Wolf lay on his stomach in the grass, a pair of binoculars held up to his mismatched eyes. One was green, one was brown, but he didn’t remember where he’d gotten either. The army had patched him up so many times it was hard to keep track of which parts came from where. Below him, the Germans were defiantly on the move. Two panzers led the soldiers streaming out of the ruins of the town. He counted at least sixty men flanking the tanks as they headed down the road. Wolf rolled off the hilltop and headed where the rest of his squad waited.
Sergeant Logan watched Wolf’s massive eight-foot form coming towards him. Wolf got his name from the pelts he wore instead of a uniform. They stunk like shit but Logan had never been able to convince the dead man to get rid of them. No one in his squad wore standard uniforms anyway. Logan scratched at the clay mask covering his face. The heat was making it itch again. He looked into Wolf’s eyes and saw that the news was not good.
“There’s more of them than even we can handle sir even without the tanks,” Wolf said in a hollow voice that sounded like a dying man’s last gasp.
“Tanks?” Slythe said from where he sat in the tree above them. He slithered down to stand beside Eyes and Logan. “What tanks?” He asked as his forked tongue darted in and out his mouth tasting the air around them.
“There’s two panzers leading them,” Wolf explained.
Eyes blinked closing forty pairs of lids and opening them as he wrung his four hands nervously in front of him. “You’re not still thinking of trying to take them out are you Logan?”
Logan gritted his teeth behind his mask. Orders were orders. If these Germans reinforced the front the allied troops were heading towards, things could go very badly. Logan hadn’t asked for this command but he wasn’t allowed to serve with the “normal” troops. His disfigurements were too disturbing forget the fact that he’d gotten them shoving the same damn general who’d stuck him here out of the way of a Nazi flamethrower to take the blast himself.
“We don’t have a choice folks,” Logan answered. “You know the only reason you’re all alive is that brass thought you could do some good here or they’d have taken you all out and put an end to you long ago. Yeah, I know. Fuck’em but we’re still Americans and somebody needs to stop that Nazi trash over the hill even if means we ain’t going home.”
Slythe and Eyes nodded. Wolf grunted his approval. It wasn’t as if any of them had a home to go to anyway.
“Alright then, let’s follow them and make sure we’re ahead of them by nightfall. We’ll take the bastards out then.”
When night fell, the Germans didn’t stop moving but Logan wasn’t concerned. In fact, he’d counted on it. He and his squad were in position to make their move and the shit was about to hit the fan.
The lead panzer was the first to roll into their trap. It struck the transparent web Eyes had spun across the roadway and grinded to a halt against it, its motor wailing. As the German infantry made their way around to see what the problem was Eyes stepped out of the darkness onto the road in front of them with a submachine gun in each of his four hands and opened fire. Germans screamed and crumpled to the ground like weeds caught in the blade of a scythe.
Wolf came bounding out from the trees headed straight towards the second tank. Bullets ripped into his gray flesh but he didn’t feel them. Tossing soldiers out of his way as if they were dolls, he reached the tank and grabbed it. Yelling at the top of his lungs he lifted the tank and flipped it onto its side, tearing off one of his arms in the process.
Slythe hit the Germans in the rear. He danced into them, his scales sparkling in the starlight as the blades of his swords drew German blood.
Logan watched from the trees grinning behind his mask. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and put a bullet through a soldier’s face.
Wolf was still taking the bulk of the enemy fire. His flesh was a wreck and his wolf pelts were riddled with holes and covered in blood not his own. He lifted a German with his remaining hand and smashed the man into the ground like a club, shattering the soldier’s bones. A grenade landed at Wolf’s feet. He barely had time to realize what had happened before the explosion turned his massive body into pulp.
The element of surprise was wearing off and Logan knew they were all going to pay for it. Eyes turned to run for cover as an enemy machine gun sent a volley of rounds into his back. Yellow blood sprayed into the air as Eyes toppled, rolling across the road to lay still.
Slythe hissed and picked up the pace of his violence. He sidestepped bullets aimed at him and twisted his body around to impale a German on one his blades. He left it in the falling corpse as he spun like a top deeper into the German ranks slicing off the heads of two more and shoved his remaining blade through a third’s heart. Unfortunately the SS officer in command of the enemy unit managed to flank him. Slythe never saw the Luger round which blew his reptilian brains out onto the dirt.
Logan estimated his men had taken out half or more of the Germans but it wasn’t enough. He flicked open the valve of the twin gas canisters he wore on his back and ran towards the remains of the German unit. “Hey, you freaks!” He yelled as he charged into them. “You forgot one of us!” With that said, he flicked his lighter and the roadway lit up into a ball of fire burning in the night.