“What in God’s name is going on?” Anthony cried.
“We’ve been demoted to insects,” Gentry said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Never mind,” Gentry replied. He told Detective Anthony to head downtown to OEM headquarters at 7 World Trade Center. The detective hoped the place was still operational.
Anthony activated the flasher and siren, turned the car around, and sped back down Central Park West. He wove around a zigzag of fire engines that had responded to their call. The firefighters were backed against their trucks using the water to beat back bats. Obviously, the giant female was still close enough for her cries to affect these vespers.
“I’m going to keep off the highway,” Anthony said. “The radio says it’s jammed with abandoned cars and wrecks and people who are still trying to get out of town.”
“Fine,” Gentry replied. “Just don’t stop. It’ll give these bastards a chance to swarm.”
“Understood.”
The driver cut west at Sixty-fourth Street, then turned onto Columbus Avenue at Lincoln Center. The bat attack was not limited to the Central Park region. Well-dressed patrons who had come to hear the 125th anniversary production ofDie Fledermaus- a perverse coincidence-at the Metropolitan Opera were running through the lobby or hiding under tables in the vast courtyard. Several bodies were bobbing under a sea of bats in the large, lighted circular fountain.
Gentry turned to Joyce. She was staring ahead, her expression flat. He took her hand and squeezed it. She turned toward him, and as they passed a streetlight he could see the sadness in her eyes.
The driver slowed to avoid a body that had crawled onto the street. A moment later, Anthony screamed, jammed hard on the brakes, and started slapping at his lap. Gentry looked over the seat.
A bat was chewing on the inside of the driver’s thigh, and two more were crawling into the car from under the dashboard.
“Get the helloff! ” Anthony cried.
He grabbed the bat and tried to pull it away as the other two flew at his hands.Two more bats came in behind them.
“Where’s your radio?” Gentry demanded.
“In the passenger door!”
Gentry reached over to get it as four more bats squirmed in from under the dashboard. The animals flew for his face, and Gentry dropped back into his seat.
A bat flew at Joyce’s chin; she snatched it from the air with her right hand and slammed it against the window to her left. There was a mushysplat and a short squeal.
As the dead bat slid from the window, Joyce leaned over the seat toward the dashboard. She turned the air conditioner on and cranked it tohigh.
“Turn the vents on the bats!” she said to Anthony as she turned to help get the bats off Gentry.
With bloody fingers, Anthony adjusted the vents so they blew on his lap and face. The bats immediately slowed down, and the young officer was able to pull them away. They flew at him again, this time less vigorously. He snatched them off and crushed them like tissues and discarded them on the floor. No other bats entered the car.
When Gentry’s bats had been crushed, he looked at Nancy. “They hate cold,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“You never fail to amaze me. Neither do the bats.”
“I can’t decide whether they’re trying to get away from the female’s cry or whether they’re controlled by it,” she said. “But whatever it is, if there’s a way into a place, they’ll find it.”
Gentry turned to the officer. “Can you drive?”
“Yes,” he said. “And thank you, ma’am.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said.
They had stopped at Fifty-sixth Street, near the Symphony House. He flipped on a loudspeaker and turned back onto the road.
“Turn on your air conditioners!” he shouted as he went around other stopped cars.
Gentry reached over and got the radio. There were different channels broken into divisions, with three precincts in each division. Anthony’s radio was still set to Midtown South. On the other end, dispatcher Caroline Andoscia was trying to listen to several people at once. Each of them was shouting, probably because they were under attack. Gentry turned down the volume and put the radio on the seat. They heard a dispatcher call for backup at Grace Church on Broadway and Tenth Street. The 10-66 “unusual incident” call reported that the building was jammed with people and under attack. Bats had come up through the pipe organ. When people tried to escape, the bats swarmed in through the doors.
“Should we go there?” Detective Anthony asked. “We don’t know how many units are operational.”
“There isn’t time,” Gentry said. “We’ve got to get Dr. Joyce downtown.”
“Say your prayers,” she said quietly to the radio.
Gentry looked out the window. It was like a scene from an old science-fiction movie where a monster or alien invaders had gone through a city reducing lively streets to acres of bodies, idling vehicles, smashed windows, and windblown litter. And all of it in just under an hour. People who had ignored the mayor’s suggestion to stay inside had dropped where they were walking or jogging or waiting to cross the street. In the road and on the sidewalk, bicycle delivery men were lying where they fell. Dogs that hadn’t been brought down in attacks were fighting each other or jumping into the air trying to bite the bats. The car had to swerve even more than before to avoid hitting injured people. Dead pigeons were everywhere. Occasionally, Gentry saw a bird streak through the air, pursued by bats. At least the furry bastards weren’t playing favorites.
The handful of people who were still mobile were attempting to ignore the bats clustered around their heads and arms and were trying to crawl to the nearest doorway. Those who had managed to get to shelter-small bodegas or newsstands that could be closed up in a hurry-were looking through windows or shouting for help. But help was nowhere near.
“What would happen if we pumped the radio feedback through the loudspeaker?” Gentry asked Joyce. “Would that drive the bats away?”
Joyce shook her head once. “The interference was the equivalent of a weak magnetic force. Beyond a very local perimeter it wouldn’t affect the stronger cry of the female.”
Gentry started as bats slammed at his window in succession and bounced away. The bats were thicker downtown, flying in every direction like black confetti caught in a fan. Just below Forty-second Street, the Port Authority Bus Terminal was a disaster, with evening commuters and police looking as if they’d been cut down by poison gas. They were lying side by side or one atop the other under the wide overhang.
To the east, the top floors of the Empire State Building were dark-not because the lights were off, but because the top of the building was crawling with bats. There must be trapped prey on the observation deck and inside the spire. Occasionally, light would poke through the shroud of bats as they shifted or as a window broke and a body fell through.
Car sirens and bank alarms screamed on all sides. Occasionally, police cars and ambulances sped by. Gentry couldn’t imagine how they were deciding who got help. Probably doctors or surgeons or city officials, he guessed. People who would be needed to fight the bats. Gentry had never seen a system crash so fast or so completely.
He turned back to Nancy. “Assuming the OEM is still functioning, Weeks is definitely going to want to talk to you. Al Doyle spent the last of his credibility coin at the mayor’s press conference this morning. He told everyone there was nothing to worry about, it was the male bat that was controlling the others. Will you be up for meeting with Weeks?”
She nodded. “That she-bat is still out there. And it’s a lot more dangerous than these people realize. She’s definitely pregnant; I could see that when she was in the lab. She’s probably within a week or so of giving birth, which is why she’s come to New York. Her offspring will be very vocal within a few days, and they’ll probably have the same effect on bats that she has. If there are two or three giants running loose in the subways, protected by other bats, it’ll be damn near impossible to get near them.” Her voice snagged and she looked away. “The one time I could really use his help and he’s not here.”