A Month with Werewolves

K. Matthew

Copyright 2012

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Smashwords Edition

No civilian had ever been inside the
Blackfoot Werewolf Reservation before. They called it a
reservation, but it was more like a relaxed concentration camp
where werewolves were separated from the rest of society to live
out their lives peacefully until a cure was found for their
condition.

I had little interest in the subject until I
was offered a chance to investigate the reservation for a
journalism piece. Since no civilian had ever been allowed inside of
the reservation, my report would gain worldwide recognition. It
would be my big break, skyrocketing a career that I had been
working hard at for the past five years.

As I pulled up to the reservation, I took a
deep breath. The outside of it looked like a prison, with a
thirteen foot high parameter fence surrounding the one thousand
acres of land. There was a small compound that I had to go through
before I could get to the reservation itself. I would stay there
for my first night, learning how the place was run before they took
me inside to live out the rest of the month with the
werewolves.

“Identification, please,” a security guard
requested as I drove up to the gate leading into the compound.

“I'm Taya Raveen, journalist for the National
News Network,” I replied with a smile, handing the guard my work
badge and driver's license.

His body language emitted nothing but
coldness towards me as he gazed down at my cards with a deadpan
expression before handing them back to me. “If you'll hang a right
at the next turn and follow the road, you'll come to the Visitors
Center. There are signs leading the way. You can park your car out
front, then go sign up for a Visitor's badge at the front
desk.”

I nodded politely before putting my yellow
Volkswagon Bettle in drive and continuing down the road. If it
weren't for the signs pointing the way, I probably would have
driven right past the Visitors Center. All the buildings in the
compound looked the same, small and tan on the outside. The only
distinguishing characteristic was the Visitors Center sign next to
the door.

I pulled into the parking lot and made my way
inside to the front desk. Another less than excited security guard
took my identification again before handing me a plain white clip
on badge with the word Visitor printed on it in bold.

“Take a seat,” he said, gesturing towards a
set of four black leather chairs that faced each other in front of
his desk.

“Thank you,” I responded courteously before
flopping into one of them and pulling out my camera.

There wasn't much to see in the Visitors
Center, so my picture-taking was short. Just a few framed photos of
wolves on the walls, gazing down upon me with very human eyes. I
imagined that they were images of the werewolves in their wolf
form. Out of boredom and curiosity, I stood to examine them more
closely. This was a part of the process that I wouldn't be seeing
since I would be pulled from the reservation before the next full
moon.

A door at the back of the Visitors Center
opened, and a man stepped through it wearing a pair of starched
khakis and a white button-down shirt. He looked young, in his late
twenties, with slicked down blonde hair and a pair of round framed
glasses.

“Ms. Raveen?” he asked, not even bothering to
look at the clipboard that the security guard offered to him.

“Yes.” I turned, preparing to extend my hand
as he approached.

“I'm John Edward, lead coordinator. I will be
your guide today.” He shook my hand firmly, giving me the warmest
smile I had seen since entering the compound. “Are you ready to
begin the tour?”

“Yes, thank you.” I nodded, preparing to
follow him out of the door from whence he had come.

“Did you have a nice drive up here?” John
asked as we walked through a small maze of identical buildings.

“Yes. It's beautiful country.”

“That it is.”

My eyes wandered while we walked, wondering
how long it took employees to memorize the layout of the compound
with so few distinguishing landmarks. Surely, there was a map that
they gave new hires to help them find their way around.

“It's a rather confusing place,” I
commented.

“It can be, if you're not familiar with it,”
he admitted, leading me to the door of one of the buildings and
then facing me to begin his speech. “This is the Containment
Center. Whenever a detainee is brought in, we hold them here until
after the full moon to make sure that they are actually infected.
It can be a long process for some, but there's unfortunately no
scientific way to determine if someone has the lycanthropy disease,
so observation is key.”

Inside the first room was a small desk with a
security guard. This man appeared to be friendlier than the last
two, his eyes lighting up as we walked through the door.

“Hey John,” he greeted in a voice that
suggested he didn't get a lot of visitors.

“Hey Johnny,” John replied.

My eyes darted to the security guard's name
tag. It must be interesting to have the same name as someone else,
I thought, happy that my name was unique, even though I wasn't a
big fan of it.

“How is our detainee today?” John asked.

“He's holding up pretty well. Would you like
to see him?”

“That's what we're here for,” he said
politely.

“Then come on through.” The security guard
waved us towards a metal detector, taking my camera so that I could
pass without setting it off.

We walked down a short hallway that opened up
into an area that consisted of three large jail cells. In each one
was an uncomfortable-looking bed, a sink, a toilet with a half-wall
in front of it, and a shower without a door.

John led me inside one of the unoccupied
cells for a better view. “This is where the detainees stay until we
are certain whether or not they are infected. Now I know that it
doesn't seem like much, but please remember that we don't get a
whole lot of government funding for this project. Detainees are
given three square meals a day, providing them with all the
nutrition that they need to remain healthy. If they become ill,
they are treated by our resident doctor, and they are also given
books to keep them entertained during their detention, as well as
the ability to watch the two provided televisions.” He gestured to
two small televisions mounted outside of the cells on the corners
of the walls. Then he pressed a panel on the wall to demonstrate
how the detainees could operate the televisions from inside their
cells.

“Are they allowed time outside of their cells
while they are waiting to find out if they have the disease?” I
asked while snapping a few photos of the bathroom area. It was
barely enough to give the detainees privacy.

“Yes. We have an outdoor recreation area that
they are allowed to use one hour out of every day. I'll take you to
it later.”

I nodded, following John out the sliding
glass door and down to the cell at the end where there was a young
man sitting on his bed reading a book. He glanced up at us for a
moment and then went back to reading as if we weren't even
there.

John lowered his voice when he spoke this
time, “This is Christopher Abbot. He was brought in about three
weeks ago. He had his first confined shift yesterday. A bit later
today, the medical team will come collect him for further
processing before he is released into the reservation.” He raised
his voice then. “You came at a good time. You'll get to see Chris's
introduction into the Blackfoot pack tomorrow. That should give you
some good material.”

I nodded, staring into the boy's nervous
looking blue eyes, which avoided us at all costs. He was
attractive, with shaggy sandy blonde hair and a tan complexion. The
longer I gazed upon him, the more I could feel my cheeks growing
warm, and I was never happier when John indicated that he was ready
to move on with the tour.

The next building that he took me to was
right across from the first. It was about the same size, though it
was divided differently, with a viewing area in the front
separating an expansive room in the back. It looked like a typical
interrogation room that you would see in the movies except for that
the walls were marred with deep claw marks.

“This is the shifting room. We bring the
detainees here during the full moon to monitor their shift. If they
turn, then we leave them here until the next morning, at which
point we continue with their processing. If they stay here all
night and do not shift, we release them back into the general
public the following day,” John explained.

“How often have you detained someone by
mistake?” I asked curiously, imaging how ticked off the innocent
person would be to have been put through such a process.

“It's only happened a handful of times. Most
of the time, the werewolves are easily enough to detain. The ones
that have been turned through a bite usually give themselves away
when they end up at the hospital or the doctor's office for it.
Werewolf bites are almost always severe enough for the person to be
forced to seek medical attention. For those that don't contract the
disease through a bite, after their first shift, they typically are
reported by a person who has either seen them shift or has
witnessed them in wolf form. Werewolves are about four times the
size of a normal wolf, so there's no question about the
difference.”

“Interesting. Are more werewolves detained in
cities or in the country?”

“Most of the ones we've detained have lived
in small country towns. There have been a couple we have detained
from the city. Most of those stories you've seen on the news. We
estimate that the majority of free roaming werewolves probably live
in rural areas however, secluded, and as far away from civilization
as possible to avoid detainment. Shall we go inside?” He gestured
to the door that led to the containment area, which was made of
thick steel.

“Yes, please,” I replied before snapping a
few pictures of the viewing area.

“As you can see, we use a one way mirror to
do our observations.” He pointed to the long panel that we had been
gazing through in the other room.

There wasn't much to see. Just a table and a
chair, typical of a regular interrogation room. I imagined that it
must be horrible to be locked up inside, waiting for the full moon
to rise with no indication as to when it was coming. This must be
one of the scarier parts of the processing.

When I was done taking pictures, we moved on
to the next building, which was a small medical facility. There
were two examination rooms, one used for staff and the other for
the detained werewolves. The two set ups were almost identical
except for that in the werewolf examination room, all the supplies
and tools were removed. John said that it was for the protection of
the medical staff.

Behind the examination rooms was a much
larger surgery suite. It looked well equipped to handle most of
what the reservation had to throw at them. John stood behind the
operating table with his hand resting on the thick blue
cushion.

“When someone is detained under the suspicion
of possessing the lycanthropy disease, they are brought to the
medical facility for a full-on evaluation of their physical health.
After it is distinguished that they have the lycanthropy disease,
males are brought here for a vasectomy and females are given birth
control.”

This shocked me a bit. I had never read about
werewolf pregnancy prevention in any of the reports during my
research. Giving the males vasectomies seemed a bit extreme.

“Why not just employ the use of condoms?” I
questioned curiously.

“We did that in the beginning, but the
werewolves have a tendency to mate after they shift. In that
situation, condoms obviously aren't effective. We find that giving
the males vasectomies has been the easiest and most cost effective
way to control reproduction. Since the reservation was established,
we've only had two live births. Both infants were born werewolves,
and both of them died early on. It's in everyone's best interest if
we prevent that from happening again.”