THE BLOODY RED BARON

The Red Baron's plane appears during an airshow over Glen Hartwell & shoots down planes

                   Thousands of people filled the roads and footpaths in Glen Hartwell in the Victorian countryside that Hallowe’en Friday in 2025. Overhead they watched as Bristol F.2 Fighters, a single Sopwith Camel, a Sopwith Pup, and the sole original airworthy bomber, a 1918 Airco DH.9 flew less than a kilometre overhead.
         “So what do you think, Sheils?” asked Derek Armstrong. A tall black American who had spent more than half of his fifty-one years in Glen Hartwell, Derek was a paramedic and was dating Sheila.
         “Fascinating,” said Sheila, snuggling up to Derek. A tall muscular Goth chick with orange-and-black striped hair, Sheila was the Chief Constable of the local area, “but I’m not quite sure what Sopwith Camels and other vintage planes really have to do with Hallowe’en.”
         “Well,” said her boss, Terri Scott, a thirty-seven-year-old ash blonde and Senior Sergeant of the local police: “Probably nothing, but as you said, Sheils, they’re fascinating.”
         “But why are they bothering with Glen Hartwell?” asked Donald Esk, a forty-something sergeant of police, with short brown hair and a build like an ox: “You’d think that they’d confine themselves to showing off ... that is showing themselves off in the big smoke.”
         “They’ve already shown off in Brisbane, Darwin, Fremantle, Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne,” said Freddy Kingston, a tall, thickset retiree with a Larry Fine-style ruff of curly black hair on his otherwise bald head, “so they had to choose between Hobart and Glen Hartwell.”
         “Still, why would they choose Glen Hartwell?” asked Natasha Lipzing, a tall, grey-haired, seventy-one-year-old retiree, who lived at the same boarding house as Sheila, Colin, Terri, Freddy, Leo, and Tommy.
         “Probably because G.H. has a bigger population than Hobart,” joked Tommy Turner, a short, fat, blond retiree, who always seemed to be inebriated, despite his landlady having seized his hidden stash.
         “There are just over six thousand people in the Glen,” said Leo Laxman, a tall black Jamaican now employed as a nurse at the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital.
         “There you are,” insisted Tommy in a blurry voice, “there can’t be that many people in Tassie.”
         “Tommy, are you stonkered when it’s not even lunch time?” asked Colin Klein. A tall redheaded Englishman, Colin had worked for thirty years as a top London crime reporter before moving to Glen Hartwell to research a book on local legends, and eventually joining the police force as a special adviser.
         “No-th,” said Tommy breathing beery fumes all over the Englishman.
         “I think we can take no-th to mean yeth,” teased Suzette Cummings, a short police cadet with long raven hair.
         Looking back at the vintage planes, Sheila said prophetically, “It’s all right, but it would be more interesting if they engaged in dogfights, or the Red Baron turned up to shoot them out of the sky.”
         Laughing, Derek said, “The Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, was shot down on April 21, 1918, by Allied forces, probably an Australian ground crew.”
         “Likely Sergeant Cedric Popkin of the 24th Machine Gun Company,” added Cheryl Pritchard, a tall, muscular brunette close to retirement age, and the senior paramedic of the area and a bit of a war buff: “While Canadian Captain Roy Brown was originally credited, it is widely believed that ground-based fire from machine gunners, including Gunners Robert Buie or Snowy Evans, hit the plane as it pursued a Sopwith Camel at low altitude over the Somme.”
         “And people call me a wealth of boring information,” teased Sheila.
         “Hey,” cried Cheryl, before laughing, “okay, I guess when it comes to the World Wars, I can sound a bit like a travelogue at times.”
         “Anyway, I don’t know why they call him the Bloody Red Baron,” asked Derek, “he was just doing his patriotic duty, and most historians now admit that the Axis Nations were the good guys in World War 1, and the allies were the bad guys. Serbia sent an assassin to murder the Austrian Prince Regent. The equivalent today would be if some pissy little backwoods anti-Utopia sent an assassin to England to murder Prince William; not only the U.K., but all proudly British nations, like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India et cetera, would want to stomp the shit out of the pissy little backwoods anti-Utopia.”
         “Don’t ask me,” teased Sheila, “all I know about the Red Baron is from the song ‘Snoopy versus the Red Baron’.”
         Both Derek and Cheryl stared at the Goth chick for a moment, before the black American said, “I think ... I hope she’s joking.”
         “Nah-ah,” said Sheila, before starting to sing:
         “Achtung!
         “Jetzt wir singen zusammen die Geschichte
         “Über den schweinköpfigen Hund
         “Und den lieben Red Baron
         
         “After the turn of the century
         “In the clear blue skies over Germany
         “Came a roar and a thunder men have never heard
         “Like the scream and the sound of a big war bird
         
         “Eins, zwei, drei, vier ....
         
         “Up in the sky, a man in a plane
         “Baron von Richthofen was his name
         “Eighty men tried and eighty men died
         “Now they're buried together on the countryside
         
         “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
         “The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' out the score
         “Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
         “Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany
         
         “Left, two, three, four ....
         
         “In the nick of time, a hero arose
         “A funny-lookin' dog with a big black nose
         “He flew into the sky to seek revenge
         “But the Baron shot him down "Curses, foiled again!"
         
         “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
         “The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' out the score
         “Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
         “Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany
         
         “Now, Snoopy had sworn that he'd get that man
         “So he asked the Great Pumpkin for a new battle plan
         “He challenged the German to a real dogfight
         “While the Baron was laughing, he got him in his sight
         
         “That Bloody Red Baron was in a fix
         “He'd tried everything, but he'd run out of tricks
         “Snoopy fired once and he fired twice
         “And that Bloody Red Baron went spinning out of sight
         
         “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
         “The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' out the score
         “Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree
         “Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany
         
         “Well, ten, twenty ....”
         “Seriously, Sheils you can remember all of that,” said Cheryl Pritchard, “but you know nothing else about the Bloody Red Baron?”
         “Yep,” said Sheila, without any hint of shame, “I love comedy rock songs from the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s.”
         “And she accused me of being a wealth of useless information.”
         As they watched, a bright red triplane with a black Maltese cross in a white square near its tail suddenly appeared and started chasing the other planes.
         “Looks like you’re gonna get your wish, Sheils,” said Derek as the red plane started chasing the others.
         “Whoever that is has done their research,” said Cheryl, “Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, flew various aircraft during World War I, but his most iconic plane was the Fokker Dr.I triplane  . Which he had painted entirely blood red, except for a white square near the tail, which had a black Maltese Cross, or to give it it’s correct name, a Cross Pattée  , a cross with flared arms.”
         “Thank you Ms. Travelogue,” teased Sheila.
         “Sorry, I do get carried away when talking about the Great War.”
         “Really, we didn’t notice,” teased Derek.
         Before they could say anymore there was the ratta-tat-tat of machinegun fire from the vintage planes above them.
         “Whoopee,” said Sheila, “looks like they’re going to have a fake dogfight after all.”
         “About time something exciting happened,” slurred Tommy Turner.
         “Tommy, do I have to breathalyse you?” asked Terri.
         “No-th,” said the retiree breathing alcohol fumes into her face.
         “I’m so sorry,” apologised Deidre Morton, their landlady, a short, dumpy brunette in her sixties, “I forgot to lock the alcohol cabinet earlier, and he got in and drank a whole bottle of sherry, and half a bottle of brandy before I discovered my mistake.”
         “Well, however he gets home it won’t be in my Lexus!” insisted the ash blonde, “:it took me forever to get the stench out after he chundered in there a while back.”
         “Actually you never did get the smell out,” corrected Colin, “that was an earlier Lexus which got destroyed when a pterosaur dropped it from a great height.” [See my story, ‘The Æon Beast’.]
         “Oh yeah,” said Terri: “Well in that case the drunken sot is definitely not getting a ride home in my Lexus.”
         “Look, fire-ring,” said Tommy, hoping to change the subject.
         He pointed to where the blood red plane had started firing at the Sopwith Camel.
         “They must be dummies,” postulated Cheryl Pritchard.
         Then there was an explosion in the fuel tank of the Sopwith Camel, and the pilot bailed out, opening his parachute immediately.
         “I didn’t think they had parachutes until World War Two?” asked Sheila Bennett.
         “Nah-ah,” said Cheryl, teasing the Goth chick, “parachutes existed during World War I, but their use was limited and mostly restricted to observation balloon crews until late in the war. German airmen received parachutes, but most Allied pilots weren’t issued parachutes until 1918, due to concerns about weight, cramped cockpit space, and pilots chickening out.”
         “Seriously,” said Sheila, “we really do need to move away from Ms. Travelogue.”
         “I heard that,” said Cheryl.
         “What the shit?” asked Sheila as first the Sopwith Camel plummeted to Earth in the neighbouring forest outside town with an explosion, and then an up burst of flames set a number of old-growth trees on fire, before the red plane zoomed down to fire upon the parachute and the pilot beneath it: “This can’t be part of the air show.”
         “They would never sacrifice a rare Sopwith Camel!” shouted Cheryl: “There’s only one or two of them left in the world that can still fly.”
         Thinking the same thing, Terri Scott raised her megaphone to her mouth and shouted, “Everybody get off the street.” When nobody moved, she turned up the volume and shouted, “Get off the fucking streets right now!”
         This time, a few people reluctantly moved towards their homes or local shops in Boothy Street.
         Hearing her boss shouting, Sheila ordered, “Chezza, Strong Arm help me to get everybody off the street.”
         Up above the town, the Bloody Red Baron rounded upon the Sopwith Pup and quickly shot it down, firing upon and killing the pilot as he bailed out, before chasing after the 1918 Airco DH.9 bomber, which was harder to shoot down than the Camel and Pup, but the Baron soon had it flaming out, this time without the pilot managing to abandon his plane.
         “Holy shit,” said Sheila, desperately trying to shoo the horrified onlookers toward the imagined safety of their homes or shops: “Either that’s the real Red Baron, or the pilot has gone loony and really thinks he’s the Red Baron.”
         “Get off the fucking streets!” Terri shouted into her megaphone again.
         A dozen cops and almost as many medics were now furiously trying to shoo, force, or even carry people off the streets to safety.
         As the bomber burst into flames, the blood red plane rounded upon the two Bristol F.2 Fighters, and began firing.
         “What are we gonna do?” Don Esk asked Sheila: “Everyone is too stupefied to move.”
         Considering for a moment Sheila took out her handgun and raised it into the air.
         “You’ll never shoot it down from here,” insisted Don, “it must be a kilometre up.”
         “I don’t want to shoot it down,” said the Goth chick, “just scare the shit out of people, so that they’ll get off the streets.”
         As she started shooting into the air, the terrified onlookers did start running toward the shops and homes lining the street. Soon all of the local cops were firing into the air and finally hundreds of people abandoned the dogfight and ran to safety.
         “Great thinking, Sheils,” Terri blared through the megaphone: “Now get off the fucking streets everybody!”
         Although hundreds of people raced indoors, thousands of others waited to watch the dogfight as finally the Red Baron shot down first one Bristol F.2 Fighter, and then the other.
         As the two planes flamed out, Terri shouted through the Megaphone, “Now there’s nothing left to see, so stop gawking and fucking well get inside!”
         “She looks like such a sweet thing,” teased Colin, “then she uses language like that.”
         Rounding upon her fiancé, until the megaphones was a few centimetres from his right ear, Terri repeated, “Fucking well get inside!”
         “Oh, Jesus,” said Colin, clutching at his right ear and having to be helped off the street by Suzette Cummings after he almost passed out from shock.
         “Sorry, honey,” Terri blared through the megaphone.
         “You can apologise, Chief, once he gets his hearing back,” said Suzette.
         “Jesus, I think I’m deaf!” said Colin, who was almost carried off the street by the raven-haired teenager.
          “To misquote Britney Spears, Chief,” said Sheila: “‘Oops, you did it again!’”
         “Just get ...” started Terri as the blood red Fokker Dr.I triplane   turned around ninety degrees and started toward Boothy Street. “Get off the fucking street everyone!” shouted Terri again, ignoring her own safety.
         “Chief, you’re in the direct line of fire!” shouted Donald Esk.
         In the end when the blonde kept shouting through the megaphone, Donald Esk, picked her up, threw her across his broad left shoulder and raced off the street into a green grocery, Constantine’s Fruit & Veg.
         “Put me down!” shouted Terri as Don raced into the fruit shop, just before Constantine lowered the thick steel shutters.
         “That oughta keep any stray bullets out,” said Constantine, a tall Grecian Aussie in his early forties.
         “Put me down!” shouted Terri again.
         Finally obeying his chief, Don plonked her onto a pile of over-ripe bananas.
         “Ooh,” said the ash blonde, wiping herself off with cleaning rags provided by Constantine. Seeing the steel grill locked down, she asked, “Is there a back door out of here?”
         “No,” said Constantine, sounding surprised by the question.
         “Seriously,” said Terri, “you own a shop in Glen Hartwell, the most monster-riddled town in the Southern Hemisphere, if not the entire world, and you don’t have an emergency exit.”
         “Afraid not.”
         
         Outside, the blood red Fokker had rounded upon Boothy Street and was flying only a couple of hundred metres above the street, firing off seemingly thousands of round of ammunition at the panicked onlookers, who had started to run at last, but like Dodgems crashed into each other in their panic, not making any progress.
         As the Red Baron fired at the crowd, now hiding in a doorway, Cheryl Pritchard said, “This doesn’t make any sense. World War I pilots only had enough rounds to fire for fourteen seconds. They usually fired seven two second bursts. This bugger has been firing for twenty minutes or more.
         This time no one called her Ms. Travelogue as the brunette continued to reel off facts and figures about planes and Dog Fights from the Great War.
         Soon the red plane had mown down dozens of panicked Glen Hartwellians as it continued to strafe the crowd while flying along Boothy Street.
         For just a second, Cheryl Pritchard thought that she could see a grinning skull where the pilot’s face should have been; but then mercifully she fainted.
         “Get off the fucking streets!” shouted Sheila Bennett as she and Derek, each grabbed an old lady, tossed her over one shoulder and raced into a nearby store, carrying the astonished women.
         “I guess that’s all we can do, babe,” said Derek, as together they turned and reluctantly watched through the large store window.
         The Red Baron continued down the street firing off an impossible amount of bullets, shooting down more and more Glen Hartwellians as he turned at the end of Boothy Street. He effortlessly spun over the Fokker Dr.I triplane   to start back down Boothy Street.
         “The bastard’s coming back!” shouted Sheila.
         The Goth chick tried to race back out into the street as the massacre continued; however, Derek Armstrong grabbed her and held her back.
         “Don’t, babe,” he warned, “there’s nothing more you can do out there except get yourself killed. And I don’t want to lose you, babe.”
         “That is so romantic,” said Sheila kissing Derek full on the lips: “But I am a cop and I’m sworn to protect the innocent even at the loss of my own life.”
         She tried to break away from Derek, but he held her in place.
         “He’s right, Sheila,” said the grey-haired old lady, Freda Barrowman, whom Sheila had carried into the drapery store.
         Sheila struggled for a moment longer, but finally, dropping her head in defeat, accepted that there was nothing more that she could do for the people outside.
         Over the sound of the Fokker’s engine, some of the panicked Glen Hartwellians could just hear the sound of insane laughter from the pilot; a few noticed his skeletal face, but thought that they were stressing out and imagining it.
         After reaching the forest again, the Red Baron spiralled over skilfully to start down the street for the third time.
         “When will it end!” cried a distressed old man, just before the Fokker fired at him, almost cutting the old man in half as he hit the street with a loud thump.
         “Old Man Henderson!” cried Sheila, trying to break away from Derek again.
         “You can’t do anything for the old bloke,” said the black American holding her firmly in place.
         Finally the firing stopped and people lay screaming on the streets, some wounded lying on the bitumen, others still standing, somehow, miraculously having been missed by the Red Baron’s strafing.
         “Okay, let’s go,” said Derek nearly five minutes after the firing finally stopped.
         Derek and Sheila raced out into Boothy Street, not sure where to start with hundreds of people lying in puddles of their own blood; both the living and the dead.
         “Where do we even start?” asked Sheila as she raced across to look at an elderly man. Then seeing that the front of his face was missing she realised, “This poor bugger is dead.”
         Constantine reluctantly unlocked then opened the steel shutters of his green grocery, and Terri Scott and Donald Esk raced out into the street staring in shock at the screaming and writhing throng of people.
         “Where do we even start, Chief?” Sheila shouted across to Terri.
         The ash blonde called back, “We have to try to help the living first. Check everybody and try treating the injured to the best of your ability.”
         “Can do,” said Derek Armstrong.
         He raced across to where Tilly Lombstrom, a tall attractive fifty-something brunette, one of the surgeons at the Glen Hartwell Hospital stood beside Leo Laxman.
         “What’ll we do, Tils?” asked Derek.
         “Buggered if I know,” said the brunette, almost losing control for the first time in her life, “I’ve rung the hospital and I’ll ring the air ambulance now.”
         As she spoke, however, they heard the whir-whir-whir of rotors as six air ambulance helicopters appeared.
         “Sheila rang then when we were inside,” explained Derek.
         “Excellent,” said Tilly, “we’re gonna need all the help we can get to sort this mayhem out.”
         With the help of a dozen cops, Tilly, Leo and Derek started checking the bodies for anyone living to do whatever they could for them, with the help of the medics from the six choppers.
         Soon they heard the sound of sirens as Glen Hartwell’s six ambulances approached from the southern end of the two.
         “Thank God,” said Tilly as the ambulances began to pull up near the chaos.
         “I’ve told you before, Tils, my name is pronounced Hee-Zeus,” said Jesus Costello, administrator and head surgeon of the Glen Hartwell and Daley Community Hospital. He stopped, realising that jocularity was inappropriate when he saw the extent of the mayhem: “Christ, there’s hundreds of them.”
         “We’re hoping that most of them are only injured,” said Derek, not sounding confident.
         As the first of the air ambulances took off, they heard the whir-whir-whir of another chopper, as a Bell Huey approached,
         “I called Louie Pascall to help ferry patients,” Terri explained to Jesus and Tilly.
         “Good thinking, Chief,” said Donald Esk as he carefully picked up an old man with both knees shattered to carry him across to one of the ground ambulances.
         “I’m damned if I know where we’re gonna put them all at the hospital?” said Jesus, thinking aloud.
         “A lot of the corpses can be taken to my morgue in Dien Avenue,” offered the coroner Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green, nicknamed due to his long black sideburns and adoration of the late King of Rock and Roll: “I don’t often use it anymore, since there are pretty nurses at the hospital and on my salary, I can’t afford pretty nurses. But it has facilities to take over fifty bodies.”
         “Thanks mate,” said Terri, as the first three ambulances roared off with patients aboard.
         All of the air ambulances had taken away patients by then, and three of them were already returning to the scene of chaos.
         “Sorry,” apologised Sheila Bennett, “in all of the chaos, I forgot to take crime scene photographs before they started taking people away.”
         “No time for that, Sheils,” assured Terri, “getting the living to hospital is more important at the moment.”
         “A skull,” muttered one of the injured.
         “What?” asked Derek.
         “A skull, that’s what the pilot had instead of a face.”
         “He’s delirious,” said Tilly, and then to an air ambulance paramedic, “get this one to the hospital as soon as possible.”
         “Yes, Tils,” said the paramedic helping to transport the old man to his helicopter.
         “A skull, that’s all he had instead of a face!” insisted the old man as he was carried away.
         “I saw it too,” said Cheryl Pritchard quietly, “the Red Baron only had a skull for a face.”
         “It can’t have been the real Red Baron!” insisted Sheila Bennett, wondering, since they had seen hundreds of weird things, including ghosts and monsters in Glen Hartwell during the nineteen years that she had been a cop in the area.
         “He definitely only had a skull for a face,” insisted Cheryl, “I saw it clearly.”
         “Maybe you should go to the hospital to be checked on, Chezza?” suggested Jesus Costello.
         “Not until all of the living have been taken away,” insisted the athletic brunette: “I might be going batty, but I still know where my duty lies.”
         “Good girl,” said Leo Laxman, although she was three times his age.
         Smiling weakly, Cheryl helped Derek to stretcher a patient to the nearest air ambulance, pleased to see some of the ground ambulances were starting to return to the scene of chaos.
         “He only had a skull for a face,” insisted Adelaide Donadin, a seventeen-year-old, half-breed Aborigine, with a minor flesh wound to one leg.
         “Relax, honey,” said Tilly Lombstrom, thinking: That’s at least the sixth person to claim that now.
         It would take the rest of that Friday, and well into the night before they finally transported all of the victims. Most of the living, and some of the dead, had to be taken to the Sale Hospital in Guthridge Parade; others to the Royal Melbourne, or Austin Hospitals three hundred kilometres away in Melbourne.
         “Please don’t tell me that we have to do autopsies upon all of the victims?” asked Elvis Green well after midnight.
         The final count was one hundred and thirty-two dead, and nearly one hundred and eighty injured, many potentially mortally. They had managed to get fifty-five corpses into refrigerated drawers at the morgue in Dien Avenue, the rest were in the basement morgue at the Glen Hartwell Hospital in Biblical Road.
         “No need,” assured Jesus, “we know how they all died; gunned down by some loony who thought that he was the Bloody Red Baron.”
         “Or perhaps really was the Red Baron,” said Tilly, making the others stare at her, “at least fifteen or sixteen of the survivors, plus Cheryl Pritchard all claimed that the shooter had only a skull where his face should have been.”
         “Lord above,” said Jesus crossing himself.
         “But why would the Red Baron come to a rural area like Glen Hartwell, to gun people down?” asked Elvis Green.
         “Because,” said Cheryl Pritchard having sneaked down from her bed in one of the hospital corridors, “two of the members of the 24th Machine Gun Company who shot down the Red Baron in 1918, Sergeant Cedric Popkin and Gunner Robert Buie lived in Glen Hartwell for a few years after the war.”
         “Well, there’s the Glen Hartwell connection,” said Jesus.
         “So what do we have to do to get you to go back to your ward?” asked Tilly.
         “Actually, I wasn’t in a ward, I was in an overflow bed in one of the corridors outside a ward.”
         At that moment the door to the ground floor opened and gorgeous platinum blonde nurse, Topaz Moseley stepped into the morgue to ask:
         “Has my runaway patient ended up here?”
         “Yes,” said Jesus, Elvis, and Tilly as one.
         “Okay, Chezza, let’s get you back to your nice, warm bed,” said Topaz.
         “Actually it’s warmer down her in the basement,” said Cheryl, reluctantly go across to the stairs to follow the blonde nurse.
         “Really?” asked Topaz: “Then we’d better turn up the heating.”
         
         The Golightly family were in the forest about five kilometres outside Glen Hartwell. They had heard the firing and explosions, but had wrongly assumed that they were part of the Hallowe’en celebrations.
         “Hallowe’en, bah,” said Godfred Golightly, a tall strongly built forty-something man with his black hair in an almost military crew-cut.
         “I was half expecting him to add a humbug to that,” teased his wife Gertrude, Gert, a tall, redhead in her late thirties.
         “So tell me again, how he got a name like Godfred?” asked Lilith Golightly, their sister-in-law, a short, chesty blonde in her mid thirties.
         “His parents couldn’t decide between Godfrey and Manfred, so they split the diff, and called him Godfred,” teased Gert.
         “That is not true, my beautiful but sarky love,” said Godfred, “Godfred is a masculine first name of Germanic origin, meaning ‘God's peace,’ ‘peace of God,’ or ‘protected by God’. It is a variation of the names Godfrey and Gottfried.”
         “In other words midway between Godfrey and Manfred,” teased Godfred’s brother, Enrick ‘Rick’, a thirty-five year old man with long brown hair that he kept in a ponytail.
         “I don’t have to take sarcasm from a girlie man with a ponytail.”
         “Yes, honey, why don’t you let me snip it off?” pleaded Lil.
         “No, it is my source of power, like Samson.”
         Shaking her head in dismay, she said, “I have considered snipping it off at night, while he’s sleeping.”
         “Why don’t you?” asked Gert.
         “Because I always fall asleep before him.”
         “That would be a problem,” admitted Gert.
         “It’s so embarrassing when people point at his ponytail.”
         “There is nothing unmanly about a ponytail,” insisted Rick, “Billy Thorpe wore a ponytail in the 1970s during his hard rock era.”
         “Yes, but Billy Thorpe was a manly he-man who could get away with it,” said Godfred, pleased that he was no longer the butt of the humour: “Not a girly, sissy man like you.”
         “I am not a girly, sissy man,” insisted Rick.
         “Well, you’re pouting like a girly, sissy man,” insisted Godfred.
         “Calm down everybody,” said Gert, pointing at the large mountain behind them, she said: “I thought we were here to climb Mount Abergowrie, not engage in catfights?”
         “All right,” said Godfred and Rick, glaring at each other.
         “Okay, so perhaps Godfred should lead the way,” said Gert, “then I’ll go next, followed by Lil, then Rick can come last to try to catch us if Lil or I fall.”
         “You won’t fall, or need anyone to catch you,” insisted Godfred, “it’s not ninety degrees; merely seventy-five at most; you can almost walk up it without a rope or pitons.”
         “It’s that word ‘almost’ that has me worried,” joked Lilith.
         “Relax, Lil, remember, ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself’!” said Rick, misquoting Franklin D. Roosevelt.
         “Yes, but that scares the shit out of me,” said Lilith, and the two women cackled like wicked witches.
         “Women!” teased Godfred: “You can’t live with them, and you can’t fuck without them.”
         Which only made Gert and Lil cackle even more, until they were both almost throwing up.
         “Actually you can fuck without us,” teased Lil, “but it’s a little bit queer.”
         This time even the men cackled with laughter. Finally both Rick and Gert dry heaved, which was enough to halt the merriment.
         “Now if we can settle down a little, who wants to start climbing Mount Abergowrie?” asked Rick.
         “Me!” cried Godfred and Rick.
         “Not me!” cried Gert and Lilith.
         “Two all, it’s a tie,” said Lil.
         “Yes, but you’re forgetting that two men outvotes two women,” teased Godfred, starting to hammer a piton into the rocky side of the mountain.
         “Since when?” demanded Gert: “Haven’t you heard of equality of the sexes?”
         “Yeah, did Germaine Greer die in vain?” teased Lil.
         “We can only hope so,” answered Rick, making his brother laugh and the two women pretend to glare at him for a moment, before giving it away by laughing also.
         “Now, let’s get climbing,” instructed Godfred.
         He started up the mount hammering in pitons from time to time; not bothering to look back, taking it for granted that the others would follow him.
         “Who wants to sneak back to the car and drive home, leaving Godfred to climb the mount all alone?” whispered Gert.
         “Sounds good to me,” teased Lil, “but do you think we can get away without him hearing the car start up?”
         “The trick is to gun the car and don’t stop no matter how much he screams, or swears, at us,” teased Gert.
         Although smiling at the suggestion, Rick said, “Now come on, girls, you wouldn’t really do that to poor Godfred, would you?”
         The two women thought about it for half a minute or so, before, reluctantly, Gert said, “No, I guess not.”
         “Then get a going, Gert, you’re next up the mount,” teased Rick, giving her a little too hard playful pat on the behind.
         “Ouch,” said Gert, “you men sometimes forget how strong you are compared to us women.”
         “Sorry, Mrs. Golightly, but don’t go quite so lightly in future.”
         “Sorry, Gert,” apologised Lil, “I’ve been trying to stop him from watching Carry On Movies for years now!”
         “There’s nothing wrong with Carry On Movies,” insisted Rick, “I learnt all I know about women from Carry On Movies.”
         “That explains the insanity of our wedding night,” said Lil just before starting up after Gert. Then as her husband gave her a none-too-gentle whack on the behind: “Ouch, you’re right about men forgetting how much stronger than us they are.”
         “I don’t know what your views are like up there, ladies,” teased Rick, “but I’m getting a great view of both of your bubble-butts.”
         “Hey!” complained Gert: “Stop watching.”
         “I do not have a bubble-butt!” refuted Lilith.
         “Well, it’s huge and perfectly round,” teased Rick as he started up Mount Abergowrie, “isn’t that by definition a bubble-butt?”
         “Sounds like it to me,” teased Gert, then as Lil whacked her on the backside, “ouch, thankfully you can’t whack as hard as Rick can.”
         “What do you mean by huge?” demanded Lil, trying not to fall too far behind Godfred and Gert as she chastened her husband.
         “Relax, honey,” Rick tried to appease her, “I love that huge bubble-butt of yours.”
         “If you had said that you loved me, not my huge bubble-butt,” warned Lil, “you might not be sleeping upon the sofa tonight.”
         “Oh, don’t be like that, babe,” teased Rick, giving her another too hard whack on the behind.
         “You really don’t know how to quit while you’re behind, do you?” asked Gert.
         “Settle down, children,” teased Godfred, who was more than a hundred metres ahead of the other three, “I’m almost up to a rocky overhang, where we can eat some energy bars and energy drinks.”
         “Thank God,” said Gert, before looking up and seeing how far behind her husband she was.
         As he eased over the edge to sit on the rocky tor, Godfred smirked down at them and said, “Less nattering and more climbing and you would already be up here with me.”
         “With any luck the smug bastard will fall off the edge,” said Lil.
         “We can only hope,” agreed Gert, as she finally reached the overhang and was pulled to safety by her husband.
         A few minutes later Lilith reached the overhang and was relieved to be pulled to safety by her brother-in-law.
         “Last is lousiest,” said Godfred, smirking at his younger brother.
         “Not when I’m last because I helped the ladies.”
         “You whacked us both on the bum,” protested Gert, “how is that helping us?”
         “Sorry for whacking you, Gert,” said Rick climbing up onto the overhanging rocky tor, “but I can never resist whacking Lilith’s delightful phat arse.”
         “Could you do me a favour, Godfred?” asked the short, chesty blonde: “Could you please throw my husband over the edge to his death?”
         “My privilege,” teased Godfred, actually helping his younger brother onto the safety of the rocky overhang.
         They were seated, happily scoffing health bars and bright blue or red health drinks, when they first heard the strange spluttering of an engine.
         “Don’t tell me that Doctor Who is about to land here?” teased Rick.
         “No, it looks like some kind of prehistoric plane,” said Lil as the blood red plane with the black Maltese cross approached.
         “Oh, that’s right; I remember now,” said Godfred, “they’re having some kind of corny World War I dogfight re-enactment over Boothy Street today.”
         “That explains all the shooting and fireworks we heard earlier,” said Gert.
         “Although this bloke seems to be way off course,” said Lil, just before the Red Baron opened fire upon them.
         “What the hell?” said Rick, his question turning to a scream as two bullets shattered his right knee, causing him to fall, fortunately forward deeper onto the rocky door.”
         “What...?” asked Lil, seconds before another burst of gunfire, shot the plastic bottle of energy drink out of her hand, spilling the bright red liquid across her.
         “Is he insane?” asked Gertrude, her words turning to mumbling, as a bullet passed into her right cheek, and then out through the right side, so that she had a small hole right through her face.
         “You stupid cunt!” shouted Godfred, waving his right fist at the Bloody Red Baron.
         Then as the Fokker Dr.I triplane   zoomed straight at him, Godfred dropped to the rocky overhead, turning to watch the red plane soar toward the side of Mount Abergowrie.
         “Yes, die you evil bastard!” shouted Godfred waving his fist a second time, expecting the blood red plane to crash into the side of the mountainside.
         “Die you fucker!” shouted Lilith, doing what she could to help her husband. Fortunately she always carried strong Panadeine Forte tablets on her, but even as she gave him four, she thought: No way are these gonna be strong enough.
         “Die fucker!” Gert tried to say, only managing to mutter through the hole through her face.
         Instead of crashing into the mountain, as expected, though, the Fokker Dr.I triplane   ghost plane passed straight through the mount, to the Golightlies’s astonishment.
         “What happened?” demanded Godfred making the mistake of standing up. Seconds before the blood red plane returned through the mountainside.
         Grinning moronically through his skull face, the Red Baron unleashed a long stream of tracer bullets, which almost cut Godfred Golightly in half, making him buck and gyrate backwards until shooting off the side of Mount Abergowrie.
         “Godfred!” Gert tried to shout, as the Fokker Dr.I triplane   zoomed out from the mountain as though, leaving them in peace.
         Instead, it swung round in a wide arch, firing at Lilith and Enrick as they huddled together.
         Husband and wife gyrated as the last of their life essence fled their bodies, then the Bloody Red Baron flipped his plane over to circle out from the mountain again, before diving back in, guns blazing as he cut Gertrude Golightly into a bloody mess.
         Then he continued forward, flying straight through Mount Abergowrie without crashing; this time not returning to the rocky tor, but continuing on out into the forest, to consider his next target.
         
         Terri Scott and the other local cops did not manage to get to their homes until after four in the morning. Seeing a shadow sitting on the steps to the bedrooms, Terri asked:
         “Mrs. M.?”
         Waking up, uncomfortable upon the steps, Deidre Morton managed to climb back to her feet, saying, “I thought you would need something hot to eat before going to bed.”
         “Mrs. M., you’re a marvel,” said Sheila Bennett, starving after having forgotten to have either lunch or tea during the massive cleanup in Boothy Street.
         “I’m almost afraid to ask,” said Deidre as she started to warm up the Duck a La Orange that she had made for their tea, “but what was the finally tally?”
         “A hundred and thirty-nine people dead,” said Terri, causing Deidre to almost drop a rare plate, another ninety-two needing hospitalisation.”
         “Oh, my Lord!” said the petite brunette: “That many.”
         “And half of the hospitalised ones, could still die,” added Colin, looking as white faced as a ghost.
         “I’d love to know what happened to that evil bee in the blood red plane,” said Sheila: “If I ever catch up with him, he’ll wish that he had never been born.”
         “I’ve heard rumours,” said Deidre, “that a dozen or more people claim that it had a skull instead of a face.”
         “Seventeen patients, plus Cheryl Pritchard,” said Terri.
         “And after more than forty years as a paramedic she’s not the type to imagine things,” added Sheila.
         “You don’t think that it could be the real Bloody Red Baron?” asked Deidre as she started to hand them their dinners.
         “Frankly, we don’t know, Mrs. M,” said Colin Klein, “but at this stage, we’re not ruling anything out.”
         
         Colin, Terri, and Sheila finally got to bed by a little before five A.M.; however, it was about 8:35 when they were awakened by Deidre Morton hammering upon their bedroom doors.
         “Mrs. M., have you gone bonkers?” called Sheila Bennett: “We’ve only had a few hours’ sleep.”
         “Sorry, Sheila, but they’ve found a body at the bottom of Mount Abergowrie,” explained Deidre, “and the bullet riddled state suggests that it was killed by the Red Baron.”
         “Holy crap,” said Sheila as she leapt out of bed and raced to put her uniform back on.
         Thirty eight minutes later Terri’s blue Lexus GX pulled up at the base of Mount Abergowrie, where Jesus, Tilly, Elvis and sundry medics and paramedics were waiting, along with four ambulances.
         “How come four ambulances, if you only found one body?” Sheila asked.
         “It was Godfred Golightly,” explained Jesus Costello.
         “And the Golightly family does everything together,” explained Tilly Lombstrom.
         “So we’re assuming that the other three are up there,” said Elvis Green, “pointing to a rocky overhang a few hundred metres up the mount, “either dead or wounded.”
         “Shit!” said Terri, she pulled out her mobile phone and rang through to Louie Pascall, then Marsha Maudsley, a bodybuilder, like Sheila, and close friend of theirs.
         Nearly half an hour later they heard the whir-whir-whir of rotors just before Louie’s green and red Bell Huey appeared in sight.
         As the chopper landed a little away from the death scene, Louie opened the pilot’s door and shouted out, “Okay, everybody hop in.”
         When Colin and Suzette started toward the chopper, Terri called, “Only Sheila.” Marsha Maudsley, a tall Amazonian brunette in her mid thirties was already sitting in the rear of the chopper.
         “How come, babe?” Colin asked as the Goth chick raced across to climb into the shotgun seat of the helicopter.
         “If Gertrude, Lilith, and Enrick Golightly are all up there, I want room to get them all in the chopper in one trip,” Terri Explained: “And since Marsha and Sheila are strong enough to lift them, they’re the obvious two.”
         “I’m as strong as them,” protested Donald Esk.
         “Yes, but you’re also bigger and take up more room. We need to try to squeeze six people into a five-person chopper.”
         “Okay, take her up,” ordered Sheila, “if they’re still alive, we need to get them down fast.”
         “Hold onto your girdle, girls,” said Louie, taking the chopper straight up.
         “What the Hell’s a girdle,” teased the Goth chick.
         “Hold onto whatever you’ve got then,” corrected the pilot as the chopper quickly ascended the mountainside.
         In almost no time they were above the rocky overhang, where they could see Gertie, Lil, and Rick; at least Rick and Lil obviously dead, with their bodies almost cut in half with tracer bullets.
         “Jesus wept,” said Marsha looking down at the death scene.
         Putting on her safety harness, Sheila said, “Okay, let’s get down there to check on Gertie, she might still be alive.”
         “Fingers crossed,” said Marsha, as the two bodybuilders lowered themselves onto the plateau, and then ran across to check upon Gertrude Golightly.
         “Damn,” said Sheila, “they’re all dead. If I get my hands on that Red Baron Wannabe, I am gonna break his neck with my bare hands.”
         “I’ll join you,” said Marsha.
         They placed the three bodies into wire baskets that Louie lowered, and then signalled for him to land the Bell Huey so that they could climb aboard.
         “All dead?” asked Louie, seeing their glum looks.
         “All dead,” agreed Marsha.
         “Then we’ll leave them in the baskets, so you don’t have to share the seat with three corpses.”
         “If I get my hands on that Red Baron Wannabe ...” said Sheila Bennett, almost glowing with rage, leaving the sentence unfinished.
         A few minutes later, they descended to where the body-baskets were touching the ground, Sheila and Marsha jumped out of the chopper, and untied the baskets, so that Louie could land a little away from the death.
         The paramedics raced across to lift the corpses of the Golightlies onto stretchers to take them to the ambulances.
         Terri went across to instruct Louie, “I want you to go to Morcambe Street to pick up the bazooka and the shells. From this point on we keep them in the Lexus until we get this bastard.”
         For once Sheila did not hoorah at the thought of using the bazooka, instead, she asked, “How many shells have we now got for it?”
         “Eleven,” answered Colin, “we had five left over after that Golem business ...” [See my story, ‘The Golem’.] “and Russell Street sent us six more.”
         “Hopefully I get at least one good shot at this evil fucker!”
         “We all hope so, Sheils,” said Marsha Maudsley climbing back into the Bell Huey to help Louie.
         
         Luella ‘Lulu’ Wellins, a petite pixie-cut brunette teen, was at work on the checkout counter at the Glen Hartwell Mall (actually, no more than a two-storey supermarket) in Boothy Street, Glen Hartwell. She had just finished serving a customer, when her supervisor, Hiram P. Brody came across to say:
         “Come with me for a moment, please.”
         “Am I in trouble?” asked the brunette.
         “Not at all, Lulu,” said Hiram, leading her down the pet food aisle, “your work is impeccable.” Pointing to a few huge sacks of dog pellets, he said, “Those three bags are past their selling date, but are still fit to eat, so you can have them for Woof if you like.”
         “Thank you, Mr. Brody; bull mastiffs do have a healthy appetite.”
         Calling a couple of shelf stackers over to help her with the sacks, Hiram said, “Then maybe you should get a smaller dog.”
         “Oh, no, I believe if you want a small pet, get a cat or a rabbit or something; if you want a dog, get a huge one not a dinky little one.”
         “Well, you saved my life at least twice during the whacky occurrences that occur regularly in G.H., so let me know if you ever need help with your dog food problems.”
         “Thank you Mr. Brody,” said Lulu as she and the two male assistants wheeled a trolley with the bags out to put into the boot of, Lulu’s red Morris Minor.
         Ten minutes later Lulu was back at her counter serving customers, when she heard a roaring of an ancient engine out in the car park.
         “Sound like Doctor Who is landing outside,” said a short fat woman at the counter. She and Lulu looked out through the small window behind the petite brunette and saw the blood red Fokker Dr.I triplane   zooming toward them.
         As the Red Baron zoomed toward the doorways of the Glen Hartwell Mall in Boothy Street, Lulu shouted, “Everyone run into the store,” wrongly thinking that that would protect them.
         She had been working the previous day, so had been lucky enough not to have seen the slaughter at the northern end of Boothy Street, although she had heard the noise of the shooting, and like many other people, had assumed that they were Hallowe’en fireworks.
         “Get away from the doorway!” shouted Lulu as the Fokker zoomed straight through the wall of the Mall as though it were not there and started firing at shoppers as it swooped down one aisle, then another.
         At the feel of a wing of the ghost plane passing through her, Lulu fainted, and fell out of sight beneath her checkout counter, which saved her life since she was out of sight.
         In aisle one, Carol Singer, ironically named since the leggy blonde was trying to make a living as a singer and was just about to release her first seven-track E.P., was at the back of the store with her four younger sisters.
         “What’s that sound like gunfire?” asked Tanya Singer, a beautiful fourteen-year-old redhead.
         “Cars backfiring,” insisted Luanne Singer, a tall, leggy thirteen-year-old raven-haired girl, who looked at least sixteen or seventeen.
         “Do cars still backfire?” asked Evelyn Singer, twelve, a short brunette with glasses: “I thought they had fixed that.”
         “Ah, duh,” said Georgetta, a twenty-year-old strawberry blonde and the least smart of the five sisters.
         “Ah, duh, what?” demanded Carol.
         “I don’t know,” said Georgetta shrugging, “I’m not a brainiac like Evelyn and you.”
         “Okay,” said Carol, looking puzzled, before the Bloody Red Baron zoomed down the aisle and blasted five holes into her forehead.
         “Look out!” cried Tanya, silenced when machine gun fire went straight in through her mouth, to blow a great hole in the back of her head.
         “Duck for cover!” shouted Luanne, following her own advise. Although a tracer bullet ripped across the top of her skull, leaving her with a permanent bald spot, forcing her to wear hats for the rest of her life, she survived without serious damage, despite blood streaming down over her face and into to her eyes.
         A bullet shattered the left lens of Evelyn’s glasses, taking our her left eye, so that blood rushed down across her face, however, she would also survive, with a prosthetic eye, she would even look normal again.
         Georgetta, too slow witted to realise what was going on, stood her ground as the Red Baron zoomed past without even noticing her.
         “Gee that’s an antique plane,” said Georgetta as the Fokker Dr.I triplane   zoomed past her, turning down aisles two and three: “How did that get in here?”
         She only realised that her sisters were hurt when Luanne and Evelyn started screaming and crying.
         “What’s up Sisses?” asked the strawberry blonde, going to investigate: “Hey, how come Carol has five small holes in her forehead? And Tanya has a hole the size of a softball in the back of her head; that must really hurt?”
         In aisle two, Leon McKella, a forty-five year-old man, short, fat and balding, opened the glass fridge door to take out two plastic containers of full cream milk.
         “Not ordinary milk,” corrected his wife, Lucille ‘Lucy’, forty-three with long red hair, “we only buy long-life milk, it lasts longer.”
         “They way this family gets through milk, that shouldn’t be a problem; it doesn’t stay undrunk long enough to go off.”
         “And not full cream milk,” protested Andrea nicknamed ‘Andie’, despite her constant protests that her name should be pronounced ‘on-dree-ah’. Pouting, the short redhead added: “We only drink lite milk, or skim milk. Are you trying to make us fat?”
         “And don’t forget that I only drink Soy milk,” insisted Leanora ‘Nora’, fourteen, a tall, strawberry blonde.
         “Girls, you could both stand to gain at least a stone,” insisted Leon.
         “What the heck is a stone?” asked Andie.
         “About six and a quarter kilos,” explained their only son, Alexander ‘Alex’, a twelve-year-old with long, raven-hair.
         “Oh, isn’t he just so smart,” said Lucy hugging her embarrassed son.
         “Mum, not in the store!”
         “Oh, and he’s so modest too.”
         “Yes, we all know that Alex is your favourite, Mum,” said Leanora.
         “And he is just so handsome,” said Lucy, embarrassing Alex further by squeezing his cheeks as she talked to him in baby talk.
         “Mum, people are watching,” protested the boy.
         “Aren’t you, my handsome boy? You’ll always be Mummy’s special little bloke.”
         Before the embarrassed teen could answer, the Blood Red Fokker Dr.I triplane   started down the aisle, guns blazing and blew the top off Alex’s head, to the shock of Lucy, who caught him as he fell into her arms.
         “My handsome boy, are you all right?” asked the tall, tall leggy redhead, wondering what had happened to his hair, and the top of his forehead.
         Realising at last, she opened her mouth to scream, when the Red Baron fired a barrage of bullets at her, virtually removing her head at the neck.
         “Get down,” cried Andie, pulling a startled Nora down to the floor. Both girls were shot once or twice in the backside, but would make a full recovery.
         “What the Christ,” said Leon, turning, with a two-litre carton of So Good Soy Milk in one hand, and a large carton of Devondale lite milk in the other.
         The Red Baron grinned his skeletal grin at Leon as he fired a stream of bullets right across the short, fat balding man chest, bursting both cartons at the same time as killing Leon.
         “Dad!” shrieked Andie, not overly concerned about the deaths of her mother or brother, but distraught at the death of the one parent who treated them all equally.
         She started to get up to check upon her father, but then passed out.
         Aisles four and five had the pasta, potato chips and snacks, salt, sauces, and condiments, so was full of nearly thirty people.
         “Which should we get?” asked Allen Horowitz, a tall, grey-haired man in his eighties, “tomato sauce like usual or American style Cat-sick.”
         “It’s pronounced ketchup,” pointed out his long suffering wife Eileen, “and you know that you only ever eat proper Aussie style tomato sauce.”
         “I thought American style Cat-sick might make a change.”
         Not bothering to correct him this time, she said, “Put it back, we’ll get the two-litre bottle of White Crow.”
         “Do White Crow make American style Cat-sick?”
         “No, only Aussie style tomato sauce.”
         “Oh,” said Allen, sounding disappointed, although Eileen was correct he had once tried American-style ketchup and spat it out in disgust.
         The Red Baron started down the aisle and shot the two-litre container out of Allen’s hand.
         “Okay, American style Cat-Sick it is,” said the old man, not noticing that the baron had also shot away most of Eileen’s head.
         Further down the aisle Arlene Tobans a thirty-seven year old woman bent low to pick up a large packet of her favourite pasta, which for some reason was always kept on the bottom shelve. The Red Baron zoomed over her shooting dead a dozen people beside, behind or just in front of her; but due to Arlene bending low the bullets just missed.
         “There’s the little beauty I want,” said Arlene straightening up with some difficulty.
         She stared at the bullet riddled corpses all around her for a few seconds, then started screaming and squeezing the half kilo bag of pasta so hard that it burst open scattering pasta across the corpses.
         
         Over at the front of the Mall, as the Red Baron kept zooming down the aisles slaughtering people, Lulu Wellins finally recovered and risked sneaking a peek over the top of her counter. Shocked at what she saw, she picked up her mobile phone and started dialling.
         
         “So what’s next, Chief?” asked Donald Esk, after helping to load the bazooka shells into the boot of Terri’s Lexus.
         “Now ...” said the ash blonde, stopping as her mobile phone rang: “Lulu, how’s it ....” After a minute or so, she hung up and said, “The Bloody Red Baron, or whoever he is, is inside the Glen Hartwell Mall.”
         “Inside?” asked Colin: “You mean without his plane?”
         “No, somehow he got his fucking Fokker, into the Mall and is gunning everybody down.”
         “Time to put the bazooka to good use,” cried Sheila as they raced toward the Lexus.
         Twenty-eight minutes later the police car raced into the mall car park, as the blood red plane roared out of the mall, whooshing across the car park.
         “Not this time, you arsehole!” shouted Sheila.
         Leaping out of the vehicle, she slammed a shell into the breach of the bazooka, carefully aimed at the escaping plane and fired.
         “Direct hit!” shouted the Goth girl, stopping as the shell passed right through the Fokker Dr.I triplane   as though it were not even there: “What the fuck?”
         To Sheila’s dismay, the shell continued out of the car park, striking and blowing up a Cortina parked outside a house across the road.
         “Jesus!” said the Goth chick almost dripping the bazooka as she raced to jump back into the driver’s seat.
         Restarting the Lexus she roared out of the mall car park to stop across the road from the burning Cortina.
         “Thank God,” said Terri Scott, getting out of the car behind the Goth chick, “there’s no one in the car.”
         “Too bad if there had been,” said Suzette Cummings.
         “I’m sorry,” said Sheila in shock, “it never occurred to me that the shell would pass through that bloody plane without hitting it.”
         “At least now we know how the bastard got the plane inside the mall,” said Colin.
         “For now we’d better get back to the mall to help with the dead and injured,” suggested Donald Esk, who now carried the bazooka, since Sheila had not stopped to return it to the boot of the Lexus.
         As they reversed direction, Terri said, “We’ll just have to add the cost of a new Cortina to our bill to Russell Street.”
         “The Assistant Commissioner is going to hate you, Chief,” teased Suzette: “If he doesn’t already.”
         “At least he doesn’t shout at me anymore.”
         “No, just bangs his head on his desk and sobs,” teased Colin Klein, “you really have broken the poor bastard, babe.”
         “It’s not my fault,” insisted Terri, as they roared back toward the double glass doors at the front of the mall, as they heard the sound of ambulance sirens behind them.
         It was late in the evening before all of the dead and injured had been taken to the Glen Hartwell Hospital, and the cops and medics were all exhausted both physically and mentally as darkfall came.
         “Okay, if this bastard is bazooka proof, what do we do now?” asked Colin.
         “We consult our witchy friend,” said Terri Scott.
         “Magnolia McCready!” said Don, Sheila, Colin, and Suzette.
         
         1/21 Calhoun Street was the right-hand side of a subdivided white weatherboard house, inside lived Magnolia McCready, a tall, busty, fifty-something redhead with electric-blue eyes. Inside the turquoise coloured lounge room, Magnolia handed around cups of cinnamon tea. On the carpet lay her white, fluffy tomcat, Timmikins, who watched with interest as she handed around a plate of homemade pineapple doughnuts.
         Sheila sat and helped herself to a doughnut, causing the cat to leap up onto her lap.
         “Hello, beautiful,” cooed the Goth chick, holding the doughnut above her head, “are you pleased to see Auntie Sheila, or do you just want to steal my doughnut?”
         By way of answer, the fluffy cat jumped up onto her left shoulder, climbed up onto her head, then leapt into the air to grab the doughnut which it scoffed away at on the carpet, before returning to the Goth chick.
         “Oh, I see,” said Sheila, “you jump onto my head, steal my doughnut, and then I’m just supposed to forgive you?” Then as the cat made sad eyes at her: “And don’t bother making the Moo Cow eyes at me, I’m not a total sucker.”
         Nonetheless, picking up another doughnut she broke it in two and gave the larger half to Timmikins.
         “He’s got you well trained, Sheils,” said the Wiccan: “You’re way too soft with him.”
         “Ah, you really love your Auntie Sheila, don’t you Timmikins,” baby talked the Goth chick: “You haven’t just trained me to be a soft touch?”
         Looking her straight in the face, the Tomcat wowed in a way that sounded suspiciously like ‘yes’.
         “Damn, he just confessed,” said Sheila, giving him the rest of the second pineapple doughnut, as the others laughed at her expense.
         “I did warn you, Sheila,” said Magnolia, “you train a dog, but a cat trains you.” Then to Terri, “I’m guessing this visit is to do with this Red Baron stuff?”
         “We’re starting to believe that it’s the real Bloody Red Baron,” admitted Terri: “Firstly seventeen or eighteen people saw a skull, not a face on the pilot.”
         “And when Sheila fired a bazooka shell at it, the shell passed straight through the plane, as though it wasn’t there,” said Colin: “Blowing up a Cortina parked across the street.”
         When Magnolia turned to stare at the Goth chick, Sheila explained, “There wasn’t anyone in the Cortina thankfully.”
         “Thank Hecate,” said the Wiccan.
         “So, do you have any ideas for dealing with the Red Baron?” asked Suzette Cummings.
         “Of course, first I’ll need to do a calling spell, to bring the Red Baron to us,” explained Magnolia.
         “Hey,” teased Sheila, “she’s used those before with reasonable success.”
         “What do you mean ‘reasonable success’? My calling spells have always worked.”
         “Well, mostly,” teased the Goth chick.
         “Mostly?”
         Finally, laughing, Sheila said, “I’m only teasing, you big goombah!”
         An hour or so later they were in a circle of old-growth trees about five kilometres outside Glen Hartwell. Terri and the other cops were wearing bullet-proof vests and shatter-proof full body shields; however, Magnolia McCready had to be able to move readily to mix her potion while chanting the calling spell.
         “So does this grove of trees constitute a magic circle, or something?” asked Suzette Cummings.
         “No,” said the Wiccan, “it’s cover so that we’re not too easy a target for the Red Baron’s tracer bullets.”
         “That’s good too,” said the raven-haired teen.
         “Now if Sheila could shut, I’ll get on with my conjuring.”
         “I didn’t say anything,” protested the Goth chick, as the Wiccan started mixing ingredients in an Earthenware bowl, while chanting the calling spell.
         Although the spell lasted over half an hour, none of the police sat down, feeling that the glass shields protected them better while standing.
         They had almost given up hope of the Bloody Red Baron appearing, when, in the distance, they heard the stuttering of the Fokker Dr.I triplane  ’s ancient engine.
         “I think it’s coming,” whispered Suzette, just before the triplane appeared in sight, heading rapidly toward the circle of trees.
         The Red Baron was almost up to them, clearly planning to ghost straight through the trees as he had done to enter the Glen Hartwell Mall the previous day. Then, when the blood red plane was only a metre or two from the trees, Magnolia suddenly said:
         “Solidify!”
         Instead of ghosting through the trees, the Fokker smashed into the trees, with a resounding crash, exploding on impact; forcing the Wiccan to run to hide with the cops behind their glass shields.
         For fifteen minutes or so, the crashed Fokker burnt, before they saw the ghostly shape of the Red Baron leaving the fire, initially starting upwards, but then suddenly whooshed down into the ground.
         “He may have qualified for Heaven after World War I, since he was just doing his patriotic duty,” explained Magnolia McCready: “But the killings he did around Glen Hartwell were cold-blooded murder and qualified him for Hell.
         “So is that it?” asked Suzette Cummings.
         “What else do you want, little girl,” teased the Wiccan, “ a lollipop, like you get after going to the dentist.”
         “My dentist doesn’t give out lollipops,” said the raven-haired teen, making everybody laugh: “He says they rot your teeth.”

         THE END

         © Copyright 2026 Philip Roberts

         Melbourne, Victoria, Australia