Nightwing (27 page)

“It could be argued that the two dominant life-forms on earth are bacilli and mammals.” Paine chose his words slowly. “The three most successful forms of these groups are the plague bacillus, man, and bats. Functioning together. The plague, to begin with. The plague bacillus has always been here. As a minor disease.”

“It wasn’t as dangerous?”

“To the caveman who caught it, yes, but how many other men could he infect? Or a farmer? Or a hunter? Do you see what I mean? There was plague, but there were no epidemics, not one in the history of the world until the coming of higher civilization. Until men got together in cities, until men traded, until men congested. Then starts the reign of the plague above all other diseases. Because of man, nothing else.”

“The plague does okay,” Youngman said. “What do we get out of it?”

“Unions. Before the Black Plague hit Western Europe, the majority of the population was in servitude. When the plague passed and half the population was dead there was a labor shortage. Men who had been slaves could sell their labor. Individual rights began. Democracy began with the plague.”

“Then public hygiene is the end of democracy, according to you,” Anne said.

“Sewage disposal and rat control didn’t stop the plague. The first pandemic of the plague killed a hundred million people in the sixth century. Seven hundred years later, the Black Plague killed a quarter of the world’s population. In between? Believe me, there was no great improvement in open sewers. The plague has its own pulse, its own cycle. It rests in places like this and waits.”

“Bats,” Youngman nervously felt for a cigarette, “what about them?”

“What about them? Don’t be angry, but what do you know about bats? Little, fluttery creatures, flying mice, freaks of nature? Not vampires now, just bats in general.”

“Something like that,” Anne acknowledged.

“Because you don’t know how wonderfully successful a life-form they are. One out of every five mammals on the face of the earth is a bat. Bats are more widespread over the earth than any other mammal, except man. We rule the day, not the night.”

“Aren’t they related to rodents?” Anne exchanged a glance with Youngman.

“Someone else. The two glorious specimens descended from tree-hopping insectivores are man and bats. We climbed down and they flew out, although we share the same hand in different forms. For twenty years, Leonardo da Vinci tried to design wings for a man to fly like a bird. His perfected design was the bat wing. We share more. More than twenty kinds of virus. The human bed bug first came from bats when we shared the same caves. And the closest of all bats to man is the vampire.”

“Well,” Youngman sighed, “I know you’re a super exterminator of bats but your humor is a little strained.”

“Not humor. Irony. It’s true. You see this is an amazing concept, the vampire bat. Incredibly advanced. Of all bats, it’s the only one that mates the year round, like humans. Of all bats, it has the longest gestation period. Eight months. Of all bats, its children take the longest to develop and teach. It’s the only bat that can jump or run. The only bat that cannot live in harmony with any other animal, including other bats. Need I add, also the only bat unafraid of man. The first western scientist ever to see the vampire feed was Charles Darwin. He didn’t know what to make of it.”

“So,” Youngman finally remembered to light his cigarette, “know your enemy.”

“Know your cousins. And since a vampire can live close to twenty years, a fairly long-lived cousin. So, don’t call me a super exterminator. You exterminate fleas. You kill bats.”

“All of which shoots your theory of interdependence to hell, right?”

“No. The vampire lives off large mammals that sleep in herds. It lives off cattle and horses. There weren’t any cattle and horses in the New World until the Spanish brought them. What do you think the vampires lived on before then? Name me the one large American mammal that slept together in herds, or villages.”

A light-headed sensation came over Anne.

“You mean, people?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. People. Which is why all the old vampire roosts were found next to villages. Of course, we can only speculate on the details of this relationship. Whether one vampire colony would establish territoriality over a particular village and defend its feeding ground against other colonies.”

“What did the people get out of it?” Youngman asked.

“Gods.”

He knows about Masaw, Youngman thought.

“What kind of gods?” Anne picked up.

“The Mayan gods, for example,” Paine said, to Youngman’s relief. “You can still see the statues in the Yucatan. Statues with the heads of vampires. The curved incisors and the long tongue are very well represented. No one knows quite why the Mayans deserted their cities. Maybe it was the collapse of their slash-and-burn agriculture. Maybe it was simply enervation, a loss of blood. Wherever there were more vampires, there were more bat gods. More public sacrifices, more ritual bloodletting, until Aztecs paste their hair with blood and cut their ears into a vampire’s fringe and wear a cape of bat skins. Maybe cattle herds are a secondary form of sacrifice for us.”

“Then, what you’re telling us,” Anne said, “is that we can’t change anything? There should be plague and there should be vampires?”

“ ‘Should’ isn’t the issue. The only thing that will ever eliminate plague or vampires is the elimination of man. We’ll go together.”

“Then what we’re doing here is pointless,” she said. “In the long run, in your biological scheme, we mean nothing. Then why are you here?”

“Because,” Paine couldn’t think of a better explanation, “it’s what I do.”

There was a long silence before Anne commented.

“Good Lord.”

For a long time, no one said anything.

Slowly, the star Hotomkam wheeled upside down over the canyon. Choochokam slid over the horizon. Youngman smoked, wishing he had some mesa tobacco. Exhausted, Anne slept in the middle of the narrow tent. Paine methodically unloaded and reloaded his dart gun.

“Maybe we should be listening to the news,” Youngman suggested.

“Why?” Paine asked. “They’re broadcasting nothing that you couldn’t predict.”

“I predict they’ll start bombing caves,” Youngman lowered his voice.

“They will,” Paine agreed, “for a cave or two. Until they find out they’re only scattering bats. We want the vampires together just two more nights—”

“Speaking of that, Anne’s not going into the cave with us tomorrow. Just you and me. She can’t carry anything in her condition and she’d only be in the way.”

“Okay.”

“No, I want more than that. Your promise Anne stays with the truck, or you go alone.”

“Very well, you have my promise she won’t go into any cave.” Paine put the dart gun down. A moth had been circling over the tent above the light. Suddenly, the insect began to fly erratically, zigzagging and dropping. Paine turned his head to the amplifier’s beeper even before it sounded.

“Wake her up!” he told Youngman and dived into the rear of the truck.

“Anne,” Youngman shook her shoulder. “They’re here.”

“Three hundred yards off,” Paine returned. In one hand he held a thin, five-foot wooden pole. In the other, a two-ounce vial of defibrilated blood.

“You’re sure they’re going to stop,” Youngman took the pole. The last two feet of the pole were wrapped in calf hide.

Rubbing her face, Anne was already beside the battery.

“They didn’t see us in the truck before. This time we’re out.” Paine poured the blood over the calf hide. “Be careful you don’t tear the mesh.”

“I know what to do.”

“When I say ‘Juice,’ ” Paine snapped his fingers at Anne.

Youngman realized that he had yet to see the bats close up. Paine had, Anne had. The deputy inserted the pole through the mesh so that the blood-soaked calf skin was outside the tent. The mesh was incredibly frail. He felt his heart pumping blood and adrenaline, and had a sense of the frailty of his own skin. He couldn’t remember ever being afraid of an animal before.

The amplifier beeper became louder and more insistent, turning into one sustained whine.

Paine stood in the middle of the tent, calmly waiting.

Anne stared upwards.

First, they heard the whisper of the false wind, then a leathery rustle. A shape flashed overhead, through the light before Youngman could make it out. Two more shapes. Ten. Eye reflections like candles. A hundred, more than Youngman could see. Anne stared, transfixed. The walls of the tent swayed. Youngman couldn’t hear the beeper’s cry anymore for the wing beats.

“They’re going past!” he shouted.

“No.” Paine pointed with the gun to a dark shape scuttling along the ground.

The river of bats poured overhead and curved, turning into a whirlpool of dipping wings. The whirlpool flattened into a tremendous wheel spinning over the tent. Youngman found himself crouching. Paine seemed to stand taller, turning on one heel. Anne looked into a face two feet outside the net. Bristles marked each cheek. Its dark eyes were slanted on either side of a squat nose with double-folded nostrils. Its ears were long and ribbed. Youngman saw that the top of the Rover was covered by bats. One, its wings wrapped into two long “arms,” jumped onto the mesh directly over Paine. More bats appeared all around the edge of the tent. Two leaped from the ground and agilely climbed the tent walls. More jumped from the Rover and others landed from the air on the tent. Youngman’s arm jerked. On the bloody end of the pole was a bat. Its incisors sliced off a half-dollarsized patch of hide. A long red tubelike tongue curled and delicately lapped the pole. He heard the soft explosion of the air gun beside his ear and saw the fin of a dart protrude from the back fur of the bat. Forty or fifty bats crawled on top of the tent, and more climbed up the walls using thumb claws as hooks. A quarter of them had face fur matted with dried blood. The pole Youngman held bowed with the weight of three more bats. Paine pushed the dart gun’s muzzle into the mesh and fired again. The top of the tent sagged. More bats climbed up from the ground, bringing a retching smell of ammonia. Youngman heard the lowest register of their excited screams, a distinct clicking in his ears. Inches from his shoulder, they started sawing through the mesh with their teeth. Paine took his time aiming his last dart, knocking a bat out off the wall to pull the trigger on one with a strip of hide hanging from its mouth. As he lowered the gun a bat landed between his shoulder blades. Without thinking. Youngman ripped the bat off Paine and crushed it under his boot.

“Juice!” Paine shouted.

The tear was at the far end of the tent. Another bat was coming through when Youngman reached the rifle in his bedroll and blew it apart. Blood, bone and gristle splattered the inside of the tent. He shot two more coming through before Paine slid the wooden pole through each side of the tent and twisted it shut.

“Turn on the battery!” Youngman shouted at Anne, who knelt beside the battery, her hand limp on the starter knob.

The bats were cutting through the roof and the walls. Youngman emptied his rifle on them and picked up the handgun he’d brought from Momoa’s. A rip three feet long appeared down one wall. Youngman walked into the bats flooding through, using up his bullets until he reached the mesh and gathered it shut in his hands. As he watched, his hands became covered with bats.

Then a thrill of electricity washed through his body, leaving his brain a darkness surrounded by convulsions.

C H A P T E R
E I G H T

A
blue sky surrounded Anne’s face.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Grand,” Youngman muttered.

“Pretty good for a man whose heart stopped.”

“Is it going now?”

He raised himself from her lap and winced. His hands, he noticed, were bandaged to the wrists. The mesh tent had been taken down and the red canister of poison was gone. Paine, also, was gone.

“Where is he?” Youngman asked.

“Paine left to look for the cave. You saved our lives last night, Youngman.”

“I don’t remember a damn thing.”

“It was my fault,” she said. “I was scared, I couldn’t turn on the battery.”

He pulled himself away.from her arms and stood. The ground swayed slightly under his feet. Youngman squinted at the sun; it was close to noon.

“But he should have waited. He can’t carry all the stuff alone. And he didn’t take the Rover?”

“He waited until he was sure you were going to come around. Youngman, he left the truck for us to leave. He never wanted us along. In fact, he took your rifle and he said he’d shoot you if you tried to follow him. I think he would. He’s crazy.”

Youngman slumped to one knee as much from surprise as weakness.

“You didn’t know that?” he asked Anne.

He turned his stare from Anne to the road, where Paine’s footprints led up the canyon.

“When did he go?”

“An hour ago, maybe more.”

“He should have left at dawn.” Youngman shook his head. “He doesn’t know where he’s going. Not enough time.”

“Youngman, let’s go home. He’s a professional, he can do the job by himself. He’s the only one who can.”

“One of us is.” Youngman still looked in the direction Paine had gone, where the road screwed through the dull-red walls of the canyon.

“So, we’ll wait and see,” he said.