“Crazy son of a bitch!” farmer Frank Wirth said, dabbing iodine on the bite marks on his face and then on the face of his son, Frankie, who had the same disposition as his father and just about as many friends—which meant that no one in the parish would have anything to do with either one of them. Then he turned his attentions to his wife, Marge, and his daughter, Becky, both of whom had been savagely bitten by the infected women. Mother and daughter shared the same disposition as husband and brother. The Wirths were probably the most disliked family in the parish. But no one would have wished this disease upon any of them. Well, most would not have wished it.
“If I could have got my hands on my gun, I’d a killed that queer son of a bitch!” Frankie said.
“It was disgusting!” Becky said. “They slobbered all over me! Ugh!”
“Did you get through to the sheriff’s office, Marge?” Frank asked.
“Never did. The phone’s out of order.”
“Well, that figures. Hell, it wouldn’t have done no good anyway. By God, I ought to run for sheriff. I’d show the people how to run that sheriff’s office. I’d kill all the niggers first.” Frank Wirth was so disliked they wouldn’t even let him in the local chapter of the KKK. Back when they had one, that is.
“Yes, dear,” Marge said. “You’d be perfect.”
“Then I could be a deputy,” Frankie said.
“Me, too,” Becky echoed.
Both of them were so dumb neither one realized that pipe had a hole in it.
“It’s late,” Frank said. “Let’s get back to bed. If that fool dog hadn’t a run off we’d been warned they was something prowlin’ around outside.”
The dog, like a dozen before it, had grown weary of Frank beating it every day and hit the trail.
Outside, a few miles down the road, Clyde, Dark Moon, and Royal Crown, were parked off the blacktop, down a long forgotten logging road. They were about a thousand yards from the national guard’s outpost.
The guardsmen had opened the barricades and retired to the safety of their reinforced trailer. Their commander had told them that the people who refused to be evacuated, the press, and the sightseers had all been repeatedly warned about the dangers of traveling in this section of the parish. He was not going to place the lives of his troops in jeopardy to protect those who refused to heed warnings. The national guard commander was taking some heat from some of the press about that decision, but the general was unmoved. He didn’t have much use for the press anyway.
The mutant bats had disappeared; no one had seen a bat of any kind in hours. There had been no attacks that day. Many were beginning to believe it was all a hoax. And when a red-faced and tight-lipped Sheriff Phil Young made the announcement about Clyde Dingle and his devil worshipping coven members being on the loose and infected with rabies, many of the press openly laughed at the sheriff and were sarcastic and rude to the sheriff while making their reports to their respective stations and/or networks.
Chief Deputy Sheriff Moody summed up the feelings of the lawmen when he said, “I hope every goddamn one of those people run into Clyde and his bunch.”
Captain Tom Alden kept his mouth shut about the matter, but his thoughts paralleled those of Moody.
The sheriffs of the parishes north, south, and west of Sheriff Young did not find anything funny about nearly twenty people infected with rabies running around with the thought of possibly attacking citizens paramount in their diseased minds. They tightened up roadblocks and called out everybody who had a deputy sheriff’s commission to help. Anyone who refused got their commissions jerked, right then and there.
A weary Sheriff Phil Young finally laid down to rest about midnight, after checking with all the national guard posts and his substations. It was quiet. For whatever reasons, no one had reported the actual or attempted attacks upon them by Clyde and his bunch. Most of the reporters were either asleep in their rooms or drinking in bars in Vidalia, Natchez, Ferriday, Monroe, Alexandria, or Tallulah.
Shortly after midnight, the bats struck.
* * *
A city patrolman in the southernmost town of the parish got out of his unit to investigate an open door at a small store on the edge of town. Huge wings suddenly enveloped his head, cutting off any cry that might have formed on his lips. Excruciating pain was all he knew for a moment as fangs ripped out his eyes, tore long strips of flesh from his face, mutilated his lips and tongue, and ripped a gaping hole in his throat, sucking up the blood that squirted freely with each beat of his hammering heart. When the mutant bats finished, there was nothing left except white bones glistening in the moonlight, bloody rags that had once been his uniform, pistol belt and weapon, handcuffs, baton, and shoes. A rush of slowly beating wings signified the end as this swarm silently swam through the air, in search of more food.
The dispatcher called again and again. There was no reply as silence fell around the death scene.
In the far westernmost part of the parish, near the river, at a lonely farmhouse, the man awakened from a sound sleep. His dog had barked once. Only once. And that wasn’t like him. The big cur dog was an excellent watchdog, raising hell at anyone or anything that crossed his territory. The loyal dog now lay dead, the fur and flesh torn from its body, the blood consumed, leaving only bare bones.
The farmer rose from the side of his sleeping wife and picked up a shotgun, shucking a round into the chamber. The sound woke his wife.
“What’s the matter, Pete?”
“I don’t know. Blackie barked once, maybe twice, then was silent. But it was an angry bark. I’ll look. Go on back to sleep.”
“You reckon it’s the bats?”
“Hell, there ain’t no bats. All that is a made-up thing. Nobody in their right minds believes crap like that. That’s Hollywood shit.” The last thing he ever said to his wife was, “I’ll be back.”
He slipped his feet into houseshoes and walked out onto the porch, closing the door behind him. He stepped off the porch and looked around. Then he saw them. He opened his mouth to scream. No sound pushed past his lips. The shotgun dropped from numbed hands as his throat was torn out and a dozen huge bats rode him to the ground, lapping at blood, ripping his flesh. The shotgun boomed as it hit the ground and his wife sat up in bed, grabbing for her nightgown. A dark, winged form covered the screen to the bedroom. Agnes Morlund slammed the window down just as the screen was torn away.
Agnes kept her senses about her. There was no point in screaming. That would accomplish nothing. She somehow knew that Pete was dead. She pushed a tall dresser in front of the window, then ran to the other window and locked it. She tugged on jeans and shirt and slipped her feet into shoes. She jerked up the phone. It was dead.
She was alone in the isolated farm house. Their kids were off at college, one in Monroe, the other at Ruston. Agnes stood for a moment, listening. She could hear scraping sounds overhead. The bats! Had to be. They were walking on the roof. She had tried to convince Pete that the sheriff would not have issued a false report. But Pete refused to believe that giant bats existed. Agnes shook herself like a big dog and gathered her senses about her, thinking fast.
She walked swiftly through the house; the bats were covering every window with their hideous shapes. Agnes went to the utility room and got a hammer and nails and a flat-head screwdriver. She put nails and screwdriver in her pocket and jammed the hammer behind her belt. She gathered up a loaf of bread, some cold cuts, and ran back to the bedroom, tossing the food onto the bed. Then she quickly knocked loose the pins holding the hall doors and carried them into the bedroom.
She stopped. No good. The bats would finally work their way through the insulation and the ceiling tile and get into the bedroom. Then . . . where would she be safe?
The bats were in a feeding frenzy now, slamming against the glass of the windows. They would be in the house in a few minutes. Then Agnes thought about their new big bathroom. She’d helped Pete build it. She remembered him laying three-quarter-inch plywood down and
stapling the ceiling tile to that. There she would be safe. She moved food to the bathroom and nailed a door across the small window. It was a snug fit but she managed it. Glass broke somewhere in the house and Agnes heard the squeaking and howling of bats. She ran out of the bathroom and closed the bedroom door, locking it. She grabbed up a flashlight, and took a 410 shotgun and a box of shells from the closet. Fighting back tears of rage and helplessness and sorrow, she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. Then Agnes sat down on the edge of the tub and wept.
On the outskirts of the parish seat, a town of about two thousand, located along the banks of the Mississippi, bats began gathering just after midnight. Dogs and cats showed much more sense than humans, for they went under buildings, dug in, and waited it out. Most of the town’s residents had done very little in the way of preparing for the winged horrors, and the evacuation order had not, at the time it was given, applied to them. All that was about to change.
Cassie Miller, owner of a bar on Main Street, had turned out the lights and was preparing to open the front door. She put her hand on the door and froze at the sight that confronted her just outside the door.
Bats. They clung to her car and hung upside down from street lamps. A row of the huge creatures were hanging upside down from her awning, all looking straight at her.
Cassie moved back from the door and went to the phone, punching out the number of the police. “Jimmy? Cassie. I’ve got bats all over my place. Big bastards, Jimmy. Jesus, I can hear them walking on the roof. Do something, Jimmy!”
“Cassie, I’ve got every unit out on call. People are seeing bats all over the goddamn place. Get some food and water and barricade yourself in the storeroom . . .”
Cassie almost dropped the phone when a horrible shrieking came from outside.
“What the hell was that?” the dispatcher asked.
Cassie looked through the big window at a woman running down the middle of the street, bats gliding all around her, swooping in to rip and tear at her flesh. The woman fell down in the center of the street and was immediately covered with dozens of the hungry bats.
“Mrs. Robbins, Jimmy,” Cassie whispered. “I think it was Mrs. Robbins. The bats got her. Oh, my God, Jimmy. They’re eating her!” Cassie fought back hot bile that threatened to erupt from her stomach.
She became aware of Jimmy shouting at her over the phone. “Get to the storage room, Cassie. Right now. I’ll have someone over there just as soon as I can. Do it, Cassie.”
Cassie grabbed up some chips and Cokes and ran to the storage room at the rear of her saloon. The storage room was windowless and very sturdy, as were both doors. Cassie clicked on the lights and sat down on a bench.
She could not remember being so scared in all her life.
At a national guard trailer out in the country, the team of men were awakened by the sounds of something thudding against the side of the trailer.
A rock smashed against the heavy protective wire and broke a window.
“Somebody is throwin’ rocks at us!” Sergeant Whitaker said.
Lieutenant Stokes, in command of this detachment, sat on the side of his cot and pulled on his boots. “Keep the lights off in here,” he ordered. “At my orders, see if you can see anything out there, Sergeant. Put on your helmet and pull your face shield down. You don’t want a face full of broken glass. Everybody up, everybody dressed, and that includes helmets with face shields down. Get your shotguns and stand ready to lock and load. Turn on the floods, Sergeant.”
The area around the trailer was flooded with harsh light. “Three people, Lieutenant,” Whitaker said. “Looks like . . . two women and a man. Something’s bad wrong with them, sir. They’re all foaming at the mouth.”
The officer pulled his face shield down and took a look. “Jesus! What a sight. That’s got to be the infected people we were told about. Get on the horn, advise the sheriff’s department of this situation, and ask for instructions.”
Clyde and Dark Moon and Royal Crown were standing in the light, throwing rocks at the trailer. They were grunting and hunching and slobbering.
“I don’t think they can speak,” Stokes said. “I think the disease has rendered them voiceless.”
“Phone is dead, sir.”
“Use the radio.”
“Yes, sir.”
A moment later. “Sir? Sheriff’s department says to handle it at our discretion.”
“Well, what the hell does that mean?”
The guardsman shrugged his shoulders and handed the headset to his commanding officer. It’s called pass the buck.
“Lieutenant Stokes here. What the hell do you mean, ‘handle at our discretion?’ I need some orders.”
“Lieutenant,” the tired dispatcher said, “I can’t give you any orders. I don’t have the authority. You’re under the command of General . . . what’s-his-name?”
“Lieutenant,” the sergeant said, “those nuts are movin’ closer.”
“Keep them in visual, Sergeant.”
The sergeant gave the lieutenant a rather pitying look and sighed heavily, fogging the inside of his face-shield.
“Deputy,” Stoke said, “can you tell me if any plans have been laid out about how to capture these people or what to do with them when or if they are taken alive?”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant. I just don’t know. Let me call Sheriff Young while you’re calling your commanding officer. How about that?”
“It’ll have to do.” The lieutenant, who was twenty-five years old, looked at the sergeant, who was forty-two years old. “You know what this is, Whitaker?”
“Yeah,” Whitaker said. “A SNAFU. Situation normal, all fucked up!”
Dingle, Royal Crown, and Dark Moon began beating on the trailer with their fists.
Fourteen
After receiving Cassie’s frantic call, the dispatcher hit the panic button, calling the Louisiana State Police, the national guard, the governor’s hot line, the sheriff’s office, the local civil defense director, the mayor, all the members of the police jury—who hadn’t already packed and hurriedly left the state in the face of crisis—and anyone else he could think of. He came within a heartbeat of calling his mother-in-law and telling her the bat situation had been resolved and it was all right if she wanted to sit out in her front yard, but he decided against that. Only because she might be suspicious about receiving such a call at one o’clock in the morning.
Police cars and military vehicles pulled up beside the bones of Mrs. Robbins. But no one wanted to be the first out to step out into that street. A wise decision, for hundreds of huge, mutant bats were soaring high above the scene, waiting, watching. Other bats were hanging from awnings, perched on rooftops, clinging to lampposts, and crouched along the curb, waiting, watching.
“What do you have, Mark?” Captain Alden radioed from his car. He’d gone home that evening, back to Monroe, and was rolling back south toward the parish within minutes of receiving the call.
“Hell,” Mark replied. “No way any of us can leave our units. There are at least hundreds, perhaps thousands, of huge bats all around us, just waiting for us to make a move. The local dispatcher says that a woman, Cassie Miller, is trapped in the storeroom of her saloon. There is no way to get her out that I can see.”
“No way you can pull your unit in close to the door and get her free?”
“Ten-fifty, Captain. Might be able to back a pickup with a camper top in there and do it. But it would have to be done very quickly.”
“All right. We’re getting calls from all over the place. A cop is dead down south. Picked clean. The guard unit out by Johnny’s is under attack from some of Dingle’s bunch. Use your mobile phone and warn MacBride, and get out there and take over.”
“How do I handle that situation, Captain?”
“At your own discretion.”
Mark hesitated. He keyed the mic. “No, sir. You give me orders. Am I free to shoot if those people attack me?”
Capta
in Alden did not pause. “You are free to use deadly force if you feel your life is being threatened. Is that clear, Hayden?”
“Perfectly clear, sir. On my way.”
“Shit!” Captain Alden said, tossing the mic on the seat. “Goddamnit anyway!” At that moment he made up his mind. He was going to retire. He’d had enough of trying to protect people who wouldn’t even make the tiniest move to protect themselves. Counting his military time, he had thirty-two years in. That was enough for anybody.
“I’m on my way,” Johnny said to Mark. “I’ll meet you there.”
Johnny made sure his dogs were safe and he and Blair buttoned up the house and pulled out. No way she was going to be left behind. Period.
Johnny waited at the drive entrance for Mark. He would back up the trooper, but this was to be Mark’s call.
At the trailer, the guardsmen were nearing panic time. General Bancroft was on his way in by car and could not be reached. HQ’s was reluctant to give the orders to shoot to kill somebody infected with rabies; that might bring lawsuits all over the place, for one could be sure that a certain type of lawyer was watching this situation with a lot of interest.
“Goddamnit!” Lieutenant Stokes fumed over the radio. “I’ve got crazies beating down the fucking door, Colonel. I need some orders from you, not foot-dragging.”
“And you had better remember to whom you are speaking, Lieutenant! I was fighting in Korea before you were born, young man. I ...”
Stokes turned off the radio. “Screw you,” he muttered, just as Royal Crown ripped the wire from a window and stuck her arm inside the trailer. Stokes leveled his shotgun and blew her arm off at the elbow. The crazed woman screamed hideously and the slobber sprayed the side of the trailer. She lurched off into the darkness, the blood squirting from what was left of her severed arm.
The headlights from Mark’s unit and Johnny’s truck were added to the illumination from the floodlights. It was a macabre scene in the early morning hours. They watched as Royal Crown staggered across the road and disappeared into the timber. Just as Mark stepped out of his unit, pistol in hand, Dingle and Dark Moon lurched and stumbled and staggered off to join her.
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