Vespers Page 20

  “She’s here,” Joyce droned. “The female bat. She followed the scent of her mate.”

  “But she went undergroundmiles from here!” Lowery said as he tore off his mask.

  “Right. And she tracked him.”

  “Yeah,” Ramirez said, “but that’s not the end of the love story, is it?”

  Joyce looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “What if the lady doesn’t know her big ugly’s dead? She’s not going to take that well at all.”

  Joyce agreed. She turned to the dead bat. It had taken six men to hoist it onto the table. There was no way they could move it down the hall, put it in the cryogenic freezer, and try to keep it from the female.

  A loud series of groans and snaps echoed up through the floor. It sounded like a car wreck that kept on going. The building shuddered again and the lights snapped off.

  “Passengers, I think we better get to the lifeboats,” Ramirez said.

  The room shook again as though it had been punched hard. Jars fell over and stuffed bats dropped from their perches. There was a muted crash right outside the wall on the other side of the laboratory, behind the sink.

  “What’s back there?” Ramirez asked.

  “The elevator,” Lowery said.

  “The subway stops directly under the museum,” Joyce thought aloud. “The bat goes from there to the elevator shaft to here.” She wished she had the Magnum Gentry had given her back in New Paltz.

  There was a sound like a whip on the other side of the wall.

  Ramirez grabbed Joyce’s forearm and tugged her toward the door. “I say we give the lovebirds some privacy.”

  Heidi and Professor Lowery had already walked past her. They opened the door and stopped.

  “God!” Heidi screamed.

  Hundreds of bats were coming down the corridor. Lowery reached past her and slammed the door. The bats crashed against the frosted glass, fluttering wildly on the other side.

  Lowery went to the desk and snatched up the phone. It was dead. He threw it down. “All right, think! What have we got in here to protect ourselves?”

  Joyce’s eyes drifted to the wings of the dead bat.

  “Ultrasonic sound can disorient it, intense cold,” Lowery thought aloud. “Come on, Nannie-think!”

  She was thinking, but nothing was coming. She’d seen those two large claws in action.

  The wall over the sink cracked. Plaster fell in thick chunks.

  The door was rattling violently, and Joyce saw a tiny muzzle squeezing under the bottom.

  She pulled off her lab coat and ran to jam it against the base of the door. While she did, Marc looked around. He disconnected the receiver from the phone and knelt next to Joyce. He smacked the creature on the head.

  “It’s for you!” he snarled.

  The bat squealed and stopped moving. Marc used the phone to push it outside as Joyce plugged the remainder of the opening.

  She stood. “That’s not going to hold for long.”

  “I don’t think it’s gonna matter,” Marc said as a hole appeared in the back wall. “Where’s the goddamn cavalry?”

  “They’re probably fighting a few thousand vespers downstairs,” Joyce said.

  The laboratory was lit only by the bright light of an emergency lamp over the lab table. Heidi picked up a scalpel and began backing toward the desk. She stumbled into the chair and seemed startled by it. Moving it aside, she crouched under the desk, her back to the wall. The white surgical mask bore the damp outline of her open mouth.

  “Wait,” Lowery said. “Maybe this.” He slipped a fire extinguisher from the wall beside the door. “Nancy, get the other one from behind the table and come here. We can spray it in the face, the ears.”

  The professor held out the hose and backed against the locker. It was the first time Joyce had ever seen him other than poised and collected.

  A shower of plaster blasted into the room, leaving a hole nearly three feet across. The monster’s hourglass-shaped nose filled the opening, then its right eye, and then one of its hooks slid through. It pulled on the top of the opening, breaking away more plaster.

  Behind them, beneath the door, Joyce’s lab coat began to move. The bats were shredding it and clawing through.

  Heidi screamed. Ramirez tried to comfort her. Professor Lowery was facing the back wall, waiting.

  And Joyce was looking around, praying for inspiration.

  Thirty-Two

  Gentry spent the morning catching up on work. At noon he went to the chief’s office to watch Mayor Taylor hold a televised press conference about the bats. The mayor said that he had some of the best “bat people” in the nation working on the problem, which was true, even though only Doyle and Berkowitz were with him at the press conference. The sixty-six-year-old second-term mayor said that a search was underway for the big bat and that the west side subways would not be reopened until it was found and “dealt with.” He said that the small bats would probably not be “much more than an inconvenience” for most New Yorkers and chided Kathy Leung for suggesting that the bats could go wild here as they had in Westchester County.

  Doyle elaborated. “We believe that they were being affected by the presence of the large male bat, which we have destroyed,” Doyle said.

  Gentry thought,Nancy Joyce did that, you prick.

  “As we saw last night,” Doyle continued, “the approach of the female had no effect on the bats over the Hudson.”

  When WABC’s science reporter Bob Wallace asked exactlyhow the bats had been affected by the big male, Doyle replied, “We have someone working on that right now.”

  Nancy Joyce, you shit stain.

  Mayor Taylor added that because the bat was apparently nesting downtown, Grand Central Station would remain open. He said that trains moving underground to and from Ninety-seventh Street would move through the tunnels slower than usual and that police would be standing watch along the way. He added that police vacation and days off were being canceled-which brought a very loud groan from the station house-so that the city’s forty thousand officers would be available to help the city through this “unusual situation.”

  Though he said he would not be calling for a curfew, the mayor urged New Yorkers to remain inside after sundown. He said the number of bats in the city made accidental run-ins “inevitable,” and he also discouraged rooftop “bat watch” parties. Police helicopters had spotted a number of these impromptu gatherings the night before.

  Gentry spent the early afternoon catching up on sleep. His “power naps” used to amaze the hell out of Bernie Michaelson. Because Gentry never knew when it would be necessary to work undercover for several days and nights at a stretch, he had trained himself not only to sleep anywhere anytime but also to get into and out of it fast.

  After resting, he pulled his radio from the desk drawer, turned it on low so he could hear what was going on with the bats, then went back to reading accident reports. There were dozens of them, some bat-related, including fender benders due to a bat flying in a car window; a newsstand owner clocking a pedestrian while using a broom to shoo away a bat; window boxes dislodged by people trying to dislodge roosting bats. Gentry wondered how many people were going to be supremely unhappy when they discovered that these came under the “act of God” clauses in most insurance policies.

  Several times during the day Gentry had to stop himself from calling Nancy. He knew she’d be busy with the big bat, and he hoped she’d let him know when she was finished or when she found something. It had been a long time since Gentry had been preoccupied with anything. The fact that it was a woman was surprising, exciting, and a little disturbing. He had become comfortable with the uncomplicated simplicity of his life.

  He checked the central computer from time to time, and as of early evening the last missing persons report Gentry had heard about was the woman who vanished from the elevator at the World Trade Center. Investigators had followed the trail of blood up the elevator shaft but lost it around the
fiftieth floor. A call to Marius Page confirmed that OEM was centering the search for the large bat in the downtown area between the financial district and the West Village. Despite the fact that there were more than five hundred police and transit officers taking part in the military-style maneuvers, progress was extremely slow. No one moved an inch without every section of tunnel being inspected.

  And then came word that the giant bat and tens of thousands of small bats had ripped their way north along the B and D subway line. Gentry heard about it when a Times Square squad car called into division central, calls that were monitored by the station house. He turned up the volume.

  “South Adam Patrol Sergeant!” said the caller. “We’re on Broadway and Forty-second Street, and we have a major bat infestation here. They’re attacking from the south. They’re coming up Broadway and Seventh Avenue and converging in Times Square.”

  Gentry sat up and listened. He could hear the screams and car horns through his open office window. He went back to the radio.

  The dispatcher said, “Sergeant, we’ve just been given a standard operating procedure notice. Have your officers get people inside. They’ll stand a better chance in enclosed areas.”

  “Understood, but I need backup. People are running… being trampled. Looters are on the job.”

  “Sergeant, backup is being notified. I repeat: the priority is to get people inside.”

  The sergeant got off the radio for a moment. Though the box was silent, Gentry could still hear the cries and shattering glass outside his window. He got his 9-mm pistol from the desk and slipped it in his shoulder holster. He rose and pulled on his jacket. He’d go out and help in a moment. First he wanted to hear where the giant bat was headed.

  The patrol sergeant came back on. “Central, I’ve told my people to set up posts at three sites: the Palace Theater, the Virgin Megastore, and the Marriott Marquis Hotel. You got that?”

  “Got it. Backup will be directed there.”

  “But it’s a real madhouse here,” the patrol sergeant said, “and it’s getting worse by the second. All you can see are bats. They’re shooting down like hawks-everyone outside is getting blitzed, including my people. If we can get inside, I’m hoping we can hold the interiors and get people to safety. I’m going out to try and-Jesus!Jesus! ”

  There was a short silence. Then Gentry heard and felt an explosion. He turned to the window as the distant blast lit the night.

  “Get everyone away from there!”the sergeant yelled.

  “What’s happening?” demanded the dispatcher. “Sergeant, what’s going on out there?”

  “A cab just hit the liquid nitrogen air tanks on the-backthose other cars the hell away!-on the west side of the office tower going up on Broadway and Forty-third-”

  Silence.

  “Shit-” the sergeant cried. “Oh, shit. God!”

  “Sergeant?”

  “Central, the construction platform’s breaking-the crane’s coming down!It’s coming down! ”

  Gentry stood there feeling helpless. He heard the metal groan from ten blocks away. He heard the screams of the men and women in Times Square. He felt and then he heard the crash. The overhead lights danced. Books slipped from a shelf behind him, and pictures fell from the walls outside his office. People were shouting all over the station house.

  The radio was silent.

  There were eleven channels on Gentry’s radio. His brain was numb, his body shaking as he tuned in to Midtown North. The bats had reached the west side of Central Park South, though they hadn’t strayed past Columbus Circle. They were obviously sticking to the subway route.

  Central was also receiving reports of events farther north, in the twentieth precinct. The dispatcher reported that so far three officers had been killed and seventy-eight wounded as the animals moved quickly along the subway line to the Eighty-first Street station. They stopped there.

  At the American Museum of Natural History.

  Immediately, Gentry was back. His mind kicked into drive as he stuck his radio in his jacket pocket and yelled for Detective Jason Anthony to come with him. They ran down the block to where the car was parked. Anthony turned on the siren and dashboard light and they sped off to the museum.

  Thirty-Three

  The door of Professor Lowery’s laboratory shuddered violently, and the room grew dark as more and more black shapes covered the frosted glass. The back wall of the lab was coming apart, and Nancy Joyce looked up while she screamed at God to give her a break. She continued to look up when she saw something. Then she took a quick look at the lab table and ran toward it.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Nannie, come back!” Lowery yelled.

  “In a minute!”

  “What are you going to do?” Ramirez yelled.

  She snatched the burner from the lab table. “I’m going to set the coat on fire!”

  “The coat?” Ramirez said.

  “Don’t!” Lowery said. “The smoke will-”

  “Start the sprinklers on the ceiling,” she interrupted. “The spray will put the fire out before we choke. The cold and the wet should also ground the little vespers if they get in.”

  “You totally rule,” Ramirez said.

  Joyce fired up the etna and crouched by the door. The rattling on the frosted glass pane and the mousy squealing of the bats were maddening, but at least they drowned out the sound of the crumbling plaster. She touched the flame to the lab coat.

  It didn’t burn.

  “You fire-resistant son of a bitch!” she yelled.

  Bats began to poke through and around the fabric. Muzzles, claws, wings. Joyce pulled over the swivel chair, stood under the sprinkler sensor, and held the flame to it.

  “Comeon!”

  The first three bats made it under the door. They flew at Ramirez and he jumped under the desk, startling Heidi; he nearly impaled himself on her scalpel before she was able to pull it back. Snuggling toward her, Ramirez reached up around the front of the desk, slipped off the mouse pad, and held it almost like a Ping-Pong paddle. He used it to swat at the bats as they attacked. Heidi was bravely trying to slash at the bats as they darted in.

  In the back of the lab the hole was big enough for the bat to fit her head through. She was using both claws now to hack at the wall. Bats began to fly through there just as the laboratory’s two sprinklers came on. They sprayed the room with a cool, sturdy shower that caused the small bats to break off their attack and flutter around in confusion.

  “Even better,” Joyce muttered.

  The water droplets were interfering with the bats’ echolocation. Joyce stepped down from the chair and sidled up to Lowery. She kept the burner in case she needed it. The room was quiet for a moment. In that moment of calm Joyce wished the professor would say something about what she’d just done. Nothing effusive. A “well done” would do it.

  A moment later a door-sized section of the rear wall fell with a horrible crack. It sent dust billowing up into the water; it fell as pasty rain that covered the giant bat as she eased into the opening.

  She came in with her folded left wing first, followed by her tawny body and then her right wing. She turned to face the room and spread her wings wide. As she did, Joyce moved into the room to get a better look at her lower belly.

  It was extremely distended. The bat was pregnant.

  The giant’s head moved slowly toward the table, her nose wrinkling as she sniffed the air. After a moment she saw the male. Folding her wings, she crawled over to him. Joyce stepped toward the door to give her room. A chair and a stainless steel surgical table were knocked over as the bat approached. Lowery remained by the locker, trembling in the cold spray. Nearly a dozen small bats were hiding from the water and a few were flying above the spray. No more bats had entered the laboratory. In the distance a fire siren sounded.

  The giant bat reached the table. She spread her wings and hopped up beside the other giant. She folded her wings again and dipped toward the face of the still, s
ilent creature.

  Joyce rubbed water from her eyes and watched the bat closely. There was no consensus among zoologists as to whether monogamous bats “felt” anything for their mates. They cared for their young but not for elderly bats; any sense of family, of community, seemed to revolve around the survival of the species. Professor Lowery had always been a student of the “survival-only” school. Joyce didn’t share his sense of human superiority or bat inferiority, whichever it was.

  She wished there were some way other than this to settle the debate.

  Bats continued to slap against the outside of the frosted glass. Once in a while a bat in the laboratory would fly at one of the occupants, only to be driven away by the water. Now there were screams coming from other rooms. Joyce didn’t want to think about what was happening there. The thick, thick swarms. The bloodletting. The death.

  The head of the giant female was facing down. Her ears were turned toward the male. Joyce watched intently; she was strangely detached from the danger she was in.

  How many days and nights had they been together?Joyce asked herself.

  The dead bat was more than just the female’s partner, her brother, and the father of her unborn pup. To the female, the sound of his heart and his breathing would be as familiar as her own. The closeness of his body would be the only warmth she’d ever known. He would have led her to food supplies and water and shelter and protected their nest from intruders. To the female, the dead bat might have been the greatest part of life itself.

  The giant bat crept back a step and threw her wings out grandly. The right wing hit the wall behind the table, crushing the second fire extinguisher and shattering the emergency light above. Joyce turned up the burner. The long flame sizzled as water fell through it. In the hissing orange glow she saw the giant bat turn toward her. Spray from the sprinklers washed over the bat’s face and wings and dark fur. The bat’s gem-red eyes fell on her and on Lowery. Then the animal’s mouth pulled wide and turned upward and Joyce heard a sound she’d never heard from a bat or any other creature. It started low, like a moan, then grew louder and higher until Joyce had to put the burner down and cover her ears. Lowery dropped the fire extinguisher and it rolled away. Even with her palms pressed tightly against them, the shriek knifed through her ears, shattering the glass in the cabinets, until it finally passed from the audible to the inaudible.