Dark Screams, Volume 7 by Dark Screams-Volume 7 # (v5.0)

Author:Dark Screams-Volume 7 # (v5.0) [#, Dark Screams-Volume 7]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

The Expedition

Bill Schweigart

AUGUST 1938

To Lieutenant Dietrich Drexler it was a simple mathematical problem: They had one wolf pursuing their party and one injured man. The guide had been thrown from his horse when something, perhaps the wolf, had spooked it. It was early in their expedition, and Drexler, at the rank of Obersturmführer, a senior storm leader of the Schutzstaffel, was confident he could lead them out of the remote hills of Romania to Bucharest himself. Unfortunately, they were still several days’ journey from the capital, and despite their medic’s best efforts, fever had set in.

Drexler had seen it done before, by his father, on their farm in Waldtrudering. Periodically, the countryside would be plagued by wolf packs. His father would select stock of little value—a lame animal, a dying sheep, an old hen. They would bind it, take it to a clearing, and stake the binding into the ground. From there, it was a matter of waiting with the rifles. Sometimes, it would take all night. More often, it didn’t. The plaintive wailing and bleating of the animal would draw the predators from the forest. It only required vigilance. And a steady hand. Drexler prided himself on possessing both.

Predictably, the scholars in the party protested. It was unnecessarily dangerous, they claimed. Worse, it was garish. They may have held advanced degrees, he thought, but degrees were no substitute for clarity of thought. Clarity of purpose. And that, he decided, was the key difference between being a researcher and being an officer.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “your mission is to unearth the past.” The small team of scholars was from the research branch of the SS, the Ahnenerbe, which sought archeological and historical evidence of the superiority of the Aryan race. For this expedition, their mission was searching the ancient Dacian ruins in the Carpathian Mountains for Germanic influence. Drexler’s squad served as their protective detail. “I’m afraid I must concern myself with the here and now.”

“It’ll horrify the men,” said Dr. Aldrich, the lead Ahnenerbe historian, a bookish man a decade older than Drexler.

“Your men, not mine.”

“It’s barbaric,” protested Aldrich.

“Security and logistics,” said Drexler, this time with a smile and a hint of steel in his voice, “are my domain, Doctor. Your protection is paramount, while this guide has but a day left to live, two at most. He will not make Bucharest. And since he is no longer able to navigate, I’m sure he would appreciate the opportunity to glorify the Reich in another capacity.”

Still, it was a bad omen, Drexler conceded to himself. The expedition was less than a week old and tragedy had already struck. His contingent, two soldiers and a medic, had grown up in Berlin and were restless and unfamiliar with the forest, a source of fear and superstition. To him, it was like coming home. He had grown up hardy in a bucolic Austria, hungry only for German reunification. Great change was sweeping through Berlin, and though he longed to see it, right now, atop a horse in the Romanian forest, there was no place he would rather be.

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