Bats Out of Hell (16 page)

Brian Newman stiffened. The man was five yards from him, and he could see the finger curled around the trigger of the revolver. It was too far to try and rush him, and there was no chance of diving for cover. Death was only seconds away.

Then he heard the front door opening behind him, and Susan's voice. "Are you all right, Brian? Oh my God, what's happening?"

"Go back inside and close the door!" he called out over his shoulder. "I won't be a minute."

"You're damned right you won't." the man snarled. "Your time's up, Professor Newman."

"Let's talk this over."

"The time for talking is done." The gunman shuffled a step or two nearer. "After you, it's me, Professor. I've got nothing left to live for."

Newman closed his eyes. If only Susan had obeyed him and gone back inside. But he knew she wouldn't. In all probability this maniac would kill her, too. And there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

He closed his eyes. Go on, get it over with. I don't blame you, whoever you are. There's millions more feel like you do about me. That's the fault of the Press.

A deafening shot crashed out. Newman swayed on his feet, but strangely he felt no pain. He remembered reading somewhere that you never heard the shot that got you. Maybe . . . Oh God, maybe he'd shot Susan first!

Newman opened his eyes. Susan was by his side, her arms around him. She was crying. The man lay face down in the drive, the revolver a foot or so away from his outstretched fingers, blood soaking into the gravel.

Still Newman was trying to work it all out. His brain was confused. It wouldn't function properly. This guy was a nutter. Not his fault, though. He'd chickened out at the last minute. Couldn't go through with murder. Committed suicide instead.

"All right, Professor?"

For the first time Newman was aware that someone was standing just inside the open gates. A tall man dressed in a jungle hat, combat jacket, bandolier across his chest. "Don't worry, Professor. I had him covered the whole time. Had to be careful I didn't hit either of you, though."

Newman nodded to the BVF soldier, noting the thin trickle of smoke coming from the barrel of the Luger in his hand.

"Thanks." he murmured. "Thanks a million. I was lucky you happened to be around. I should've asked for a guard before. I told 'em I didn't need one."

"You've had one all along," the soldier told him, "only you didn't know it. Night and day. We can't take chances with you, Professor. Whatever the public might think, you're the one man who stands any chance of coming up with an antidote."

"I just hope I can justify your confidence." Newman pulled Susan Wylie close to him, and together they went inside and closed the door.

The weather was changing. Still the sun beat down, but now its heat was tempered by the coming of autumn. Each morning a thick mist followed the dawn, grey vapor which dispersed reluctantly towards mid-morning, and each evening brought a refreshing coolness to the parched land.

Fleets of helicopters stood at the ready throughout the Midlands, all fitted with crop-spraying attachments, the pilots waiting impatiently for the thick mist to evaporate. From the north Staffordshire moors as far south as Worcester, from the Wash to the Wrekin, the operation stretched, the largest assault on insect life in British history.

"Crazy," Tamperley of West Midlands Fertilizers muttered to his companion as they watched the rays of the sun beginning to disperse the fog. "It won't work. I could've told 'em that."

"Don't see no reason why not." Whittaker climbed up into the helicopter, and tapped the huge tank containing insecticide. "This stuff was withdrawn five years ago because it was proved to be detrimental to wildlife. Don't see why it shouldn't kill bats."

"I'll believe it when I see it." Tamperley lit a cigarette. "Reckon we'll be on the move in about twenty minutes."

It was 11.30 A.M. before they took off, the countryside around them now becoming bathed in bright sunshine. Some of the trees below were already showing signs of brown in their foliage. Drought or not, autumn would dominate the rural scene from now onwards.

Whittaker recognized Chasetown sprawling below them and the dark green and purple of Cannock Chase over to their left. Something golden glinted in the sunlight, the ball on the main spire of Lichfield Cathedral. They dropped lower.

Traffic was sparse. An isolated community, even on a small island, had nowhere to go. Smoke hung in the air in places. Heath and forest fires still burned, but they had been abandoned long ago. Town fires were given priority.

Tamperley turned to his colleague. "That's the place," he said, pointing in the direction of a tall television transmitter, rising like a lighthouse out of a dark green ocean. "The fields between those two woods."

Whittaker nodded and began connecting up various attachments. They could see other helicopters already at work, skimming fields and woods, turning, going back, three or four covering a large expanse of arable ground. Organization. He had to hand it to the authorities, in spite of what Tamperley said. They were doing everything possible. If it resulted in failure then they'd done their best. Nobody could blame them, only that professor who had allowed the bats to escape. It was all his fault.

"O.K.," Tamperley called. They were flying at a height of twenty feet, skimming hedgerows, rising to negotiate a couple of spinneys. "Let 'er go."

"Never sprayed woods before," Whittaker muttered to himself. A lifelong member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, he realized the dangers to birdlife from toxic sprays. Yet the bats had to be destroyed; otherwise it meant the end of everything.

Back and forth they went, methodically, barely missing a square yard on a 20-acre field, Tamperley knew his job.

They finished the field and turned their attention to the spinneys, gaining additional height because of some of the taller trees. Wood pigeons were flying aimlessly. They had been deprived of their morning feed on some lush clover by the helicopters and now there was no peace even in their day roosts.

"Hey, what's that?" Tamperley yelled above the roar of the engine.

Whitaker looked down in the direction the pilot pointed and saw a small wood with dense undergrowth.

"What . . ." he began, and then he saw it, a black cloud spiralling upwards, a flock of living creatures, formationless, spreading out as they gained height. Has first thought was that they were starlings. Their mode of flight was different, though; faster and more erratic. Their aerobatics would have been the envy of any pilot.

"It's them!" he yelled. "The bats!"

"Some of 'em," Tamperley shouted back. "That spinney must be one of their roosting places. Well, we might as well give 'em the works. I'm going down on 'em. Let 'em have it!"

Whittaker increased the flow of insecticide as they dipped. The spray was thick and yellow, reminding him of urine. It hit the bats, the sheer force of the liquid sending several of them spinning to the ground. The remainder wheeled and jinked, above and below the helicopter, some dashing themselves against the sides of the machine and falling earthwards, lifeless.

The helicopter was stationary, hovering, the full force of the nozzles directed immediately beneath it. Bats were everywhere, hurling themselves at the glass of the cockpit as though they sensed whence this liquid death came.

There was a brief moment during which the two men thought that victory was theirs, a total slaughter. In fact, Tamperley was already preparing to move on when the cockpit was darkened by shadows, tiny flickering shapes that merged into near-total darkness, obscuring the sunlight.

"Hell"s bells!" Whittaker croaked. "Just look at 'em!"

Bats clung to every available inch of toughened glass, somehow securing a hold on the smooth surface, upside down, hundreds of malevolent faces staring at the two men with an insane hatred beyond comprehension.

"Jesus! " Tamperley jerked on the lever. "Let's get back to base!"

The helicopter responded, moved forward, and then shuddered to a standstill as though a brake had been applied. One final roar from the engine, and then it died away, stuttering into silence. The two men could hear the shrill piping of their attackers.

"They've clogged the vanes!" Tamperley screamed.

Whittaker watched in horror as the pilot tried desperately to restart the engine, but they were already embarking upon a direct downward course, hurtling towards the spinney below, the cockpit a coffin, borne by the bats down to a quarry grave.

With a screech of tearing metal and splintering wood the undercarriage was ripped away by the topmost branches of a tall Corsican pine, the trunk spearing into the cockpit. The machine hung precariously for a couple of seconds, its fall checked. Then the tree snapped lower down, and the helicopter plunged on the last stage of its journey of death, jagged rocks rushing up to meet it, bats whirring above as though in triumph at their victory, then scattering in every direction as they witnessed the final destruction.

Another helicopter which had seen the bizarre scene from half-a-mile away hastened towards the spinney, the grim-faced pilot noting the clouds of bats which dispersed in all directions.

"Looked like Tamperley," he yelled to the man at his side.

"If it was, then he's bought it for sure. Go easy, Joe. I never seen nothin' like it! We don't want to get caught up in a cloud o' bleedin' bats."

But Joe was already veering away. There wasn't a bat in sight. Just a column of black smoke rising up out of the quarry in the wood as flames began to lick greedily at the lower branches, leaping from one to another with the speed of a frightened squirrel.

Nothing could be done to help the two men in the blazing wreckage. They were already in the final stages of cremation.

"Well," Haynes said, "The spraying operation is complete. All we can do now is wait. If we don't poison 'em, maybe they'll starve without insect life to feed on."

"God knows what the long-term result will be," Newman groaned.

"We've a good idea what it'll be if we don't check the spread of this virus."

"There's no pattern to the bats' behaviour now," Professor Newman went on, "There are reports from both rural and urban areas. We've flushed 'em out of cover, and they're widespread throughout the Midlands."

"The human death toll is estimated at something in the region of ten thousand," Haynes told him. He turned away and looked out of the window. The mist was thinning across the Chase as the early morning sunshine finally broke through. "We'll probably never know the exact figures, as a lot of the corpses were burned in the fires. People won't stand for it much longer. Even the ordinary, normally complacent citizen is no longer prepared to shut himself away in his house. Food supplies are running out. Those brought in from outside are not being distributed as they should be. It's a case of the strong dominating the weak. At least this spraying idea of Rickers's has given us a breathing space. Everybody's just waiting now, but if it doesn't work . . . well, I'd rather not think about it. That'll be the end,"

The drone of helicopters was absent from the rural scene. Seldom were vehicles heard at all now. Aircraft passed over on their flights north and south, but only government-authorized planes were allowed to land at either Elmdon or the East Midlands Airport.

And gradually the sounds of insects in the woods and fields were dying away. The grasshopper's chirruping became slow, like a chain saw with the power switched off. Wasps crawled lazily, not even having the energy to sting when molested. Midges died by their millions in hedgerows and fields. And already bird life was beginning to suffer. The swifts and swallows should have been congregating on telegraph wires in readiness for their long flight south, but many were found lying beneath these communal perches as though electrified by the currents. Everybody knew the true cause of death.

Only the bats seemed unharmed by the extermination of almost every form of insect life. The creatures for whom the poison had been intended showed no signs of ill effects. In fact, they became more active, and were seen in greater numbers than before.

"They're restless, disturbed," Rickers said uneasily as he stood at the laboratory window, with Haynes and Newman. Dusk was closing in over the Chase, and already dozens of bats were to be seen, flying apparently aimlessly, frequently dashing themselves against the windows of the Biological Research Center, almost as though they recognized this place as the headquarters of the war which was being waged against them.

"And the insecticides are apparently having no effect on them," Newman murmured. "We've killed off nearly everything else within a radius of sixty miles, but the bats appear to be unharmed. How the hell are they surviving?"

"They're eating poisoned insect life," Haynes said, shaking his head in bewilderment, "and they're thriving on it. They don't even have to look for it. The woods and, fields are carpeted with it. And there's more than enough to keep them going until the winter."

"Maybe that'll be the finish of them," Rickers suggested. "They'll hibernate, and then in spring there'll be no food for them and they'll starve."

"Like hell!" Newman said. "They'll just spread to the rest of the country. And we can't poison the whole of the British Isles from John o' Groats to Land's End. Anyway, this hibernation isn't what everybody thinks it is. Bats don't sleep solidly throughout the winter. A spell of mild weather and they're as active as they are in summer."

"But we don't know that we've failed yet," Rickers insisted. "Maybe the poison is taking longer to work on the bats. The virus could be slowing it up."

"Or even acting as an inoculation. The virus could well be rendering it harmless. There's so much we bloody well don't know about the whole thing. All we can do is wait, but right now things don't look very hopeful."

By September 24th it was clear to the whole world that the insecticide experiment was a failure and also that the overall situation had worsened. The numbers of bats flying at night had visibly increased. The young were now totally independent and flew with the adults like swarms of locusts over the whole countryside. Every night held its own terrors. Even the most secure barricades were proved to be inadequate, almost as though the creatures were now deliberately seeking out human victims.