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Red Moon:

Wolves of Stalingrad

Part 3

A pair of medics rushed the bleeding and broken body of Franz into the make shift hospital that was no more than a large tent. People, suffering from various wounds and ailments writhed and moaned as the nurses and doctors did their best to care for them. It was a nightmare for the staff since the flow of wounded and needy never stopped. People missing legs, arms, eyes even all needed someone to care for them and there was barely enough if each person worked eighteen hour shifts.

"What happened?" A doctor in a standard infantry uniform that was covered in the blood of a hundred different people walked up to the two soldier that had rushed Franz to the hospital when they had found him. The look of the two soldiers carrying what was one of the most torn up people he had ever seen got his attention immediately. Looking down, the doctor grimaced at the sight. Bite marks were scattered around Franz's arms along with numerous scratches, some of which were bone deep. He wasn't sure if he would live, but it was his job to try. He motioned them to set the man on a cot while he listened to them.

Heaving Franz up with a grunt the two set him into the cot. "We found him inside a building all torn up like this." He wiped the blood off of his arms onto his pants legs.

The doctor looked over the wounds. They were already festering, much faster than he would expect. "Any idea how long he had been out there before you found him." The doctor asked and waved over a nurse who brought bandages and disinfectants.

"I don't think very long." The soldier replied, he had heard a struggle from inside the building when he was sent out with the other soldier that was with him. It sounded horrible with the sounds of a man truly fighting for his life, but when they got there, they had just found Franz' unconscious on the floor.

The doctor frowned at the non-descript answer and padded at the wounds with a bandage the nurse had given him. The blood was being washed away, but it almost looked like the flesh around the wound was already rotting in part. The meat was turning black and gave off a strong pungent odor. It was worrying, it could be a new bio-weapon that the Russians had developed. "These wounds are bad." He muttered out and handed the nurse the bloody rag. "I need to cut away the dead bits." He looked up at the two soldiers who looked a bit green. "I think it's time you two leave. Thank you for bringing him here, I'll take care of it now." They nodded and hurried off, the sickening smell of disinfectant mixing with blood was turning their stomachs.

"Get me a scalpel." He told the nurse who was just some soldier the doctor had found. The nurses didn't need much training, he just needed people to take some of the more menial tasks off his hands while he did his part. The nurse nodded wordlessly and went off in search of a scalpel, preferably a clean one.

"Now let's get a closer look." The doctor grabbed the two sides of Franz's tattered shirt and tore it, exposing his chest and new set of wounds. A massive gash across his chest that had a broken bone sticking out. It was much worse than the doctor thought. He didn't waste time, grabbing a fresh rag, the doctor began to wipe away the blood and called for another nurse to help. Together, they got as much blood cleared away as possible with many of the wounds still bleeding.

The other nurse returned with a clean scalpel and the doctor took it with a nod. He began to cut away to dead tissue around each of the wounds to prevent his patient from going septic. Each slow and careful slice took away a sliver of grey, dead tissue which he piled on the floor right next to the bed where it would be cleaned up afterwards. The nurses continued to wipe away the blood and as the doctor moved form one gash to the next, they bandaged the wounds which almost immediately soaked through with blood.

Franz jerked suddenly, he wasn't waking up or responding to the pain, but going into cardiac arrest. He had lost too much blood and the shock was now hitting hard.

"Fucking hell." The doctor stopped cutting and set the scalpel down, he was only about half way finished cutting the dead tissue away. "Don't die on me." The doctor commanded and Franz jerked again, his heart straining under the stress and failing. "Don't you fucking die on me!" The doctor yelled out. He hated losing patients on the table when he felt like he was doing good. It felt like god was slapping him in the face to be right there, doing everything he could and still lose someone.

He began chest compressions to try and keep the heart going. He wasn't about to lose the man.

Back on the other side of the city, in Russian controlled territory, inside an empty grain silo, a Russian medic cared for one of his own. One sat on a wooden bench that was being used as a makeshift gurney while the other stood over him and tended his wounds. The inside of the grain silo was barren, its metal walls stained by the grain the used to fill it up to the very top. A single candle gave the medic light and casted dark shadows up the wall and onto their gear that was piled off to the side.

"Hold still Vasili!" Dmitri shoved the hollering man down onto his back, but he kept trying to get back up.

"Let me go pup." Vasili growled even though Dmitri was much older than him. "I'm going to kill the man who did this to me." He was talking about the bullet wounds that were strewn about him, from a PPSH. He winced as he was shoved down much harder this time by Dmitri who was trying to pull the bullets out.

"He's probably dead." Dmitri tried to reason and dug a pair of tweezers into a bullet hole and dug around.

Vasili cried out it pain. He had refused any kind of anesthetic or morphine since his pain threshold was much higher than most people. He gritted his teeth as one by one, the bullets were pulled out of him to let his natural healing ability to kick in.

"Fucker was still alive when he sprayed me with his damn gun." He calmed down a bit, the pain of his wounds not enraging him anymore, but calming him. "Almost had him." He clenched his fists and held them in front of him as he imagined ripping into the German sniper that he had been tracking for several days.

"Why couldn't you have just shot the man instead of trying to tear him apart?" Dmitri asked while wrapping an arm in bed sheets he had found. Medical supplies were nearly nonexistent even for him and he was the medic that cared for the entire pack.

Vasili pulled his arm away, the wounds neatly wrapped. "Nature of the hunt." He answered.

"Look where that got you." Dmitri sighed and moved on to Vasili's back which took the brunt of the damage. He thought about how lucky Vasili really was, over thirty bullet wounds and he was still alive. While flesh wounds posed no real threat, a single bullet to the heart was still fatal.

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah." Vasili didn't like getting nagged by anyone even though he knew that Dmitri was right. He sucked in a tight breath and tensed up as Dmitri patted the wounds with Vodka. The wounds wouldn't get infected, but sterilizing them would make the healing process go by faster since the body wouldn't have to deal with bacteria. "Almost had him too. Maybe he'll bleed out." He said when the stinging sensation went away.

"Or." Dmitri wiggled a finger and walked in front of Vasili to look at him face to face. "You've gone off and changed someone."

"So?" Vasili looked away and pouted.

"You know the rules." Dmitri reminded him. "If you change someone, you're responsible for them. We need to go find this person and bring him back for evaluation by the alpha." It was a long standing rule that had been put in place when the number of werewolves plummeted during the Inquisition. Any person who was changed, either by accident or on purpose, had to be judge if they were good enough to join the pack. It was also in place so there wouldn't be stray werewolves wandering around which could re-expose them to the rest of the world.

"He was almost dead when I left." Vasili made the poor argument that he had lost before it had even begun.

"C'mon. Grab your things. We're going to find him." Dmitri picked up his Mosin Nagant and handed another one to Vasili who took it with a glare. It seemed cruel to force the man who had just been shot to get up and walk, but Vasili was already showing signs of improvement.

From there, they went out to go looking for a potential werewolf.

Back at the German hospital, the doctor breathed out a breath, his body slumped with exhaustion after fighting to save Franz's life for two long hours. He had worked so hard that he had gotten the attention of nearly everyone else in the tent. They all had watched him, prayed for him and even cheered him on as he worked on the dying man, but to no avail.

Franz laid on the bed, motionless. The rot that had started to appear on his body only hours after receiving his grievous wounds was now spreading and it had stopped the man's heart.

With a hand, red and black from both healthy and dead blood, the doctor grabbed a blanket from one of the nearby beds and spread it over Franz's body, covering the head. He didn't want to look at his failure anymore. "Pile him out back with the rest of them." The doctor said to anyone who was listening and shuffled off to go clean his hands.

Franz's body was carried, more gently than most and put atop a pile of bodies that was four feet high. All had come to the hospital in need of care and just couldn't be saved. There was no room to bury the dead, nor the time. The pile was on the outskirts of the camp that was set up around the hospital and was unguarded most of the time.

There, Franz's body laid undisturbed until darkness where two figures approached it.

"See, he's dead." Vasili whispered. They were still within earshot and it didn't help that they were speaking in Russian either. They were taking a huge risk sneaking into enemy territory.

Dmitri grabbed and arm and pulled Franz's body off the pile for closer inspection. A quick sniff confirmed that it was the man who Vasili attacked, but a closer inspection revealed other information. "Not in the way you like." He pointed out the grey flesh around the wounds that had spread out and nearly encompassed the entire body.

"You've got to be kidding me." It was all Vasili could mutter. The rot was not in fact rot, but the early stages of change. During the change, the body was often put in a catatonic state that closely resembled death. This allowed the change to occur without allowing the body to react to violently to the change that was drastically altering Franz's DNA and body.

"Grab him and let's go." Dmitri ordered and frowned. He didn't know how the alpha would react to them bringing a German when they were at war, but rules were rules.