A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 113: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

"THE LITTLE DOLL DIED Cx 113 burial—” And there, it rang out again. Wow! It was too much for me, and it was too much for Haiti, right then. The . long-fizzing powder keg went off. As if the widow’s words, spoken like an incan- tation, had at last invoked the Saturnalia. Actually there was an explosion. The evening hush was shattered by a blast of gunfire. A bugle bleated the alarm. Some- where a guard was squalling, “Charle- magne! The Cacos! It’s Charlemagne!” My men were rushing the gun-stacks; the village set up a wild shriek of, ‘‘Zom- bies!” and all the spooks out of hell were running in the dusk outside. CHAPTER 7 Blood Ran Fast T WILL be a cold day before I forget if that attack on Morne Noir. A mighty cold day, that’s a fact. I’d seen a couple of fights over in Nicaragua, and at Belleau Wood the Heinies bothered us a little ; but that Morne Noir battle beat any muss I’d been in with the Marines. It was touch and go from the first shot to the last, and some things happened in that engagement that couldn’t have happened anywhere but in Haiti. I yelled at Mrs. Peabody to lock her- self in my headquarters, and I beat it out to the stockade wall to take command. Those Cacos were hitting us with every- thing they had, and they had plenty. Not just bullets, or stolen hand gren- ades, or machete knives. But drums. Jungle horns. Rattles. Goat-bells. All the voodooistic pandemonium and _ blood- curdling bedlam of which those black holy- warriors were capable. Brother, at that sort of stuff those Hai- tian Cacos were past-masters of the Inner Shrine. They were all daubed up with ashes, bird feathers and magician’s paint; hung from head to heel with ouangas, dried frogs and chicken-bones. ‘They were made up to look like zombies, those fiends; and they gave some first class impersonations, take it from me! Pouring out of the jungle, they raced through the village and swirled around the stockade, letting out such howls as could only come from lost souls fresh out of their graves. Myself, I was half convinced that swarm had been dug out of a cemetery. The villagers scattered in terror, and the Haitian Guard I’d been trying to or- ganize fled in panic before that charge. “Zombies! Zombies!” That was one of the things that could have happened only in Haiti. | The U. S. Marines had a scrap on their hands, then. What a scrap! By the time I reached the stockade wall bullets were flying from all directions; most of the grass huts in the village were afire; the Cacos were storming our gate like demons. All but one of the sentries got’in in time. I felt sorry for that boy out there. A lad from Michigan. We couldn’t rescue him. Luckily he was dead of a hundred bullets before those black butchers piled over him ; they fell on him with their chopping knives, and when they jumped up their hands and faces were glistening red. That sight brought my boys to their senses. You bet it did. They opened up with their Springfields and gave those Caco savages hell. I had my Colt working, and we had two old machine guns mounted near the gate ready to go. We opened fire at a hundred yards; uncorked another fusillade at fifty yards; then the machine guns were hammering and the din was like a canning factory. Wow! Wow! Wow! That was a carn- age. We cut those tar babies down in droves. We piled them in squirming choc- olate heaps. We shot the feet out from under them, dropped them kicking riddled them to sponge. At the stockade gate we stacked them up like creosote ties. Brother, what a battle! | The British talk about Ondurman. Huh! Five minutes of that Morne Noir assualt made Ondurman a Sunday School picnic brawl in comparison. 7 Those Haitian wild men gave us a work- out I tell you. They weren’t zombies, but they kept on coming like zombies. Knock one dead and another took his place. Springfields, Colts and machine guns didn’t interest them. For weeks Charle- magne had been pumping them up to a frenzy ; their voodoo priests had told them their ouangas made them bullet-proof, and their magic-working undertakers had promised to bring them back to life if they were killed, 3 GComicbooks.com