was in bed and all this had just been a terrible nightmare. Except her pillow was not this bristly, this hot; her blankets did not pulse and breathe.
She brought her hands up and touched a hot, leathery body, bones covered with scant flesh. The bat had roosted just above her right breast, in the hollow of her shoulder ... she realized suddenly that she had called it . . . that somehow she had called all of them. She could hear its rodentine, scabrous mind, its thoughts dark and instinctual and insane. It thought only of blood and bugs and cruising in blind darkness.
'Oh God no!' she screamed ... the rugose, alien crawl of its thoughts was maddening, not to be borne. 'Oh no, oh please God no -'
She tightened her hands, not meaning to, and the papery bones in its wings snapped under her fingers. lt squealed, and she felt sharp, needling pain in her cheek as it bit her.
Now they were all squealing, all, and she realized that there were dozens of them on her - maybe hundreds. On her other shoulder, on her shoes, in her hair. As she looked, the lap of her dress began to squirm and twist.
'Oh no!' she shrieked again into the dusty dimness of the clock tower. Bats flew all around her. They squeaked. The whisper of their wings was a soft rising thunder, like the rising whisper of Haven's voices. 'Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!'
A bat fluttered in her hair, caught, squealing.
Another flew into her face, and its breath was the stink of a dead henhouse.
The world spun and swung. Somehow she blundered to her feet. She beat her hands about her head, the bats were everywhere, all around her in a black cloud, and now there was no difference between the soft fluttery explosion of their wings and the voices
(we all love you, Ruth!)
the voices
(we hate you Ruth don't you meddle don't you dare meddle)
the voices of Haven.
She had forgotten where she was. She had forgotten the trapdoor which yawned almost at her feet, and as she stumbled toward it she heard the clock strike - but the sound was muffled, not true, because the hammer had struck her detonator and
- and nothing was happening.
She turned, bats flying all about her, and now her incredulous eyes were also bleeding, but through a reddish haze she saw the hammer fall again, and then yet a third time, and still the world remained.
A dud, Ruth McCausland thought. It was a dud.
And fell through the trapdoor.
The bats flew up from her body, her dress flew up from her body, one loafer flew up from her foot. She struck the ladder, half-turned, and landed on her left side with a crunch that broke all her ribs. She struggled to turn over and somehow managed to do it. Most of the bats had found their way back through the trapdoor into the welcoming darkness of the clock tower, but half a dozen or so were still circling, confused, below the roof of the third-floor corridor. The sound of their voices, so alien and insectile, so hivelike and warm with insanity. These were the voices she had been hearing in her head ever since July 4th or so. The town was not just going mad. That would have been bad, but this was worse . . . oh God, it was much, much worse.
And it had all been for nothing. Hump Jernigan's M-16 had been nothing but a dud after all. She grayed out and came back some four minutes later with a bat roosting on the bridge of her nose, lapping bloody tears from her cheek.
'No you dirty FUCK!' she screamed, and tore it in two, her revulsion an agony. lt made a sound like thick, tearing paper. Its alien guts dribbled onto her upturned, cobweb-smeared face. She could not open her mouth to scream - Let me die, God, please, don't let me be like them, don't let me 'become' - because it would dribble its dying self into her and then Hump's M-16 exploded under the striker with an undramatic wet bang. Green light lit first the square of the trapdoor ... and then the whole world. For one moment Ruth could see the bones of the bats standing out clearly, as if in an X-ray picture.
Then all the green turned black.
It was 3:05 P.M.
17
All over Haven, people were lying down. Some had gone to their cellars with a vague notion that