Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  Weyrauch had reached the point at which his reason was deserting him, and instead of responding to the question he just kept weeping, "Don’t, Helmuth, please, please..."

  The colonel gestured the two soldiers away, and as they released their grips on Weyrauch’s arms Schlacht put his own around the minister’s shoulder amicably. "I tell you what, Gottfried. Just because we are family, I’m going to give you a chance to prove your worth."

  "Anything, Helmuth," he blubbered, wiping his eyes and choking on his own tears and phlegm, "anything, anything, I’ll do anything, anything, just don’t, please, please don’t, please..."

  "Gottfried!" he snapped, seeming suddenly angry. "Pull yourself together! If you are going to demonstrate your manliness to me, you’re going to have to stop all this childish nonsense!" Weyrauch struggled to establish some control over his terror, and Schlacht smiled at him and patted his back comfortingly. "Good, good. Now come with me. "

  Schlacht led Weyrauch toward the front of the line, to the edge of the pit where two of the S.S. were holding a thin, screaming young woman in her early twenties. "You must be strong to be a German, Gottfried, you must master your emotions and follow your orders, regardless of what they are. It is such an attitude which has already made us the masters of Europe."

  "Y...yes...yes," Weyrauch agreed, nodding his head idiotically, "yes, yes..."

  "Reichsführer Himmler often reminds his men that we must resist any urge toward mercy or kindness or human sympathy when we are dealing with the enemies of the Reich," Schlacht went on. "I don’t think that you have the capacity for such discipline, Gottfried. But if you can prove to me that you have, then I will have to assume that I may perhaps have misjudged you."

  "Anything, Helmuth, anything, anything…"

  "Good fellow," he said, smiling again and slapping Weyrauch on the shoulder. He gestured at the woman on the edge of the pit. "Push her in."

  Weyrauch gaped at the woman as the two soldiers thrust her at him, and she fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around his legs, screaming in a language he could not understand. She stared up at him with desperate, pleading eyes and hugged his legs tightly as she screamed on and on. Weyrauch looked at Schlacht, and began again to weep. The colonel shook his head and said, "Now, don’t disappoint me, Gottfried, don’t embarrass me in front of my men. Go ahead, push her in."

  Weyrauch looked back down at the pathetic figure that was clinging to his legs, and then back up at Schlacht. "Helmuth, don’t, please don’t make me... don’t, please..."

  Schlacht smiled at him. "A simple choice, isn’t it, old fellow? My werewolves have to eat. You can be waiter or you can be meal. It’s up to you."

  Weyrauch looked again into the woman’s terrified eyes, and then looked down at the snarling, howling creatures fifty feet below. He reached down and put his hands into the woman’s arm pits and lifted her up. "I’m sorry," he wept in utter misery. "I’m sorry, but I don’t have any choice, don’t you see? I’m sorry...I’m sorry..."

  He pushed her away from him and she fell screaming into the jaws of death which opened for her below. He could not bring himself to look into the pit, to see the woman torn to shreds as the famished werewolves ripped her with fang and claw and forced chunks of human meat down their gullets.

  "A good start, Gottfried," Schlacht said approvingly, "but you are lacking in a certain enthusiasm." He pretended to think. "Let’s try another, shall we?" He nodded to the next pair of guards, and they dragged a frail old man with a thin beard to the edge of the pit. The old man squinted his eyes myopically but said nothing, did not resist, neither screamed nor begged nor pleaded. It was not that he had resigned himself to death; rather, the endless misery of existence and the brutality and horror and sorrow of the past few years had robbed him of the capacity to care.

  "Come now, Gottfried," Schlacht said impatiently. "Don’t tell me that a man with as much education as you have is going to allow himself to fail such an important test. This is an examination, old fellow, this is your final exam!"

  Weyrauch did not look at the old man’s face. He closed his eyes and pushed him into the pit, and the subsequent roars of the werewolves were deafening.

  Schlacht shook his head. "No, Gottfried, I’m sorry. You’re just putting on an act, trying to impress me. Your heart just isn’t in this." He turned to the soldiers who had been holding the old man and was about to order them to toss the minister to his death when he heard the sound of nearby gunfire. He turned to see Hauptmann Flieger, the camp commander, crying, "Colonel Schlacht! Colonel Schlacht!" as he came running toward them.

  Schlacht walked away from the edge of the pit and asked, "What is it, Flieger? What’s wrong?"

  "Two of your creatures have escaped!"

  Schlacht shook his head. "Impossible, impossible. I have been standing here watching them ever since the sun..."

  "Don’t tell me that it is impossible!" Flieger shouted. "They are attacking my men! They are killing my men!"

  Schlacht ran toward the sound of the explosions with Flieger, Vogel and those S.S. who were not holding prisoners, but they had not run ten yards when the two werewolves rounded the corner of the nearest barracks and charged at them. One look told Schlacht everything he needed to know, for the creatures that were running toward them were true werewolves, not the Lycanvolk that he had created; and he knew in an instant who they were, and that they could not be killed.

  "Fire on them!" he shouted to his men, hoping that the S.S. could keep the creatures busy while he escaped. "Forget the prisoners! Open fire!"

  The soldiers drew their weapons and began to shoot at the creatures, but the werewolves ignored them, ignored the bullets, ignored the gunfire, as they broke through the hastily assembled line of soldiers and ran directly at Helmuth Schlacht.

  Schlacht ran for his life but the speed of the werewolves was much too great for him to put any distance between them. One of the werewolves, the larger of the two, tackled him and brought him to the ground and then ran off to attack the other soldiers. The smaller of the two, smaller only when compared to its fellow, reached down, grabbed the S.S. colonel by the throat and pulled him to his feet. Helmuth Schlacht screamed as his face was drawn close to the face of the monster, as he saw the salivating maw of the werewolf seem to smile at him, coldly, cruelly, hatefully.

  Schlacht pounded with his fists and kicked with his feet, but he was powerless against the lupine monolith. The creature’s burning yellow eyes seemed almost to dance with wicked glee as it stared at the terrified man for a moment and then picked him up in its powerful arms. It walked slowly and deliberately to the edge of the pit. Then it threw him in.

  Schlacht screamed again as he plummeted into the midst of the ravenous creatures below, one of whom unintentionally broke his fall. Instinct led him both to thrust his arms forward and to twist his body so as to roll when he hit bottom. His instincts were good, for the fall did not kill him outright; but his left arm broke and he hit his head on the concrete. The impact sent him reeling into unconsciousness, but another jolt of pain roused him almost immediately. He opened his eyes to see one of the creatures sinking its fangs into his leg. Schlacht tried to strike out at it with his right arm, and his shocked and benumbed mind was confused when he realized that he no longer had a right arm. One of the werewolves had torn the arm from its socket and was even now stripping it of flesh. Schlacht gazed at the spectacle dumbly for a moment, and then darkness engulfed him as razor-like talons ripped his head from his body.

  The smaller werewolf had rejoined the larger and together they ran through the camp, killing the soldiers and oddly ignoring the prisoners, who ran screaming from the city of death out into the darkness of the countryside, unaware that their salvation had been the intention of the monsters who were everywhere slicing black-capped heads from black-uniformed shoulders, tearing jack-booted legs from bleeding torsos, ripping open throats just above the lightning bolts on the S.S. collars, gouging red hearts out of shuddering bodies
through torn black tunics.

  Weyrauch had fallen to the ground when the soldiers released him, and he struggled to rise to his feet through the overwhelming weakness with which his fear had smitten him. He had managed to climb from his back to his knees when the last gunshot sounded and the last human scream echoed through the carnage of the camp, and as he got unsteadily to his feet he saw the werewolves charging in his direction. He screamed when they sprang, but he had not been the target of their attack. One of them knocked him down and he rolled over and grabbed onto the piled up chain-link ladder which lay beside the pit and clung to it desperately as he fell over the edge. He hung there, unable to climb up and unwilling to climb down, as the two attacking werewolves seemed to fly the fifty feet to the bottom of the pit. Weyrauch almost lost his grip and the ladder began to unroll through his slippery fingers. He cried and sought to restore his grip, but he had fallen and slid more than halfway to the cement floor before he had a handhold adequate to stop his descent. From his precarious vantage point, Weyrauch’s traumatized mind was not able to employ its faculties to draw the obvious conclusion as to the identities of the two attackers, and so he watched in mute, horrified fascination at the infernal drama that was unfolding beneath him.

  The man-made wolfmen had swarmed over the true werewolves when the latter jumped into the pit, but a few sweeps of the mighty arms were sufficient to dispel the attackers. They seemed confused, startled, and they withdrew to a wary circle around the two larger werewolves, eying them with a mad mixture of hatred, confusion, and barely restrained blood lust. Then the larger werewolf jumped forward and raked the chest of one of the others with its claws, and found to its shock that the wound was not fatal. The man-made wolf-man was severely injured, but the pain served only to increase its anger. It leapt at its enemy with an ear-piercing shriek of rage, struck out at the true werewolf’s face and tore a gash in the hairy cheek. It struck out again, but this time it was deflected and then seized in an inhuman grip considerably stronger than its own.

  The two creatures fell to the ground as the others jumped madly around them, howling and roaring as the two combatants sought to crush and rip and bite the other, until at last the true werewolf was able to snap its mighty jaws shut on the throat of the other and rip it open; but it had taken every bit of strength it had, strength such as it had never needed to use in three thousand years. The victor then rose from the ground and ignored the bleeding body at its feet.

  The mind of Janos Kaldy, still present in the body of the monster, still struggling to remain in control, became aware of a stinging pain and an odd liquid warmth beneath the fur on its face. With a slow, deliberate, almost tentative gesture, the werewolf touched the wound with its paw and then stared at the red droplets of blood that lay upon it. I am bleeding, Kaldy realized. I am injured.

  I am bleeding! I am injured!

  I can die!

  The creature that had been Claudia Procula approached her ancient companion and gazed at the wound with wonder and hope. Their eyes met and each knew that the other understood the significance of the blood flowing freely from the wounded face. They turned to confront the creatures that were still circling them cautiously. Kaldy and Claudia roared, and then they attacked.

  In mute horror Weyrauch watched the Lyconvolk fall back as the werewolves rushed at them, but then they too succumbed to their own murderous instincts and they fought back with fang and claw. Shrieks of rage mingled with howls of pain as the war was fought in the cement pit. The two werewolves were engaged in a hellish battle with their man-made relatives, and though the true lycanthropes were killing the pseudo-lycanthropes, they were being visibly wounded in the process, wounded in such a manner as neither of them had ever been wounded through the course of the long centuries. The larger of the werewolves was bleeding from the face and arms and an ugly wound had been torn open in the stomach of the smaller.

  The battle raged for an hour, and the howls and snarls and wails that rose up from the pit echoed from the walls and filled the darkness, a din of screeching madness that mirrored the eternal cacophony of hell itself, as claw ripped and fang bit and inhuman blood flowed like an infernal river, and mad howls shattered the moonlit sky.

  Weyrauch’s hands grew weaker and his fingers grew numb, and try as he might, he could not retain his grip on the ladder. He screamed, and then fell into the midst of the madness. He screamed again as his feet struck the cement ground and both of his ankles broke with audible cracks, crushed beneath his own weight. He lay, crippled, motionless, in excruciating pain, as the warfare of monster against monster rocked the very walls of the pit. He closed his eyes and prayed.

  And then, suddenly, the chaotic din ceased. Weyrauch forced himself to open his eyes and look around him. Everywhere were strewn the dead or dying bodies of the Lycanvolk, and in the midst of the slaughter were the two surviving werewolves, the larger one kneeling on the ground and the other lying weakly in its hairy arms, a tableau of human tenderness in the center of a stygian landscape. Weyrauch almost forgot the incredible pain which was radiating upward from his shattered ankles as his eyes went wide with what he saw happening not five yards away; for one of the creatures, the more seriously wounded one whose blood poured out of the tear across its stomach, the one which lay back in the arms of its companion as if it were a perverse, lupine Pieta, was slowly changing its shape.

  The bright moonlight streamed down and mingled with that of the electric lights, allowing Weyrauch to see clearly as the billowing hair seemed to be sucked backward into the body, as the fangs withdrew into the jaws, as the talons sank back into the paws which then became human hands, as the bloody muzzle shrank into a human face.

  "Petra," he whispered in awe.

  The woman whom he had known as Petra Loewenstein, the woman who was Claudia Procla, the wife of Pontius Pilate and a priestess of Ahura Mazda, looked up into the face of the werewolf that was cradling her in its arms as if she were its child, and tears of happiness began to stream from her eyes as the blood continued to flow from her midsection. No tears fell from the eyes of the monster, but its mighty chest heaved with emotion.

  "Janos..." she murmured. "Janos...I am dying... I am dying..."

  Janos?! Weyrauch thought. Kaldy?!

  The werewolf leaned forward and pressed its bleeding face against her cheek.

  "I am dying, Janos…I am dying…I am dying…" Claudia’s voice grew slurred and indistinct as her eyes glowed ecstatically and she said, "I shall await you...I shall await you, Janos...on the Bridge...on the Bridge...of the Separator...I shall await you. Janos... Janos..." Her voice faded and her eyes grew white and empty. "Janos..." she murmured. "Janos..." Her head fell back and she was still.

  The werewolf stared into her dead eyes for a long while and then it placed her body gently down upon the cement floor and stared down at her for an eternity. Then it raised its face to the moon, and a howl unto the fiery winds of the underworld burst from its bloody mouth and wafted to the heavens; but it was not a wail of sorrow. It was a shout of triumph. It was a cry of joy.

  The creature turned and walked slowly over to Weyrauch, and the minister, rolling over onto his stomach, tried with pathetic desperation to crawl away from the approaching specter. But the werewolf did not mean to harm him, for it lifted him up, threw him across its shoulder and carried him upward as it climbed the ladder which led from the pit. When they had reached the edge of the high wall, the werewolf put Weyrauch down carefully, and then turned to leave.

  But then it stopped in mid-stride as if it had been struck by something. It spun around, jumping back and landing on the ground beside the crippled minister. The creature brought its face close to that of the man, and then seemed to freeze in place. Weyrauch gazed into the burning yellow eyes, into the glowing, inhuman orbs which stared at him from above the bloody snout of the monster, but those eyes did not return his gaze, those eyes did not meet his own.

  The werewolf was staring at his forehead.

  "
K...K...Kaldy?" Weyrauch whispered. "Is it you? Kaldy, is it you? Do you know me, Kaldy?"

  The werewolf did not move, did not respond, did nothing at all except stare at the sweaty brow of the minister. And then, with a motion so fast that Weyrauch’s eyes could not follow it, the werewolf snapped its jaws shut on his shoulder. The pain tore through his body, the world spun around him, and he lost consciousness.

  When Weyrauch awoke, the warm sunlight was bathing his face, and the birds were proclaiming the beauty of the morning. He raised himself up onto his elbows and looked around at the shredded bodies which lay everywhere, in all directions, which were already providing a feast for the crows. His traumatized mind slowly reassembled the events of the previous night in his memory, and he remembered his broken ankles; but then he tried to wiggle his feet, and they moved without pain. I must not have hurt myself as badly as I had thought, he reasoned. He remembered the attack of the creature just before he blacked out, and he cried softly as his hand went to his shoulder; but he saw that the wound was not as severe as it had seemed. There was very little blood, and it seemed already to be healing. It was the horror of the entire night, he told himself. It made everything seem worse than it was.

  Weyrauch tried to stand up and found that he was so weak and dizzythat his first effort left him pitched forward onto his face. He tried again, more slowly and more carefully, and at last was able to stand erect without swaying. And then, with a rush of elation, he realized:

  I am alive! I am alive!

  He felt like laughing, but he lacked the strength to do more than smile. He began to walk upon his still unsteady legs back away from the pit toward the administration building of the now vacant concentration camp. He entered the wooden structure and, finding the office where he and Schlacht had donned their combat uniforms two nights before, walked in and fell down heavily into a chair. He saw a bottle of cognac on a shelf against the wall, and he grabbed it and poured it greedily down his throat. The fiery liquor warmed him and refreshed him for a moment, and then he felt the bile rise up in his throat and he vomited onto the floor. Well, he thought to himself, what do you expect, after what you’ve been through? Of course your system is upset and your nerves are shattered.