“I think he should have been given a medal and a substantial reward for ridding the community of scum.”
Captain Alden’s look was neither friendly nor hostile, just long and measuring. “Why did you choose this parish to settle in, Johnny?”
“To be left the hell alone, Tom.”
“An honest man. A rarity.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the squawking of a radio. A trooper walked over. “That kid who was attacked by the bat this morning, Captain. He died en route to the hospital in Monroe.” The trooper hesitated.
“Drop the other boot,” Captain Alden said.
“His mother just told the whole story to the press.”
“As the fat man used to say,” Johnny muttered. “And away we go.”
Seven
It was approaching a carnival scene by late that afternoon. Somebody leaked the deaths of the Morrison couple and that blew the lid off. Bats attacking people was rare enough; but giant, bloodsucking bats that ripped the throats out of people was really, really hot stuff. Reporters were coming in from all over the northern hemisphere, both print and broadcast. Motels were filled from Tallulah to Natchez, Monroe down to Alexandria. Gawkers and rubberneckers were driving and flying in to clog the two lane highways. There wasn’t a car or truck or van to rent within a seventy-five mile radius. One reporter got shot in the ass by a farmer after the reporter left a gate open and the man’s horses got loose. It was light bird shot and the nosey fellow who disregarded warning signs only got a few pellets in one cheek, but he was threatening to sue. Naturally.
Blair had returned with good news and bad news. The bat that bit Cal Miller was not rabid, but two others she had tested were.
“The night is about to become a lot more dangerous,” Johnny said.
Johnny had closed and locked the gates on the gravel road leading from the blacktop to his house. Mark Hayden had a key, and so did Sheriff Young and Captain Alden, and of course, Blair. He also had reduced the voltage to his charged fence, cutting it down to stun level. The fence would still knock the crap out of human or animal, but it would not kill.
“How can you do that?” Blair asked. “I thought an electric fence was an electric fence.”
“Oh, no. Well, I suppose some are. But mine can be placed on full voltage, or on a reduced voltage of my choosing. Some of those damn reporters are sure to climb my outer fence and come stumbling around my property and I don’t want to kill any of the silly bastards.”
“You don’t like reporters, do you, Johnny?”
“I respect the ones with some degree of objectivity and neutrality when dealing with a story. Unfortunately, most, or at least many, don’t have those qualities. Have you ever seen a network reporter take a conservative stand on an issue?”
She shook her head.
“That’s right. And you won’t, either. Don’t get me started, Blair. I’ll bend your ear all evening.”
“What’s for supper, cook?”
“Aren’t you afraid of people talking, Blair?”
She laughed, a lusty, throaty, healthy laugh. “Come on, Johnny, I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve been married and divorced and known as a very opinionated and liberated woman. I pack a gun and I’ve used it. I own several animal hospitals in the state, plus teach at university level and am quite comfortable. You think I really give a damn what people might say?”
He chuckled. “No. I guess not, Blair. How about spaghetti and hot garlic bread and salad and a good wine?”
“Sounds great to me. I told my colleagues I would not be returning to the lab.” She looked outside. It would be dark in about an hour.
Johnny had driven into town, loaded up his truck, and then spent the rest of the afternoon stringing more heavy mesh wire. He had secured both open sides of the covered walkway leading from house to garage, and then put wire in place over every window in the house. He then took a ladder and covered the gable vents. On the roof, he covered the spinning exhaust vents with shaped wire and nailed them down with short roofing nails. He could think of no more to do to make his home and surroundings secure.
At 5, after showering, he and Blair sat down to watch the local new. Bats. At 5:30, the national news came on. Bats. The anchor, a man Johnny only barely tolerated, seemed more concerned with the reporter who got shot in the ass by an irate farmer than the three people who were killed by bats. Then the anchor launched into a two minute editorial about those nasty, terrible, horrible, awful, wicked, monstrous, dreadful, appalling, atrocious, loathsome, vile, and repulsive . . . guns.
“I think the liberal son of a bitch is going to start weeping any minute,” Johnny said.
“I hope when they go to commercial somebody has a box of hankies for him to stomp on,” Blair added.
Johnny turned off the television and went into the kitchen to get ice for the bucket and to make the drinks. June and Skipper were both under the kitchen table.
“Blair!” Johnny called. “Get the shotguns. I bought a case of heavier loads today. Load them up.”
“All right. What’s the matter, Johnny?”
“They’re here.”
She didn’t bother asking who they might be. She knew.
Johnny kept Valium on hand because the dogs got upset when he had to go away, even though he hired a young man to house sit and dog sit in his absence. The vet had suggested Valium. Johnny got down on his knees and gave each dog a pill and a moment of comforting petting. He looked up to see Blair standing in the archway, smiling at him.
“Ol’ softy, that’s you,” she said.
Something slammed against the heavy wire protecting the dog’s outside area and Blair jumped despite herself.
“Take it easy—all of you,” Johnny said. “They can’t get inside.”
“Then why do we have these loaded shotguns?” Blair asked.
Johnny smiled. “In case I’m wrong.”
“Do you mind if I get under the table with the dogs?” Blair asked.
Johnny turned to see if she was kidding. She was smiling at him. Her smile abruptly vanished when a strange screaming/shrieking/howling began outside the house. It was like nothing either of them had ever heard before.
“Bats can’t make sounds like that,” Blair said. “It’s physically impossible.”
“For a normal bat,” Johnny said calmly. “But these are anything but normal bats.” He went into the utility room and jacked up the voltage on his fence, putting it to the maximum. Then he laid the shotgun to one side and got a .22-caliber rifle, loading the clip up with .22 hollow-points. Back in the kitchen he explained. “The shotguns would blow holes in the mesh. If I aim right, these tiny slugs won’t. But they will kill those damn mutant bats.” He stepped out onto the back porch and opened the back door. He fired six times and six bats fell to the ground, dead or dying. There was a sudden fluttering of huge wings and then silence. Johnny stepped out into the dog’s protected area and made certain all the bats outside the wire were dead by shooting each one in the head.
When he stepped back into the house, Blair was talking on the kitchen phone. She hung up and said, “That was Mark. He just heard that the governor is sending in national guard troops. For crowd control and to help Sheriff Young maintain order. No reports of attacking bats have come out of any parish except this one.”
“I don’t understand this,” Johnny admitted. “I know that bats usually roost in caves or tunnels. But there are no caves or tunnels in this area.”
“They also live in hollow trees and deserted buildings, Johnny,” Blair replied. “Really, any protected place will do. Barns, for example. There are a lot of places in this parish where bats could live undetected. Solitary bats live in the thick leaves of trees. It would take weeks, maybe months to thoroughly search out this parish.”
“We don’t have weeks, Blair. They’ve congregated close by. I know it. But where?”
She shook her head. “This is swamp and timber and farm country, Johnny.”
“They could be roosting in the trees alongside the river. In the swampy areas that are virtually undisturbed.”
“Possibly. They would be anywhere. And we don’t know whether these bats roost together or separately and only come together at night to hunt. There are a lot of things about bats that the scientific community doesn’t understand.”
“Where’d they come from? Evolve, I mean?”
She shrugged. “We’re not sure. Possibly from the shrew. Or a shrewlike animal. The reason we’re not sure is because of very poor fossil records.”
“Flying rats.”
“That’s one way of putting it. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong.”
Johnny turned and looked outside through the kitchen window. It was fully dark now. And the mutant bats would be on the hunt. For flesh and blood.
* * *
Clyde Dingle had gathered his coven members together and they had all marveled at the creature sent to them from their master, Satan. They had all handled the bat, and the bat had obliged them all by biting them.
“The Prince of Darkness’s way of letting us know he is present,” Clyde said.
Yeah. Right.
While the coven members were all dancing and prancing around in their black robes, singing their praises to the Dark One, the captive bat fell over dead in its cage. None of the coven members noticed. They had all moved into the yard, where they were flinging themselves about and shouting praises to the Prince.
“The Prince has blessed us all!” shouted Clyde.
“I feel rejuvenated!” shouted Dark Moon.
“The jubilant mood is infectious!” yelled Percy.
Bet your ass it was.
Everybody stripped off their clothing and fell to the cool grass, grabbing this and groping at that. In minutes, the mound of writhing flesh resembled a huge grotesque monster, hunching and jerking and moaning and panting. The naked mound of misguided humanity would become even more of a monster within a few days.
* * *
Mark Hayden sent his wife and two children up to visit some cousins in Arkansas. Sheriff Phil Young got his family out of the parish and down to New Orleans. But most residents of that part of the parish refused to leave their homes and businesses and farms. Sheriff’s deputies and state troopers tried to convince them to leave.
“Nothing doing.”
“No way.”
“I ain’t leavin’.”
“I ain’t scared of no goddamn bat!”
“I don’t care if the sons of bitches is as big as a dog. I ain’t goin’ nowheres.”
“I don’t believe any of this crap. Bats as big as cats? Come on! I’ll take care of me and my own.”
“You can tell that coonass governor to take his orders and shove ’em!”
“Why don’t the governor leave and make everybody happy?” a few people retorted.
And so it went, on into the night. Weary deputies and troopers reported back that maybe five percent of the people in the affected area (affected in more ways than one) had volunteered to leave.
“We tried,” Sheriff Young said, his voice thick with exhaustion. “Go home and get some sleep. No telling what tomorrow will bring.”
The next morning, no new attacks had been reported and the people began saying, “See. I told you it was all a bunch of crap.”
The press conference, which had been delayed until this day, was scheduled for noon, was to be held outside of the highway department buildings not far from Johnny’s property. Blair left the house just after dawn and returned about an hour later.
“Roll up your sleeve,” she told Johnny, opening a small black bag.
“What are you planning on doing?” Johnny asked, eyeballing the syringe.
“I’m immunizing you. This is HDCV. It works. There is no way we can immunize everybody in the parish; it would take weeks to get enough vaccine in. But we can protect all the police and guardsmen.”
She popped him.
“What kind of reaction can I expect?” Johnny asked.
“None. You’ve probably had this same vaccine several times while in the Army and just didn’t know it. One more thing, Johnny.” She wiped his arm clean and put a small bandage over the injection point. “The incubation period of rabies ranges from about two weeks to as much as a year, occasionally. Full blown rabies usually shows up four to six weeks after that. Not with these damn bats. Incubation is about twenty four hours and the disease is raging within two or three days later. So figure four to five days after a person is bitten.”
“Jesus Christ! All right, then. What hope for them after that?”
“Absolutely none, Johnny. There have been only a very, very few instances of recovery in humans from full blown rabies. About three, I think.”
“In bats?”
“They can recover from it in many cases.”
“Symptoms in humans?”
“At first, depression, restlessness, fever, fatigue. Then they become very excitable. And dangerous.”
“How about some breakfast?”
“I’d like that.”
“I’ll fix it. You tell me more about rabies in humans.”
In the kitchen, over coffee, Blair said, “The victim becomes extremely excited at the sight of water. But they can’t drink because of massive throat spasms if they attempt to swallow. That produces foaming at the mouth. Hydrophobia literally means ‘fear of water.’ ”
“Now you tell me what the cops and the guardsmen are supposed to do when confronted with a violent and highly dangerous rabies victim?”
Blair stared at him and then looked down into her cup and said nothing for a moment. Finally, she said, “That decision is not mine to make, thank God.”
“The most humane thing to do would be to put the victim out of his or her misery.”
“That is true.”
“How long before death occurs after the disease is full blown?”
“Normally, three to seven days. But with these bats, I have no way of knowing. Johnny, I don’t think these bats die from rabies. I think they’re immune to it. So ...” She fell silent.
“So a human might just go on and on and on in this incredible agony until they die of dehydration.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Infecting anyone they come in contact with.” It was not a question.
“If the person is bitten or scratched and has not been immunized, yes.”
“Have the sheriff and his deputies been popped with that stuff you just hit me with?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Rather than you make that long drive into town, how about them getting it here. They’re setting up a substation just down the road. Ought to be in place in a few hours.”
“That’s fine. I brought enough vaccine for two dozen injections.”
Johnny called the sheriff’s office. Phil was just walking in after only a few hours sleep. He explained what Blair was doing. “I’ll send my men out in shifts, Johnny. I’ll be there in half an hour. I didn’t even know there was a vaccine for rabies.”
“Blair says it works.”
“I’m on my way.”
Johnny laid out more eggs and bacon and bread for toast while Blair made a fresh pot of coffee. He delayed cooking to time the food for Phil’s arrival. He had a hunch that Mark just might drop in, so he laid out more food.
“Are we feeding an army?” Blair asked.
“You never know. Mark and Captain Alden just might decide this is a good place to eat.”
“I can’t speak for Captain Alden, but Mark can eat enough for two.”
They chatted and drank coffee until Phil arrived, and just as Johnny had thought, Mark and Tom Alden were right behind him, driving unmarked cars and both men in civilian clothes, as was Phil. They wore their badges clipped to their belts.
“You’re just in time for breakfast,” Johnny called from the porch.
“I told you,” Mark said, grinning.
“The boy can smell food two miles off,” Capt
ain Alden said.
While Johnny finished cooking the breakfast and buttering the toast, Blair immunized the men.
“I’m using a portable building for a substation,” Phil explained. “But it’s a sturdy one and I had the floor reinforced and the windows covered with wire mesh, which, by the way, the local stores are all sold out of.”
“So people are taking precautions?” Blair questioned.
“Oh, yeah,” Mark said sarcastically. “At least ten percent of them. The rest are treating it like a joke.”
“But these bats we captured have been put on television!” Blair said, getting upset. “We’ve shown the dead ones. What’s the matter with people?”
“Settle down,” Johnny told her. “You can’t be responsible for the entire population. None of us can. All we can do is warn them of the dangers and hope for the best.”
Captain Alden said, “Blair, we can show people pictures of the most hideous highway accidents imaginable, caused by high speeds, booze, or a combination of both. But certain types of people will still speed and drink and drive. We can offer to teach them gun safety, and some fool will still shoot himself in the foot or kill his child because of carelessness. People hear public safety commercials several times a day about all sorts of things that could save their lives, give them better health, prolong their life expectancy, improve the quality of life, and many, if not most, ignore them. Johnny’s right. We just do our best and that’s all we can do.”
“It won’t be enough,” Blair said softly.
“It never is,” Johnny ended it.
Eight
The day passed uneventfully with no reports of bat attacks. The deputies and guardsmen were immunized. Sheriff Young set up his sub-station just down the road from Johnny’s property. Johnny went down and looked it over. If any bats got inside the portable building they would have to have the ability to use a chain saw. Two deputies would stay at the substation, including Cal Miller.
“I got a real personal interest in this war,” Cal said, holding up his bandaged hand.
Johnny was introduced to Deputy Dale Gray. Both deputies were young, probably no more than their early to midtwenties. But they were well-trained and steady, having both joined the department on their eighteenth birthday.
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