What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World by Henry Clark

Author:Henry Clark
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction / Science Fiction, Juvenile Fiction / Social Issues - Friendship, Juvenile Fiction / Humorous Stories, Juvenile Fiction / Action & Adventure - Survival Stories
ISBN: 9780316206679
Publisher: Little Brown Books Young Readers
Published: 2013-07-01T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

15

Never Moon a Werewolf

none of us moved.

“Come, come,” said the wolf. “I won’t bite. I know there are three of you, no matter how motionless two of you thought you were being.”

Freak squared his shoulders and took a step forward. I shrugged myself off my peg and joined him. After a moment, Fiona came up beside me.

“That’s better,” said the wolf. “I see all four of us have come masked to the ball. I suppose introducing ourselves would make it less romantic. You can, however, remove your helmets. The door has been open long enough for the gas to have dissipated.”

None of us made a move to undo our helmets. Freak turned his head to look at the door.

“I wouldn’t think of running for it,” the wolf informed us. “You would not get far.”

“How could you stop us?” Fiona surprised me by saying. Her voice was muffled by the suit. She sounded like an older version of herself with a head cold. “You’re not even on the same continent as we are.”

The wolf’s eyes narrowed. “And how would you know that?”

“Every time you reply to somebody, there’s a brief pause before you speak. It’s obvious the TV signal is being bounced off a satellite to someplace far away.”

“Yes!” shouted the wolf. “Exactly! That’s the sort of thinking that none of the five people lying at your feet ever seemed to exhibit. How I miss that. I believe it’s called intelligence.”

“Are they dead?” asked Freak, with a stillness in his tone I had never heard before. He sounded older than he was, too.

“Dead? Who? Them? No. Not technically. What kind of man do you take me for?”

“A big hairy one with enormous claws and fangs,” I said.

“What? Oh. You mean the avatar. It might interest you to know the avatar software monitors my heart rate and blood pressure. It’s only when those things go up that the wolf appears. We have a saying where I come from: ‘Never moon a werewolf.’ Actually, I just made that saying up, since, where I come from, we don’t have a moon. It’s a werewolf-free zone. Anyway, each of the people at your feet had mooned me. They had offended me. They brought out the wolf, and look what happened. They’re not dead, though.”

Fiona screamed.

Coyote had grabbed her by the ankle. He was lying on his back looking up at her, drool running down one side of his face. Fiona yanked her ankle away and Coyote rolled over on his side and gurgled. The other four bodies showed faint signs of life.

“What mnemocide gas does,” explained the wolf, “is cause the brain’s synapses to fire all at once, in one huge burst. The result is like an electromagnetic pulse near a computer. It wipes the memory completely clean. Their personalities, their memories—everything they were, except for some basic motor skills—are gone. They become clean slates.”

“Will their memories come back?” demanded Freak.

“Never.”

“Then how,” said Freak slowly, “is that different from being dead?”

“It isn’t. Not if you want to get philosophical about it.

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