“Any further sign of Dingle’s group?”
“No,” Captain Alden shook his head. “Not yet. But I doubt if that one with her arm blown off got far. I went out there. She was losing a lot of blood. Mark said he couldn’t tell who she was. Said her face looked swollen.”
“All their faces were swollen grotesquely,” Johnny said. “And they were all foaming at the mouth. It was not a very pleasant sight.”
“Mark was a bit more graphic in his description,” Alden said drily.
“I bet he was,” Johnny said with a laugh. “See you.”
He was back home by early afternoon, after stopping at the store for a gallon of milk and some jars of peanut butter and jelly and several loaves of bread.
“They’re both asleep,” Blair said. “They took baths and ate a little something and were nearly asleep before I got them into a bed.”
“I’m sure they haven’t slept in twenty-four or more hours. They’ll probably wake up about dark, eat, and go right back to sleep.”
“Did you speak with the authorities about them?”
“Off the record. Captain Alden is going to run a quiet check about any possible living relatives.”
“And then?”
He shrugged his shoulders, then smiled. “I’m not going to throw them back. They’re keepers.”
“You’re a fast judge of character.”
“In my business, you learn to do that.”
“Someday you’ll have to tell me about it.”
“Perhaps.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon checking the outside. The weight of the huge bats had loosened some of the wiring and Johnny nailed it down tight, adding extra nails. He checked the dog’s runaround and found where the bats had been trying to dig under the wire.
“Incredible,” Blair said. “I’m beginning to think these aren’t bats at all. Bats don’t do things like this.”
“Well, these did. Now I’m going to teach the bastards a hard lesson.”
He quickly cut stakes and attached plastic insulators. He drove the stakes into the ground, about six inches from the wire, on the outside, and ran a single strand of wire all around, finally attaching it to the power supply. “The dogs can’t get to it, and the bats won’t . . . not after tonight.”
Blair laughed at the expression on his face. “You’re enjoying this, Johnny. You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Enjoying is probably not the right word,” he replied with a smile. “But these damn bats are not going to beat me.”
“The immovable object meets the irresistible force.”
“Are you talking about yourself or the bats?”
She laughed and poked him in the ribs with a finger. “Oh, I got you, Johnny-Boy. You’ll never get rid of me. And I warn you, I’m the jealous type. Just bear in mind the ballad of Frankie and Johnny.”
“You’re scaring me to death. Come on, it’ll be dark in a few minutes.”
The kids woke up about six that evening, and rubbing sleepy eyes, wandered into the den.
“You hungry?” Blair asked, knowing what the reply would be.
“Starving,” Holly said. “You have any peanut butter and jelly, Mr. MacBride?”
“So happens I do. Blair, will you fix them something to eat while I talk with them a minute?”
“Sure.”
Holly and Rich seated on the couch, Johnny said, “First of all I want you to know that as long as you stay in this house, you are entirely safe from the bats. They can’t get in. But they’ll try. And they’ll do it soon. Don’t be scared. They can’t get in. Blair and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t safe.”
Rich’s face drained of blood, and he lifted a shaking hand, pointing to the window. Johnny turned his head. Bats were hanging from the heavy wire.
“Make a face at them, Rich,” he told the boy. “Stick your tongue out at them. It’ll make you feel better.”
He did and it seemed to enrage the bats. They shrieked and howled and shook the wire in frustration. Holly joined in and made a horrible face at the bats. The bats gave it right back, baring their fangs and screaming.
“You see, kids. They can’t get into the house. They can’t get to the dogs out back. We’re all safe, as long as we stay inside.” He leaned over and pulled down the blind. “I’m tired of looking at those ugly devils. Let’s have something to eat.”
The kids ate, each drinking a large glass of iced tea. They watched TV for a few minutes, and then, yawning, they tottered off to bed.
“I cheated,” Blair whispered, sitting down beside Johnny. “I put a very mild sedative in their tea to help them sleep.”
“Of course,” Johnny said with a straight face, “I wouldn’t want to think you had an ulterior motive behind that move.”
She gasped in mock outrage. “Why, sir! What kind of a girl do you think I am?”
Johnny whispered in her ear.
Blair smiled. “Well . . . you just might be right about that.”
* * *
The bats could not get into the MacBride house, and neither could the rabies-crazed members of Dingle’s coven. But in other parts of the parish, people were not so lucky. In some cases, it would be days before anyone missed those who lived in isolated areas. Not so for the people who lived in the few towns scattered throughout the parish.
The governor flew back from his conference and was immediately faced with the pleas from some of his advisors to order the evacuation of the parish. But the bat experts who had gathered from all over the world finally agreed on one thing: if the residents of the parish pulled out, the bats would shift to another parish in their search for blood and flesh. The governor found himself in that unenviable spot called being between a rock and a hard place.
The news media picked up the prediction from the scientists, and the residents of the surrounding parishes became quite vocal in their opinions concerning the matter.
“That’s their problem,” one police jury member said.
“Stay home. We don’t want those damn bats up here,” the mayor of a town northwest of the besieged area said.
“Block the roads and keep those people down there penned in!” half a dozen preachers thundered to their flocks and later on that day to the sheriff of the parish.
“The roads are blocked and the national guard has been called out, you dipsticks!” the weary sheriff told them, every line on his desk phone flashing. “Get out of here!”
The spokesman for the Committee To Keep Our Race Pure, Billy Joe Harry Bob “Call Me Bubba,” which boasted a membership of fourteen, statewide, said, “It’s all the fault of integration. Goddamn niggers probably brought the bats in here.”
Ali Doomagitchamaz Holy-Breath Shazaam, who was spiritual head of the Church of the Sacred Turban and Fez, which had a membership of eleven, statewide, countered, “You goddamn honkies brought them bats in to kill off all the black people. Just like you white devils started AIDS to kill us off.”
At dawn, Johnny sat with Blair in the den watching the news unfold on television. “Human nature never fails to amuse me,” he said. “Brotherly love is just dandy as long as the asses of those preaching it aren’t on the line.”
“Why is the press even airing the crap from the mouths of those two nitwits?” Blair asked.
“Well, at least they did air both sides,” Johnny replied. “That’s a start toward impartial journalism.”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing, which woke up the kids.
“I’m hungry,” Holly said.
“Me, too,” Rich said.
“You want to tell us the joke?” Holly asked.
That started Johnny and Blair off again. They were still laughing as Johnny got the milk and Blair opened the cereal boxes.
“Grownups are weird!” Rich whispered to his sister.
Sixteen
Clyde Dingle and Royal Crown linked up with Percy and Rene and Rex and Lucille by accident. By now they had all been reduced to litt
le more than animals, stumbling through the woods. How they managed to avoid being spotted by the planes and helicopters in the air and the ground patrols was a question that would never be answered. If they had stayed in the woods, the panic that was soon to erupt in one small town could have been averted . . . and a lot of lives would not have been wasted.
Johnny had left Blair at the house with the kids and roamed the countryside alone in his truck. He drove to the northernmost town in the parish and found people nervously trying to maintain some degree of normalcy. Stores were open, but most people had stocked up and the stores were rapidly running out of anything to sell, for only a few wholesalers were allowing their trucks in. Earlier that morning, Johnny had stopped by the sheriff’s office and a deputy had quickly installed a radio in his truck. Johnny could now communicate parishwide, or further out if he so desired.
Bars and honkytonks were doing a booming business—a phenomenon that Johnny could never understand. In case of emergency, Johnny wanted all his wits about him, unimpaired by alcohol.
But what was the old saying? Everybody to their own tastes, said the woman who kissed a cow.
But in this case, no cows were going to be kissed. Real people were going to be kissed, in a manner of speaking, by Clyde Dingle and his infected coven members.
Johnny had just pulled back onto the highway when Clyde and his band of followers burst into a farm house just outside of town. Maddened, their brains pus-filled, they were tremendously strong, and they attacked the man and his family with a wild frenzy. One child managed to run out the front door while his father fought with Clyde and his mother and sisters struggled with the others. The family didn’t have a chance. Clyde and his followers stumbled out the back door, leaving the other rooms splattered with blood. Several cats sprang into the house through the open back door and lapped at the blood. Rats soon caught the scent and ran in from the fields and the barn and began eating the bodies and drinking the blood.
The little boy never had a chance. He was about a half mile from a neighbor’s house when the bats caught him. He ran for a few more yards with his throat torn out, then he collapsed. He was not a big boy, and it did not take the bats long to finish dining. The mutants lifted off and silently swam through the air to a nearby pecan grove. They waited.
The cats ran to other cats and immediately got into a fight. The rats ran back into the fields and barn and infected more of their kind. Half-wild dogs, long-abandoned by trashy dick-heads who do that sort of thing, came along and chewed on the bones of the little boy, tearing away the strips of infected flesh. Then they went on their way, fighting with other dogs who had been abandoned by other trashy dick-heads and not received their shots.
It was about to get real interesting around the parish, for other members of Dingle’s coven had found prey to attack and infect. And dogs and cats had found their bodies and had eaten the flesh and lapped up the blood.
Johnny caught a glimpse of something flitting through heavy timber as he drove the back roads and he stopped, pulling over. When he did that, the figure stopped and stared out at him from behind a bush.
Johnny waited in the truck. While he waited, he checked his Colt .45 autoloader. Johnny had always preferred the .45, for as far as he was concerned, its stopping power was unequaled in a handgun.
The figure lunged out of the brush and struggled to climb over a barbed wire fence. He appeared not to notice the barbs cutting his hands. He was also foaming at the mouth. Johnny did not know the man. He guessed him to be in his late twenties, but with his swollen features, it was only a guess.
“I suppose better me than some young guardsman or deputy who has never taken human life,” Johnny muttered. And might hesitate, he silently added.
The rabies-ravaged man was trying to push words out of his spasm-ridden throat. But none came. Johnny could see the feverish eyes, maddened by the dreadful disease. He lowered the passenger side window and shot the man in the chest just as the pitiful figure reached out to grip the door. The big slug slammed into the heart, killing the man instantly.
“Sorry, partner,” Johnny said. He picked up his mic and called in.
“Go, Johnny,” dispatch said.
“Tell Phil to meet me out on 3010 just south of the bayou bridge. And bring a body bag.”
“That’s ten-four, Johnny.” Johnny had not yet been assigned a call number.
Phil, Mark, and Captain Alden were there in ten minutes, in three cars. Johnny had very carefully looked all around him, and could find no bats. But he was still wary. He pointed to the body in the ditch.
“Anybody know him?”
“I never saw him before in my life,” Phil said. “And I think I know just about everybody in this parish. What happened, Johnny?”
“I put him out of his misery.”
Captain Alden glanced at him. “Just like that?”
“Not exactly. He was approaching the truck, grunting and foaming at the mouth and jerking spasmodically. He was well past the twenty-four hour period where vaccine would do any good. Anyway, Blair told me last evening that the doctors and scientists have discovered that in this type of rabies, if shots are not begun within a couple of hours after the bite, they won’t do any good. This strain is slightly different from the normal. If normal is the right choice of words.”
“Something just occurred to me,” Alden said. “We have no way of knowing how many people are already dead from this disease, and how many have been chewed on by rats and dogs and cats and squirrels and so forth. People, we have more than the bats to contend with here.”
Johnny had holstered his .45 and was holding his shotgun when Mark suddenly shouted, “Head’s up. Bats coming in from the timber!”
The men, all armed with shotguns, spun and opened fire. A dozen huge bats were blown out of the air.
“Johnny, you and Mark put on rubber gloves and bag that body, will you? Tom and I will stand guard. We’ll put the body in your pickup and take it to the refrigeration unit the military supplied us. And it’s been moved, Johnny. And it’s under military police guard. You follow me in, Johnny.”
Phil traveled some twisting back roads and stopped far from any town. When Johnny parked at the portable refrigeration trailer and helped unload the body, he was surprised to see the trailer was nearly half full with bodies. The military police officer from Fort Polk gave him a grim look.
“Yeah. I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. We’re trying to keep the press from reporting on all the bodies. We’re a heartbeat away from uncontrollable panic in this parish. If news of all these bodies—and parts of bodies—leaked out, the shit would really hit the fan.”
“How many here?” Johnny asked.
The officer looked at him for a moment. “This is the second trailer, mister. The first one pulled out last night.”
“Jesus!”
“Yeah. And I figure it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it’s over.”
Phil walked over. “Over fifty dead, Johnny,” the sheriff admitted. “And I have a sinking feeling there are at least that many more dead out in the parish that we haven’t discovered. We just got a report about a farm family north of here. Everybody dead. And tracks of cats and dogs and coyotes and God knows what else all over the place. They’ve eaten on the bodies and lapped up blood. And it wasn’t bats who killed them.”
“Dingle’s bunch?”
“Probably. But we’re not sure. We don’t have any way of knowing how many other people are infected—like that one you just brought in.”
Johnny nodded his head in agreement. “Phil, where can I get some old parish maps? Fifty to a hundred years old?”
“The assessors’ office in the court house.” He looked at his watch. “He can make you copies. You might catch him before he closes for the weekend. Why? What do you have on your mind?”
“Are there any old deserted towns in this parish?”
“No,” Phil said. “Oh, some of these crossroads you find on a ma
p have a building or two there. But certainly not large enough to roost thousands of bats.”
Johnny sighed. “Another good idea shot to hell. Phil, if the trucks aren’t going to bring foodstuffs in, the parish is going to have to be evacuated.”
Phil shook his head. “The governor ordered them to start running again. They’re coming in and dropping off their loads under guard by troopers and military police. But I’ll say this: if the conditions get much worse, I’ll evacuate this parish whether the governor likes it or not.”
“Where will you take them, Phil? Seems like to me the surrounding parishes have spoken their minds about that.”
“A few of the people in each parish have spoken, Johnny. The ones who are always running off at the mouth about something. The only way the governor could stop me is to seal us in here.”
“Would he do that?”
“Well ... he might. Wouldn’t you sacrifice one parish to save the remaining sixty-three? It’d be a hell of a choice to have to make.” He sighed heavily. “We’ve got slightly more than twelve thousand people scattered over half a million acres with only a few towns. Sixteen oil and gas fields. Hundreds of miles of roads, a lot of them dirt and gravel or a combination of the two. Johnny, there are people out in the country that don’t come to town but maybe five or six times a year. Sometimes when it rains, they can’t get out, unless they use a boat. You mess with some of these people, they’ll shoot you. And I’m telling you the flat out truth.”
“I wonder how many of them are still alive?”
“That’s a damn good question, Johnny. Did you know that Mississippi has called out their national guard?”
Johnny shook his head. “No. But it doesn’t surprise me. They’re guarding along the river, aren’t they?”
“Good guess. Yeah. It isn’t for broadcast, but Mississippi officials found some of these mutant bats hanging under the bridge down at Natchez. The governor over there pulled out all the stops after that find.”
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