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Red Moon:

Wolves of Stalingrad

Part 5

Franz crept through the woods silently, only moving when the wind blew to cover the noise of his boots crunching the snow beneath. He had his rifle clutched tightly in his grasp with a single round chambered. It would make too much noise for him to work the clunky bolt, he only had the one shot and he intended to make it count. It wasn't anything like the scoped rifle he had back in Stalingrad, the stock of the Mosin Nagant felt wrong in his hands and there was only the iron sights to use.

Rubbing his nose with the back of his hand, Franz scanned the surrounding woods. There was a light fog over the land. It was getting cold enough for snow during the nights, but it got damp during the day, making for a humid environment. He relished it, it truly felt right as a sniper. The fog dulled his senses, gave him the feeling that he was truly on an even playing field. His new sense of smell was useless as the fog drove his scent to the ground before it traveled too far and his vison couldn't pierce the fog well either.

A squirrel watched him for the low hanging branches of a pine tree and Franz dared it to start chattering and give away his position, but it only watched. It was more interested in storing more acorns and nuts for the coming winter. It was going to be a hard one, Siberian winters were never anything but that. The squirrel's tail flicked once before it scampered up the tree and leapt away, rustling the branches as it did so. Franz watched it until it was no longer in sight, he had his own gathering to do.

After a half a mile of walking, Franz came to the place he had been walking so far to get to, an open field. It was a small one which was good since it allowed Franz to see the small pile of apples in the center, lightly grazed upon.

Franz smiled at the sight. Deer had taken the bait and with winter so close, they would come back soon. He had been laying out apples for several weeks in many different places, hoping that deer would come. Many of the piles went untouched and rotted, but a few were getting some nips.

Finding a nice thick tree, Franz sat at its base where the branches above had sheltered the ground beneath it from the snow. Moving some dead pine needles out of the way, Franz got himself comfortable for a long wait. There was no telling how long it would be before the deer came back for their next meal.

Minutes turned into hours as the sun began its journey down and the world was cast into twilight. The sky turned a gorgeous orange with the horizon a fiery red that reminded Franz of a burning city in the distance. It didn't take much to remind him of the war and what he was pulled away from. Sometimes it brought thoughts of how he survived, a blessing in disguise. Other times it brought thoughts of despair and cowardice since he left so many behind. He was stuck in Siberia, he had no idea how to get back nor the knowledge of even if the war was still going on.

His thoughts were cut off as he heard the unmistakable sound of an apples being bit into. With his mind occupied, a deer had walked right into the middle of the field unnoticed. It was a small mockery to his hunting skills, but only a small one. It mattered little in the end since he was going to get the deer anyways.

Pulling his legs up closer to his chest, Franz rested his rifle on his knees for supports. He moved slowly to avoid getting the attention of the deer. It looked up a few times, but never in an alarmed way and always went back to eating when Franz froze.

With one eye squinting to help him focus, the sights of the rifle were aimed at the area behind the deer's shoulder where a bullet could enter and hit both lungs and the heart. It would be instant death, clean, just like how he liked. He took a slow and deep breathe in and held it before slowly letting it out. The sights quivered a bit. Franz had never been the best with iron sights, which was part of the reason why he had become a sniper. With a scope, it was more technical. He needed to adjust the settings for the range, lead and keep the crosshair steady at the point where the person...

He reached the end of his breath at the thought of shooting people. It had been his job once and the memory caused a slight jerk in his arm when he fired.

The sound of the firing rifle echoed loudly across the forest and the deer looked up and stared directly at Franz. Miss.

The deer now saw the hunter that had missed his only shot and it reared back, getting ready to flee the obvious danger. Sadly for it, Franz had only the one shot, not because of a philosophy that if he missed the prey deserved to live, but because if he missed, the other hunter wouldn't let it escape.

A roar erupted from the tree line behind where Franz was seated with the gun still sitting on his knee, steam rising from the barrel as he waited for the inevitable. A grey flash burst out of the woods and headed right for the deer. A quick and guttural bleat was all the noise the deer made before its neck was ripped out by a massive pair of jaws that quickly clamped down on it.

Franz eased himself up, not startled at all by the quick and brutal kill that sent blood spilling in an arc across the snow, red as the apples. He slung the weapon, no longer needing it, and began to walk over to the wolf. He watched as the two glowing yellow eyes watched his approached.

A low growl emanated from the chest of the wolf as Franz got close. "Oh, shut up." Franz rolled his eyes and looked down at the kill that hung limp from the mouth of the wolf. Its neck was torn open, blood everywhere, it wasn't as clean as he would have liked, but it was still a quick death. The main artery had been severed and with the twitchiness of a deer, it would have died of blood loss in seconds. Little suffering.

He reached down for the deer and got another growl from the wolf. It didn't faze Franz in the slightest as he grabbed a leg and pulled it away from the wolf who let it go. Pulling a knife from the sheath on his belt, Franz began to gut it. He cut, starting from the crotch and worked his way up to the chest until the entire abdomen was slit open and the guts spilled out of it. Using his hands, Franz pulled out the ribbons of intestines that gravity couldn't get out.

The wolf moved closer and nosed the gut pile. It sniffed, taking in the smell of the kill that it had made. It was hungry and didn't feel like waiting so it took the liver and a few other choice organs and began to eat them.

"You know that patience is a virtue and if you rip the intestines open again, you're carrying it back." Franz said as he cracked open the rib cage with his bare hands. The heart was nestled neatly between two pale lungs, perfectly unscathed.

The wolf snorted at the man and licked the blood off of its chops. It left the intestines alone. It remembered the last deer, the intestines might as well have been a highly pressurized bomb. A small cut in the lining and the entire thing would go up in a small explosion of shit which would get everything covered in a sickening aroma.

Franz took his backpack off and began to pile the uneaten organs into it. Every part had its use so everything was coming with him. When that was done, he closed the top off with a latch and threw it back on. "You going to help?" He asked the wolf while he decided how to best carry the deer carcass.

The wolf answered by licking its paw and giving another loud snort. It was its own way of punishing the man for missing although it wanted him to miss anyways. It loved the hunt. The feeling of running through the woods after panicked prey was exhilarating. He had grown bored following the man through the woods at an excruciatingly slow pace all day, unnecessary in his opinion.

"Ass." Franz muttered out and shoved the wolf's head. He got a tackled in return that caught him off guard. He landed on his back with the wolf over him that had its teeth barred. "Oh, it's going to be like that, is it?" He laughed and shoved the wolf off of him.

This time it was the wolf's turn to turn to be caught off guard as the man quickly got up before he could recover from the shove and yelped as he was tackled. A quick tussle occurred with the man and the wolf rolling through the snow, teeth snapping and growling before the wolf ended up on top once again with Franz pinned down under its paws.

"Ok. Ok." Franz panted and wincing as the claws of the wolf dug into his shoulders slightly. "You win." He surrendered and the wolf got off of him. He dusted himself off and took off his backpack. He didn't even check the inside, he knew that the rolling around had turned the inside into some retched hell. "You get to carry this." He threw it at the wolf where it landed at its feet.

The wolf leaned down and sniffed the pack, the smell of feces emanating from it. It pawed at it slightly and looked back up at Franz, its head turned slightly and its ears flopping slightly. It looked like some confused puppy, but Franz knew better than to make such a stupid assumption.

"Hey, I warned you." Franz said and heaved the dead deer onto his shoulders. It barely weighed anything to him. "C'mon you big mutt." He said and began to walk towards the tree line, back towards home. He thought about that. Was Siberia his home? It was where he lived, but he never felt like he belonged though.

It had been five years since he had been forcibly whisked away from the battlefield, his body changed forever by the bites and scratches of a werewolf. He had hunted here, made friends and yet he didn't belong. He had a house in Berlin, an apartment in the heart of the city where he could walk to the market every day or meet up with some other soldiers who had the day off for a night at the tavern for a round of beers. That was home and he held onto the belief that someday he would see it again. He just needed to wait and earn the trust of the wolves that insisted to be being his new family. He secretly scoffed at the idea while publicly embracing it. Just needed to be patient. He looked back and saw the wolf carrying to pack in its mouth, padding after him silently. They both began the slow and long walk back home. The sun would be rising the next day before they got back.

Franz finished hanging the deer on a rack where it would stay until its meat was needed. There were a dozen other deer hanging, each from a different wolf that went out to hunt the previous day. He had been the last to return since he always insisted on staying in the form of a human. He didn't like becoming a beast, running on all fours, it didn't feel right and he was glad that no one mocked him for it. They didn't care much or openly as long as he got back with a kill.

He looked around at the small village that he lived in. It was an odd sight, one that took him off guard the first time he saw it. There were normal houses, made of wood and hide with chimneys like normal, but instead of people, there were wolves wandering through the streets. Most of the pack liked to remain in their wolf form and only took the shape of humans when a non-pack member got the privilege of coming to them. Even then, it was usually just some government official coming for taxes. Even in Siberia, the government wanted their money.

A group of pups ran out of one of the houses and up to him. They yipped excitedly at the sight of another successful hunt and jumped at his knees. "C'mon you little ankle biters." He laughed and swatted at them until they backed off. "I still need to skin it." They did eventually leave him alone, but only to swarm the other wolf that was sifting through the gut pack trying to see what was salvageable.

Franz let them bug the wolf as he skinned the deer. It was an unnecessary act, to dress the kill when wolves could easily tear the skin away with their teeth, but he enjoyed the slow task. It let him think. Over the sounds of squealing pups that had stolen the gut pack, Franz stripped away the skin. It peeled back easily under his grip, the layer of fat underneath, clung on in oily white bits and the raw smell wafted into his nose where it stirred something deep inside of him. He clamped down on the feeling, the feral and pure wild feeling of the wolf inside.

No matter what occurred, he always thought of himself as a human first. Living among the werewolves for all those years, observing them and watching them as they lived a mixed life. Some came and went, traveling to the cities in the west in the form of a human while others never left and never took the shape of a man. It all seemed like some lie to him. It disgusted him.

During the night, when the pack got together to eat, Franz didn't show up. He had said that he was going to retire early since he hadn't slept in two days, but Dmitri knew better. He had noticed that Sergei, as he called him now, had been troubled.

Franz was known as Sergei by most of the pack to hide his German origins. Many hated Germany for invading their home and dragging them into a war that killed many pack members. It had been necessary to stop more zealous members of the pack from tearing the man apart when Dmitri first dragged the unconscious wolf into the village. Now it wasn't so much of an issue. Many had guessed his origins after some time, mostly since he only spoke German, but by then, the alpha had made his decision to keep him clear.

Sergei had never fit in, he never embraced being a werewolf, choosing to remain in his human form whenever possible. It concerned him since he was charged with watching over him and teaching him about how to be a werewolf.

After getting his fill, Dmitri set off to find his charge. He wasn't in his bed and he had tried to mask his scent with herbs, but that didn't work. Dmitri simply needed to follow the scent of the herbs now that went into the woods to the north. He didn't think that Sergei was trying to run away like had had done the first few months he had been here, Sergei knew that he would only end up hopelessly lost. He didn't have the knowledge of the layout of the land, but there was something to the north that Dmitri had been hiding from him.

Franz knew that he had failed to cover his tracks when he began to smell the herbs on himself. It wouldn't be long before Dmitri came to find him, but it was too late anyway, he found their dirty little secret. He stood on a hill overlooking a large military camp. Normally he would have dismissed it as just that, a military camp, but it was much more. He had stumbled across it months ago when he had gone out hunting and managed to get in close. There he saw the true nature of it. There were people in there being forced to work, most emaciated and on the verge of death. It was one of the labor camps that he had heard about and it was being worked by Germans. Germans from the 6th army, his unit as he recognized the faces. Stalingrad had been lost and his people were paying for it.

Dmitri walked up to the man who looked down onto the labor camp. He had tried to hide the fact that Germany had lost the war and that the Soviet Union had imprisoned thousands of prisoners of war instead of releasing them.

"It's quite a sight." Franz sighed, noting looking at the wolf that stood up to the bottom of his chest. "Seeing people you once knew worked to death." He didn't feel angry, that had passed a long time ago. He felt disappointment that he had been kept in the dark.

Dmitri needed to talk to Sergei face to face to explain his actions so he changed into a form that would let him do that.

"Look." He said as he stepped up onto two feet. "I hid this because I was afraid of how you would act." He wanted to put a hand on his shoulder to try and reassure him, but he hesitated. "You know that the pack didn't do this, it was the government."

"I know, but I've never belonged to the pack and you know it. I was a soldier who belonged with his own people."

"We are your people now."

Franz looked over at Dmitri. "I guess so since my old people are gone." He turned around and walked back down the hill towards the village. "I should have died all those years ago." He said as he walked away. "I should have died with my own kind."