Bats by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone [Johnstone, William W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

Book Two

It made our hair stand up in panic fear.

—Sophocles

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—

Prophet still, if bird or devil!”

—Poe

One

Mark stopped by Johnny’s late that afternoon, just about an hour before sunset, and had a cup of coffee... and two sandwiches.

Johnny had dropped off the body of the woman and returned home. He had spent the entire afternoon reworking all the windows. He left the original wire up, attached insulators to more wire he had precut to fit, and nailed them in place. Then he took PVC and ran his insulated wire through that, to the outside wire on each window. Finally he hooked it up and tested it. It was hot all the way around.

Blair had worked right beside him while Holly and Rich kept an eye out for bats.

“It’s personal to you now, isn’t it?” Blair asked.

“I’m in a war, and I’m going to win it.”

“You and the bats, huh?”

“Me and the bats.”

Mark had looked at the handiwork and grinned. “You taking this personal now?”

“Damn right.”

“I wish I could stay and see you fry some of those bats but I have to roam until midnight.”

“Alone?” Johnny looked at him.

“’Fraid so. And no, you can’t come along. I’d love the company, but I’d have a guilty conscience about leaving Blair here with the kids.”

She laughed. “I’ll be perfectly all right if Johnny wants to tag along.”

He shook his head. “No. I want to see those damn bats hit that wire. Mark? How angry is Phil with me?”

“Oh, he’s not upset at you. It’s more himself. Phil is taking shooting that woman pretty hard.”

“He shouldn’t,” Blair said. “He saved her from a terrible, horrible death. I ...”

Several hundred monster bats hit the house simultaneously and the sound startled them all. Mark spilled his iced tea all down the front of his shirt, Blair jumped about a foot in the air, Holly and Rich ran out from the bedroom, hollering, June and Skipper headed under a table, and Johnny dropped a just lighted cigarette into his lap.

When they had settled down—as much as they could over the shrieking, yowling, snarling sounds of the bats—Mark asked, “Aren’t you running the risk of shorting out your equipment with that many bats hanging on?”

“No,” Johnny said on his hands and knees, looking for the lost cigarette. He finally found it and snubbed it out. “I hooked all that up to my big generator out back. You folks watch this.”

He walked to the rear of the house, electrically started his big butane run power plant, and hit a switch. The sound of frying bats was horrible and the smell was even worse. But two seconds after Johnny turned on the juice, the windows were clear and the ground around the house was littered with dead bats.

“All right!” Mark said.

“Not so fast. We have troubles,” Johnny said, standing by a window and looking out.

“What?” Blair asked.

“We’re surrounded by bats. Look.”

They were hanging from the trees all around the house, glaring balefully and unblinking at the house.

“Jesus!” Mark said.

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