Vespers

Twenty-Eight

In all her years of bat hunting, Nancy Joyce had never had the opportunity to ride in a helicopter. Within five seconds of lifting off from the pier, she realized she’d have been happy to postpone the experience indefinitely.

The chopper ascended, which wasn’t the same as taking off. Not to her. As it arced steeply from the pier, the sense of motion up and away and then forward was pronounced. It was like being in a bumper car that had suddenly added a third dimension of mobility.

But that wasn’t all. The helicopter was incredibly loud. Even though Joyce was in the seat directly behind the pilot, she would have had to yell if she wanted to converse. Fortunately, as soon as they were airborne, the copilot handed back a headset. It fit entirely over her ears. That not only deadened the clapping-loud drone of the rotors, it enabled Joyce to communicate with the fliers and Mr. Pace without shouting.

The chopper was also fast. Joyce was accustomed to cabs picking and weaving their way through New York traffic. The helicopter was above the bats and just about ten blocks away before she even had a chance to adjust the mouthpiece of the headset and sit back.

All of that went through her mind in moments. She forced herself to concentrate on the horizon. On the bats.

The pilot said, “Dr. Joyce, all I was told is that you want to observe the bats. You’re going to have to tell us from what height and where.”

“I want to be able to watch the river facing north,” she said. “How high are we now?”

“Seventeen hundred feet.”

“How high would you say the bats are?”

“Maybe six hundred feet. Six fifty tops.”

“Does your propeller cause any kind of downdraft?”

“It does,” he said. “If we get on top of the bats and go much lower than above twelve hundred feet, we’re gonna stir them up like a blender.”

“Then make it twelve hundred feet,” she said. “But the bats might ascend. If they do, we should be ready to get out of their way.”

“Understood.”

“Dr. Joyce?” said a voice with a gentle British accent. “This is Marius Pace.”

“Hi,” she said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”

“You didn’t,”he assured her. “You were busy. Gordon advises me that what you’re watching for is a very large bat.”

“That’s correct.”

“How large is large?”

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“Eagle? Condor?” he asked.

“More like a Cessna,” she replied.

“You mean as in the private airplane?”

“Yes.”

Pace said,“ That’s large, all right. And if and when you see this bat, is it your intention to pursue?”

“Only to watch where it’s going,” she replied. “If possible, I want to get close enough to see what it looks like, take some pictures.”

“I understand,” Pace said. “All right, then. From now on I’ll just be listening in. If you need anything, ask.”

She looked out as the helicopter reached the shifting carpet of bats. They were bottom-lit, twenty or thirty thousand of them swimming back and forth on a bright and luminous sea. It was majestic, mesmerizing, and inexplicable. Worse, she didn’t know exactly where it was all going. If and when one of the big bats arrived, would these smaller bats go or stay? And if they stayed, would they stay peaceably?

Joyce hadn’t really thought about the personal danger until now. If these bats became territorial like the others, things could get very bad. She also realized, suddenly and belatedly, that when she took off Gentry had really been worried about her. Joyce hadn’t had anyone except her assistant feel that way for a long time. It felt nice.

Joyce wondered what Professor Lowery was making of all this. He would have a perfect view of the river from his apartment window. She also wondered what the bats were making of them. What they might be thinking, feeling. They’d be picking up the movement of every bat, every bird, every insect, the choppers, the people. The input had to be overwhelming.

“Can you hover?” Joyce asked the pilot.

He said he could.

The helicopter stopped moving forward.

As Joyce looked down on the thick mesh of bats, anticipation grew. Behind the helicopter, the dark cloud had spread southward almost down to Forty-second Street. To the west, the bats had reached nearly to the New Jersey shore. State police helicopters were already hovering over the New Jersey Palisades. Bats were still joining the group from all directions.

And then she saw something. Something large just beyond the bats.

She raised the binoculars, and the pilot nudged the nose of the chopper to the northwest to give her a better view. The George Washington Bridge was hidden save for an occasional glint of light.

“Go down!” she said suddenly.

“Where?” the pilot asked.

“Underneath the bats.”

“You mean through them-”

“No. Go around-anywhere. I need to get under the bats. Something’s out there, flying low. It’s going to come in under the bats.”

The chopper swung to the east, toward Manhattan. It moved so fast that if Joyce hadn’t been wearing her seat belt she’d have been thrown against the door. The pilot dropped them lower as Joyce sat back up and watched through the binoculars.

“Where to now?” the pilot asked as they fell below the bat line.

“Stay about one hundred feet up. Go north slowly.”

The pilot did. They passed through the Eighties. The Nineties. Joyce looked ahead. Something was there. It had ducked under the canopy of bats and was moving slowly. She unbuckled her seat belt for a better look.

“There it is!” she said excitedly. “Mr. Pace? Tell Mr. Weeks we found it! We found it and it’shuge.”

The bat was still beyond the range of the searchlights, but she knew it was there because she could make out its outline as it moved forward, blocking the shore light and headlights behind it.

And of course it was flying low. New Paltz was far, and there were no thermal currents from the sun to heat the air and help lift the bat. There was no reason for it to tire itself out by flying high.

As the bat neared, as it began to pick up the light, Joyce could see that itwas enormous. There was nothing to compare it to but the other bats, and it dwarfed them. The wingspan looked to be about ten-to-twelve feet across-at this distance, in the dark, it was still difficult to tell. The body was thick, like a long barrel, with lumpy masses on the back. Joyce assumed they were muscle. The head was wide and pie-round. She couldn’t quite make out the ears, though they were nearly as high as the head was long, and they were extremely close together.There was a large bulge near the back of the bat, on the bottom. Joyce assumed they were the legs.

“Man oh man,” the copilot said. “Are all these other bats here for-” He was interrupted when the helicopter shook.

The pilot and copilot both looked at their instruments.

“What was that?” the copilot said.

It happened again-a hard, spine-ringing thump from below.

“It feels like we’re being hit from the bottom!” the pilot said.

There was a third strike, rougher than the others, this time from the pilot’s side. Then something seemed to tug the helicopter toward the left. Joyce turned away from the distant giant and its entourage. She moved back to the pilot’s side and looked out the window just as a monstrous face appeared beneath the portside landing skid. Joyce watched while it rose slowly, followed by two white hooks as thick and large as elephant ivory. The hooks were at least six feet apart.

“Get us out of here!” she screamed.

The copilot looked back. “Oh shit-”

A pair of large ruby eyes rolled toward Joyce just as a blast of vapor from the awesome mouth clouded the window. A moment later one of the hooks crashed against the pane. It didn’t break through, but the tip raked downward, cutting a deep rut.

The pilot swung the chopper around and swept toward the southeast. Ahead, brightly lighted, the retired battleshipIntrepid appeared through the window.

“What’s wrong?” Pace demanded.

“It’s one of them!” Joyce cried as the hook came again. It wasn’t a hook, she knew, it was the bat’s thumb. This time the tip of the finger came through the shatter-resistant window.

“One ofwho?” Pace said.

“One of the giant bats!” she screamed. “It’s on the helicopter!”

“What do we need to do?” Pace asked, his voice calm.

The pilot rocked the helicopter from side to side as he flew down and toward the shore.

“Are you doing that or is he?” Joyce cried.

“I am,” the pilot replied. “Trying to shake him-”

“Forget that!” she yelled. “Can you put us in the water?”

“I can’t land on it-” the pilot said.

“I mean drag the runner through it! Bats hate submersion. It weighs them down.”

“I can try,” the pilot said tensely as he guided the chopper back to starboard and dropped toward the river.

The vapor had cleared from the window, and Joyce looked out again. The rotor was blasting the bat’s fur, but the creature held on. The eyes were angry now, the crescent nostrils wide and trembling. Vibrating.

“He’s calling the others,” she muttered. “We’ve got to get him off-he’s calling the other bats!”

The chopper was flying parallel to the water. They were seven feet up. Then five…four…

Joyce looked up. Bats were peeling off the edge of the colony. That was how he did it. The big bat called them, and they came. It was unbelievable.

She was rocked back hard as the skid shot across the water. Spray flew up on all sides, and the pilot immediately pulled up. The bat was still there, its head back, the mouth pulled taut, the eyes big and aflame.

The pilot dipped down again, this time dragging lower and for several seconds. He rose. The bat was dark and drenched, its hook still thrust through the window.

“Hold on!” the pilot said.

Joyce looked ahead. They were coming toward Yacht Harbor down by the World Financial Center.

Pace said, “N412, what’s happening?”

“Just a second,” the copilot said.

The chopper raced toward the nearest boat. The skid was level with the tower platform on the top of the flybridge.

“We’re playing chicken,” the copilot said into the mouthpiece. “Shit, man. Shit-”

The yacht was less than thirty feet away. The bat turned toward the boat. Suddenly, the creature snapped its thumb toward it. The pane flew out and the wind roared in, howling in Joyce’s face. The bat turned toward her, glaring. Then it opened the claws of its feet, releasing its hold on the skids. It fell away, like a parachutist, its wings spreading and filling like a shroud.

The pilot swerved hard to starboard to avoid the tower. He missed it by less than two feet. Quickly righting the chopper, he steadied it and swung around the tip of Manhattan. He started to climb.

Joyce looked out the window. She withdrew her head quickly and cried,“He’s coming back!”

The bat was about twenty feet behind the tail rotor on the portside. It was extremely muscular along its back and flapping vigorously. Definitely a male. Behind it was a stream of hundreds of small bats.

Joyce knew that it had to be difficult for the bat to keep up with them. Not only was the water weighing it down, but it was cooling fast and lowering the bat’s body temperature. Bats did not fly well wet-or cold.

Pace said, “N412, come in.”

“We managed to dislodge the bat,” the copilot said, “but he’s in pursuit. I clock him at about seventy-five miles an hour.”

“He can’t keep that up for long,” Joyce said.

“Neither can we with that hole in our side,” the copilot replied. “Got a lot of drag.”

They passed the ferry buildings and sped up the east side of Manhattan.

The pilot said, “I’m going to land at the downtown heliport. I’ll need support. The big bat and a shitload more are gonna be all over us.”

“We’ll never get out of the helicopter alive,” Joyce said. “The bat will do anything to protect its sister.”

“Its sister?” Pace said.

“Yes. The smaller bat coming from the north is a female. The male attacked because we were airborne, in her path. It sees us as a threat.”

“Good for him,” the pilot said. “What do we do?”

Joyce leaned between the pilot and copilot. She pointed ahead, toward the stone towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. “Head there,” she said. “Take us between the cables and the span.”

“Between them? ”he said. “Doctor, there’s a steel wire web truss in that area-”

“I know. But the bat doesn’t. And it may not see them. It’s dark, the bat has got to be tiring, and our rotors may mess up its echolocation. I’ve also got something it isn’t expecting.”

“Say no more,” the pilot said.

He pushed the chopper ahead, maximum speed. The bridge was exactly a mile from their position. They’d reach it in less than a minute.

Joyce looked back. The big bat was well to the side of the chopper now and several feet closer. It was obviously trying to stay away from the tail rotor and get back alongside the helicopter. Now that she had her first good look at it, Joyce couldn’t decide whether the bat was beautiful or hideous. The noseleaf construction was like an hourglass, with the crescent nostrils upright along the bottom half and a ridge of bone forming the top half. The bone formed a protective ridge around the eyes. The ears were large, a rose-petal shape. They began, in front, just above the eye ridge. They twisted gracefully to the sides, just above the head, so that the upper third of each ear was turned nearly completely around. Unlike most bats, whose ears faced front, this creature could probably hear equally well in every direction. The mouth was a wide, deep slit very close to the chin, and the eyes were almost luminescent. Beautiful or hideous, the bat was astonishing.

Joyce picked up her camera. She faced backward and leaned toward the shattered window. The bat was gaining quickly. The strength and endurance of the thing were simply incredible.

She turned and looked toward the bridge. They sped past the Fulton Fish Market and the South Street Seaport. The bridge, nearly sixteen hundred feet long, loomed just ahead.

“I’m going to swing to the right and up,” the pilot told Joyce. “In six…five…four…”

Joyce turned back. She leaned partway out the window. The creature was closing on them.

“…three…”

She raised the camera.The face of the bat filled the lens.

“…two…”

She took a flash picture.

“…one!”

The helicopter swerved to the starboard side and climbed. Joyce was tossed roughly toward the right side of the helicopter. She dropped the camera but put her foot against the starboard door to brace herself and looked back as the giant bat slammed into the meshwork of steel strands. It hit at full speed, its head twisting to the side and almost completely back as the rest of its body struck. The wires sliced through the forearms, which connected the wings to the body, and continued cutting into the wing membrane. The body hovered straight out behind it for a moment, the legs kicking outward. Then the legs stopped moving and the body sagged and the bat hung crucified on the suspension wires just outside the Manhattan-side tower.

Below it, cars braked and horns screamed, and then nothing on the bridge moved. The copilot slapped his companion on the shoulder then updated Marius Pace. As the helicopter turned a gentle arc toward the East River helipad, Joyce slid into the seat behind the copilot. There was sweat on her back, and it was turning very cold. She looked out the window.

The thick stream of small bats had rushed past them. The animals fluttered close to the bridge but either peeled off or passed between the wires. After a few seconds they turned toward Manhattan, no longer as a group but hundreds of individuals. They vanished quickly in the darkness.

Joyce had no idea whether the bats were returning to the Hudson River group or leaving. There was no precedent for this kind of control by an individual bat over a supercolony.

As the helicopter touched down, Joyce knew only one thing. That wherever the female had gone, she would soon be aware of her brother’s death.

Joyce had just seen what a guardian bat was capable of. She couldn’t even begin to contemplate what a vengeful bat might do…