“That’s a relief.”
“We’ll have a fully equipped lab set up by this time tomorrow. Workmen installed air conditioners and refrigerators late this afternoon, and the place is being partitioned off for proper bedrooms. I think we’re going to be here for a time.”
“Good,” Johnny said.
“In a way, maybe,” Blair replied, her dark eyes meeting his. “Johnny, it was bats, all right. Big bats. But we can’t identify any species by the teeth impressions. At least not yet.” She shook her head. “Nothing matched. We need to find one. Alive, preferably.”
“I listened to the radio while I worked this afternoon. This hasn’t hit the news as yet.”
“It isn’t going to hit the news.” Blair was petting the dogs and they were in heaven. “The governor ordered a lid put on it. It was the only thing he could do to prevent panic.”
“I agree. But the first time a human goes down, the lid is very likely to blow off.”
She frowned and then took another sip of her drink. She sat the glass down carefully on the coaster. “Two people are missing, Johnny.”
He shook his head. “Damn! In what part of the parish do they live?”
“About a mile from right where we’re sitting. An elderly man and his wife. I just learned that about ten minutes before coming over here.”
Johnny looked outside. It was pitch black. He stood up. “I’ll be right back. I have an idea.” He went into another room and came back with a shotgun and a box of shells. He held up the box. “These are duck loads. If those damn things are in this area, they should be leaving their . . . wherever they’re roosting . . . and flying over right about now. Let’s see if I can’t knock some out of the sky.”
“You a hunter?”
Johnny noticed some disapproval in her tone. “Not since I was a kid. I just happen to have a varied assortment of weapons in the house. Listen!”
They both heard it. The faint beating of wings. “What a strange sound,” Johnny said.
“Bats swim through the air rather than fly,” Blair said. “That’s why it sounds so strange.”
“Stay inside and don’t let the dogs out,” Johnny told her, shucking a shell in the chamber. He replaced that shell in the tube and stepped out into the yard, after carefully propping open the newly reinforced screen door.
Then he saw them and the sight chilled him. The damn things were big. There were hundreds of them. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. He lifted the shotgun to his shoulder and emptied the tube. He saw a dozen or more fall. He stepped quickly back into the house, but none of the flying mammals changed direction and came after him. From the woods around his cleared acreage, he could hear the horrible cries of those wounded bats. He locked the screen as Blair stepped out onto the porch to stand close to him.
Blair had a strange look on her face. “Bats are incapable of making sounds like that. They usually make supersonic sounds, inaudible to the human ear, but they also can produce harsh, shrill chirpings and they sometimes make screeching sounds. But nothing like what’s going on now.”
“That is interesting,” Johnny said very softly.
She said, “You’re not going out there tonight, are you?”
“Hell, no! They’ll keep until the morning. Big as those things are, I don’t want to come up on a wounded one in the dark.”
“Bats walk, you know?”
“They walk?”
“Yes. And they can move surprisingly fast. They fold their wings and use the nubs for front feet. Their back extremities have claws. They can scurry right along on the ground, and also are quite good at jumping from limb to limb.”
“I’ll certainly remember that in the morning.” He called Sheriff Young and told him what he’d done.
“Good, Johnny. Good. Why didn’t I think of that? Look, at first light, I’ll be out there with men and we’ll see if we can’t find some of these little bastards.”
“They’re not little, Sheriff.”
“Sure they are. I got a book from the library and read up on the birds. Most of them have a wing span of about a foot and don’t weigh more than a few ounces.”
“They aren’t birds. They’re mammals. I’d say these I downed tonight had a wing span of about three to four feet, and weighed about a pound or better.”
“A pound! Leapin’ Jesus Christ! Well, the book I got had lots of pictures. I should have read more. You stay in the house, Johnny. Don’t you go out looking for them tonight.”
“Don’t worry about that. How about the missing couple?”
“Still missing. I’ve got men out looking for them now. But the TV was on in their living room and food on the table. It doesn’t look good.”
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Right.”
The cries soon faded away, and Johnny and Blair sat down to their newly freshened drinks. Johnny would occasionally glance at Skipper and June. If any wounded bat came too close to the house, they’d let him know. Then a thought came to him.
“Blair, can bats climb?”
“You bet they can. They’re quite good at it ...” She paused, thinking the same thing Johnny was thinking. “Oh, hell!”
Johnny walked to a bank of switches and cut on the outside floodlights, some of them mounted on the house, some on tall telephone poles outside the fenced in area. Standing beside him, Blair gasped.
In the harsh glare of the big lights, several dozen hideous looking, very large bats were crawling toward the fence. The lights glistened off of bared fangs.
“Get my minicam off the desk in the study,” Johnny said. “It’s in a case and freshly loaded. I want film of this before they hit that fence.”
“Johnny!” She clutched at his sleeve. “No. We’ve got to ... I don’t know. Get the hell out of here. They’ll climb the fence and be in the front yard. And then we’ll really be in trouble. We’ve . . . What about your fence?”
He smiled. “Get the camera, Blair. We’re all right.”
She was back in a few seconds and shooting. While she filmed the hideously ugly, crawling, lurching, fanged horror, she asked, “What about your fence?”
“Look at it carefully. Here you look and I’ll film. Give me the camera.”
She stared at the fence. “Well, it’s just a fence. No. Wait. Actually, it’s two fences. The top two feet seem to have some sort of long spacer separating it from the bottom.”
“That’s right. The bottom five feet won’t hurt a child or an animal if they should brush up against it even when the top two feet are electrified. The top two feet, should I so desire, and tonight I so desire, are hot. Or will be as soon as I turn it on.”
“Well, I really, really wish you would turn it on!”
“Here, keep filming.” He handed her the camera and went into his bedroom, returning a few seconds later. “It’s hot.”
June and Skipper were on the front porch, snarling at the crawling horrors that were now only a few yards from the fence. Neither Blair nor Johnny had ever seen anything like them. Except perhaps in a bad horror movie.
“What if there’s a power failure?” Blair asked nervously.
“I have a big generator I can activate from the house. I check it every week.”
“I suppose you have food and water enough to last several days, too?”
“Six months.”
She muttered something under her breath. “Is there anything that you forgot to do to make yourself self-sufficient?” she asked, exasperation in the tone.
“No,” he replied, and handed her the camera.
The first big bat climbed up the fence and was fried. The others backed off to just the edge of light and stopped, staring at the lighted compound.
“Well, I’ll be goddamned!” Johnny said. “The bastards can think and reason!”
“That’s impossible!” Blair said, still filming.
“Then why didn’t they come on?”
“Good question,” she muttered.
The fried bat fell
off the hot wires and plopped to the ground.
The other bats backed out and away from the circle of light.
“Blair, can you call your scientist friends up the road?”
“We’ll get phones in the morning.” She lowered the camera and turned it off. “Johnny, do you think those wounded bats have gone?”
“No. I think they’re out there waiting for us to make a careless move.” He went to the phone and called Sheriff Young, bringing him up to date.
“I didn’t know you had an electric fence. If it’s not posted, that’s illegal, Johnny.”
“Phil!”
“Oh. Right. Are you sure about all this?”
“It’s on film.”
“They can think and reason?”
“Sure appears that way. Before we go into those woods tomorrow, we’re going to have to do some serious talking about suiting up.”
“You damn sure got that right!” The sheriff sighed. “Well, let me call the governor about this. See you in the morning, Johnny.” I hope, the sheriff thought, hanging up.
“Now what do we do?” Blair asked.
“Fix supper,” Johnny said with a smile, and walked toward the kitchen.
Four
After supper, Johnny let the dogs out into their screened in runaround in the rear of the yard, and watched them go about their business. They returned to the house without being called. They seemed to sense there was danger all around them. From now on, when he left the compound, Johnny would leave the dogs in the house. He’d done so before and knew they would cause no damage.
Johnny stilled the ringing telephone. Sheriff Young. “Johnny, the governor has gathered a group of specialists around him. All of them experts in the field of bats. They say what you reported is impossible. That bats are incapable of that kind of reasoning. And they don’t make the kind of sounds that you say you heard last night.”
That didn’t come as any surprise to Johnny and he was not annoyed by it. “They can view the film tomorrow, Phil. Although I doubt that will change their minds. The minds of self-described experts are not easily changed.”
“The governor called Washington and Washington sent them in,” the sheriff said glumly.
“Well, you can just expect a major fuck-up from here on in, if the government’s gotten involved.”
The sheriff sighed. “I guess the governor felt he didn’t have a choice, Johnny. We found that old couple. They ended up just like the cattle.”
“They’ll be no keeping the press out now. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Not anymore. They’re here!” The sheriff hung up.
Johnny turned to Blair. “The federal government’s gotten involved now. And the press is in the area.”
Blair mouthed a few very vulgar words. “My opinion of government experts is that when you can’t find work anywhere else, you go to work for the government in an advisory position.”
“You’re not far off the mark. Look, it’s getting late. I’m going to button up the house and go to bed. I’m an early riser. Do you want to sleep late?”
“No. I’ll be lucky if I get any sleep at all with those . . . things . . . crawling around out there. Wake me when you get up.”
“They can’t get into the house, Blair. So don’t worry about that. I’ve closed and locked the doors to the rooms that don’t have additional wire mesh over the windows. Tomorrow, I’ll cover all the windows.”
“That makes me feel some better. Johnny? Thanks for letting me stay over.”
“‘You’re certainly welcome. Good night, Blair.”
“’Night, Johnny.”
“The door to your bedroom locks, Blair,” he said with a smile.
“I don’t think I need to lock it,” she replied. “Besides, with those things crawling around out there, I’d stay here if you were a convicted serial killer!”
Johnny laughed and turned off the lamp in the den. The outside lights remained on, and the fence stayed fully charged.
* * *
Johnny was up at his regular time and looked outside from all angles. No sign of the strange-behaving bats. He quietly made coffee while the dogs attended to business under the protection of the wire. He heard the shower running just as the coffee finished dripping. He stilled the phone in the middle of the first ring. Trooper Mark Hayden.
“You told me you got up early,” Mark said. “Phil told me what went on out at your place last night, and about the so-called government experts saying it couldn’t happen. I’d like to see that film.”
“Come on out. But I’d wait till dawn before I did.”
“Oh, I’m not about to go blundering around out there in the dark. Where did the vets and scientists from LSU stay?”
“Some stayed at the highway department building. Blair got trapped out here and I wouldn’t let her leave.” He waited for a wisecrack that didn’t come. “No locker room comments, Mark?”
“No. I’ve known Blair all my life. She was a couple of years ahead of me in school. She’s a very independent lady. And a very decent lady. She had a bad marriage some years ago . . . soured her on men. She dates some, but not much. She felt she could trust you.” Mark chuckled. “Besides, I happen to know she has a State Police permit to carry a concealed weapon. A .38 Ladysmith. And she’s a crack shot. I know. I taught her. I’ll see you in about an hour, buddy.”
Johnny laughed and poured a cup of coffee just as Blair entered the kitchen. “I thought I heard the phone ring.”
“You did. Mark called. He’ll be out in about an hour.”
Blair poured coffee and leaned against the counter. “Mark and I have been friends all our lives. He’s a clown, but a man that takes very little pushing.”
“I gathered that five minutes after meeting him. He told me you carry a pistol.”
“Yes. Sometimes I have to go in and quarantine entire herds of cattle. There are a few rancher types who want to get hostile. Not anymore; but when I first started. I shot a rancher eight years ago when he attacked me after I told him his herd would have to be destroyed. He’d brought cattle in from out of state and they infected his herd. It was his own fault. He slipped the cattle across the line knowing they were diseased. It was to be a quick sale.”
“What happened to him?”
“The family buried him three days later.” She looked out the kitchen window. “Any sign of those things?”
“No. And the dogs did not appear nervous when I let them out. Did you get any sleep?”
“I slept very well, oddly enough.”
The phone rang and Johnny answered it, then held it out to Blair. “A Dr. Catton.”
Johnny fetched his shotgun and loaded it up full while Blair was on the phone. He leaned it up against the doorjamb by the front porch and then returned to the kitchen for more coffee.
“We now have phone service at the highway department buildings,” Blair told him. “Also, Dr. Catton does not believe the bats are mutant, or that they behaved as we claim they did last night. He said what they did was pure survival instinct.”
“You believe that?”
She shook her head. “No. It goes against training; but no. I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I. Have the press contacted him?”
“They have a press conference scheduled for noon today.”
“That ought to be interesting and enlightening,” Johnny said, very drily.
She laughed at the expression on his face and together they walked to the front porch, to sit and sip their coffee and enjoy the coolness of late spring. The dead bat was still by the fence. It seemed somehow smaller in death.
When the sky began to lighten, Johnny turned off the floodlights and sat back down. “You know,” he said slowly, “it just might be that the lights caused them to back up.”
“They advanced straight into the lights first,” Blair reminded him. “It didn’t seem to bother them. Only when one of their own died did they back up.”
“Well . . . I was preachin
g.”
“Good try.”
“But they still seem to hole up during the day and come out only at night.”
“For now. But last night proves that light doesn’t bother them. Very strange behavior for a bat.”
Johnny turned his head and looked toward the woods. Blair’s eyes followed his gaze. “Are you going in there?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you the truth: I really don’t want to. But they’re my woods. At least a small part of them are.”
“How are you going to dress?”
“That’s the part that worries me. I suspect that Sheriff Young has sent someone off to get some of those padded jackets and pants that dog trainers wear. At least I hope he has.”
“How about the face?”
“A crash helmet and some sort of fencing mask, maybe.”
“A fencing mask? In this parish? Good luck.”
Johnny turned his head and smiled at her words. There were a lot of good and decent people in this part of the parish, but culturally speaking, there was something of a void. “We’ll think of something.”
“I’m going in with you.”
“The hell you say!”
“I’m the youngest member of the team from LSU. Drs. Catton and Meeker are in their sixties. Maggie is overweight. There is always the chance we might not be able, for whatever reasons, to bring one out. I’ve got to see one close up and take pictures of it. And in there, even with a flash, the pictures might not tell us what we need to know. I’ve got to visually inspect one and take blood samples.”
“Well, hell, Blair. There’s one right by the fence.”
“With everything fried. You saw the smoke coming from it. It hung there for two minutes or more. Sorry. I go in.”
“OK. Here comes Mark.”
* * *
Several reporters had broken from the main group and struck out on their own. They had flown into Monroe, rented cars, and headed south and east, with approximately half of them getting very nearly hopelessly lost. One rolled into Jigger and asked if there was a motel. Citizen almost herniated himself laughing.
Bats Page 3