“Normal bats don’t have litters. They have one or two pups per birth. This particular vespertilionid, I don’t know. Irradiated cells can divide in strange ways.”
“So a high level of exposure could harm a mother and cause mutations in a fetus, but she still might live long enough to carry the pup to term. And the pup might survive.”
“Yes.”
“But then why wouldn’t the pup be radioactive?”
“The radiation isn’t passed along to the child,” Joyce said. “Only the damage.”
“So the mother acts like a filter.”
“In a way. But the changes can be geometric. A mutated child can pass even greater changes on to its offspring.”
Gentry glanced at her. “So a big bat like the Russian one could conceivably give birth to-”
“An even bigger bat,” Joyce said.
“Shit,” Gentry said.
“Yeah. Slow down,” she said as they neared a dark stretch of road. “Up there.”
The route narrowed and ended at a wooded region. Gentry’s shoulders heaved and he sighed.
“Y’know, I can accept most of what you said. But I’m not sure I can make the leap of faith to the next part.”
“Which part?”
“About one or more large predators living out here, in a small town, without being seen.”
“Why not? How often do people see bears up here?”
“That’s different.”
“You’re right,” Joyce said. “A bat can fly. It feeds at night. It has a more diverse diet than a bear or a cougar or a deer. It apparently has a much wider range of predation, which would blunt its impact on the local fauna. And it has the Catskills to the west to prowl around in.”
“Okay,” he said. “It goes unnoticed. Flies too low even to be picked up on airport radar. Then answer one more question.”
“I’ll try.”
“Can you fire a forty-four Magnum?”
She smiled. “Do bats fly?”
“Good. I’ve got two Ruger Super Blackhawks in the trunk,” Gentry said, “and I’m not going mutant bat hunting without them.”
They drove for another five minutes before reaching a clearing. There were no other vehicles in the area. Gentry parked and they got out. He removed the two handguns from the well where he stored the tire jack and grabbed a flashlight from the tool chest. When he closed the trunk, the slam of the door sounded disturbingly final.
It had gotten chilly since they left the doctor’s house. An insistent breeze stirred the treetops, carrying an early hint of fall and a sense of isolation. Branches groaned softly. Gentry heard a train whistle far off. The detective had gone into crackhouses feeling less anxious than he did now. He knew that kind of enemy. The zoned-out junkie or the quick-on-the-trigger pusher. This was something-primalwas the word that came to mind.
Stones and dirt crunched underfoot as they hiked up the sloping path. They proceeded slowly at Joyce’s insistence. She didn’t want to stumble into an “off-limits bat habitat,” as she described it, the kind of area the Little Leaguer and his father had entered the evening before. If they did, the plan was that she’d back out immediately and Gentry would help her.
Twigs snapped as animals fled into the underbrush. Gentry kept his eyes ahead. He had the flashlight; Joyce had the lead. He liked the way she looked with the Magnum swinging comfortably alongside her thigh. He liked the way she looked period.
“Check the trees, not just the ground,” Joyce said. “In case there are any animal remains up there.”
“I am,” Gentry said. “Have you seen any bats?”
“Not a one,” she said. “Last night there wereonly bats in the woods. Tonight there’s everything but.”
“So we’re wasting our time.”
“To the contrary. What I’m saying is that thereshould be bats. I understand how massive bat predation like I found last night could eat up a lot of local animal life and force the remaining bugs or lizards to leave or hide. But I don’t understand what could scare awayjust bats and leave everything else-”
She stopped. So did Gentry. She turned around.
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“Robert, what if the bats weren’tfrightened away?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think about that path down the Hudson River you were talking about before.”
“Yeah?”
“There are no bats here. There were relatively few bats by the time I went into the woods last night. There’s a very high bat count in the city subways. What if they’re all moving?”
“You mean migrating?”
“No. Moving. In a highly organized fashion.”
“Is that possible?”
“Bats communicate,” she said, thinking aloud. “We don’t know how or to what extent, but we think they’re a lot like dolphins in that sense. They send out short, pulselike sounds-‘clicks’-that come so fast they sound like high-pitched duck quacks. Bats use those sounds mostly to hunt.”
“Echolocation.”
“Yes. But deeper in the throat, in the larynx, they generate a very high whistle that can change pitch very quickly. We think those sounds are used to communicate everything from the location of food sources to sexual interest to organizational commands.”
“That’s very nice,” Gentry said. “But why would bats be moving to New York?”
“I don’t know. Why do bats move anywhere? Shelter or food.”
“Subways and cockroaches.”
“There’s also other wildlife,” Joyce said. “Baby pigeons, mice, rats, fish-New York is a big, rich smorgasbord for bats.”
“But so are the Catskills and Westchester and Connecticut. Right?”
Joyce started walking again. “For a normal colony, yes. But what if this one isn’t normal?”
She stopped beside a sign that pointed out the various roads and scenic sites in the area. But she wasn’t looking at the sign. She was looking at what was behind it. Gentry turned the flashlight in that direction.
There was a red and white iron bar waist-high across another dirt road. In the center was a sign with hours posted on it.
“Landfill,” Joyce said.
Gentry shined his light beyond the pole.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “It’s deserted at night. The remains of any animals would be bulldozed under, and the smell of the trash would cover the smell of guano.”
“Are we going in there?”
Joyce ducked under the pole.
“I guess so,” Gentry said as he followed her in.
They walked for roughly an eighth of a mile down the rutted dirt road. The full moon had risen above the mountains, casting the hills and thickly bunched trees in pale light. The only sounds were the crunch of their shoes on the stones, the leaves stirred by the night air, and now and then an animal fleeing through the underbrush.They moved slowly, Joyce reminding Gentry that the first time a bat came after either of them they were to back away immediately. Gentry understood and said he’d been less anxious raiding apartments when he was a narc. He knew and understood that kind of danger. Plus it was over in a few moments of intense activity. Now, he had no idea what to expect, or when.
When they reached the landfill, the vision was surreal. Crags of refuse, like blue-white lunar mountains, towered over the flat plains of dirt. The jagged peaks threw long, sharp shadows over their own lumpy foothills and across the occasional clumps of trash. Off to the right, near a shed, a bulldozer sat like a sleeping monster.
“Where do you want to look?” Gentry asked.
“I’m not sure.” Joyce took the flashlight from him. “I’ll just pick a spot.”
She walked toward the hills that surrounded the landfill. The nearest slope was about three hundred yards away. When she reached it, she walked slowly along the base, shining the light up through the surrounding trees and then down along the ground.
Gentry stood alone at the entrance to the landfill. Despite the gun, he felt naked.
After several minutes, Joyce stopped in front of a steep section of hill. She looked up and then down. Then she got down on her hands and knees. “Robert?” Her voice seemed very far away.