Jeff Rovin - Vespers

Joyce ran to the left and Gilheany dove to the right. The sergeant landed hard on her shoulder. She rolled to the edge of the landing, losing the shotgun. The bat cannonballed past, toward the spiral staircase. A moment later the severity of the wound finally seemed to hit the creature as she staggered forward and struck the side of the spiral staircase with her shoulder.

Gilheany scrambled toward the shotgun. Joyce had had the same idea, but the sergeant got in her way. Joyce kept running toward the arm, hugging the radio and flashlight to her chest to keep from losing them.

The bat turned quickly and looked back. Blood trickled down her front and back. Her expression fierce, she leaned forward and snapped her wings ahead of her. The thick muscles of her shoulders bunched and rolled as she pulled her wings back and sailed across the landing.

Sergeant Gilheany reached the gun and dropped onto her back. She swung it around as the bat bore down, but the creature landed on Gilheany before she could fire. The impact caused the gun to spin free and drop from the landing. Joyce heard it clatter down through the struts. The claws of the bat’s feet dug deeply into the officer’s hips, and the sergeant cried out. She screamed again as the bat drove her hooks into Gilheany’s chest.

Joyce fell against the steps that led up the statue’s arm. She heard the sergeant’s cries but didn’t look back; she knew what was happening. Physically and emotionally exhausted, she sobbed as she scrambled up the rickety, steep steps toward the next small landing. The staircase was slippery with blood and guano from when the bat had roosted here, and Joyce stumbled as she ascended. She dropped the flashlight but kept going until she reached the landing. Her eyes were blurry with tears and sweat, and there was nothing to see here anyway except the narrowing confines of the arm and the dead end of the torch.

“ Nancy!”

She was startled to find herself still holding the radio. She brought it to her lips. “Robert!”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in the arm. The sergeant’s dead. The bat’s wounded and it’s chasing me-”

Just then the creature slammed against the stairs at the base of the arm. The entire structure rattled; the support struts creaked around her. Joyce looked down. The flashlight beam spilled across the floor, silhouetting the bat in its glow. Joyce was just ten feet above the animal.

She turned to the ladder and started climbing. The ladder twisted as she reached the elbow. It was awkward to negotiate as the copper literally rubbed against her hips and shoulders. Still holding the radio, she tucked it in her belt, followed the trapezoidal turn, then retrieved the radio.

“Robert, I blew it and I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry-”

“ Nancy, this is Kathy Leung! Robert and T-Bone are coming up. Do you hear me?”

Joyce was about to acknowledge this when the bat pulled her wings to her body and forced herself into the opening. The arm shook more violently than before, and the scientist lost the radio as she was forced to hold on with both hands…

Gentry and T-Bone had left the communications center with no plan other than to reach the statue’s arm and attempt to get Nancy out. T-Bone was holding a crowbar he’d found in a broom closet; that was their only weapon.

Gentry was carrying a flashlight he’d taken from a tool rack and wearing a bandage he’d found in a first aid kit. The pain of his wounded Achilles tendon was a hobbling constant, but it was tolerable.

He was also carrying a lot of anger.

“I never should have let her go up there,” he’d said as he handed the radio to Kathy. “Never.”

“You didn’t ‘let’ her do anything,” Kathy had pointed out. “Bats are her livelihood.”

Bats, yes-not monsters.

As they reentered the fort he couldn’t have been more disgusted with himself. There was an unpleasant groaning high above them, like a tree listing in the wind. Gentry also thought he heard scratching outside the statue.

“Uh-oh,” T-Bone said. “The little peckers are back.”

“I hear.”

The men started up through the pedestal, Gentry in front. He was struggling to keep the weight off his foot.

“You gonna be okay?” T-Bone asked.

“Yeah,” Gentry said. He was using the pain to stay alert. He was aware of every damn step.

As they entered the statue, Gentry felt the way he used to when he chased scum through the tunnels under Grand Central. His senses were high-intensity, as they were as he listened for quarry, watched for trains, stayed wide of the third rail.

Gentry stopped suddenly. T-Bone ran into him.

“Hey,” the camera operator complained, panting.

Gentry turned the flashlight back toward the pedestal. “The third rail,” he muttered.

“What?”

“The third rail,” he repeated, as he moved the light down the stairs. “You step on it and you’re fried.”

“Man, what thehell are you talkin’ about?”

“T-Bone,” Gentry said urgently, “didn’t Gilheany say there was a transformer down here?”

“She did, but we ain’t got time to fix the lights-”

“Not the lights,” Gentry said. “She said they passed them at the bottom of the statue. And that the transformer was intact.”

“Yeah, she said that,” T-Bone said impatiently.“And?”

Gentry hurried down the steps. He kept his left palm pressed against the left side of the stairwell to keep as much weight as possible off his leg. He felt like he was on a caffeine high, his heart racing and nerves crawling. He could see and hear the faint crackling of the broken wire above. He kept the light directed at the core of the statue.

“De-tec-tive,” T-Bone said.

“There!” Gentry said. He shined the light on a series of large metal boxes that lined the stone walls.

“Okay,” T-Bone said. “The juice. And the fuse boxes. So?”

“Situated less then fifteen feet from a shaft that goes all the way up the statue,” Gentry said. “A shaft made of steel.”

T-Bone said, “Fuck, man. Yeah.Yeah! ”

The big man elbowed around Gentry. He looked at the locked boxes then put the crowbar to the faceplate of one of them.

“You worked with transformers when you were a lineman, didn’t you?” Gentry asked.

“Every friggin’ day,” he said as he drew back the crowbar.

“How much power would it take to kill that bat?”

“Five amperes of current at two thousand volts should do it.”

The panel snapped open. Gentry took the crowbar and handed him the flashlight.

“They sure have solid-stated a lot of this shit,” T-Bone said.

“Can you work with it?”

“I’m lookin’.”

The scratching outside became louder. The bat was echolocating again. He hoped that meant Nancy was still on the run.

“This is a major transformer,” he said. “I bet they’re runnin’ Ellis Island from here too.”

“Can youdo it?” Gentry pressed.

“I don’t know-!” He looked at the bundles of wires tucked above and behind the transformer. Pulling a pocket knife from his vest, he carefully stripped away some of the casing.

Gentry was growing impatient. But he stood there quietly and waited.

T-Bone shined the flashlight on the wires and bent close. “High temperature wire. Looks like adequate ampacity… galvanized steel armor.” He backed away and slipped a screwdriver and pliers from his tool vest. “I can run some of this to the steel core, close the circuit, and turn the juice back on-yeah. I think it’s doable. But I seem to recall it’s all metal up there. Anyplace you stand you’re gonna get zapped.”

Gentry started limping up the staircase. “You rig it and wait for me to come back with Nancy.”