When they reached Manhattan, Gentry returned the car to the lot and they cabbed back to his apartment. They turned on the ten o’clock news. Doyle was on, congratulating himself and the NYPD on a successful pest-control operation. Gentry turned the TV off.
“You did good, Al,” he said, “but it was only round one. Nancy, you ever play video games?”
“JustMs. Pac-Man when I was a kid.”
“This whole thing reminds me ofSpace Invaders orAsteroids. You clear one level and you feel pretty good about yourself. Then you get hit with the second level where everything’s twice as fast and three times as nasty. And you’re history in about two seconds.”
“There’s just one big difference,” Joyce pointed out.
“I know,” Gentry said. “The games have a reset button.”
Twenty-Five
Dori slowed as the traffic getting onto the George Washington Bridge began to thicken.
When she first started driving a bus six years before, thirty-nine-year-old Dori Dryfoos had the morning shift. The single mother thought she’d like shuttling businessmen between New York and northern New Jersey. They’d be neat, articulate, and reliable, everything her alcoholic, screwing-around, former jock of a husband wasn’t. Maybe she’d even get to know some of the men, meet a single one, and get asked to coffee or dinner or a movie. It could happen. But it never did.
The reality was that at least half the businessmen were networking, lost in newspapers or cell-phone-using bores. The other half were busy hitting on the young, highpowered, up-and-coming women who rode the bus. Some of the men gave Dori a “good morning” with their tickets. But most didn’t. And the women seemed condescending.
Dori hadn’t asked for the night shift just to get away from the morning commuters. That was just a side benefit. She did it so that she’d be home during the day with her three-year-old son, Larry. Day care just hadn’t worked out; poor Larry would sit in a corner and cry the entire time. Working the night shift, at least Dori could tuck the boy into bed while the baby-sitter looked on. Larry seemed much happier about that. And why not? No one liked to feel abandoned.
To Dori’s surprise, she loved the night shift. It was relaxing and invigorating. One of the afternoon-to-evening drivers would park in the New Jersey terminal lot at eight o’clock, where the bus would get gas and a cleaning. Dori would collect it at nine. Her shift ended at five in the morning, right before the hellish rush-hour commute began over the George Washington Bridge. It was perfect.
The nighttime crowd was always delightfully eclectic and slightly wacky. There were aunts and uncles and grandparents who had spent the day with family. There were teenagers going to Manhattan for God knew what, workers heading in for late shifts as security guards or street cleaners or disc jockeys or whatever else people did at night, and even the occasional nun or lap dancer or hustler. Dori knew a few of the regulars by name. It was too bad: some of the male hustlers had better manners than the businessmen.
“Excuse me, miss.”
Dori took a quick glance behind her. A thin, white-haired lady was standing in the aisle to her right.
“Yes ma’am?” Dori said.
“Is there something wrong with the lavatory?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Why?”
“I think it’s locked.”
“Maybe someone’s in there.”
“No. I’m sitting right in front of it. No one’s gone in.”
“Well, maybe it’s stuck,” Dori said. “This is a pretty old bus. Maybe one of the gentlemen back there will give it a tug for you.”
“Thank you,” the woman said. “I’ll ask.”
Slowed in the moderate late-evening traffic at the entrance to the bridge, Dori watched in the rearview mirror as the woman made her way back down the aisle. She held the backs of the seats as she walked, then stopped beside a young man. He was probably a college student. He had that look. Muscular, blond, clean-cut. The youth smiled up at the woman, listened to what she had to say, then went back to help her. The restroom was a small compartment on the left side of the bus. He pushed down hard on the handle.
The traffic started to move as she got on the bridge. Dori took her eyes from the mirror and looked ahead. You didn’t see very many things like that in the morning, she thought. Simple courtesies. People who didn’t mind getting off their butts and helping people.
Suddenly, a terrible cry tore through the bus. Dori touched the brake, and her eyes snapped back to the mirror.
The young man was stumbling backward. As Dori watched, he fell across the lap of a young woman who was sitting opposite the restroom. He was waving his hands wildly as things flew from the opened door.The old woman fell backward, landing hard on the rubber flooring. She didn’t get up.
At first, in the subdued light of the bus, the things looked like campfire ash or fall leaves blown by a strong wind. They were swirling forward rapidly, an expanding spiral moving this way and that. Their approach caused most of the seventeen passengers to flail their arms, scream, and duck down. As the things continued toward her, Dori saw what they really were.
Bats.
Shrieks filled the bus as Dori crushed the brake. The vehicle stopped; the bats kept going. Four of the small, tawny creatures were on her a moment later. Their wings were dry and soft as they fluttered against her. She snarled at the bats as they tore at her face and scalp.
“Get off me!”
Dori leaned forward and tried to reach the lever that opened the door. But she retreated an instant later, forced to cover her eyes. She shook her head violently, but the bats wouldn’t leave. They clung to her bobbed black hair and ears, to her slender fingers and knuckles. Every move, every moment brought new pain. She felt like she’d run deep into a thorn bush and couldn’t get out.
Screams bounced through the bus. Burying her eyes in the crook of her right elbow, Dori wrapped the arm tightly around her face. Then she turned herself back toward the dashboard and felt blindly with her left hand for the lever. When she found it, she pulled hard.
The door folded open. The cool, brisk air rushed in off the Hudson River. The bats continued to attack.
Dori cried out in desperation. She half stood and threw herself against the window to her left. The bus began to roll forward. She hit the window again and again, banging her hands and forehead against the pane until bat blood mingled with her own blood and bat cries joined hers.
The bus angled toward the road divider, then rammed against it and stopped. Tires squealed as cars braked. A van smashed into the rear of the bus, jolting it forward. Horns blared angrily. Behind her, passengers screamed and shouted. But Dori wasn’t aware of any of them. Her world was bounded by bats and defined by pain.
There were no longer any bats in the air. Two or three of them had latched onto each of the passengers. Most of the riders had folded themselves in the narrow space between their seats and the backs of seats in front of them. They were trying to duck in a face-down position. A few had fallen into the aisles and were pulling at stubborn bats or kicking the air in pain. No one was able to get free of the small, fast-flapping attackers. Not for more than a moment.
Suddenly, the cars went silent.
Then, as one, the bats stopped attacking the passengers and flew in a mad, cat’s cradle pattern toward the door.
A motorist ran to the door to see what was wrong; the middle-aged woman ducked as the bats zigzagged past her. When they were gone, the woman hurried up the steps and knelt beside Dori. The driver was curled in a ball on the floor and crying softly.