Children of the Dusk (12 page)

Solomon stood with hands lifted, the medallion clenched in his palm, as the guard walked in a semi-circle, faced Sol, and peered into the HQ tent.

"The Herr Oberst isn't here," the guard announced, eyes narrowing with suspicion. "Not the radio operator, either.
No one
." He moved around Sol with the cautious wrath of a cur sniffing a rival. "Just what did you think you could get away with here, Jew?"

He jammed the barrel into Sol's gut. Sol doubled over in pain but managed to keep the medal concealed.

"Get back to your sty! Sturmbannführer Hempel will hear about this!"

"The Oberst is next--"

"Silence!" The guard swung the rifle butt-first, missing Sol's forehead by a centimeter.

Sol staggered toward the sleeping area. He hesitated as he entered the gate, allowing the guard time to kick him because a boot was better than a bullet, and crumpled, groaning, onto the matted grass. As he lay with his face in the sod, trying to wheeze air into his lungs and drive out the fear and humiliation, he wondered if he should get word to Erich about the incident. The colonel's orders had been explicit: no beating or berating of prisoners unless they deserved it. The problem was that Sol could not say anything without revealing that he'd overheard the conversation in the medical tent, and Erich was not beyond killing him for being privy to his weakness.

The pain subsided and the guard drifted into shadows to smoke a cigarette. Sol crawled over to the edge of the fence. He felt the paralytic fear instilled in him in Sachsenhausen. The only difference was that here the unfinished construction made in-compound movement relatively easy.

Then a knee bore down against Sol's back and a guard gripped his hair, forcing up his head. Grinning, the guard slapped the flat of his bayonet against Sol's cheek.

"Did you summon them,
Rabbi
?" the man said, directing Sol's vision to the lemurs. "You and your Jewish sorcery?"

"Stick him!" another voice said.

The guard lifted the weapon. "What, and spoil the fun? The Sturmbahnführer has plans for him."

E
rich thought he remembered Taurus calling him sometime during the night. Remembered staggering to the medical tent, collapsing to his knees before the dog and wrapping his arms around her warm neck, mentally begging her to forgive him for bringing her to this terrible place. He remembered standing over Miriam, she lying beneath netting as hazy as a wedding veil.

"Can you ever see it in your heart?" he thought he had said.

After a long silence, she had answered, "Someday, perhaps. If you think my forgiveness would help."

"And Solomon?"

"What about Solomon?"

"Would he follow your lead?"

"Do you believe he could? Would you really want him to?"

He awakened to a false dawn heavy with humidity. It made his sinuses swell and brought on a headache behind his eyes. When he dragged himself out of the chair he'd slept in and looked outside the tent, there seemed to him to be a sheen to the air, as though the sky had fractured and fallen. He winced and closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to shut himself in for the day--alone with his military books and maps, the smell of dusty canvas, and what was left at the bottom of the bottle.

"Bastards," he said, with the triumvirate of Hempel, Pleshdimer, and the syphilitic clearly in mind. "We'll see about you after the dogs and I get through with you."

He had no intention of using his dogs for guarding the Jews. That was the job of Hempel's...
boys
, as Miriam was fond of calling the guards. Erich had never seen the dogs as guard dogs but as sentry dogs and combat troops. With Taurus and Aquarius out of action, he was loathe to do much training; the dogs needed to acclimate to the heat. Much to the anger of the guards, he had placed the dogs and the trainers on light duty.

A hand touched his shoulder "It's the animals, sir! Come quickly!" Fermi's voice sounded like a megaphone.

Suddenly fully awake, Erich followed the trainer. He felt himself running as though through glue to the kennel area, a feeling of renewed despair sticking like sweat against his skin. The trainers were each struggling to bring a raging shepherd under control. Pisces had wrapped his chain around his run-pole and was up on hind legs, straining against his bonds, jaws snapping and eyes filled with frenzy. Snarling, Gemini was sprinting the length of her run with such force that each time she reached the end she was thrown off her feet and lay squirming and growling, tugging her head against her collar.

"They're fevered, sir. I think this damn humidity's got to them." After great difficulty Fermi managed to snap a choke chain onto Pisces' collar and lift him to the dog's full height, temporarily controlling the animal while Erich, squinting against the urge to sleep, clamped Pisces' jaws together and slipped on a muzzle. "Feel his nose, sir! Hotter than a nipple on a French whore. All the dogs' are."

Shivering and gnashing his teeth against the leather restraint, Pisces abruptly twisted from Erich's grasp and insanely pawed the air as Fermi fought to control him.

"It's not distemper, is it?" Fermi was clearly worried.

"They wouldn't all have it." Erich's voice sounded outside himself. He realized he was watching himself as if from a distance. "You see?" He knelt and lifted the upper gum, revealing the canines. "No pink froth." He anxiously searched the forest. "Something outside the compound has them riled. The Kalanaro, maybe?"

"Kalanaro, sir?" asked Holten-Pflug, Sagittarius' trainer, a chubby staff sergeant with a boyish face.

"Those pygmies with the glowing face paint." Erich silently cursed himself for having spent the night with the bottle. He tried to think about the Kalanaro as he rose to his feet and peered around the jungle perimeter. He thought he recalled digging through books from his footlocker earlier in the night. He had found no mention of the Kalanaro in the military literature or the supplemental guides. He had counted eighteen tribes--plus the Vazimba and Zana-Malata, who functioned as individuals rather than in groups. In his mind's eye he remembered demographic maps; he had even found the location of the Mikea, a tribe so small and mysterious that they had been considered mythical until a decade ago.

The Kalanaro were not among the eighteen.

They were not listed among the sub-groups: the clans and moieties. Nor among the lists of non-Malagasy peoples inhabiting the country.

Bruqah had proved no more enlightening. "Kalanaro," was his only answer. "They not hurt you. They be spirit-guardians of Madagascar."

"Spirits, my ass," Erich had said, but the Malagasy had refused to say more.

Returning to the moment, he said, "No, I don't think this has anything to do with the Kalanaro. The dogs all seem to be straining toward the main gate."

"What, then?" Fermi asked, going to help Virgo's trainer.

"I'm not sure," Erich said over his shoulder.

Virgo struggled in the trainer's arms and gnashed her teeth. Her eyes bulged, but at last, within his loving arms, she briefly settled, whining and quivering. Erich followed the dog's gaze. She was glaring past the ghetto and the compound gate--glaring toward the hut.

Emerging from the doorway, the Zana-Malata stepped aside as several guards filed out and, in a mob, headed toward the compound. Hempel was in the lead, with Misha trotting alongside, leashed by a choke chain. The syphilitic followed. The two guards at the gate snapped to ready arms and saluted when Hempel entered.
 

Nostrils flaring and eyes so intense they seemed about to pop from her skull, Virgo renewed her frenzied, deep-throated growl. From the medical tent, he heard Taurus. Trying to tell him something.

That's it, isn't it, girl! When I was at the crypt, you sensed trouble and wanted to warn me.

More guards had emerged from their tents and were joining Hempel, several smacking truncheons against their palms as, a mob now, they marched toward the Jews.

"Let the dogs go," Erich said.

Totenkopfverbände: Death's Head Unit. He'd show Hempel what death was all about!

"Sir?" Fermi questioned.

"Do as I say!"

Fermi looked from his commander to the oncoming mob, and then suddenly, like the precision squad that they were, the trainers sensed their predicament at the same time. They were weaponless but for the dogs. Between themselves and their rifles, stacked outside their tents, were Hempel and his men on the one side and, on the other, over a hundred and forty Jews who would tear any German soldier apart if they had the chance.

The guards began to chant. "Kill the Jews! Kill the Jews!"

With perverse pleasure Erich saw the faces of his men harden. He had trained them well--though they were untried in battle, he was sure they could be as savage as the dogs. Fermi's face shone with fierce delight as he unmuzzled Pisces.
 

The Jews, seeing two packs of jackals doing battle over hunks of meat--them--started running around within the sleeping area and yelling to one another, searching for anything with which to defend themselves.

"Release...now!" Erich commanded. Then, mentally, he ordered the dogs to restrain the guards.

Slavering and crazed, ten of the twelve dogs of the zodiac raced indiscriminately toward anything that moved.

"Get the guards!" Erich screamed.

"KILL JEWS!" the guards intoned.

Instead of responding like Erich's trained killing machine, the dogs behaved like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

"Herr Oberst!" Holten-Pflug shouted above the din. "The dogs' water dishes! It looks like someone's dribbled blood--!"

No wonder the shepherds were going crazy. Having tasted blood, they wanted more. Now controlling them would be a thousand times more difficult.

"Who fed my dogs blood!" he called out when he was near enough for Hempel to hear.

Hempel's men stopped their approach and grew silent, all except Pleshdimer, who shouted, "I did!"

Erich felt heat rise into his cheeks. "Shoot that man," he said to the guard closest to him.

The guard did not move.

"Rottenführer Pleshdimer is SS, and thus not subject to your orders." Hempel withdrew a cigar from his pocket and moistened it by drawing an end over moist lips. "None of the guards are. You are Abwehr, we are Totenkopfverbände." After lighting the cigar with a match, he held the red end before the mouth of the Zana-Malata.

The syphilitic encompassed it with gnarled flesh that once had been lips, and inhaled deeply, a look of pleasure entering his eyes.

"You may do as you wish with your shepherds and Abwehr chimps," Hempel said, "but my unit is
mine
."

"Then command your unit to conduct the execution. Or do it yourself. You are still subject to my orders."

With his holster strap unsnapped and one hand on the grip of the Walther, Erich glared at the Zana-Malata, who must somehow be responsible for this insurrection. Hempel was crazy, but he was not stupid, certainly not stupid enough to pull this kind of maneuver so early in the game. Play the professional, he reminded himself. If they see chinks in the armor, they may crumble the castle.

He drew his pistol and kept the weapon steady as he pointed it at Hempel. "Or do you intend to disobey your commander, Sturmbahnführer?"

Hempel smiled a reassuring smile, as though he intended to gather Erich in and grace him with his confidence.

"So you are, officially," Erich said in a tight, hard voice, "disobeying a direct order?"

"That is correct."

Erich's finger tightened on the trigger.

Puuuh
.

The Zana-Malata had craned his neck so that his head was level with the gun when he blew the smoke ring. Tinged with blue fire and writhing with worms, it floated around the barrel and fastened onto Erich's flesh. His skin burst into flames. He screamed, fired, and dropped the pistol.

The bullet went wildly astray.

Slapping at his good hand with his dead fingers, he tried a roundhouse kick at the Zana-Malata. Off balance, he missed.

"We each have our units to command," Hempel said.

"We'll see about that! Guards, arrest those three!" he shouted, trying to be heard above the barking and growling.
 
When no one moved to obey, he added, "They're to be shot for treason against our Führer!"

The men did nothing. It was as if they did not even know that he was there. Disregarding the pain in his hand, he grabbed a tall man by the shirt. "You heard me! Arrest them!"

The guard stared past him, making no effort to respond.

With the back of his dead hand Erich struck the guard across the face. Blood burst from the man's nose. Erich looked at his hand in horror. Oh my God, I've struck an enlisted man.

The man appeared hardly to notice. From somewhere close by, Erich heard again the sound of rubber against flesh. He swore to himself, pushed past the guard, and headed for his tent--and his MP-38 submachine gun. He would take all of them on himself, he thought irrationally. Behind him, he heard Hempel issuing orders and speaking to the Zana-Malata.