(Transcript: Audio tape recovered from Greenbox, Baltimore, MD, July 1989. Field Officer [REDACTED], codename Osprey, interviewing Special Agent Mason, codename Wolverine)

OSPREY: All right, there we go. I'm sure you've done plenty of debriefs before; just remember, I'm not here as a part of the Company right now.

WOLVERINE: Hence the dilapidated office and the even worse coffee.

OSPREY: Can't send expense reports for this side. Go ahead and tell the tape what happened.

WOLVERINE: As long as I don't get a psych eval after this... Okay. Our team took a train out of Warsaw, then had to walk about six, seven kilometers from the station. We'd been briefed on the town... Village, really.

OSPREY: Luborowo.

WOLVERINE: Right. We got there, more cows than houses, and almost nobody on the street. Only one old woman sweeping her porch; Dobosz, our local asset, asked her for directions, if there was a hostel, tourist questions.

OSPREY: Tourist questions.

WOLVERINE: Have to keep cover, even in Nowhere Village; you know how it is. The day we show up to take a look, that's gonna be the day the fuckin' GRU sniffs around.

OSPREY: Didn't you have contact with a GRU agent around that time?

WOLVERINE: Yeah, but he was a double agent. Be easy for him to set up an "accidental" meet. Hell, could be a real accident. You know the Soviets don't tell each other what they're doing.

OSPREY: But you encountered no foreign agents.

WOLVERINE: No, no. The, ah, the old woman shooed Dobosz off and yelled "you should not be here, get out," just warnings. And of course we had to act like nothing was up.

OSPREY: Like that part in Dracula, right? The villagers, "oh, beware!" (laughter)

WOLVERINE: (laughter) Just like that.

OSPREY: But you know they're right.

WOLVERINE: Of course. But cover. So anyway, we keep going through this village, seeing nobody, I'm starting to think we came out here on bad intel, then... Then I catch the smell. Dead bodies, nothing like it.

(pause)

WOLVERINE: Hey, mind if I smoke?

OSPREY: It's a free country.

WOLVERINE: Goddamn right it is.

(lighter strikes)

WOLVERINE: So, I catch that smell of something dead, and stop the group. I'm hoping I'm wrong and it's just pig shit, but the wind changes and I see where it's coming from. Big barn on the other side of an orchard. And I look over there and I realize, hey, none of these trees are growing anything.

OSPREY: In June.

WOLVERINE: Right, it's just a few dead leaves in the middle of summer. That sealed it for me; I went ahead and signaled the team to fall back and strap up. Then we headed up the path to the barn, opened up the door to check it...

(silence)

OSPREY: Go on, Arthur. This tape stays with our people.

WOLVERINE: Right, our people... Yeah. Checked the door, it was a whole barn full of the walking dead. Just... Standing there, and they slowly turned our way. Not one of 'em had eyes, but they turned to look... And then one of them let out this screech. Louder than any scream I've ever heard, and... There was nothing human about it. Just an animal screech, staring at us.

(silence, lighter strikes)

WOLVERINE: I took a step back, drew and fired. Didn't even think about it, just fired. Three shots, two to the head. I was about to keep going when I heard Foster shout "movement" and turned to see the bastard who did all that.

OSPREY: The necromancer.

WOLVERINE: Ugh. I hate titles like that; it makes these sick sons of bitches sound impressive.

OSPREY: But he had raised the dead.

WOLVERINE: Didn't bring them back to life, though. Just moved them around. Anyway, he's come from somewhere off to the side, he's in robes and waving a knife, and Foster drops him before I can get an order out.

OSPREY: Just another person in over their head with bad shit.

WOLVERINE: More than we thought. The catch was that as soon as he hit the ground, it was like someone hit a switch and turned all those bodies on. They came barreling out the barn doors at us, full tilt... Dobosz wasn't expecting it, they bowled him over and just... Tore him apart. Took seconds.

(silence)

WOLVERINE: Foster and I opened fire on the rest of them; they barely seemed to notice us once Dobosz went down. Just kept swarming him... So the rest went down pretty easy. We counted eighteen bodies, plus Dobosz and the freak.

OSPREY: And these bodies, they looked like villagers?

WOLVERINE: From what we could tell. Usual clothing, though none had any jewelry or money on them.

OSPREY: Those were found in the farmhouse.

WOLVERINE: Right. Guy wasn't satisfied with murdering and reanimating his neighbors, he had to rob them too.

OSPREY: Seems he had some antisocial tendencies.

WOLVERINE: (laugh) Yeah, I guess so. If he was from around here, they'd be blaming that on TV.

OSPREY: (laughter) Over there, they blame it on our TV.

WOLVERINE: Too right.

(silence)

WOLVERINE: What do you think it really is? That makes people get into this kind of shit?

OSPREY: Arthur, trust me when I tell you that you're better off not knowing.

(end tape)

(A journal filled with notes on necromancy was retrieved from the farmhouse in Luborowo. It was recovered from the Baltimore Greenbox and subsequently destroyed.)