Children of the Dusk

by Berliner, Janet

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Frozen in the beam of the searchlight, Misha heard Herr Freund call out to him in warning from the top of the knoll.

  Behind him, the Zana-Malata's hut crackled and roared as the fire set by the brazier sent sparks flying in all directions. Pleshdimer's dead, he thought. Dead, dead, dead! He felt no pang of conscience at having set the shack on fire with Pleshdimer inside it. If anything, he was sorry that it had been an accident, though no sorrier than he had felt when he'd discovered that the Kapo had, after all, not died at the hands of the major.

  He could feel in his clenched fist the tanghin pit that had started the fire. Though he had no idea how the sorcery worked, he'd picked up the pit again before darting out of the hut, taking the syphilitic's magic and making it his own.

  A shot broke through his hypnotic state. He looked up at the sentry tower, realized that they were shooting at him, and took a running dive into the closest bush.

  Now what? he thought. He could go up to the crypt, where Bruqah had taken Miriam, but he had seen the Zana-Malata headed in that direction. The last thing he needed was punishment for having destroyed the syphilitic's home. He knew the major was in the mess tent because he had watched him go in there, but he wasn't about to go to him, especially after what he had done to Herr Goldman. As for Herr Freund, who was up there shooting, he was afraid to go to him in case he was hit by a stray bullet on the way.

  The first searchlight went out, destroyed by the machine gun fire from the knoll. Crouching there, Misha thought about one of the stories his papa had told him--all about an ancient city somewhere in Palestine, near the Dead Sea. Just like here, the Jews were looking for a homeland. They had found a home in Jericho, by making the walls of the city come tumbling down so that they could go in--even if their enemies didn't want them to.

  That gave him an idea; he was amazed that he hadn’t thought of it before.

  He would go into the Jewish quarters, find the zebu horn that he had given Herr Goldman to use as a Shofar, and blow it. The fence that formed the Jewish sleeping area would tumble down--and the outside fence--and everyone would be free.

  He parted the branches and peered at the compound. Ahead of him, and slightly to the left, he could see Herr Alois and the rest of the shepherds. The colonel was still dressed in Taurus' skin. He was hauling a section of the punishment cage.

  Ignoring the spray of bullets from the knoll and from the sentry towers, Misha sprinted toward the dogs. As he ran, the American Negro song that his father had taught him rang softly inside his head, and in his mind's eye he saw the walls of Jericho come tumbling down.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Keeping carefully within the jungle, Erich and his dogs circumnavigated the meadow. When they were near the ruins of Benyowsky's hospital, he found a vantage point which allowed him to observe Hempel without being seen.

  The major, probably thinking that the pack was still chasing Sol, was returning triumphantly to the camp. The guards gathered around as he entered with the air of a conqueror. In a group, they ducked into the mess tent.

  Erich looked around. The overhang of vermiliads and orchids would afford him and the dogs protection from the knoll and sentry towers, allowing them to get to the compound unseen.

  He led the way. With the pack behind him, he dropped to his belly and crawled toward the fence.

  The smell of smoke stopped them. Turning around, he saw a spiral of smoke coming from the Zana-Malata's hut, and watched as the shack burst into flames. He didn't have time to wonder who, if anyone, was inside, before he saw Misha run and stop, caught in the beam of the sentry towers' searchlights. He heard Solomon's shouted warning, and a burst of fire from the sentry station atop the knoll.

  Misha scooted toward the bushes.

  Spatz! His Spatz! Solomon Freund...wise friend, Erich thought. Who would have credited him with the balls?

  As the other sentry posts returned fire, Erich acted. He dragged part of the collapsed punishment cage over to a small natural cavity at the base of the fence. The other shepherds looked at him expectantly as he shoved the lashed bamboo under the fence to pry it up. One by one, they crawled forward as if to be petted, and passed safely beneath. He smiled when he saw that Misha was last in line behind them.

  When they were all inside, Erich led the way to the area behind the supply tent, keeping to the shadows as the spotlights swept the compound.

  The trainers could join him if they wanted to, he thought. Right now, all they had were empty dog runs. They could all be a unit again until the Altmark returned, at which time some if not all them might try to head back to Germany.

  He would not miss them.

  The shepherds were really the only friends he had left. His true friends.

  My friends, he heard the syphilitic call from the top of the hill. My Sagittarius, my Pisces, my Erich....

  He put his hands over his ears and listened only to the pounding of his heart. Hempel and the guards had burst from the mess tent and were near the Panzer shooting toward the knoll. Machine-gun fire spat from above them, and they dove to the ground.

  Bullets ricocheted off the tank. One man screamed and fell, clutching himself. Hempel rolled behind the tank as another spray of bullets stitched a line toward him. A searchlight shattered. The remaining two swung chaotically from the sentry towers, searching for the enemy and finally realizing it came from one of their own positions. They fired toward the limestone chimney, and Solomon retaliated. A second light went out in response.

  Misha and the dogs drew close as the guards opened fire on anyone and anything that moved. Erich put an arm for comfort around the nearest neck. Stay calm, he told them, though he knew he was incapable of taking his own advice.

  Solomon fired a burst toward the generator, but hit the water tower, which was in the way. Water streamed from it.

  Just shoot the spotlights, Spatz. Don't worry about the power! Erich thought.

  He looked over at the Jewish quarters, knowing intuitively that Hempel's boys would have re-electrified the wire around the sleeping area while the major was down at the beach.

  What he saw made him want to stand up and cheer.

  The Jews had torn down the canopy that he had given them and thrown it over the fence. Four or five of them were beating down the wire with the poles that had held up the tent. Having broken the circuit, they poured over the fence. What was left of it buckled under their weight.

  Solomon laid down peppery fire. The sentry towers fired back, and the guards near the tank blasted at the human wave heading toward them. The front line of Jews fell back, their agonized screams filling the night, only to have more Jews rush on.

  Turning to Misha, Erich gave him quick instructions. "Go into the munitions tent. Open one of the small wooden crates marked Granate. It'll be on the right, near the entrance. Bring me a grenade. And be careful," he added as an afterthought.

  Before he had finished the sentence, Misha was headed around the tent.

  Erich and the shepherds followed, staying close to the canvas. He could see in the dark far better than his adversaries, and he was surprised to find himself without fear and also without bloodlust. He operated on animal instinct alone, but there was still the hunger with which to contend. He looked around, fearing the Zana-Malata's presence. He could feel the sorcerer's voice calling to him, but it was weak and distant. Then the voice was gone.

  The dogs would not obey the syphilitic any more. Will they obey me? Erich wondered. He didn't know, but he had to try. Silently, he gave the command: Zodiac.

  The dogs fanned out. As if the animals had reversed roles and called out to them, the trainers moved from various points of the encampment to join their charges.

  Ready, Erich commanded.

  The spotlight sighted the boy at the same time as the guard who had stayed his post outside the munitions supply tent.

  "Kill him!" Hempel screamed.

  "No!" Franz burst from the medical tent, flailing his arms as he ran. "Don't s
hoot the boy!"

  A volley from half a dozen guards caught the corpsman with such force that he left his feet. When he hit the ground, his legs flopped toward his head and down again like a rag doll. His arms splayed out, his head turned at an unnatural angle, and blood ran in a jagged line from his mouth.

  As if by silent command, all carbines snapped toward the boy, who stood motionless within the searchlight's glare. He had stretched out his arm. Elongated flames rose from his palm into the night sky.

  "Shoot him!" Hempel screamed again, but no one moved. Erich could almost taste the fear and frustration in the major's voice. Where is your precious syphilitic now, he thought sarcastically.

  Attack! Erich mentally commanded Pisces and, trusting in the animal, jumped up in full sight of everyone. "Shoot me, you bastards! Kill a colonel!" he yelled.

  "It's Alois!" someone shouted. "Dressed as a dog!"

  Shooting started again. Solomon fired as the spotlight moved toward the new target. No more than a split-second later, Pisces was upon the man. As a rain of bullets took man and beast, the boy tore at the tent-flap ties and dashed inside. He emerged moments later holding two grenades.

  "Here! Bring them here!" Erich yelled. "Roll them if you have to! We've got to blow up the generator!"

  Misha started forward, half running, half staggering, then stuttery fire kicked up the dirt before him and he was running the other way, toward the power plant. He dropped one grenade and wheeled around to retrieve it, only to see the ground behind him erupt with bullets. He leapt and rolled. Erich saw him yank out the pin, and then the boy screamed as he charged, arm lifted.

  A bullet spun him around before he reached the generator. The grenade fell from his hand, bounced as though striking a rock, and rolled down the incline that Jews in their work had worn smooth of grass. Misha lay in a heap as the grenade came to rest against one leg of the water tower.

  The explosion shook the ground, pelting Erich with rocks and debris. When it was over, he rolled onto his back, trying to spot Solomon but instead seeing the tripod topple.

  Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The bottom of one leg of the tower was missing--jagged where it had been blown off--and the whole thing leaned drunkenly, water fountaining from the holes Solomon had shot in it in his attempt to destroy the generator.

  Another leg snapped beneath the weight and the structure tipped. Water cascaded as the tower fell onto the generator and the headquarters tent. The generator sizzled--and shorted. There were several sharp pops, then darkness.

  No more shots came from the limestone chimney.

  Hempel climbed onto the Panzer and entered the turret. There was a growl and a metallic whir, and the tank swung around to face the Jews. Their knot spread out into a line.

  Hempel stuck up his head. "I warned you and yours against any insurrection, Rabbi!" he screamed.

  In a shower of sparks, the roof of the hut collapsed. The major ducked down again into the Panzer.

  Erich looked up, positioning his body. If only Solomon would give covering fire...if he was still alive.

  He tensed himself, and felt the dogs tense in response. His years of track and field, their years of training with the Abwehr and then in the specialized program he had set up on the Rathenau estate, it was all culminating here.

  Fire spewed from the barrel of the tank's gun. Perhaps a fourth of the Jews were mown down, limbs scattered like tenpins, as the.50 caliber machine gun traced through their line.

  The remainder swarmed upon the tank, so close to it now as to render it ineffective. The guards shot them at point-blank range but they kept coming, one or two wrestling the Mausers from the hands of sadistic boys who thought themselves soldiers, and returning the fire.

  The shepherds leapt, tearing at throats and testicles. Erich speared his hand into an eye with a satisfaction he would not have dreamed possible; the guard staggered back, falling against Johann, who was wrestling with Max, each ripping savagely at the other. Someone rifle-butted Erich in the back. He went down hard, and glanced up just in time to see the tank swivel toward the melee.

  He's going to shoot us all, he thought, even if it means killing his own men.

  Hempel popped his head out of the turret to look around. Bullets rang against the armor as Fermi and Holten-Pflug knelt and fired, forcing the major back inside. A wave of Jews reached the tank and began, by force of numbers, to overturn it.

  The Totenkopfverbände threw down their weapons and ran toward the jungle, closely pursued by dogs, trainers, and Jews. Those still alive in the sentry towers raised their hands in surrender. The tank growled and lurched forward, spitting clods of dirt as the rocking treads grappled for purchase.

  Jews and guards screamed as the tank crushed them in Hempel's haste to exit the camp and save himself.

  The machine was halfway to the road leading down the hill when it stalled. Erich ran toward it, leaped on and peered inside, expecting to get shot by Hempel's pistol. He had done what he had set out to do. He had saved the Jews. Now there was only one thing left. Rid himself and the world of Hempel.

  A mouselemur, the tank's sole occupant, gazed up at him with doleful eyes.

  Instinctively, Erich knew that Hempel was headed toward the Storch. He let Taurus' spirit course through him. Immediately he sensed the shortcut the major had taken. He sniffed the air, consciously attempting to cease thinking in human terms. The world was sapped of all pigments, the jungle a hothouse of orchids gone to gray, but the forest was rich with odors. His hearing was likewise acute. The rumble of a centipede across a leaf; the storm of Hempel's breaths a hundred meters down the hill.

  As he dashed among the trees and ferns, Erich could still hear sporadic shooting behind him. He moved laterally along the hillside until the desire to stop seized him and he sniffed the air a second time. He could smell them. The Kalanaro, their body heat aromatic strata he could read like a geological map. Those monkey-men were old, it occurred to him for some reason he could not explain but which he had already begun to trust: old as Benyowsky's diary, perhaps old when it was written. Had they been the ones who stood, three thousand strong, as Benyowsky and the King of the North sliced their own chests with the royal assegai and sucked each other's blood?

  Ampanzanda-be!

  Where was the meaning to Benyowsky's life? The writing of the country's first constitution? the attempt to save Ravalona, only to be betrayed by friends and his own idealistic ambition? What joy could have come to the Count in the cool darkness of the crypt?

  Perhaps only the grasshoppers and the centipedes held meaning. Perhaps only footfalls through the woods at the first light of dawn. All else, he told himself, must be nothingness, must be chaos. The only real advice worth listening to was the sound of his own heart, where the voices of dogs dwelled.

  "Taurus," he said.

  And then: "Miriam."

  Sensing her presence within the valavato and knowing that if he neared it he might lose all control, he continued to descend the hill, slipping effortlessly between lianas and brambles. With his newfound senses had come surety of foot. At the base of the hill a tidal pond loomed like a moat, but he danced across the line of stumps and sprang to a grassy dune. Digging his hands into the sand he scrambled to the top and peered over.

  The Storch, two small tabun bombs emplaced beneath the wings, was turning, taxiing hard, prop wash dimpling the water. He set his sights on the white September moon above the western tree line. Only a low spine of beach ridge blocked the pilot's view of him as he sprinted across the sand, heading for the short spit that arced into the sea at the open end of the lagoon.

  Ducking his head, he ran in a half-crouch for the end of the spit. The dogskin slapped against him, the foliage cast crenellated shadows across the sand, enabling him to run in relative secrecy. The last twenty meters, though, was fully exposed, an apron of wet beach studded with sharp, dark stones. He hit the area at top stride, so charged with anger and power that he sailed painlessly across the r
ocks, laughing as Hempel aimed the Mann.

  The plane whipped toward him as the first shot zinged past his ear.

  He splashed out into the lagoon. Hempel waved his right arm as he attempted another shot and jerked the craft to the left, revving as he headed into the bay. The floats sluiced across wavelets, spray rooster-tailing behind.

  Erich threw himself into a surface dive.

  He caught the right float's tail fin. Its force whipped his body out straight. As water pelted over him and the plane picked up speed, he grabbed the strut. The left float lifted off the water and the right, lower due to his weight, followed suit. He saw the major jerk the controls to the left, trying to compensate as the aircraft pitched to the right. The machine yawed crazily and slowly corrected.

  Hempel's feet were directly above him, soles against the wraparound window. He looked down, eyes angry.

  Erich bared his teeth and grinned up at him.

  The major, swearing inaudibly, reached across to the passenger seat and picked up his gun. As he maneuvered in his chair to get a clear shot down through the glass, Erich took a firm grip on the sponson and heaved himself left, caught the strut that ran to the left wing, and pulled himself up toward the passenger hatch. He heard the gun fire--twice, like someone cracking walnuts--but he was beyond fear, beyond caring. Physical action subordinated thought.

  He shouted, smashing at the hatch with his fist.

  The window splintered into a spiderweb of shattered glass. He wrenched at the door handle so hard that the door slammed open and caught the airflow. The momentum knocked him against the fuselage.

  Another shot rang out. "You should have shot me long ago, when you had the chance," Erich shouted, as the plane dipped to one side and the pistol flew from Hempel's hand.

  Laughing, Erich placed the arch of his foot into the V of the strut joint and swung up to look the pilot in the eyes.

  Hempel threw the plane into a turn. Greenery displaced the blue of the sea as they banked back toward Mangabéy. Erich clutched the top of the hatch frame and, raising and tucking his legs as though he were about to pole vault, hurled himself inside and lashed out with both feet, catching the major squarely on the jaw.