“Yeah. Back here too.”
“Hang on. I’m going to try to beat them to the house.”
“You think they’re following us?” Dale yelled.
“Yes.”
The bats followed the truck in a huge dark wave that at times blotted out the faint light from the moon. Using the CB in his truck to contact Blair, standing by the CB base at his house, Johnny radioed, “It’s not good, Blair. Don’t raise that garage door. The bats will swarm in. We’re going to have to think of some other way to get inside the house.”
A flexible rubber sleeve between camper and cab kept the small space weather-proof. Opening the sliding glass that separated camper shell from cab of truck, Cal said, “We’re in deep shit, aren’t we, Johnny?”
“For the moment,” Johnny called. “We’ll think of something, though.”
“We’d better start thinking. There’s your road.”
Johnny drove past the road, after telling Blair his intentions. He drove down to the highway department buildings and found the buildings and trailers besieged by bats. They were everywhere. They hung from limbs, waddled around by the hundreds in the parking area and between the buildings. They clung to the wire over the windows. If it was depressing to Johnny, it must have been pure terror for those inside the buildings. The national guard post had been abandoned, the troops ordered back into the parish seat, into the armory. His was the only vehicle on the lonely road that night.
“Christ, it’s getting worse!” Cal commented.
Johnny nodded his head, a germ of an idea springing into his head. He reached for the mic and got hold of Phil. He told him where he was and what had happened.
“What’s on your mind, Johnny?”
“Well, tonight I imagine we’ll sleep in the truck. The bats are swarming all over the place. But for now, we’ve got to start thinking of this as a war. Phil, roust some welders out of bed and have them start working on building pipe frames that will fit on the bed of pickups. We’ll cover the frames with heavy expanded metal and have gun slits cut into the metal, just large enough for a shotgun to fit. You see what I’m getting out?”
“’Deed I do, Johnny. General Bancroft is right here with me and he’s nodding his head in agreement. The expanded metal will give the shooters a clear field of fire while still protecting them. We’ll be welding within the hour.”
“Ten-four. And have somebody order several hundred or so cases of shotgun shells, duck loads ought to do it.”
“Ten-four, Johnny. Sleep tight, now, you hear?”
“Yeah, right.”
Johnny kept on the move the rest of that night, driving from one end of the parish to the other, south to north, east to west, with the bats following wherever he went. When dawn finally broke, the bats gave up the chase and vanished back to their roost. The military had pulled in a mobile field office for Cal and Dale to use. It was no more than a dry-wall trailer with rooms; but it was wild hog proof. Johnny drove back to his place and sacked out for a few hours. While he was sleeping, military engineers came out and built a frame for his truck, replacing the camper with the expanded metal covering over the bed. It was no work of art, but it was bat proof. When Johnny got up at noon, he looked at his reworked truck and smiled a warrior’s smile.
“Now, you bastards,” he muttered. “Now we’re on a level playing field.”
* * *
The military took Linda and Jane back home. Johnny asked if Mark Hayden could be permanently assigned to work with him during the “bat situation,” as some had begun calling it, and Captain Alden agreed.
“You’d better stock up with food,” Alden warned him. “That boy is a bottomless pit.”
The Special Forces unit out of New Orleans was assigned to capture, alive if possible, those wandering around the parish infected with rabies. It was very unpleasant duty. They used nets to restrain them, then a doctor would inject the unfortunates with an anti-convulsive drug to make their dying a little easier.
“This is worse than ’Nam,” a senior SF sergeant commented.
There were some, of course, who were so maddened by the disease they would leap out at the men, giving the soldiers no chance to use the nets. Those were killed and certain members of the press were giving the SF people a hard time about that, condemning them for their actions. The condemnations eased up quite a lot after three members of the press had the shit kicked out of them by “unknown” assailants. A jump boot in the teeth can bring about a hurried and drastic change of attitude.
On the third day of the shotgun assault against the bats, everyone felt that while they were not gaining the upper hand, yet, they were at least beginning to hold their own. The shooters in the protected trucks had killed hundreds of bats. But no one was kidding themselves; this was strictly a stopgap measure, a holding action while they waited for a signal to destroy the bat colony at the old logging town.
That signal did not come.
“What’s the hang-up,” Johnny asked Captain Alden.
“The way I understand it, the people who own the land can’t be found.”
“Then we go in without their damn permission.”
“That’s my feeling, but it’s obviously not the feeling of the federal government. They say we have no proof that the bats are actually in that area.”
“Let me guess what’s coming next. They want a team to go in there and find proof?”
“Well . . . that’s only part of it. We have a few very radical environmental groups who say we don’t have the right to destroy a new species and they’ve filed a lawsuit blocking the total destruction of the bats.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“Oh, it’s true. Now, your known environmental groups have backed away from it. They don’t want any part of this. And they’re going to make that perfectly clear at a news conference. They’re going public today stating that these bats are a clear and present danger to both human life and wildlife and feel that for the good of the country they must be destroyed. But a federal judge is ready to issue a restraining order blocking any move to destroy the habitat of new bats.”
Johnny sat down, his mouth hanging open. He just could not believe what he had just heard. He was known as a moderate tree-hugger himself; but there are limits to everything. “Tom, you’re not putting me on, are you?”
“I wish. Nope. We can’t go in that area. The governor is furious, our U.S. senators and representatives are bouncing off the walls, and Colonel Jarrett said—strictly off the record—that somebody ought to put a bounty on that federal judge’s head and kill the son of a bitch. The situation is, ah, volatile, to say the least.”
“And confusing,” Blair added.
“That too.”
“What’s the name of the group muddying the waters?”
“Save Our Bats.”
“SOB?” Mark asked.
“They’re based in California.”
“That figures.”
“I have a suggestion,” Blair said. “Why don’t we ask these SOB people to come in and personally confront some of these bats?”
“The governor did . . . sort of. I think we are all fortunate that none of the SOB members speak French. He was, ah, less than complimentary.”
“I just bet he was,” Blair said.
“So for now we are . . . ?” Johnny asked.
“Dead in the water as far as entering the area where we think the bats are roosting. And that federal judge, his Lordship on High, has also ordered us to stop the killing of the bats unless it is in self-defense.”
“That dumb son of a bitch!” Johnny said.
Captain Alden stood up and smiled. “Cops have been saying that about federal judges for years, Johnny.
* * *
At the governor’s orders, the national guard began evacuating the handicapped and the elderly out of the parish, whether or not they wanted to go. And he also ordered martial law declared in the parish. And he also issued this order: Looters would be shot on sight. He was the first governor
in anyone’s memory to order looters shot. The press immediately began to speculate on whether that would finish the governor’s political career.
The governor had a good laugh at that. “People have been counting me out for years,” he said. “You just don’t understand the mood of southern folks when it comes to looters.”
And he was right. The press quickly conducted a survey and much to their surprise, found that a very large percentage of the population of the state felt that looters should be shot on sight. And that was one of the more humane things the citizens had to say about what should be done with and to looters. Several members of the press went to interview Ali Doomagitchamaz Holy-Breath Shazaam, who immediately condemned the shooting of looters as the act of a racist honky government.
It was then pointed out to Ali that the three looters who had been shot thus far were all white.
“Oh,” said Ali.
And it was also pointed out to Ali Shazaam that the vast majority of African-Americans surveyed supported the shooting of looters.
“See!” Shazaam shouted. “That just shows you how brain-washed they are. The CIA brought those bats in here. I betcha they did.”
“Are you suggesting that the bats are actually spooks in the employ of the CIA?”
“Don’t you be callin’ me no spook, you honky motherfucker!”
Waiting across the parish, Billy Joe Harry Bob had gotten all dressed up in his best polyester leisure suit, complete with his best imitation alligator cowboy boots and his ten gallon hat. They were going to have a parade to show the reporters they weren’t afraid of a bunch of bats. But the parade had to be called off. Of those who were going to march with Billy Joe, one guy got sick and the other one had to work.
Six
The federal judge, who as it later turned out was a tad on the senile side, having been appointed by Harry Truman back in ’45, sent federal marshals in to see that his orders were carried out. The marshals shrugged their shoulders when they met with Captain Alden and Sheriff Young.
“I know,” the trooper said. “You’re just following orders. I understand.”
“We’re going to report that you are following the judge’s orders to the letter and then we’re getting the hell out of here,” the marshal in charge said. “And best of luck to you.”
“You’re not going to order the bat-shooter’s trucks to be dismantled?” Phil asked.
“What trucks? We haven’t seen any trucks. As far as I know, they never existed.”
One of the marshals leaned forward, “Captain, we were under the impression there would be bats all over the place. We haven’t seen any bats since we’ve been in here.”
“Neither has anyone else for the past two days,” Phil answered that.
“Maybe you killed them all?” another marshal questioned.
“Not a chance,” Alden said. “We’ve killed hundreds, but there are thousands of them. And I mean, literally, thousands.”
The marshal shuddered. “We’ve seen the films. We believe you’re in a hard bind. But the judge...?” He lifted his hands.
“We understand.”
After the marshals had left, Captain Alden cut his eyes to Phil. “Now what?”
“We get set for an attack.” The Troop Commander put his elbows on the desk of his temporary HQ and said, “Phil, regardless of what the experts say, these mutant bats can think and reason. I believe that down to my toenails.”
Phil nodded his head. “Yeah. So do I, Tom. At least to some degree. I think the scientists believe that too. They’re just too damned stubborn to admit it.”
“What have you been able to find out about the kids out at Johnny’s?”
“They have no living relatives. Anywhere. They’re alone. I expect Johnny and Blair to be married when this . . . mess is all over and adopt the kids.”
A trooper stuck his head into the office. “All patrols have now reported in, Captain. There has not been a single bat sighting all day.”
Captain Tom Alden leaned back in his chair. “I wonder just what those bastard bats are up to. I just wonder.”
* * *
Nothing. The bats rested in the now protected area and waited for nightfall. They had learned it was just too risky to launch any daylight attacks. But tonight would be different. They were hungry. And thirsty.
* * *
In the few weeks they had known each other, Johnny and Blair had gone from like to love, with both still retaining the like. They had stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of sometimes unspeakable horror and not flinched. Blair was a strong woman who spoke her mind when she felt like it and, up until she met Johnny, had never met a man who would tolerate for very long her strong sense of independence. Johnny, up to this point, had never found a woman who could understand that his apparent coldness was not a lack of emotion, certainly not arrogance, but instead a reserve, a wait-and-see attitude. And Holly and Rich fit in with them like fingers in a glove.
Both Johnny and Blair had asked the brother and sister if they wanted to be sent out of this area for a time, until the danger was past. Their answer was an emphatic no. Schools throughout the parish had been closed until the bat threat was over, and the people remaining in the parish were now taking the danger very seriously—so seriously that the bats were going to have a difficult time finding food to sustain them. The residents of the parish had bunkered in, adopting a siege mentality. And that was beginning to worry the sheriffs of the surrounding parishes, for they knew if the mutants could not find food near their roosting spot, they would be forced to move, and seek flesh and blood elsewhere.
The story of the bats had moved off of page one and no longer was the top story on the networks’ evening news. Sometimes it wasn’t even mentioned. Top print and broadcast reporters were no longer in the area, the papers and networks leaving that to lesser-knowns and in many cases, stringers. The press was not missed by those engaged in the struggle against the mutant bats.
“Feed the bats poisoned meat and tainted blood,” someone suggested.
That had been tried. The bats wouldn’t touch it.
“I know what to feed them,” Billy Joe Harry Bob said.
“So do I,” Ali Doomagitchamaz Holy-Breath Shazaam said.
“Yeah,” the majority of citizens of all colors came back. “Each other!”
That shut Ali and Billy Joe up ... for the moment.
* * *
Johnny took his cup of coffee out to the front porch just as dawn was faintly coloring the sky and sat down. Blair and the kids were still sleeping.
The restlessness of the dogs had awakened him. For several days now, since the mysterious disappearance of the bats, June and Skipper had been calm. But this morning, starting about four o’clock, they had begun their pacing throughout the house. They were tense and uneasy. And to anyone even slightly versed in animal behavior, that spoke volumes.
Something, or someone, that represented danger, was close-by.
All of Clyde Dingle’s followers were either dead or had been rounded up and were now under heavy sedation, making their dying easier. They had longed for the arms of Satan, now they were getting their wish. The patrolman whose face had been half eaten off had died. About thirty percent of those locals attacked by the bats during that hideous night in the small delta town had not responded to vaccine and were sinking deeper into the throes of rabies. All that could be done for them was to keep them sedated and hope for an easy death.
Everyone in the parish who would allow themselves to be inoculated against rabies had been. But not surprising to Johnny and Blair, many refused, believing the vaccine itself would give them rabies.
As Blair had put it, “There are a lot of dumb-asses in this world.”
“Johnny rose from the chair on the porch to still the telephone. Sheriff Phil Young. ”Johnny? I just got the word. Another federal judge upheld Judge Nitwit’s order. We cannot enter the land in question, nor can we do anything to harm those bats as long as they remain in that pr
otected area.”
“What the hell brought all this on?”
“A group of scientists from all over the world, including right here in the good old US of A. They say these bats are a tremendous scientific find. They want time to study them. And as of now, they’ve sure got it.”
“What about us—the people who live in the parish?”
“We weren’t mentioned.”
“How nice of them.”
“I thought so too. So button up, Johnny. They’ll be swarming soon, bet on that. I swear these goddamn bats know every move we make.”
“I sometimes get that same feeling. See you, Phil.” I’ve got it now, Johnny thought, freshening his coffee and walking back out to the porch.
Blair came out to join him, with a cup of coffee in her hand. She sat down and yawned. “Nice to have phones again. Who was that?”
“Phil.” He told her of the latest judge’s ruling. “You don’t look surprised.”
“I’m not. I simply do not understand the thinking of many in science. These bats have no value. They’re blood drinkers and flesh eaters. They spread disease and attack people. Johnny, you told me that man from Washington—the one you think came from NSA—said these bats had to be wiped out.”
“That’s what he said.”
“And you feel he was acting on orders from the White House?”
“He . . . intimated that. But after thinking about it some, I rather doubt it. Does a president have the power to override a federal judge’s rulings? I don’t know. I haven’t paid very much attention to politics in my adult life.”
“Oh, that’s sad, Johnny.”
“Why? Do you really think you’re being represented in Washington, Blair? I hope you don’t believe that, because you’re not.”
Blair thought about that for a moment and decided she would not pursue the subject any further. Not because she didn’t enjoy a spirited debate about politics, for she did. But because she had a vague, uneasy feeling that Johnny was so close to the truth it was scary.
“I don’t think some foreign interest owns that land in question, Blair,” he said suddenly. “Not for one second.”
Bats Page 18
