Jeff Rovin - Vespers

Hundreds of bats were coming down the corridor. Lowery reached past her and slammed the door. The bats crashed against the frosted glass, fluttering wildly on the other side.

Lowery went to the desk and snatched up the phone. It was dead. He threw it down. “All right, think! What have we got in here to protect ourselves?”

Joyce’s eyes drifted to the wings of the dead bat.

“Ultrasonic sound can disorient it, intense cold,” Lowery thought aloud. “Come on, Nannie-think!”

She was thinking, but nothing was coming. She’d seen those two large claws in action.

The wall over the sink cracked. Plaster fell in thick chunks.

The door was rattling violently, and Joyce saw a tiny muzzle squeezing under the bottom.

She pulled off her lab coat and ran to jam it against the base of the door. While she did, Marc looked around. He disconnected the receiver from the phone and knelt next to Joyce. He smacked the creature on the head.

“It’s for you!” he snarled.

The bat squealed and stopped moving. Marc used the phone to push it outside as Joyce plugged the remainder of the opening.

She stood. “That’s not going to hold for long.”

“I don’t think it’s gonna matter,” Marc said as a hole appeared in the back wall. “Where’s the goddamn cavalry?”

“They’re probably fighting a few thousand vespers downstairs,” Joyce said.

The laboratory was lit only by the bright light of an emergency lamp over the lab table. Heidi picked up a scalpel and began backing toward the desk. She stumbled into the chair and seemed startled by it. Moving it aside, she crouched under the desk, her back to the wall. The white surgical mask bore the damp outline of her open mouth.

“Wait,” Lowery said. “Maybe this.” He slipped a fire extinguisher from the wall beside the door. “Nancy, get the other one from behind the table and come here. We can spray it in the face, the ears.”

The professor held out the hose and backed against the locker. It was the first time Joyce had ever seen him other than poised and collected.

A shower of plaster blasted into the room, leaving a hole nearly three feet across. The monster’s hourglass-shaped nose filled the opening, then its right eye, and then one of its hooks slid through. It pulled on the top of the opening, breaking away more plaster.

Behind them, beneath the door, Joyce’s lab coat began to move. The bats were shredding it and clawing through.

Heidi screamed. Ramirez tried to comfort her. Professor Lowery was facing the back wall, waiting.

And Joyce was looking around, praying for inspiration.

Gentry spent the morning catching up on work. At noon he went to the chief’s office to watch Mayor Taylor hold a televised press conference about the bats. The mayor said that he had some of the best “bat people” in the nation working on the problem, which was true, even though only Doyle and Berkowitz were with him at the press conference. The sixty-six-year-old second-term mayor said that a search was underway for the big bat and that the west side subways would not be reopened until it was found and “dealt with.” He said that the small bats would probably not be “much more than an inconvenience” for most New Yorkers and chided Kathy Leung for suggesting that the bats could go wild here as they had in Westchester County.

Doyle elaborated. “We believe that they were being affected by the presence of the large male bat, which we have destroyed,” Doyle said.

Gentry thought,Nancy Joyce did that, you prick.

“As we saw last night,” Doyle continued, “the approach of the female had no effect on the bats over the Hudson.”

When WABC’s science reporter Bob Wallace asked exactlyhow the bats had been affected by the big male, Doyle replied, “We have someone working on that right now.”

Nancy Joyce, you shit stain.

Mayor Taylor added that because the bat was apparently nesting downtown, Grand Central Station would remain open. He said that trains moving underground to and from Ninety-seventh Street would move through the tunnels slower than usual and that police would be standing watch along the way. He added that police vacation and days off were being canceled-which brought a very loud groan from the station house-so that the city’s forty thousand officers would be available to help the city through this “unusual situation.”

Though he said he would not be calling for a curfew, the mayor urged New Yorkers to remain inside after sundown. He said the number of bats in the city made accidental run-ins “inevitable,” and he also discouraged rooftop “bat watch” parties. Police helicopters had spotted a number of these impromptu gatherings the night before.

Gentry spent the early afternoon catching up on sleep. His “power naps” used to amaze the hell out of Bernie Michaelson. Because Gentry never knew when it would be necessary to work undercover for several days and nights at a stretch, he had trained himself not only to sleep anywhere anytime but also to get into and out of it fast.

After resting, he pulled his radio from the desk drawer, turned it on low so he could hear what was going on with the bats, then went back to reading accident reports. There were dozens of them, some bat-related, including fender benders due to a bat flying in a car window; a newsstand owner clocking a pedestrian while using a broom to shoo away a bat; window boxes dislodged by people trying to dislodge roosting bats. Gentry wondered how many people were going to be supremely unhappy when they discovered that these came under the “act of God” clauses in most insurance policies.

Several times during the day Gentry had to stop himself from calling Nancy. He knew she’d be busy with the big bat, and he hoped she’d let him know when she was finished or when she found something. It had been a long time since Gentry had been preoccupied with anything. The fact that it was a woman was surprising, exciting, and a little disturbing. He had become comfortable with the uncomplicated simplicity of his life.

He checked the central computer from time to time, and as of early evening the last missing persons report Gentry had heard about was the woman who vanished from the elevator at the World Trade Center. Investigators had followed the trail of blood up the elevator shaft but lost it around the fiftieth floor. A call to Marius Page confirmed that OEM was centering the search for the large bat in the downtown area between the financial district and the West Village. Despite the fact that there were more than five hundred police and transit officers taking part in the military-style maneuvers, progress was extremely slow. No one moved an inch without every section of tunnel being inspected.

And then came word that the giant bat and tens of thousands of small bats had ripped their way north along the B and D subway line. Gentry heard about it when a Times Square squad car called into division central, calls that were monitored by the station house. He turned up the volume.

“South Adam Patrol Sergeant!” said the caller. “We’re on Broadway and Forty-second Street, and we have a major bat infestation here. They’re attacking from the south. They’re coming up Broadway and Seventh Avenue and converging in Times Square.”

Gentry sat up and listened. He could hear the screams and car horns through his open office window. He went back to the radio.

The dispatcher said, “Sergeant, we’ve just been given a standard operating procedure notice. Have your officers get people inside. They’ll stand a better chance in enclosed areas.”

“Understood, but I need backup. People are running… being trampled. Looters are on the job.”

“Sergeant, backup is being notified. I repeat: the priority is to get people inside.”