snowbound

He looked out the window, first to the right, then the left. There was nothing there, now. The silhouette he thought he'd seen turned out to be nothing, and he relaxed. He did a half turn and slumped down, his back against the cool stone wall. He let his rifle drop onto his lap. It had been a long night, and it wasn't over yet. The wind had picked up, and the snow was falling hard. The full moon gave the landscape outside his window an eerie translucence, and made shadows jump and seem alive. He checked his rifle for the hundreth time, making sure it was full and a round was in the chamber. His eyes closed, and he drifted back....

   "Sir! Captian Patterson reporting as ordered, Sir!", he snapped the salute up, even though the General's back was still to him.
    " Stand at ease, Captian.", said General Walters. Walters had gotten the call from the joint chiefs twenty minutes ago, and we was less than enthusiatic on the orders he was about to give.
    "Well, I'm not going to sugar coat this, Capitan. The Joint Chiefs, along with the President, have just recieved solid intelligence on the Nazi's chemical warfare situation. It seems Hitler has been squirreling biologists and scientists away at a castle in the Romanian mountains, creating biological weapons to use against our troops dug in, in France. With what they've developed now, Hitler and the SS could wipe out our entire front. You have been chosen as the one man to get into that castle, disable thier chemical weapons capabilities, dispatch the scientists, and retrieve thier notes. It's all on you, Patterson." The General sat down in his chair, eyeing Patterson. The Captian stood there, looking back at the General.
"Will there be anything else, Sir?", Patterson said, his voice with a steely edge.
"Yes, Captian...you leave in an hour. Good luck, son...you'll need it."

The wind in the mountains was cold, but the snow had held out. Patterson scaled the mountain without incident, seeing nothing but trees, and hearing only the wind and the occasional howl of a wolf. He had read the mission brief on the plane; he was to find the chemical warfare lab, destroy all samples of their weapon, dispatch ALL personnel encountered, and retrieve the scientists notes. He hefted his rifle, and scanned the terrain ahead for any sign of hostiles. It seemd Hitler was unconcered with posting sentries in his remote labratory. Patterson crawled the last few yards through the woods to the treeline, and stopped. He scanned the castle with his binoculars, and saw no sign of movement anywhere. ' Well, now or never,' he thought, and ran for the castle wall. He made it. Patterson thought it was strange that there were no sentries, no machine-gun embankments, not even a doorgaurd. He practically walked right in.

Patterson smashed the last of the chemical warfare beakers inside the protective bag, and looked around. He had gained entry without encountering a single person, and had found the lab with almost ridiculous ease. The notes of the scientists were scattered around the lab, but he gathered them up and stored them in his backpack. This mission had gone almost too easily, but Patterson wasn't complaining. The mission objectives had been met, and the Der Fuher's plans had been rent asunder yet again by good ol' Uncle Sam. It was time to go home. Patterson took one last look at the destroyed lab and headed back upstairs to the main foyer.

He opened the door slowly, looked left, then right, and eased out the door, rifle first. Snow had started to fall in big, lazy flakes, but the wind picked up and was blowing small tornadoes of snow around the mountainside. The moon was full, and cast it's eerie luminecence everywhere. It was sheer instinct that saved his life. Patterson felt a rush of air on the back of his neck, and he whirled away and dropped to the ground, rifle loaded and ready. He saw a black shape loom up in front of him, and he squeezed the trigger. An inhuman howl followed the rifle's report, and Patterson's blood froze. It hit the ground with a smoking hole in it's chest, and Patterson saw that it had the body of a man, but the head of a wolf. It was covered in coarse gray hair, and had long claws at the ends of it's hands. The shock of seeing such a thing sent Patterson reeling, but hearing the howl of another beast just off to his right snapped him out of it. Patterson looked around, and saw five more of the creatures coming up the mountain from behind him, and two more on each side of him flanking him. They were wearing Nazi officer's uniforms. The only place to run was back into the castle.

He decided to get to high ground. He ran through the castle, up the stairs the uppermost floor, and found a bedroom that suited his needs. It was made all of stone, with one small window with no glass, and a heavy, solid door. Patterson bolted the door behind him and pushed the bed in front of the door. He collapsed next to the window, and laid his head on the cool stone windowsill. He needed to get his head straight. There were no such things as werewolves, not in this modern world of 1943. This had to be some side effect of handling the chemicals, and he just needed to get his head straight and continue with the mission. He had to meet the plane at the rendevous point at dawn, or walk back to the States. He decided he'd be there to meet the plane. He turned and looked out the window, and what he saw blew every coherant thought he had out of his head. Down there in the snow, staring up at him with thier eyes shining in the moonlight, were hundreds of werewolves. When they saw him looking at him, a hell's chorus of Howling rose up into the night sky. Patterson fainted.

When he came to, he looked out the window and saw nothing there. Then, a shadow flitted across the treeline. It turned out to be nothing. Patterson relaxed, and began to replay the incidents of the mission back in his mind. His eyes closed, and he drifted back....

...His eyes stayed closed when the door crashed in...