Bats

by William W. Johnstone

She paused in the lifting of coffee cup to lips and looked at him. “Then who does?”

  “You tell me. You said the oil and gas wells are pretty much played out, right?”

  “That’s right. It would be a money-losing proposition to reopen them. Any of them. All of them. So there they sit.”

  “In the middle of some of the most valuable farm land in the world.”

  “That too, is correct. The timber alone is worth a fortune. What are you getting at, Johnny?”

  “Well, I’m thinking that the bats could not have come along at a more opportune time for someone who is engaged in some pretty shady dealings. Someone who has tight contacts in Washington, and who might have a couple of federal judges in his, or her, pocket.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll call Phil in a couple of hours and ask him to check at the courthouse to see if anyone has been buying up land recently.”

  “Agnes Morlund just sold out. Mark told me that yesterday.”

  “Uh-huh,” Johnny said with a smile. “And I’ll bet that with a little checking, we’ll find that those families out where we found the kids have either sold or been approached to sell. There is always going to be some sorry son of a bitch who’ll come along and try to make money out of tragedy.”

  “And the sad thing is they usually succeed.”

  “For a time,” Johnny said. “For a time.”

  * * *

  “You were right, Johnny,” Sheriff Young said, sitting down in the den. “Some corporation called Renan has people in here buying property. The FBI is looking into whether they have ties with this overseas conglomerate who supposedly bought that tract of land from the government. And whether or not these federal judges are tied in with it.”

  “You can bet they are, Phil. Knowingly or unknowingly.”

  “Since all the Wirths are dead, who takes over that property?” Blair asked.

  “The brother up in Arkansas, I suppose.” Phil nodded his head. “It was a family thing. But, yeah. I see your point. I’ll call in and have someone check to see if the brother has been approached. Your call got me to thinking, Johnny. So I checked with other offices in the courthouse. For the past year, land in this parish, especially around the area in question, has been bought up, little by little. But not by the same people. Here’s the way it works: Temple Industries is owned by the Biggers Manufacturing Company and the Biggers Manufacturing Company is owned by the Cason Construction Company and they’re owned by something else and so forth and so on. When we peel off all the layers, I’ll bet you a steak dinner they’re all owned by the Renan Corporation.”

  “That’s disgusting!” Blair said.

  Johnny smiled. “But not criminal. The sad truth is that big business owns this country, Blair. And one of their main objectives is to put the little farmer out of business. And they’re succeeding. Another sad truth is because of loopholes and tricky lawyers and lobbyists and middlemen and agents, government is helping them do it. This nation is slowly being bought up by overseas interests. Just ask anyone who has spent their life in the intelligence community, as I have. Oh, Phil and the Bureau and others will eventually find out just who owns what, but it’ll be too late by then. You can bet your boots that the Renan Corporation has already learned of the Bureau’s interest, and they’ve got batteries of lawyers working feverishly, right this moment, on throwing up legal roadblocks. The longer they can keep those damnable bats alive, and scaring the hell out of the residents of this parish, the more land will be up for sale. And the Renan Corporation will keep those bats alive just as long as possible.”

  “That’s ... sick!” Phil said. “What about the people who are surely going to be infected and die from these delaying tactics?”

  “Oh, hell, Phil!” Johnny waved a hand. “These corporate heads don’t care about little things like that. They’re sitting on the fifty-fifth floor of some corporate headquarters, in offices so plush it would boggle your mind, counting their money and devising ways to make more money. We’re just statistics, that’s all. Numbers. Graphs. Look, you two, human life is the cheapest commodity on the face of the earth. Money and power fuel the world. Not ordinary folks. People will always be making more people to take the place of those who fall by the wayside. Just look at the automobile makers who roll a car or truck off the line and then find out it’s defective in some way. They’re sitting in their corporate offices knowing, knowing, that fifty or a hundred human beings are going to die as a result of that defect. Well, they figure, to recall and retool might cost fifty billion dollars. To pay out the projected number of lawsuits from accident victims will cost five billion. Which way do you think they’ll go? It’s just good business to go for the lowest number. When I retired I had at least thirty offers from large corporations to come on board and engage in industrial espionage for them. Stealing ideas and secrets from other companies. Perfume, wine, beer, manufacturing in every field from toys to tractors, panties to shoes, guns to garters, dog food to computer chips, you name it. Believe me, it’s going on even as we speak. As for this parish?” He shrugged his shoulders. “So fifty or five hundred or five thousand people die in this parish. Hell, they don’t care. In the end they’ll have the land, they’ll cut down all the trees and make money from the sale of timber while they’re clearing the land to make more money from farming. Or they’ll use it as a tax write-off. Either way they’ll come out ahead.”

  “You paint a pretty crummy world out there, Johnny,” Phil said.

  “More than you will ever know, Phil. More than I hope you will ever know.”

  Seven

  Johnny walked around his fenced in acreage and double-checked everything. Mark had gone back in uniform, patrolling the parish in his regular unit. Blair watched him, knowing he had something on his mind, and she had a pretty good idea what that might be.

  “Johnny,” she called from the porch. “We’re all right. We’ve plenty of food and milk and snacks for the kids. What are you planning? As if I didn’t know.”

  “Then you tell me,” he said with a smile.

  “You’re driving out to the land in question and looking around, right?”

  “You missed your calling, Blair. You should have set up shop as a mind-reader.”

  “Johnny ... you’re not thinking of getting out of the truck, are you?”

  “No,” he answered quickly. “I’m not even sure I’m going to do anything except drive around the area. Going over there is just something I feel I need to do. And the thought came to me this morning that I don’t think anyone has done it yet.”

  As soon as he pulled out of the driveway, Blair called the sheriff’s office and told Phil what he was doing.

  “I swear, Blair, I sometimes think that fellow of yours has got more guts than brains. I’ll call Mark on his car phone and have him intercept and tag along. OK?”

  “Fine, Phil. And thanks.”

  Johnny was not surprised to see Mark pull in behind him. He smiled. He had made a bet with himself that Blair would be on the phone before he hit the blacktop. He pulled over and got out, looking warily around him.

  “I would tell you I was just roaming around and spotted your truck,” Mark said. “But I think you’d know I’d be lying.”

  “Oh, I expected Blair to call the sheriff’s office. Mark, I’m not going out there to play hero. I just want to drive around and get as close as I can to that old abandoned town.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  When they reached the old logging road that led off into a dark timbered unknown, Johnny stopped and got out, walking back to Mark’s unit. He smiled at the trooper.

  “Shit!” Mark said, recognizing the smile for what it was. “You’re going in there, aren’t you?”

  “We haven’t had any appreciable rain around here for a long time. The old road looks passable. I’ve got four-wheel drive plus a winch on front. So, yeah. I’m going in. At least for a little ways. Will you wait out here?”

  “Sure. Look, we’ll use CBs to keep chatter off the poli
ce frequencies. Go to channel 39 and keep it there.”

  “Will do.”

  Mark sat in his unit and watched Johnny’s truck disappear into the Spanish-moss-hung gloom. He hoped he wouldn’t have to go in there after him. Place gave him the creeps.

  “Spooky,” Johnny muttered, the deeper he drove into the timber. He guessed that many of the trees were well over a hundred years old—probably many more years older than that. But he saw no signs of bats. He stopped often and looked all around him, carefully inspecting the branches. No bats, and no sign that bats had ever been there.

  The road abruptly ended at a sturdy looking fence that looked reasonably new; probably not more than a few years old. Off to one side, he caught the glint of sunlight off of metal and could make out the cab of a truck. The cab was covered with dust and leaves. He cautiously pulled in behind the truck and lying beside it, near the right front tire, were the bones of a human being and the bones of a dog.

  “The man sent in to put up new NO TRESPASSING signs,” Johnny said. He lifted his mic. “Mark?”

  “Come on.”

  “Found skeletons of a man and a dog. Probably that guy sent in to post new signs. Arkansas plate on the truck.” He gave it to the trooper.

  “I’ll call it in. Hang on.”

  The bones of man and dog were undisturbed and that told Johnny that the bats had depleted the wildlife in the area before they went on a rampage against humans.

  “Johnny,” his CB speaker cracked. “You called it. Guy’s been missing for weeks. What do you want to do about the bones?”

  “Nothing. I’m not getting out of this truck. I can’t go any further in on this road. A fence has me blocked. I’m coming out and we’ll try another way in.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  Johnny backed out and drove back to the gravel. He was sweating despite the air conditioning in the truck, his shirt sticking to his skin. Although he had not seen any bats, he had sensed danger all around him.

  “Boy, they’re in there,” he said, walking up to Mark, who had stepped out of his patrol car. “I didn’t see them, but I damn sure sensed them.”

  “So do I,” the trooper replied. There was no kidding around about him now. His face was tense. “Listen, Johnny. Listen. There is nothing. It’s as silent as a tomb. Those damn bats have either killed and eaten everything alive for miles, or the wildlife have fled.”

  “Probably a combination of both. You ready to roll?”

  “Yeah. I know several more ways in if you’re game.”

  “I’m game.”

  “Follow me.”

  * * *

  The man from Washington had been wrong. These bats had not come from the plane crash; that impact had killed every living thing on board. No, these bats had been around for a long, long time, hundreds of years, evolving, growing in intelligence. But until recently, no more than five or six years back, they had been relatively few in number in America and had never congregated en mass. The few in the southwest U.S. survived on wildlife and an occasional hitchhiker on a lonely road. Then something happened some quirk of nature, some awful imbalance, perhaps some of the hundreds of chemicals that humankind sprays and belched and puffs into the air, they didn’t know; but what they did know was that they had experienced a population explosion. Their numbers increased so rapidly food soon became a major problem. They turned to human flesh and blood. Then some call, some silent beckoning, summoned them all to this place. And they flew in from their safe havens in Mexico and South America. To here.

  Blair and Johnny and a few of the scientists had been correct about some aspect of these huge bats. They were smart. Very smart . . . for a bat. They had leaders, and coleaders. They worked like a well-trained army. The planned, sometimes not too well, but they did plan. They communicated quite well. Through chirps and body language and squeals and subsonic sounds that only they could hear.

  They knew immediately that Johnny MacBride was an enemy to be feared, and killed if possible. They spotted adversaries quickly. Some they had managed to kill. Most they had not. And they had plotted and schemed and squabbled and argued, in their limited way, attempting to find some way to get Johnny MacBride to come to them.

  Now he had come. He had actually entered their sanctuary. Eagerly they watched him drive into their territory. They narrowed their eyes and felt their hearts race in anticipation of the kill.

  But he would not leave his steel protection. And they knew as long as he remained within the confines of metal and glass, he was untouchable. However, that was about to change.

  To attack outside of the gloom was a risk they did not want to take. For neither Johnny nor the uniformed man ever left their steel protection without the long guns that meant death. And they never talked face to face; they moved constantly, their eyes always searching the skies.

  But there was always hope that the human enemy would drive deeper into their domain. They hung from branches and hoped. And watched. And waited.

  * * *

  Mark pulled just past another old road leading into the protected area where WARNING KEEP OUT signs were nailed to posts. Johnny waved to him and turned onto the now grassy lane and headed into the gloom. He had not gone two hundred yards before he began spotting the skeletons of animals. He picked up the mic.

  “They’re here, Mark,” he radioed. “Skeletons of animals all over the place. I think they’ve been here longer than people suspect.”

  “That’s ten-four. Listen, Johnny? Hold up. Right now. Just shut it down and listen to me.”

  Johnny braked and keyed the mic. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s a trap, Johnny. I think these damn bats have set a trap for you. Maybe for me, too.”

  Johnny thought about that for moment, then he backed up, found a place to turn around, and drove back to the gravel. He did not get out of the truck this time, just pulled in close to Mark’s unit and lowered his window.

  “You may be right, Mark. But if you are, it proves these creatures are a hell of a lot smarter than we think.”

  “That’s what you’ve always maintained, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  The police band speakers in both vehicles began blaring metallically and they both listened to Captain Alden’s voice call Mark’s unit number. “You have Johnny in visual?”

  “That’s ten-four. He’s not three feet away, Captain.”

  “Both of you head on back. Stop at the highway department buildings. The scientists have something to show you. I’ll meet you there.”

  The faces of the scientists, to a person, were grim. The building was filled to capacity with men and women from all over the world.

  “What’s wrong?” Johnny asked.

  A woman pointed to a cut open and very dead bat on an examining table. Death had not diminished the ugliness and savageness of the creature. “As close as we are able to determine, that bat is about twenty-five years old, Mr. MacBride.” She pointed to another dead bat, sliced open. “That bat is about nine months old.”

  Both were approximately the same size.

  Johnny and Mark exchanged glances. Johnny was the first to speak. “They’ve been around for a long time then. But what have they been preying on?” He felt he knew the answer to that, but asked anyway.

  “The dregs of humanity,” Captain Alden said. “When they absolutely had to.”

  “And they are incredibly intelligent,” another scientist said in an Eastern European accent. “We have been observing them in a free environment for about a week; free as far as we could safely allow. In a back room equipped with two-way mirrors. They have leaders in each band. They have a highly evolved language. They can perform simple tasks like removing cage latches. They’ve mastered the turning of a door knob.”

  “And that means,” Captain Alden said, “that when you’re driving around, you’d better keep your car doors locked. For surely some of these . . . goddamn things will have learned how to open a car door.” He turned and fac
ed Mark. “I was monitoring your conversations on CB. You really believe you and Johnny were walking, or driving as it were, into a trap?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “Yes,” the captain said. “So do I and so do the majority of these distinguished ladies and gentlemen. Opens up a whole new ball game, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alden turned to face Johnny. “What did you feel, sense, in that disputed area, Johnny?”

  “Danger. And believe me, over the years I’ve honed down my senses pretty fine.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “I also saw a lot of animal skeletons. And at least one human skeleton. The bats are centralized in that protected area. I didn’t see them; but I damn sure sensed their presence. How is the looking into who owns what around here going?”

  Alden shook his head. “Bogged down in legal crap. Those corporate lawyers are playing with peoples’ lives and they don’t seem to care.”

  “They don’t care,” Johnny agreed. The huge room filled with scientists and doctors from all over the world was silent, the men and women listening. Most agreeing, some not. “They’re motivated by the almighty dollar and nothing else.” Johnny took the captain’s arm and led him off a few yards. He spoke softly. “Tom, if anything is to be done, and it had better be done damn quick, we’re going to have to do it ourselves and to hell with the consequences.”

  “I agree. Let me talk with Colonel Jarrett and he’ll touch base with the governor.” He smiled at Johnny. “A covert operation, Johnny.”

  Johnny nodded his head. “I’m pretty good at them. God knows, I’ve had enough experience.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “No. That’s something we’ll have to work out. Keeping it just as simple as possible, and with as few people involved as possible.”

  “The more complex the plan, the higher the odds for failure.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll be back with you this afternoon. You’ll be at your house?”

  “Yes. If these bats have me targeted, and I’m sure they do. My house is the safest place to be.”