Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  And then, suddenly and without warning, the road was alive with chaos of battle as the Croatian partisans opened fire. They streamed from the surrounding forest, their guns blazing away in their hands as they attacked the supposedly isolated, stranded, vulnerable contingent of Germans.

  Weyrauch closed his eyes, not knowing if he should pray for the Croatians or the Lycanvolk. The success of either meant certain death for him, and so it was for himself that he prayed.

  The battle was a short one. The Croatians exhausted their ammunition on the S.S., firing a sufficient number of rounds to have killed a hundred men; but not one German fell to the ground, not one drop of German blood dripped onto the road, not one German life met its end at the hands of the partisans. Instead the partisans themselves were killed, most by the returned fire, and a few, those who were bold enough to rush at the staff car, by the bare hands of the superhuman, or perhaps merely inhuman, S.S.

  The time between the first gunshot and the last had been no more than fifteen minutes, and another fifteen minutes elapsed before Helmuth Schlacht and Corporal Vogel emerged from the forest which bordered the road. "Gentlemen," Schlacht called out as he stepped onto the road, "I congratulate you!" He had spoken both to express his satisfaction and to advise his men of his approach, so that the sound of his approach would not lead one of them to fire at him. "We shall celebrate this victory in proper style when we return to our headquarters." Schlacht climbed into the rear seat of the staff car and ignored Weyrauch as Vogel started the engine and began to drive back toward the border between Croatia and Hungary. He said not one word to his wife’s cousin and Weyrauch made no attempt at conversation either. He was nursing the irrational hope that Schlacht might forget about him entirely.

  As they drew near to the camp, Schlacht turned to him and asked, "Have you ever read Mein Kampf, Gottfried?"

  "Oh, yes, of course I have," he lied nervously. Like most of the German population, Weyrauch had found Hitler’s turgid, rambling book impossible to sit down and read, though it had been expedient to purchase and display it.

  "The new order," Schlacht whispered distantly, turning to gaze out into the darkness. "That’s what this war is all about, Gottfried, that’s what National Socialism is all about, that’s what the S.S. is all about." He sighed with weary contentment. "Tonight I have given the Führer a tool, a weapon the likes of which this planet has never seen, and with this weapon his prophecies shall come to pass, and his vision shall be realized."

  Weyrauch nodded a simpering agreement. "Yes, yes," he muttered.

  "Most of the people in Europe just don’t understand this war, you know," Schlacht said conversationally. "They think that it has something to do with Alsace-Lorraine or Danzigor colonies or some other petty nonsense. But they’re wrong, of course."

  "Of... of course..."

  "It’s about blood and soil, nothing less. Blood and soil." He looked at Weyrauch. "Do you want to know what the world will be like in a hundred years, Gottfried?"

  "Yes, of course." I’ll be content if I will be able to see the world when I am seventy, he thought.

  "The inferior races, the polluters of the human strain, will all have been done away with," Schlacht said. "Think about it, Gottfried. A world without Jews and Gypsies and Slavs. Picture Asia, Gottfried, without one single slant-eyed, yellow skinned, jabbering monkey, picture Africawithout one single black-skinned, sub-human ape. Isn’t the idea glorious?"

  "Gl...glorious, Helmuth..."

  "With my new army of Lycanvolk, we’ll be in London in a month and wipe out the Russians by the end of the year. It won’t matter what the Americans try to do at that point. We’ll be able to knock them out in short order. Most Americans have negro blood in them anyway, so they won’t pose much of a problem."

  "No...no, certainly not..."

  "We’ll have to continue to work with the Italians, I suppose, because of the Führer’s affection for Mussolini, but the Sicilians at least will definitely have to go. I’m not sure how we’ll handle it, actually. We’ve already begun to exterminate the Jews and the Gypsies, but thus far the Slavs are valuable as slave laborers. We may adopt the same policy toward the Latin Americans...the Indians and the Negroes, that is, not the Aryan elements in the populations of those states…"

  "No, no... not the Aryans..."

  "Japan is technically our ally, of course, but that is unimportant. The Führer concluded that alliance only to put pressure on England. I suppose we’ll just allow the Japanese and the Chinese to kill as many of each other as they can for a while before we get around to exterminating them as well." He shook his head. "That will present us with an extremely complicated problem in logistics and disposal."

  "Yes, a complicated problem..."

  "So much needs to be done," Schlacht whispered. "We’ve begun taking blonde-haired, blue-eyed women from the conquered nations and sending them to Germany to breed with selected members of the S.S. …the Lebensborn project…have you heard of it?"

  "N…n…"

  "But that is only the beginning. The Führer does not have even the most remote expectation that he will live to see it all brought to pass, but we must establish the foundations now, before the enthusiasm and dedication begins to wane. A century from now, two centuries at most, this will be a planet of Aryans, a blond-haired, blue-eyed master race, served by slaves and living in perfect order beneath a planetary government run by the National Socialist Party, which will itself be little more than an administrative arm of the S.S. And if technology advances sufficiently to satisfy whatever needs are now dependent upon manual labor, we will even be able to wipe out the slaves." He sighed. "That is what this war is all about, Gottfried. Utopia. It is about Utopia."

  Schlacht fell into a contemplative silence as the gates of the camp swung open and they drove into the courtyard. He smiled at Weyrauch and said, "Now I must make some arrangements with the commander of this camp. We’ll need fourteen prisoners for tomorrow night."

  "More...more prisoners?" Weyrauch asked, trying to sound casual, trying to sound as if and Schlacht were still somehow allied in the project. "Another round of experiments?"

  "Oh, no, the experimental phase is over and done with. But we know that Kaldy doesn’t eat anything until he is transformed, and that when that happens, he seeks out human flesh. I must operate under the assumption that my men will have the same needs, and I do not wish to deprive them of whatever nourishment is necessary for their continued health and power." He opened the door of the staff car. "No, now our prisoners will serve as food."

  Weyrauch shuddered at the unspeakable idea. "But surely, Helmuth, they can eat beef or some other kind of meat! Surely it isn’t necessary to..."

  "Gottfried," Schlacht said sadly but without anger, "you are a fool. These prisoners are destined for the gas chamber and the crematoria anyway. What difference does it make if they serve a useful purpose in their deaths? If we exterminate fifty thousand of them here at Hunyad, and if fourteen of those fifty thousand are fed to my creatures, what of it?"

  Weyrauch frowned. "But why fourteen prisoners, Helmuth? You have fifteen men!"

  Schlacht smiled at him cruelly. "Very good, Gottfried, very good! You can count!"

  Weyrauch’s look of confusion collapsed into one of unmitigated horror as he realized what Schlacht was saying. "Helmuth...Helmuth...you wouldn’t...you can’t mean...you wouldn’t...!"

  "Count yourself singularly honored, my dear pastor," Schlacht said as he stepped from the car. "This is as close as a Christian can come in this century to being thrown to the lions." He looked at the two soldiers who had left the truck and were walking toward him and then he pointed at Weyrauch. "Lock him up," he ordered, and then walked toward the camp’s administration building, listening with cheerful contentment to Weyrauch’s frenzied screams as he pleaded and implored and begged for mercy, screams that faded into silence as the minister was dragged away by the soldiers. Vogel fell into place beside his commander and Schlacht said, "Send a
telegram to Berlin, to Reichsführer Himmler. I will send a courier with a full report in the morning, but I want him notified of this tonight."

  "At once, Herr Colonel," Vogel replied. "What should I tell the Reichsführer?"

  Schlacht thought for a moment. "Tell him that the experiment is a complete success. Tell him that the Führer will soon have an invulnerable army." The bright moonlight reflected madly in his blue eyes as he smiled and whispered, as much to himself as to Vogel, "Tell him that we have won the war."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Louisa von Weyrauch stood in the middle of the dank cell, her arms folded angrily across her chest, listening to Petra…no, Claudia, she reminded herself, Claudia…as she spoke to her old companion Kaldy. The latter sat on the cold stones and listened to her discourse intently, his thin fingers absentmindedly drawing five pointed stars in the dust on the floor. Claudia was speaking in Italian and Kaldy was responding in Romansch, which allowed both Louisa and Blasko to understand them, though as yet neither had taken part in the conversation.

  The woman known to her previously as Petra Loewenstein and known to her now as Claudia Procula, the one time wife of Pontius Pilate, had entered the cell the previous evening, had screamed at Kaldy for an hour, and then had stormed out. Louisa had spent the entire night and most of the morning trying to find her, knowing that the full moon was still twelve hours away, wanting desperately to talk to her, to question her, to try to understand. As her husband Gottfried, unbeknownst to Louisa, sat in a prisoners’ barracks in the camp at Hunyad, awaiting the coming night with terrified dread, Louisa had returned to Kaldy’s cell to tell him that she had been unable to find the woman. To her great surprise she found Claudia standing in front of Kaldy and Blasko, speaking to her ancient companion in quiet, calm, even tones. Claudia’s rage of the previous evening had apparently faded into acceptance. Louisa listened silently, at first fascinated and then horrified and infuriated at what she was hearing.

  "It was rather simple, really," Claudia was saying. "After you and I parted company, I wandered around Central Europe and listened to the things people were talking about in cafés and beer halls and bistros. I realized that you and I had largely isolated ourselves from the incredible expansion of scientific knowledge which seems to have occurred over the past few centuries."

  "And you began to believe that chemistry might provide you with a clue to our condition and give you a means of dying," Kaldy nodded. "I’m impressed, Claudia. That never occurred to me, not once, not at all. But how did you manage to fabricate such an identity for yourself? I mean, you must have had to forge records and..."

  "Not at all," she replied. "There really was a Petra Loewenstein, and her parents were killed by a werewolf."

  "By you," he said as if it were an obvious fact.

  "Of course. It took me a few years to find the right family and the right girl, but when I finally did, the plan was a very simple one. I needed a husband and wife with one daughter of about five years of age and no living relatives, who lived in a small town and kept a regular schedule which included a periodic and predictable absence of the child from the home at night."

  Kaldy allowed himself a slight smile. "Rather specific criteria."

  "Of necessity. It wasn’t easy to find them, but eventually I found the Loewensteins. Their daughter Petra spent every other Saturday night and Sunday morning at a convent some forty miles from their home. She was in a special choir, or some such thing. I waited until her absence from home corresponded to the night of a full moon, and then went to her parent’s home just before sunset and told them that I was from the convent and wanted to discuss Petra’s vocal training. They invited me in, of course, and then I pulled a gun from my purse. I had the woman tie up the man, then I tied her up..."

  "And then you waited. And when the change came you killed them both," Kaldy finished for her.

  "Causing their daughter to be placed in an orphanage, yes," Claudia went on. "For the next twelve years, while she was growing up. I was working for the Farben company..."

  "The what?" Kaldy asked.

  "I.G. Farben." Louisa muttered. "A major chemical corporation."

  "Yes, precisely." Claudia said. "All I did there was clean the floors, wash off the laboratory tables and such simple manual tasks, but by keeping my eyes and ears open and asking questions of some of the more talkative chemists, I was able to absorb quite a bit of knowledge about chemistry."

  "Let me anticipate you, Claudia," Kaldy broke in. "When the child Petra was old enough to go to the university, you killed her and took her place."

  "Yes, but I went through the application and interviewing procedures myself. The girl would never have gone to the university. She was not particularly intelligent."

  "And yet she had the right to live," Louisa said softly.

  "What?" Claudia asked.

  Louisa looked at her hatefully. "I said that she had the right to 1ive!"

  Claudia gazed at the other woman for a few moments and then, as if Louisa had said nothing at all, she returned her attention to Kaldy and continued. "It was very difficult for me to adjust to imitating a normal human life, but I managed to keep from being ejected from the university. I did quite well in my studies of chemistry, of course, but I was an absolute ignoramus when it came to the other disciplines. But I persevered, and eventually I received my degree."

  Kaldy frowned. "But why bother with all that, Claudia? If you were learning about these matters at Farben, why go to all the trouble of obtaining a formal education?"

  She leaned forward and looked at him intently. "Because if I were to have any chance at all of learning how the two of us might be able to die, I would have to be in a position to conduct my own research, which meant I needed a staff position as a chemist, either with a company or with the government. No one would have allowed a scrub woman to do research!"

  He nodded. "That makes sense. But how did you get involved with this, with Schlacht?"

  "Well, initially I wasn’t involved with this project," she replied. "I managed to obtain a position as a staff chemist at a hospital in Marburg, in Hessen. While I was there I learned that Dr. Mengele was conducting genetic experiments at Auschwitz. It was, of course, genetic chemistry which was vital to me, and so I contacted Mengele and asked to join his research team. And then, when Himmler ordered Mengele to assign one of his chemists to a project dealing with lycanthropy..."

  "Yes," Kaldy said. "You volunteered."

  "I more than volunteered. I begged. I didn’t know that you were here, Janos. In fact, I had hoped that the Germans had captured another of our kind so that I might question him."

  He smiled with amusement. "And when you learned that I was to be the subject of these experiments, you tried to hide your identity from me behind that foolish mask?"

  She returned his smile sadly. "You recognized me, of course."

  "Of course," he replied. "All I could see were your eyes, but I have looked at those eyes for two thousand years."

  "Wait, Herr Kaldy," Louisa said. "Do you mean that you have known all along that Petra... I mean, that Claudia..."

  "I recognized her immediately," he replied.

  She gaped at him. "Then why didn’t you tell us?"

  He shrugged. "Why should I have? You are a pleasant person, Louisa. I enjoy conversing with you and I bear you no ill will, but I owe you nothing. And I owe your husband and Colonel Schlacht less than nothing." He paused. "Besides, there was always the remote chance that Claudia might learn something of value to us both."

  "But I have not," Claudia sighed. "Oh, Janos, I was so disappointed to learn that it was you whom the Germans had captured. I knew that you would have no vital information. You have never had anything to say that could be of help to us."

  He sighed. "No. And the memories that Weyrauch has been able to awaken in me have done nothing but remind me of my own frustrations. He has taken me back two thousand years, Claudia, and still I do not understand."

  Her
eyes narrowed and grew suddenly cold. "At least I know for certain now that it was you who visited this living hell upon me."

  He smiled. "And are you angry at me, Claudia? Do you think it was an act of volition on my part, of free will, that I made a rational decision to share my curse with you?"

  She stared at him for a few moments, and then her eyes softened, and she emitted a curt laugh. "No, Janos, of course not."

  "So you forgive me?"

  "I have to forgive you. We can’t help ourselves, neither of us." Claudia heard Louisa mumble something, and she looked once again at her and asked. "What did you say?"

  "I said that you are a liar," Louisa spat. "You can’t help yourself! Ha! Who forced you to kill that family and that child? This whole project in Budapest has depended on treating innocent people as if they were laboratory rats! How many people have you killed with your damned injections? And what exactly did you do with Mengele at Auschwitz, tell me that!"

  "Try to be logical," Claudia said coldly. "Over the past two thousand years I must have killed tens of thousands of people. If I can find a way to die, my death will prevent me from killing tens of thousands of others over the centuries to come. If I must kill a few dozen in order to save those tens of thousands, is it not worth the price? Besides, I have an overriding need..."

  "You hypocrite! You’re as bad as my husband! He at least has the excuse of cowardice!"

  "I won’t make any excuses for my actions, Louisa," Claudia said evenly. "You say that these people had a right to live. Well, I have a right to die!"

  "No one has the right to kill innocent people," Louisa shouted, "not you, not Helmuth, not Hitler, no one!"