Bats Out of Hell (8 page)

She broke off, saw the tottering boy, the knife embedded in his throat, the fountain of blood, and fell forward unconscious.

The sun beat down relentlessly on the squat buildings which comprised the Biological Research Center on Cannock Chase, so that as early as ten o'clock in the morning the heat in Haynes' office was stifling. The air-conditioning laboured under the strain, and the four people in the room knew that by midday it would be virtually ineffective. They all recalled the freak summer of 1976, but this one threatened to break all records. Farmers were forecasting disastrous potato crops again. Fire brigades were at full stretch in an attempt to combat heath and forestry fires. Yet, suddenly, all these had become of minor importance.

Copies of every daily newspaper for the past week lay spread out on the desk. The headlines bore a similarity as the Fleet Street prophets of doom revelled in the latest sensations. "BATS FROM HELL SPREAD KILLER DISEASE", "SCHOOL QUARANTINE AS PLAGUE AND MADNESS STRIKE", "DEATH VIRUS ESCAPES FROM RESEARCH CENTER", and so on. The accounts varied. Some followed the truth religiously, others exaggerated. The man in the street would believe that which he chose to believe. In all, fear would predominate.

Haynes regarded Brian Newman, Professor Rickers and Susan Wylie steadily. He fidgeted with his spectacles, and chewed his lower lip.

"It seems you were right, Brian." He averted his eyes as he spoke. He wasn't accustomed to making apologies, nor to admitting that he was wrong. "I owe you an apology."

"Thanks." Newman said. He could have made it tougher for his chief, but he had no wish to do so. The situation now was far too serious for either of them to indulge in petty jealousies.

Rickers shuffled his feet and mumbled. "I still can't believe it. It's just not scientifically possible."

"Well, it's happened, and that's that." Haynes spoke sharply. "And right now we've got to do something about putting it right. How have your tests gone, Brian? Is an antidote possible?"

"Not at the moment." Newman shook his head gravely. "I injected a fresh lot of bats, but they died in just the same way. I tried taking germs from those which appeared to be immune and injecting the virus into the sufferers. They died. It had no effect."

"Hell!" Haynes lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. "The Press are really gunning for us now. So are our own boys in London. We're the villains of the piece."

"
I
am," Professor Newman corrected him. "It was my fault that the bats escaped, I was careless enough to knock the cage over." He noticed Susan blush and start to say something, but his frown silenced her. "It's got to come out, anyway, and I'm prepared to take full responsibility."

"Let's get a few facts together first," Haynes said, "working from the information we already have. By now a large percentage—it's impossible to quote figures—of bats are carrying the virus. Those which they come into contact with either catch it, and die within a very short time, or else they become carriers themselves. Hence the disease will spread at an alarming rate. It is reasonable to assume, in the light of recent information, that the bats were responsible for the death of the Williams' family and that they caused the horses to bolt on to the road. Therefore the Wooden Stables were their first home after their escape. Then they vanished. Was it because they were disturbed? Let us assume so. Then for some time they disappeared altogether, presumably to some quiet place. The main bunch, anyway. They chose the upper regions of Lichfield Cathedral's main spire. They were disturbed again, this time by a firm of contractors working on the spire. They came into contact with schoolboys and a headmaster. The headmaster and six boys died horribly from this meningitis type disease within three days.
But nobody else
. Consequently we can assume, at this point, that humans do not carry the disease. They only catch it
directly
from the bats. Therefore, the bats are the real menace. If you keep out of their way you're safe, unless of course you meet up with someone in the 'mad' stage of the disease. Williams killed his wife, and that schoolboy murdered the head boy. But can the virus be carried by animals or birds, rats, mice, starlings, all the scavengers, for instance?"

"That we don't know yet," Professor Newman answered. The greatest danger could be from rats and mice, but at the moment there are no reports to substantiate this."

"But the question everybody is asking," Haynes said slowly, pausing to draw on his cigarette, "Is just where have the bats gone now? Nobody has set eyes on them since the episode in the cathedral."

"We can only guess," Brian Newman said. "The time between the Wooden Stables affair and the one in the cathedral we can presume is the period they took to adjust to their new way of life, hiding away from humans. Then they were disturbed by those contractors. They have now retired somewhere to breed. The period of gestation is seven weeks. That takes us up to July. The young are not capable of leading an independent life for two months after birth. By September, we could be in the midst of the most terrible spread of the disease imaginable. It could be nationwide instead of just confined to the Midlands. Our only hope is to find the main colony and destroy them. Now!"

"A task equivalent to looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack," Rickers said. "Where the hell do we start?"

"There is no longer any point in attempting to conceal the facts from the public," Newman continued. "The more they are kept informed, the better. We must enlist their help. Anybody who sees bats must report it at once, and we must have teams of pest-control experts standing by to move into action. Whilst the bats remain in rural areas there is still hope, but once they converge on the towns and cities—well, it doesn't bear thinking about!"

Haynes said, "Oh, God!"

"We play ball with the Press, then?" Rickers pulled a wry face.

"We must," Haynes replied. "Give them the full facts, don't leave them to draw their own conclusions. There's already been too much exaggeration and surmising. I'm attending a Press conference this afternoon, and I shall attempt to educate them on bats and mutated viruses. Now, Brian, what's the chance of coming up with an antidote? Is it hopeless?"

"We'll keep trying," Professor Newman told him. "There isn't much else I can do at this stage. However, to be perfectly honest, I don't hold out much hope."

Ken Tyler had been gamekeeper in charge of the land around the ancient site of Castle Ring, on the edge of Cannock Chase, for five years. His duties varied between rearing pheasants for his employers, who rented the shooting rights over the surrounding two thousand acres, controlling the vermin, assisting in the culling of the deer herds, and spending his weekends patrolling in his Land Rover to ensure that none of the picnickers who converged on the Chase at fine weekends either lit fires or deposited litter.

A small, wiry man, he wore the traditional suit of plus fours in all weathers, including freak heat waves. It was his uniform, his symbol of authority. People knew to whom they were talking when he stopped them. In his own estimation he commanded the same respect as that of a police officer. His word was law on the Chase. If Ken Tyler instructed anyone to quit the land, they were expected to obey without question.

For the past fortnight he had rarely enjoyed more than four hours' sleep in any one night. Fires were breaking out all over the Chase. At this very moment two brigades, aided by troops and voluntary helpers, were attempting to contain thirty acres of blazing conifer thickets. There was no chance of putting the fire out. They had to be content to widen the fire-breaks and hopefully prevent it from spreading to an adjacent five hundred acres of larch trees.

Ken Tyler knew all about the deadly bats. His attitude was one of "I-told-you-so". Hadn't he forecast something like this happening from the very first day when the building of the Biological Research Center had commenced next to the German Cemetery? Yet he still had his routine duties to attend to. He had listened to the repeat broadcast of the previous evening's plea to the public. "Find the bats," they said, "before they give birth in July."

Tyler laughed. Some chance. Today he was going to leave the fire-fighters to their own devices. Beyond the golf course there were five acres of rhododendron bushes. The previous winter they had provided roosting for some tens of thousands of migratory starlings. As a result the shrubs had become white with the birds' droppings, and beneath them there was a good six inches of foul-smelling excreta. Now a fire up there would have been beneficial, cleared the area. But no, the silly buggers who came here at weekends preferred to drop their cigarette ends and broken bottles in valuable growing timber.

Nevertheless, there was a job to be done on those rhododendrons. Some of the starlings had remained behind when their colleagues had departed for their native country in March, just as though they were keeping the place habitable for the big flocks to return to next winter. They had to be moved, now. Game and starlings could not exist in the same area. No self-respecting pheasant would put up with a constant foul stench and incessant deafening twittering throughout the nights.

Well, if the public weren't prepared to burn the rhododendrons, then Ken Tyler would see to it himself. And the public could take the blame!

The half-gallon of paraffin in the back of the Land-Rover was covered by an old blanket. In all probability a crumpled newspaper would have been quite sufficient to start a blaze, but Tyler was not taking any chances. The flames had to spread quickly, and become established before any of the brigades already in the area were able to put out the fire.

On the floor beside the covered can lay his shotgun, a 12-bore, worn and rusted in places, but nevertheless with a look of efficiency about it. The gamekeeper never went anywhere without it. It was as much a part of his character as the baggy plus fours.

He drove past the Park Gate Inn, turned right at the junction, then took the first left down a bumpy, uneven track which followed a winding course amidst the pine forest. There was a smell of woodsmoke in the air. It had been around for almost a week now, drifting across the Chase from the numerous fires, hanging in the still, windless, hot atmosphere.

At last the track emerged on to an open stretch of heather, its natural beauty marred by a number of well-trodden footpaths and an abundance of litter. Tyler grimaced as he brought the Land-Rover to a standstill. People were selfish, inconsiderate. They never kept to recognized footpaths but had to trample down natural growth, leaving it looking as though a herd of stampeding elephants had crossed it. Then, to add insult to injury, they left their litter lying all over the place.

It was early: 7.15 A.M. Too early for ordinary folk to be about, and all the firemen had their hands full anyway. There were rumours that today the authorities were sending troops from Whittington Barracks to help out. Well, if that was the case, then they were certainly fighting a losing battle, Tyler decided. Soon the whole countryside would be reduced to a charred waste.

He stopped the Land-Rover within thirty yards of the high wall of rhododendrons, and reversed so it was facing in the direction from which it had come, ready for a quick getaway before the flames took hold.

God, it was hot! He pushed his cap on to the back of his head and wiped his brow. Even at night the place never got a chance to cool down. There was no respite from the scorching heat. By day it blazed down from the sun, by night it came up out of the cracked, parched earth. There was no escape.

He climbed down and looked around him. Not a soul in sight. In the distance he could see a column of black smoke mushrooming in the sky. That would be the Pye Green fire. A line of firemen were fighting like hell in an attempt to prevent it from destroying the STD station. Bloody good job if it burnt it down, Tyler thought. It spoiled the Chase, like a skyscraper. Trouble with people today, he told himself, was they couldn't exist without every up-to-date gadget and convenience.

He checked once more to make sure that there was nobody about, and then he lifted the can of paraffin out of the back. Just two gallons, but it would be more than enough.

The shrubs should have been flowering by this time of year, a mass of sweet smelling red and pink. Instead they had a look of dereliction about them. Somehow the greenery had survived in spite of the clinging starling droppings. There had been no rain to wash the excreta away.

Tyler wrinkled his nose. The sour aroma was stronger than the smell of woodsmoke. He coughed. Maybe if the bushes blazed for a week it might get rid of the stench and scorch up the layer of droppings. It was the only way.

Usually there were starlings in evidence, one or two flying about, maybe nesting, or just too lazy to go out to feed on the surrounding fields. They chirped noisily. This morning, however, there was not a bird to be seen. Not a cheep. Silence. Sheer desolation.

Ken Tyler noticed this as he walked towards the rhododendrons, carrying his can of paraffin. Where had all the birds gone? Still, whenever they'd gone, when they came back to roost that evening they'd be in for a nasty shock. They'd singe their wings if they came too close. The starling problem was as good as solved.

As he approached the bushes the stench was almost overpowering, a combination of excreta and rotting flesh. Many starlings died from natural causes out of the thousands clustering in the bushes, and none of the scavengers of the countryside were prepared to clear up the corpses.

"Soon settle that," Ken Tyler said as he unscrewed the cap on his jerrican and began splashing the contents over the nearest rhododendrons. "Cremate the bastards!"

He stood back, struck a match, and flung it at the paraffin-soaked bushes. It fell to the ground, lay burning for a couple of seconds, and then with a roar a small sheet of flame shot up, spreading even before it reached the topmost branches.

Tyler felt the scorching heat on his back as he ran for the Land-Rover. Those excreta-covered bushes were tinder-dry. The blaze was spreading far quicker than he had thought it would.