Jim Dunkley picked up his gun and pushed further into the wood. He had never known so many flies here before. Surely they would have preferred the warmth and dryness of the Hanging Wood.
The bracken was chest high, lush green with hardly a tint of brown on its fronds, defying the drought even as it now attempted to impede his own progress, entwining around his body as he forced his way through.
There was an area of silver-birch trees leading up to the old quarry, half an acre of flattened undergrowth with mounds of excavated soil rising up' above the trampled bracken. Beneath the surface was a badger-set which had been there in his youth, the solitary position affording these nocturnal creatures all the peace and quietness they needed. Yet his experienced eye noted that the footprints inthe soil, and the scoring of the bark on the surrounding trees where they had sharpened their claws, were not fresh. The badgers had moved on elsewhere, a week or more ago at a rough guess, Jim Dunkley decided.
It was strange indeed. Civilisation had not encroached this far. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps it was the presence of the BVF guards. Those two shots the other night... He moved forward, an angry expression on his face. Well, they weren't coming on to his land with guns any more. Nor those damned vigilantes. It was just an excuse to poach the surrounding countryside. If they tried it again he'd see how they felt about being on the receiving end of a double charge of buckshot.
Dunkley was ten yards from the edge of the old quarry when he became aware of the smell, nauseous, putrifying, penetrating even his own barrier of strong tobacco smoke. He coughed. It was like decomposing flesh. In his time he had dug out a number of fox-earths and he was familiar with the stench, the half-consumed carcasses, rotting and rank. But this was much more powerful. A dozen foxes would not be capable of making a smell as bad as that. And it was definitely coming from the pit.
He moved forward, treading warily, knowing that the edge was crumbling and that in some places it would not bear the weight of a fully grown man. He dropped to his hands and knees, crawled the last five yards and peered down into the depths.
He had to wait whilst his eyesight adjusted to the gloom below. Scrub bushes grew on the bottom. One or two birch seedlings had even managed a precarious hold on the sides, rooted in the soft moss. And the smell was sickening. Something was dead down there.
Then he saw them, tiny bodies practically forming a carpet over the entire bottom, lying in a variety of positions. Unnatural. Stiff. Many were propped up by the corpses of their companions, and all were in various stages of decomposition, as though they had been dying at intervals over the past couple of weeks. 'Bats!' he grunted. 'Bloody hundreds of 'em!' He was astounded, but not frightened. He did not believe the reports anyway. The trouble with people today was that they did not understand the ways of the countryside. They were all too involved in modern living. A surplus of bats had coincided with some outbreak of disease. They had to have a scapegoat, so they blamed the bats. Harmless little creatures, really. He recalled the time when there were supposedly armies of rats on the march. It had come about as a result of flooding in the west country, and the rodents had been forced to move on in search of new quarters. The rat population hadn't increased, it was just that people saw more of them. It was the same with these bats. All the demolition and rebuilding in the towns and cities had compelled them to move out into the country, so folks began panicking. There was a logical explanation for everything if one just took the trouble to think about it.
Jim Dunkley was just about to move away when something attracted his attention on the opposite face of the quarry. A small cave had been formed in the slate by constant washing of the rain on the surface. Part of it had come away and formed an alcove, roughly three feet square and going back into the quarry about a couple of feet. And as he looked, the whole interior seemed to move. He stared, and only when a tiny furry creature hopped out on to the overhanging ledge did he realise what the interior of that cave contained.
'More bloody bats,' he muttered. 'Hundreds of 'em all crowded in together!'
He continued to watch. There was little movement. The bats were resting, sleeping by day, and when dusk fell they would flit out in search of food.
Possibly the farmer would have crept away undetected had it not been for the crumbling edge of the deep pit. As he moved he dislodged a piece of slate. It slid forward, struck some more, gathered some stones on its way, and as a result a miniature avalanche showered down on to the mass of minute, rotting corpses below.
The reaction from within the cave was instantaneous. The whole interior seemed to come to life, the bats pouring outwards as one, then spraying in all directions in the manner of irate wasps which have had their nest dug out.
Jim Dunkley was not frightened.. He was simply astounded at the sight of so many bats. He knelt there looking up at them, and as he did so something struck him sharply in the face. He grunted, and began to struggle to his feet.
Bats were everywhere. Above the trees, below them, clinging to the sides of the quarry, and still more were emerging from holes and smaller caves. They flitted around him, as insistent as the flies which had troubled him earlier. They brushed against him, struck his clothing. He threw up a hand to protect his face, wielding the shotgun in an attempt to ward them off.
Then the ground beneath his feet gave way, crumbling. He stepped back, but there was nothing beneath his feet. He was falling, floating, somersaulting...
Jim Dunkley plummeted headlong to the bottom of the quarry, impaling his head on a sharp unturned rock. His skull split open, showering grey matter and crimson fluid over the dead bats which lay all around. His body twitched once or twice, but he was already dead. The shotgun fell, landing softly, barrels resting against his chest, hammers at full cock.
The bats continued to fly haphazardly for five or ten minutes, seemingly oblivious to the man who lay dead in their very own graveyard, and then, tiring of their unaccustomed daytime activities, they returned to their sleeping places.
Silence returned to the Devil's Dressing Room. There was not a bat in sight, the only evidence of their existence being the smell of death which rose up out of the quarry, and the buzzing of the flies as they fed, uninterrupted.
Chapter Twelve
By late September, terror had returned to the rural areas in full force. No longer were the bats concentrated in any particular place. With the coming of dusk people barricaded themselves in their homes, listening fearfully as tiny bodies thudded against window panes or fluttered down chimneys, squeaking inside blocked fireplaces as though with anger at being thwarted of their prey. In spite of many official statements that the bats were not deliberately intent upon attacking humans, and that their seemingly aggressive attitude was brought about by damaged radar, the public were still convinced that they were the main targets of the flying death swarms. And outside the protective cordon the rest of Britain waited fearfully. It was only a matter of time before the bats extended their territory.
'As there seems to be no chance of finding an antidote,' Haynes said, 'then there is only one alternative.' He and Rickers were in Newman's laboratory where tests were still being carried out on a number of bats, mice and rats.
'And what's that?' Professor Newman looked up.
'We must poison the bats. If necessary, to the point of extinction.'
Newman laughed. 'It's fine in theory. But there's no chance. With rats and mice you can put poison down for 'em; feed 'em specially prepared food, but bats live on insect life.'