Night of the Bat (The Zone Unknown)

by Paul Zindel

  Jake could hardly recognize the man waiting for them in the mist at the landing. His dad looked thinner than Jake had ever seen him. It was always a shock to see him after he’d spent a few months in the jungle. By now he had a full beard, and his eyes were puffy. He wore a tan pith helmet to shield his balding head. There were always changes inside, too. Changes in the way he thought. Secrets from each expedition.

  A handful of Indian workers flanked Dr. Lefkovitz on the small area that had been cleared at the river bank. They helped beach the pirogue. As Jake disembarked he could see that the camp wasn’t much larger than a baseball diamond, carved out of the heavy foliage and giant grandiflora and mahogany trees of the rain forest.

  Three huts and a half dozen thatched lean-tos had been erected in a circle. Clusters of ropes and pulleys spiraled skyward as though the entire camp were controlled by the strings of a puppet master.

  “I wish you hadn’t come, son,” was the first thing out of Dr. Lefkovitz’s mouth. He extended his hand as if he were greeting a stranger.

  For a moment, Jake surprised himself with his own sudden anger. He realized he wanted to yell at his father, Are those the only words you can think to say to me? You haven’t seen me in months, and that’s what you’ve got to say!

  “Pops, I know you don’t want me hanging around here,” Jake said. “You never want me on any of your bat treks.”

  “If only you could ever take anything seriously,” his father said, seeing the CD player Jake clutched like a suitcase.

  “Hey, I’ve spent the last couple of months studying bats. I’ll know what you’re talking about. This time I can help. I’ll move equipment. Build huts. I’m stronger. I was on the track and gymnastic teams at Dalton. I ran in Central Park. Worked out at the gym. You’ll see …”

  “Jake, what I need you to be is a team player. The men won’t accept a selfish fool on this expedition.”

  “I’m not a selfish fool,” Jake said. “Not anymore.”

  Muras and Dangari brought Jake’s things to the main hut. Hanuma gave Jake his cardboard box. “Your son did well on the journey here,” Hanuma told Dr. Lefkovitz.

  Dr. Lefkovitz frowned.

  “What’s the downer now?” Jake said, afraid that it would be the same as always—that his father wouldn’t even try to see all the ways he had changed.

  Jake said, “Dad, I’ve got good instincts. I know how to listen to them now. Hey, I come from great genes. Just give me a chance.”

  Dr. Lefkovitz turned away from him and went to a crude control board radiating electric cables, and threw a switch. Two hundred feet above the camp, the jungle canopy lit up with long strings of naked lightbulbs lining each of the dozens of aerial walkways and rope bridges that spread out from a high central platform like the support spokes of a circus tent. A gasoline truck motor, reclaimed from an abandoned gold-mining operation, chugged away driving a crude generator at the edge of the river.

  “The only way you can help around here is to keep out of our way.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Jake said. He’d long ago learned it was easier to yes his father than argue. He’d always soften after a while, and usually forget anything harsh that he’d said. “I will,” Jake went on. “I’ll stay on the ground. I’ll wash laundry. Anything. I don’t care. I’ll become the best worker you’ve got. You’ll be glad I came.” Jake’s gaze was fixed skyward on the dangling walkways and lights, to the high-wire glitter show—an adventure he knew he had no intention of missing.

  The jungle became a wall of night by the time Jake had stowed his things. The camp itself was still ablaze from the garlands of lightbulbs. Jake’s bed, in the largest hut, was on the other side of the room from his father’s. They were separated by a towering rack of formaldehyde jars brimming with vampire bat specimens. Dozens of small mouths were agape and distorted. A sky of small black, dead eyes appeared to stare down at him. Jake hated the way scientists killed hundreds, if not thousands, of creatures just to add them to their collection. He never forgot an experiment one of his father’s colleagues had done once on mice. He put electrodes into the brains of living mice, and then decapitated the mice to check on how their nervous systems worked. Jake had nightmares for months when he’d heard about that project.

  There came the sound from a bamboo flute, loud and shrill, and Dr. Lefkovitz’s voice: “Hey, Jake—get out here for dinner.”

  “Coming,” Jake called back.

  Outside, his father, Hanuma and the dozen or so Indian workers from the camp sat cross-legged on mats that covered the ground of the communal circle.

  “We start our work up in the canopy after dinner,” his father said.

  “I want to go up with you,” Jake said, sitting down next to his father.

  “It’s too dangerous—I don’t want you up there.”

  “I…” Jake started, but a bowl of roast pig and plump, moist bark larvae was placed in front of him. Jake knew the thick white worms were a delicacy throughout the Amazon. He also knew the men were watching him, waiting to see what he’d do.

  “Ummm,” he said, picking out one of the crispiest larvae, putting it in his mouth, and chewing on it like a caramel.

  Hanuma and the workers smiled.

  “Magyar is our cook,” Hanuma said. “He trapped and cooked the fresh boar to celebrate your arrival.”

  Jake looked at the small Indian across from him who was smiling and nodding his head.

  “Thank you, Magyar,” Jake said. He grabbed a piece of the wild pig and tasted it. There were softer, moist clumps clinging to it. Magyar spoke excitedly as Jake realized how tasty the clumps were.

  “He wants you to know the boar was stuffed and wrapped with masticated water snake.”

  “He’s spoiling me,” Jake said.

  Hanuma laughed loudly.

  “Dad, I want you to see this gadget I made.” Jake opened his equipment box and took out a jerry-rigged power belt with a cluster of wires that looked like the kind used to hook up a VCR. He tightened the belt around his waist, reached back into the box, and hooked up a screen and circuit board he’d adapted from an old video game.

  “I can’t give it any time now,” his father said.

  “Maybe tonight after work. I remember last year’s science fair project. You made that electronic kitty litter box—the one where the top lifted when anything crossed in front of an electric eye. And it did something when the lid closed.”

  “Gave a spray of perfume.”

  “Yes. It almost scared our cat to death.”

  “Hey, I was only fooling around,” Jake said. “This year I did something serious on bat flight and communication.”

  “We’ll see,” his father said. He brushed flecks of charred meat from his lap, and stood up. The men got to their feet and headed for the rope ladders. Dangari and Muras sat in the two-man sling elevator. It looked like a parachute harness with a swing seat. They threw a switch to engage the power shaft that had been geared to the truck engine. The sling jerked upward, lifting the men quickly to the central canopy platform.

  “Pops, I want to go up,” Jake said.

  His father frowned again.

  Hanuma spoke up. “The riverwalk of the canopy needs repairing. Can you tie knots?” he asked Jake.

  “I’m the best knot-tying expert in the world,” Jake answered quickly. “I was an Eagle Scout.”

  Dr. Lefkovitz stared at Hanuma a moment, then smiled. “All right,” he told Jake. “You can help reinforce the walkways. Hanuma will show you how to use the vines. The rest of us will be collecting specimens on the north walkway tonight.”

  The empty sling was sent back down. Dr. Lefkovitz and one of the other workers got into it and went up.

  “We’ll be next,” Hanuma said.

  “I could climb,” Jake said. “I only fell twice in gym class—that’s because it was a single rope and I had to climb using my hands only.”

  “This canopy is two hundred feet high—it’s not your gym ceiling,” Hanuma said. �
��You would fall only once here.”

  4

  THE CANOPY

  While Dr. Lefkovitz and Magyar traveled up to the canopy, Jake shook out a shoulder pouch he’d packed and put his echolocation device into it. The sling arrived back down, and Jake sat in it with Hanuma. Jake gasped as the seat jerked up into the air like the harness of a rising parachute.

  “Hey, this is high,” Jake said, as they were lifted quickly to the canopy platform. The central platform itself was an octagonal scaffold that encircled the top of the tallest mahogany tree. His father and the other workers had already started out along the rope bridges and slatted track of the north walkway.

  Hanuma pointed to a walkway to the left that appeared to end at a wall of thick vines and foliation. “That is the riverwalk,” Hanuma said. He led Jake to a spot high above the bank of the river. “Your father started collecting here three months ago when we arrived, but the canopy was too thick above the river. Unyielding. It is a barrier because the mist of the river rises and feeds the jungle above it more than any

  other area.”

  Jake set his shoulder pouch down on the walkway “So where do I tie knots?”

  Hanuma sat down cross-legged, and grabbed a thin, strong vine from the edge of the walkway. He took the machete hanging from his waist and sliced the vine into lengths as long as his arm.

  “You tie the slats together,” Hanuma said. “We use bow knots. Do you know bow knots?”

  “Sure,” Jake said. “Bow knots were my specialty when I was an Eagle.”

  “Good,” Hanuma said, smiling. “Up here it is excellent to be an eagle.”

  Jake watched Hanuma make the first tie. The old vine-ties were frayed, rotting. Hanuma placed the new vine over the old, and tied the knots so that one of the slats of the walkway was firmly attached to the next.

  “Like that,” Hanuma said.

  “Right,” Jake said.

  Jake took off his shoulder pouch and sat down across from Hanuma, then selected a piece of fresh cut vine and bound together the pair of slats in front of him. With his father and the other men gone, he could hear the sounds of insects and monkeys in the canopy. One area had been hacked away enough so Jake could glimpse the river flowing below.

  Hanuma gave Jake his machete. “Cut back the overgrowth, but don’t sever the rope railings,” he said. “Be careful.”

  Jake swung the machete, and the vines and young branches gave way bit by bit. Once they had worked their way farther out over the river itself, Jake knew that if the fall to the river didn’t kill him, the piranha would.

  “What do you think happened to the two missing workers?” Jake asked. “I mean, what do you really think?”

  “No one knows,” Hanuma said. “They were working here on the riverwalk the night they disappeared. That was almost two weeks ago. They finished with the rest of us, and went down.”

  Jake looked more carefully at the wall of jungle that lay ahead on the riverwalk. A coolness rose up from the river far below. “How do you know for sure that they didn’t run away?”

  “We searched around the camp. There were no footprints, no signs that anyone had left the camp in any direction.”

  “Maybe they left on the river.”

  Hanuma took his machete back to cut several more strips of tough vine. “No pirogues were missing. They couldn’t have swum very far because of the piranha.”

  Jake tied another set of the planks together.

  “Did anyone see them climb down or use the sling?”

  “No.”

  Jake winked at Hanuma. “I thought you were supposed to be clairvoyant? That you could feel things. See things that were happening elsewhere?”

  “I don’t have good feelings about the disappearance of these men, but I’ve chosen to hope and pray to the Great Spirit they are still alive.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about them, too,” Jake said, “Ever since Dad called and told us. I’ve been having bad dreams. Usually, it’s because I eat too much popcorn before going to bed. But, I’ve had these dreams about the men, and bats coming after me—and about a dozen other horrible Amazon bugs and critters I’ve read about. Since I was in the third grade, I’ve had a recurring dream that one day I’ll be devoured alive.

  “There was always something I was afraid of. Once, for school, I researched all the documented shark attacks in the world since recorded history. I had nightmares about sharks for years,” Jake said. He looked around at the shadows in the canopy. “Did you ever think that maybe the missing men were still up here in the canopy? Did you ever consider that?”

  Hanuma glanced uneasily toward the barrier of vines and branches. “The men had been ordered to clear the riverwalk,” he said.

  Jake took the machete back and chopped carefully at the next cluster of the green wall.

  “If a jaguar had taken them, we would have heard screams. A jungle cat would silence only one man at a time,” Hanuma said.

  “I know jaguars bite the throat and cut off your breathing,” Jake said.

  “Yes, that is the way they kill. They are merciful—they do not eat a man alive.”

  Jake reached into his shoulder pouch and pulled out his electronic device. He flicked a switch and his gadget made a high pulsing noise.

  Blip … Blip …

  “This is Gizmo,” Jake explained to Hanuma. “That’s what I call it.”

  “Gizmo?”

  “Yep.”

  “What does Gizmo do?”

  “A couple of things,” Jake said. “I built the device keeping in mind that bats make all kinds of noises, both audible and ultrasonic. The audible ‘blip’ sounds Gizmo makes travel out and bounce off objects, like tree trunks and stones. Whatever. Different things have different densities and don’t reflect sound waves the same.” He set Gizmo’s small glowing video screen on his lap. “The sounds come back and we see a ‘picture.’ Pictures of things in the jungle.”

  “You can see through the jungle?”

  Jake explained that Gizmo could “see” easily for a hundred feet or so. He had built a volume dial into Gizmo so he could pump up the sound and make the signals reach up to several hundred feet into the night or jungle. Bats usually send out high frequency sounds and can see in the dark. Some use audible vocalizations like Gizmo’s in communication—between mothers and their young, among roost mates, and, in some species of bats, as alarm cries. The echoes let them see shapes. Gizmo’s picture made everything black and white, more like an X ray or the image on an oscilloscope screen.

  “So what will you do with Gizmo?” Hanuma asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Jake replied. “Can you show me where the men were working before they disappeared?”

  “There.”

  Jake aimed the directional disc of the device so it pointed straight at the spot Hanuma was indicating.

  Blip …

  The sounds went out and were reflected back. Images danced on the small game screen. “You can see motion on this thing,” Jake said. “I mean, it’s hard to see the definite shape of anything—but we’ll be able to look pretty deep into the canopy. You’ve got to train your eye.” Jake pointed out a configuration on the screen. “See, that’s a big tree trunk.”

  “Your father wouldn’t like you playing up here,” Hanuma said.

  “Hey, this isn’t play. I mean, I won the whole school science fair with Gizmo.” A thin, twisting image moved in the lower section of the screen. Jake felt a flush of apprehension, then recognized what it was. “See, that’s a snake in the canopy.”

  Hanuma watched the image for a moment. “Yes. There are many small tree pythons here,” Hanuma said. “They are harmless, much smaller than the ordinary pythons that can crush you to death. They’re not poisonous. We don’t need Gizmo to tell us this.”

  “Maybe your men accidentally fell into the river,” Jake said. “They could have been out on a branch, and it broke off.”

  “They didn’t cut far enough into the overgrowth to be a
bove the river. They would have fallen onto the bank.”

  Jake put the strap of his apparatus around his neck, and stood slowly. He turned up the amplitude of the blips. Hanuma stood and looked over his shoulder.

  “What is this?” Hanuma asked, pointing to a dark shape in the middle of the screen.

  Jake checked it and said, “Maybe a clump of vines.”

  “Why is it moving?”

  “The wind,” Jake said, but a spray of goose bumps rose on the back of his neck. “It looks like it could be something that’s alive, but it’s too big. Maybe sap flowing from a hollow trunk.”

  Jake used the machete and hacked deeper. With each slash, clumps of vines and branches fell away. They were farther from the lighted stretch of the riverwalk.

  “We should come back with floodlights or a Coleman lamp,” Jake said hesitantly.

  Hanuma watched the image of the undulating object come into focus. Near the base of it there were twisted shapes.

  “Hey,” Jake said. “It could be just a rotting branch or some kind of hive or bark maggots. … ”

  With another powerful slash of the machete, a drape of vines dropped onto the abandoned walkway. Jake reflexively kicked the clump out of the way. In front of him was a shining bulk that swelled as high as the thick rope railings. The dim light spill rendered the mass a sort of shroud.

  “There are bones,” Hanuma said.

  Jake gave the machete back to Hanuma, picked up a broken branch, and prodded at the center of the form. Now he could see that whatever it was, it was covered with hundreds of tiny black moving wings.

  5

  ATTACK

  “It’s just bats,” Jake said. “A colony of little vampire bats. Desmodus rotundus.” Jake had read about them and seen pictures of this species of Amazon bat.

  “It is something more,” Hanuma said.

  Using the branch, Jake gritted his teeth as he prodded deeper into the colony. The bats began to make high-pitched sounds, peel away from the mound, and take to the air. They flapped away into a labyrinth of holes that had been ripped out of the underbelly of the canopy. Those bats that stayed on the heap were drinking, their tongues frantically lapping at an oozing fluid.