“Goddammit, I ain’t running away,” said Jackson. “I want payback.” A vengeful chorus of agreement echoed from the others.
Cole stopped pacing. “You got more of those silver bullets?” he asked Rosenthal.
“About a hundred rounds.”
“That’s not enough – and they’ve got some of our guns now.” He turned to the others. “We’re pulling out. We’ll pick up Lindsey on the way.”
The tankers reluctantly obeyed. The dog tags of the dead were collected; there was no time to bury them. Waters’ and Brown’s tanks and both jeeps would have to be abandoned so their engines, radios, and armament were disabled. Small arms and ammunition were retrieved. Rosenthal brought two boxes of .45 ACP from his jeep and passed them out so each crew could load at least one magazine with silver bullets.
“Only use them at close range,” he said. “Silver bullets don’t shoot straight.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Wind moaned like a lost soul and rain drummed on the tanks as the survivors drove back down Hill 207 towards Teufelsdorf.
Cole tried radioing Hogue again, but the channels still had too much interference. “Dammit. Who’s jamming us? I still can’t get through.”
“I don’t think that’s jamming,” said Rosenthal, who was riding in the tank with him. “Atmospheric conditions aren’t normal around here. Lots of creepy rumors about the locals – stories of devil worship and so forth. Teufelsdorf means Devils Town in German. People from neighboring villages shun this place.”
Cole hung up the microphone. “You know a helluva lot more than you’ve been letting on about. Start talking. Where did these werewolves come from?”
“Remember that SS-Major your captain told you about? Rudolf Krebs, the one wanted for war crimes?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Krebs is Austrian, but received doctorates in anthropology and medicine from the University of Munich. He became a research assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. He was obsessed with medieval alchemy, and while a student had been a member of the Thule Society, the occult group that founded the Nazi Party. Joined the Party and the SS and volunteered as a doctor at Mauthausen concentration camp, where he conducted experiments on prisoners. His work came to the attention of Heinrich Himmler, who expanded it into a secret program called the Fenrir Project, named after the giant wolf of Norse mythology. Krebs was appointed project director. He destroyed his records before fleeing at end of the war, but his reports to Himmler were found in captured SS archives.” Rosenthal shifted in his seat, trying in vain to get comfortable.
“Krebs’ study of medieval manuscripts uncovered a potion for lycanthropy,” said Rosenthal. “Prisoners he first tested it on developed horrific deformities and died. But he eventually perfected the formula for a serum that alters the genetic makeup. When injected into a select group of SS volunteers, the test subjects gained the ability to transform at will into a hybrid wolf-man with increased strength and enhanced senses. In either form they have incredible regenerative powers, recovering from injuries in minutes or hours. Werewolves are true supermen, almost unstoppable soldiers.”
Cole looked stupefied, shaking his head.
Rosenthal continued. “To test their combat effectiveness, they were formed into a heavy tank destroyer platoon assigned to the 2nd SS Panzer Division. They fought ferociously at Budapest and Vienna, but were too few to make any difference and were practically annihilated – even their regenerative powers were no match for heavy Russian guns. During the German retreat problems started with the survivors.”
“What happened?” asked Cole.
“They became increasingly violent and uncontrollable – apparently a side effect of the serum. Military police who tried to restore order were mauled. The werewolves deserted.”
Cole had their cannon reloaded with high explosive, ammunition used against fortifications, infantry, and unarmored vehicles. Unfortunately the 76-millimeter HE shells only had half the explosive of the old 75-millimeter used by earlier Shermans, making them less effective.
“Lead might not kill the bastards,” said Cole, “but it’ll be damn hard to regenerate if they’re blown to bits.”
They reached the bottom of the ridge and the trees started thinning out. Lightning flashed.
Four feral figures jumped down from the branches above. Each was black and furry like a wolf, but lacking a tail, and moved on two legs. Clawed hands gripped captured submachine guns. They dropped onto the backs of the tanks.
Kinkaid floored the accelerator; one of the creatures fell off the Sherman as it surged ahead. Then Kinkaid abruptly stopped, shifted into reverse, and backed up hard. The unexpected movement caught the beast by surprise and Kinkaid heard an agonized howl as the tracks rolled over him.
A second flung open the turret hatch. A snarling, shaggy head with a black canine snout, slavering yellow fangs, and glowing red eyes thrust inside. Cole grabbed the gaping jaws, struggling to keep from being bitten. He gagged on the brute’s hot, foul breath. Rosenthal snatched out his Colt. He quickly fired three times, the shots deafening inside the tank. Warm blood spattered Cole’s face and the monstrosity fell back out.
He reached up to close the hatch and saw that Jackson’s tank had abruptly stopped, the hatches open. Screams and a flurry of shots came from inside. Then silence.
Cole got on the radio. “Able Two Four, come in. Jackson. Jackson! Over!”
No reply. His blood froze as the turret began rotating towards him.
Cole issued terse orders. Youngblood swung the breech open and replaced the high explosive shell with armor-piercing; Robinson stomped the firing pedal. The cannon boomed. The turret of Jackson’s tank stopped, jammed in place by a damaged traverse. Unless the whole vehicle moved around it could not fire at them. Robinson’s second round blew off a track and immobilized it. Cole stood in the cupola, submachine gun ready.
A werewolf scrambled out the turret hatch. Cole peppered the creature with silver slugs and watched coldly as it tumbled to the ground, twitching. Cole waited for the last werewolf to emerge, but no one appeared.
“C’mon, Rosenthal, let’s make sure the bastards are dead.”
They climbed out. Thunder crashed; rain hissed down in sheets, soaking them to the skin.
The werewolf which had tried to get into Cole’s tank was found stone dead; the carcass had turned back into human form again.
The one Kinkaid had run over was still alive and in the guise of a wolf, dragging crushed legs as it crawled towards a dropped submachine gun. Already the bleeding had stopped; mangled bones and muscles were knitting back together at an astonishing rate.
Cole kicked the weapon away before the werewolf could reach it.
It glared up at Cole, fangs bared in a defiant snarl. “Heil Hitler,” it growled – and lunged for him.
Cole shot it, and the beast collapsed at his feet. Cole’s M3 was empty now, so Rosenthal handed him the Thompson and drew his pistol.
The pair cautiously moved up to Jackson’s tank, smelling death and cordite. Blood was splattered all over the white walls inside. Jackson and his crew had been ripped apart by the two werewolves before they commandeered the Sherman and tried to use it against Cole. The second werewolf was gone: the floor escape hatch lay open.
Rosenthal cautiously circled the tank and pointed. Wolf tracks led away. They followed.
As they passed an outcropping of mossy boulders the werewolf charged out of the gloom and smashed Cole across the head with a clawed hand, knocking his helmet off. Stunned, Cole reeled back, slipped on the sodden grass, and fell. His wet hands lost their grip on the Thompson and it skittered down a gully out of reach.
Wheeling, the beast pounced on Rosenthal, throwing him down and dashing the pistol from his hand. Broken spectacles fell off. The monster dove for his throat; he tried to block it and cried out as jaws clamped like a vise on his forearm. They grappled.
Rosenthal frantically fumbled for anything he could use as a weapon. Desperate fingers f
ound the mechanical pencil. He stabbed the werewolf in the eye as hard as he could.
The creature howled and recoiled. It tried yanking the pencil out, but let go sharply as if just touching the pencil burned. It staggered a few steps before its knees buckled and it fell headlong.
Cole came to. He gaped at the dead werewolf and gave Rosenthal a questioning look.
“Sterling silver,” said Rosenthal.
They watched the matted fur fade away. Claws, triangular ears, and the canine snout retracted, muscles shrank to normal proportions, and the carcass slowly became human again.
Rosenthal stared numbly at the bite marks on his trembling arm. He felt dizzy and nauseous. He looked at Cole. “You know what to do.”
Cole nodded grimly and got to his feet. He picked up the Colt and made sure a round was in the chamber. Then he aimed at Rosenthal and pulled the trigger.
Project Lupine
Brian W. Taylor
An alarm blared – the nasal tone repeating over and over like a hammer beating nails into Rolf Alfredsson’s head. He heard but pretended like he didn’t.
“Yo, Red, get your ass up, man.”
Rolf groaned before opening his eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Red?”
Lou ‘Sully’ Sullivan smiled, his teeth like headlights cutting through the darkness. “Shit, man, I can’t help your ginger complexion, or that the name’s already stuck.”
A light clicked on reflecting harshly off the white of the floor and walls. Everything was white in TriGenex’s classified laboratory, the actual labs, the living quarters, and even the bathrooms.
“C’mon though, for real. Dot will have our asses if we’re last to respond.” Sully rummaged around his footlocker and pulled out a fresh uniform – classic, black BDUs, with the TriGenex logo on the breast and back.
“Fuck Dot. And fuck you.” Rolf looked at the clock; he had only slept two hours. They weren’t paying him enough for this shit. Well, maybe they were, but that was beside the point. This job was supposed to be his ticket to early retirement.
A multitude of footsteps rushed along the hallways of the living quarters as scientists, technicians, and security personnel scrambled like ants summoned by their queen toward their duty stations. In this case, their queen was project lead Doctor Cecily Sturgess, a woman who was about as joyful as a dip in a frozen lake. She cared about her experiments and little else.
Something had to have gone wrong with the latest experiment if the queen had put out the call.
Rolf was beginning to think taking the security job at TriGenex had been a mistake. In truth he had only been employed a little over a month but in that short amount of time he had seen some ungodly shit – shit that already had him pondering early termination of his contract. Grunts like him weren’t supposed to ask questions or pay attention. In fact, they were paid to do the opposite. Rolf had always asked too many questions during his time in the United States Army; they had politely suggested he take his talents elsewhere despite his exemplary service record. His time at TriGen was turning out to be the sequel to a movie he wished he had never auditioned for in the first place.
Both he and Sully were suited, booted, and strapped in two minutes. They hurried from their quarters and followed the green line along the floor until reaching Lab One.
Consisting of five floors built into the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, the complex was shaped like a giant hourglass. Only the offices of the top floor were visible, while recreational, exercise, and cafeteria facilities dominated the second. The third and fourth floors housed the labs and associated personnel. Nobody ever talked about what lay below on five. Rumor had it that’s where they kept the test subjects.
Up until today, Rolf had considered himself lucky to have been assigned to the genetics half of the facility. He mostly stood around and watched over the scientists while they conducted their experiments on witless death-row inmates. Those same fool inmates had signed their lives over to science and their families received a nice sum of money. It seemed harmless enough until Rolf had seen what was left of the last batch of experiments. He guessed it would be better than waiting around in a cage to die though.
Nearing the lab, the two ex-soldiers heard shouts. Through the observation window they saw a guy in an orange jumpsuit strapped to a table shudder under his restraints. Dr Sturgess shouted orders at two technicians while preparing a syringe. Two other technicians ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, scrambling from station to station pressing buttons on various machines and monitoring vital signs.
“We’ve got a situation.” Their squad leader, Dot, looked from Sully to Rolf, her normally calm demeanor shattered. A line of sweat trickled down her forehead and rolled past her eye. Rolf appraised her reaction and surmised she probably had never seen any real combat. Her eyes lacked that hard edge he saw in the rest of his squad.
The inmate strapped to the table cried out, sweat pouring from every nook and cranny. As the rest of Rolf’s team lined up, the inmate shot up, tearing through the straps and ripping free from the metal clamps holding him to the table. Dr Sturgess shouted at the window but her words were lost as everyone watched in rapt horror as the inmate’s orange jumpsuit split, coils of muscle bubbling up through the material. Bones stretched, limbs lengthened in ways that went against nature or God, depending on what you believed. Hair rose in thick clusters all along its skin. Teeth clattered along the floor as fangs forced their way through.
What had been a man a few moments ago morphed into something…else.
“Oh my God,” someone, Rolf wasn’t sure who, murmured.
The creature stood upright, towering over the scientists. It snarled, saliva dribbling from its snout to chest. Dr Sturgess looked up, eyes wide. She scrambled to get away but a hairy arm connected with her chest. The air was forced from her lungs, her needle bouncing away. She landed on the floor in a heap and didn’t rise. The thing in the other room turned and looked at the window and growled – an imposing hulk of fur and muscle.
If Rolf hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would have never believed it. He had watched enough movies to know what he was looking at. And yet, he refused to think the word. Things like that weren’t supposed to exist.
“Holy… shit,” Sully said, giving voice to everyone else’s thoughts.
One of the technicians screamed.
The experiment was across the room in a flash. It lunged at the closest technician, opened its toothy maw and latched onto her throat. The thing shook its head from side to side like a predator would with its prey, blood spraying in wild arcs. Screams filled the room as the remaining technicians watched on in horror. One of them made a mad dash for the door while the remaining technician attended to the fallen doctor.
“Open the outer door. Now.” Rolf readied his HK416.
Dot didn’t move. She stood transfixed by the scene beyond the window. Her mouth moved but no words came out.
“Dot! Open the goddamned door!”
Dot jumped. With her eyes still fixed on the experiment, she slid a card through a magnetic reader beside the large window. A small light went from red to green. The outer door slid open with a hiss.
It looked like their squad leader checked out. Considering the circumstances, Rolf couldn’t blame her. He had commanded and fought with plenty of good men and women in both Afghanistan and Iraq and thought he had seen just about everything. After seeing that thing in the other room, he knew he was wrong.
“Sully and I will break right,” Rolf said patting his roommate on the shoulder. “Peretti, you and Kang break left. Cruz, get those people out of there. Everyone clear?”
Peretti and Kang nodded.
“You got it,” Cruz said pulling his Desert Eagle from its holster.
“Dot, keep that outer door clear.”
Their squad leader nodded, still unable to draw her gaze from the window.
Rolf entered the small hallway between the outer and inner doors,
the rest of his squad close behind. The only thing keeping the experiment contained was a few inches of reinforced steel of the inner door. Once he pressed the large red button they’d be face to face with a savage beast who had already tasted human blood. He took a breath and jammed on the button. The scent of blood and wet dog lay heavy on the air. The experiment had finished with the first technician and had another cornered. The skinny guy slid down the wall, sniveling, snot bubbling from a nostril.
Cruz cradled a hysterical technician in his arms, running from the lab. They disappeared through the inner doorway unharmed.
The experiment leaned in and sniffed. The skinny technician shielded his head with his arms. Bloody drool dribbled down the experiment’s face. It reared back and howled. Just like a wolf.
Rolf motioned to Peretti. He and Kang moved like smoke through the lab, easy and silent. They came to a stop a few feet from the experiment, flanking the creature, rifles at the ready.
Rolf and Sully made their way from cover to cover until reaching the downed doctor. A trickle of blood ran from the top of her head. “Is she breathing?” he asked the technician attending her.
The technician—her badge identified her as Mara Leitch—nodded.
“Cover us,” Rolf said to Sully.
Sully cocked his shotgun as Rolf slung the unconscious doctor over his shoulder. He hustled for the inner door; the experiment paid him no attention.
“P-please,” the skinny technician stammered from across the room. He held out a hand toward Peretti, pleading.
The experiment let a clawed hand fly. With a sickening crunch, the cowering technician’s neck twisted sharply, three long lacerations running the length of his face. He slumped to the floor a moment later staring through unblinking eyes.
Peretti and Kang opened fire.
A hail of automatic gunfire filled the experiment with holes. The thing turned, seemingly more annoyed than injured. It dove over Peretti and Kang, cleared a work station, and was halfway across the room. As Kang turned, he barely had time to react as the creature closed in from behind. It clubbed him in the chest, swatting him aside as if he were a child. With a wheeze, Kang slammed into the wall before sliding down to the floor.
SNAFU: Wolves at the Door: An Anthology of Military Horror Page 9