Operation Gumtree, Part 3 of 4: Fear and Vargulf in Aleppo

Hermann Geiger’s terrible journey in the hands of the Vargulf Korps continues into one of the oldest cities in the world. With deadly hunters tracking their every step, he does not know whether they’re coming to rescue him or eliminate him.

The four parts of Operation Gumtree have been collected in The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

Fear and Vargulf in Aleppo is Part 3 of Operation Gumtree. It takes place before The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden and features characters introduced there. Read Part 1 and Part 2 first to avoid spoilers.

Content Warnings: Mild Swearing, Violence, Body Horror, Nazis

TUESDAY NIGHT, MAY 11, 1943
HABBAB ANTAKEYA, THE OLD CITY
ALEPPO, MANDATORY SYRIAN REPUBLIC

//Translated from German.//

“Did you know, Hermann, that this city was once known as Hadad?” Isaak Gerhardt asked idly. He was leaning out of the window of the abandoned bath house, exposed like he was oblivious to the squad of the Allied nations' most prolific killers scouring the narrow streets for them. A breeze whispered past, and Hermann Geiger almost imagined he could smell the sea, though it was nearly forty kilometers away.

“I did not know that,” Geiger replied. He examined the weathered designs and chipped mosaics around the old room. Where once this had been a place of social gathering and relaxation, now it was dead and crumbling. The bench he was sitting on once would have let him dip his feet in heated mineral waters scented with flowers and oils. Now his weathered soles dangled a centimeter above the empty, cracked basin. Whatever healing waters this place had once held escaped long ago. “I had never heard of this city before you brought me here.”

“Hadad was the Canaanites' god of storms,” Gerhardt said. “What fury must this place experience to earn such a name?”

“Perhaps they wanted to placate that god,” Geiger suggested. He was only paying half attention to the Vargulf commander. His wrist was swollen and sloshed if he moved his arm too fast. His fingers would barely twitch. He had been writing taunting, desperate letters to the Office for days, hundreds of them at least. He hoped they read them for the breadcrumbs they were and leave him to brave the dark woods alone, but he knew that would not be the case.

“If placation was their goal, they were either idiots or cowards,” Gerhardt smirked. “You cannot beg or bribe for respite. Not from a god, not from a nation, and not from men. You must show strength, and utility. When those wells are dry, you are nothing.”

“So why name it that?”

“Because, Wormy Hermann, it stood against the wrath of a god. This is a place of victory. The city is pride wrought in brick. Great things have happened here.” Gerhardt left the open window and came to sit next on the bench next to Hermann. “The air here is thick with history.”

Geiger could not disagree. The buildings around them were thousands of years old. Empires had risen and fallen here. Languages and pantheons, as well.

“Do you know who served the Fatherland before Sparteführer Abendroth was instated? Who oversaw the creations of its monsters before you?” Gerhardt asked. “You had yet to ever dream of serving your homeland, or betraying it. The things you'd create were not even bad dreams yet. You slept comfortably back then.”

“I know our history,” Geiger snapped.

“Not your history any more,” Gerhardt replied. His voice was as dry as a brittle bone.

“Before the Arms, before Department Three, there were the Seven Counts. They sought answers in science that nothing else could provide,” Geiger said, parroting the lessons he'd learned.

“And do you know why they are dead?”

“Are they?”

“Watch your mouth, Hermann,” Gerhardt hissed. “The Counts died because they lost sight of their purpose. Their leader was uncertain, and unfocused. The lives of the German people were below him.”

“You think Hitler has the best interest of - !” Geiger tried to rebuke, but a sudden backhand from Gerhardt silenced him. Geiger had grown thin in his captivity. The Vargulf and their attendants fed him, but the fear robbed him of any appetite, and it sloughed away whatever kilograms he managed to gain like rainwater. Even a dismissive slap was enough to send him reeling and bounce his head off the tiled wall behind him.

“The Führer sits at the right hand of the All-Highest and executes His will,” Gerhardt said, like he was reading from one of the children's books the Reich produced. “The Counts thought themselves above the All-Highest. They were humbled.”

“By Frenchmen, and Americans, and Britons,” Geiger muttered. His teeth felt loose, so he wondered why he should not loosen his tongue as well. He had grown exhausted being meek. A punch here or there might be worth relieving the pressure that had built in his chest.

“The All-Highest chooses the tools required to impart the greatest impact,” Gerhardt said with a smirk. “Homosexuals, miscegenists, harlots, Jews, Mohammedens, and atheists numbered among the Counts. They accepted and advanced the downfall of our nation while professing to save it. One of their number even practiced here, in this foul city.”

“Mehmet-oğlu Temel Shahinji,” Geiger recited. He knew the name, he had seen evidence of the man's works. It was impressive, but impractical. The Shahinji had been a breeder and a trainer, not a scientist. His great works were the result of trial, error, and selective culling, as much coincidences as they were masterpieces.

“The Shahinji was a master of his craft, an artist,” Gerhardt said. “It is said that with enough time, he could twist any living thing to his vision. But time is a commodity in war, one that cannot be captured back. Despite his weapons and monsters, the Shahinji's ways are long dead. You killed them.”

“So I did,” Geiger whispered. On this, he agreed with Gerhardt. Before, changing the nature of a living thing had required time, patience, and sacrifice. Now it could be done en masse, with a needle. He had driven the value of the extraordinary down to nothing.

“Locals claim they can hear the cackling of his karaconcolos from the old sewers even now,” Gerhardt said. Geiger stared at the drain in the middle of the cracked basin. He could almost imagine the feral things running through the catacombs of this ancient city.

Gerhardt's sudden laugh startled Geiger.

“You are as impressionable as these foolish Untermenschen,” he snickered. Geiger's face flushed red.

“I am impressionable?” he stammered.

“How else do you explain your betrayal?”

“I saw and I listened. I did not wait to be shown or to be told. You sound like the best little boy in class, reciting all of Mister Himmler's lessons without understanding a word of them,” Geiger taunted.

Gerhardt only hit him twice for that, once to slam his head into the wall, and a second into his hollow gut. He felt like he had shown remarkable restraint. Geiger coughed, doubled-over and clasping his hands against the back of his head in an attempt to staunch the crimson flowing from his split scalp. Red oozed between and around his fingers, dripping off his chin and elbows alike.

“You were fooled, you were bought, you were flattered. Your ego was greater than your love of nation.”

Geiger didn't respond.

“Do you know why we are here?” Gerhardt asked. “This is an Allied city. Germany has only a few friends here, and Department Three, even fewer. Every second we linger is another chance for my enemies to find me. For all their preaching, they would not capture me. They would kill me here, and let my blood leak away, down that drain.”

Gerhardt and Geiger stared at the drain together in silence.

“We are here so I do get seen. Your 'friends' have been chasing us since Prague. Konrad and Dierk took two officials outside Vienna. A Romanian agent killed another investigating our time in Bucharest. Horst killed three on a ship in harbor at Istanbul before they took him. I understand the official that removed his head carries silver-edged sword. Your work. My little worm, hauling you around Europe, drawing out spies and assassins at every turn. No matter how many officials we kill, they send more to me. For you.”

Gerhardt had kept his word. Geiger was little more than bait on a hook. Gerhardt patted him on the knee, saying:

“You have killed more officials in the last six months than the rest of Department Three combined.”

He stood again, and wandered to the window, his back toward Geiger. He wanted to be recognized. They would move on in a few days, once Geiger's gaunt visage made its way through the Office's spy networks. When the officials came looking, all they would find would be a pack of Vargulf, waiting and hungry. But the Office had implemented Geiger's information they were using silver. With the death of Horst, they had confirmation that it worked.

“The Office has killed more Vargulf in the last six months than have ever died before,” Geiger said.

A twitch ran up Gerhardt's spine, but he did not react. He kept his back to his prisoner and let the saline breeze carry his words back into the bath house:

“Horst Stueck was a hero of the Reich.”

“His head should be mounted atop a city gate, like any other monster.”

“You enjoy bleeding, Hermann,” Gerhardt replied with a sigh. “I should let Konrad have you.”

That shut Geiger up. Gerhardt had twisted Konrad Schovasja into a beast. The man had been unhinged before he was Vargulf, but under Gerhardt's tutelage he had abandoned all but the most superficial trappings of humanity. These last months had turned him feral. Gerhardt's hunt, the roles he played as both predator and prey, had leeched the last milligrams of logic and reason out of him.

Gerhardt had made Geiger watch Konrad work. 'Witness your miracles,' he had insisted. Konrad was not sadistic when he tore living people into pieces and devoured them, but he was methodical and persistent. He could hear the half-drawn gasp of a hidden agent two houses away, but the screams of a dying person trying to drag themselves away fell on deaf ears.

To him, people were sustenance. He afforded them as much deference as Geiger might have an apple.

“I am not serious,” Gerhardt said after a moment. “Come here.”

Geiger considered disobeying, but thought better of it. Gerhardt wanted the Office to chase them, but now the Office knew the silver worked. The next time the officials caught up with them, they would come with machine guns, sniper rifles, and bombs, all in silver. The Vargulf would burn in chemical flame.

Gerhardt moved a bit to the side, inviting him over. Geiger lurched to his feet, keeping one hand clamped over his bloody wound and extending the other to keep his balance. He took his place next to Gerhardt at the open window. The tiled sill shifted as he leaned on it. It was ancient, only held up by the old building's stubbornness.

The few passers-by who had successfully pretended not to notice the one white man gazing out over their city like an ancient mariner were left dumbstruck. Two strange white men, one covered in blood, could not help but be gawked at. Whispers and rumors would whip up into a cyclone. Eventually they would breeze past the right ears, and the Office would arrive.

“We need your face, too,” Gerhardt explained, as if Geiger did not understand the game. “It will make them ever more eager to arrive. The blood adds urgency.”

“They are never far behind,” Geiger noted.

They stood together for a long while, watching the city fall asleep. The foot traffic going past died down, then the lights in the shops and homes. Eventually it was just the two of them, watching the stars and listening to the wind amble down the ancient streets.

“You have never asked me about your family, Hermann,” Gerhardt said casually. His voice rattled a bit from disuse. After knowing only silence for so long, it took Geiger a moment to piece the Vargulf commander's words together. When he did, his eyes went wide. He had avoided any thought about them as best he could. The pit beneath his hollow, bruised stomach dropped out.

“What did you do?” he wheezed.

“The auditors found them days after you left,” Gerhardt said. “You were already gone, and there was no one to protect them.”

“No.”

“I suppose your new friends at the Office promised protection. They did not. They stripped what they wanted from you and left the scraps. Your wife and your children were detritus to them. You knew what would happen, as did they, it was never in question. The justice of the Reich is a certainty.”

“No,” Geiger said again. The Office wouldn't have abandoned Iris to the auditors. And Hans and Kiki were only children.

“I am told that your wife lasted the longest.”

Geiger forgot the weeping wound on his head. He forgot the watery mass his wrist had swollen into. He forgot his bruised ribs and his boney frame. He forgot the dread pooled in the bottom of his belly. Adrenaline boiled through him.

The stone window sill came free from the wall with one furious tug. Geiger never felt how heavy it was, or that he'd peeled his fingernails back lifting it. His swollen wrist creaked under the strain. He clenched his jaw and swung it at Gerhardt's sneering face.

Gerhardt's fist connected with his throat. Geiger gasped. His body locked up, and suddenly the entire weight of the broken sill was in his feeble fingers. It slipped from his rubbery grip and crashed down on his foot. He felt every bone break and lightning shot through the floor and up his leg. He could no longer stand. Gerhardt stepped out of the way and let Geiger fall.

“That was the most backbone you have shown since Prague, Hermann,” Gerhardt observed. Geiger was curled in a ball, wheezing. He kept one hand on his crushed throat, the other on his mashed ankle. “That was strength. But not enough.”

Gerhardt grabbed Geiger by the collar and dragged him across the tiled floor, over the broken sill and to the edge of the empty bath. He hopped down in the dry basin, then reached up over the lip and hauled Geiger over the edge. The gasping man hit the bottom hard and slid almost a meter. He left a red trail behind him. Gerhardt pulled him over the middle of the bath, dropping him onto the tarnished grate above the echoing drain.

“Can you hear them?” Gerhardt asked. “Can you hear the Shahinji's little creatures?”

All Geiger could hear was his own rattling breath, and his oozing blood falling in drips through the grate.

“Those things were supposed to be the saviors of the Fatherland,” Gerhardt said. He had unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his pale torso. Geiger could trace Doktor Metzger's scalpel work across the other man's ribs, neck, collarbones, stomach. He could see the puckered scars of a hundred injections in his abdomen. Gerhardt folded his shirt and laid it on the basin's edge.

“The Seven Counts failed because they desired a Fatherland without its children. Their karaconcolos were supposed to build a new world for us. And their metal puppets would fight our wars. Their foul gospels would prescribe our science, and their chemicals would make our art. But these things are not distractions to be shoveled away.”

Gerhardt removed his boots and his belt, then his socks and slacks. He set everything in a row, folded and proper. After a moment, he was standing over Geiger in just his boxer shorts. Deep surgical scars ran in channels over every inch of his frame.

“Building, fighting, and thinking are the responsibilities of a nation. Of men.” He shook his head. “The Counts were men of genius and means, but their vision was clouded. Alien elements perverted it. That is why they failed while we will succeed. Because we remain focused, and because we know that even the most distasteful of work must be undertaken by those who would reap its benefits. People must understand the cost of victory.”

Gerhardt removed a small leather bundle from his folded jacket. Geiger's eyes went wide.

“The hard work must always fall to men, it cannot be shirked.”

“Wait,” Geiger gasped.

“Hermann, I told you: strength and utility,” Gerhardt replied. He removed a set of syringes from the pouch and set it aside. He slid the first needle in just below his ribs and shoved the plunger all the way down.

Geiger tried to drag himself across the floor, but the pain in his pulped foot, his torn fingers, his bent throat, his split scalp cut through him like a saw. He cried out and flopped like a fish.

“You do not have the strength to stop me, but to be fair, you never did,” Gerhardt said. He grunted as the second needle lanced his gut. “Showing your wormy little face was the last bit of use I needed from you. Do you think I had you writing pleas for rescue for twelve hours a day for my amusement? You've baked enough bread crumbs for me to lead the officials to the Crimson Depths and back. They want you alive, Hermann. But do you think I would play any game that I could lose?”

The third injection awakened Gerhardt's musculature like a barking dog under a blanket. He fell to a knee as his tissues bulged and twisted. Bones popped and shifted, rearranging on surgically-inset tracks and engineered breaks to support the man's bulging frame.

“Sparteführer Abendroth passed judgement on you long ago, Hermann,” Gerhardt spat. His voice shuddered as his organs shifted and squeezed his lungs. “It is time I followed orders.”

Geiger knew his sentence: death by consumption. He tried to crawl, but his vision was growing fuzzy, and the basin was slick with blood. His arms and one good leg slid on it like oil. Still he tried.

A pained grunt made him twist around. Gerhardt was standing over him, pelted in black, glaring down with with weeping, reddened eyes. Most subjects shrieked when the crystal fibers pierced their flesh; Gerhardt stayed quiet, only allowing himself a few tears.

“You have one use left to you, Hermann,” Gerhardt said. His voice grew deeper with each word, until Geiger's name came out as a wet snarl. “You may die.”

Gerhardt fell to a knee as the last waves of transmutive changes pulsed through him. The fibers were fully formed, and the last slabs of muscle slid into place. He raised himself up and stalked over the crawling scientist. His breath was so hot that Geiger could feel it curdle against his skin. His torn fingers slipped on the loose tiles. One came up in his hand, sharp as broken glass. He held it up, between him and the thing standing over him.

The Vargulf laughed, a mix of a hyena's chuckle and a failing bridge cable. He could no longer speak, his brain had been tied into wet knots by the serums.

Geiger knew as well as Gerhardt did that the sad little weapon he wielded could not harm a Vargulf. But it could end a man. He brought the shard to his throat as Gerhardt pounced, teeth bared and hungry for flesh.

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Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin.