SNAFU: Wolves at the Door

Corrado had shucked his bloody coat and now wore a thin, once-white dress shirt. He shivered in the night’s chill, present even here in the shelter.

“Now you know what we are up against,” he told Giovanni. “Since late last year, the Germans have sent those things against us, night after night.”

“But… what are they?”

“Do you not remember the stories your parents told you when you were young? They are wolf-men, just like the legends.”

“It’s just too… It’s impossible.”

“You saw it with your own eyes. But for Turco, one would have torn you apart. We know what they are, but they are almost impossible to kill. The Germans are retreating, but they have deployed a rear guard made up, partly, of this Werwolf Division of theirs. The monsters have done their worst in the hills and used to stay out of the cities, mostly, but now they are being used against us here as well.”

“You said you can’t kill them? But they did die.”

Corrado snorted quietly. “Sure, but at what cost. They can be killed, but it takes special…” He leaned over and whispered even more quietly. “That man there, hunched in the corner?”

Giovanni saw a man whose look was haunted. His eyes seemed feverish, his skin pale. He hadn’t been part of the gun battle.

“He’s a priest. He has fought with us. He is a Jesuit. You know what that means?”

Giovanni shrugged. He knew who Jesuits were, of course, but…

“He has done exorcisms. He has faced evil before and survived. And he has brought us more than just his own fighting spirit. From Rome, he has brought us a weapon.”

“Rome?”

“From the Vatican.” Corrado scratched his stubble. “You want to talk with him? Will it make you feel better about what you have seen?”

Giovanni’s eyes unfocused as he stared at the priest. Then he nodded.

“Hey, Babbo, this guy wants to talk to you,” Corrado called out across the room.

The priest stood and moved as if uncertain of his footing. As if his feet were submerged. He looked to have been muscular and then run to fat, but now the fat had dissipated and his skin was sallow and bag-like.

He came to a stop near Giovanni and Corrado. His priest’s collar was long gone. His eyes were glazed by lack of sleep or war-weariness. Both.

“You’re that new one,” he said. “You have a pretty wife.”

Giovanni nodded. “Yes, and a son. But I don’t know what happened to him. I wanted him here with me, but he’s missing. And now I’m not sure I want him here. I don’t know what I want. Except… I want to know that what I saw out there cannot exist.”

The priest sighed and sat stiffly near them.

He pointed at Corrado and said: “He calls me Babbo, dad, because he’s not very religious.” His expression was more sympathetic now. “I see how much you fear for your son. What happened?”

Corrado moved away, checking on his men.

“I was out working when the Germans picked me up for one of their damned slave-labor details. I didn’t intend— I… found myself fighting even though it was the last thing I wanted. My son was out with his friend Pietro, playing, as he does every day since their school was closed. That was when Corrado’s men grabbed my wife too, but my son wasn’t home. I’m grateful, they may have saved her, but now I want to find Franco and they won’t let me go.”

“My name is Father Tranelli. I will have a word with Corrado. He’s a good man, but he feels responsible for his fighters, and he cannot separate his hate for Germans from his responsibilities. But you saw what the Germans use against us…”

“What are they, Father?” The tremble in Giovanni’s voice betrayed how haunted he was by the horror.

“They are men who have the ability to turn into wolves. You must remember the legends? The Middle Ages were full of sightings, convictions, and executions of so-called wolf-men. Mothers still terrify their unruly children with tales of the uomo-lupo, the wolf-man, or the lupo mannaro – the werewolf. We have always had the legends, especially in the hill villages. But after the Germans became our occupiers and the war seemed already lost, they brought in the Werwolf Division as a rear guard. You know the damned Nazis, they like all that occult stuff. Nobody paid any more attention than to anything else they do. They have already a reputation for shooting civilians and imprisoning anyone they deem dangerous. But as Corrado will tell you, partisan units began coming into contact with groups of these wolves. First our fighters found their sentries killed, torn apart and disemboweled. Men on lonely outposts were killed by mysterious animals. But then the attacks became brazen, and now sometimes several werewolves will attack a patrol or even a safehouse.”

“But why can’t you kill them?” Giovanni slapped his hand on the table. “I saw your men shoot them at point-blank range and yet the wolves survived and still reached them.”

“Werewolves are magical beings, young man. I have no other explanation. They are of the devil, perhaps. They cannot be killed by normal means.”

“Then if there are many of them, we’ll all die…”