It was dry in here, though water dripped from her hair into her ears and mouth. She began to tremble from the cold and ended up crying with fear and the horror of what had happened to Professor Lowery.
Joyce listened. As she did, her mind beat up on her.
Lowery is dead.
She breathed rapidly and the locker warmed.
I should have done what he told me.
The dark made everything seem louder, closer. She heard the flap of the bat’s wings, like someone shaking out a rug. She couldn’t tell whether or not it was coming closer.
No. That wouldn’t have made any difference. Two fireextinguishers wouldn’t have helped.
She heard shouts from downstairs.
You did the right thing.
Then there was silence, but only for a moment. Suddenly the world turned sideways as the locker was wrenched away from the wall and dragged loudly across the laboratory floor. A moment later the top and bottom of the metal cabinet slammed hard against something. There was a brief respite, the locker tilted farther, and then it was slammed again-
The hole in the wall. The locker was being pulled against it.
Joyce’s breath came faster as panic gripped her. She thought of the deer in the tree, the bicyclist carried into the tunnel, the man swept from the train platform at Christopher Street.
The bat was trying to take her away.
Thirty-Four
Detective Anthony raced along Eighth Avenue to Columbus Circle. En route, Gentry used the car phone to try to raise Professor Lowery’s office.
The phones were not working in the laboratory. The detective also wasn’t able to reach museum security and was furious with himself for not having accompanied Nancy.
The car rounded Columbus Circle. Anthony cut through the traffic coming the other way and sped alongside the park. As they headed north, Gentry was overwhelmed by the panic he saw. Anthony had to swerve, stop, and start as people ran and stumbled into the street, trying to get away from the bats. It reminded him of the cockroaches that had been flushed from the walls of his apartment building. People didn’t seem to be runningto anything, just away. And there weren’t many people helping other people. They were looking after themselves. Not out of selfishness but out of necessity. The bats turned each person, each part of the body, into a battle zone.
And the people were losing.
“Isn’t there anything we can do to help?” Anthony asked.
“If we get out, the bats will bring us down,” he said. “And if we stop to let anyone into the car, we may be overrun.”
Overrun by bats and by people. Overrun by panic and fear.
The detective looked up as they drove past the rows of stately and exclusive apartment buildings that lined the broad street. Small fires were burning in the windows of several apartments. They could have been caused by struggles around candlelit dinners, by bats that had flown too close to gas burners, by people who tried to chase away the creatures using makeshift torches. Gentry could also hear the high-pitched whine of the smoke detectors, which seemed to make the bats even more agitated.
Midtown South and Midtown North used the same radio frequency and Gentry called in the locations of the 10-59s to be relayed to the engine and ladder company on West Eighty-third Street. He didn’t know how the firefighters would deal with the bats-hoses, perhaps-but they’d have to try. That was all the city needed now, to burn.
The car pulled up across the street from the museum. The old gothic towers were alive with bats. Gentry told Anthony to wait; he didn’t want an officer who was inexperienced with the bats either getting hurt or getting in his way. Pulling his coat over his head, Gentry ran across the wide street and raced up the stairs into the rotunda.
He was not surprised to find bats everywhere. In the bright glare of the emergency lights he could see them circling in the high ceiling, knitting in and out of the skeleton of the giant, rearing barosaurus, flying through the dark halls beyond. What did surprise him was that they weren’t attacking, though it was obvious they had been: wounded museum personnel and visitors were everywhere. People were just beginning to stir after the assault.
Gentry took his coat from around his head. The subdued state of the bats meant that the giant had left or had been killed. As he sped toward the stairway, he prayed it was the latter.
Gentry reached the fourth floor, the last of the public floors. There, he had to ask a wounded guard how to get to the fifth floor. Bleeding on the cheeks and hands, the man told him. Out of breath, Gentry ran to the door and put three bullets through the security scanner. The door clicked open. He took the stairs two at a time and hurried to Professor Lowery’s laboratory. He heard awful banging coming from that direction.
The spotlit halls were deserted save for several confused, slipstream flows of bats and two people who were limping toward him. As they neared, Gentry recognized Heidi Daniels. The detective stopped her.
“Heidi, where’s Nancy?”
“She’s still in the lab!” Marc Ramirez said urgently.
“What happened?”
“The female bat broke through-”
Gentry didn’t hear the rest. He ran on, damning himself with every other step. He should have been here. Heshould have.
Though the main lights were down, the emergency lights had come on in the hallway. The laboratory was just ahead. Gentry approached boldly; it didn’t pay to tiptoe, not with bats.
When he reached the lab, he saw bats drinking from a puddle just outside the doorway. He heard the gentle spray of water inside under the steady beat ofwham…silence…wham. The bats didn’t bother him, even though he was just a few feet away.
He saw the shattered glass lying just inside the door. His heart punching hard, he raised his gun and held his breath and swung through the wooden frame.
Years of entering drug dens and hideouts had taught Gentry to see everything as a snapshot when he went into a room: front vision, peripheral vision, top and bottom, it was all processed at once. The emergency lights in the hall barely lit the laboratory, but it was enough. Virtually every inch of the walls, cabinets, and ceiling was covered with a rippling black carpet of bats.Everything except for the dead giant, which was lying on the table to the left. A fine spray was raining down in the midst of the bats, and Professor Lowery lay soaked with water and blood near the desk. He wasn’t moving. Behind the spray was what the narcotics squad used to call “the big story,” the head of the gang.
The giant bat.
The creature was mostly in shadow, its giant off-white hooks trying to pull the laboratory clothes locker through an opening in the wall. The animal was hidden inside the opening. The banging came from the monster’s awkward attempts to maneuver the tall locker through the wide hole.
The creature stopped moving. Gentry stood with his right arm extended, his left hand supporting his wrist, his index finger on the trigger. The locker was resting in the creature’s hooks, lying diagonally across its body. Gentry couldn’t see the bat’s head, wings, or legs.
Suddenly, the creature wailed. The echoing cry reminded Gentry of a street musician he used to hear on his beat, a man who dragged a violin bow across the mouth of glass bottles. It was a high, sustained, hollow sound, almost like weeping. The other bats didn’t move. Obviously, that wasn’t the sound that sent them into their frenzy.
Gentry raised the gun slightly and fired twice, once to the left and once to the right. The giant bat’s wail became a shriek of pain. The locker clattered loudly to the floor.
The twin reports of the 9-mm stirred the small bats from their perches. Hundreds of them dashed through the spray, weaving up and down and from side to side. The droplets seemed to confuse them. Gentry lowered his weapon and walked into the spray. Behind the thick swarm he could see the locker lying on its side. The giant hooks were gone.