‘We’re Surrounded by Wolves!’ The Night German Women Prisoners Panicked in a Winter Camp—and the American Guards’ Warning Shots Sparked a Moral Trial
The first scream didn’t sound like fear.
It sounded like certainty.
“Wölfe!” a woman shouted from the shadowed barracks, her voice cracking across the frozen yard. “We’re surrounded by wolves!”
For a heartbeat, the camp held its breath—wooden buildings, wire, watchtowers, and the stale hush of winter. Then the howling rose from the treeline like a curtain being ripped open, long and layered and too close.
Someone struck a lamp inside Barracks Nine, and a square of yellow light leapt into the night. Faces pressed to the glass—pale, tense, eyes wide in a way no uniform could fix.
On the nearest tower, Private Daniel Mercer tightened his grip on his rifle until his knuckles whitened through his gloves. He’d heard gunfire in Europe. He’d heard screams too. But this sound—animal, patient, hungry—did something worse: it made the cold feel alive.
Below him, the yard churned as doors banged open. Women in thick coats and borrowed boots spilled into the open, some with blankets wrapped around their shoulders, others clutching tin cups as if they might bargain with the dark.
“Back inside!” Mercer yelled, but his words vanished under the next wave of howls.
The interpreter, Corporal Luis Alvarez, ran from the office building with his cap half on and his scarf trailing. “Mercer!” he called up. “Hold! Don’t do anything!”
Mercer stared past him, past the wire, to the trees. Shadows moved where shadows shouldn’t move.
The howling shifted again—closer, sharper—like the woods had leaned forward.
And then he saw it: a pale shape slipping between trunks, low to the ground, silent except for the snow compressing under padded feet.
A second shape.
A third.
“Jesus,” Mercer whispered.
In Barracks Nine, the women began to shout over one another. Mercer caught a few words Alvarez had taught him—hungry, pack, coming, fence—and then the sentence that turned panic into a stampede.
“They’ll climb us,” someone yelled in broken English. “They’ll climb like men!”
That made Mercer’s stomach drop, because it wasn’t just fear speaking. It was memory. And memory could make a person do anything.
“Mercer!” Alvarez shouted again. “You fire, you’ll start a mess you can’t stop!”
Mercer looked down and saw Captain Hargrove striding into the yard, coat flapping, jaw set in the way officers wore when they wanted order more than oxygen. He pointed at the barracks, barked a command, and two guards rushed toward the crowd.
Then something hit the wire.
A hard, heavy impact.
The fence twanged like a plucked instrument. The women screamed as one. Someone fell. Someone else tried to pull her up and got dragged down in a tangle of boots and blankets.
Mercer’s heart slammed against his ribs. He tracked the movement beyond the fence—something pale circling, head low, tail straight, not like a dog, not like anything tame.
Captain Hargrove glanced up at Mercer and made a chopping motion: Do your job.
Mercer did not remember deciding.
He only remembered the rifle rising, the front sight finding the space above the wire, the world narrowing to a single point of sky.
He squeezed the trigger once.
The shot cracked open the night.
Then again.
And again.
Three warning shots, aimed high.
Three sharp thunderclaps that startled the woods and echoed off the barracks walls.
For a moment, the howling faltered.
In that pause, Mercer heard something else—worse than wolves.
He heard people.
The women weren’t just frightened.
They were furious.
Because warning shots, to them, could mean only one thing: someone had decided the camp was a battlefield again.
And in a place built to hold the defeated, even the sound of a rifle could start a war of stories.
1
Two hours later, the camp office smelled of wet wool and burnt coffee. Mercer sat on a hard chair with his rifle propped against the wall, trying not to look at his own hands. They wouldn’t stop trembling.
Captain Hargrove stood near the stove, jaw tight, eyes scanning the room as if the truth might be hiding behind a clipboard. Corporal Alvarez hovered beside him, translator’s notebook open, pencil ready. Across the desk sat Lieutenant Grace Collins from Military Police oversight, her hair pinned back, her expression calm in a way that made everyone else feel guilty for breathing too loudly.
“And you fired three rounds?” Collins asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Mercer said.
“Upward?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Any chance you hit the fence? Any chance you hit a building?”
“No, ma’am.” He swallowed. “I aimed at open sky.”
Collins tapped her pencil. “And why?”
Mercer’s throat tightened. “They were outside. The women. They were… they were pressing the wire. Something hit the fence. I saw movement in the trees.”
“A wolf,” Captain Hargrove said, as if naming it could cage it.
Collins raised an eyebrow. “You’re certain it was a wolf?”
Mercer hesitated. In Europe, he’d been certain of things and been wrong. That was what haunted him at night—not the bullets, but the certainty.
“I’m sure it wasn’t a dog,” he said carefully. “It moved… different.”
Alvarez cleared his throat. “Lieutenant, the detainees are saying the wolves were inside the perimeter. They’re saying the shots were aimed at them.”
Mercer’s eyes snapped up. “That’s not true.”
“I know,” Alvarez said quickly. “But they believe it. Or they want to believe it.”
Captain Hargrove’s voice went flat. “No one’s turning this into a circus.”
Collins looked between them. “It already is, Captain. You’ve got a camp of scared women, a guard who fired a weapon near them, and a rumor spreading faster than frost. That’s not a circus—it’s a spark.”
Mercer’s ears burned. He wanted to say the shots had saved them. He wanted to say he’d done the right thing. But he’d learned the hard way that “right” depended on who wrote the report.
“Who got hurt?” Collins asked.
Captain Hargrove gestured toward the door. “One sprained wrist, one bruised knee. No serious injury.”
Collins nodded. “Then we keep it that way.”
She turned back to Mercer. “Private, you’ll write a statement. Full detail. Time, sequence, distance. No guessing. If you don’t know, you say you don’t know.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And,” Collins added, her voice gentler now, “you’ll understand why we’re asking. Weapons near detainees are a powder keg. Even warning shots.”
Mercer stared at the desk, at a stain shaped like a continent he’d once crossed in a ship. “I understand, ma’am.”
But understanding wasn’t the same as forgiveness.
Outside, the camp had quieted, but not settled. From the barracks came low voices—German syllables and broken English, sharp whispers, laughter that sounded too close to tears. The night’s story was already changing hands, acquiring details like snow gathers on boots.
Alvarez shut his notebook. “Lieutenant, may I speak freely?”
Collins nodded.
“These women—most of them weren’t front-line. They’re clerks, radio aides, nurses, drivers. Some were taken when units surrendered. Others were found in towns after the lines moved. They don’t trust us, but they also don’t trust one another.”
Captain Hargrove frowned. “Why wouldn’t they trust each other?”
Alvarez exhaled. “Because they’re still fighting a war, Captain—just not with rifles. With blame. With loyalty. With who gets to be called innocent.”
Collins leaned back in her chair. “And tonight gave them a new weapon.”
Mercer looked up. “What weapon?”
Alvarez’s mouth tightened. “Fear. And a villain.”
Mercer felt the words land like a shove.
He wasn’t just a guard now.
He was a story.
2
In Barracks Nine, Anneliese Keller pressed her palms against the wood of her bunk until the splinters bit her skin. Pain helped her think.
The others clustered in knots, whispering, arguing. Someone had lit a candle and set it in a tin lid. Shadows crawled along the ceiling like nervous hands.
Anneliese had worked as a nurse. She’d learned to measure panic by breathing patterns, by the way hands trembled, by how quickly someone began to search for someone else to blame.
Tonight, the camp breathed like a single animal.
“They fired at us,” Greta said, her red hair sticking out from under her scarf. Greta had been a communications clerk—good with codes, better with conspiracies. “I heard the bullets in the walls.”
“That was echo,” Anneliese said, though she wasn’t sure. Sound did strange things in the cold.
“They want an excuse,” Greta insisted. “They want us to run so they can punish us for running.”
Across the room, Lotte sat on her bunk with her knees pulled up, eyes blank. Lotte had stopped speaking much after the surrender. When she did speak, it was often to ask what year it was, as if time might offer mercy.
“We were surrounded,” someone else said. “I saw them.”
“Wolves?” Anneliese asked.
A murmur went through the room.
Anneliese had heard wolves as a child, far from cities, when hunger made them brave. But she’d also seen men become wolves without fur, without teeth, without the honesty of instinct.
“Yes,” Greta said, lowering her voice. “Wolves. But not only wolves.”
Anneliese’s stomach clenched. “What do you mean?”
Greta leaned in. The candlelight carved her face into sharp planes. “There are men outside the camp. Local men. They hate us. They throw stones sometimes. Tonight they came with animals to frighten us.”
“That’s nonsense,” Anneliese said, but even as she said it, she remembered the small rocks tossed over the fence two weeks ago. The crude words shouted in English she barely understood.
Greta’s eyes glittered. “You didn’t hear them at the wire? That wasn’t wolves. That was men testing the fence.”
Anneliese closed her eyes briefly. If Greta said it, some would believe it. If enough believed it, it became a fact in their minds, and facts made decisions for you.
She stood, pushing past bodies, and reached the window. Outside, the yard lay pale under moonlight. Guards moved in pairs. The watchtowers were silhouettes against the sky.
She could see Mercer’s tower. She didn’t know his name, but she recognized his shape—tall, stiff, always too alert. The kind of man who slept with one eye open even when the world was quiet.
Tonight, he leaned forward, scanning the treeline.
Anneliese whispered, not to him, but to herself: “Were you afraid of wolves… or of us?”
Behind her, Greta’s voice rose again. “They fired because they wanted us to know we are trapped. They want us to remember we are nothing.”
Lotte suddenly spoke, her voice thin. “Maybe they fired at the wolves.”
Silence snapped into place.
Greta scoffed. “You think they would protect us?”
Lotte looked down at her hands. “Maybe they protected themselves.”
Anneliese turned from the window. “Either way,” she said, forcing calm into her tone, “we can’t turn on each other. That’s what fear does. That’s what war does.”
Greta’s smile was quick and sharp. “Spoken like a nurse. Always trying to keep everyone alive.”
Anneliese held her gaze. “Alive is a victory these days.”
But Greta’s words had already planted their seed. In the corners, women whispered about bullets. About intentions. About how the Americans smiled during roll call as if counting cattle.
And beneath all of it, like a second heartbeat, was the howl in the woods—fainter now, but not gone.
Anneliese returned to her bunk and sat hard. She thought of home, of streets that might not exist anymore, of people who might pretend not to recognize her if she ever returned.
She thought of the wolves.
And the harder truth: wolves didn’t need lies to become dangerous.
People did.
3
In the morning, the camp looked ordinary, which felt like an insult.
The sun hung low and white. Frost glittered on the wire. Smoke rose from the kitchen building in a straight line, as if even the air refused to argue.
Mercer stood at attention outside the office while Lieutenant Collins walked the perimeter with Captain Hargrove. Alvarez trailed behind, translating when needed, hands shoved into his pockets against the cold.
A group of women watched from behind the barracks windows. Their faces were pale ovals against the glass, eyes following the officers like they were studying a puzzle.
Collins stopped where the fence had been struck. A shallow dent marred one post.
“What hit this?” she asked.
Hargrove frowned. “Could’ve been a rock.”
Alvarez crouched and brushed aside snow. “Or an animal,” he said, pointing.
There were tracks.
Not bootprints. Not deer. Something heavier, with a wide pad and claw marks faint as pencil lines.
Collins’s expression tightened. “That’s not a dog.”
Mercer felt a surge of vindication—and then shame for wanting it.
Alvarez straightened slowly. “There were wolves. Or at least one.”
Hargrove grunted. “There are always wolves somewhere.”
Collins looked back toward the barracks. “And now there are stories.”
They continued along the fence toward the storage shed. The camp kept a small supply of meat—frozen shipments that arrived every few weeks. In the winter, everything was cold enough to last longer than promises.
At the shed’s corner, Collins paused. “What’s that?”
A dark stain spread across the snow like spilled ink. Frozen, but unmistakable.
Hargrove swore under his breath. He jerked open the shed door. The smell that escaped wasn’t rotten—just metallic and raw, the scent of something that shouldn’t be out in the open.
Inside, a crate lay tipped, lid cracked.
Alvarez peered in. “Meat,” he said.
Collins’s eyes narrowed. “Was this sealed last night?”
Hargrove’s mouth tightened. “It should’ve been.”
Mercer’s stomach sank. Wolves didn’t come close to people for sport. They came for food.
And someone had left a trail.
“Captain,” Collins said, voice sharp now, “if that crate was disturbed, I need to know if it was negligence or sabotage.”
Hargrove bristled. “Are you accusing my men?”
“I’m asking,” Collins said evenly. “Because if one of your men left this unsecured, it’s a problem. And if one of the detainees accessed it, it’s a bigger problem.”
Alvarez looked from the crate to the tracks leading away. “Lieutenant,” he said softly, “if someone wanted a distraction…”
Collins met his eyes. “Exactly.”
Mercer felt cold creep under his collar that had nothing to do with weather. “You think it was a plan?”
Alvarez didn’t answer directly. “I think fear is useful. Wolves are useful. Gunshots are useful. Depending on who’s telling the story.”
Hargrove slammed the shed door shut. “We’ll lock it. Double the patrols.”
Collins looked toward Mercer. “And you,” she said, “will stay on duty, but you will not fire again unless there is direct threat.”
Mercer nodded, though his jaw was tight. “Yes, ma’am.”
Collins’s gaze softened just a fraction. “You did what you thought was right. But right actions can still have consequences. Understand?”
Mercer swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”
As they walked away, he heard the faintest sound from the woods—too distant to call it a howl, more like a reminder.
The wolves hadn’t left.
They were simply waiting for the next mistake.
4
That afternoon, Alvarez visited Barracks Nine with a clipboard and a reluctant smile. He wasn’t there to be liked. He was there to be understood.
The women gathered in a half-circle, shoulders stiff. Anneliese stood near the front, arms folded, eyes steady.
Alvarez cleared his throat. “I’m here to ask about last night,” he said in German. His accent wasn’t perfect, but it was careful.
Greta stepped forward immediately. “We were fired upon.”
Alvarez held up a hand. “No one was fired upon. Shots were fired upward.”
“That is what you say,” Greta snapped.
Anneliese spoke calmly. “We heard shots. We panicked. We believed they were aimed at us.”
Alvarez nodded, grateful. “Fear makes the ears lie.”
Some women murmured at that, offended.
Alvarez continued. “I saw tracks outside. They are consistent with a wild animal. A large one.”
Greta’s eyes flashed. “So it was wolves.”
“It appears so,” Alvarez admitted. “But also, the meat shed was disturbed.”
A ripple went through the room.
Anneliese’s brow furrowed. “Disturbed how?”
Alvarez hesitated. He didn’t want to throw blame without proof. But he also couldn’t stop a rumor by starving it.
“A crate was opened,” he said. “Meat was exposed. That could draw animals close.”
Greta lifted her chin. “So now you accuse us.”
“I accuse no one,” Alvarez said. “I ask questions. Who was outside after evening roll call? Who left the barracks?”
No one answered.
Silence can be loyalty. Silence can be fear. Silence can be a weapon.
Anneliese glanced around. “If someone did it,” she said carefully, “it could have been an accident. Or someone desperate.”
Greta’s smile returned, thin as paper. “Or someone trying to give your guards an excuse to shoot.”
Alvarez exhaled slowly. “You believe the guards want to shoot you?”
A chorus of overlapping voices answered him—complaints, grievances, old humiliations. Small moments sharpened into blades.
Anneliese watched Alvarez’s face. Beneath his fatigue, she saw something else: a man trying to hold two languages in his mouth without choking on either.
She stepped forward. “We are frightened,” she said. “And frightened people will invent monsters. Sometimes those monsters wear fur. Sometimes they wear uniforms.”
Alvarez’s eyes met hers. For a second, the room quieted.
“I understand,” he said softly. “But listen to me: gunshots near you help no one. Not the guards. Not you. Not the wolves, either.”
Greta snorted. “We are to care about wolves now?”
Alvarez’s tone hardened. “You are to care about staying alive. And about not starting a riot over a story.”
He flipped his clipboard. “Tonight, there will be extra patrols. You will remain inside after roll call. If you see anything, you report it. Do you understand?”
Murmurs.
Anneliese nodded. “We understand.”
Alvarez looked at her as if choosing his next words carefully. “And if anyone among you thinks they can use fear to bargain for something—food, favors, attention—tell them to stop. It will backfire.”
Greta’s gaze sharpened. “Who would do that?”
Alvarez didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Suspicion moved through the room like a draft.
When he left, the women returned to their knots of whispering, but the tone had changed. Not calmer—just sharper, more calculating.
Anneliese sat on her bunk and stared at the wooden floor. She didn’t trust Greta’s certainty. She didn’t trust the guards’ patience.
And she trusted the wolves least of all—because wolves did not care who was guilty.
They only cared who was vulnerable.
5
That evening, as the light faded, Mercer climbed his tower again. The rifle felt heavier than it had the night before.
He scanned the perimeter, forcing himself to count details: fence lines intact, gates closed, patrol pairs moving, breath visible in the cold. Discipline as a lifeline.
Below, Captain Hargrove spoke to the guards, issuing orders with clipped efficiency. No one argued. No one joked.
In the barracks, lamps glowed. Curtains shifted as faces peeked out.
Mercer tried to remember Lieutenant Collins’s warning: Right actions can still have consequences.
He remembered the sound of the women screaming. He remembered the way their fear had turned toward him like a searchlight.
He had grown up thinking uniforms meant safety. Then he’d gone to war and learned uniforms also meant targets.
In the distance, the woods were dark.
Too dark.
A howl rose just after full night fell—single, long, almost mournful. Another answered. Then another.
Mercer’s throat tightened.
On the ground, Alvarez stood near the office building, staring toward the treeline as if he could translate the wolves, too. He glanced up at Mercer and raised a hand—not a salute, not a command, just a quiet gesture: Easy.
Mercer loosened his grip slightly.
Then a shape moved near the meat shed.
Mercer froze.
At first he thought it was a guard.
Then he saw the posture—low, hunched, quick.
Human.
He leaned forward, heart hammering. “Hargrove!” he called, voice cutting through the night.
The figure darted behind the shed.
Hargrove looked up, instantly alert. He waved to a patrol pair, and they broke into a run.
Mercer swung his rifle down, sighting the area—but he did not fire. His finger hovered, trembling.
From the woods, the wolves howled again, louder, as if encouraged.
The patrol reached the shed. One guard shone a flashlight beam behind it. The light caught a face for half a second—a woman’s face, hair loose, eyes wide.
Then she ran.
“Stop!” someone shouted in English.
“Nein!” the woman cried, voice high with terror.
The beam bounced as the guards gave chase. The woman sprinted toward the fence, not the gate, as if she had no plan beyond movement.
Mercer’s mouth went dry. If she hit the wire, if she climbed, if the guards tackled her—
A howl erupted from the trees, close enough now that Mercer felt it in his teeth.
The woman stumbled, slipping on ice, catching herself with her hands. She scrambled up, looking back—eyes reflecting the flashlight like an animal’s.
For a split second, she looked directly up at Mercer’s tower.
He recognized her—not Greta, not Lotte.
Anneliese.
The nurse.
She raised one hand, palm out, as if pleading.
Mercer’s finger tightened unintentionally.
Then Alvarez burst into the yard, shouting in German. “Anneliese! Stop!”
Mercer blinked. He hadn’t known her name.
Anneliese froze at the sound. Her shoulders shook. The guards closed in.
Behind her, beyond the wire, a pale shape moved between trees—silent, steady, circling.
Mercer’s pulse roared in his ears. The wolves were closer than yesterday.
Hargrove shouted, “Mercer! Watch the line!”
Mercer’s eyes flicked to the woods. Another pale shape appeared, then another—glimpses of bodies sliding through darkness.
The wolves were not attacking yet.
They were watching.
Anneliese backed away from the approaching guards, eyes locked on the treeline. Her lips moved in a whisper Mercer couldn’t hear.
Then she screamed—not at the guards, but at the woods.
“Go!” she shouted in German. “Go away!”
The wolves answered with a chorus of howls.
The guards hesitated. The flashlight beam wavered.
Alvarez reached Anneliese first. He grabbed her shoulders—not roughly, but firmly—and spoke rapidly in German. Mercer couldn’t hear the words, but he saw the effect: Anneliese’s body sagged, like someone had cut strings holding her upright.
She began to sob.
Hargrove’s face was a mask. “Get her inside,” he barked. “Now.”
The guards escorted Anneliese back toward the office building, Alvarez beside her, murmuring.
Mercer kept his rifle trained above the wire, breathing hard. He watched the woods.
The wolves stayed just beyond the line of light.
Patient.
Waiting.
Hargrove looked up at Mercer and shook his head once—slowly, unmistakably.
No shots.
Mercer nodded, jaw clenched so tight it hurt.
For the next hour, the camp held still. Patrols doubled. The barracks lights stayed on. No one slept.
And in the woods, the wolves paced like a rumor with teeth.
6
Anneliese sat in the office building’s small medical room, wrapped in a blanket she hadn’t earned. Alvarez crouched in front of her, speaking softly while Lieutenant Collins watched from the doorway, expression unreadable.
“Tell her,” Collins said.
Alvarez nodded. “Anneliese,” he said gently in German, “why were you at the shed?”
Anneliese’s eyes were red. She stared at her hands as if they belonged to someone else. “Because I saw Greta,” she whispered.
Alvarez blinked. “Greta?”
Anneliese nodded, swallowing hard. “She was talking about the meat. About how animals come when food is left out. About how guards panic when they think there is danger.”
Collins stepped closer. “She planned this?”
Alvarez translated.
Anneliese’s shoulders shook. “I don’t know if she planned it,” she said. “But she wanted… attention. Leverage. She wanted the women angry. She wanted… a story.”
Alvarez’s jaw tightened. “And you?”
Anneliese looked up, eyes bright with shame. “I went to stop her,” she said. “I thought if I closed the crate, if I cleaned it, the wolves would go away.”
Collins’s gaze sharpened. “You left the barracks alone at night?”
Anneliese flinched. “I didn’t think. I heard the howling and I—” She broke off, breath hitching. “I have seen what hunger does. Not just to animals.”
Alvarez’s voice softened. “Did you open the crate?”
Anneliese shook her head quickly. “No. It was already open. Meat was on the snow. I tried to put it back, but my hands were cold and—” She swallowed. “Then I heard the guards. I panicked.”
Collins exhaled slowly. “So she ran.”
Alvarez translated. Anneliese nodded miserably.
Collins looked at Alvarez. “Bring Greta in.”
Alvarez hesitated. “Lieutenant, accusations will inflame the barracks.”
Collins’s tone was firm. “So will wolves. So will gunshots. So will fear. We either control the story with facts, or we let it grow teeth.”
Mercer appeared in the doorway then, face pale. “Lieutenant,” he said, voice tight, “the wolves are still out there.”
Collins looked at him. “I know.”
For a moment, all four of them stood in the same room—guard, interpreter, oversight officer, detainee—bound together by a problem none of them had chosen.
Collins’s voice lowered. “Private Mercer, you kept discipline tonight. Thank you.”
Mercer swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”
Anneliese looked at him, eyes searching, as if trying to decide whether he was a wolf in a man’s shape.
Mercer met her gaze and spoke quietly, surprising himself. “I wasn’t aiming at you,” he said.
Alvarez translated.
Anneliese’s mouth trembled. She nodded once, small and exhausted. “I know,” she whispered. And then, after a pause: “But the sound… it made us remember.”
Mercer didn’t ask what she remembered. He didn’t want to borrow her ghosts.
Collins turned to Alvarez. “Here’s what happens,” she said. “We address the camp tomorrow morning. We show them the tracks. We show them the shed. We tell them why shots were fired, and we tell them it won’t happen again unless absolutely necessary.”
Alvarez nodded slowly. “And Greta?”
Collins’s eyes hardened. “If she used fear as a tool, she loses privileges. No theatrics. No public humiliation. Just consequences.”
Anneliese whispered, “She won’t admit it.”
Collins’s expression softened slightly. “Then she’ll learn something new: stories don’t always win.”
Outside, another howl rose, distant now—like the woods had heard their plan and was amused.
Mercer stared toward the sound and thought: We’re not surrounded by wolves.
Not exactly.
They were surrounded by winter, by mistrust, by the fragile wall between order and panic.
And sometimes, those were worse than teeth.
7
The next morning, Lieutenant Collins stood in the yard with Captain Hargrove at her side. Alvarez translated, his voice carrying over the gathered women like a bridge.
“We found tracks,” Collins said. “Large animal tracks. Wolves. We found an opened meat crate. Food left exposed draws animals close.”
The women murmured, shifting. Some looked relieved. Some looked angry that relief was even possible.
Collins continued. “The shots fired were warning shots into the air. Not at you. We acknowledge the fear it caused. We will not repeat it unless there is direct danger.”
Greta stood near the back, arms folded, face set in hard disbelief. When Collins finished, Greta called out in German, sharp and loud.
“And if the next time bullets come down? If one of your ‘warnings’ becomes a mistake?”
Alvarez translated carefully. The question hung in the air like frost.
Collins didn’t flinch. “Then it will be investigated,” she said. “And there will be consequences for the person who fired.”
Greta’s eyes narrowed. “And consequences for those who opened the crate?”
A ripple went through the crowd. Heads turned. Whispered names.
Anneliese stood very still.
Collins’s gaze swept the women. “If someone inside this camp created danger intentionally,” she said, voice firm, “they will also face consequences.”
Greta’s expression flickered—just for a second. Enough for Anneliese to see it.
Collins lifted a hand. “You want safety? Then you help create it. That means no leaving barracks at night. No tampering with supplies. No feeding rumors.”
Alvarez translated, his voice steady.
For a moment, the yard was silent except for wind.
Then Lotte—quiet, fragile Lotte—raised her hand. “Do the wolves leave?” she asked in a small voice.
Alvarez translated. Collins’s expression softened. “Yes,” she said. “They do. When there’s nothing for them here.”
Lotte nodded as if storing that sentence somewhere safe.
Greta scoffed quietly, but her confidence had cracked. Not shattered—just cracked.
Because now there were facts: tracks, a crate, a reason wolves came close. Facts were harder to twist than fear, though not impossible.
As the women were led back toward the barracks, Mercer watched from his tower. The yard looked normal again—lines, routines, order.
But he understood now: normal was a costume the camp wore. Underneath, everything was raw and human.
Alvarez glanced up at Mercer and offered a tired half-smile, as if to say we made it through another night without turning into monsters.
Mercer nodded back.
In the woods, far beyond the fence, a final howl rose—distant, fading—like a closing argument delivered by something that didn’t care who was right.
Only who survived.
8
Weeks later, when the snow began to soften at the edges and the camp roads turned to mud, Mercer received the official report.
Lieutenant Collins’s conclusion was blunt:
Warning shots were not justified by a direct attack, but were understandable given credible animal presence and escalating crowd panic. No evidence of intent to harm detainees. Recommendation: revised protocol for wildlife threats and crowd control.
Mercer read it twice, then folded it carefully and placed it in his footlocker like a letter from a stranger.
On a quiet afternoon, he saw Anneliese outside the medical hut, carrying a basin of water with another woman. She moved slower now, more careful, as if every step was a decision.
She glanced up and met Mercer’s eyes.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then Anneliese lifted her hand in a small gesture—half greeting, half apology, half something else Mercer couldn’t name.
Mercer hesitated, then returned the gesture.
It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t friendship.
It was acknowledgment.
That night, from his tower, Mercer listened to the woods.
No howls.
Only wind through trees.
He thought about the phrase the women had screamed—We’re surrounded by wolves!—and understood what they’d meant, even if they’d been wrong in the literal sense.
They hadn’t been describing animals.
They’d been describing the feeling of being trapped in a world where any sound could become danger, where any authority could become threat, where any rumor could become truth.
The wolves had been real.
But so had the fear.
And fear, Mercer had learned, was the most contagious predator of all.
