Jeff Rovin - Vespers

The sergeant got off the radio for a moment. Though the box was silent, Gentry could still hear the cries and shattering glass outside his window. He got his 9-mm pistol from the desk and slipped it in his shoulder holster. He rose and pulled on his jacket. He’d go out and help in a moment. First he wanted to hear where the giant bat was headed.

The patrol sergeant came back on. “Central, I’ve told my people to set up posts at three sites: the Palace Theater, the Virgin Megastore, and the Marriott Marquis Hotel. You got that?”

“Got it. Backup will be directed there.”

“But it’s a real madhouse here,” the patrol sergeant said, “and it’s getting worse by the second. All you can see are bats. They’re shooting down like hawks-everyone outside is getting blitzed, including my people. If we can get inside, I’m hoping we can hold the interiors and get people to safety. I’m going out to try and-Jesus!Jesus! ”

There was a short silence. Then Gentry heard and felt an explosion. He turned to the window as the distant blast lit the night.

“Get everyone away from there!”the sergeant yelled.

“What’s happening?” demanded the dispatcher. “Sergeant, what’s going on out there?”

“A cab just hit the liquid nitrogen air tanks on the-backthose other cars the hell away!-on the west side of the office tower going up on Broadway and Forty-third-”

Silence.

“Shit-” the sergeant cried. “Oh, shit. God!”

“Sergeant?”

“Central, the construction platform’s breaking-the crane’s coming down!It’s coming down! ”

Gentry stood there feeling helpless. He heard the metal groan from ten blocks away. He heard the screams of the men and women in Times Square. He felt and then he heard the crash. The overhead lights danced. Books slipped from a shelf behind him, and pictures fell from the walls outside his office. People were shouting all over the station house.

The radio was silent.

There were eleven channels on Gentry’s radio. His brain was numb, his body shaking as he tuned in to Midtown North. The bats had reached the west side of Central Park South, though they hadn’t strayed past Columbus Circle. They were obviously sticking to the subway route.

Central was also receiving reports of events farther north, in the twentieth precinct. The dispatcher reported that so far three officers had been killed and seventy-eight wounded as the animals moved quickly along the subway line to the Eighty-first Street station. They stopped there.

At the American Museum of Natural History.

Immediately, Gentry was back. His mind kicked into drive as he stuck his radio in his jacket pocket and yelled for Detective Jason Anthony to come with him. They ran down the block to where the car was parked. Anthony turned on the siren and dashboard light and they sped off to the museum.

The door of Professor Lowery’s laboratory shuddered violently, and the room grew dark as more and more black shapes covered the frosted glass. The back wall of the lab was coming apart, and Nancy Joyce looked up while she screamed at God to give her a break. She continued to look up when she saw something. Then she took a quick look at the lab table and ran toward it.

“Yes,” she said.

“Nannie, come back!” Lowery yelled.

“In a minute!”

“What are you going to do?” Ramirez yelled.

She snatched the burner from the lab table. “I’m going to set the coat on fire!”

“The coat?” Ramirez said.

“Don’t!” Lowery said. “The smoke will-”

“Start the sprinklers on the ceiling,” she interrupted. “The spray will put the fire out before we choke. The cold and the wet should also ground the little vespers if they get in.”

“You totally rule,” Ramirez said.

Joyce fired up the etna and crouched by the door. The rattling on the frosted glass pane and the mousy squealing of the bats were maddening, but at least they drowned out the sound of the crumbling plaster. She touched the flame to the lab coat.

It didn’t burn.

“You fire-resistant son of a bitch!” she yelled.

Bats began to poke through and around the fabric. Muzzles, claws, wings. Joyce pulled over the swivel chair, stood under the sprinkler sensor, and held the flame to it.

“Comeon!”

The first three bats made it under the door. They flew at Ramirez and he jumped under the desk, startling Heidi; he nearly impaled himself on her scalpel before she was able to pull it back. Snuggling toward her, Ramirez reached up around the front of the desk, slipped off the mouse pad, and held it almost like a Ping-Pong paddle. He used it to swat at the bats as they attacked. Heidi was bravely trying to slash at the bats as they darted in.

In the back of the lab the hole was big enough for the bat to fit her head through. She was using both claws now to hack at the wall. Bats began to fly through there just as the laboratory’s two sprinklers came on. They sprayed the room with a cool, sturdy shower that caused the small bats to break off their attack and flutter around in confusion.

“Even better,” Joyce muttered.

The water droplets were interfering with the bats’ echolocation. Joyce stepped down from the chair and sidled up to Lowery. She kept the burner in case she needed it. The room was quiet for a moment. In that moment of calm Joyce wished the professor would say something about what she’d just done. Nothing effusive. A “well done” would do it.

A moment later a door-sized section of the rear wall fell with a horrible crack. It sent dust billowing up into the water; it fell as pasty rain that covered the giant bat as she eased into the opening.

She came in with her folded left wing first, followed by her tawny body and then her right wing. She turned to face the room and spread her wings wide. As she did, Joyce moved into the room to get a better look at her lower belly.

It was extremely distended. The bat was pregnant.

The giant’s head moved slowly toward the table, her nose wrinkling as she sniffed the air. After a moment she saw the male. Folding her wings, she crawled over to him. Joyce stepped toward the door to give her room. A chair and a stainless steel surgical table were knocked over as the bat approached. Lowery remained by the locker, trembling in the cold spray. Nearly a dozen small bats were hiding from the water and a few were flying above the spray. No more bats had entered the laboratory. In the distance a fire siren sounded.

The giant bat reached the table. She spread her wings and hopped up beside the other giant. She folded her wings again and dipped toward the face of the still, silent creature.

Joyce rubbed water from her eyes and watched the bat closely. There was no consensus among zoologists as to whether monogamous bats “felt” anything for their mates. They cared for their young but not for elderly bats; any sense of family, of community, seemed to revolve around the survival of the species. Professor Lowery had always been a student of the “survival-only” school. Joyce didn’t share his sense of human superiority or bat inferiority, whichever it was.

She wished there were some way other than this to settle the debate.

Bats continued to slap against the outside of the frosted glass. Once in a while a bat in the laboratory would fly at one of the occupants, only to be driven away by the water. Now there were screams coming from other rooms. Joyce didn’t want to think about what was happening there. The thick, thick swarms. The bloodletting. The death.

The head of the giant female was facing down. Her ears were turned toward the male. Joyce watched intently; she was strangely detached from the danger she was in.

How many days and nights had they been together?Joyce asked herself.