Bat out of Hell

by Alan Gold

  President Thomas was sitting at his desk, writing. He looked up as Debra and Daniel entered his room. Debra introduced Daniel, and the president escorted them to the sofas.

  “What’s your assessment, Professor Todd?”

  Clearing his throat, Daniel said with halting confidence, “One can’t be definite without the electron microscopy of the virus that should be here within a day or two, but I’d say you could be pretty confident that the bats that Debra found are the source of the infection that killed the children.”

  “I can’t wait a day or two. If those bats swarm tonight and more people die . . . well, the prospect is too awful to contemplate. If you’re pretty sure, I’m giving the order to destroy the colony,” said President Thomas.

  “Sir,” said Daniel, “there could be other causes. There could be . . .”

  “Sorry, Daniel, but I’m taking no risks. I held up the destruction of these bats for sixteen hours because Debra begged me to wait for you to arrive here from London. I have no intention of waiting another moment. The American people will accept the death of a colony of bats; they’ll never accept the death of a human being when our best minds were pretty confident that they knew the source.”

  The president stood and stabbed a number on his telephone. “Go!” he said.

  The order was given to the general in command of the Situation Room in the basement of the White House. He instantly picked up another phone and spoke to the colonel in charge of the fumigation squad from the Chemical and Biological Defense Division at the Pentagon, who had positioned themselves outside of the cave in the Pompton Lakes in the Ramapo Mountain State Forest.

  The colonel simply nodded to the Sergeant in charge of the squad who told his men to uniform up. They donned their full-face breathing masks over their white hazmat uniforms and walked toward the mouth of the cave that had been sealed with a heavy rubber curtain. Walking through the curtain’s airlock they pulled the tubing through the aperture and deep into the cave. The lights in the cave had been muted so as not to unduly disturb the bats, but several of them were flying around in an obvious panic that their radar couldn’t find the cave’s mouth. Laying the tubing on the floor of the cave, the Sergeant pressed the light on his intercom to instruct the men waiting outside to begin the fumigation process. Within seconds, the end of the tube emitted an eerie yellow gas that floated to the ceiling. The chemical, a close relative of mustard gas, quickly filled the part of the cave in which the fumigation troop was standing. They shone flashlights into the roof of the cave and saw the bats twitching. Some left their perches and flew around in obvious distress. Others, still asleep, breathed in the deadly gas and quickly dropped to the floor of the cave, convulsing for a few moments in great suffering. Others died where they hung, their claws clinging in death throes.

  It took only minutes for all the bats in the cave to die. When there were none flying, those dead but still clinging to the roof were removed by long poles. The men picked up the tube, still pumping out its deadly gas, and moved further in. It took them two hours before they were totally confident that each and every living thing inside the cave had been destroyed. They emerged from the cave, climbed into a large trough, and were immediately pressure-sprayed from above and the sides with hot water to wash away the residue of the gas; then they were sprayed with bleach, antibacterial and antifungal chemicals, and disinfectants; and finally, a hot air blower was brought in to dry their hazmat uniforms.

  When the procedure was completed, rubber-gloved assistants in breathing masks helped them off with their uniforms, which were immediately stuffed into a mobile incinerator and burned. The fumigation team was followed into the cave by a disinfectant team that sprayed the entire inside walls and ceiling of the cave with three specific types of antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral disinfectants. That took a further three hours. Finally, a hazmat team was sent into the cave with mechanized digging equipment to scrape the floor of the cave back to solid rock. Aside from samples of the bats’ bodies for forensic investigation, the entire floor of the cave—guano, insect and bat bodies, and chemicals—were scooped up and loaded into special drums that would be taken in a military convoy to be burnt to a cinder in a 1,500 degree furnace. Then the ash would be collected and dumped in a unused 1,000 meter deep mine shaft in geologically stable Utah which, along with numerous other deadly cocktails collected over the years, was guarded every minute of every day by an army detachment.

  Debra and Daniel were having dinner in the Lafayette Restaurant on Sixteenth Street NW when she received a text message on her cell phone. She looked at it and nodded to Daniel. It was a simple coded message, “MA”, meaning mission accomplished. It was a parody on the obscenity of the former President George W. Bush saying that the United States mission in Iraq was accomplished with the overthrow of the hideous ruling family of Saddam and his psychopathic children, a prelude to years of anguish and cost in American lives and money.

  “They’re no more,” she said.

  Daniel nodded. His face didn’t betray any satisfaction. He didn’t like the thought of being the destroyer of animals he’d come to know and love. He never thought that he’d be the cause of a colony of bats being destroyed when they were the innocent victims of humanity’s push for room to grow and feed itself. If anything, it was the law of the jungle, of a species that was destroying what stood in its way because suddenly the species threatened them. It was the sort of thing that nature had done through evolution since plants and animals first colonized the earth. One species developed and wiped out another . . . Homo sapiens wiped out Homo Neanderthal; Aboriginal man had wiped out much of the megafauna. It was a progression—the cruelty of Darwinian survival of the fittest. And inexorable logic demanded, as the president had so forcefully put it, that the American people get upset about the death of a few bats rather than hysterical about another child’s death from this virus.

  “What if it wasn’t the bats, though?” Daniel asked Debra. “What if it was birds or some insect? Jesus, Debra, what could we be dealing with here? Is this the beginning of another pandemic or plague? Are we dealing with species’ extinction? Our extinction?”

  “Remember when you first approached me all those months ago at that virology conference at Yale? Remember, you said that the source of the virus I was investigating, what had wiped out the villagers in Indonesia, was almost certainly by bats. I remember so clearly what you said to me. It was along the lines of, ‘Today it’s the jungles of Indonesia; tomorrow, the jungles of New York and Washington.’ I’ve thought you were talking crap then, but I totally believe you now. My problem, what I really don’t understand, is what’s happening . . . why it’s happening. This outbreak in the UK, in New York State? Okay, I understand the outbreaks in South America and Asia, but England? The United States? What the hell is happening to the world?”

  Daniel smiled and reached over the table to hold her hand. She felt a shock of surprise as he’d never shown her the least bit of physical interest. He’d only ever once touched her and that was to shake her hand when they’d first met. She didn’t react to him.

  As though he didn’t notice her reaction, he said, “You remember some of what I told you in that coffee shop at Yale, but you haven’t remembered what else I said. I clearly remember the conversation because you were the first medical person who’d taken me seriously. I said that the worldwide bat population has plunged in the past dozen or more years. The populations are under huge pressure . . . everywhere. We’re encroaching on their habitats, they’re developing disastrous fungi that are killing them, we’re fucking up their food sources, and let’s never forget global warming. It’s only just begun with the shrinking of the ice caps and our weather patterns beginning to turn nasty, but in five, ten, twenty years, the problems that are going to be caused by global warming will become the biggest problems humanity has ever faced. There are some species that can’t adapt quickly enough. We all know about frogs disappearing and the colony collapse of bees. But ba
ts are the real canaries in the coal mine. They’re the early warning system that the earth is in revolt. Because they harbor all these viruses and their viral load goes through the roof when they’re stressed, it’s going to spill out and human diseases will proliferate like there’s no tomorrow.

  “All in all, Debra it’s a real bad world out there for bats right now and tomorrow, it’s going to be a whole lot worse. And with their stress and the massive increase in their viral load, the viruses in their blood will mutate. Today, individuals are dying; tomorrow, whole communities will be at risk.”

  “Surely bats aren’t the only cause . . .”

  “Of course not, but as a vector, they’re a hidden menace and they’re not taken seriously. Everybody knows about rats and fleas and the Black Death. It’s one of the reasons why we’re all so terrified of rats but not so much of mice that are seen as safe and cuddly. What’s not understood by the public is that bats can harbor these viruses that jump species into human beings.”

  “Okay, but why Washington? Why London?” she asked. “I can understand a tropical village with its heat and unsanitary conditions, but the world’s largest metropolises . . . and bats? Bats are country dwellers, not city folk. Sure, we have some flying foxes in our city parks and some bat varieties are in the barns on the outskirts, but bats in cities are incredibly uncommon, aren’t they? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Really? Cities are sources of food. Bats need ready access to food. We’re seeing more and more feral animals come into cities for their food . . . foxes, squirrels, possums, moose, bears, and deer are just recent arrivals. Rats and mice and dogs and birds have lived in inner cities for millennia, side by side with human beings who have taken control of the production and supply of food. Think about when you dig up the garden . . . suddenly half a dozen birds appear in the trees, looking down and watching you. The moment you go indoors to make a cup of tea, they fly down into the furrows you’ve made and pull up the earthworms that you’ve disturbed. Clever.

  “So it makes sense for an intelligent flying mammal to come to the city for its food supply and its shelter when its food might be drying up in the countryside and its shelter under threat from developers.”

  Debra drank some more wine and asked, “Okay, so if this is going to be an epidemic or even a global pandemic, what can we do about it? No matter what the animal protectionists say, we’re the dominant species on this planet, and we have to make it safe for humanity. Nobody’s going to go back to pre-industrial revolution times and live within the rhythms of the earth. So are we going to have to kill all the bats? Is that becoming a real possibility?”

  “We may have to,” said Daniel. “But only in the inner cities and the surrounding suburbs where there are colonies. Most of the rural bats are probably okay.”

  She shook her head. “What about these villages in Indonesia and Malaysia and South America? They’ve been wiped out by these deadly mutating bat viruses.”

  “Sure, but we’re pretty sure we know the reasons for that. And unless you eliminate every bat in the world or reverse the damage that humanity is doing to the ecology, it’s something that we’re just going to have to live with. Face it, jungle and rural villages have been impoverished—disease- and sickness-prone—since time immemorial. The vast majority of the world’s populations are living in filthy conditions with no access to preventative medicine, all on a dollar a day. It’s the haves and the have-nots. We who live in the cities have wealth, community, access to medicines, control of pests and vermin, shelter, and cleanliness. And we can dominate the landscape and the environment like no other animal in creation. And if something gets in our way, we can eradicate it. We eradicated smallpox and most waterborne diseases. It’s just a question of eradicating species higher up the evolutionary scale. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem for scientists like us to eradicate our neighborhood bats.”

  “So what method do we use? Are we going to have bat patrols walking city streets on the lookout for something flying other than moths or birds? Inner city radar won’t work because of the buildings. Satellite navigation devices spying on our own towns and cities . . . drones flying down the canyons between skyscrapers? What?”

  Daniel shrugged. “Scientists are good at analyzing and protecting and counting and stuff, but I don’t think that too many of us are destroyers. I think we’re going to have to leave that to vermin controllers . . . my God,” he whispered, “did I just call bats ‘vermin’?”

  MADISON, WISCONSIN

  He only ever ate at the Green Madison Restaurant when the situation required immediate action. A young first-year student had kindly carried a note to Jim Towney in the Agri-Science block of the university way across the campus from the Philosophy School, alerting him to be at this new restaurant at 12:30 p.m. sharp and to sit at a table facing the door.

  At fifteen minutes to the half hour, Stuart Chalmers left his office and his building via a service entrance, quickly crossed the busy main street, and stood surreptitiously for five minutes in the alley to see if he was being followed. Satisfied that he wasn’t, he walked by circuitous routes down Campus Drive toward University Avenue and then turned left toward the lakeside.

  The Green Madison Restaurant was just a few blocks away. Stuart, assured that he wasn’t being followed, hurried to the eatery and stood and waited for a full five minutes, hidden by a post but looking carefully through the windows. He wasn’t looking at the table where his colleague Jim Towney sat; instead, he was looking at other tables to see if anybody was sitting there and trying to look inconspicuous.

  Satisfied that they weren’t going to be observed by the Feds, the police, or any other enforcement agency, he entered the restaurant ten minutes late and sat alone at an empty table overlooking the lake. He ordered vegetarian lasagna, a sarsaparilla, and unbuttered toast. Taking out that day’s edition of the local newspaper and holding it high so that his mouth was obscured, he said softly, “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

  Jim Towney, sitting with his back toward Stuart’s at the adjoining table, said, “What’s so urgent?”

  “We need to take immediate action to prevent further slaughter of these bats. Soon it’ll be birds and anything else that carries a virus. It has to stop.”

  “Sure, but what do you want to do?”

  “We have to off the secretary of health. Let everybody know that this is a man-made problem, and slaughtering animals is just delaying the inevitable. We have to put out a message that if you slaughter animals, we’ll order the slaughter of the person responsible. Do it at your own risk.”

  Jim Townie was quiet for a moment. “Did you just say what I thought you said?”

  “You heard,” Stuart whispered.

  “You want to assassinate the secretary of health. Kill DeAnne Harper?”

  Stuart didn’t answer.

  “Why her? Why not the secretary of agriculture?”

  “Because she’s the one most closely associated with the destruction of the bat colony in New Jersey. Offing the secretary of agriculture is something we’ll do later, once we’ve told the world that governments have got to get their populations to live in harmony in the natural world.”

  “Jesus, Stuart. Do you realize what assassinating a cabinet secretary will do? It’ll have every Fed, every police force, every US marshal, every government agency after our balls.”

  “Right. As if we didn’t have every one of them after them right now.”

  “But a cabinet secretary? That’s almost as high profile as offing the president.”

  Stuart laughed softly. “I thought about giving it to him, but he’s one step removed from the person responsible for ordering this slaughter of innocent animals. First her, then the secretary of agriculture. Harper is behind this rabid assault on bats, and the world has to understand the seriousness of her actions. It’ll be a warning to other governments . . . stop this shit happening or shit will happen to you.”

  “And when the roof comes down on our hea
ds . . . ? Nobody’s going to help us or fund us if we assassinate a cabinet secretary,” Jim whispered.

  “Nobody’s going to blame us. Just like we weren’t blamed when that old Jewish guy who sold furs got what was coming to him in Florida. CHAT was blamed because they have a publicity-hound spin-doctor asshole in charge. Nobody connected the Florida thing to us. Good, eh!”

  Again, Jim remained silent. “So you set that up? That Florida killing. You set it up?”

  His silence was eloquent testimony. The less Jim knew, the better. That was the way to ensure security. Stuart was only including him in this latest plan because it was important that he be seen in public in another city when the bomb went off.

  The black kid who’d done the Florida killing would be happy to off anybody else for a grand. Even a cabinet secretary. He was a brilliant student but wildly irrational and probably insane. Stuart had nurtured him by giving him passes in his academic work that he didn’t deserve, but there were moments when Noah, the black kid, had some breathtaking insights. Still, the pressure had been on Stuart to kick the kid out of school, and now he worked for Stuart on a freelance basis . . . and Stuart gave him free tuition from time to time.

  One of the things Noah liked to do was to kill, so long as he didn’t have a relationship with the person he was killing or know why he was doing the killing. He was a thug and an assassin with a sky-high IQ, one who needed money to live and needed the occasional intellectual nourishment. But it was the money that was needed most, and Stuart’s money, sourced from wealthy and eccentric donors to WEL, was as welcome as anybody’s was.

  “Did we really have to kill that old Jew?” asked Jim.

  “I didn’t kill him because he was Jewish, but Jews control what’s left of the fur trade, so I had to make it look like a street crime and not a deliberate murder. That’s why I coordinated it with CHAT’s demonstration.”