Bats

by William W. Johnstone

  “Try back down the road at Fort Necessity,” his partner in checkers suggested with a smile.

  “I already did,” the reporter snapped back. “You know damn well there are no motels there.”

  “That is a fact, ain’t it?”

  “Bumpkin!” the reporter snarled.

  “Could be,” the local said. “But I ain’t lost.”

  The reporter’s camera crew thought that was hysterically funny. The reporter found nothing humorous about it.

  “Lemme tell you something, Mister Hot-Shot-TV-Reporter that I tune out every time your sarcastic face shows up,” the first citizen said. “You can’t get to where you want to go from here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “I’m tellin’ you the truth, sonny-boy. Now listen to me.” The citizen gave them directions and sent them on their way.

  “Idiot,” he said to his friend.

  His friend jumped two of his men. “Wonder what’s going on over there?”

  “Beats me. Whatever it is, when he reports it, it’ll be from the left side.”

  “I’d a let him take that dead-end over Bayou Macon. Get him good and lost. Son of a bitch thinks he knows it all anyway.”

  “Then he’d a been back here wartin’ us again.”

  “You’re right. Move.”

  That same reporter had wound up in Ferriday, got a few hours sleep, and armed with a better map, was now heading in the right direction.

  Two other reporters had seen Mark in his unit and had discreetly—so they thought—followed him, their camera crews in another car right behind theirs. They paid absolutely no attention to the NO TRESPASSING, KEEP OUT, POSTED signs and drove right up to Johnny MacBride’s fence. Mark just had time to warn Johnny that he was being followed and Johnny had tossed the fried bat over the fence and Blair had carefully picked it up with a shovel and carried it to the porch.

  Johnny could be very subtle when he wanted to be. But this was not one of those times. He walked to the lead car and said, “What’s the matter? Can’t you arrogant bastards and bitches read? Get off this property and do it right now!”

  “Now see here!” the man said. “You can’t talk to me in that tone of voice. I’m ...”

  Johnny grabbed him by the throat and exerted just enough pressure to prevent the man from talking, but not enough to cut off breath. It’s a move that, when tried by amateurs, can cause death, but is safe when done by an expert. Johnny was an expert.

  The woman with him, from the same network, started bellowing to Mark. “Arrest that man! That’s battery!”

  Mark shook his head. “A property owner has a right to put another man off his land, ma’am. And this land is legally posted. Ads were run in several papers and the warning signs are up and easily seen. Your friend was told to leave, he refused.”

  “What’s going on around here?” the woman shrieked in a voice that could crack brass. “We have rights, you know?”

  “Jesus, I’m getting where I really hate that word,” Mark muttered.

  Johnny put his tanned face very close to the now very red face of the reporter. “When I turn you loose, I want you gone from here. And don’t ever, ever come back. Do you understand?”

  The reporter nodded his head as best he could with Johnny’s big hand wrapped around his neck. Johnny released him and stepped back. The rear car backed up and got out of the way. Just as the car with the reporters was leaving, the still red-faced man stuck his arm out, shook his fist in the air, and yelled, “I’ll sue you, goddamnit!”

  “Five will get you ten they’ll turn right at the road and then take another right on that old gravel road through the timber,” Mark opined. “Then they’ll slip in through the woods and try to film.”

  “They’ll be very sorry if they do,” Johnny said, entering the fenced-in area and securing the gate behind him.

  “Perhaps we should warn them,” Blair suggested.

  “They’re grown up people,” Johnny said, stepping onto the porch and kicking the dead bat out of the way and then sitting down. “Who obviously don’t take warning signs very seriously. They ignored my warning signs by the driveway, didn’t they?”

  “Captain Alden will be here any minute,” Mark said. “He wants to see the film you shot.”

  “He can have it. I made several dubs last evening.”

  Mark looked down at the dead bat and shuddered. “Would you just look at the teeth on that thing. Those fangs could tear a man’s throat out.”

  “Did you see the bodies of that old couple?”

  “Yeah,” Mark said softly.

  “And?”

  “Their throats were ripped out.”

  Five

  Johnny sat silently for a moment, digesting all that the trooper had said in that simple sentence. Something didn’t jell. Something was just slightly off the target. Finally it came to him. “Their throats were ripped out?”

  “That’s right. I went down to the funeral home and viewed them personally.”

  “Just their throats? No other marks?”

  “Just their throats.”

  “Sheriff Young told me last night they were just like the cattle.”

  “I’m sure he meant they were dead like the cattle. But the old man and woman were not savaged like the cows.”

  Johnny felt Blair’s eyes on him. “What are you getting at, Johnny?”

  “I ... I’m not sure. But something doesn’t match here. Why would the bats mutilate the cattle in a feeding frenzy and not do the same to the old couple? Why just hit the throat and leave them?”

  “Odd, isn’t it?” Mark said.

  “Blair, didn’t you tell me the old couple lived about a mile from here?”

  “Yes. He was a retired farmer and she was a retired schoolteacher.”

  “You should have been a cop,” Mark said. “You’d have been a good one.”

  “In a sense, I was. Their deaths have not been reported to anyone?”

  “Not yet. They had no children. Well, none living. They had two kids. Both of them died in bizarre accidents.”

  “How bizarre?” Johnny asked.

  “Well . . . their oldest was a deputy sheriff here in the parish, back in the fifties. According to what my dad told me, Pat had been working on something; he wouldn’t tell anybody what it was except the sheriff. Pat would work all day and then prowl half the night. He got to where he wouldn’t eat and was real jumpy. He’d make trips down to Alexandria two or three times a week to visit with an old priest down there. And that was odd ’cause Pat was a Baptist. This went on for about six months. No one ever found out what he was working on. Then one night he answered a call and didn’t come back. Trapper found him the next morning. He’d been stripped naked, drained of blood, and crucified, nailed to a cross upside down.”

  “I remember my folks talking about that,” Blair said. “I was about nine or ten when the Morrison’s last child died. What was her name?”

  “Irene,” Mark said. “She vanished in ’68. Ten years after her brother was murdered. She’d come back here for a visit—she lived and worked in New Orleans. Told her mom and dad she was going to drive over to Newellton to see some high school friends, and that was the last time anyone ever saw her.”

  “Her car?” Johnny asked.

  “Never was found. Just another unsolved disappearance. There are hundreds, thousands, of people who disappear every year and are never heard from again.”

  “That’s true,” Johnny said.

  “Are you serious, Mark?” Blair asked.

  “Sure. People disappear all the time. You think there is a connection between that old murder and disappearance and what is happening now, Johnny?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t see how there could be. What would bats have to do with a decades’ old murder and disappearance?”

  Mark sighed audibly. “Well, here I go, shooting off my mouth when I probably should keep it closed. I’ll tell you how, Johnny. But you have to bear in mind that
I can’t prove any of this. The pictures that were taken of Pat’s body have been missing for years. The body cannot be exhumed for examination because it was sent to New Orleans for cremation the day after it was found. The old priest Pat used to visit down in Alex has been dead for years. He was killed . . .”

  “Killed?” Johnny interrupted. “How?”

  “Shortly after Pat was killed, somebody broke into the priest’s quarters and cut his head off. The head was never found.”

  Blair said, “Mark, how come you know so much about this stuff? I never heard any of this.”

  “Very hush, hush, Blair. My dad said that people who talked too much about it suddenly stopped talking. Like they were ordered to shut up. Or threatened into silence. Besides, there is no one left who had anything to do with the investigation. The coroner is dead, the sheriff is dead, the chief deputy is dead, the trooper who helped with the investigation is dead, the undertaker is dead.”

  “You still haven’t told me how all this might be tied together,” Johnny said.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Well, on both Pat and the priest’s body, carved into the chest and belly, was the outline of a bat.”

  Johnny and Blair sat in silence, staring at the trooper. Finally, Johnny asked, “Have there been any incidents reported of voodoo in this area?”

  Mark smiled. “You’re a good cop, Johnny. Black magic. Oh, yeah. Back in the piney woods and the swamps. The further south in this state you go the more you find. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying there are thousands of people involved in that crap. But there are a number of small cells, or covens. But around here, every report is treated like so much nonsense. I mean, Phil Young would be on it like a dog on a meaty bone if those voodoo worshippers ever actually did anything. But they don’t. They don’t sacrifice animals or people . . . as far as we know.”

  “But you think there is something that ties all this together,” Johnny said, not putting it as a question.

  The trooper slowly nodded his head. “Yeah. I sure do.”

  “Does Captain Alden know of your suspicions?”

  Mark shook his head. “I doubt if he even knows about the Morrison case. Or cases. No reason he should, and I’m damn sure not going to say anything about it at this late date with nothing but a gut hunch to back me up.”

  Johnny stood up. “Come on. Let’s see that film we shot last night before the others show up.”

  Mark was fascinated by the actions of the wounded bats. “Those bastards can think!” he said. “Look at them.”

  “That’s what we said,” Blair told him. “But my colleagues disagree and so do the government experts. They say we imagined the bats making those sounds.” She rolled her eyes.

  Then the place got crowded as Sheriff Young and Chief Deputy Moody showed up, followed by Captain Alden and Sergeant Barker. Then Drs. Catton, Barstow, and Meeker drove up. Introductions were just over when a man from the governor’s office pulled up, accompanied by two men from Washington. One of them was a typical bureaucrat. The other one tried to act like a bureaucrat but couldn’t quite pull it off. Johnny pegged him as FBI or some other enforcement branch of government.

  The film was shown again and the doctors and the Washington expert were not impressed.

  “They can’t be making those sounds,” one said.

  “Natural action of a predator,” another said.

  “No reason to suspect they have the ability to think or to reason,” the third one said. “How did you dub in those sounds?”

  “The light blinded them for a moment, that’s all,” the expert from Washington said. “Any number of animals will freeze under the glare of bright lights. Run it again.”

  Johnny went to the kitchen and the second man from Washington followed him. “All right, Mr. MacBride,” he said softly. “I know all about you, and you seem to think you have me pegged. Now level with me. What do you think about the behavior of those bats?”

  “I think they have some limited capacity to think and reason. What agency are you from?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Wonderful. It’s spook time again. What else do you want to know?”

  “How can you afford such a nice home on a retired Colonel’s salary?”

  “I smuggled opium in from the Golden Triangle, had counterfeit money laundered in Germany, and I own three whorehouses in Hong Kong.”

  The man’s mouth dropped open. “You did what?”

  “Relax, pal. Settle down. You don’t have much of a sense of humor. You have to be from NSA. Although why the National Security Agency would be interested in bats in Louisiana is beyond me. Look, I was never married, I saved my money, and had a damn good investment firm handling what was automatically taken out of my bank account each month. For over twenty years. I am quite comfortable, as I suspect you already know. You happy now?”

  “No. But it will have to do. We don’t have time for word games. And I resent your accusation that people who work for NSA have no sense of humor.”

  “I calls ‘em as I sees ’em. What is your interest in bats in Louisiana?”

  “You do not have a need to know,” the man who had been introduced as Mr. Smith said stiffly.

  “Naturally. What does the job pay?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You want me to do contract work for NSA, you pay me. How much does it pay?”

  “Why ...” Mr. Smith sputtered for a moment. “You insolent, arrogant, insufferable ass! You actually believe your government should pay you for saving your own life? You have to be the most . . .”

  Smith’s words were cut off as Johnny wrapped a big hand around the man’s throat and squeezed. He frisked the man with his left hand. No gun, unless he was carrying it in an ankle rig or a crotch holster, which Johnny doubted. “Now, Mr. Smith, let’s be civil with one another. Let’s call a truce. I’ll admit, albeit reluctantly, that you might have a sense of humor buried somewhere beneath all that college-boy, fraternity-snobbery, Washington-insider crap, and in return you don’t call me names. Are you agreeable to that?”

  Mr. Smith nodded his head as best he could and Johnny released him and sat him down in a kitchen chair. “You sit right there, Mr. Smith. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and relax. Just as soon as that crowd in the den clears out, we’re going to have a chat. You and me. Or you and I. Whatever. You want to call in to your bosses at Fort Meade, go right ahead. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Is your phone secure?” Smith asked.

  “As secure as I can make it.”

  Smith nodded and Johnny walked back into the den. Everybody was arguing about how best to approach those wounded bats in the woods.

  “Carefully,” Johnny broke into the discussion. He stepped out onto the porch, flipped the towel off the dead bat, gingerly picked it up and tossed it into the den. It bounced on the floor and came to rest near the Washington man’s foot. He yelped and almost turned over his chair. “How’d you like to have a live one of those clamped onto your leg? Or your throat?”

  Captain Alden took his hand off the butt of his. 357 and gave Johnny a very jaundiced look. “Don’t do things like that, MacBride. This situation has made most of us jumpy.”

  Johnny shrugged.

  Alden said, “I’ve got dog trainer clothing coming in along with rattlesnake leggings. We’ll use riot helmets with face shields. All that should be here in a hour or so. Until then, we stay out of the woods. All that’s coming in to your office, Phil.”

  Sheriff Young and Chief Deputy Moody stood up. “We’ll go back and wait for the equipment.”

  The doctors from LSU said they’d be at their lab. The expert from Washington and the governor’s man went with them, as did Blair.

  Captain Alden motioned for Mark and Sergeant Barker to come outside with him.

  Johnny walked to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down at the table with Mr. Smith. “What’s going on, Smith?”

  “As if killer bees aren’t
bad enough, now we have mutant bats,” Smith said with a sigh.

  “Is this some sort of government experiment gone sour?” Johnny asked.

  “Oh, hell no!” Smith said hotly. Skipper and June wandered into the kitchen and Smith petted them both. “I like dogs. I looked out back at what you’ve done to protect them. I approve. That tells me you have a compassionate side to you that doesn’t show up in your dossier.”

  “What’s NSA’s interest in bats, Smith?”

  “They have to be contained.”

  “The bats or NSA?”

  Smith tried a smile. He almost made it. “Cute, MacBride. Very amusing. Ha, ha.”

  “So NSA has known about these . . . call them mutants, for some time?”

  “For about a month.”

  “And you have been doing . . . ?”

  “Trying to find their roosting places. Or whatever one calls where bats live.”

  “Where’d they come from?”

  “We don’t know. And neither does FBI, CIA, DIA, or any other agency. Some among us, ah, only a few, mind you, ah, believe they may have been brought in by incantation.”

  Johnny blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Incantation.”

  “I heard that. You mean to sit there with your face hanging out and tell me that members of the most highly sophisticated intelligence gathering organizations in the world believe that some self-proclaimed voodoo prince or princess tossed a few chicken bones and feathers on the ground, did a little dance around a skull, and made a pact with the devil to produce these bats?”

  “I didn’t say I was one of them,” Smith quickly replied, his face turning red. “But if you have a better theory, I’d certainly like to hear it.”

  “This has all happened pretty fast, Smith. I haven’t had time to develop any theories. How many spooks are in this area?”

  “None. Yet. Well, you.”

  “I’m retired. This is strictly personal as far as I’m concerned. But if one of those winged horrors hurts my dogs, you’re going to see a one-man army get into action.”

  “Yes.” Smith smiled. “We are fully aware that you possess somewhat of an arsenal here.”

  Somewhat of an arsenal was a slight understatement. Johnny smiled. “You people keeping tabs on me, huh?”