Evil Eye

by Michael Slade

  for the

  Royal Canadian Mounted Police

  the thin red line

  and for

  Les Wiseman,

  who passed on the twist

  Part 1 BLACK GHOST

  We're foot-slog-slog-slog-sloggin' over Africa— Foot-foot-foot-foot-sloggin' over Africa— (Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again!) There's no discharge in the war!

  — Kipling

  RORKE'S DRIFT

  Africa

  Wednesday, January 22, 1879

  "Here they come!" the sentry yelled down from his outlook on the storehouse roof.

  "Stand to!" the color-sergeant ordered in the yard.

  A jolt of fear and tension ran through the 152 men in the makeshift army post. Around the wall of mealie bags piled waist-high to fortify the storehouse, hospital, and open yard between, click met click as Redcoats in single-breasted tunics and tropical helmets fixed twenty-two-inch bayonets to their Martini-Henry rifles. The phalanx of razor-sharp "lungers" glittered under a scorching sun. Here and there, the slouch hat and dark corduroy uniform of a Colonial volunteer broke the thin red line. Behind the perimeter, noncombatants worked feverishly to build a biscuit-box barricade across the yard as a second line of defense should the first line fail. With the sentry's warning, all eyes turned toward the Oskarberg.

  The heights of Shiyane Hill—dubbed the Oskarberg in honor of Sweden's king by Reverend Otto Witt, whose mission the British had commandeered—loomed over the barricades 400 yards to the rear. Around its right flank the first Zulus appeared, a vanguard of unmarried warriors from the iNdluyengwe regiment who quickly took up the "beast's horns" of impi attack formation. Stripped to the skin for hand-to-hand combat, most wore little more than a leopard skin headband and umutsha loincloth. Their three-foot umbhumbhulozu shields were black with white patches on the lower half. Some carried rifles. Some carried knobkerrie clubs. Most carried the deadly assegai stabbing spear, called an iklwa from the sucking noise made when it was yanked from an enemy's body.

  "How many?" Lieutenant Bromhead shouted up to the roof.

  "Four thousand ... or more, sir," the sentry yelled down.

  "Nothing remains but to fight," someone said at the wall.

  Eleven days earlier, Lord Chelmsford had invaded Zu-luland with 3,500 men, fording the Mzinyathi River here at Rorke's Drift. "Drift" is the African term for a river crossing, and this land was settled by trader James Rorke in 1849. The homestead was purchased by Reverend Witt in 1878. Rorke's store became his church, and Rorke's house his own. When Chelmsford arrived to conquer Zululand, he converted the mission into his supply depot, using the church for storage and the house as a hospital. The chapel was crammed floor to ceiling with sacks of tea, coffee, sugar, flour, and "mealie" maize, and with heavy crates of biscuits and tinned meat. The hospital had thirty patients, of whom nine couldn't move. The Zulu War had commenced the day the British forded the river, so "B" Company of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, had stayed behind to garrison the drift.

  Lieutenant John Chard of the Royal Engineers was in command. Thirty-two years old, he had yet to face enemy action. Despite a noon eclipse of the sun, it was a scorching 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Sheltered in his tent down by the river, Chard was writing a letter home when two galloping horsemen thundered across the drift ninety minutes ago with shocking news. "The camp has fallen to Zulus!" they reported.

  The depot ran rife with the news by the time Chard arrived. In command of "B" Company, Lieutenant Bromhead was having the yard fortified with 200-pound sacks of mealies dragged from the storehouse. Near as they could tell, the facts were: Lord Chelmsford rode out of camp with half his men to hunt for the enemy in the Mangeni Valley, and while gone the main Zulu impi 20,000 strong attacked those camped at the base of Isan-dlwana, a flat mountain resembling a lion in repose. The worst defeat suffered in any Colonial war, 1,500 British Redcoats and local troops were slaughtered ruthlessly. And now Zulus were nearing Rorke's Drift.

  Laboring against the clock under a brutal sun, the 24th secured the rear of the depot facing the hill by running two ox-wagons into the gap between the storehouse and the hospital, completing the barrier with biscuit boxes and mealie bags. The only way to barricade the front of the yard was to build a rampart along the rocky incline from the hospital veranda across to the stone corral just left of the storehouse. Mealie bags piled three feet high on top of this natural ledge presented a seven-foot wall to Zulus on foot, except in front of the hospital where the slope didn't step down. The rampart was incomplete when the Zulus attacked, so nothing but a plank secured the barricade at one point. British Redcoats defending the mission were outnumbered forty to one.

  Advancing at a fast run backed by the impi snaking around the hill, 600 iNdluyengwe dashed toward the rear wall. Stooped low to keep their heads down, they made the most of scant cover afforded by grass and bush, ducking behind anthills and boulders dotting the dusty slope. At several hundred yards, Redcoat marksmen crouched behind the wagons and lining the rear of both buildings opened fire, wreaths of black smoke swirling from their rifles. The Zulus were so thick it was hard to miss. The .45 slugs exacted a devastating toll, the force of impact lifting the front men off their feet to hurl them tumbling, rolling, or sprawling into the rank behind. Undaunted, those warriors leaped over the dead, charging forward. Chamber levers clicked down to eject spent casings, brass glinting as they tinkled about army boots. Volley upon riproaring volley blasted from the post. Whizz zip, closer came the hail of throwing spears, reinforced by shots from Brown Bess muskets on the hill. The swarming black onrush now fifty paces away, the entrenched white line braced to meet it at bayonet point. A burst of crossfire mowed the vanguard down. Rifles blazed from the storehouse to the Zulus' right. Rifles barked from the barricade dead ahead. Rifles roared from the rear of the hospital. And as if by magic, the onslaught stopped.

  One of those shooting from inside the hospital was Lance-Sergeant Rex Craven of the 24th. For generations, Craven had served king and queen. John Craven helped Wolfe take Quebec from France, William Craven

  fought at Waterloo, and young Rex—before his posting here—had earned the queen's shilling in the 9th Frontier War. Dark haired, dark eyed, with dark muttonchops meeting his bushy dark mustache, the Lance-Sergeant had hurt his knee during the recent invasion when a horse crossing the Mzinyathi slipped and pinned his leg against a rock. Invalided to the hospital, Craven cursed fate for denying him glory in this Colonial war, unaware the Zulus would bring the war to him. Zulus take no prisoners and dismember the dead, so nothing truly remained for Craven but to fight and die.

  Unable to reach the rear wall in the teeth of such crossfire, the iNdluyengwe circled the hospital in a wide sweep with senior men of the uThulwana, uDloko, and iNdlondlo regiments close on their heels. Those with rifles stayed out back and went to ground, taking cover behind the cookhouse and ovens, or wriggling through the bloody grass to gain a shallow ditch. Leaning against the door frame to favor his hurt knee, Craven sniped these skirmishers.

  The defenders' Achilles' heel was the front of the hospital. Fearless of the point-blank fire, the Zulus stormed the incomplete barricade to engage the whites hand-to-hand. Bromhead's men met the charge with their bayonets. Spikes rattled on shields, assegais clattered with gun barrels, as blacks threw themselves against the mea-lie bags. Stabbing and slashing the defenders, some scaled the waist-high wall while others clawed the barricade in an attempt to pull it down. Redcoats parried, jabbed, and thrust with bloody lungers. They rammed rifle butts and threw left hooks to drive back blacks. The 24th was a Welsh regiment, so Cymric voices shouted warnings and encouragement as African voices returned the battle cry "uSuthul"

  The sentry slid off the storehouse roof
to reinforce the barricade. He shot an attacker rushing the porch. Dropping his spear, a six-foot Zulu grabbed the private's empty rifle, left hand gripping the muzzle and right the bayonet, yanking and pushing alternatively to wrench away the gun. The Redcoat clung to the small of the butt while his other hand fed the chamber a live round, enabling him to blow a point-blank hole through the warrior.

  Now the senior uDloko and uThulwana charged the front. Against this tide of red shields with white spots and white shields with black patches Bromhead massed a counterattack. Zulus clashed their spears against their shields, then rushed the wall in an all-out assault. One behind the other, the Redcoats formed two firing lines. At Bromhead's order, the front rank fired and reloaded, the back rank stepping through them to fire in turn. Step after step the relentless phalanx drove forward, forcing the Zulus back to the bushes where they regrouped and charged again. Back and forth, the fight for the hospital raged, the veranda drenched in blood and littered with corpses.

  The post was soon surrounded on all sides by Zulus. Though armed with antiquated guns spitting musket balls blown by powder horns, African snipers on Shiyane Hill picked the Redcoats off. The Oskarberg overlooked the yard between the buildings, so those manning the front rampart had their backs exposed. Smoky air above hummed as shots zipped in. Birds flitted through the haze with vultures hovering higher up, waiting to pick the bones. Lieutenant Chard was constantly on the move, eyes along the perimeter so he could shift men to quell developing trouble.

  The yard between the two buildings was proving too dangerous to hold. Chard gave orders to fall back to the inner line, the biscuit-box barricade bisecting the yard. Shoulder to shoulder, here the Redcoats could concentrate their fire, backed by the storehouse to protect them from the hill.

  No sooner did the British withdraw from the veranda than the Africans overran the hospital. They banged their spears against the wooden doors, and grabbed the rifles of defenders shooting at them through loopholes. Thick smoke billowed from the far side of the building, where the Zulus set fire to the thatch roof. Abandoned to battle the besiegers on their own, Lance-Sergeant Craven and the other patients were trapped within the burning infirmary.

  SKINHEAD

  New Westminster, British Columbia Tuesday, December 7, 1993

  Sheriff's deputies on the third floor of the Law Courts removed a skinhead from the cells for transport to FPI on a psychiatric remand. The German's blond hair was shaved to the scalp, his blue eyes pinpoints of paranoid psychosis. Rings from his ears and nose were sealed in the envelope of personal effects that would accompany him to the Forensic Psychiatric Institute. Pierce holes marred pale Aryan flesh stretched over Teutonic bones with angles as sharp as if chipped by a chisel. Black swastikas were tattooed down one arm, and a Celtic Cross on the other shoulder trailed the runic symbol of Viking Youth. The skinhead wore a black leather jacket with silver studs, fatigue pants, and steel-toed boots. Only half a dozen teeth remained in his mouth, exposed each time he snarled "Knochenpolizeir

  Police handcuff behind and sheriffs cuff in front. The DS who snapped steel aroimd the skinhead's wrists was double-cursed with the name Ernie Costello. Both he and his partner Bert Polk wore dark brown pants, light brown shirts, dark brown windbreakers, and brown peaked caps. Not only did the uniform attract "Brownies," but teamed with Bert, Ernie was half of the "Sesame Street Boys." As if that wasn't bad enough, Deputy Doug Abbott was a Brownie, too. The team was either Bert & Ernie or Abbott & Costello.

  " Knochenpolizeir the skinhead sneered as he was caged in back of the brown Chevy Caprice with sheriff's decals on the doors.

  "What's that mean?" Bert asked over the roof from the driver's side.

  "Bone Police," Ernie said, opening the passenger's door.

  Both deputies thought the M (short for mental) was more a danger to himself than them. Yes, he'd assaulted the arresting officers, kicking and screaming "Knochen-polizei!" like a nut, but after a "hold doc" shot in the arm, drugs had calmed him down. Obviously the M was one sick fuck, lost in a weird world of Bone Police, so Bert & Ernie didn't "suitcase" him with wrists and ankles joined. The regular jail-run deputies packed guns, but not those on special FPI trips. And so on this misty day at twilight, the car left the Law Courts loading bay.

  Mike in hand, Ernie broadcast to home base. "Ten-eight, ten-seventeen," he said. "New West to FPI, with one male mental patient."

  Bert watched the skinhead in the rearview mirror. "Spooky guy. Kraut, huh? What kinda beef?"

  "B and E," Ernie said, replacing the mike. "Sporting goods. Caught in the act. Tripped the silent alarm. New West cops found him gathering loot. Thermal coat, polar tent, Arctic stuff. Second he saw the uniforms, he went berserk."

  "Name?"

  "Don't know. Wouldn't give it. No ID. Won't speak English. Fingerprints wired to Germany. Till they call, he's John Doe, mystery man."

  "How'd he get into the country?"

  Ernie shrugged. "Had a passport? Smuggled in? The coast leaks like a sieve."

  "Arctic stuff?" Bert wondered. "Why would he steal that?"

  The haze off the water was more Scotch mist than fog. The route took them along the Fraser River. The oncoming headlights were haloed beams whitening droplets suspended in the gloom. River boats moaned their foghorns while rumbling trains idled in Burlington Station. Smokestacks by the river belched white fumes, polluting under cover of dark to fool the populace.

  The Trans-Canada Highway was clogged with traffic creeping east from Vancouver to Fraser Valley bedroom towns. They crossed on the overpass, then turned right on the Lougheed Highway, driving parallel to the rush-hour jam. Wedged between the highways was Colony Farm.

  Bert drove down Colony Farm Road overhung by tow-

  ering elm trees, the eeriest and loneliest mile in Coquit-lam. The encircling hills were carpeted with monster houses, but here on the flatlands between the Fraser and Coquitlam rivers time had stood still since 1905, when the province acquired 1,000 acres to establish a colony for mental outcasts. Covered by a mat of grass, thistle, and bramble, the fields on both sides of the road had not been plowed for decades.

  A mile ahead stood FPI, the Riverside unit for the criminally insane, a dual-winged brick building brown-gray and cream, with blue bars on the windows and crows cawing from the eaves. Involuntary home of those judges think too sick to be thrown into jail, men confined by the grills have butchered, raped, mutilated, and eaten victims. Bert thought it odd a black-on-white sign read

  CAUTION, PATIENTS ON ROAD & GROUNDS.

  The car passed from one lamp pool to the next, the posted speed 25 kph, dim bulbs far apart since the road was rarely used after dark, nothing else down here but FPI with its back to dikes along the water. Winter runs to Riverside gave Bert the creeps.

  Again he eyed the skinhead in the rearview mirror. "What earned the Kraut a psych remand, Em?"

  "Clicked his heels and gave Doddering Dodd a Sieg heir

  "No shit?"

  "Judge asked how he intended to plead to the B and E and assaults. He replied ' Knochenpolizeir and 'Endlo-sungP Interpreter translated that as 'Bone Police' and 'Final Solution.' That was enough for Old Man Dodd. Did you know he fought Rommel at El Alamein?"

  "The Desert Fox and Doddering Dodd? The judge's so feeble he can barely climb to the bench. What's all the fuss about Bone Police?"

  "Beats me," Ernie said, twisting in his seat. "The guy's a neo-Nazi nut who should be . . . Christ, Bert! The M's having a fit!"

  The skinhead had vanished from the rearview mirror. As Bert craned around to peer through the plastic shield, Ernie grabbed the mike to alert home base. "New West from Ninety-One. We got a ten-eighteen medical problem. Male M's having a seizure in back. Advise FPI our ETA is two or three minutes."

  Bert scrambled out and opened the rear door of the car. The skinhead was thrashing on the seat and mewling like an epileptic. "Drag him out," Ernie cried, rushing around the back to the driver's side. "Could be the M's swallowed his tong
ue."

  "Right," Bert said, trying to get a grip on either jerking leg.

  Schreck means terror in German, and this German was terrified. Mind throbbing insanely from the squeezing of his brain, Schreck sat in back of the sheriff's car with handcuffs biting his wrists, fearing the skeletons plotting his death. The Bone Police beyond the plastic shield wore brown caps and windbreakers with crests on both shoulders. Several times the driver watched him in the mirror, the eye sockets of his skull baleful black holes. When they turned to conspire, Schreck faced the zigzag seams of their cranial bones. As they conversed, he heard the squeak of fleshless hinged jaws. Skeletal fingers on the steering wheel, the driver drove the car down a long deserted road.

  Sweat trickling from his brow made Giinter Schreck blink.

  Every time he closed his eyes his mind screened a memory on his shut lids. The memory was from East Germany before the Wall came down, when he was arrested by People's Police for Nazi Thought Crimes. Ravenscrag was the cold stone asylum where they sleep-deprived him for days, then dragged him to the Red Room and strapped him naked to a tilted table. A doctor in a white lab coat smeared something greasy on his temples before affixing electrodes to both offending sites. Thirty times more juice than normal electroshock therapy, the jolt was so strong he jumped like a live fish in a frying pan, eyes bugging out of his head as flesh burned from the faces of the watching cops.

  Opening his eyes, Schreck gazed ahead down Colony Farm Road.

  Closing his eyes, he relived the jolts of the Red Room, and saw the flesh burn off the cops to expose the Bone Police.

  Opening his eyes, he watched the skeleton driving

  speak, reading lipless teeth that mouthed the word "Elektroschock"

  Closing his eyes, Schreck began to convulse. Electric jolts surged through his psychotic mind. Falling sideways on the seat in back of the sheriff's car, he thrashed until his leg was grabbed and one of the skeletons dragged him out. They were going to kill him here. That's why they drove down this deserted road. Left foot held by the Bone cop and right foot free, he kicked the skull in the nose and drove splintered bones back into the black holes of its eyes.