Evil Eye

by Michael Slade

  Down the lazy river . . .

  A school of forty hippos lolled on a river island, huge fat animals, some nearly three tons, with balloonlike bodies, puff-cheeked heads, and short stubby legs. To Zinc, these giant pigs adapted to aquatic life were clones of Alfred Hitchcock. Despite their girth, those on land trotted smoothly, two feet on the ground, two feet off. Those wallowing in mud yawned wide to bare an armory of crooked yellow tusks. The nostrils, eyes, and ears of those submerged in the river were all that Zinc could see, as rumps shat fertilizer dispersed by swishy tails. Every bull's gray hide was crisscrossed with pink scars from endless quarrels over who should hump the cowo.

  'The most dangerous animal for us," the boatman said.

  I hear."

  "Most accidents occur when hippos surface beneath boats. Canoeing down the Zambezi below the dam, a guide on safari recently dangled his foot in the water. Angry at being displaced in his school, a rogue bull chomped the boat and took his leg."

  Down the lazy river . . .

  "There," said the boatman, pointing.

  The buffalo graveyard marred the right bank, bones bleaching and flesh mummifying under the merciless sun. "A few months back," the boatman said, "lions stampeded a herd to take out stragglers. Those buffalos in front mired onshore, while those behind trampled on them to reach the river." As he listened, Zinc imagined the wild melee, massive hulks thundering here in panic and confusion, clouds of dust billowing up to obscure the sun, air reeking of mud, dung, and the sweaty press of bodies, fear tensing the grunting herd into a chorus of bellows, lost calves bleating for separated mothers, flies buzzing in black clusters around rolling eyes and flared nostrils, the blue river churned brown by broken legs and thrashing hooves, the heads and limbs of dying and dead protruding from the quagmire, as crocs slipped from sandbars to feed on the turmoil, nosing in with arrow-ripples trailing grim snouts, cold eyes diving as they dragged victims under, jaws locked while swirling tails spun their bodies to tear chunks of living flesh from skeletons.

  "Put me ashore," said Zinc.

  The bow turned in.

  Bag with clothes in one hand, bag with food in the other, Zinc watched the boat motor back upstream toward the lodge. Trudging up the grisly bank he was amazed by how the dead had rotted. All were desiccated, but most retained their form, each buffalo face preserving its moment of death, heads turned, terrified or pleading to be spared, front halves mummified, back halves bones, shrunken lips baring blunt teeth, hairy hides streaked white where vultures had crouched to rip out eyes, eat tongues, shred sphincters, desperately trying to get at the putrid goodies inside. Now the sun beat down on dry carrion, around the horns of which buzzed halos of flies.

  Shimmering in the heat-haze, a figure walked down from the road.

  When Zinc first viewed The Herald clipping with De-Clercq, he'd thought the white mirrored Stewart Granger as Allan Quatermain in King Solomon's Mines. There was gray in the bush beard now and the khaki shirt and shorts were rumpled as if he'd slept in them, for this was the same "Clive Moon" in the photo with thirty years added, but up close he was far from the Great White Hunter, heroic, good, and strong. Strong sure, for muscles corded his shoulders, chest, and arms, not a hint of fat on his powerful frame, but there was malice in his pagan eyes, cruelty in his hard mouth, sadism in his weathered squint, and a skull tattooed on the palm gripping Zinc's hand.

  "Chandler?"

  "Uh-huh."

  'The name's White."

  Africa.

  Fantasy and reality.

  But then perhaps fantasy and reality did meld, for face to face with "Mr. White," here was Conrad's Kurtz: His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. Zinc could almost hear White whisper, (f I am lying here in the dark waiting for death." A cry that was no more than a breath — "The horror! The horror!" What brutal life had this man led to warp him so mean?

  "Why do you seek Nigel?"

  "That's between Hammond and me."

  "What brings a Mounted Policeman all the way to Africa?"

  "Why you? Why not Hammond here himself?"

  "Guess."

  "Poaching?"

  "Poachers are shot on sight"

  "You poached, too."

  "Who says?"

  Zinc flashed The Herald clipping.

  "Why should I help you if you won't talk with me?"

  "I'm told you know where Hammond is. If you won't help me, I'll go a different route. This photo will be

  shown to every cop in Africa. If you're still poaching, that could be a drag."

  "If you want Nigel, you must go to him. Just you. No guns. Understand? I search you and your kit before you get on the plane/'

  "Agreed. Where am I going?"

  "On safari."

  REVENGE

  North Vancouver

  As each bone hit the table, the evil eye carved on it winked at Evil Eye. The smell in the windowless room at the heart of the Lions Den was overpowering. Wreaths of greasy smoke swirled up from the isiko roasting on a hibachi, Tipple's heart an offer of ukuhlabela amadlozi "slaughter for the shades" so Evil Eye and Black Ghost could commune. The juju room in the cabin perched high on Grouse Mountain was lit by the oil lamp that danced Evil Eye's shadow like a black ghost over the Redcoat pictures spiked to the logs. The pictures came to life . . . Fripp's "The Last Stand of the 24th at Isandlwana" transformed into a macabre aftermath, the green grass red with running blood, the veld slippery with the entrails of the slain, the corpses of white and black mixed up together with the carcasses of horses, oxen, and mules, decapitated heads placed in a ring, the "poor little drummer boys"—the British Army would never again take boys on campaign—hung up with butchers hooks jabbed under their chins so they could be "opened like sheep" . . , Photographs of Ted Craven in the "Four Circle" and "Wagon Wheel" formations of the RCMP Musical Ride, his face X'd with crisscrossed thin red lines of blood, thrown from the saddle of his bucking charger . . . The shot of Nick Craven, also defaced, in a Color Guard to salute the Queen,

  crumpling in a faint under the blazing African sun at Her Majesty's unamused feet. . . .

  Lady Butler's 'The Defense of Rorke's Drift" . . .

  In the picture, Chard and Bromhead shared a bottle of beer. The other Redcoats drank a tot of rum. Slowly, Black Ghost appeared among the whites, necromancy noted by none but Evil Eye. The screams from the picture were unnerving, a symphony of agony from spectral images too vague to discern, but through the smoky forms of which wandered Black Ghost, beckoning Evil Eye in to commune. The black ghost lamplight cast across the picture moved rhythmically to the beat of drums deep in the psycho's mind as Evil Eye entered the picture like Alice through the Looking Glass.

  The world in here was a negative of the world out there. The yard of Rorke's Drift in the painting faded into haze, while the spectral images once too vague to discern materialized. Evil Eye stood in the gate of the shades' ikhanda, the opening facing east like an Indian sweat lodge. The dome-shaped thatch huts to either side circled around the parade ground of this military kraal ringed outside by a stout stockade, until the horns met opposite at the Induna's hut. Seven hundred Zulu shades shambled about, their black skins white and the whites of their rolled-back eyes black, the only color in this kraal the red wound that killed or mortally struck down each at Rorke's Drift. The screaming came from the hill beyond.

  He was trained by Shaka.

  This Induna Enkulu.

  Ferocity was important, so Zulus could have no sex until they "washed their spears," and those defeated in battle were put to death. Discipline was important, so shield-bearers shading the king from the sun who allowed rays through were put to death. Respect was important, so those who sneezed when the king was eating or failed to grieve when his mother died were put to death.

  Death by ukujoja.

  Death by impalement.

  Impalement with a long stake driven up the anus
so it pierced the lungs.

  Impalement with several stakes rammed at different angles through the abdomen.

  Impalement with a split stake that branched inside the body.

  Ukujoja.

  Impalement like this.

  A hundred and fifty-two pairs of stakes spiked the Hill of Execution beyond the Induna s hut, one pair for each defender of Rorke's Drift. The screaming from the nineteen washed already impaled shrilled like a top end to the driving bass of the drums. One stake entered the left boot of each Redcoat to pass through his body, then up his raised right arm to exit from his hand. With the other stake skewed right to left, each impaled formed a red X on the hill, white face black and Red Serge tunic as red as the X's defacing the photos of Ted and Nick Craven.

  Seventeen washed from Rorke's Drift.

  Plus MacDougall and Tipple.

  Writhing and shrieking eternally here in the Realm of the Shades.

  152 - 19 = 133 Redcoats to come.

  The witch doctor walked Evil Eye out of the kraal and up the hill and through the forest of stakes. Blood ran red under their feet from the crooked crucified, as white vultures circled, circled overhead, and the kraal below faded back to haze. "Revenger said the Induna as they passed each barren pair of stakes, waiting for one of the Redcoats who escaped from Rorke's Drift, of whom King Cetshwayo said, Ck An assegai has been plunged into the belly of the Zulu Nation." "Revenge!'' commanded the Induna as they crested the hill, pointing down to where the shades' kraal had disappeared, and where instead of Rorke's Drift around the killing ground, Evil Eye gazed down on "E" Division Headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

  Redcoats.

  Revenge!

  KAMIKAZE

  Cloverdale

  The Suicide Club had met for the next to last time tonight. The final meeting tomorrow would be aboard the cruise ship Good Luck City at the Red Serge Ball, where each conspirator's bowels would be packed with two and a half pounds of plastic explosives.

  Wayne Tarr sat slumped in a chair, swilling Scotch straight from the bottle. Spread across the table under his propped-up feet were two tickets to the RCMP dance, a high-colonic enema kit to clean out his bowels, tubes of K-Y jelly to grease the deadly snake, and components to make him a kamikaze bomb. The snake was an elongated tube crammed with two and a half pounds of moldable C4, an RDX-based commercial explosive easier to obtain than PETN military DM12, cyclotri-methylenetrinitramine putty stuffed into gray synthetic skin by a butcher's sausage machine. Beside it lay a detonator, powered by hearing-aid batteries, trailing an aerial tail.

  Missing was the single radio control that would set off both human bombs.

  So the blasts would trigger together, that was with Evil Eye.

  HINTERLAND

  Africa

  It was a short dusty ride from the buffalo graveyard to Kasane Airport. The terminal was small, modern, clean, and deserted, departures — ba ba bololang read a sign above a door to the right, surmounted by a picture of Dr. Q.K.J. Masire, the President of Botswana. Seated on a bench inside. Zinc sipped a pop while White tossed his bags: shirts, pants, underwear, socks, medical kit, including disposable needles in case he required a jab, you don't trust African hypodermics with HIV infecting 20 percent, suit, shoes, tie, and belt with the old man's hunting knife. The taste of Sparletta conjured up memories.

  When he was a kid on the prairies, all cream soda was red . . . till Pop took him and his brother Tom to the Calgary Stampede.

  Calgary Cream Soda was crystal clear.

  Like 7UP with vanilla taste.

  In New York City, cream soda was brown.

  Here in Africa, Sparletta cream soda was green.

  Inconsistent world, Zinc thought as White unsheathed Pop's knife, holding it out like King Arthur with Excali-bur, thumbing the edge to compare it with his own Ka-Bar.

  "You said no guns. That's a knife."

  White tossed it back in the bag unsheathed. "Now you," he said.

  They entered the men's room off the Kasane Airport lounge. For security, there are searches and there are Searches. Till now, the best pat-down Zinc had endured was at the Old Bailey, when he was Special X liaison in London before the Ghoul case. The IRA was on a bombing run, so Zinc was stopped at the top of the stairs to the court galleries. Ci A moment of your time, sir. Hands out from your sides."

  The man in blue was past retirement, guarding the Realm no doubt while Zinc was still in diapers, stiff not the word, rigid more like it. Deft fingers ruffled his hair, then slipped behind his ears, then probed the seams of his shirt and his underarms, chest, back, pockets, belly button, then down both legs into his shoes and up the inside—where the guy fudged inches from his groin. Most military men are homophobes, so if you're going to pack it, pack it there. Mr. White had no compunctions. The way he cupped Zinc's balls you'd think he owned them.

  Which he thought he did.

  "A safe flight," White said. "And give my best to Nigel."

  Zinc left by the door marked departures — ba ba

  BOLOLANG.

  The single-engine Cessna had seen better days. So had the pilot. The plane, a Stationair 206, was a dirty rattletrap with scorch marks on the nose cone and Band-Aids on the wings, several decades of undisturbed dust griming the instrument panel. The pilot was Danish with wild blond hair, tufts sticking here and there as if to mock combs, pale stubble on his chin, the only feature about him dark the bags beneath his eyes. "Five hundred dollars up front," he said between bites into a mango. "US, not Zim."

  Zinc paid him.

  "That puts you in and brings me out. How long you staying?"

  "Say tomorrow afternoon, to be safe."

  "Another five hundred'll bring me in to take you out. In advance."

  Zinc grinned. "Credit equals trust. Two-fifty now, the rest when you pick me up. I'll be there. Two-fifty says so will you."

  The pilot grinned. "Deal," he said.

  It took the Dane six tries to start the propeller, which coughed, sputtered, and belched smoke before it whirled. The things I do for Canada, Chandler thought, as they taxied out to take off. The shrill drone of an engine cranked to the max, brakes off, bumps, shudders, and they were in the air. Whenever Zinc flew in a one-

  crew plane, he wondered what you did if the captain had a heart attack?

  They bush-drifted west.

  The Chobe River to the right changed name upstream to the Itenge, then to the Linyanti, then to the Kwando as it veered north toward Angola. Gazing down as if the ground was his only map, the Dane flew with the ease of a bush veteran, adjusting knobs and tapping dials while munching from the mango. "Firebreak," he said when Zinc indicated parallels akin to train tracks. Forty minutes of flying saw them across Chobe National Park, over the Savuti Channel dry for many years, over the Gubat-saa Hills and Magwikhwe Sand Ridge into the wilds. The size of France but populated by only 1.3 million huddled in the south, Botswana equates with raw wilderness. One of the last virgin landscapes on this shrinking globe, the vast seemingly endless expanse beneath the plane exuded the aura Africa of Old.

  On they flew. On they flew. The land below wet and wetter.

  "Okavango," said the Dane.

  Rivers rise inland and empty into the sea, forming deltas on the coast. The Okavango River is the reverse, rising in the rain-soaked mountains of Atlantic Angola to flow southeast for 1,000 miles to form its delta in the hinterland. Called "the river that never finds the sea," it crosses the Caprivi Strip and enters Botswana from the north as a wide "Panhandle," then fans fingers south across sands of the Kalahari Desert as one of the seven natural wonders of the world: the 9,000-square-mile Okavango Delta.

  This "Jewel of the Kalahari," this land that time forgot, swept a shimmering oasis under the plane. Water lilies flowered on oxbow lagoons, and serpentine channels wound through papyrus reeds, interlocking islands crowned with palms. Water, water everywhere, as far as the eye could see, creeping downstream in convolutions that forked again and aga
in, a labyrinth of swamps and thickets by the hundreds, a tranquil maze teeming with exotic birds and game, an ever-changing tapestry of ebb and flow, Africa's third longest river spreading slowly south, fanning, evaporating, and seeping into the sand, the only way in by plane or punting boat, until it died

  far from here in a sandy trickle where wasteland began, the deadly Kalahari Desert, last remaining home of San Bushmen.

  Descending into the central reaches of this Last Eden, Zinc searching in vain for a landing strip, the Cessna skimmed dazzling lagoons at treetop level, then bump, bump, bump, bounced across bumpy earth, clouds of dust rising behind.

  The engine gagged, the prop stopped, and both men got out.

  The sun was now at broiling height so it was sweltering hot. Under a flawless sky that arced horizon to horizon, heat waves warped the Delta into a mirage. The silence was so intense it was threatening, as if Nature itself had died. Merely unloading his bags drenched the Mountie in sweat.

  "Where are we?" Zinc asked.

  "The End of the Earth."

  "Why stop here?"

  "The camp you want is through those trees."

  "Now what?"

  "You're on your own as far as I'm concerned." Foot up and hand in the cockpit under the overhead wing, the Dane climbed back into the plane.

  "You will return tomorrow?"

  The pilot grinned. "Credit equals trust," he said, slamming the door.

  Dust billowing behind, the Cessna took off. Engine noise filled the eerie green hell. In banking east, the plane buzzed Zinc on the ground, perhaps the only human meat in a hundred miles. Tomorrow the Dane would return as promised, not for the other two-fifty from Zinc, but to testify he was nowhere to be found. In one pocket of the pilot's shorts were the hundreds from the Canadian. But in the other pocket of those shorts were thousands from the White.

  Fleeing the scorch and glare of the landing strip, Zinc entered the stifling shade of dense trees. At home he knew the name and use of every plant, but here among rain trees that dripped insect spit, and strangler figs that slowly garroted their hosts, and fever berries the bark of which cures malaria, and buffalo thorns said to be an