Bats

by William W. Johnstone

  “Unless ... what, Johnny?”

  “There are those in government, a few, I hope, that think the bats may be the work of the devil.”

  “Say ... what?”

  “The devil. I am not one of them.”

  “Let’s hope not. Johnny, if you knew Clyde Dingle and that bunch that hangs out with him, you wouldn’t even consider them capable of doing anything, much less communing with the devil.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s the devil’s work. I think the bats are just what they appear to me: mutants. A strain of highly intelligent bats. But . . . answer this: what if this Dingle person got his hands on one or two or three of these mutants?”

  “Several things occur to me. One: he might think his dark prayers had been answered and call his flock, or coven together. Two: the likelihood of them all contracting rabies would be very high.”

  “And if that happened, we’d have fifteen or twenty highly contagious and very dangerous nuts roaming around the parish.”

  “That’s a scary thought, Johnny.”

  “Yeah. It sure is.” He walked into the house and called the sheriff’s substation, catching Phil there and telling him of his suspicions.

  “I sure hadn’t thought of that, Johnny,” Phil said. “But it would be like that damn pack of screwballs to pick up any they found and think the ugly bastards came from the devil. Rabies? Jesus! Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.”

  “You want me to go over there?”

  “No. Dingle doesn’t know you. If he has found one of these goddamn bats alive, he’s probably made a pet out of it and might sic it on you. You never know about Clyde Dingle. I’ll take a run over to his house. Thanks, Johnny. I’ll get back to you.”

  He hung up the phone slowly, a curious look on his face. Blair asked, “What’s wrong, Johnny? Same feeling of bad tidings to come?”

  “Yes. Only stronger. I feel like I should be doing... something.”

  “Johnny,” she touched his arm, “if you never did another thing in this . . . situation we’re in, you couldn’t be faulted. You’ve already done ten times over what any other citizen in the parish has done.”

  Johnny shook his head. “Only because I was right under the bats’ fly-path, Blair. I told you, I’m no hero. I just do what I think has to be done.”

  She smiled at him, a twinkle in her eyes. “Right. Absolutely. Whatever you say, Johnny.”

  They both looked up as the sky began to darken. Together, they stepped out onto the porch and watched as dark clouds began gathering, blotting out the sun.

  “The weathercaster said no rain,” Blair said. “Clear and sunny skies. I just heard the report on the kitchen radio. What’s going on?”

  “You know Louisiana weather better than me, Blair. It can change quickly.”

  “Not this quickly, Johnny. This is ... eerie.”

  A large bat suddenly glided down from the skies to hover for a moment only a few feet from the couple on the porch. The wing span was awesome and the face was pure evil, the eyes shining with a hateful fury. Then it was gone.

  Blair shivered. “Maybe those government people were right about this being the work of the devil, Johnny.” She tried a laugh that almost made it. “Just kidding, just kidding!”

  Johnny cut his eyes to her. “Makes you wonder though, doesn’t it?”

  Eleven

  Sheriff Phil Young parked in front of the Dingle home, half on the narrow shoulder and half on the road, and sat for a moment in his car, looking at the sprawling ranch-style house set out in the big fat middle of nowhere. Phil had been a cop for more years than he liked to think about, and right now, every silent alarm bell he’d acquired over the long years was donging and dinging and shrieking out warnings.

  But the house and grounds looked just fine. So why were all his mental alarms going off?

  He shook his head and started to open the door just as a monstrous bat landed on the hood of his car and began biting at the windshield. Phil jerked his hand from the lever.

  “Jesus!” he blurted. He looked down at his hands. They were trembling. “Calm down,” he said. “Just calm down, son.”

  The bat glared balefully at him for a few seconds, then flew off into a tree. Phil sat in his car and watched as Clyde Dingle and those two nitwit women who lived with him walked nonchalantly out of the house and stood staring at him. Phil returned the stares. His stare was justified. The trio was stark naked.

  Phil cracked his window just about a quarter of an inch and shouted. “Get back inside! There are bats all around you!”

  Clyde waved and so did the women. Then they began doing some sort of dance step on the grass. Looked to Phil like some of those old English dances—sort of.

  “They’ve been smokin’ that shit again,” Phil muttered. He chanced lowering his window about an inch further and shouted, “Clyde? Get the hell back into the house. These bats are attacking people.”

  The trio paid no attention to his warnings. They continued their dancing ... or whatever the hell they were doing. Phil shook his head in disgust and rolled up the window. He could not order them into the house. He sighed and dropped the car into gear, pulling back onto the road. He passed the tree where he’d seen the bat fly into the branches. He grimaced when he saw the limbs were filled with hanging bats, all of them watching him. Many of them were drooling, the slobber dripping to the ground in slimy threads. Phil shuddered and drove out to the highway department building where the scientists had set up their lab. Parking, he carefully looked all around him before dashing to the front door.

  It was locked.

  Phil pounded on the door, his eyes busy for attacking bats. The door was jerked open and Phil lunged inside, his heart calming as the door was closed behind him.

  “Sorry, Sheriff,” Dr. Catton said. “We’re all a little jumpy.”

  “The phone is out,” Dr. Barstow said, irritation in her voice. And fear. Phil picked up on that immediately. “It’s been fixed twice in that many days and the bats come at night and tear out the wiring where it enters the house. The phone company has ceased operations in this area. One of the workmen was attacked this morning.”

  Phil hadn’t heard about that. “Is the lineman all right?”

  “He was bitten,” Dr. Meeker said. “Several times. He’s taking the rabies shots to be on the safe side. We’ve got to have some way of communicating, Sheriff.”

  “I’ll get a radio out here.” He looked at Maggie. “The bats attack the wiring and rip it out?”

  “Yes. We’ve all had to revise our thinking on these creatures. It seems they do possess some sort of higher form of intelligence. It ... flies in the face of logic, but it’s too obvious to be ignored.”

  Phil told them about the reporter. “They eat flesh, people. They’re carnivorous.”

  “Yes, we know,” Dr. Catton said. “These mutants, they, well . . .”

  “What my esteemed colleague is trying to say,” Maggie said. “Is that we don’t know jack-shit about these bats! They don’t behave like any species we’re familiar with. I want you to get in touch with somebody at the federal level and have them order the evacuation of this entire area, Sheriff.”

  “Yes, I agree,” Dr. Catton said. “Sheriff, how many people live in this area?”

  “Oh ... two or three hundred, I suppose.” He shook his head. “But you’ll never get some of these people to leave. You’d have to force them out at gunpoint. And they’d be pointing guns right back at you.”

  “But their lives are in terrible risk,” Dr. Meeker said. “About a full third of these mutant bats are infected with rabies.” He moved to a wall map. “Look, Sheriff. I want all traffic on highway 65, from Ferriday up to the Madison Parish line stopped. Immediately. Seal it off; divert traffic. I want everybody, and I mean everybody, evacuated . . . in this area here.” He placed his hand over the suspect area.

  Phil again shook his head. “That would take days, Doctor. And like I said, you’d never get everybody but
of there. My God, man, that’s three-fourths of this parish and parts of two others. I don’t have the authority to order that.”

  “Then find somebody who does have the authority,” Maggie said. “Right now, Sheriff. Before this thing turns catastrophic in scope.”

  Phil nodded his agreement. Panic, he thought. This thing is going to end in total, unchecked panic. He looked around the busy room. In addition to the three doctors from LSU, there were half a dozen younger people, three young men and three attractive young ladies.

  “Technicians,” Maggie told him. “They’re students of ours who volunteered to help us.”

  “Are there anymore coming in?” Phil asked.

  “Probably. When the news of this really catches on worldwide,” Dr. Meeker said, “I expect there will be dozens, oh, more than that. Oh, my, yes. Perhaps hundreds of scientists coming in.”

  “Oh, that’s just . . . great,” Phil said with a sigh. “You people want me to evac parts of three parishes with one breath, and in the next breath you tell me to expect hundreds of scientists in here. You’re not serious?”

  “Certainly, I’m serious.” Dr. Meeker seemed offended that Phil would even ask. “But these are not people who would panic. These are scientists.”

  “Oh, well, that clears everything up,” Phil could not keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Sure. I suppose that makes them immune to bat bites and free of human emotions . . . such as fear and panic?”

  “There is no need for sarcasm, Sheriff Young,” Dr. Catton said. “This is a very important scientific find. There is no way to keep intelligent inquiring minds out.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Meeker said. “We already know of ten teams who are on their way in. They’re arranged for trailers and security.”

  “Nice of you to tell me,” Phil said wearily. “How many per team?”

  “Oh ... I would say from five to ten.”

  Phil nodded his head and sighed. “From where?”

  “All over the world. Several should be set-up and working by noon tomorrow.”

  Muttering to himself, Phil cracked the door and looked out. No bats in sight.

  “There are none out there,” Maggie told him. “We set up outside security cameras just for that purpose. See that bank of monitors over there?” She pointed. “We covered the cases with heavy wire to prevent the bats from destroying them. It’s safe for the moment.”

  Phil made it to his car and left the doctors to their work—whatever the hell they were doing. They had dead bats cut open and laid all over the place. Disgusting. He drove straight to Johnny’s house, radioing in to the substation and telling them where he’d be. He made it to Johnny’s in time for lunch. He did not see a single bat.

  “The news of the scientists coming in does not surprise me,” Blair said. “They don’t want to see people killing harmless bats, Phil. That’s all. Let me tell you something: just one bat can eat over six hundred mosquitos an hour. If we didn’t have bats, a dozen different human diseases would be running rampant, out of control. Bats pollinate tropical rainforest trees and plants. Your average bat is a really very gentle, quite harmless, and very beneficial creature.”

  Phil jumped about a foot out of his chair when a huge mutant bat slammed onto the wire mesh of the dining room window and howled at those inside.

  Johnny raised the window over the heated protestations of Linda and Dick, and shot the creature with his .22. It squawked once, spread its huge wings, and fell dead to the ground. “I’m really becoming very weary of that,” Johnny said, closing the window.

  “I would never have guessed,” Phil said drily, settling back down to his salad and sandwich.

  Johnny stilled the ringing phone and handed it to the sheriff. Phil listened, softly cursed, and hung up. “That was Cal. The first several teams of scientists have arrived,” he told them. “Mobile homes are being set up now on the highway department acreage, with a dozen more coming in tomorrow. Jesus! How long can I sit on the death of that damn stupid reporter?”

  “I don’t think there is any point of sitting on it any longer,” Blair said. “You can take Linda and Dick back with you and they can give you their statements and then you can release it to the press.”

  “Where is the body?” Johnny asked.

  “What’s left of it is being held in a portable cooler sent up from Baton Rouge. I don’t know where they got it. It’s a large one.”

  “Probably from the military,” Johnny told him. “They’re expecting the death toll to climb, I would imagine.”

  Phil glanced at his watch. “I gotta go. I have a meeting with the three sheriffs of the surrounding parishes in an hour. I understand they’re unhappy about not being informed of this situation from the start.” He stood up. “Oh, before I forget, I went out to Clyde’s place. He and those two nitwit women that live with him were naked, doing some sort of dance in the front yard. There were huge bats all around the place, but they didn’t attack Clyde or the women. I tried to get Clyde’s attention, but all three of them ignored me. I think they were all popped up on grass or uppers or downers or whatever they have handy. That whole bunch is as goofy as a road lizard.”

  Linda and Dick left with the sheriff, and Johnny and Blair were alone. Blair called the makeshift laboratory and spoke with Maggie Barstow, but nothing new had been discovered about the bats. Johnny turned on the TV and as they had suspected, the story of the bats was headline news. No matter what network he tuned to, it was the same. One reporter was ducking and dodging the swooping bats, making a game out of it.

  “That man is an idiot!” Blair said.

  Johnny leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin in one hand and watched the short piece closely. “Blair . . . correct me if I’m wrong, but those bats appear to be playing with that guy.”

  “Tape this, Johnny,” she urged.

  Johnny set his VCR on continuous record and fished around until he found a replay of the piece and taped it. They had just settled down to watch it when Trooper Hayden pulled up and made a dash for the house. But it was a needless effort: no bats showed themselves.

  “I’ll put out the cold cuts,” Blair said, standing up.

  “How do you know he’s hungry?”

  “I know Mark,” she replied.

  Mark waved at Johnny and headed straight for the kitchen. He returned with a sandwich he had to hold in both hands. He sat down and said, “Place is becoming a circus. Portable labs are being set up all over the parish. We’ve got more reporters and scientists in here than we have residents. I just heard on the radio that Phil released the news of that reporter’s death. Phone lines are jammed to the max. Not even the President could get through now. A national guard post is being set up on Gun Ridge road, at the junction.”

  “Did you see the body?” Blair asked him.

  Mark chewed for a moment. “Yeah. What was left of it. Those bats really did a number on that guy. Maybe now people will start taking this seriously . . . but I doubt it.”

  Together, they watched the taped report several times in silence.

  “Those bats were playing with that guy,” Mark said. “They’ve got a lot more sense than we’re giving them credit for having. I’ll bet you there won’t be a single attack for a day or two, maybe more than that. Then when this place is filled to overflowing, they’ll hit hard.”

  Blair looked at him. “Mark, do you know how large a bat’s brain is? They don’t have the ability, the capacity for that kind of reasoning.”

  “Then you tell me what they’re doing,” the trooper countered.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “As a doctor, a teacher, Mark, if I went public with that logic, I’d be laughed out of the profession.”

  “Maybe they know that.” He paused. “Maybe they’re counting on that.”

  Blair blinked. “Who?”

  “The bats, that’s who.” Mark finished his sandwich. “Look, on the way over here, I heard more than one so-called scientist on the radio. They all said that bats could not have po
ssibly killed and eaten that reporter . . . what’s his name? Paul Steele. They said it had to have been vultures.”

  “There were two witnesses,” Johnny reminded him.

  “It was dark. They were scared. I’m just telling you what the scientists said.”

  Johnny said, “Is it possible, Blair? Could these bats be some super strain, or breed, or whatever the hell you might want to call it? Could they think and plan?”

  She sighed and rose from the couch to pace the den. “It would be unheard of. They’d be freaks—they are freaks. Oh, hell! I don’t know. I’m a vet, not a batologist.”

  “Is that rally a word, Blair?” Mark said with a smile.

  She laughed. “I don’t think so. But it will do.” She turned at a scratching noise. Her eyes narrowed. “They know we’re the enemy,” she said. “They’ve learned that.”

  Johnny and Mark followed the direction of her eyes. Every window in the den was dark with the shapes of huge mutant bats, clinging to the heavy wire. They stared in silence through the wire and the glass.

  “I hope y’all stocked up on food,” Mark said. “’Cause you got a permanent house guest—me!”

  Twelve

  “We’re up to our asses in government experts,” the sheriff of the parish directly east of the bat-plagued area told Phil.

  “All contradicting each other,” the sheriff of the parish northwest of Phil’s added.

  “The one bright spot for me in all of this is that the bats appear to be moving north, away from my parish,” the sheriff of the parish south said.

  “Well, thanks a lot,” the sheriff of the parish directly north replied. “That really makes my day. That means they’re probably moving into Madison.” He looked at Sheriff Phil Young. “I got a bunch of jumpy people in my parish, Phil. And now you’re telling me the scientists want me to set up blockades on Highway 65 at the parish line. Why? Have the goddamn bats learned to drive?”

  Humor is where one finds it and the other heads of law enforcement were only too glad to chuckle at that. Phil said, “Civilian traffic has got to be stopped. Captain Alden is in the process of closing Highways 15 and 65 north, from Ferriday up to the Interstate. Traffic is being diverted east and west. None of you will have to use your people. Troopers and national guard personnel will man the road blocks. Military police from Fort Polk have been put on alert in case we need them.” Phil placed a folder on the table. “Pictures of what the bats did to that reporter. Take a good look at it. It won’t be released to the press.”