Chief Deputy Moody reached for his pistol, thought better of it, and turned his head, looking through the crap and slobber-streaked window into the savage eyes of a bat, hanging upside down from the top of the car. “I really, truly believe this is the worse damn night of my life,” Moody said.
“And it isn’t going to get any better with those two in the back,” Phil said.
“Don’t remind me.”
“Porch monkey!” Billy Joe squalled, slamming his head into Shazaam’s chest.
“Pus-brained clodhopper!” Shazaam screamed, taking a bite out of Billy Joe’s arm.
“Ooww!” Billy Joe hollered, kicking out, the toe of his genuine imitation lizard cowboy boot connecting with Shazaam’s shin.
“Oowww!” Shazaam yelled, kicking out, the toe of his shoe landing squarely on Billy Joe’s knee.
“‘At there’s my bad knee!” Billy Joe hollered. “’At’s no fair. No kickin’ on the knee.”
Shazaam promptly kicked him again, on the same knee. The two men began butting heads and screaming at each other. After a moment, the back seat became eerily silent.
“If I give each of you a gun,” Phil said. “will you promise to use them on each other?”
Moody and Phil twisted in the front seat and turned on the dome light. Shazaam and Billy Joe were sprawled unconscious. The men had battered themselves with head-butts until they knocked each other out.
Phil reached up and clicked off the light. He said, “When we get back, Jimmy . . . If we ever get back, do we really want to put these two in the same jail?”
“Hell, no!” the chief deputy blurted.
“You have any suggestions as to what to do with them?”
“Oh, yeah.” Moody spoke softly for a moment.
“Beautiful,” Phil said. “Just beautiful.”
* * *
After inflicting hideous casualties during the first attack, the bats regrouped for their second assault that evening. But by now, the people in the parish, residents and sightseers alike, had barricaded themselves in, most taking refuge in their cars and trucks and motor homes.
In the MacBride home, Johnny picked up the phone. Dr. Bajat. “I just spotted the scouts,” the scientist said. “The rest shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours behind.”
“I’ve got to see it to believe it, Doctor.”
“You’ll see it. And it will be a sight like none other you have ever witnessed. By dawn, this terror will be over. The huge bats I have in captivity are screaming in fright, all huddled together. They know the end is near. You and Blair sit out on the front porch. The show is about to begin.”
Johnny rang off and told Blair what Bajat had said. She shook her head. “I only hope he’s right.”
“Where are the kids?”
“Believe it or not, they went to sleep right after the bats left.”
“I’ll fix some coffee. We’ll sit out on the porch and wait for the show to start.”
Outside, tiny shapes began whizzing through the night skies.
Seventeen
The bats suddenly stopped their wild shrieking and as one lifted off from Captain Alden’s unit and were gone into the night, leaving the two men staring at each other through the very slight touch of light that seeped through the bat crap on the windows. Tom turned on the windshield washers and let them run for about a minute, until he could see out clearly.
The two men looked around them very carefully. There was not a bat to be seen.
“What the hell is going on?” Mark questioned, his voice loud in the silence that surrounded them.
“I don’t know. But I like it.”
Both men picked up on the tiny shapes that were flitting through the night skies.
“What the hell are those?” Tom asked.
“I don’t have any idea. Whatever they are, they aren’t interested in us.”
“Thank God. Those are ... no,” Tom said, shaking his head. “That’s impossible.”
“No, it isn’t, Captain. You’re right about it. They’re little bats! Little tiny bats.”
“My God, Mark, look at them. There are thousands of them.”
* * *
In his lab at the old highway department buildings, Dr. Bajat, using special night binoculars, was smiling as he watched the bats. Every few seconds, he would lower the glasses and make a notation in a journal.
“I was correct. I was correct. There is the South-eastern Myotis,” he muttered. Then he lifted the glasses to his eyes and watched. “Ah! The Big Brown Bat. And there is the Red Bat. Well, now. Look at that. The Seminole Bat. And there is the Northern Yellow Bat, just slightly out of their territory. But looking for a fight. I thought they’d be among those who gathered. And there is the Evening Bat.” He made some fast notations and once more lifted the glasses. “Ah! Wonderful. Rafinesque’s Big-Eared Bat. And there they are. Hundreds of thousands of them, I’m sure. The Brazilian Free-Tailed Bat.”
The other scientists had gathered around and were watching silently. Bajat had just that evening told them of his theory. Now he smiled. He’d been right in his thinking.
Dr. Bajat’s smile faded. What he had not told them was his other theory: that if these newly arrived bats were not victorious, were unable to defeat the huge blood-drinking and flesh-eating bats . . . it could well mean the end of human life on earth.
In the center of the parish, people were standing silently by heavily screened windows, standing on reinforced front porches, sitting in cars and trucks and vans, watching the life-and-death struggle between the bats.
The huge bats that had terrorized the state no longer had any interest in humans; they were too busy attempting to fight off the thousands of tiny bats that had descended upon them. The giant bats were much heavier, much stronger, but also much slower. The smaller bats would zip in, tear off a hunk of wing, and be gone into the night skies before the larger bats could retaliate. Crippled, unable to fly, the huge bats would slowly tumble to earth, spinning like an uncontrollable airplane. Residents then blew them into bloody chunks with shotguns.
The night skies grew dark with hundreds of thousands of tiny bats, all locked in mortal combat. The smaller bats, most weighing no more than a few ounces, fought the huge bats savagely, using hit and dodge tactics.
“It’s incredible,” Blair said, standing on the front porch, watching the bats at war high above her. “It flies in the face of logic.”
Johnny said nothing for a moment. He was mesmerized by the aerial combat high above him. He shook his head in disbelief and said, “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be rooting for a bat.”
A huge bat, slobber leaking from its mouth, fell awkwardly from the skies, its wings damaged by dozens of tiny bites. Johnny walked to the fortified screen door, opened it a crack, lifted a .22 pistol and put the final touches to that mutant.
Moody had taken Shazaam and Billy Joe to a doctor, and he was now heading south, for the Gulf of Mexico. The two troublemakers were sound asleep in the back seat. Moody had loaded syringes that he would use on the pair before heading back north, after he dumped his load.
“I never gave a shot to a human before,” he’d told the doctor. “But I used to vaccinate my dogs.”
“Just pop them in the butt,” the doctor said. “And you don’t have to be as gentle with them as you were with your dogs.”
As he drove through the night, putting the combat-locked parish behind him, Moody wondered if there would be anything left to return to?
The huge mutant bats tried to escape the fury of their winged cousins. But the tiny bats chased them down and hammered at them relentlessly, diving in and tearing at them with their teeth, ripping flesh and crippling wings. The earth soon became littered with the carcasses of huge bats.
The many TV camera crews were filming as much of the combat as they could, from behind the safety of the glass of vans and cars and private homes. It was the most incredible sight any of them had ever witnessed.
Th
e night was filled with shrieking, hissing, howling, screeching; the din was awful.
But it was beautiful music to the ears of those residents of the parish.
As the tiny bats tired and swooped down to rest, others took their place in combat.
“It’s as if they planned and rehearsed this,” Captain Alden said, unable to take his eyes off the incredible sight unfolding high above him.
“Maybe they did,” Mark said softly. “Maybe they’ve been doing this for thousands of years and we just didn’t know about it until now.”
“I hate to admit it, but you’re probably right. But that doesn’t mean I’m ever going to buy you lunch again.”
Phil Young sat in his office, at his desk, and watched the unbelievable through his big window.
“Where’s Moody?” Dale asked.
“He had to go south on an errand. He’ll probably be back around dawn.”
There was something in the sheriff’s voice that silently told the deputy not to ask anything more about the “errand.”
“You reckon this is it?” the deputy asked him. “This night is going to finish it?”
“One way or the other,” Phil replied.
The fast flurry of wings and the frantic screechings began to slowly decrease in tempo. By midnight, all combat had ceased. The living bats, large and small, were gone. The ground was littered with dead and dying and crippled mutant bats.
Phil ordered sound trucks to go out into the parish and warn people to stay in their homes until dawn. The hundreds of wounded bats flopping around on the ground were still very dangerous. They would be dealt with commencing at first light.
“Let’s get some sleep,” Johnny said. “Tomorrow we can finally put an end to it.”
Eighteen
A rocking motion awakened Billy Joe Harry Bob. He opened his eyes and groaned. He couldn’t get his eyes in focus. Felt like he’d been on a ten day drunk. He felt awful. He was in bed. It was a bunk, he finally realized. A bunk? And that slight rocking motion... he finally figured out what it was. He was on a boat. A boat?
He opened his eyes and swung his feet to the floor just as the door to his cabin opened and a very black man stuck his head inside and grinned at him.
“What the hell do you want?” Billy Joe said.
The black man’s grin widened. “Just checking on you, sir. We wouldn’t want anything to disturb your vacation, now, would we?”
“What vacation? I don’t know nothing ’bout no goddamn vacation. Who the hell are you and where the hell am I?”
“You are a passenger on the Ebony Star, Mr. Billy Joe. Just relax and enjoy your cruise. We’re a cargo ship, but we do occasionally carry passengers. We’ll be docking in about a week.”
“A week! Where the hell are we going?”
The black man laughed. “Our home port is in Nigeria.”
“Nigeria! You mean like in Africa?”
“Yes. It’s a lovely country. By the way, your application for citizenship has been approved.”
“Citizenship! In Nigeria?”
“Yes. Welcome, brother.”
“Brother! I ain’t your goddamn brother. Halp! Let me out of here. Halp!”
* * *
Ali Shazaam stared at the very blond-haired and fair-skinned man. He blinked. “Would you repeat that, you honky?”
“I said, your application for citizenship has been approved. We’ll be docking in about a week.”
“Application for citizenship? Is you crazy? Docking? Where?”
“At a port on the Black Sea. Welcome, Comrade.”
“I ain’t your comrade! What kind of a ship is this?”
“It’s Russian.”
“Russian!”
“Yes. You’ll like the new Russia. It’s a wonderful country.”
“Russia! Halp! Get me out of here. Russia! I demand to see a lawyer. I demand to see Jesse Jackson. I demand . . .”
He was still demanding as the sailor closed the door.
Nineteen
“Phil really sent Shazaam to Russia and Billy Joe to Nigeria?” Blair asked.
Mark grinned and took a bite of sandwich. “That’s the story that’s circulating. Phil, of course, says he doesn’t know a thing about it. Billy Joe and Shazaam will be back, but it’ll take about a year, at least, to process their papers. Phil has some good friends down in New Orleans, in the shipping business, that agreed to go along with this farce.”
“Why so long?” Johnny asked. “The embassy usually gets right on these things.”
Mark laughed. “’Cause they’re both in jail! That’s why. The story I get is that Shazaam punched out a cop and Billy Joe told a senior Nigerian official he wasn’t about to take orders from some goddamn ignorant spade.”
Johnny winced. “That will just about always guarantee some time in the poky.”
Two weeks had passed since the “night of the bats,” as it was now referred to. For the first few days after the terrible battle in the night skies, people killed hundreds of wounded and unable to fly mutant bats. Several people were savagely bitten, but there had been no casualties. By the end of that first week after the battle, no bats were found. None had been sighted since.
The thousands of tiny brave bats had done their work and vanished, either back to their hibernation spots, or migrating south. Dr. Bajat said his goodbyes to all and returned to South America, saying his work was finished and he had some papers to write.
The press had left the parish—nothing to report now, except for people trying to put their lives back together—and conditions were rapidly settling down. Schools had reopened. The national guard had pulled out and there were only a few sightseers straggling in and out. It was late fall and soon the first frost would arrive.
“You going to build something, Johnny?” Mark asked, pointing to the lumber in the back of Johnny’s pickup.
“Yes. Bat houses. I found an article on bats and it shows how to build a house for them.”
Blair smiled at the expression on Mark’s face and said, “They are really very beneficial creatures, Mark.”
“If you say so,” the trooper replied. “You think the mutant bats were wiped out, Blair?”
“Oh, no. A few got away, I’m sure. But Dr. Bajat said it would take years for them to repopulate in any number.”
“Then they’ll be back?”
“I don’t think they’ll come back here,” Blair said. “They were defeated soundly and their instincts will warn them away from this area.”
“You hope,” Johnny said.
“Yes,” Blair spoke the words softly. “I hope.”
Twenty
About forty miles to the north of where Johnny and Blair and Mark sat talking, half a dozen huge bats had found a long-abandoned old building and were settling in for winter’s hibernation. A half a mile away, four other huge bats had found shelter in an old barn. On the other side of Madison Parish, near the Richland Parish line, another small colony of huge bats had taken up residence in the attic of an old home. The bats had mated, and come the spring, there would be new birth among them. They all knew that others of their kind had escaped the deadly assault from their tiny cousins. They knew where those other survivors were, and come the spring, they would gather to hunt. But they would be cautious for several seasons. They would attack no humans, except for the occasional night hitchhiker who would not be missed. Their numbers had been reduced to only a few hundred. But in a few years, there would be several thousand of them.
They would then send out the call for others of their kind to gather, and once more the huge bats would take flight and resume the hunt for human flesh and blood.
In a few years, the people in this parish would have forgotten all about the bats. No one would be on guard. The hunt would be good. The bats would wait. They were patient. They had been doing this for hundreds of years in isolated parts of Mexico and South America, and they would continue doing it for hundreds more. The food source was much more plentiful here in N
orth America.
The huge bats slept, waiting for spring, and the hunt.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Though known largely for his epic tales of the American West including The Mountain Man series, New York Times bestselling author William W. Johnstone began his career by writing some of the most frightening and nightmare-inducing novels of his generation, including The Devil’s Heart and The Devil’s Kiss, which have developed a cult following in the years since their first publication.
You can learn more about Johnstone’s books including upcoming releases and special promotions by visiting williamjohnstone.net or kensingtonbooks.com.
Look for these other horrifying tales from William W. Johnstone.
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