Gentry turned the radio off.

Joyce looked at him. “How’s your ankle?”

“A little surgery, a little rest, no more bats, and it should be as good as new.”

“I think we’ve pretty much guaranteed the no-bats part,” she smiled.

“I hope so,” Gentry said. “So. Can I buy you coffee when we get back?”

“No thanks.”

He seemed wounded.

Her smile broadened. “Hasn’t it occurred to you, Robert, that I just don’t like the stuff?”

“Actually, no. I thought you were turningme down.”

“Uh-uh. It’s coffee I don’t like. Not the server.”

He smiled back and put his arm around her.

She hadn’t felt cold, but now she felt wonderfully warm.

Al Doyle spent the day supervising his pest control personnel as they removed the giant bats from the statue. He left the cleanup of the remaining vespers to the National Park Service police and the Hazardous Materials unit of the Coast Guard. He would return later in the day when officials from the United States Agriculture Department were scheduled to arrive from Washington.

The three giant bats were packed in crates lined with plastic and loaded with ice. The crates were sealed, placed on a barge, and floated up the Hudson River to the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin. There, they were met by ESU personnel who loaded them into vans and brought them to the Central Park Zoo’s veterinary department.

Zoo chief Berkowitz had suggested that the remains of the bats could be put on display to help raise money for the zoo and for future pest control efforts. Doyle was all for that. But several things Dr. Joyce had said about the creatures intrigued him. Not just about the bats themselves but about the circumstances that had caused them to mutate.

Whatever accident had created these monsters offered many opportunities to science-and to the scientists who were clever enough to decipher the chemical and biological processes involved. Decipher them, understand them, and one thing more. The most important thing of all.

Replicate them.

Jeff Rovin is an Author of many How to Play, video game books which were popular in the 1980s and 1990s. They detail strategies for dozens of games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, and Game Boy. He is currently the editor in chief of Weekly World News.