Bats

by William W. Johnstone

  Eleven

  The spectators and players and coaches never had a chance. Just seconds before kick-off, the bats struck. Not nearly as many as before, but just as deadly and horrible and savage. And much smarter. They came in waves. Just like fighter planes. The harsh bright lights did not bother them at all. And the bats had changed their tactics. They slammed into people, tore at flesh and eyes, then lifted off and sought out new prey before the panicked and terrorized victims could do anything except scream—that is, providing they still had a tongue.

  The people pushed and shoved and trampled others under foot in their wild rush to get to the safety of their cars. But the bats were waiting there, too. Some of the other people, who had left their cars unlocked, jumped into their vehicles only to find that bats had opened the doors and were waiting for them.

  The bats had recognized and passed the signals that uniforms were symbols of authority. The sheriff’s deputies and local police were the first to be struck.

  Johnny had tuned into the local station and he and Blair sat on the front porch with the radio turned down low, listening, when the attack came. Johnny had the kids watching off of satellite so their program would not be interrupted by news of the attack.

  “They’re back!” The play-by-play announcer screamed into his mic. “The bats are back. They’re attacking the players and the people in the stands. Oh, my God, there’s blood everywhere. It’s . . .”

  That was the last thing the announcer said as bats soared into the press box and continued their deadly work.

  Blair and Johnny sat and listened to the frantic screaming of people and the howling and crying of the injured. There was nothing either of them could do.

  “My eyes! My eyes!” a woman shrieked. “Help me. I can’t see.”

  Her voice was suddenly stilled as she was knocked off the bleachers and sent tumbling down to the ground as panicked people were running wild-eyed in all directions.

  Then several citizens hauled out their pistols and started blasting away. Their bullets missed the bats and struck other citizens. A half a dozen went down, critically wounded from the slugs. The bats feasted.

  Wives and husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends, became separated in their rush for safety. Children were left behind, unintentionally or deliberately. Several bats landed on the face masks of players, reached in with their claws and removed eyes. The blinded players ran screaming in pain and confusion. Several cheerleaders went down, covered with bats. Band members swung their horns at the bats in a futile attempt to drive them off.

  The parking lot soon resembled an anything-goes demolition derby, as cars and trucks smashed into other vehicles. Kids on bikes were run down and crushed by terrorized drivers. Motorcyclists were easy prey. The exits soon became blocked and drivers were smashing through fences and running over people in their haste to get away.

  Some people made it to the gym, only to find that the bats had learned how to open doors and were waiting for them. The polished floor soon became slick with blood.

  The driver of an eighteen-wheeler, seeing all the people running in all directions had pulled over on the shoulder of the highway to see what all the fuss was about. He rolled down his window, and in seconds bats had covered his head and were feasting. In his pain he floorboarded the pedal and the truck lurched forward. He jumped the ditch, headed across the school parking lot, and went crashing into the high school building. The big rig went slamming down the corridor, finally stopping with the cab inside the auditorium, the driver dead, slumped over the wheel.

  The bats were gone, vanishing into the dark skies as swiftly and silently as they had come. Those who survived the attack were numbed as they looked around them. Friends and neighbors were staggering around, blood pouring from head wounds. Some had eyes torn out. The more fortunate ones were being led, while others were stumbling around, crying and calling out for someone, anyone, to help them. Some residents were sitting on the ground, male and female alike, openly weeping in cold shock and horror.

  Two deputies and two city patrolmen were dead, their throats torn out. Moody got hold of Phil Young and he was flying back in by private plane. Captain Alden sent as many troopers as he could screaming into the area as soon as he heard the news. By the time Tom personally arrived at the scene, the night was flashing Technicolor with every ambulance that could be sent in from a sixty mile radius.

  Then the bats struck again.

  Captain Alden caught the silent deadly shapes coming in out of the corner of his eye and he jumped for a car. It was Mark’s unit and he was right behind the captain. They slammed and locked the doors and were helpless to do anything except watch the carnage begin anew.

  Several EMTs were taken down, their faces mangled and their throats gushing blood. Their struggles were brief as the huge bats tore the life from them.

  The ones who were exposed and who kept their wits about them jumped for the safety of vehicles. Those who panicked ran ... and died.

  And the savage attacks were not occurring in just this one parish. In the parishes north and south and to the west, and in several counties in Mississippi across the river, the bats had massed and were attacking, and they were striking at the exposed, highly vulnerable and totally unprepared people sitting in the stands at local high school football games, munching hot dogs, drinking soft drinks and coffee, cheering on the home teams, and enjoying the game.

  Their enjoyment was very brief that night.

  The bats did not come in as before; their numbers were not that great after the fire. They were attacking in small groups, in what one person later described as a hit-and-run assault. Like the bats had it planned that way.

  That citizen was a lot more correct in his description than he realized.

  The bats struck hard and then went winging silently off, human blood dripping from mouths and claws. They disappeared into the dark night skies in very small groups. No more would they gather in large colonies; they had learned a hard lesson about that. In twos and threes and fours they could hide undetected nearly anywhere they chose. In garages, in attics, in murky corners of barns, in thick leafy branches, in warehouses, in storage rooms, in the hulks of cars and trucks in junkyards, in basements, in sheds, in boathouses, in seldom-used rooms in private dwellings, and in closets.

  After the swift and bloody bat attacks in the parishes of Madison, Concordia, Catahoula, and Franklin, the sheriffs’ deputies and city police began trying to restore order, get the injured to hospitals, and begin the grisly task of counting their dead.

  The governor placed the Louisiana National Guard on alert and mobilized several companies, starting them rolling into the attack areas that night. The first units to go in were medical and military police. The next were infantry and one Special Forces unit. Following them were transportation units to help in case the areas had to be evacuated. Rabies vaccine was being flown in and pharmaceutical factories all over the nation started working around the clock producing the life-saving vaccine.

  Everyone in five Louisiana parishes and three Mississippi counties breathed a sigh of relief when the sun came bubbling over the horizon the next morning.

  Both the national and the world’s press began descending on the hard hit areas like locust, sticking microphones in peoples’ faces and asking questions like: “How did you feel while your best friend was getting her face eaten off?” Or: “What will you do if the bats return?” So it went.

  The live satellite broadcasts, without any five-second delays, ended when a local in Madison, after being asked how he had felt during the attack at the football stadium, told the reporter, his words going all over the world: “I damn near shit all over myself, that’s how I felt. You silly son of a bitch!”

  * * *

  Building materials and heavy wire and sheets of expanded metal in the five parish area of Louisiana and several Mississippi counties sold out by noon on the day following the bat attack. Sheriffs’ deputies and local city police, already weary from a long and
sleepless night, were kept busy breaking up fistfights between people who had wire and sheets of plywood, and those who had come to buy and found there was none available.

  People who for years had loudly demanded that the government get out of their lives, were now loudly demanding that the government do something to help them.

  Sheriffs’ offices and police stations and every phone line going into them were packed and buzzing with people demanding that the local law officers do something.

  “Sure,” the sheriffs and chiefs of police told them. “Absolutely. We’ll get right on it. Let me look at these notes here for a second. I have six field deputies and two thousand complaints logged. We’ll get to you on Wednesday . . . in 1998. Of course, if we don’t get new cars we might have to come out on horseback. That’ll put us getting to you on ... umm ... Tuesday, of the year 2002.”

  Most of the parish residents were not amused.

  * * *

  “Any bat attacks today?” Johnny asked Phil, using his truck phone.

  “No. Thank God. Not a bat sighted anywhere.”

  “How about the phones?”

  “Phone company says it’s going to be weeks before they get service to everybody. They’re working the towns first, then they’ll head for the country.”

  “But no bat attacks today?”

  “Not a one. None Saturday, and so far, none today. But there have been sightings. They’re moving.”

  “Interesting,” Johnny said.

  That very night, only a few hours after Johnny spoke with Phil, the bats gathered and attacked the residents of Alexandria, a small city of some fifty thousand people, about seventy-five miles south and west of the river parishes, catching the people just as they were leaving churches after the evening service. The attacks lasted no more than two or three minutes and then the bats were gone, vanishing into the night skies. They left behind them dead, blinded, maimed, bloodied and horror-filled residents. Everybody assumed the bats would not attack away from the river parishes. Everybody was wrong.

  “Bats don’t behave like this,” experts said. “They have a specific hunting territory. They don’t just go off, flying willy-nilly all over the place.”

  “So much for expert opinion,” Johnny said, turning off the TV. He found a map of Louisiana and spread it out on the dining room table. Using a colored accent pen, he began drawing a line of the bats’ attack.

  “What are you doing?” Blair asked, standing behind him.

  “I’m not sure. Not yet.”

  The next night, the bats struck the campus of Northwestern State University at Natchitoches and nailed several dozen students, killing one and sending the small campus into a state of panic. Johnny added another colored line to his map.

  Johnny sat at the dining room table and studied the map for several minutes, then he shook his head. “Shreveport is next,” he muttered, heading for his truck and his phone. “Bet on it. It’s impossible, but that’s what it’s shaping up to look like. If they turn east after Shreveport . . .” He hesitated. He had no proof. It was just a hunch. A shaky theory. Nothing really to support the supposition. He went ahead and made his call. All they could do was laugh at him.

  He called Tom Alden at the troop in Monroe. But Tom had been called to a meeting in Baton Rouge. He asked if Lieutenant Woloszyk was there. No. Sorry. A trooper had been forced to use his sidearm in making an arrest, killing the suspect, and Woloszyk was on the scene.

  Johnny returned to the dining room table and sat looking at the map. He took his accent pen and drew a single line angling southwest from Natchitoches. Then he remembered there had been a small attack on another town just a few hours before the larger attack at Alexandria. He added another line.

  “Incredible!” he said.

  Johnny was alone in the house, Holly and Rich having gone with Blair to the clinic that day. Schools had been shut down indefinitely in a five parish area, with more being closed over North Louisiana every day as the attacks became more frequent. There had been no more attacks in Mississippi.

  After Blair had taken her shower and the kids had a snack, Johnny showed her the map.

  Blair blinked a couple of times at the lines he’d drawn and then put serious eyes on him. “But all this is ...” She closed her mouth.

  “Impossible. Yeah. I know. But there it is.”

  She put a finger on the map and traced a half circle from Minden to Monroe, staying north of the interstate. “But this is pure speculation.”

  “That’s right. That’s all it is. Just a theory.”

  “These lines down here, southeast and southwest. That would be the . . .”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  Blair leaned against the table for a moment. “I need a drink.”

  “Fix me one, too, would you?” Johnny said, just as the phone rang.

  “Tom, here, Johnny. Did you call the troop today looking for me?”

  “Yeah, I did, Tom. I may be all wrong about this. And you are probably going to laugh at me, but I think Shreveport is going to get hit tonight, with a smaller attack somewhere around the Toledo Bend area.”

  Tom was silent for a few heartbeats. “All right. How do you figure it, Johnny?”

  Johnny laid it out for him, feeling just a little bit like a fool as he did.

  “That’s wild, for a fact,” Tom said. “But you don’t hear me laughing, do you? These damn bats are totally unpredictable. Hold on. Let me get a map.” He was back in a moment. “Stay with me while I unfold this . . .” There was a rustling of paper. “... goddamn thing! Now where’s a pencil? OK. I’m drawing the lines like you said. There. All right. We have . . . Good Jesus Christ. Would you look at that. It’s taking shape.”

  “What do you see, Tom?”

  “Just what you said I would. But . . . why?”

  “I don’t know why. Maybe there is something supernatural about this thing.”

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Yeah? Well . . . neither do I. Look, I’ll FAX a rough drawing of this over to the troop in Shreveport. But we don’t have much time to get the people off the streets. It’ll be dark in about an hour. This would make a hell of a movie, Johnny.”

  “That’s a fact. Providing any of us live long enough to see it.”

  Twelve

  Several hundred bats struck at residents of a small town just east of the Toledo Bend Reservoir just as several thousand bats descended on Shreveport and went on the attack inside a huge mall. After all the blood was mopped up, the bodies of the dead carried away, and the hundreds of injured taken to hospitals, it was theorized that the bats entered the mall through a door that had accidently been left open. But no one knew for sure. What they did know for sure is that this attack was as savage as any that had occurred along the river parishes, and much more deadly.

  The bats struck as a unit, seemingly well-planned and certainly well-carried-out. Panicked and screaming men and women and children were running all over the place, some with bats wrapped around their heads, tearing at flesh. Some of those, blinded by the winged fury, went crashing into show windows, slamming into other panicked shoppers, and running wildly through stores, knocking over merchandise and clerks in their frantic search for safety.

  Windows and walls became splattered with blood. The floor of the mall became littered with screaming people, all with some degree of facial, throat, and neck mutilation—about one in five dead. The floors soon became slippery with fresh blood and the frightened running patrons were sliding and slipping all over the place, slamming into walls and seriously hurting themselves in vicious falls on the hard floors.

  A half a dozen police cars squalled up and the cops ran inside. The bats turned on them in a fury, riding them down to the floor and eating their eyes and faces and tongues. Some of the bats found their way out onto the parking lot and had a fine time with those shoppers who mistakenly thought they had found safety outside
the mall.

  One young man jumped into his car and gave several bats hovering outside the middle finger, taunting them. But not for long. He forgot to lock his door. The bats hissed and squealed and howled and slobbered at the young man, opened the door, and had another light snack that evening.

  Inside, people had grabbed up the guns of the fallen officers and were blasting and banging away. They didn’t hit a single one of the bats but they did inflict quite a few terrible wounds on some of the shoppers.

  The bats left in an almost silent rush of wings, human blood mixed in with the rabid slobber leaking from the mouths. The EMTs who responded from hospitals all over the city stood for a moment in shock. None of them had ever seen anything to equal the sight that lay moaning and twitching and bleeding and whimpering and screaming on the bloody floor. Some were wandering sightlessly in the mall, calling out for help, bloody empty sockets where their eyes had been.

  The commander of the state police troop in Shreveport ran into the mall and almost fell down on the blood-slick floor. Like the EMTs, he, too, stood for a moment, not believing his eyes. At least he had eyes to see out of.

  Doctors who had arrived at the scene were yelling out for the EMTs and nurses to be careful, to wear gloves, to assume that all those down were infected with rabies.

  The police chief arrived, almost falling down on the slippery floor, took one look at what was left of his dead and savaged officers, and threw up all over part of a wall. It was only with the greatest of efforts on his part that prevented the troop commander from joining him.

  Both men recovered and both yelled together, “Seal off this area.”

  “And watch out for bats,” the state police captain said. He added in a low voice, “Tom, I take back anything I ever said derogatory about your situation east of here.”

  He looked at the FAX from Tom. “Impossible. It’s. . . just impossible.”

  * * *

  “Johnny,” Captain Alden said. “This is Dr. Enrique Bajat. He is the world’s foremost authority on bats and their behavior.”