Night of the Bat (The Zone Unknown)

by Paul Zindel

  Jake’s eyes filled with rage, and he shoved Sorgno to the ground. Furiously, he drew back his fist to punch him, but Sorgno was faster, stronger. He grabbed Jake’s fists and stopped them from striking him. An older Indian cried out from the doorway.

  “Stop!”Muras said, barely able to stand. “Sorgno is right. As long as the bat lives, your father and our people will never make it past Dark Angel Falls.”

  Sorgno let Jake get up.

  Jake began to choke with anxiety and panic. He fought until he had control again. “If we all go down river in the daytime, we’ll be safe.”

  “No,” Muras said. “This bat will not be frightened of daytime. It will leave its darkness. Its roost in the canopy or cave in the river cliffs. Wherever it sleeps. Where it gains strength and readies itself.”

  Sorgno translated for the men, and they began to cry out fearfully and shout protests in Murdaruci.

  “The bat will come after us in the bright sun,” Sorgno told Jake what they were saying. “It will not stop until we are all dead.”

  “You believe that?” Jake asked.

  “Yes.”

  Jake saw that all the men were staring at him. He realized they were looking to him to convince them—to make the right decision. They were riveted on him as he had seen them look to his father and Hanuma.

  “Then we’re going to have to destroy it,” Jake said.

  Sorgno told the men what was said. Again they reacted.

  “They say that it will not die,” Sorgno said. “We are the ones that will be killed.”

  Dr. Lefkovitz’s eyes opened, and he cried out in pain. Jake crouched down at his side. “They’ll get you to the village,” Jake said. He saw a look in his fathers eyes that he had never seen before. “Dad, tell me what to do. Tell me.”

  His father looked away to the rack of preserved specimens, the hundred or so small black bodies floating—the heads of the bats frozen in fury. He glanced back at Jake.

  “I was wrong, son,” he said. His voice was weak and it broke with pain and anguish. “Get the men out of here,” he said. “Safely out. Leave me. It’s my fault. …”

  For the first time in his life, Jake felt his father was speaking from his heart. He strained to say something more.”

  “What, Pops?”

  “Forgive me for not seeing who you’ve become, son. Forgive me. …”

  “It’s okay, Dad. …”

  His father’s eyes closed once more, and his breathing quickened.

  Jake dipped a cloth in a cup of fresh water, and wet his father’s lips. He knew his father was slipping fast.

  “You’ll all leave,” Jake said decisively to the men. “I’ll stay.”

  Muras sat exhausted on the floor. He saw the hate and the ferocity in Jake’s eyes.

  All the men knew if they didn’t do something, Dr. Lefkovitz would die.

  Jake said, “The bat won’t follow you if I make noise. If I keep the sounds of the camp going. I’ll shout and yell, and make enough noise with Gizmo and my boom box. I’ll blast it while you drift quietly away. I’ll make a racket that’ll make the bat think there are still dozens of us here. Besides, I’m the one it probably really hates now. Me and Gizmo.”

  “If we leave you here, you will be dead,” Sorgno said.

  “No,” Jake said, determined. “It will be the bat who dies.”

  The afternoon sun burned off the thick morning fog that had rolled from the river onto the banks. Muras had the men do everything that Jake wanted to prepare for his stand against the bat. They knew if they didn’t get the men moving, they’d start defecting anyway.

  Once Dr. Lefkovitz had been safely strapped into a pirogue, the fears of the men nearly reached the breaking point. Even Sorgno knew if they all didn’t leave together, they’d panic and start taking off alone in a pirogue, or run away—two or three at a time—into the jungle. Divided, the small terrorized groups would be certainly stalked and killed.

  Daylight was fleeting. Sorgno and Kiro, the strongest riverman left from the expedition, would take Dr. Lefkovitz in the lead dugout. They prayed there would be safety in numbers and that Jake’s plan would work. Jake had packed the medicines, and Sorgno knew how to give an injection if Dr. Lefkovitz went into shock. Jake made Sorgno promise to never leave his father’s side as he had never left Hanuma’s.

  The loading of the half dozen dugouts was done quietly and under the cover of the mangrove trees at the left of the small beach. The loud sounds of the camp at work were simply just that—sounds. The only thing moving in the camp was the tape deck of Jake’s boom box. With its volume on ten, it seemed like the whole camp was booming with the ordinary sounds of chopping and cooking and preparing for a night research trip into the canopy.

  Jake gently and silently helped the men edge the last pirogue into the water. On board was Dr. Lefkovitz bundled up and strapped in like a mummy but miraculously still alive.

  Muras was the last to whisper to Jake. “Be careful,” he whispered.

  Jake nodded. He watched the men frozen still, holding their paddles, as they began the drift along the downstream bank under the cover of thick, arching palms and stilt roots. The current began to move the cluster of pirogues silently, secretly, down river.

  Several of the men looked back at Jake. He saw the expressions on their faces, and decided it was a mixture of terror and profound sadness. It was as if they knew for certain that it would be the last time they’d ever see him alive.

  Jake waited by the river for a long while after the boats had disappeared around the first bend. He listened to the noisy, coughing truck motor. He could see the silver flash of the large schools of piranha feeding on frogs and catfish along the far bank. The vibrations of the truck motor still kept them away from the camp beach.

  As Jake walked back up the bank he hoped the blasting recorded sounds of the workers and rock music would be enough to keep the bat fooled that all was business as usual at the camp.

  It was strange walking through the empty camp, but sounds from the truck motor and tape deck comforted him. He found himself thinking, You’ll be okay, Dad. Even when the bat knows it’s only me and Gizmo here, that’ll probably be enough to keep it here for a while. Sorgno and Muras and the men will have you safely at the village. …

  Then he remembered the sight of his father bleeding and broken on the floor of the jungle, and he clenched his fists. He caught himself gasping, breathing fitfully. He knew his eyes were wide with fear—as if the bat were already attacking. As the full realization that he was alone, he found himself stumbling, fighting for breath.

  He looked down and saw the image of himself reflected in the drinking trough. He stared, mesmerized by his image. His hair and face were speckled with river mud. He brushed the dirt from his forehead, as if to make certain he was truly seeing himself.

  He rubbed at his eyes, and a wave of realization rushed up and overwhelmed him. He turned and looked up into the failing light, at the treeline and labyrinth of the canopy. Slowly, a look of vengeance and hatred crossed over his face and he continued his preparations to meet the bat.

  16

  NIGHT OF THE BAT

  The sun was setting fast along the Amazon. Clouds of mosquitoes rose from the river banks and giant aruanas leaped out of the water to catch baby lizards scurrying across vast stretches of giant lily pads.

  Before they left, the men had helped Jake construct what he had chosen as his final defense against the bat, if all else failed. Unlike his father, he knew he mustn’t underestimate the power and intelligence of the bat. His father’s trap had been recast into a large rectangular net that stretched so that it extended out over the river. The dozen human effigies from the camp were reinforced with bamboo and clay, and brought up to the riverwalk. Under Jake’s instructions, two of the best climbers among the men had hung them from vines beneath the netting. They made an eerie mobile above the river, moving in the wind of the canopy.

  In the last of the sunlight that angled
into the camp, Jake scraped the milky poison from a dozen of Rasdyr’s scattered arrows and placed it in the ridges at the end of a single sharp blow-dart he’d whittled. He held the sticky sap over a bed of hot embers until the considerable mass of poison melted and fused solidly onto the tip.

  Jake hoped that if he got the chance to fire this single dart with its megadose of poison—if he could make its tip rip fast and hard into the bat’s underbelly or deep into an eye—that the poison would kill. Or blind. At least slow the bat. But he couldn’t be sure.

  By dusk, he had the last of his supplies out of the main hut and struggled to pull himself up by the sling. On this trip up into the canopy, he was loaded with a drum of gasoline and as many pots as he could tie onto the pulleys. These, too, would be part of his master plan.

  He had had Sorgno and the other men strip the electric wiring from the north walkway, and help him wrap it around one of the effigies. Jake rigged it with a separate line run from the generator and wired in a length of metal stripping to fashion a switch. Sorgno had beached a single pirogue for him, the smallest.

  If he were alive to use it.

  As Jake pulled himself higher, pain flared up from blisters on his hands. He looked out across the tops of the canopy and saw the last of the bright gold and purple clouds of the sky. On another evening he might have paused and looked longer at the sunset. But not tonight. Not now. He promised himself he’d watch it again soon with his dad. Yes, that was a fine thought. They’d be at a restaurant in Manaus, or Belem—or they’d be leaving on a jet back to New York. That thought gave him strength as he continued to pull himself up to the top.

  He took the heavy, red drum of gasoline and began to drench the center platform of the canopy. He felt it was the best shot, and he decided he’d use it first. He knew it would depend upon the bat flying toward him. He’d be the living bait at the end of a puddle fuse. The bat would need to be low, flying very low over the fumes when the incendiary pool ignited. The flames could shoot twenty feet in the air. Burn the bat’s wings. Set it on fire.

  But again, he couldn’t be sure.

  In a promontory north of the camp—in a cave impossible to see from the ground—a pair of powerful, taloned feet held onto a rock-face. As the sun sunk beneath the horizon of jungle, the wings of the massive bat began to stir. Its eyelids moved and opened, revealing two black shining orbs. A moment more, and its wings stretched wide. Its feet loosened themselves from the rocky cave ceiling—and the bat dropped into flight.

  Shrieking filled the air as thousands of smaller bats flew from the main cave in the cliff: the Emergence. Flying among them was what looked like a giant black condor. Its vast wings carried the creature along the river and toward the plumes of smoke from the camp in the distance.

  By the light from the string of bulbs surrounding the center platform, Jake finished pouring the gasoline over the wooden octagon. It was the one cleared area where the lush canopy itself wouldn’t have a chance of burning. He tossed the empty drum over the side. Seconds later, he heard it hit the jungle floor.

  Jake grabbed up two of Magyar’s largest cooking pots, a twenty-five gallon soup kettle, and a large aluminum frying pan. He thought of Magyar, and what the bat had done to him, and anger filled his chest. He began to bang the pan lid on the bottom of the kettle. Hard. Crazily. The racket echoed through the night sky and along the river. Jake hoped the bat would want to see what was making the new, violent sounds.

  Come and get me. Come …

  Not far away, the giant bat separated from the main swarm of smaller chiropterans and swooped down, skimming along the tops of the trees.

  Jake saw the massive, dark wingspan against the moonlight. The bat was heading right for him. He tossed the pots down onto the platform and waited.

  When the bat was less than a hundred yards away, Jake took matches from his pocket and tried to strike one. It broke against the box. He looked up to see the bat above him now, shrieking like a massive bird of prey. With his hand shaking, Jake grabbed another match from the box and scraped it against the box. Its tip burst into a small flame. He heard the swishing of the bat’s wings as he tossed the match into a narrow trail of gasoline leading to the soaked platform.

  Jake ducked as the bat swooped lower, uncurling its claws and opening its mouth. Suddenly, the gasoline trail hit the main pool and exploded into a lagoon of fire. The bat veered away, but the flames surrounded it. Jake heard its first cry of surprise, which turned into earsplitting shrieks of agony.

  The bat flew out of the fire, its abdomen and wings singed. The moisture on its snout boiled and the tips of its wings were charred. The bat was wounded, angrier than ever, as it flew toward him. Jake dove as the bat’s talons dragged right over him.

  Jake ran away from the fire onto the shadowy riverwalk. He cried out in terror as he glanced back. The gasoline fire had failed. The bat was still after him. He tripped, rolled up onto his feet, and took off, slogging through the veil of vines and along the moss-covered railings. He spun and stumbled again, this time turning his ankle, then scuttling like a crab onto the rotting planking over the river.

  The bat made a wide circle. It had no problem finding Jake as he sprinted away. It extended the giant claws of its feet. As the creature bore down on him, Jake made a flying leap off the darkened end of the walkway and grabbed on to a rope wrapped around the trunk of a balsa tree.

  The bat slowed its flight and fluttered in a circle around the girth of the tree. In the darkness, it picked up a human silhouette on its sonar and flew right for it. Its front claws and jaws clamped down onto it, and it began to rip the form apart. It hadn’t noticed the metal stripping and wires that connected the effigy to the dangling bulb sockets.

  The creature screeched as a bolt of electricity shot out from the wired effigy. The bat’s muscles contracted and released as the pulsing hot voltage burned into it. It threw itself backward and away from the rigged effigy. The bat fluttered and floundered down into the shadows of the walkway. Jake swung around from the other side of the tree, a machete in his hand.

  As he charged at the dazed bat, the smell of rotting flesh mixed with the stench of the creature’s burned hair filled Jake’s nostrils. He saw lesions and blood on the ruptured skin of the bat’s wings and ears. As Jake closed on the bat, he raised the machete above one of the creature’s wings.

  With an explosive squawk, the bat sprang to life. Its eyes glared right up at Jake, and its wings shot forward, smashing into his arm. The machete flew out of Jake’s hand and over the edge of the walkway. Jake tottered and grabbed the handrail. As he steadied himself, he felt a pain in his arm. The bat had carved a slice into his wrist. Holding onto the cut, Jake took off running again. Ahead of him was a dead end, and behind him was the bat.

  Furious, the bat took flight.

  At the end of the walkway, Jake quickly slid himself out along one of the dozen ropes that spiderwebbed across the river. He reached a second effigy he had set, one that hung this time in the midst of a dozen like it—the mobile of effigies. Jake looked back, grabbed for his Gizmo and the power belt. He fastened the belt fast around his waist and strapped Gizmo’s screen onto his forehead. In the blackness of night he needed to be the equal of the bat.

  The moon was blotted out by clouds and the night fog. A strong wind blew across the Amazon. Jake could see nothing with his eyes, but Gizmo’s beep-and-retrieve system was coming in clear. He had to remember what it was like to concentrate as he’d trained himself for so many months to see like the blind—to “see” the sound pictures of terror.

  17

  FINAL STALKING

  Jake heard the noises of the bat, its terrible shrieking. Its sounds confused the images on Gizmo, and Jake struggled to make sense of everything. He looked down toward the water far below. He knew that if he fell he probably wouldn’t survive.

  The bat swung into the dead end of the walkway and spotted a human silhouette. It flew at the figure and smashed it with its mighty claws. But
it smashed only an effigy. The bat knew the difference between crushing wood and crushing human flesh.

  The bat sent its sonar out across the spiderwebbing ropes and picked up human silhouettes hanging from half a dozen branches that stretched out over the river. The monster flew to the next effigy and grabbed it, smashing it to splinters. It flew to the next and smashed that into pieces, too.

  From behind the effigy he clung to, Jake saw the bat viciously, systematically make its way among the branches, destroying effigy after effigy. He looked out to the netting he’d stretched and set as a trap above the river.

  The giant bat smashed an effigy only a few branches away.

  Jake took the blowpipe from his holster. He carefully removed the special dart he’d prepared from its hollow bamboo shield and slid it into the tip of the blowpipe. The bat landed on the effigy next to Jake, and he watched its fingerlike spiked claws pulverize the wood and branches.

  Jake brought the blowpipe to his mouth. The giant bat flew to the branch above him, and lowered itself to Jake’s effigy. As the creature spun the effigy around, it was surprised to see the figure clinging to it.

  Summoning all his breath, Jake aimed as best he could, and blew into the blowpipe. The dart flew out from the blowpipe and sunk into the tender, hairy underbelly of the bat. Shrieking, the bat flailed at itself, quickly knocking the dart loose. There couldn’t have been enough time for the delivery of a lethal dose.

  There was a last chance.

  Jake’s hands shot up to the pulley line from which his effigy hung. He yanked himself free of the effigy, and dangled. A second later and he was propelling himself, hand over hand, farther out over the river. As his momentum carried him, he wanted the bat to see the glow of Gizmo. He wanted the killer to follow him now with great speed.

  This time there was nowhere to hide. The bat swung in and headed for Jake. It knew it had him. The bat raised its wings and thrust its claws forward.