by Mark Woods
Bearing all this in mind, Wilfred thought, was it hardly surprising that some of his men might be starting to feel on edge?
To make them all feel a little better, Wilfred had told all his men to ready their weapons and be prepared for anything. He didn’t want The War-Wolves getting the jump on them when they were so close now to completing their mission. It was no easy task pretending to be brave when all the time, deep down inside, he felt every bit as scared and on edge as they were.
That was when he first noticed that one of his men was missing.
At some point, during their trek through the forest, one of them had been snatched away, right under their noses, and carried off into the night.
Not for one moment did Wilfred even consider one of his men might have gone AWOL, for they were a tightly knit unit and had been much better trained than that.
No, one of them had been taken – he was sure of it.
Wilfred was just attempting to discover which one of his unit had been the last to see their missing comrade when a shrill scream split the air, closely followed by the sound of gunfire. The scream almost sounded like it was coming from someone quite literally being torn in two.
Dark grey shapes suddenly appeared, brushing through the trees all around them, barely glimpsed in the shadows, but before Wilfred could even so much as shout a warning, suddenly he and his men were under attack.
One of his men instinctively dropped his weapon as one of The Wolves leapt out from amongst the trees and attacked him, clamping its jaws firmly around his wrist. As the Wolf’s grip tightened, the soldier attempted to hit out at the Wolf with his free hand, punching it about the head and pummelling it in a bid to make it lose its grip, but all to no avail. The wolf, having seized its prey, had absolutely no intention of letting go.
Two more Wolves leapt out at him from the darkness and attacked him from either side, dragging him down and pulling him to the floor, and a second later the Private was gone; lost beneath a sea of snarling bodies.
As all around him, more of Wilfred’s men suddenly came under attack, more and more Wolves began emerging from out of the forest and into the clearing they were in – but unlike the others attacking his unit, these creatures were different. Walking on their hind legs like men, these new creatures appeared to be no ordinary wolves but instead, some kind of hybrid. Seeing them, in a moment of sheer terror, Wilfred suddenly found himself contemplating if perhaps all those stories told about their targets might not, in fact, be true after all, and maybe not quite as far-fetched as he and his men had been led to believe.
They were surrounded, he noted, and drastically outnumbered.
The War-Wolves had obviously been planning this; had probably, no doubt, allowed themselves to be tracked up until this point, lured them in, and Wilfred and his men – blindly obsessed with finally catching up with their prey – had foolishly walked straight into their trap like lambs to the slaughter…
With no hope of them ever completing their objective now, sadly, Wilfred realised there was only one thing left for them to do.
“FALL BACK,” he shouted to his men – those of them who could hear him that was, as the sound of gunfire mixed with his men’s frantic screams filled the air.
“FALL BACK, RETREAT…RETREAT…RETREAT…IT’S A TRAP! I REPEAT – WE’VE WALKED INTO A TRAP!”
“But, Sir!” one of his men screamed back, opening fire on a monstrous beast rushing towards them – his bullets seeming to do little harm against the Wolf’s thick hide, almost as though the Wolf were invulnerable to ordinary lead. “We’re surrounded, there’s nowhere for us to go!”
“THEN MAKE AN OPENING!” Wilfred yelled back at him. “WE NEED TO GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE – AND LIKE, NOW! WE’RE OUTNUMBERED – AND IF WE DON’T LEAVE NOW, WE’LL ALL BE SLAUGHTERED!”
He drew out his service revolver and shot the Wolf coming towards them right between the eyes, stopping him instantly.
Well, that seemed to work, he thought, even as the Wolf before them suddenly started climbing back to its feet.
There was a perfectly round hole in its forehead where Wilfred had shot him, but even as Wilf watched, he saw the wound suddenly starting to close up and heal over until it almost looked as though the Wolf had never even been hit.
Fuck, he thought.
In their blind panic at all they were seeing before their eyes, his men had forgotten everything they had been trained for, all they had been taught.
They were firing indiscriminately, not picking their targets, not working together as a team, a unit, and this was resulting in them being picked off like cattle.
“FALL BACK!” he screamed again. “FALL BACK!”
Their only hope of survival, Wilf thought, was for them to regroup and fight back as a single unit or failing that, to just get the fuck right out of there and come back later to take The War-Wolves on again once reinforcements had arrived.
He pulled out a grenade and threw it behind him, back amongst the trees where more werewolves were starting to gather, blocking their retreat – and was there any question anymore, Wilf asked himself, that this was what these creatures were? For what else could they be, other than that which up until now, neither he nor any of his men had actually believed might exist? Wilfred felt a small sense of satisfaction as his grenade exploded, sending up huge great swathes of earth along with the bodies of several bloodied and severely wounded Wolves.
One of them had, quite literally, been blown apart and as Wilf watched, a bloody severed arm, complete with twitching claw, landed on the ground in front of him.
Heal from that, mother-fucker, Wilf thought, and holstering his gun for the moment, pulled the soldier who was standing alongside him back towards the exit he had made.
“COME ON, SOLDIER!” he bellowed. “WE NEED TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! LIKE, NOW!”
In almost an exact repeat of what Wilfred had seen happen earlier to one of his men, one of the surviving Wolves leapt forward. As if from out of nowhere, and clamped its jaws around his wrist, its sharp teeth biting deep into his arm. Screaming out loud and trying to stay focused despite the immense pain he was in, Wilfred drew out his service revolver again and shot the Wolf squarely between the eyes – at the same time thanking his lucky stars that he was ambidextrous and able to shoot with his left hand.
The Wolf’s head exploded, showering him in blood, and gore, and bits of brain tissue – in part because it was the same Wolf Wilfred had shot between the eyes only a few minutes before and hence still trying to heal itself, but also in part because of the sheer proximity from which Wilfred had shot it.
Suddenly feeling a surge of hope that there might still be a slim chance that some amongst them might actually end up surviving this, Wilfred began shouting out new orders to his men.
“CLOSE RANGE, MEN!” he bellowed. “SHOOT THEM UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL. DON’T FIRE UNTIL YOU SEE THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES!”
Another werewolf was headed towards him and Wilfred once more steadied his aim, emptying the rest of his service revolver into the monster’s head, his wounded and mauled right hand dangling uselessly beside him dripping blood.
Just as before, as with all the other shots he and his men had fired at The War-Wolves, the bullets seemed barely to penetrate the creature’s hide, not appearing to do much visible damage.
As Wilfred really started to think his number might be up, one of his men leapt out at the Wolf and attacked it from the side – plunging a dagger into the werewolf’s neck and stabbing him continuously; opening up his carotid artery, sending a spray of arterial blood up into the air.
“COME ON AND DIE, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!” The man was screaming, as he stabbed the War-Wolf over and over and over, seemingly caught up in some kind of battle frenzy.
All wrapped up in his berserker rage, the soldier never heard another of The War-Wolves coming up from behind him and before Wilfred could warn him, the creature was upon him, twisting his neck and ripping off the other soldier’s head like he were some kind
of mannequin, or doll, instead of one of his men.
“Come on, Sir. You were right – we need to go…” the soldier Wilfred had pulled along with him urged him, suddenly speaking up.
“Not without my men,” the Lance-Corporal replied. He was the one who had walked them straight into this, he thought. He was the one who had blindly led them here, into this trap – there was no way he could just turn tail, flee, and abandon his men, not with a clear conscience.
No, he was not leaving unless at least some of the rest of his men could make it out of this alive with him, he thought.
“It’s too late,” the soldier standing beside him told Wilfred. Roberts, he thought his name was, though with everything else that was going on around them, Wilfred was no longer one hundred percent sure; his mind was drawing a blank right now, faced with all this slaughter.
“WE NEED TO GO, NOW! And while there’s still an opening, otherwise we’re going to lose our opportunity and it’s important at least someone survives this to warn others what we’ve faced here.
“Someone needs to inform Command what went on here. Someone needs to warn them what to expect, otherwise they’ll come to rescue us and just wind up stumbling into the same trap we just did, and end up getting massacred just like the rest of our men! Besides which, you’re wounded –badly too – and in need of medical attention. You can’t do anything for your men now, the best thing you can do is survive, so at least those who come after us stand some kind of chance!”
Reluctantly, Wilfred admitted the young soldier was right.
If they didn’t go, and now, none of them were ever getting out of here alive and his superiors would never have any idea what had happened here to him and his men. Besides, someone had to be the one to tell them that all the stories they’d heard told about The War-Wolves were true.
Roberts was right, but it was not an easy decision to make – especially for someone who had spent his whole life believing that someday, he would end up dying on the battlefield like so many of his predecessors and forefathers had before him.
Drawing out the sabre Wilfred always carried by his side, and which had belonged to his father and grandfather before him in both the wars they had fought in, Wilfred allowed himself to be pulled away – slashing away at any werewolves that were foolish enough to step in their way and try to stop them.
The blade was tipped with silver, and where Wilfred’s sword connected with the Wolves that attacked them, he saw their flesh bubbling and blistering as though the blade were coated in acid. Although The War-Wolves were not born out of blood, but instead created through science, still they appeared to share some of the same weaknesses as true, genuine preternatural werewolves.
This was good to know, Wilfred thought, and valuable information, though that knowledge had come too late now to do any of the rest of his men any good.
The leader of The War-Wolves watched them as they fled, and allowed the two of them to go. The older of the two men was wounded, badly bitten by one of his brethren, and, no doubt, would not even make it back to the rest of his command alive. As for the younger of the two – well, the leader of the wolves was perfectly willing to let him go too.
Upon reaching safety, no doubt he would inform his superiors of all that had occurred here, and this, in turn, would help spread The War-Wolves’ already infamous reputation of being something other than human and with any luck, throw even more rumour and conjecture into the mix.
The leader of The War-Wolves thought the Fuhrer, when he eventually got to meet him, would be proud of all they had achieved here today – him and all the rest of his wolves. They had rid themselves of an annoying thorn in their side and struck back a blow for the Reich at the same time.
When word of what had happened here got out, it would cement the fact that the German army was still a force to be reckoned with, even though they had begun facing a few temporary set-backs of late. It would show the Allied forces that it was still possible for them to turn everything around - that they were still a credible threat - and that there was still a chance yet that their enemies might yet win the war.
The leader of The Wolves turned his back on the fleeing Lance-Corporal and his companion, and loped back into the fray.
Meanwhile, Wilfred and Roberts disappeared into the trees and off into the darkness of the night beyond, leaving their fallen comrades behind…
***
When they were clear of the battlefield, and several miles from the massacre behind them, Wilfred bid them to stop.
“I need you to do something for me, Roberts,” he said. “I need your help. I need you to help me cut off my hand.”
Roberts recoiled in horror.
“It’s not that bad,” he said, trying to reassure his Lance-Corporal. “I’m sure they might even be able to save it – we just have to make it back to Command and get you into a Field Hospital.”
“I’ve been bitten,” Wilfred told him, holding up his mauled and mutilated hand.
A couple of fingers were all but gone, and the rest of his hand was none too pretty either – a bloody, gory mess that no longer resembled anything even remotely like a hand anymore. “And I think we both know what that means,” he said, continuing. “There’s a very good chance I may be infected and if I am, and we don’t do something about this now, I could well end up turning – transforming into one of those things, just like the ones we left behind.”
“What do you need me to do?” Roberts asked, feeling nervous and knowing his Lance-Corporal’s fate now lay entirely in his hands.
“Take off your belt,” Wilfred told him, and then, “have you got a lighter?”
Roberts patted his top right pocket.
“I’m going to cut off my hand with this,” Wilfred said, half-drawing his grandfather’s sabre. “And then I’m going to need you to open up a couple of shells, use the gunpowder inside to heat the blade, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to use it to cauterize the wound and stop me from bleeding out.”
“Is that even going to work?” Roberts asked him, loosening his belt.
“I’m not sure,” Wilfred admitted. “I’ve heard it being done before, but never had to do it myself. I guess there’s a first time for everything. Now, are you ready?”
Roberts took a second to get himself mentally prepared, and then nodded.
“After three,” Wilfred said, and then tightening Roberts’ belt round his wrist, quickly placed his own belt between his teeth, bit down and then lifting his grandfather’s sabre, brought the blade down swiftly on his arm – neatly severing his hand before Roberts could even think about backing out of the deal.
The sudden pain was like nothing Wilfred had ever experienced before in his whole life. A white hot, searing pain sent shock waves rushing through him, throughout the whole of his body, and for a moment, screaming into his makeshift gag, almost biting through the leather, Wilfred felt like he was going to pass out.
As Roberts a hold of Wilfred’s stump – now quite literally pouring with blood – he crudely attempted to do as Wilfred had asked and cauterize the wound.
This time, the pain was so bad Wilfred did black out.
He remembered screaming again, louder this time…and then, after that, there was nothing…
***
When Wilfred awoke, he was in a Field Hospital, being treated not just for his wound, but also for shock.
The last few days, and weeks, completely blank.
He remembered the massacre at Helle Haus, he remembered him and Roberts fleeing the battle, and he remembered what had come afterwards, but after that – nothing. He had no idea how Roberts had managed to get him to safety, but was all too aware he owed the other man his life.
Roberts was gone, having already returned back to the front line to help try and go after The War-Wolves and gain some sort of revenge for their fallen comrades, but Wilfred was under no illusion that the soldier might find them.
If they had any sense, The War-Wolves, whateve
r they were, whatever they had been, would already be long gone.
Meanwhile Wilfred, the doctors told him, was lucky to even still be alive.
By the time he and Roberts had gotten here, Wilfred had fallen deep into shock and was suffering from fever. His wound had become grossly infected and gangrene had already started to set in - Roberts’s attempts to cauterize the wound in the field having only partially been successful.
Any longer, the doctors told him, and Wilfred might have had to lose his whole arm.
As it was, the tissue surrounding his wound had been open, and weeping, and it had only been the sheer skill of the army medics that had saved him from only losing his hand.
Over the next few days and nights, Wilfred often awoke screaming – not just from the pain where his hand had once been, but also from night terrors.
Every time he closed his eyes, all he kept seeing was those Wolves that had attacked them, walking on two legs like men, and who had slaughtered his whole unit like cattle within no more than a few minutes of launching their ambush. He had no idea why he and Roberts might have been spared, or allowed to live – for surely The War-Wolves could have come after them had they wanted, Wilfred thought - but for some reason, they had chosen not to.
His superiors came to him, and questioned him numerous times during his recovery – despite and against the advice of all his doctors - but each time, Wilfred told them the same thing, the truth, even though with no-one to back up his story, he could tell they didn’t believe him.
After all, there was no such thing as werewolves, right? Right?
In the end, to finally shut them up and make them cease with the questions, Wilfred eventually relented and ended up telling them exactly what he knew they wanted to hear.
He told them that he must have been mistaken.
That he had been delusional.
That The War-Wolves were just men like any others and the only reason he and his men had ever believed they were anything more must have been because of the wolf skins The War-Wolves always wore to help them strike fear into the hearts of their enemy.