Lycanthropos by Jeffrey Sackett Read Free Book Online Page B

saluting Schlacht. The colonel walked past them, followed by his cousin and her husband. Weyrauch was visibly unnerved by the presence of so many armed men, and even Louisa was increasingly ill at ease. In their little town of Kappelburg , the armed might of Hitler’s minions had not been a constant presence, relegated instead to newsreels and the occasional parade. But there was no element of pretense or show in these S.S. troops. They were heavily armed and, as the Weyrauchs knew full well, quite willing, ready and able to kill upon orders from their colonel.
    Schlacht walked over to the rear wall of the large, empty, starkly white room which they had just entered as Weyrauch looked around and decided that this must at one time have been a kitchen. Against the wall stood a number of very large freezer cases, and as Schlacht placed his hand upon the door handle of one case he turned to his cousin. "Last chance, Louisa," Schlacht warned her. "This isn’t a pretty sight."
    "I can avert my eyes if I want to, Helmuth," she replied laconically.
    "I think you may want to," he said as he pulled open the door. She averted her eyes almost immediately. Her husband would have done the same, but for the fact that he knew that Schlacht expected him to examine the contents of the freezers. Weyrauch did not think it would be wise to disappoint him.
    Weyrauch walked closer and, repressing his nausea, looked into the freezer. It was packed full with parts of human bodies: arms, hands, legs, internal organs, wild, staring eyes set into severed heads whose open mouths had been frozen into death screams, chunks of flesh that had been torn brutally from human bodies. They were the ripped and raked and ruined pieces of mutilated corpses.
    "Your findings, Doctor?" Schlacht asked, a hint of amusement in his voice. What a weakling you are, Gottfried , he thought.
    Weyrauch leaned closer, feeling the bile rising in his throat. He looked at the edges of the body parts, at the length and structure of the scraping wounds. He stepped back and wiped his brow. "Well, I couldn’t be certain, of course…"
    "Of course," Schlacht agreed patiently. "Just give me your impressions. What killed these men?"
    Weyrauch sighed. "They were S.S.?"
    "Yes. You noticed the shreds of uniform, of course."
    "Of course." He paused. "Well, I would have to say, as strange as it sounds, that these men were torn apart by wild beasts."
    "Precisely the findings of our doctors," Schlacht agreed, and then leaned forward to say in almost conspiratorial tones, "The problem. Gottfried, is that these two dozen heavily-armed, well-trained soldiers were killed by one unarmed man."
    Weyrauch stared at Schlacht for a moment and then, at a loss for how to respond to so outrageous an assertion, he said, "That’s, uh, remarkable, to be sure."
    "It’s more than remarkable, Gottfried," Schlacht said, closing the freezer door. "It may very well be a matter of the greatest importance."
    "Yes, yes, of course it may, of course it may," Weyrauch agreed, having not the foggiest notion what Schlacht was talking about.
    "Come with me, Gottfried, Louisa. I want you to meet some prisoners." He led them from the room and they followed him as he walked down the corridor. "You need some background to understand why you are here and what I want from you."
    "At last, the truth," Louisa said. "And why doesn’t it surprise me that you have people imprisoned here?"
    "Your concern is touching, if misplaced, my dear," Schlacht said calmly. "It is fortunate that you and I are related, else I might be tempted to take exception to your attitude."
    "Take all the exception you want, Helmuth," she said heatedly.
    Schlacht was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner, and he required great self-control not to strike his cousin in the face. Turning to Weyrauch, he said, "I’m sure you know that the war is not going as well as we could hope. We had expected to complete the pacification