Night of the Bat (The Zone Unknown)

by Paul Zindel

  “Who taught you how to hunt?” Jake asked Rasdyr.

  “My father taught me how to stay alive in the jungle.” Rasdyr tried to smile. He took water from a canteen and splashed it on his face.

  Soon they could see the moon directly above them. The treetops were aglow, silver and shimmering. Dr. Lefkovitz turned off the Coleman, and the three waited in silence again. They could hear the gurgling sounds of the river and see it sparkle like a thick glittering ribbon below and south of the walkway.

  Dr. Lefkovitz moved slowly closer to the center of the trap. He listened to every peep and chirp and gentle crackling of the canopy.

  There was a loud whooshing somewhere ahead, and Jake felt a chill crawl up his neck and across his scalp. There were new smells in the canopy now: dust, and a jasmine fragrance in the air. The late hour and crisp moonlight began to play tricks with his eyes and blur his vision. His mind was racing. All the death and loss that had happened was beginning to shift and seep into places in his brain and heart where he couldn’t escape it.

  Jake realized that the three of them were waiting like cheese in a mousetrap. He sat to the left of Rasdyr on a bed of leaves camouflaging the walkway. Panic swelled in him until he felt as if he were in a speeding car about to crash. There was the scream of a river loon. His stomach hardened into a knot.

  Suddenly, the chattering and whirring of monkeys and insects disappeared. An utter stillness fell on the canopy, so that the only sound was the faint march of the river as it washed against the banks and churned downstream into white water.

  More silence.

  Dr. Lefkovitz had heard a silence like this before when he had been in Java and the lush mountains of Kenya. It was a silence that preceded the arrival of the king of a vast primate colony. That’s how it had been with the monkeys and apes: first, a shrieking that froze one’s heart; and then an utter, uncanny silence while all the lesser monkeys awaited the appearance of the royal apes in the pecking order.

  A breeze crept into the canopy. Jake saw an image fluttering at the center of Gizmo’s screen.

  “Dad, it’s coming.”

  His father moved closer to watch the ghostly electronic picture. The night mist had conjured itself once more, thick enough to blacken out the moonlight. Now the men heard something in the sky.

  A thing soaring overhead.

  A few moments later, they heard it again. The glide of a large airborne creature closing in.

  There were vibrations now. The platform shaking. The creature had landed on the platform ahead of them. For a moment, the vague image disappeared from the screen and there were new sounds behind them. Then to the left and right.

  Jake shifted, and redirected Gizmo. It was when he turned to check the trap’s opening that he noticed the shadow, as if a large tree branch were moving in a breeze. Rasdyr coughed. A moment later, the stench reached Jake’s nostrils. His father had already covered his mouth. It was the horrid smell of rotting meat, like chicken that had stayed weeks too long in its package.

  There came a wheezing sound, and the shadow crawled forward.

  13

  ENCOUNTER

  A sliver of moonlight broke through again. Now Jake  could see the reflection in the pair of huge glass eyes that stared at him. He saw the wet, dripping snout of the huge chiropteran lifted up into the night breeze. It sniffed fiercely. Intensely.

  Catching the full lure of the scent of human flesh, the shadow continued forward. The boards of the platform creaked beneath its weight. Even without the aid of Gizmo now, they could see the bat bunched up. It appeared to be the size of a small car. As one of its wings lifted from its body, Jake thought the bat must surely have passed the trip rope—the waiting trigger of jungle vine, fishing catgut, and rope. One wing moved so that it protruded to the left. The bat crawled closer still.

  “It should be now,” Rasdyr whispered.

  The bat stopped.

  Jake’s eyes had become accustomed to the night and darkness and the shadows of the moonlight. He could see the bat swiveling its head as if sensing something wrong. Dangerous. It lifted its head and sniffed again toward the three figures crouched at the far end of the vine cluster. It decided to proceed. As it did, its talons dragged across the trip rope.

  There was the quick pivoting of rope and pulleys, a dropping of log weights on either side of the net which made the inner mesh rise with a scream. Guy wires screeched, and the bat shuddered with surprise. The netting at the center of the room was in place now, and the entrance behind the bat was sealed. The bat was caught inside the rope cage.

  As the final counterweights pulled taut the top of the trap, the bat sat midway between the platform railings. It watched the physics of the entrapment, swiveling its head from left to right. When all the sounds had halted, it gazed toward the net roof with what looked more like curiosity than fear.

  Jake and Rasdyr, stood frozen, amazed that the trap had worked. They stared through the net divider at the freakish creature looking back at them. They could see the bats eyes. Its every instinct was focused on them.

  There was a snorting that deepened into a wheezing. The bat’s jaws opened like a mouth-breather’s, and a hot froth dripped from the its lips.

  Jake gasped. He could see the bat more objectively now than in the madness of the first night when it had attacked Hanuma. It seemed to stare at the glow of Gizmo in his hands, and then lifted its lazy gaze and fixed its eyes on him. Jake’s pulse quickened, as he became convinced that the bat remembered him.

  The bat twisted its head to the right, keeping one dark, terrible eye on Jake. The reek of its mouth announced the mark of the carnivore, and its wheezing transmuted into a hissing sound like a massive cobra. It moved forward, its taloned feet dragging along the planking like those of a gargoyle come to life on the edge of an ancient rampart.

  It turned one ear in the direction of Gizmo, with its piercing electronic sounds.

  Instinctively, Jake moved nearer to his father, who held a machete ready. Dr. Lefkovitz took the full measure of the maze of thick arteries and veins that had developed in the creature’s wings, making them resemble the spokes of an enormous open umbrella. Winged beetles and tropical cicadas buzzed and clustered around the bat’s face, attracted to its rancid smells and specks of rotting carrion.

  For a moment longer, the two sides—the bat and the men—stared at each other in disbelief.

  The bat stood up on its legs and spread its wings to their full span—twenty, twenty-five feet! It began to screech with a volume that shook the entire platform. It launched itself violently into the air, flying straight at the dividing net.

  Rasdyr, Jake, and Dr. Lefkovitz rushed back and away as the screaming bat crashed into the netting in front of them. The net stretched forward, its ropes extending until all slack was gone. The anchor branches strained and creaked like long, brittle fingers. It seemed certain the ropes would snap.

  But they held.

  The bat slammed its feet back down onto the platform. Its head swiveled on its hairy, thick neck. It hissed its outrage again and its stinking, scalding breath rolled toward the men. Its forelimbs boasted another set of talons that had atrophied into a comb of thick barbs. Like a rioting bird of prey, it screamed its ire through its dagger fangs.

  It shuddered and rose up again. The ropes squeaked under the savage strain. But the bat was caught. Perplexed. Furious.

  Its talons shot forward and down, testing the ropes and planking for a weakness. Jake, his father, and Rasdyr were stunned by the bat’s ferocity. The bat hurled itself against the netting like a crazed ram, its hooked claws reaching out to cut them. Savage them. Kill and feed!

  Jake checked the peak of the net, where the ropes drew to a nexus like the top of a circus tent. The riverwalk platform quaked violently—but still the netting and wooden boards held. The bat seized the net in its teeth and shook it like an angry dog with a pull toy. Leaves and fruit and beetles rained down from the highest domain of the canopy. All the s
mall living things crawled and dropped off the edge, plummeting toward the jungle floor.

  Jake and his father looked at each other.

  “NOW!” his father shouted.

  Rasdyr began to fire the drug-tipped darts. The first hit the bat’s face. The second stuck in the bat’s pug nose—and another hit the flesh above its left eye. The bat shrieked with renewed rage, and clawed at the darts until he had scraped them off.

  Dr. Lefkovitz dropped down on his knees next to Rasdyr, grabbed another of the loaded blowpipes, and helped fire off a second spray of darts. Rasdyr, too, fired again and again. The bat shook, screeched raucously, and bit wildly at the net that separated it from its attackers.

  “I want the bat alive,” Dr. Lefkovitz shouted. “I need it alive.”

  14

  THE DEATH OF RASDYR

  Jake, too, grabbed a blowpipe and managed to fire a drug-tipped dart into the bat’s face. The bat stared maliciously at Jake and shrieked deafeningly. The violent fluttering and clawing of the bat was so alarming, even Rasdyr wasn’t able to shoot straight. The darts began to miss their mark.

  “Stop firing,” Dr. Lefkovitz shouted. “Don’t provoke it anymore. Let the drug take effect.”

  The bat quieted and backed away from the division net. It checked the trap entrance, clawed at it. But that was sealed, too.

  The bat turned back to look at them. Rasdyr held another dart ready to fire, and moved closer to the net dividing the space.

  “Be careful,” Dr. Lefkovitz said.

  The bat was standing up now. It was eerily quiet, checking every inch of the trap with its dark, mucous-rimmed eyes.

  Rasdyr could see that the darts were taking their toll. On various hunts, he had seen several tapirs and enraged jaguars succumb slowly to the drug’s power. The bat appeared to be drifting toward sleep. It looked mesmerized, riveted.

  Rasdyr moved closer to the division net and the creature. He picked up another of the drug-tipped darts, loaded a blowpipe, and held it aimed toward the bat’s eyes. If the dart could strike the flesh of an eye, the drug would flow quickly to its brain—even make it collapse. From experience, he had learned the amount of the wildflower-eucalyptus sap that would cause a large animal to close its eyes and drop unconscious.

  “Don’t go too close,” Dr. Lefkovitz warned Rasdyr.

  But Rasdyr was already dangerously near the division net. He raised the blowpipe into position. As he inhaled deeply to propel the dart through the long slender tube, the massive bat exploded into motion again. It came hurtling at the divider.

  The force of the collision stretched the net farther than anyone had thought possible. The forelimb claws of the bat ripped through the net and grasped Rasdyr. The claws tore into Rasdyr’s shoulders, and blood from an artery shot out like water from a shower hose. Jake and Dr. Lefkovitz reached forward quickly. They each reflexively grabbed one of Rasdyr’s arms, and tried to yank him back out of harm’s way—but they were no match for the savage strength of the bat.

  “EEEEH! EEEEEEEH!”

  Rasdyr cried out as the bat flexed its talons, digging them deep until they surrounded solid muscle tissue and bone. It pulled Rasdyr violently to its breast now—at the same time leaping upward and digging the claws of its feet into the top of Rasdyr’s midsection. Like a huge dark ostrich, it kicked its powerful legs downward. Rasdyr’s whole abdomen burst open.

  Instantly, Rasdyr was dead.

  It was several moments before Jake and his father fully understood that they were holding the arms of a disemboweled corpse.

  “Let him go,” Dr. Lefkovitz shouted—to himself as well as Jake.

  They released their grasp on Rasdyr’s arms. The bat shrieked and tore farther through the net into the chamber. It let loose Rasdyr’s bloody body, and dropped down onto it. It tore at the dead face and neck and chest, not feeding or devouring. It used its teeth to slice and dismember.

  Instinctively Jake threw open the volume switch on Gizmo.

  BEEP BEEP BEEP.

  The electronic blaring had confused the monster on the night that it had grabbed Hanuma. Now, delirious with horror, Jake somehow hoped it would give him and his father the seconds they needed to escape.

  His father had spun around and was hacking with his machete at the vine they’d used to secure an exit flap at the rear of the trap. The bat’s rage was focused on Jake and Gizmo now. Its nostrils dripped with a green ooze as it shook the netting and managed to thrust its cruel, snapping jaws farther through the rip of the netting. Its flailing claws scooped and swung inches from Jake’s legs.

  As the bat rolled its head and screamed audibly in a shaft of moonlight, its talons reached deep, pawing through the sad remains of what was Rasdyr. Suddenly, it grasped the palm-wood planks of the trap floor itself. It spread its wings with a power and turbulence that tore the division net wide open, and it stepped through the entrails toward Jake.

  The trap was only a shattered spiderweb when Dr. Lefkovitz gave a final slash. The exit flap fell open, and Jake crawled out. Jake’s father was quick behind him—and they were running. A second later, the bat’s head and wings crashed through the rupture, and it was after them.

  “The sling,” Dr. Lefkovitz called out.

  Jake ran toward the center platform. The sling to descend was waiting. It would hold both of them. Jake reached it. He leaped into it and held it against the railing, ready to launch.

  “Hurry up,” he shouted to his father.

  Dr. Lefkovitz rushed toward him. The bat was crawling—racing—swiftly, half-flying after him. Jake held the sling open. For a moment, he met his father’s terrified gaze and knew he had made another decision.

  “Save yourself,” his father said.

  “No!” Jake cried out.

  Then his father was at the sling. The bat was coming fast. Jake turned the volume of Gizmo up still higher. The loud beeping was earsplitting, but it didn’t slow the bat.

  “Don’t!” Jake said, as his father reached out for the sling release. It was too late. His father sent Jake and the sling descending toward the jungle floor. Horrified, Jake watched his father sidestep onto the north catwalk. The bat halted to see Jake and the retreating sling—then the bat chose another, a crueller, turn.

  There was shouting from the camp as the men realized that something had gone terribly wrong at the trap.

  “The bat’s after my dad!” Jake shouted as he reached the bottom.

  Jake leaped out of the sling. He took off beneath the path of the north walkway, straining to see up through a mesh of tropic evergreens and moonlight. The men, with cries of fear, raced along beside him.

  There was a scream from above.

  There came the sounds of a heavy weight crashing down from the canopy—something falling through the layers of delicate branches and strands of fleshy orchids and vines. There was the thud of a body hitting the sea of red clay and broadleafs that were the jungle floor.

  15

  VENGEANCE

  Frightened and shouting, the Indian men hacked their way through the jungle undergrowth and reached the fallen body first. Sorgno, the young man who could speak only broken English, grabbed Jake and led him to the spot. “Your father. Hurt.”

  Sorgno led Jake to where the group of men had gathered. Jake knew how far his father had fallen. He had heard the branches crack, breaking his father’s fall as he smashed down through them.

  The men stepped aside to make room for Jake. Some of the Indians had terror in their eyes; others had sorrow.

  He walked to the center of the group of men, and dropped down on his knees next to his father. His father was covered with bruises and wounds.

  Capillaries on his arms had burst, and his eyes were closed. His face and hair were cloaked in blood, and his left leg stuck out in an impossible direction. A chunk of white bone protruded from the skin of his knee.

  Jake saw his father’s chest rise and fall, and heard his troubled breathing. Each breath was a hard wheezing. A struggle
. He started coughing and a strand of blood dripped out the side of his mouth. Jake was afraid his father was dying in front of him.

  But that mustn’t be.

  “Get a cot,” Jake yelled. He reinforced with a mime of what was needed. “Something flat. Hurry.”

  Sorgno translated. Three of the men left for the lean-tos. Taking off his own shirt to use as a towel, Jake wiped the dirt and blood off his father’s face. He took his father’s hand and whispered in his ear: “Don’t worry, Dad—you’ll be okay. We’ll get you out of here.” Jake turned to Sorgno. “We have to get his bone back inside,” Jake said. “Set it as best we can.”

  “I have done this,” Sorgno said. “I can do it.”

  The men returned with a cot. They gently lifted Jake’s father onto it and carried it like a stretcher to the main hut.

  “My dad needs a doctor,” Jake said to Sorgno. “He has to get down to the Fathers’ village. To the missionaries. Muras needs treatment, too. They’ll have to radio for a helicopter or my dad will die. I want your best rowers—the strongest river men—in their pirogues, and they’ve got to leave now.”

  “We cannot leave on the river,” Sorgno said. “They will be slaughtered like Hanuma and Dangari. We must carry Dr. Lefkovitz and Muras through the jungle.”

  “How long would that take?” Jake asked.

  “Three days, maybe more.”

  “My dad doesn’t have three days,” Jake said, his patience running out. “Can’t you see he’s dying? Do you want me to paddle him down there myself? Is that what I have to do?” Jake shouted.

  “The bat will get him,” Sorgno said. “We will not go on the river.”