by Jason Offutt
Your Arsenal and Where to Keep It
Werewolves, a lot like moose or anything else just too damned big, are hard to kill. Unless you’re carrying a really big gun, you can pull the trigger on a wolf man all day and just piss it off. Unfortunately, most people don’t carry enough firepower—a 30.06 or larger-caliber rifle—on a stroll through the park, or their living room, to kill a werewolf. The werewolf, however, carries a bite force of greater than 1,200 pounds per square inch everywhere it goes. If it finds you when you’re not prepared, you won’t finish reading this sentence.
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Okay. You still here? Good. Let’s get ready.
Things You Should Have Everywhere
Fireworks: On Independence Day, dogs run, and hide under the bed. By shooting bottle rockets, or a couple of Mr. Turtles, your shape-shifting home intruder will be exactly where you want him—cowering under a large piece of furniture while you either escape or stab it with something long, and pointy. In close quarters, a Roman candle to the face is a quite effective method of werewolf combustion. Yes, defending your home with fireworks is a safety hazard, but what’s more important? Saving the family photo albums, or preventing a bloodthirsty beast from ripping the lungs from your chest?
Guns: As Americans, our Founding Fathers gave us the right to pack heat. The popular notion is that the framers of the Constitution put the Second Amendment into place so We the People could take back the government if it became corrupt. Actually, our nation’s founders came from Europe and were scared shitless of werewolves. It’s not a right for you as an American to have large projectile shooting weapons in your home; it’s a responsibility. Even if a werewolf doesn’t attack your home, it might attack your neighbor’s home, and what if your neighbor’s hot? When this happens, you’ll wish you’d honored the Second Amendment.
A Cat/Werewolf Distraction Device: Stuffed animals just don’t have the scent, the caterwaul, or the flailing claws to grab the attention of a werewolf like a cat. Although a tossed cat will only buy a few seconds—valuable seconds you might spend grabbing a rifle—throw it. Crazy Cat Lady might hesitate to toss Fluffy into the slavering jaws of a beast, but you can’t. Never get emotionally attached to a cat (it’s not that hard). Unlike monkeys and dogs, cats are as interchangeable as Legos. It’s wise to keep a couple around the house just in case of lycanthropes.
Frisbee/ball/stick/etc.: Like cats, these items are quick, easy distractions. Frisbees, balls, and sticks may not save you (they don’t have the chasing power of a cat), but they’ll give you a chance to send the werewolf off in another direction, and if you throw one outside, the beast might kill someone else instead.
Things You Should Have in the Kitchen
Bladed weapons: Most households don’t have bladed weapons adequate enough to slice through a werewolf in close quarters unless you grew up in some really messed-up redneck home with ninja swords on the walls, and Chinese throwing stars as beer coasters. Yes, farmers from the 1800s had scythes, and jungle explorers have machetes, but chances are you’re not a farmer from the 1800s or Indiana Jones. So what do you have? Steak knives and cutlery. Although steak knives work well when battling space aliens who have no idea the meat-slicing power of a four-inch serrated kitchen utensil, these knives are useless when fending off a beast with teeth longer than a human forearm. Cutlery—butcher knives, cleavers, bread knives and big pointy forks—are better for hand-to-hand combat.
Something boiling: Although a pan of boiling water in the face will distract a werewolf, boiling spaghetti sauce, cheese dip, or something else sticky can capture the beast’s attention long enough for you to grab a butcher knife and sever its windpipe. If you’re at home alone and suspect the large, hairy man tapping on your plate glass window might be a werewolf instead of the UPS guy, put a pan of Velveeta on the stove (First, coat the pot with a non-stick spray. This will make cleanup a snap).
Things You Should Have in the Bathroom
Bleach: In a darkened house, werewolves depend on their sense of smell to track you down, and eat you. While masking your scent with something as pungent as bleach, you can wait for the confused wolf-thing to come close enough to put a bullet in its head with that pansy .22-cailber pistol you bought to make you look cool (it doesn’t. Bad Ass Factor: Laugh in Your Face).
The Iron: Let’s face it. If a werewolf has trapped you in your bathroom, unless it’s an older house with a window you can squeeze through, at this point in the attack you’re desperate. Let’s say you’ve locked the door, and propped something against it. Grab the iron, plug it in, and turn the dial to “cotton.” By the time the werewolf has clawed through the door, the iron might have gotten hot enough to draw its attention away from you, and toward the searing pain on the end of its snout. If not, it makes a good bludgeoning tool and leaves the werewolf’s coat ready for a night on the town.
Things You Should Have in the Garage
Your car: During a werewolf attack, if you can get to your car, unless it’s a Chevy Volt, you’re going to be fine. People in movies are always fishing for their car keys when a beast is about to pounce. Idiots. Always keep a single car key hooked to a belt loop in case of a werewolf attack. No house key. No work key. No beer opener. The key has to be alone. A car’s not a sanctuary if you can’t get into it.
Car maintenance is equally important. Change the oil as per manufacturer recommendation. Check the tires and alignment regularly. And make sure you have plenty of wiper fluid to clean the windshield after you’ve driven over one of these raging (or, in Mexico, cheese-stealing, wife fondling) beasts. It wouldn’t be your best day to successfully kill a hound from Hell only to run into a tree because you can’t see the road through all the blood.
Pickaxe: There’s no reason anyone would own one of these tools unless they were a coal miner from the 1920s or a dwarf from The Lord of the Rings. But for some reason, companies still make pickaxes for sale to the general public, which is good for someone who has a pressing need to plant a metal spike into the head of a monster or hurry home to see how Snow White is doing.
Behavior of the Werewolf While You’re Trying to Kill It
Werewolves, since they are living, are even more averse to being killed than are vampires. Humans are hunters and wolves are hunters, so werewolves are like double hunters, which means they’re double tough to kill. If a werewolf is aware of a human trying to kill it, it will first laugh at you, second fight back, and third, when it realizes you’re serious about killing it, will bite, scratch, and be generally unsociable.
Disposing of the Body
During hunting season, when you kill something big like a moose, everyone is happy except animal rights activists, who protest your kill by weeping openly in public. But a dead werewolf isn’t as easy to deal with as a dead moose. The main difference between a dead moose and a dead werewolf is a meat processing plant will make jerky out of a moose. It’s hard to find a processing plant to butcher a dead werewolf—especially after it’s transformed back into Seth Green. Yes, a werewolf killed as a wolf will transform back into human form.
So what do you do with the body? Dehydrators are like $40. If you don’t feel too disturbed by cleaning a carcass that looks like the man behind Robot Chicken, you can make enough jerky in your own kitchen to give to friends and family. Doesn’t it feel good to get your Christmas shopping done early?
Burials are also nice. However, with a human-looking body, you have to be careful not to be seen. Nature trails, national parks, and other places people should visit but don’t work well.
Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (pointing at the Monster): Look here Benson, look at this. Do you know what those are?
Benson: No, Sir.
Baron Wolf von Frankenstein: Bullets. Crude bullets in his heart but he still lives.
--Son of Frankenstein, 1939
Chapter 3: Reanimated Corpses
The concept of a reanimated corpse hit popular culture in 1818 when Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, a story she sai
d came to her in a dream about a scientist who liked to dig up dead people, and turn them into sewing projects. One of these monsters came alive, and started killing German girls.
But was it a dream? Some speculate Shelley didn’t come up with this story in a dream, but from a visit to Castle Frankenstein, the boyhood home of alchemist and physician Johann Conrad Dippel. Dippel was one of many people in the Age of Enlightenment (which roughly means, Check Out This Shit) who tried to reanimate corpses with science. The scientists Galvani, Volta, Aldini, and Dippel—some of whom were friends of Shelley’s father—were all interested in the effects electricity had on the human body. You have to wonder what horrible thing happened in these guys’ childhoods. And Dippel lived in Castle Frankenstein (Bad Ass Factor 7 out of 10). No wonder he was messed up. Something similar probably happened in Simon Cowell’s youth. Jerk.
Reanimated corpses are as real as Bill O’Reilly’s forehead and twice as believable, but apart from the obvious problems associated with being a reanimated corpse, these monsters have a hard time dealing with life. Well, re-life, actually. It’s all about respect, and walking Frankenstein’s monsters stitched together from three or four corpses (hell, why not five?), hooked to a Die Hard battery and jump-started back to life, just don’t get respect. Out of the traditional Big Three of monsters—vampires, werewolves, and reanimated corpses—vampires and werewolves are rock stars. These slick, leather-wearing, professionally groomed monsters are cooler than Tyler Durden, The Dude, and Ferris Bueller sitting on the beach smoking cigars and eating bacon. Reanimated corpses aren’t even as cool as Weird Al Yankovic around 1983. This is why reanimated corpses are angry and spend a lot of their spare time strangling ten-year-old German girls picking flowers. Big tip: if you’re a ten-year-old German girl, and today’s Monster Warning Level has gone from Chartreuse to Soil Your Lederhosen, don’t pick flowers.
Problem One: They like to kill ten-year-old German girls.
Reanimated corpses need to be killed, not only because if you don’t kill them they’ll kill you, but most of them qualify for government social programs (Problem Two), and are wrecking our economy by sucking up all our taxpayer dollars.
There are also persistent rumors of covert government programs trying to reanimate corpses to serve as soldiers they don’t have to pay, house, feed, entertain, or count as casualties because, well heck, they’re already dead. And what will the military face in a future war? Monsters. In the case of a foreign military invasion of U.S. soil, all American homes should be fortified with moats, and armed with torches and pitchforks.
How to Identify the Undead
A reanimated corpse is something that was once dead, often bits and pieces of many someones, stitched together like a patchwork quilt before being brought back to life by a mad scientist. Trying to figure out why a scientist would do something so completely insane is a lot like trying to figure out why someone would make a patchwork quilt, but that’s probably why they’re called “mad.” And I’m talking about the quilters, not the scientists.
If it isn’t obvious why something needs to be killed that was dead, is now alive, and isn’t Jesus, let’s consider the following:
1) I’m not sure you heard me before. IT USED TO BE DEAD. Now it’s alive—again—all gaunt with baggy eyes, and is walking the earth like it owns the place. Lindsey Lohan seriously creeps me out.
2) Since the now-living corpse was once dead (many types of dead), it no longer has a soul and the soul—or souls, depending on the volume of body parts—is sitting around in the afterlife thinking, That green complexion really doesn’t go with my eyes. God, won’t somebody just kill me? Or at least apply blush? But because this particular monster has no soul, killing it is guilt free, kind of like eating Lean Cuisine.
3) They don’t tip well.
Sure, reanimated corpses look more human than Mickey Rourke, but … oh, wait, they are more human than Mickey Rourke and, come to think of it, Tara Reid. If you see anything that looks all mangled and fleshy, maybe you shouldn’t take any chances. Like Mom always told me, “Don’t leave home without your machete. You never know when you’ll meet Cher.”
Reanimated Corpse Powers
Reanimated corpses have five major powers:
1) They can breathe even though they’ve been dead, embalmed, buried, dug up, butchered, reassembled, and pumped with enough electricity to eliminate their need to ever take Viagra.
2) They’re as strong as The Incredible Hulk.
3) The Sympathy Factor. These creatures shamble around like they’re really hung over and, let’s face it, if they had a telethon, science would have cured them twenty years ago. Warning: feeling sympathy for something—especially monsters—causes you to pause, which means they now have time to kill you. Never pause.
4) They can take a punch. Since these hunks of meat have been sewn together from a number of different bodies, their nerve endings are all wonky. Like old school Mike Tyson, they can’t feel pain. So unless you crush a reanimated corpse’s skull with a hammer blow to the forehead, it will try (and fail) to grin before it snaps your spine.
5) Since they’ve already been dead once, they’re pretty touchy, which means accidentally bumping their cart in the supermarket might lead to them running your still-beating heart across the laser scanner.
Reanimated Corpse Weaknesses
Reanimated corpses are so slow hugely overweight director Michael Moore could outrun one. Then again, reanimated corpses don’t get tired. So unless Michael Moore gets into his car and runs over the monster, the monster will catch him sweating like a holiday ham in front of the doughnut shop, and crush his throat. Monsters 1, big fat hypocrites 0.
• Reanimated corpses are stupid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a mad scientist could hypothetically give it a genius’s brain, but then, instead of a stupid dead guy limping around killing German children, we’d have a brilliant dead guy limping around killing German children. A reanimated Einstein is twice as scary as a reanimated Gomer Pyle. Not only will he kill you, he’ll kill you with physics.
How to Avoid Reanimated Corpses
Since reanimated corpses are pretty much confined to remote castles in German forests and secret government laboratories, it’s pretty easy to avoid them. However, sometimes one gets loose and terrorizes the countryside. What do you do?
1. Exercise until you can run faster than a dead guy who came back to life, and can’t bend his knees.
2. Avoid people in lab coats.
Who’s Going to Help You
Villagers. No matter where these beasts show up, there’s never a shortage of angry, pitchfork- and torch-carrying peasants to chase down a shambling monster, and set fire to the building it’s taken refuge in. Yes, the Germans started two world wars, but they sure know how to take care of monsters.
If you can’t locate any German villagers, try Abbot and Costello. They at least lived until the end of their monster movies.
Your Arsenal and Where to Keep It
These critters are rare, not as rare as a cheerleader who’d give me the time of day in high school, but more rare than ivory-billed woodpeckers. So it’s possible the guy you see shambling down your street clutching a brown paper bag might not be a drunken bum with a 40-ounce Olde English 800 in the sack. It might be a reanimated corpse carrying your neighbor’s head. As the thing shuffles under streetlights, the questions you need to ask are, 1) how can I determine if the thing is a-down-on-his-luck vagrant or a monster? and 2) either way, what am I going to do about it? Legal note: In Texas and Alaska, killing a drunken vagrant carrying a human head in a liquor sack is usually a misdemeanor.
Okay, so you’re not deep in a Bavarian forest, or Area 51, or Los Angeles, and you encounter a walking dead guy. Be ready to defend yourself in places you don’t expect to encounter a reanimated corpse, like the grocery store, church, or your house. Here are some tips.
Weapons Found in a Grocery Store
It would be a lot easier to kill a monster if they were courteo
us enough to follow you into a hardware store, gun shop, or karate studio where killing instruments are readily available. But monsters are rarely thoughtful. However, since reanimated corpses are technically still human, they’re as prone to human frailties as the rest of us. They’re just too stupid to realize it. So there are lots of weapons at your disposal in a grocery store.
Frozen turkeys: Turkey tastes great on Thanksgiving, and gives you that nice, sleepy feeling that makes you doze off during the Lions game. Or maybe it’s just the Lions game. Turkey works on reanimated corpses, too. A frozen turkey has the skull-crushing power of a ten-pound sledgehammer. If you smash one of these gobblers into the monster’s cranium, it might just get dopey enough to drop like Uncle Phil after a few too many Bloody Marys.
Knives: Any good meat department will have butcher knives, cleavers, and paring knives. Although these are close-range weapons, while the monster is staggering around from the crushing blow of a frozen turkey, you’ll have a safety cushion to slice its Achilles tendon, and watch it flop on the floor.
Broken glass: Grocery stores are loaded with products packaged into glass containers, which makes each one a potential weapon. According to the greatest movie ever made, Predator, “If it bleeds, we can kill it,” so start busting bottles, and hurling shards of broken glass at the thing. If you cut it badly enough, it might bleed to death before it gets close enough to rip out your spleen. And just because these beasts are slow and shambling, don’t get cute and start breaking olive jars. Break those big, industrial-sized pickle jars. You only get style points for living.
