The smell above; the movement below.
He remembered a similar scene, minus the telltale evidence of a lost civilization, deep inside a cave in upstate New York.
MacCready let out the breath he forgot he’d been holding, realizing that ancient human remains were being animated by millions upon millions of insect larvae, larvae that were thriving in a dark layer of organic tar and bodily fluids that was constantly being renewed from—
—above.
But that means . . .
MacCready swung the beam slowly higher, and peered across the ceiling of the tomb. Hanging in utter silence was the source of the beetles’ feast: a hundred dark silhouettes.
Like giant Christmas tree ornaments.
In the dim red light, one of the fusiform shapes unfurled, revealing wings ten feet across.
Catching a glimpse of the creature’s head in profile, MacCready was reminded of something the half-mad Lieutenant Scott had said: “No more doggie on the ceiling.” But only now did the real meaning of that statement become clear.
A hell of a time to figure this out, he thought, his mind quickly transitioning to more immediate concerns. MacCready slowly moved his free arm up through the opening, waving his hand in a circular motion that he hoped would translate to “Pull me the hell up—now!”
It did.
“Time to get out of here,” he whispered to Wolff, keeping his eyes on the opening in the floor even as he crab-walked away from it. “Very quietly out,” he added.
“What did you see? What are they?” Wolff whispered back, but he did not move.
“They’re bats, Colonel. Big, fucking vampire bats.”
“Fascinating. They are mating?”
“No. Surviving,” MacCready replied. “And doing a better job of it than we’re gonna do, if they figure out we’re up here.”
“And this is what killed my men?”
MacCready nodded and planned his bid for more time. “You got it. But there’s too many of them and too few of us. Unless you want all of your men killed, there is no way to exterminate them right now.”
“Can we capture one?” Wolff asked, unable to mask his excitement—and at that very moment MacCready realized that he’d been had.
This little expedition has nothing to do with dead Germans and eliminating their stalkers. But why do they—
Before he could finish the thought, a loud grunt echoed off the stone corridor. Both men flinched at the sound and turned toward Sergeant Schr?dinger. The giant was leaning against a wall and staring at the eight-inch cave centipede that hung from his right hand.
MacCready threw a glance at the hole in the floor, then brought his forefinger reflexively to his lips, as if to shush the stricken man. If the bats heard them, this play’s final act would come quickly, Lady Macbeth style. The sergeant, however, was definitely preoccupied. The arthropod’s pincers were powerful enough to pierce boot leather, and now they were efficiently slicing beyond the fleshy pad below Schr?dinger’s thumb, digging into bone and locking like the jaws of a poisonous, hydraulically driven vise.
The sergeant held out his hand to Colonel Wolff, his eyes trying to conceal pain as the centipede threw its body into a series of exaggerated S shapes. Schr?dinger flailed his arm out, slamming the back of his hand into the wall with bone-cracking force. He let out a slight grunt, turned, and disappeared into the darkness.
They could hear him crashing blindly down the stone corridor, trying to make his way back again toward the imagined safety of the cave entrance.
For a moment, the American captain and the German colonel exchanged equally surprised looks, but just as quickly they both turned toward the opening in the floor. There were new sounds rising through the hole in the tomb, stirred by Schr?dinger’s commotion.
click, click, click, click, click, click, CLICK, CLICK
“Flatten yourself against the wall,” MacCready whispered, hoping that Wolff was not about to follow the sergeant’s noisy lead—and knowing that if the colonel did run, all three of them would be slashed open and pumped full of anticoagulant saliva. MacCready also knew that, like the goat under the Brazil nut tree, he would still be alive while the draculae drank him.
In the lair of the vampire bats, the colony was awake.
The reaction to the sounds from above was immediate and synchronized.
BIPEDS, the draculae signaled to each other.
Then, with the relentless precision of wasps sent to protect their endangered hive, four dark shapes scuttled across the ceiling toward the circular opening. The bats skillfully maneuvered an obstacle course of stalactites, moving as easily through the rooftop forest of columns as if it made no difference to them that their world was suspended upside down.