Bat out of Hell

by Alan Gold

  “I’m not thinking anything, just want to try to get a grip on the environment around here. I want my people to collect some bat droppings and a live bat if possible. I’m going to radio through to Marine One.”

  She went outside into the open air, away from the entry of the cave and picked up the two-way that the captain had given her. She asked him if he could patch her through to the White House. When she got through to the personal assistant with the number given to her by the president, she instructed the young woman to contact the veterinary department of New York University and get the scientists to collect the samples she needed. And she gave strict orders that anybody who entered the cave was to wear full hazmat protection including air-breathing equipment. Also, a mobile shower and disinfection van was to accompany them for when they left the cave.

  When she disconnected, she turned and smiled at Will Saville. But before she could ask him to drive her back, the ground under her feet shook as though there was a minor earthquake taking place. She turned and saw that a giant excavator was using a pneumatic power tooth to punch deep holes into the stone to weaken and fracture the granite and then a separate bucket would carve out vast scars of earth and rock at the construction site.

  “Can I borrow your flashlight?” she asked.

  She knew the risks to her, but decided to walk just inside the entryway to the cave . . . holding her breath as she entered. But she could tell instantly that the stench was overpowering. Urine and ammonia and the putrid reek of decomposition. She had to breathe again, and so she soldiered on, shining the flashlight into the black depths of the cave. As she walked deeper and deeper, she became aware that the shadows cast by the flashlight’s beam were making her frightened. Silly, because she was within running distance of the cave mouth . . . yet there could be black or grizzly bears in here, or other animals like mountain lions who might like to take a bite out of her. Especially as she could feel the vibrations of the giant earth-moving equipment outside, which must be causing a disturbance to animals that used the cave as a daytime sanctuary.

  She was about to walk out when she shone the flashlight beam up into the ceiling of the cave. A shudder of horror rocked her body as she looked at what the brilliant light had illuminated and saw, high on the roof of the cave—quivering—dozens of bats. They were hanging on nooks and crannies, in little pits in the rock wall, or from spurs in the roof of the cave. And as the ground beneath her feet vibrated, so too did the cave walls. And the bats. The groundbreaking, jarring, massive machinery outside was affecting the peace and tranquility inside the cave. Daniel Todd had shown her videos he’d taken of bat colonies asleep in caves. Those bats were docile, still, only the occasional one moving and altering its position, but these bats were behaving very differently. They were shaking, as though they were frightened.

  Debra walked quickly out of the cave and into the brilliant summer sunlight. She had been terrified of breathing the same air as the bats, touching the same surfaces, being in the same place. She would have to get the analytical results as quickly as possible if she were to quell this outbreak. But in her heart, she already knew the result. Although she certainly wasn’t an expert on bats, she knew a sick colony when she saw one. And this was a depressed, depleted, and stressed-out colony. God only knew what the viral load was within these creatures’ blood. It must be a cocktail of every malevolent disease that could cause mayhem in the human population.

  And if what she instinctively knew was proven correct, they would have to be exterminated. Immediately.

  8

  OFFICES OF CHAT UPTOWN MANHATTAN

  Tom Pollard, president of CHAT, reacted in anger when his phone rang. He was in the middle of reading the New York Times’ story about the discovery of bats in some cave in upstate New Jersey being the most likely source of the infection that had taken the lives of twenty-five kids, and, at last count, seven adults in a small town. As he read, he tried to figure out an angle he could use, but for once, caution took control of his promotional instincts, and he knew in his heart that he shouldn’t try to capitalize on the tragedy by coming out in public and trying to defend the bats. The public hated bats. There would be zero public concern about their fate, and having been responsible for the deaths of young children, the chance of Americans wanting them to be spared the executioner’s wrath was non-existent.

  And the stakes were too high for Tom and CHAT to become involved in the debate. Only a day or two ago, Tom was listening while the president of the United States crucified some asshole fundamentalist minister for making capital over the deaths of these poor kids, and Tom certainly wasn’t going to get a tongue lashing from President Thomas.

  He picked up the phone and hissed, “What?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, Tom, but there’s a man on the phone who insists on talking to you.”

  “Who?”

  “He refuses to give his name. He just says that you’ll want to speak with him.”

  Without waiting for permission, his PA put the call through.

  “Who is this?” asked Tom.

  “I don’t want to give my name because I can assure you that the Feds are listening in right now. I just want to know whether you and CHAT are going to do anything to save these bats. They’re about to be slaughtered by the United States government . . . they may already have been slaughtered . . . but it was Americans who make them carriers of these deadly viruses, and instead of making restitution, we’re going to kill the victims of our transgressions. Are you going to do something to protect them? Yes or no. And don’t think that it’ll just be these bats in New Jersey that are slaughtered. Every bat and probably every bird in America is threatened.”

  “Who are you?” asked Tom.

  “Think Pollard. Think about who could be asking such a question, when the whole of America is baying for the innocent blood of these creatures. Think about who really is concerned about the earth, its creatures, its ecology. Not a bunch of shitheads like you and your CHAT-erers who strip naked in front of pet stores to make television pictures. Not an organization that gets airhead Hollywood movie stars to cry crocodile tears about cuddly, fluffy animals. I’m a man who thinks that all life is sacred, from the humblest insect to gorillas and polar bears; animals that mankind is pushing to extinction because of his insatiable greed and desire. I’m a man who speaks out and points the finger at who’s really responsible for the mess the earth and all its creatures are in. So do you know who I am yet? And are you and CHAT going to do anything to save these bats?”

  Light dawned when he began to put two and two together. Pollard knew who was on the phone. He was the very last person to whom he wanted to speak.

  “Professor Stuart Chalmers, I assume.”

  “Are you and CHAT going to do anything to stop the slaughter of these bats?” he insisted.

  “I don’t want to talk to you, Chalmers. Don’t phone here again.”

  “Moron.”

  Tom Pollard put the phone down. His mind reeled, going over the conversation, trying to pinpoint any threats. The last thing he needed was to be associated with the fanatics of the Whole Earth League. And there was no doubt that the police or the Feds were monitoring his phone calls as well as those of Chalmers and his fellow fanatics in WEL.

  If Tom contacted the FBI about the phone call, it would score him some brownie points and might get them off his back. Or should he leave it alone? The Feds would have recorded this phone call, so if he didn’t report Chalmers’ contact, he could be seen to be acting in complicity, and it would be a black mark against him. There was only one decision, and he’d already made it.

  He picked up the phone, opened his address book, and dialed the number of the FBI district officer who had recently warned him that CHAT’s activities were close to breaching federal regulations, especially if he’d ordered the crime across state lines to break a window of the fur shop in Florida. This phone call from Stuart Chalmers and its implied consequences would be reported by him to the Feds. At l
east, when the shit hit the fan, he wouldn’t be caught in the updraft.

  ***

  A thousand miles away, Professor Stuart Chalmers, department chair of the Philosophy Department of the University of Wisconsin School of the Mind, replaced the receiver and smiled. The FBI was monitoring his phone calls and would certainly have monitored CHAT’s phone and now would be buzzing with what Chalmers was planning to do. They assumed that he would be planning an assault by his Whole Earth League. Something big—something showy—something to do with the bats! He smiled. How wrong they would be.

  Chalmers loved the cat and mouse game he played with the Feds. Twelve major terrorist assaults this year alone against electric utilities, animal transport and haulage firms, government offices, and God knows who else—and even though he’d been questioned each time, they’d never had the evidence to charge him.

  Nor would they this time, when Chalmers and his handful of lieutenants in the fight to save the earth and its flora and fauna from the ravages of humankind, committed the greatest homegrown antigovernment assault in history. Okay, not as big as 9/11 but this one would be against Americans . . . by Americans. More spectacular than the Oklahoma bombing, he would strike at the very rotten heart of a corrupt system of government that slaughtered animals that had been prostituted by humankind’s intervention, nature’s creatures changed by humans to become unwilling and unwitting killers of little children. Not that he truly cared about little children . . . or big children . . . or people or, if truth were told, even some animals. Some of them, like snakes and rats and spiders and yes, bats, made his skin crawl. It was his philosophical mind that wanted to protect them from humanity, not his emotional mind. His ineffable joy came from knowing that he could make the United States’ law enforcement authorities look silly and stupid, knowing that they knew he’d committed these crimes, but being unable to prove it.

  And soon, he’d rise up above the law enforcement buffoons and attack the US government itself. And he’d even warn the authorities before he did it, just to give them a heads up. Not a big warning, of course, but rather a hint that something might be awry so that when the inevitable senate or congressional investigation took place, somebody would uncover a telephone warning to some district office of the FBI that had been ignored, that hadn’t been acted upon, and the Bureau would have some explaining to do by shocked politicians in their splendid isolation in Washington, pontificating and thumping desks.

  He’d warned them a day or two before every assault his group had committed, but his warnings had never been heeded in the past. He smiled to himself as he mused on the past two decades of being the most carefully guarded secret in the FBI’s annals—the man they’d most like to exterminate . . . the man they were unable to prosecute.

  The US system had brought this on itself, and bats and kids were the innocent victims. And while the Feds were monitoring his movements in New York, assuming that he’d gone there to do some dastardly act of terrorism, all he’d really be doing was giving a lecture; and at the very moment that he was teaching in front of an audience of hundreds, one of his WEL group would be preparing to commit a huge act of aggression against the government. While he was being monitored by the Bureau, while he was asleep in his motel in Manhattan, the act would be committed. And in the aftermath, when the dust was beginning to settle, no matter how the cops and the Feds tried to pin it on him, he’d come out of it as clean as the driven snow. Nor would they, or could they, connect any associate with him. All his meetings were held covertly in different locations, and he was known to be a total loner in his private life. It was a delicious irony.

  Soon the American people would feel the wrath of the Whole Earth League and be forced to change its ways. Mickey Mouse organizations like PETA and CHAT were brilliant for distracting public attention from the real eco-warriors, men like him and the dozens of handpicked troopers from around the world who’d joined him in the most secret and underground resistance movement the world had ever known, dedicated to reversing the ravages that humanity had wreaked on a globe that was theirs to share, not dominate. Dear heavens, how he hated humanity . . . how he hated all living things . . . how he hated.

  WEL had become one of the most covert and tightly run organizations by adopting the modus operandi of Al-Qaeda and some other Arab terrorist organizations; only a tiny number of those at the very apex of the organization knew its structure. These were the handful of people who ran the organization but who recruited those locally to do their dirty work.

  The minions below were organized into cells, and those cell leaders only knew the name of one man or woman at the top of the next cell up. Chalmers had organized it along Al-Qaeda lines so that the only numbers that could be busted by the police were miniscule, and even if they were tortured, they simply didn’t know who else was involved. Which was the reason for their success in the early days; so if one cell was busted, it was virtually impossible for the police or the Feds to work their way up the chain of command to Chalmers and his colleagues who ran WEL. Perfect decentralization. Perfect cover for him—an honest and nonviolent, though profoundly controversial, philosophy professor.

  Yeah! Right!

  He was front-page news in the New York Times, and everybody in the United States knew of his radical ideas—his demand for an end to all human destruction of the environment and the earth’s remaining fauna and flora—but equally well, everybody thought he was an amiable nutcase, somebody so off the planet as to be laughable. Even the senate of his university had demanded his dismissal, and had it not been for the president who’d insisted on academic freedom, he’d have been on the streets.

  Only the Feds, police forces in twelve states, and a handful of hard-core reporters thought that they had an inside understanding of what the true Professor Stuart Chalmers was really up to. But thinking and proving were two completely different things. That was precisely why he played the cat and mouse game with them. Because whenever Stuart made fun of the authorities, he knew that it was too dangerous to drop his guard, to get sloppy. The moment he started to believe himself invincible, he’d make a mistake and be thrown into prison for the rest of his life.

  CHAT and the other animal protection groups were the focus of public disquiet, of conscience-prickers, but in the end, their nude demonstrations, moronic protests by starlets with banners, and the occasional prison sentence for throwing paint on a fur coat or breaking windows in a pet store, were nothing more meaningful than hot air. They were to eco-terrorism what Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame was to intellectual genius. The real job of rescuing Mother Earth from the evildoings of human beings had to be left to men and women who’d put their lives on the line and think nothing of taking the lives of perpetrators. Just as a soldier in a war was entitled to take the life of an enemy combatant to protect himself and his colleagues, so WEL had decided that as the soldiers defending the natural world, they were entitled to take lives in order to protect what was incapable of defending itself from the brute force of humanity. The men and women who were the soldiers of WEL killed without compunction those men and women who destroyed without compunction. They were dedicated last-ditch warriors trying to prevent the destruction of the earth by the most destructive animal who’d ever evolved . . . man!

  Professor Stuart Chalmers was a perennial suspect by the Feds of being the kingpin of the Whole Earth League, but that was only because he regularly lectured to large numbers of adoring kids about the evils of humanity and what it was doing to the ecosystems. Yet despite the court orders, the searching of his rooms at the university and his home, despite having him followed and bugged twenty-four hours a day, there was never ever anything that even remotely connected him to WEL.

  Like Al-Qaeda, he’d learned never to communicate WEL business by phone or in writing. Instead, he personally gave his orders and instructions to those in his inner circle, who traveled to their lieutenants in America and other parts of the world and spoke only to the person in charge. Conversations
were always in parks or open spaces to avoid listening devices. Hands were held to mouths so that lip reading experts couldn’t interpret what was being said.

  The members of the inner circle then went to see other lieutenants until the second tier structure that was involved in the action had been informed. These lieutenants would then communicate directly, and in precisely the same manner, with cell leaders who had to carry out the assaults. There was virtually no possibility of tracing the instructions to Chalmers.

  And today was the day to activate his most audacious assault against the hubris of humanity. Today, he would set in motion an assault against authority that would make America reel back and take notice of the destruction it was wreaking against Mother Earth.

  When his new project came to fruition . . . he leaned back in his chair and smiled to himself. All hell would break loose. Literally. He just couldn’t wait.

  THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, DC

  No matter how confident he tried to portray himself, Daniel Todd was overwhelmed by his first time in the White House. Few ordinary people had ever been at the center of the US executive government, yet when Daniel sat in the Roosevelt Room with Debra, waiting for the arrival of the president of the United States, he came close to being struck dumb. Used to addressing audiences of hundreds, he said a short prayer to himself to ensure he was able to speak clearly, crisply, and without error to the audience he was about to address, an audience of a handful of the most influential people in the world.

  Sensing his unease, Debra said, “You really mustn’t worry about talking to the president, Daniel. He’s a scientist, a keen listener, and very interested in what you’ve got to say.”

  Before he could respond, the door suddenly opened and a tall, thin middle-aged woman walked in. She smiled at Debra and nodded to Daniel. “The president will see you now, Debra,” she said crisply.

  They rose and followed her down further corridors—sound muffled by the royal blue carpet—and as they approached, the door to the world’s most famous office was opened by the president’s PA.