“At least we got her research. Maybe we can help stop it.” Mara slipped the flash drive into her pocket.
A howl sounded in the distance and bounced around the peak of the mountain.
Werwolf!
W.D. Gagliani & David Benton
A hybrid excerpt from W.D. Gagliani’s Wolf’s Edge
1
Giovanni Lupo walked fast, hands in his pockets, one wrapped around the tubular lead weight he carried in case he needed a little more oomph behind his considerable right hook.
It wouldn’t help against a German patrol, but a single adversary would pay the price if his jaw got between Giovanni and his escape route. It might be all the advantage he needed. He walked fast, hoping to beat the rapidly approaching darkness as well as the random patrols.
For as dusk arrived, so would the Allied bombers.
They came every night, almost as soon as the sirens went off and the spotlights went on, trying to catch their silhouettes like bugs on a glass.
Giovanni Lupo lived with his family on the outskirts of Genova, the huge port city whose importance to the German war machine was incalculable. Its factories had turned to slave labor to churn out goods for the war effort, but it was Germany’s war effort — no longer Italy’s. In September 1943, the Italian monarchy and its political backers signed a secret armistice with the Allies. As soon as it became known that Italy had surrendered, the German ally’s resident forces had become an outright occupation. Everyone knew the war was lost except the mad German leadership, and few Italians saw the benefit of that, but the die was cast.
But those factories were a fat prize for the Allied bombardiers. As was the German high command, located somewhere near the harbor.
Now heading home on foot from his meager employment in a local foundry that had miraculously avoided nationalization by the Germans, Giovanni Lupo kept a cautious watch for German patrols, his greatest fear. They would sometimes sweep up able-bodied Italian men to fill gaps in factory assembly lines.
A typical tactic was for a covered truck to drive to a public square or market, pull up, and disperse a platoon of Wehrmacht infantrymen who would then round up bystanders and passersby and hold them at gunpoint until a cattle van could cart away the victims.
Giovanni watched for the rumbling covered trucks.
He was convinced his ears were sensitive. The moment he heard the unforgettable gear-grinding sound of one of those vehicles, he would melt into one of the narrow lanes that lined the street. He had mapped numerous routes home to avoid this very danger. He walked briskly, avoiding the glances of strangers, hoping he could make it home without trouble. His fellow pedestrians surely thought the same and went their way, avoiding him.
He looked straight ahead, ears attuned to the infrequent roar of a motor vehicle or the grinding of trucks.
Maria, I’m coming home. Don’t worry too much.
He hoped his son had found his way home from school by now. A month ago, a teacher had disappeared — presumably in a street sweep. The children had been dismissed until a substitute could be coaxed from another school farther away. Hardly anyone wanted to work so close to a German high command, for it was an Allied high-priority target.
Giovanni had worked a full day for the first time in months, eagerly accepting the opportunity to earn a few extra lire. Maybe there would be eggs and some lard in the kitchen tomorrow because of it.
Again Giovanni thought of his son’s long walk home from school. Some of it was through rural lanes and secondary streets, but he should be safe if he walked straight home without any distractions. Unfortunately, Franco was the kind of boy for whom everything was a distraction. If not for this damnable, senseless war — and its resulting occupation by the goddamned Germans — his son would have been at the top of his class in studies. But the school slowdown had stunted the book learning, and Giovanni was beginning to fear his boy was getting too much of a street education. He spent half his days running in the streets.
But it was the thought of extra food, especially eggs and meat and oil, all of which he could almost taste — though he suspected that soon the Germans would begin to run out of oil as well, if the rumors of their losses in the South were true — that distracted Giovanni from his single-minded route home.
And distracted him from two very important things.
One was the approaching command car, which was crawling along scouting the streets ahead of its “collection” squad.
The other was the exact moment at which dusk would become evening.
Giovanni turned the corner and found himself facing the command car, which swerved toward him with a squeal of tires. Two burly German soldiers leapt from the rear before the vehicle had even come to a full stop.
Taken by surprise, Giovanni shrank back against the wall behind him, having forgotten it was there. He lost precious time trying to decide whether he should pull his lead-heavy hand from his pocket and fight, or flee the way he’d come. Unfortunately, the momentary indecision tied up both options, for his weighted hand caught in his clothes and at the same time he couldn’t reorient his legs and feet in order to allow for a sprint away from the uniformed thugs who were upon him.
Merda!
His fist was trapped.
His feet tripped over themselves and he went down sideways even as the two Germans caught him and yanked him off the sidewalk as if he were a child, their guttural orders and commands just a jagged jumble of sounds in his ears.
Oh no, Maria! This wasn’t what I wanted!
He struggled in their grasp. The two were larger than average, two bruisers who knew the ropes. They suspected his hand held a weapon and made sure it couldn’t clear his damned pocket, and by keeping his feet off the ground he was off-balance as well and found it impossible to gather enough leverage for a kick.
“Nooooo!” he shouted in frustration. Tears wet the corners of his eyes.
The two uniformed goons manhandled him, their faces grim with determination and single-minded purpose. Perhaps their well-being in the barracks depended on how they performed their duty.
He struggled in their iron grip even as they dragged him, sweating and screaming, past the waiting command car to where a covered truck was just now pulling up.
His legs swinging empty kicks at his attackers’ shins, his mouth keeping up a steady stream of curses that would have made his wife blush, he found himself being tossed face-first like a sack of spongy rotten potatoes over the rear gate and into the back of the truck.
His face stopped its painful slide on the rough planks by smashing into the muddy boots of another German soldier who thrust the muzzle of his submachine gun into Giovanni’s skull.
He couldn’t look up, but what was in his range of vision deflated his spirit and took the fight out of him. Boots all around him, and at the front of the truck bed, scuffed shoes and even bare feet — other conscripted unfortunates.
A stream of guttural syllables followed him onto the truck bed. One of the two burly thugs telling the other troopers he was probably armed.
Hands reached out for his arms on both sides and dug his fist out of his pocket as the gun muzzle threatened to burrow straight through his skull and into his brain. Rivulets of blood seeped down his forehead and into his eyes as he felt the gun metal scraping his cranium like a crowbar. His fist was forcibly removed from his pocket, the fabric tearing loudly, and the lead weight was pried from his fingers with inexorable strength.