by Patton, Dirk
“Bats still there?”
“Yep. They didn’t even know we’d flown over. Guess it was only a small portion that got spooked.”
“How the hell did they bring us down?” I asked, turning my head in the direction of the distant wail of a dingo.
“Little bastards probably got sucked into the air intakes. Nothing’ll kill an engine quicker than shutting off its air.” We started walking toward the plane. “You sure they’re infected?”
“The bats? No, I’m not sure, but this is where you live. Ever seen anything like this?”
After a long moment he shook his head.
We walked the rest of the way in silence, each of us with our heads on swivels. Expecting to be attacked at any moment.
“There,” Lucas said, pointing at the starboard engine’s intake.
I couldn’t even guess how many bats had managed to get sucked into the large maw on the underneath edge of the engine nacelle. The space was crammed full and some of the damn little beasts were even still alive. I could see legs and wings twitch occasionally. There were also hundreds of their corpses scattered across the sand in all directions. Bending, I picked one up by the back of its neck.
“Got a light?”
Lucas dug a small flashlight out of his pocket and clicked it on after shoving the NVGs off his face. In the weak, yellowish beam, we examined the dead bat. It seemed perfectly normal until I pried one of its eyes open.
“Fuck,” Lucas muttered when we saw the telltale red that indicated infection.
“Agreed,” I said, tossing the body away.
“Why aren’t they attacking us?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” I said. “Like I told you, they didn’t attack in Texas, either. Maybe it affects them differently.”
“Then why the hell are they attacking my house?”
“Maybe they aren’t,” I said. “Maybe something drew them in and they’re just… well… just being bats. Sorry. Best I’ve got. But we’d better think of something pretty fuckin’ quick to get our people out. That herd is going to start arriving in less than two hours and they’ll probably be drawn to the activity. Once it does, the bats aren’t gonna matter.”
“Damn it!”
Lucas spat the curse and I could see the fear on his face as he turned and raced away. I was scared, too. Scared for everyone, but especially Mavis and Rachel, and my unborn child. But we needed to be thinking, not charging in without a plan. With a sigh, I chased after him, quickly catching up and matching him stride for stride.
“You have a plan?” I asked, loping along at his side.
“Find a way to draw them off,” he puffed. “Give everyone a chance to get out.”
“And what if we only draw off a few, like with the plane? What if we agitate them enough that they do decide to attack and injure or kill us. Who’s going to help our families then?”
It took several seconds for my words to sink in, then Lucas’s stride broke and he dropped into a walk for a few steps before coming to a stop and staring at me.
“Then what the fuck do we do, John? Stand out here in the desert and talk it to death?”
His fear was quickly morphing into anger and I was the only available target. Pretty much anyone else would have had me in their face, but I was willing to let Lucas’s words roll off without responding in kind.
“How do you scare bats away?” I asked, keeping my voice calm and reasonable. “Or attract them to a different location?”
“I’m not a fuckin’ bat expert!”
I bit back a retort that wouldn’t have been productive. Turning away from my friend’s florid face, I stared in the direction of his compound. Hundreds of shapes could be seen flitting around the general area, but I knew that was only a tiny fraction of how many creatures were covering the house and other buildings.
“Fuck this,” Lucas said, turning away.
“Fire,” I said loudly.
He’d already broken into another run but slowed and skidded to a stop when I spoke.
“What?” he asked, looking at me as if I were crazy.
“We use fire,” I said again, walking over to him. “It either scares them off, or we burn them off. You talk to Smyth on the radio and make sure he has everyone ready to move the instant we clear a door.”
“How exactly are we going to do that?” Lucas asked, some of the earlier anger gone now that there was a proposed plan on the table.
That was a good question. One I wasn’t prepared to answer. I’d simply been trying to come up with anything to stop him from making a bad situation even worse. Privately, I wasn’t at all sure that fire was a good idea. Too many times I’d seen infected walk directly into it without any sign of fear. What if the bats were no longer afraid of it?
But we were burning valuable time. Every second we spent arguing and discussing how to do this meant the leading edge of the herd was one step closer. We had to be gone before they arrived. The presence of the bats had changed the game. Hiding silently while the infected walked past was no longer an option.
“The plane,” I said, grasping for straws. “Still lots of fuel in it, right?”
“Yeah,” Lucas said cautiously.
“There a tool kit, too?” I asked, an idea starting to take shape.
“A small one, aye. What are you thinking?”
“Don’t ask, just come with me,” I said, setting off at a run back to the plane without waiting to see if he followed.
10
“You’re fuckin’ insane,” Lucas said when I explained what I intended to do.
We were standing outside the plane as he dug through a compartment for the tool kit. I checked my watch and met his eyes.
“Clock’s ticking. Unless you’ve got a better idea, we don’t have time to stand here and discuss it.”
He grumbled something under his breath then pulled out a zippered nylon pouch not much bigger than a tablet computer.
“What the fuck is that? You said you had a tool kit.”
“It’s what I bloody well got. Sorry if it don’t live up to your standards!”
I took a breath, reminding myself that he was just as worried as I was. Everyone and thing that mattered to both of us was in a house smothered by infected bats in the path of a massive herd of infected. Which meant we needed to quit acting like children and get our asses in gear.
Nodding an apology, I helped him start removing panels from the exterior of the aircraft so we could access the engine. There was no time for worrying about denting the skin or scuffing the paint. When something came free that we didn’t need, it was tossed to the side.
Fortunately, Lucas seemed to know what he was doing and quickly set to work removing parts from the engine. While he did this, I set about finding the rest of what we needed. I stripped out fuel lines and a battery. Used my knife to cut out several seatbelts, then slit open a seat back and removed its foam padding and vinyl cover.
Climbing inside, I worked my way to the back and dragged out a pair of twenty liter jugs of water Lucas kept in the aircraft. There was pretty much nothing other than desolate desert for thousands of miles in every direction and pilots have to be prepared to survive in case they find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere.
Taking a deep drink from one, I passed it to Lucas who raised it to his mouth as I turned the other upside down to drain into the sand.
“Got everything,” he said, setting the jug down. “Ready to start putting it together?”
I nodded and we set about assembling the contraption. There were several false starts but that’s to be expected when you’re engineering something on the fly.
“How much time?” Lucas asked as he tightened a fitting.
“An hour,” I said, weaving the seat belts through a small frame I’d made from several parts of the plane.
Nearly half of that time later, I bounced my shoulders to adjust the fit of the device. It was strapped to me like a backpack and was heavy as hell with an aircraft battery,
fuel pump, injector pump and a twenty-liter jug of fuel. Flexible hosing Lucas had removed from the engines ran to my front and connected to a length of rigid tubing with a fuel injector threaded into the end. Mounted at an angle was a spark plug with a wire running to a switch near my hand.
“Ready to try it?” he asked, still looking dubious.
I nodded and pointed the end of the tube in a safe direction. Thumb hovering over a button that would activate the pumps, I triggered the plug. Blue arcs of electricity sparked and with a deep breath, I turned on the flow of fuel.
For a second, nothing happened other than the continual popping of the spark plug. Then the pumps primed and pressurized the tubing. Fuel was atomized by the injector as it was forced out and with a surprising whoosh, flames shot thirty feet from the tip of our improvised weapon.
“Holy shit!” Lucas cried.
Releasing all the buttons, the flow of fuel stopped and the flame disappeared.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Smyth got everyone ready?”
We started walking, the makeshift flamethrower digging into my shoulders and bouncing against my back with each step. Lucas carried the second jug, full of fuel, just in case.
“Get the back door cleared and they’ll come out when I tell them. We’re going straight to the barn, up the path that runs behind the grill. You hold the door while I get everyone loaded and we’ll pick you up on the way out. Got it?”
“Got it.”
This was the fourth time we’d discussed what we were going to do once our people were able to escape the house, but it’s better to make sure there’s no ambiguity before the action starts. Once I was shooting fire with bats swirling around my head there wouldn’t be an opportunity to ask for clarification of the plan.
“Less than half an hour,” Lucas said after glancing at my watch.
“No time to fuck around,” I said. “We get everyone loaded and get the fuck out of here. You know where we’re going?”
“Got some ideas. Going to wait and see what the conditions are like as we go before I make a decision.”
I nodded, then we crested the rise a hundred yards from his house. Below us, the ground seemed to be alive. It was covered with what had to be a million bats. They blanketed every surface, stacked on top of each other and laying with their wings extended. I had no idea how deep the layer of bodies was, but it was an unbelievable sight to watch the entire mass constantly expanding and contracting in an undulating motion as each of the creatures breathed.
“Looks even worse on the ground,” Lucas breathed, staring in horror.
I couldn’t respond. Suddenly, my tiny little homemade flamethrower didn’t seem like such a good idea. There were just too many bats. All I was going to do was cook a few and piss off the rest. There were enough teeth and claws down there to shred every last strip of flesh from my bones in no time at all.
For a brief moment, my resolve wavered. Was this really a good idea? The bats weren’t hurting anyone in the house. Maybe the infected that came through would just avoid them and keep going. After all, how could they possibly know there were people under all that?
“We’ve got to hurry,” Lucas said, agitated after a brief radio conversation.
I glanced at my watch, but still hesitated, unsure of the course of action. Lucas grabbed my arm.
“John, they’re suffocating in there!”
“What?”
“Smyth says it’s hotter than hell under all those bodies and the air’s going bad!”
For an instant I pictured Mavis and Rachel in distress and that’s all it took. No longer doubting the plan, I nodded and pressed the button to activate the spark plug. The popping was loud, causing a few of the closest bats to worm around and face in my direction.
“Stay close,” I growled at Lucas.
He moved directly behind me and I hit the control for the pumps. This time there was almost no delay, a brilliant tongue of flame shooting out and lighting up the entire area. Taking a step forward, I was gratified to see hundreds of bats directly in my path suddenly take to the air.
Pushing forward, a step at a time, I kept the long gout of fire swinging through a narrow arc a few feet over the upper surface of the bats. Lucas tightly gripped my shoulder, staying right against the equipment on my back. Bats rose in thick clouds, avoiding the heated air above the burning fuel, but swirling around us in steadily increasing numbers. I could hear Lucas shouting into the radio, telling Smyth to have everyone on their feet and ready to move.
The bats continued to flee the fire, more and more taking wing. Fortunately, none were attacking which was a damn good thing. That was one glaring hole in my plan that I had glossed over. So far, so good.
We’d covered perhaps half the distance and still had fifty yards to go. As we’d progressed, the number of bodies had steadily grown deeper until they were above my knees and I’d come to a near standstill. There were so many of the little beasts that I was having to frighten them away a layer at a time.
Send a river of flame over the heads of the ones on top, then repeat on the next group when they flew up into the sky. It was arduous, and it was taking too damn long. The clock in my head was still ticking, counting the precious seconds until the herd arrived. Worrying about the people inside the house succumbing to the growing levels of carbon dioxide.
And to top it all off, the ground beneath my feet had grown slick from bat shit. A slimy layer of guano coated Lucas’s struggling lawn, sticking to the soles of my boots and creating an almost walking on ice sensation with every step. I won’t even try to describe the smell, but my enhanced senses were anything but an advantage at the moment.
“Running out of time!” Lucas shouted in my ear to be heard over the roar of the burning fuel and the scrape of thousands of bat wings.
He was right. We were bogged down because I was trying to scare the bats away rather than kill them. There was nothing compassionate or caring about my actions. I was concerned that if I started directing the flames directly onto the mass of heaving bodies and burning them alive, an attack might be triggered.
I had no idea what would happen. Would they even care, or would they descend on us in unstoppable waves, rending and tearing until there was nothing left? But there was no choice. Progress had ground to a halt, or close enough for the distinction to not matter. We had to get to the house, get our people out and get the hell out of the area.
Taking a breath and anticipating the worst, I lowered the tip of the tube until the flame was shooting directly into the mass of bodies in my way. Screams of pain sounded as bats were engulfed. Many of them were able to take flight as they burned, liquid fire dripping from their bodies as they frantically flapped about. More were killed instantly, remaining on the ground, but the strategy was working.
Thousands flew out of our path, leaving a smoldering scar on the ground covered by the corpses of their dead. Soon I was crunching my way across fried bat carcasses which provided for much better footing than the gooey shit I’d been wading through.
A solid cloud of bats was now swirling around my head. Frequently, one would come within inches of my face causing me to involuntarily flinch, but they never touched me. I didn’t understand it, but I wasn’t going to complain.
“Almost there!” I shouted, crushing a nearly dead bat under my boot as I swept across a new area with the flamethrower.
I pushed two more steps forward before I realized Lucas hadn’t answered. And I no longer felt his hand grasping my shoulder.
“Lucas!”
No response.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a man-sized lump on the ground a dozen feet behind me, completely covered in writhing bats. With a curse, I turned and sent a stream of flame directly over the spot. A cloud of bodies erupted to swirl in the immediate area, revealing a bloody Lucas rolled into a ball to protect himself. Moving to him, I worked the fire across the flying bats, momentarily clearing the air.
“Can you get up?” I yelled, turning
a circle to keep the beasts from swooping back in and resuming the attack. Oddly, they still weren’t coming after me.
“I’m fine,” Lucas grunted, climbing to his feet and swaying dangerously.
His face and arms were in tatters. Bone was visible in some of the wounds and flesh hung in long strips where claws and razor-sharp teeth had torn into him. His shirt wasn’t in much better shape and I could see multiple places where he’d been slashed open.
“C’mon, mate. I got you,” I said, wrapping him in my arms and turning back toward the house.
Waddling with a severely injured Lucas pressed against me, I directed the fire directly into the bats blocking our path. Maybe I should have turned around and gotten clear of the area they were occupying, but the house was closer and I wasn’t sure Lucas was going to be on his feet much longer. I couldn’t operate the flamethrower and carry him to safety at the same time.
Burning our way through, I was amazed to see a nearly four-foot-thick mass of bodies when they erupted off the wall of the house. Keeping the fire going, I gritted my teeth and pushed ahead, trying to balance opening a path with not setting the house on fire.
Finally, the door and a few feet surrounding it were clear. I stumbled over Lucas’s dragging feet and we slammed against it. Turning and wedging my friend in place with my back, I swept the flames through the air to keep the bats back and began kicking the door with my heel.
“Open the fucking door!” I screamed several times.
It seemed like forever but was probably only seconds before I felt Lucas’s weight fall away, then strong hands were grabbing and pulling me backward. Releasing the button that controlled the pumps, the flame immediately died as I tumbled through. Instantly, thousands of bats began converging directly at me.
11
The playback stopped automatically upon reaching the end of the file. It was the fourth time Jessica had played it for Captain Black and she was more than concerned.
“Sir?”
He ignored her, staring at the computer screen for several moments before beginning to pace around the Admiral’s hospital room.
