Jeff Rovin: Vespers

“That’s better,” she said. She picked up the pace slightly and looked skyward. “It’s odd, though. Only a few are attacking. The rest are still going about their business.”

“Someone forgot to tell them the war’s over,” Marc joked.

Joyce was about twenty-five yards from the forest now. It loomed large and dark, like the woods in Cornwall. But there was something unnaturally still about this place. Uninviting. When Joyce reached the edge of the woods, the bats suddenly flew off. The silence was complete. The scientist stopped and swept the flashlight beam slowly across the trees. Nothing seemed to be moving. She stooped, picked up a large rock, and heaved it ahead. Except for thethunk of the rock there was no sound.

“What’s happening?” Marc asked.

“Apart from my escorts leaving, nothing,” Joyce said.

“The bats just took off?”

“All at once, like they had somewhere else to go.”

“More pack behavior. Nancy, I don’t like this. Are you sure you want to go in there?”

“Answers don’t just walk up to scientists, Marc.”

“I heard a scientist say something like that in a movie once. Right before he was eaten by the ‘Beast from 2,000 Fathoms.’ At least talk to me.”

Joyce said she would. She moved cautiously into the woods, shining the flashlight left and right as she proceeded.

“It’s strange. I’m about ten feet in and it’s dead quiet. I also haven’t seen any flying insects.” She stopped at a rotted log and poked it with her toe. There were beetles in the soft wood; after a moment they rushed into the cracks and under moss-covered bark. Grubs glistened under her light. “There are some shelter bugs, but that’s it.”

“Maybe the bats got the others.”

“An entire airborne population? Very unlikely.” Joyce continued walking. “Besides, I don’t see or hear anything else here. Nothing in the grass, in the leaves, anywhere.”

At about twenty-five feet in, the ground sloped downward slightly. The soft earth was knit with large, looping roots and creeping vines. Bare patches of dirt were interspersed with tall grass and occasional thorn bushes. The incline ended in a small marsh that was about fifty yards across. Joyce crouched at the edge and shined her light across the murky water. The grasses, cattails, and motherwort were bowed, and the water was still. There were no minnows, no frogs, no waterbugs. No animal life of any kind.

She stood slowly. “This isn’t natural, Marc.There aren’t even any sounds coming from-”

There was a loud crack, and then something crashed into the water in front of her. Joyce stumbled back, swearing.

“What’s wrong?” Marc demanded.

“Something fell.” Joyce turned the light on the marsh as she got back on her feet. “A large branch.” She watched as the four-foot limb settled into the mud beneath the shallow water. Then she pointed the light up. “And I see where it came from. Very interesting. We’ve got what look like otherwise healthy limbs of all sizes. They’re broken and hanging from a row of red oaks along the right rim of the marsh.” She started walking along the water’s edge, looking up at the shattered limbs. “Strange.”

“What?”

“The trees are severely damaged from top to bottom but only on the marsh side.”

“That could mean there was a weather event. A small tornado could’ve touched down and scared the bats. They get those little twisters here.”

Joyce stood directly under one of the trees. “True. But some of these branches are pushed down and others are leaningup against the trees. They’re broken in the middle and folded back.”

“A funnel could have snapped them going in, then sucked them up again going out.”

“Possibly,” she said. “Do me a favor. Ask one of the TV reporters to call their meteorological people. Find out if there were reports of any ministorms in the region.”

“You got it,” Marc said.

Joyce continued to circle the marsh. A small twisterwould explain many things. The condition of the trees. The absence of anything living aboveground. The agitated bats.

She stopped as something shimmered on an old tree to the right. She turned her light toward the trunk. It took a long moment before she realized what she was looking at. The bark was covered with blood. It was running down in a thick coat, like paint. She stepped closer and angled her head so she could see up through the leaves.

She froze. A twister wouldn’t explain the deer carcass flopped across a massive branch roughly fifteen feet up. The buck was lying on its side, its head and hindquarters hanging down, its eyes staring lifelessly. From where Joyce stood it looked as though the midsection of the animal had been torn open and gutted.

“Marc?”

“Wait a sec. I’ve got Kathy Leung checking-”

“Forget that.”

“What?”

“Forget the weather report,” Joyce said. “I’m coming out. Tell Trooper Anderson we’re going to need the chopper again. And tell Commissioner LoDolce something for me.”

“What?”

“Tell him I don’t think his problem is little brown bats.”

The Hudson River is one of the most heavily traveled waterways in the world.

The river begins in upstate New York at Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondack Mountains and flows 315 miles in a mostly southward direction. It divides New York State from New Jersey for seventeen miles before spilling into the Atlantic Ocean.

Grant’s Tomb, the final resting place of President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia, is among the most famous landmarks along the river. This is primarily due to the old joke about “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” and not because the mausoleum is a popular tourist stop. Located in an isolated area off residential Riverside Drive and West 122nd Street, inconvenient to pedestrians because of heavy vehicular traffic to the east, the monument has become a hangout for drug dealers and graffiti artists.

At 150 feet tall, the top of the domed rotunda is one of the highest points on the upper New York City side of the river. Whether travelers are coming south by water or by air, it is considered the beacon that welcomes them to Manhattan.

The bats glided gracefully to the top of the tomb.

Their powerful feet found clawholds in the wind-pitted stone, on the marble knob at the top, at the decorative ridges. Their wings settled gracefully on the sloping sides of the dome, and their bodies slumped forward. Many hung upside down from the eaves. They preferred letting gravity work for them to help them take flight or keep their ears erect.

A strong, persistent river wind washed over and around the monument. A tiny claw at the apex of each wing helped the bats hold on wherever they were. The wind carried with it the strong scents of the city and of the streets directly below.

They listened. First, they listened for the high, drumming cries of their kind. Some of the voices were faint, bouncing here and there before reaching them. The bats focused on the location of the nearest members of the colony. They were coming from a cave in the direction of the lightening sky. They marked the mouth of the cave not just by sight and sound but also where it was relative to the direction of the wind and the first glow of the new day.

The bats would go there-but not yet.

They also listened for the sounds of insects flying toward them. Nourishment for themselves. They listened for the sound of the bat that had summoned them. The bat that had not yet arrived.

A short time later a sound reached them from the north. It grew louder, until finally a large shadow passed over them. A shadow accompanied by a high, whistling cry. A sound that stirred them to activity by its strength and the ringing pain it caused inside the head.