shot struck the wolf.

As Foster turned the corner, the wolf bit his right leg just above the knee. He screeched and fell.

Schuster turned the corner. He tried to dazzle the wolf without blinding Foster. He repositioned himself. Because Foster and the wolf moved constantly, Schuster could not find a clear line of fire.

Foster fired his handgun three times, once inside the wolf’s mouth, and once striking it.

Retelling the events to John in a church building, Schuster paraphrased much of Foster’s words through the rest of the attack. In an alarming, panicked tone Schuster had never heard from anybody before, Foster yelled, “Shoot it! I can’t fire my gun!”

Just when Schuster saw Foster and the wolf, he tore something off Foster’s body. Schuster initially hoped the floppy thing was his shirt or the softer fabric covering of his body armor, but worried it was Foster’s flopping skin or an intestine.

In the same tone, Foster said, “I lost my gun!”

Likely, Foster gripped any part of the gun with either hand, but rain, blood, and mud made the gun too slippery for a secure grip, and the pain probably discouraged using his hand. If only one finger looped through the trigger, and nothing else touched the gun, Foster could have lost it. Schuster believed Foster touched the gun without holding it for as long as possible; he may have dropped it multiple times. The wolf bit through Foster’s left hand, affecting his dexterity. The bites on his forearm affected his grip strength. The wolf injured Foster’s right hand less severely, but enough to complicate firing a gun with a non-dominant hand.

He continued wrestling with the duty belt and told Schuster to shoot regardless of hitting him. He fired at the wolf’s ribs; around the same time, Foster pepper sprayed the wolf, which flinched and yelped.

Schuster fired three more times at the fleeing wolf, while Foster tranquilized the wolf one-handed. The heavily bleeding wolf held a solid metal object in his mouth. It resembled a gun.

Slumped against the wall and ground, Foster fumbled with his tranquilizer gun.

“I can’t reload,” he said.

“Take it easy,” Schuster said.

Schuster looked for Foster’s injuries under the mud, from head to toe.

“Did it bite you?” Foster asked.

“No. Where are you bitten?” Several times, Schuster would tell Foster, “Take it easy.”

“In my radio.”

“What?”

“You didn’t shoot me.”

“I shot you?”

“No, you didn’t. It whizzed.”

“Mr. Marshal, can you hear us?” Schuster yelled.

Mrs. Marshal said, “He’s getting his shotgun! Tell him not to shoot around policemen!”

“Tom Lyons?” Foster asked.

To Schuster's relief, body armor protected the front of Foster’s chest and torso.

“Okey-dokey, ma’am. Tell him Foster and I told you to make him listen to you. Stay inside.” To Foster, he said, “Mr. Marshal has a shotgun.”

Foster paid little attention to the pain throughout the attack, but he began to notice it. His left hand and arm poured blood, causing most of his blood loss. His left middle finger dangled by a tendon or his skin, and the wolf had bitten or torn off his left index finger, his trigger finger; blood gushed from them.

Foster asked, “Where’s my wedding ring?”

“You have it,” Schuster said. “Where’s your tourniquet?”

“I promised Megan I wouldn’t take it off. Where’s my wedding ring?”

“It’s on your finger.”

Schuster applied Foster’s tourniquet to Foster’s arm. More blood streamed down Foster’s hip and leg, and Schuster hoped it could wait. Applying direct pressure outside felt unsafe.

“It bit my knee and knocked me down,” Foster said.

“I’m inside, keeping an eye out for the wolf,” Mr. Marshal called.

The empty space between Ms. Parker’s house and Mr. Marshal’s house was shorter than the space between Ms. Parker’s house and the police car. Moving Foster would require a few minutes. Schuster administered first aid and asked Mr. Marshal for permission to hide in his house, despite rabies.

Simultaneously, Foster groaned that the wolf tore off his duty belt, his gun was gone, and the pepper spray blew into his eyes, and, scared, that the wolf would return. He fiddled with his pocket, wincing.

“I can’t get it and open it in time,” he said.

“What?”

“Yeah, come in, but stay in the kitchen, so she can bleach everything,” Mr. Marshal called. “She’s got the kids in the bathroom.”

Schuster was sticking Foster’s flashlight in his right pocket and telling him which side.

“My knife. I need a weapon.” Foster dropped his red Swiss Army knife.

“Okey-dokey. We’ll be there in a minute. We appreciate it, sir.”

Schuster unfolded the larger blade, and Foster squeezed the pocketknife in his right hand.

“I’ll watch your back.” Being dragged, Foster said, “Yeah, Mr. Marshal. Thanks for your help,” Foster called. “Come on, I’m scared. Give me your OC.”

“I’ll take the safety strip off, so you can grab it off me.”

“Tell Megan to stay away from me.” Foster methodically reached for the flashlight.

“Take it easy.”

“No, you’ve been exposed. Stay away from Megan.”

Schuster began dragging Foster again. “Okay. Take it easy. I took off the safety strip.”

“Tell Stephanie to tell Megan.” Foster yelled, “Wolf, wolf, wolf!”

Part 10 coming November 1, 2024.