Bats Read online

  “Not us alone, Johnny. There are others.”

  “Yeah. I know. It goes with the territory.”

  Smith took a business card from a leather case and laid the card on the table. “They’ll always be able to reach me. I’m staying down in Natchez. I’ve written the number on the back. But I’ll be spending most of my time up here.”

  “What’s the NSA’s interest in this, Smith?”

  “Think about it. What if this is not the only nest, or colony of these things? What if there are two more, or a dozen more, or a hundred more. Panic in the streets. I don’t have to tell you that anything that might affect the security of this nation is our concern.”

  “You keep tippy-toeing around my questions, Smith. I keep getting these little uneasy feelings that those bats out there, and they are mutants, whether you’ll admit it or not, is another government fuck-up.”

  “Johnny, it isn’t our government’s fuck-up.”

  “Now we’re getting to it. Who screwed up, Smith? And when?”

  Smith sighed. He stood up and poured fresh coffee into his cup. With his back to Johnny, looking out the kitchen window, he said, “Just about seven years ago, a multinational scientific expedition, working in a very remote area of South America, discovered a new species of bat. Very aggressive bats. The members of the team were delighted, of course. I personally find nothing delightful about it, but I’m not a scientist. The plane bringing a shipment of bats back to study crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. Just off the Louisiana coast.”

  “Oh, shit!” Johnny said.

  “Engine trouble. The pilot and copilot parachuted and were picked up by the Coast Guard. The scientists assumed all the cargo was lost. They, ah, didn’t tell our government about the bats until three months ago.”

  “What happened three months ago?”

  “One of these, ah, mutant bats, as you put it, was found in a long-deserted warehouse in New Orleans. Just one. It was killed and the find reported to the proper authorities. Only then did a spokesperson from this multinational group report what they had actually found and attempted to ship back to the U.S.” Smith sighed again. He was real good at sighing. “Two months ago, several pairs of these bats was found in Baton Rouge.”

  “Moving north,” Johnny said.

  “Yes. They were taken alive and studied. The females had just given birth. It was concluded by the scientists that they had given birth many times before. Last month several more pairs of bats were found . . .”

  “In Natchez,” Johnny guessed.

  “Good guess. But each find showed some alarming new developments. The bats appear to be getting larger and much more aggressive. Over the years—and this is just a guess—they have mated with some species of local bats to produce what you saw last night. Also it appears that both the male and female are quite promiscuous and, unlike most other bat species, produce young several times a year. And, unlike other species, have half a dozen or more in a litter. And, they mature quite rapidly. They are totally carnivorous, highly intelligent, and very vicious.”

  “Smith, last night I saw hundreds, probably thousands of these damn things flying overhead. Am I getting through to you? I said thousands!”

  “I heard you,” Smith said, turning around and leaning up against the counter.

  “Smith, this area has to be evacuated.”

  “Or isolated.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Johnny, 99.9 percent of bats are very beneficial to humankind. They eat thousands of tons of insects each year. We can’t have people going out and killing millions of basically harmless bats. The damage to the eco chain would be disastrous. This mutant bat is centralized—localized. In this immediate area. There have been no reports of these bats from any other place. They are coming here. Why? We don’t know. But here they are, and here they have to be found and destroyed. All of them. Because if they’re not destroyed... this nation is going to be facing a horror like it has never seen.”

  Six

  Scattered throughout the parish there was indeed a small group of people who dabbled in the dark arts. They met twice a month to mouth incantations and call up the spirits and try to establish some direct link between themselves and Satan. To say they were a bit on the strange side would be a slight understatement. They all worked, paid taxes, mowed their lawns, and stayed out of trouble with the law. But on the first and third Friday of each month, they turned into a pack of kooks. They would don their robes, paint stars and moons and lightning bolts on their faces, and prance around in worship of the devil.

  This coven had a membership of sixteen. Their leader was a rather eccentric man named Clyde Dingle. Everybody in the parish felt that Clyde was about one brick shy of a load. But he had inherited a fortune from his parents, and when one is as rich as Clyde, folks tend to overlook a few minor eccentricities. Clyde’s live-in lover was a nut who called herself Dark Moon. Her best friend and member of the coven was another whacko who called herself Royal Crown. When Dark Moon wasn’t available for sex, Clyde poked Royal Crown. Also in the coven were two fags, Percy and Rene. Sometimes Percy and Rene joined Clyde and Dark Moon and Royal Crown in Clyde’s huge special-made bed. When that occurred, nobody knew who was sticking what into whom. Or cared. There were two sisters of Lesbos, Lark and Lila, the parish drunk, Rex Kenny, a farmer and his wife, Wade and Wanda Wakefield, Lucille Barnsted, a lady who’d been married and divorced about fifteen times and in the process got rich, a school teacher, Louis Bankston, a mechanic, Sam, two goofy twins, Don and Dot, and the son of a local Baptist minister, Victor, who had dabbled with every drug known to mankind and who had about as much sense as a road lizard. Victor kept the group supplied with dope.

  On this lovely early spring morning, Clyde Dingle strolled out into his front yard, naked, as usual, to see if his nightly prayers to the Dark One had been answered. When he saw the huge ugly bat squatted on its wingtips, glaring at him, Clyde knew he’d finally broken through to the nether world.

  “Thank you, my Dark Prince!” Clyde shouted. “I am yours forever.” Bet your ass there was truth in that statement.

  Clyde rushed to the bat and picked it up, whereupon the bat promptly bit the shit out of Clyde. But Clyde was so excited he didn’t notice the pain. He ran into his huge rambling house and shouted for Dark Moon and Royal Crown to join him in the den, which smelled like a Saigon whorehouse after a busy Saturday night. The bat also bit Dark Moon and Royal Crown before they got him, or her, caged.

  “Call the faithful! We meet tonight!” Clyde said. “The Prince of Darkness has sent a sign.” He whirled, almost falling down, and pointed to the bat. “And there it is!”

  The bat crapped all over itself.

  * * *

  Johnny and Sheriff Young, Blair and Trooper Hayden, and Deputy Cal Miller were suited up to enter the woods. The heavily padded suits were hot and uncomfortable; add to that the heavy boots and knee-high rattlesnake leggings, and walking was awkward.

  “Face-shields down,” Sheriff Young said. “Let’s go in.”

  Except for Blair, who carried a camera, they were all armed with shotguns, and bandoleers of shells crossed their chests. They found their first bat at the edge of the woods. It was dead. This was the first time Cal had seen one of the bats, and he shuddered at the sight of the fangs.

  About ten yards into the woods, a bat dropped out of a tree and landed on top of Phil Young’s helmet, biting savagely at the plastic. Phil couldn’t help himself; he let out a holler that was loud despite the clear face mask.

  “Take it alive!” Blair yelled.

  Mark knocked the bat off with a swipe of his shotgun barrel and Johnny threw a thick piece of screening over the addled bat.

  “Now what?” Phil asked, his voice shaky.

  “We pick it up and put it in the box,” Blair said.

  “Shit!” Cal said.

  Careful to avoid the slashing teeth, the bat was tossed into a large box with air holes punched in the sides. Another bat drop
ped from the trees and clamped onto Mark’s leg, just below the knee, biting furiously. Like Phil, Mark let out a yell as he pounded at the bat with the butt of his shotgun. But the bat held on. Johnny, not liking it at all, reached down and grabbed the bat from behind, by the neck, and tore it off Mark’s leg. The bat was heavy and incredibly strong, and with the thick gloves it was difficult to maintain a grasp.

  “It’s like trying to hold a damn boa,” Johnny said, which he had once done. Blair ran up with another box and Johnny threw the bat into the box. The lid was slammed shut.

  Mark was shaken and made no effort to hide it. He leaned up against a tree and tried to catch his breath.

  “You OK, Mark?” Cal asked.

  “I’ve been better,” the trooper said honestly.

  “Did the leggings do the trick?” Phil asked.

  “Yeah. It didn’t bite me. But my heart feels like it’s gonna jump out of my chest.”

  “Believe me, I do know the feeling,” Phil said.

  Mark looked at Johnny. “Thanks.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” Johnny replied, his voice muffled behind the mask. “And probably will before this day is over.”

  The next four bats they found were dead from the loads out of Johnny’s shotgun. Those were handled just as carefully when being placed in the boxes; no one among them knew just how much intelligence these creatures possessed or whether they could, like so many other animals, play dead for safety’s sake.

  Johnny had looked around and found himself taking the point, which really didn’t surprise him. It wasn’t that the others lacked courage, for they all had more than their share to enter these dark woods filled with crawling, leaping, biting horrors. Johnny just felt better relying on his own wits rather than on the expertise of someone else, whose knack for survival might not be honed nearly so fine as his.

  A bat with a broken wing jumped from a branch straight at him and Johnny blew it apart. The woods began reverberating with shotgun blasts as the bats seemed to all charge at once. One latched onto Cal’s hand and bit right through the thick gloves. Johnny dropped his shotgun, reached out, grabbed the lower body in one hand and the head in another, and twisted, leaving the head still attached to Cal’s hand.

  “Get out of here, Cal!” he said. “Everybody get back. We need to take a break and get this bastard bat tested for rabies.”

  No one argued that as they slowly backed out of the gunsmoke-filled woods.

  “Save that head, Johnny,” Blair told the badly shaken young deputy. “I’ll need it.”

  Johnny nodded and Cal moaned in pain. Mark was carrying Cal’s shotgun as Cal’s left hand was cradled in his right hand. Johnny had removed the bat’s head and stowed it in a pocket of the padded suit.

  Once back in the bright sunlight, everyone breathed easier. Chief Deputy Moody hustled Cal into his car and off to the hospital, and Blair took the bat’s head and left with a trooper for the lab.

  Johnny said, “I won’t presume to tell you your business, Phil. But that area we just exited needs to be cordoned off.”

  “I know, I know. I just don’t have the manpower to do it.”

  “The press has gathered all around this area,” Captain Alden said. “More coming in every hour. All the major networks have at least one reporter and camera crew in here and there are two dozen or more independent stations represented.”

  “How long you think we can sit on this?” Johnny asked.

  “Maybe another twenty-four hours, if we’re lucky.”

  “How about the national guard?” Mark asked.

  “I suggested that to the governor. He said if the situation worsened, he’ll send them in.”

  “It just worsened, Captain.” A trooper Johnny had not seen before walked up. “A kid was fishing in the Tensas just north of Highway 4 right at dawn this morning. He was attacked by a huge bat. The kid’s in pretty bad shape.”

  “What parish?”

  “This one.”

  “What about the bat?”

  “The kid killed it. It tested positive, Captain.”

  “Ahh, fuck!” Captain Alden said, throwing his Smokey Bear hat onto the ground.

  Johnny retrieved it for him and brushed off the dirt and twigs before handing it to the troop commander. “They no longer have to give a rabies victim all those painful stomach shots, Captain. They’ve got it down to either three or five. Very little reaction to them now.”

  Alden plopped the hat back on his head. “Thank you, Mr. MacBride. For my hat and the information. Are you going back into those woods?”

  “I don’t see that we have much of a choice. But these gloves leave a great deal to be desired.”

  “So I just saw. I ...”

  “Jesus H. Christ!” the newly arrived trooper yelled, jerking out his 9 mm and blasting away. Everyone spun around. Several dozen wounded bats were lurching and crawling and running along on their wingtips, all headed straight for the group near the edge of the woods.

  The scene was one that would remain with the men long after this moment had passed. Some sort of thick, ropy secretion was leaking from the fanged mouths of some of the bats as they drew closer and closer.

  But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. The pistols and shotguns roared and the line of charging bats was blown into bloody bits. The men stood for a moment, shaken. They stared at the mess near the woods’ edge.

  Captain Alden was the first to speak. “What was that . . . crap coming out of their mouths?”

  “Whatever it was, I sure don’t want any on me,” Phil said.

  “We better get one of those doctors from the lab down here,” Johnny said. “They’ll want to see this and pick them up for study.”

  “They can damn sure have them,” Mark said, shoving loads into his shotgun.

  Captain Alden looked at Mark. “For once, we agree. So how about you going over and getting one of those doctors? Scientists. Whatever they are.” He looked at another trooper. “You take pictures of this mess.”

  Johnny struggled out of the heavy padded coat and jacket and laid them aside. Helmet, leggings, and gloves went on top of the pile.

  Mark did the same, asking, “You think there are any more of those things in the woods?”

  Johnny shook his head. “I think they shot their wad with that charge.”

  “That was a planned attack,” Captain Alden said. “And I don’t give a damn what those so-called experts say.”

  “I’m with you,” Johnny said, bumming a cigarette from a deputy.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Mark said.

  “I don’t very often. A pack will last me a week or more. But I’ve found that a smoke calms me, and right now, my nerves need some calming.”

  Alden watched as Mark pulled out, heading for the makeshift lab just up the road. “From now on we drive unmarked cars and leave our uniforms at home.” He turned to Johnny. “I’ve requested additional men. We don’t need a lot of blue uniforms around to attract the attention of the press.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Johnny, I heard you had a run-in with some press types this morning.”

  “They ignored my NO TRESPASSING signs and I showed them the error of their ways.”

  “They’ll be all over you, digging into your background. You know how those bloodsuckers love to smear people they don’t like. They’re all such perfect angels.”

  Johnny chuckled. “Let them. My tracks are covered. Anything that isn’t covered, isn’t that important.”

  “Government sure didn’t release much on you, except that you’ve won nearly every medal the Army has to offer, that you have a federal permit to carry a concealed weapon, and that you were born.” Alden smiled. “It’s always good to know that somebody was born.”

  “Sharecropper’s shack outside of Charleston, South Carolina, Tom. My mother could not read or write and my father was a drunk. They’re both dead. I’ve got several brothers and sisters somewhere. I used to keep up with them, b
ut when they all turned out to be losers, I stopped caring what happened to them.”

  Tom shook his head at the man’s bluntness. “You really that hard, Johnny?”

  “Yes. We all, to a very large degree, control our destinies. I have no patience with people who refuse to better themselves and place the blame on others for their own failures. I have no patience with people who stop learning.”

  “Is MacBride your real name?”

  “No.”

  The Troop Commander chuckled. “And no way of finding out what it is, huh?”

  “It’d be difficult, at best. There are no records of my birth. Back then, white trash dropped their kids like dogs whelp a litter.”

  “So you ran away from home when you were young?”

  Johnny smiled at the questions. Once a cop, always a cop. “Tom, I worked two jobs and went to school whenever I could. I was a voracious reader of anything with words. I was buying my own clothes at eleven. There was a deputy sheriff who, in his words, ‘Wanted to keep me in my place.’ He delighted in rousting me. At least once a week. He used to get a big kick out of sticking a pistol in my face to try to make me beg. I never did. Made him mad. I was walking home from work one night and he went just a little too far. I used a knife on him and left him in a ditch with his guts hanging out. I was fourteen years old.”

  Tom grunted. “I hate bad cops. People paint the rest of us with the same dirty brush. Did the deputy die?”

  “No. But I’m told he was a changed man after that. He made up some wild tale about being attacked by a gang of thugs. He was so prideful and stiff-necked and full of himself he just couldn’t tell the truth about what really had happened: that one skinny malnourished fourteen-year-old kid took him down. He left the sheriff’s department and drifted from job to job. Some guy that he had framed into prison finally caught up with him one night in a Savannah honky-tonk and killed him. Sad thing is, even though the justice system knew that the man had been set up and took a wrong fall, the courts still convicted him and returned him to prison for that prick’s death.”

  Tom stared at Johnny for a moment. “And you think he shouldn’t have been convicted?”