Vespers (35 page)

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.”

“Man, you sure? The two of us stand a better chance up there-”

“I’m sure,” he said. “Just be ready to turn the transformer on when I give you the word.”

“It’ll take me about five minutes,” T-Bone called after him. “Just don’t bring that motherfucking bat with you!”

“I’ll try not to,” he called back.

It was dark inside the statue but not black; the earliest rays of dawn were beginning to filter down from the statue’s eyes and from the windows in the crown.He heard the sound of grinding metal and he saw several vespers flitting above. He also saw the body of Sergeant Gilheany crumpled on one of the rest platforms off the staircase.

There was a slight breeze coming from above. The statue had obviously been breached somewhere, which was how the bats were getting in. But there was no way he was going to let the vespers stop him. As his heart and legs pumped ferociously, as he prepared to take the pain of the vesper attack to do whatever it took to draw the big bat away, Gentry had just one concern.

That he wasn’t too late to help Nancy.

When there was nowhere left for her to go and nothing else she could do, Nancy Joyce had become surprisingly calm. It wasn’t peace but a combination of things that gave the semblance of that state: being drained, frightened, numb, and resigned.

She had climbed to the top of the arm and was standing on a small platform beside the highest rung of the ladder. There were two handrails, and there was room for only one person. Above her was the solid base of the torch. Behind her was a steel door. The door obviously led to the small balcony that surrounded the torch, but it was double-locked. And even if she went out there, what would she do? Jump?

Perhaps. She’d rather leap than die under the hooks and teeth of the bat. And if she jumped she would live an extra-how long would it take to fall? A second or two?

Why not? Right now that seemed like a lot. She might also black out as she fell and die painlessly. That was a comforting thought, given the alternative.

So was this, a non sequitur which came to her in a flow of thoughts. She hadn’t had time to contemplate death up at the museum. She’d been too busy surviving. Now that she did she was surprised to find herself not bitter but grateful. She was happy to have had the time she had, the life she did, the experiences.

The entire arm shuddered, and she squeezed the handrails. For some reason the thought of death wasn’t as scary as the thought of being vulnerable like this. She wished this part would pass.

It was dark below, the entrance to the forearm stuffed with the giant bat. The creature was no longer trying to get up here. Rather, it would enter, hack, back down to the second landing, then twist around and enter again. Each time it did, it tore at the support structure, trying to rip the steel beams, steps, and ladder out of its way. Every now and then the hint of sunlight entering through the crown gave her a glimpse of the giant’s face. Motherhood had not softened the creature’s disposition. If there could be such a thing as hate in an animal’s expression, it was there. Joyce could also hear the giant even after it stopped wailing aloud and began panting in long, chilling, hisses. She knew that each suspiration was comprised of hundreds of high blats, the barely audible aspect of her echolocation.

Steel support struts buckled. Rivets strained and the copper plates that comprised the skin of the statue popped on one or two sides. After a short time the smaller vespers began returning to the statue; Joyce could see them outside through the broken seams in the arm.

That was it,she thought. Gentry was on his way from the communications center, and the giant bat must have heard him coming. That was why it was echolocating. The scientist in Joyce found it an amazing synergy. So simple, yet so effective that nothing-no living thing other than a bat-could get near the creature. Not even an insect.

She prayed that Gentry would have the good sense to turn around. If the bats came back in force he’d never make it.

The young woman felt the arm sag and rotate slightly. The platform she was on angled backward so that she was leaning more than slightly against the door. She heard it squeak.

Then she heard something else.

Her name.

And all the calm, all the pensive resignation, was gone in a finger-snap instant as she gripped the handrails and screamed,“Robert-go back!”

About midway up the twelve-story statue,vespers had begun swirling around Gentry, scratching and biting. The detective ducked his head into his arms and continued running up. He didn’t have to see where he was going in order to get there. All he needed to do was keep his right side pressed to the railing and follow it up. The pain in his ankle had become a constant ache, which was preferable to the sharp jabs he’d been suffering before.

Every once in a while he shouted Nancy ’s name, hoping that she might hear him and respond. Hoping that she might find a way to buy herself another second or two until he could get to her.

It wasn’t until he was near the statue’s shoulders that he heard a response. He also heard something else: the continuous grind of metal against metal. He felt gusts of fresh air. Still holding the crowbar, he crouched when he was just below the landing. With his arm slung across his face to protect it from the vespers, he raised his eyes above the crook of his elbow. He peered through the crisscrossing support beams.

He saw the bat on the staircase of the upraised arm. She was tucked up in the folds of the bunched sleeve. All around her, copper plates had been torn away while others were swinging on single rivets. Though none of the support beams were broken, several were bent, and the arm was tilting slightly toward the front of the monument. He could tell because the stairs had torn away from the landing and were leaning seaward.

The belligerent vespers forced him to move before he’d had more than a moment to reconnoiter. He clambered up to the landing, leaning as much as possible on his right leg. God help him if the bats hobbled that one too. His immediate goal was to try and get the big bat away from the statue’s arm so Joyce could get out.

As the detective began to move forward, the creature dropped from the stairs, landed heavily, then turned slowly. The animal was bowed very low, its chin nearly on the platform. It was bleeding from its neck. Swatting vespers away from his face, Gentry watched as the wounded giant crept slowly across the broken body of Officer Berk. The bat inadvertently dragged the corpse several feet as it crawled toward him. Berk’s shredded belt came off. Blood-soaked shreds of his uniform stuck to the landing.

Gentry backed away as more and more vespers picked at his arms, his shoulders, his legs. He held the crowbar in one hand and clawed desperately at vespers with the other. Between close-up glimpses of tiny white teeth and velvety wings he thought he saw movement behind the giant-

The giant bat heard it and turned, still low to the ground. As she did, her head snapped to the side as Joyce smashed it with Officer Berk’s nightstick.

The creature reared up, shrieking, its huge body centered on the tripod of its powerful legs and thick tail. Its head and shoulders pushed against the top of the statue’s sleeve. The copper bulged and broke as the creature rose into the dawn sky.

“ Nancy!”Gentry cried. He motioned her toward him.

“No, go back!”

“Not without you! Comeon! ”

The young woman hesitated a moment longer. Then she tossed the stick aside, scrambled around the bat, and ran toward Gentry. An instant later the creature came down hard, causing the metal landing to bend in the center. The floor tilted and seemed to suck Joyce back; she grabbed the handrail of the spiral staircase to keep from sliding toward the creature. The monster swept at her with its hook, but Gentry had dropped the crowbar and pulled Joyce up and over the railing just as the claw sliced by. Roaring with rage, the wounded creature hunched its head deep in its huge shoulders and charged forward.