Jeff Rovin - Vespers

This time they weren’t buying.

Gentry had his left arm over Nancy. He pulled her close and used his body and coat to shield her as best as he could. She had her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, her damp head bent against his chest. He could feel her heart drumming. His own was getting up there too: they’d gone only a few yards down the corridor when Gentry realized they weren’t going to get much farther.The bats were really starting to pile on. He couldn’t see or hear, wasn’t even sure in which direction they were headed. And he felt like he was being hit from ankle to scalp with snapping rubber bands. Each bite made some part of him jump.

Finally, Gentry stopped, took off his coat, and started to wrap it around Nancy ’s head.

“You go!” he yelled. “Make a run for it!”

Joyce refused and pushed blindly at his coat to make him take it back; she stopped suddenly and desperately patted the coat. The top, on the left.

“What’s in here?” she asked.

“My radio-”

Joyce tore frantically at the coat to get it out. She fell to her knees, pulling at the coat with one hand while swatting at the bats with the other. Gentry dropped and helped her get it out.

He handed it to her then pulled the coat over them both.

“Turn it on!” she yelled.

“It’s on.”

“Louder!I want static, as much as you can get!”

Gentry took the slender radio. He held it close to his face, curling his arm around them both for protection, and turned it to talk. Then he pushed up the volume in order to generate feedback. After a moment he got a thunderous, seashore-breaker drone.

He gave the radio back to Nancy. “Now what?”

“We jam them!” she shouted as she took the radio and held it outside the garment.

The bats broke off their attack at once. They fluttered around aimlessly. When Nancy was sure the retreat would hold, she removed the coat.

“Okay,”she said. “Let’s get up and walk out of here.”

Gentry rose and helped her up. They started toward the stairs.It was astonishing.The bats would approach and then fly off, as though they were bouncing into a force field.

“It’s like you said about the tiger moth, isn’t it?” Gentry said. “High-frequency sounds interrupting the normal flow of information.”

“Not exactly,” Joyce said. “This isn’t blocking whatever the she-bat’s sending.It’s hiding it-confusing them.”

They hobbled ahead, bleeding from numerous puncture wounds. Gentry’s mind leaped from being proud of Nancy yet again, to thinking about the rabies shots they’d certainly have to undergo after being attacked, to focusing on the larger problem: how to stop the giant bat. If they didn’t do that soon, New York City would be destroyed in a matter of days.

The bats in the rotunda had gone back on the offensive, flying, clinging, and ripping at everyone who moved. The radio afforded Gentry and Joyce protection as they made their way to the exit; she left it behind with a museum official who was trying to get workers into a windowless office. She and Gentry ducked back under his coat.

Detective Anthony was still waiting across from the museum, his windows shut as bats poured from Central Park. Dogs were howling everywhere, and many were running free in the streets, no doubt driven wild by the ultrasonic cry of the she-bat. There were screams coming from people lying on the sidewalks, from windows of the apartments that lined Central Park West, from cars and buses. They had stopped or plowed into one another, into trees or hydrants, or had rolled up onto sidewalks. Bats had come in through open windows. Passengers were struggling to get them off.

There were loud cries to the right. As Joyce and Gentry crossed the street, the detective pulled the coat off his head and looked back. The skies high and low were full of bats. They were like layers of clouds, moving at different speeds, in different directions. Just north of Seventy-sixth Street, where the loud screams had come from, a cloud of bats had descended on a rooftop bat party. “Guano shelter” tents were ripped, and ghostly shapes flitted through the night as bats became tangled in the torn fabric.

Gentry opened the car door and helped Nancy in. A bat flew at him, and he whipped his coat around, smacking it to the ground. He stepped on the coat, then pulled it under his arm. The bat was crushed on the asphalt. Gentry took another look back.

The air was full of bats. It was like watching thousands of dark Ping-Pong balls blowing in a huge lotto tank. The creatures were moving everywhere and every way. The detective watched as some rooftop partygoers stumbled against the low brick wall. There was a horrified shriek as one man went over. He managed to grab a cement planter that ran along the edge of the roof; he dangled there while other guests attempted to pull him up. But the growing swarm of bats drove the rescuers back, and the man fell eleven stories to the sidewalk. He didn’t scream, but he hit the concrete with an audible crack.

Gentry slid into the back, behind the passenger’s seat. He slammed the door, catching an incoming bat as he did. The detective opened the door, let the bat drop out, and reshut it firmly.

“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.