“Gregor,” Bennis said suddenly. “I know what to do. I know how to make it so that the bats can’t get to us.”
3
Bennis did not make it so that the bats could not get to them. That would have been impossible without specialized clothing. What she did do was to rearrange the clothing they did have to give the bats the least possible access to bare skin. She pulled Gregor’s sleeves down over his hands and fastened the cuffs past his fingers. She took his sweater off and wound it around his head and the lower half of his face. Then she did the same for herself and called out to Kelly Pratt and Geraldine Dart to do the same for themselves. There was nothing she could do about the upper halves of their faces. They needed to see.
“Look at it this way,” Bennis said. “We’d have had to have found some way through here no matter what we decided to do about Hannah Graham and Cavender Marsh. We have to get out to the roof to meet the helicopter.”
“I thought we decided that the helicopter wasn’t coming. I thought Geraldine Dart said it couldn’t land.”
“She did, but it doesn’t have to land, Gregor. It just has to hover. That way it can drop some medical people off and pick some of us up.”
Gregor thought of a helicopter hovering above this roof in this weather with a human being dangling from a rope, being hauled in or let out, and then he decided not to think of it. It made him sick to his stomach. He would think about it later.
“Come on,” he called. “Are you two ready?”
“We’re ready,” Geraldine Dart said.
“Ready,” Kelly echoed faintly.
Gregor started forward across the attic, very slowly, very carefully, trying not to disturb the bats. For a while, it worked. The bats were restless, but no more restless than they had been when Gregor first came to the attic door. They shrieked and shuddered and pulsed above his head. Some of them took off and flew in great swooping arcs among the rafters. None of them came close.
“Maybe we’re going to get away with this,” Bennis said.
“We’ve still got the ladder.”
The ladder was a disadvantage Hannah Graham and Cavender Marsh would not have had. It would not have been pulled down when they arrived in the attic—or Gregor thought it wouldn’t have. If it had not been pulled down, it would not have been covered with bats. Gregor approached the ladder and then stopped. Bennis stopped behind him. Kelly Pratt and Geraldine Dart stopped beside her. The ladder was carpeted in bats. Every rung had two or three. Some rungs seemed to have ten or twelve crammed in together. They were all moving incessantly. The noise they emitted made Gregor’s skin crawl.
“Now what?” Geraldine Dart asked.
Gregor looked up through the open trapdoor. He expected to see black sky and feel the rain. Instead, he saw Hannah Graham smiling at him. She had the long iron instrument raised above her head. She was bracing herself on spread legs just beyond the lip of the trapdoor. It took a minute for all the elements to come together in Gregor’s mind, and by then it was almost too late.
“Look out!” he shouted, as Hannah brought the instrument crashing down above their heads, just inside the trapdoor, on the top rung of the ladder.
The bats exploded into life. Shrieking and cawing, they wheeled into the air and made angry circles among the rafters. Gregor hit the floor with his hands over his head. A bat swooped down and tore at the sweater he had wrapped around his head. Another scratched at his thin cotton shirt.
“My God,” Bennis said, on the floor next to him. “What are they doing?”
“They’re protecting their home,” Gregor said curtly. He looked up, hoping to catch sight of Hannah Graham again, hoping to find out what she was going to do next. What he saw instead was the ladder, almost empty. The bats on the ladder had been frightened off it by Hannah’s blow. Their absence was only temporary. Gregor didn’t have much time.
“Bennis,” he said. “When I tell you to go, go. Run up the ladder. Get onto the roof.”
“Just Bennis?” Kelly Pratt asked.
“All of you,” Gregor said.
The bats were still cawing and angry. Gregor braced himself on his knees in a running crouch and got ready. They were going to have to be fast.
If I get out of this without needing a rabies shot, Gregor promised the universe, I will stay home reading Perry Mason novels for the rest of my life. I will even go to church.
Gregor launched himself forward.
“Go!” he shouted.
He hit the ladder running and scrambled ungracefully all the way to the roof, refusing to listen to the shriek and swoop of angry bats swirling around his head, refusing to look back to see how the others were doing. When he got to the lip of the trapdoor he grabbed it in both hands and pulled himself upward. A bat attacked the sweater on top of his head and he shook it off. A second later, he was out of the attic and onto the roof.