Not one hand shot up, not one voice was raised.
"Excellent," Schlacht said, and then asked Weyrauch,
"Are you ready, Gottfried?"
"Y...y...yes..."
he tried to reply.
"Good." Schlacht turned back to his men. "I call for a volunteer from among you to be the recipient of the first injection." He smiled, almost thrilled with pride as each and every one of the fifteen S.S. stepped forward. "Men, the Führer himself will know your names and proclaim your greatness," he whispered. He pointed arbitrarily at one soldier and said, "You shall have the honor...Private
Gebhardt, isn't it?"
"
Jawohl
, Herr Colonel," the robust young man replied, his blue eyes gleaming with eagerness. "And thank you, Herr
Colonel."
Schlacht nodded an acceptance of the thanks, and then barked at Weyrauch, "Proceed!"
Weyrauch, who had been breathing deeply in an attempt to calm himself, walked over to Gebhardt, who removed his coat and rolled up his sleeve promptly, without being instructed to do so. Weyrauch rubbed some alcohol on the crook of the soldier's arm, just above the vein, and injected him with the solution. He stood back, and the assembled men waited silently.
Less than thirty seconds later, Gebhardt's eyes began to bulge and his mouth opened wide as his entire frame began to
shudder violently. A scream struggled to escape from his lips, and his contracting abdominal muscles tried to wrench him downward; but he was S.S., he was a scion of the master race, he was one of the elite corps of warriors in the empire of an elite people, and his life had been structured by concepts of discipline, obedience, military stoicism and
Nazism's powerful, if bizarre, brand of honor. Gebhardt fought
the pain, fought his own need to double over and scream, fought to maintain his dignity and his self-mastery in the presence of his commander. A long minute passed, and Gebhardt brought the pain under control. In another minute, the pain had eased and Gebhardt released a relieved sigh.
"How do you feel, Private?" Schlacht asked.
"I am... I am fine, Herr Colonel," he replied, his voice
shaking slightly.
"Good, good," Schlacht smiled. "Stand over there against that wall, Private."
Gebhardt, puzzled, complied. Schlacht turned to the fourteen other S.S. and said. "Draw your side arms, gentlemen. At my command, you will open fire on Private Gebhardt and will continue firing until your guns are empty." The fourteen men looked at each other hesitantly
and Gebhardt, standing stiffly against the wall, swallowed
almost audibly. "Any questions?" Schlacht asked. There were none. "Good. Draw your side arms."
Fourteen revolvers were drawn.
"Ready..." Schlacht said,
"...aim...
commence firing."
Weyrauch cringed at the gunfire. The barren openness of
the large, empty room seemed to intensify the deafening sound of the barrage, and in an instant the barracks was
filled with thin, acerbic smoke. Weyrauch had shut his eyes
tightly when the firing began, and when he opened them he saw Gebhardt still standing against the wall, laughing with
relief, to all appearances completely uninjured.
Schlacht walked over to the private and wrapped his arm around him in an oddly paternal gesture. "Well done, Gebhardt, well done," he smiled. He turned to the other soldiers, "Seeing is believing, is it not, gentlemen?"
The S.S. volunteers broke into a spontaneous round of applause, and then lined up by the table, removing their
coats and rolling up their sleeves.
Ninety minutes later, Gottfried von Weyrauch was sitting in the back seat of a general's staff car, in a pool of his own sweat. Each inch of the ride through the hilly countryside of southwestern
Hungary
and northeastern
Croatia
had served as a progression marker to increase his fear. As he stared out the window in the rolling darkness, he prayed in silent, terrified desperation, unable to rid himself of the gnawing suspicion that his prayer was being ignored and that he was as disgusting to God as he was to
Helmuth Schlacht.
All was as Schlacht had indicated it would be. The Colonel and his adjutant were out there in the darkness somewhere, watching and waiting. The troop truck in which the soldiers had themselves made the journey rested by the roadside some ten yards behind the staff car. The hood of the staff car had been raised, and the fifteen S.S. milled about casually, clearly illuminated by their own
flashlights. And Weyrauch sat and listened to his heart race
and felt his body tremble as his lips moved in incessant,
frightened prayer.
And then, suddenly and without warning, the road was alive with chaos of battle as the Croatian partisans opened fire. They streamed from the surrounding forest, their guns blazing away in their hands as they attacked the supposedly isolated, stranded, vulnerable contingent of Germans.
Weyrauch closed his eyes, not knowing if he should pray for the Croatians or the
Lycanvolk
. The success of either meant certain death for him, and so it was for himself that
he prayed.
The battle was a short one. The Croatians exhausted their ammunition on the S.S., firing a sufficient number of
rounds to have killed a hundred men; but not one German fell to the ground, not one drop of German blood dripped onto the
road, not one German life met its end at the hands of the partisans. Instead the partisans themselves were killed,
most by the returned fire, and a few, those who were bold enough to rush at the staff car, by the bare hands of the superhuman, or perhaps merely inhuman, S.S.
The time between the first gunshot and the last had been no more than fifteen minutes, and another fifteen minutes elapsed before Helmuth Schlacht and Corporal Vogel emerged from the forest which bordered the road. "Gentlemen," Schlacht called out as he stepped onto the road, "I congratulate you!" He had spoken both to express his satisfaction and to advise his men of his approach, so that
the sound of his approach would not lead one of them to fire
at him. "We shall celebrate this victory in proper style when we return to our headquarters." Schlacht climbed into
the rear seat of the staff car and ignored Weyrauch as Vogel started the engine and began to drive back toward the border
between
Croatia
and
Hungary
. He said not one word to his
wife's
cousin and Weyrauch made no attempt at conversation
either. He was nursing the irrational hope that Schlacht
might forget about him entirely.
As they drew near to the camp, Schlacht turned to him and asked, "Have you ever read
Mein Kampf
,
Gottfried?"
"Oh, yes, of course I have," he lied nervously. Like most of the German population, Weyrauch had found Hitler's turgid, rambling book impossible to sit down and read, though it had been expedient to purchase and display it.
"The new order," Schlacht whispered distantly, turning
to gaze out into the darkness. "That's what this war is all
about, Gottfried, that's what National Socialism is all about, that's what the S.S. is all about." He sighed with
weary contentment. "Tonight I have given the Führer a tool,
a weapon the likes of which this planet has never seen, and with this weapon his prophecies shall come to pass, and his
vision shall be realized."
Weyrauch nodded a simpering agreement. "Yes, yes," he
muttered.
"Most of the people in
Europe
just don't understand this
war, you know," Schlacht said conversationally. "They think that it has something to do with Alsace-Lorraine or
Danzig
or colonies or some other petty nonsense. But they're wrong,
of course."
"Of... of course..."
"It's about blood and soil, nothing less. Blood and
soil." He looked at Weyrauch. "Do you want to know what the
world will be like in a hundred years, Gottfried?"
"Yes, of course." I'll be content if I will be able to see the world when I am seventy, he thought.
"The inferior races, the polluters of the human strain,
will all have been done away with," Schlacht said. "Think about
it,
Gottfried. A world without Jews and Gypsies and Slavs. Picture Asia, Gottfried, without one single
slant-eyed, yellow skinned, jabbering monkey, picture
Africa
without one single black-skinned, sub-human ape. Isn't the idea glorious?"
"Gl...glorious,
Helmuth..."
"With my new army of
Lycanvolk,
we'll be in
London
in a month and wipe out the Russians by the end of the year. It won't matter what the Americans try to do at that point.
We'll
be able to knock them out in short order. Most Americans have negro blood in them anyway, so they won't pose much of a problem."
"No...no, certainly
not..."
"We'll have to continue to work with the Italians, I suppose, because of the Führer's affection for Mussolini, but the Sicilians at least will definitely have to go. I'm
not sure how
we'll
handle
it,
actually. We've already begun
to exterminate the Jews and the Gypsies, but thus far the
Slavs are valuable as slave laborers. We may adopt the same
policy toward the Latin Americans...the Indians and the Negroes, that is, not the Aryan elements in the populations of those statesâ¦"
"No, no... not the Aryans..."
"Japan is technically our ally, of course, but that is unimportant. The Führer concluded that alliance only to put pressure on
England
. I suppose
we'll
just allow the Japanese and the Chinese to kill as many of each other as they can for a
while before we get around to exterminating them as
well."
He shook his head. "That will present us with an extremely
complicated problem in logistics and disposal."
"Yes, a complicated problem..."
"So much needs to be done," Schlacht whispered. "We've begun taking blonde-haired, blue-eyed women from the conquered nations and sending them to
Germany
to breed with selected members of the S.S. â¦the
Lebensborn
projectâ¦have you heard of it?"
"Nâ¦nâ¦"
"But that is only the beginning. The Führer does not have even the most remote
expectation that he will live to see it all brought to pass,
but we must establish the foundations now, before the enthusiasm and dedication begins to wane. A century from now, two centuries at most, this will be a planet of Aryans, a blond-haired, blue-eyed master race, served by slaves and living in perfect order beneath a planetary government run by the National Socialist Party, which will itself be little more than an administrative arm of the S.S. And if technology advances sufficiently to satisfy whatever needs are now dependent upon manual labor, we will even be able to wipe out the slaves." He sighed. "That is what this war is all about, Gottfried. Utopia. It is about Utopia."
Schlacht fell into a contemplative silence as the gates
of the camp swung open and they drove into the courtyard. He smiled at
Weyrauch and said, "Now I must make some
arrangements with the commander of this camp. We'll need fourteen prisoners for tomorrow night."
"More...more prisoners?" Weyrauch asked, trying to sound
casual, trying to sound as if and Schlacht were still somehow allied in the project. "Another round of
experiments?"
"Oh, no, the experimental phase is over and done with.
But we know that Kaldy doesn't eat anything until he is transformed, and that when that happens, he seeks out human flesh. I must operate under the assumption that my men will have the same needs, and I do not wish to deprive them of whatever nourishment is necessary for their continued health and power." He opened the door of the staff car. "No, now our prisoners will serve as food."
Weyrauch shuddered at the unspeakable idea. "But
surely, Helmuth, they can eat beef or some other kind of
meat! Surely it isn't necessary to..."
"Gottfried," Schlacht said sadly but without anger, "you are a fool. These prisoners are destined for the gas chamber
and the crematoria anyway. What difference does it make if they serve a useful purpose in their deaths? If we exterminate fifty thousand of them here at Hunyad,
and if fourteen of those fifty thousand are fed to my creatures, what of it?"
Weyrauch frowned. "But why fourteen prisoners, Helmuth? You have fifteen men!"
Schlacht smiled at him cruelly. "Very good, Gottfried, very good! You can count!"
Weyrauch's look of confusion collapsed into one of
unmitigated horror as he realized what Schlacht was saying.
"Helmuth...Helmuth...you wouldn't...you can't mean...you
wouldn't...!"
"Count yourself singularly honored, my dear pastor," Schlacht said as he stepped from the car. "This is as close as a Christian can come in this century to being thrown to the lions." He looked at the two soldiers who had left the truck and were walking toward him and then he pointed at Weyrauch. "Lock him up," he ordered, and then walked toward the camp's administration building, listening with cheerful contentment to Weyrauch's frenzied screams as he pleaded and implored and begged for mercy, screams that faded into silence as the minister was dragged away by the soldiers. Vogel fell into place beside his commander and Schlacht said, "Send a telegram to
Berlin
, to
Reichsführer
Himmler. I will send a courier with a full report in the morning, but
I want him notified of this tonight."