SLEAZE FEATURE: 'BATS‘ (1993)

  

Haven't done one of these in a while, and as I'm clearing out the shelves, figgered what the hell.

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Bats is terrible.  And gets worse the more ya think about it.

The novel doesn't deserve further explanation.

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Sighhh, fine.

In the swampy wilds of Podunk, Louisiana, our ostensible hero–one Johnny McBride [not his real name, because he's a retired super-spook who "worked for ASA, CIA, DIA, NSA, and a dozen other intelligence-gathering organizations all over the world" and in hiding from All The Planet's Bad Guys]–hears the titular bats on Page 2, and finds desiccated, bloodless livestock less than ten pages later.

Potentially interesting, as the hero knows about the furry threat from the get-go; usually, with these Animals Amok™ books, the beastie menaces lurk on the periphery until rampaging about two-thirds through the story.  But, nope!  Vampire bats are namechecked in the last sentence of the first chapter.

About Johnny McBride:  He's hunky.  He's wealthy.  He drives a cool car.  He built a bayou Wayne Manor equipped with secret hatches and an arsenal that puts militaries to shame.  Best of all, he's COMPETENT, with the sort of calm, cool, collected, confident, always-right mojo that makes all Good Government Officials kowtow in reverence and all Bad Government Officials scoff to their inevitable exsanguinary comeuppance.

Now Crank That Sentiment To 11

Chapter Two introduces us to Dr. Blair Perkins, the female McBride (gorgeous; financially sound; armed; COMPETENT) who, upon investigating the aforementioned livestock, intones, "We're in trouble.  I think we're in a lot of trouble."

Spoiler:  He Does.

Chapter Three has the leads capture footage of the bats, discovering they are enormous (four-foot wingspans!), active 24/7 (being diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular, and everything in between), number in the tens-of-thousands, slobberily rabid, and intelligent enough to circumvent electric fences and detect / bypass boobytraps.

"'Well, I'll be goddamned!' Johnny said.  'The bastards can think and reason!'" (p. 38)

Thanks to our heroes and the discovery of some draculized human corpses, by the end of Chapter Four, anybody and everybody knows about the bats.  Knows they're smart.  Knows they're carnivorous.  Knows they're Deadly-with-a-capital-D.  Knows they probably number in the millions.  Knows that potentially apocalyptic events are about to transpire.

Oh, what further genre-bending thrills-n-chills await us over the remaining three-hundred pages?!!!

And, whoa!  Chapter Six amps up the weirdness!

Some rando mentions decades-old, unsolved vampiric murders where everyone involved moved away, was sworn to silence, and / or deceasified (killed or suicided), introducing the threat might be supernatural!  Ooh, a twist!

A mysterious NSA Agent, one "Mr. Smith"–yes, really–shows up, alluding to secret government experiments and bioweapons and Top Secret toxic waste dumps causing mutations.  Ooh, another twist!

There's also a cult of 1970s-Satanist-voodoo-hippies-as-written-by-a-1990s-Dittohead who love drugs, orgies, and the blackest of masses.  Ooh, a third twist!

THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME!!!1111!!!!!

"No, no it's not."

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That's about as far as the book goes in the first fifty pages before turning into a joyless, repetitive slog [before that, it was just a slog-adjacent].  The text is perfunctory and boring, making humdrum scenes agonizing and the (theoretically rollicking) setpieces perfunctory text blocks, and the next two-hundred-fifty pages play out essentially the same.

McBride fortifies his home / base of operations.

McB issues grave warnings to all the surrounding city and county governments about The Bats (with frequent author's-true-feelings, Dale Gribblean lamentations about liberal judges, liberal newsmedia, liberal gun-control activists, liberal welfare recipients, and all the other liberal soft folks Who Can't Do What He Does™).

Perkins agrees.

Everyone scoffs, and goes barhopping / mall-crawling / Friday Night Light-ing without care.

The Bats attack, blinding, eating, and / or infecting everyone.  (There are sooooooo many mentions of plucked eyeballs and ripped-out tongues and throats, but they're just... there.)  And the winged menaces intentionally leave power / phone lines undamaged (yes, they could destroy 'em if wanted) to lure in more victims.

There Are Indeed Passages About
The Bats' Thought Processes... EVIL Thought Processes!

Rabies-zombies [the devil-hippies got bitten on purpose, and spread the contagion] attack the uneaten civilians.

Law enforcement kills the rabies-zombies but dies via The Bats.

Medical personnel rush in to save law enforcement but die via The Bats.

So heroic duo re-fortifies their homes / bases of operation.

Then warn the next batch of towns.

Repeat ad nauseum.

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Everything above should create a bonkers, gonzo, crazy-go-nuts blood-romp, but it's so tragically, brutally boring.  Absolutely no panache nor suspense.  Even all the nausuems are dry and flavorless.

Remember all the weirdness introduced in Chapters Five and Six?  It's all pointless and useless.

Mr. Smith is never seen or mentioned again.

Total.  Waste.

Speaking of waste, the other NPCs (mostly police) are all but identical and interchangeable, with only told-not-shown one-line quirks to distinguish them (like, the sheriff resenting a deputy because the latter "eats too much on meal tabs" and the deputy resenting the sheriff because "it was only one instance of eating too much on a meal tab".  Every time the two are on the same page at the same time (which is blessedly rare), they bicker about the food incident.

Says It All

(McB and P also adopt some bat-induced orphans, and only mentioned because it's perhaps the most hand-wavingly preposterous part of the book.)

Regarding those unsolved vampire-murders?  Turns out the Satanist leader did 'em.  Just a throwaway line about it, too.

Oh!  Same about The Bats being atomic mutants.  Again, in one line, it's revealed that they're not hybrids resulting from Forbidden Science / Mother Earth Seeking Revenge, but seeeeecret bats that have been around since The Dawn Of Time and show up every century or so to cause mayhem.

All of the above are reasons to loathe Bats, but it's the unmitigatedly galling idiocy that really gets me.

Let me count The Dumb.

1)  The Bats, about halfway through the book, get even more dangerous by figuring out how to open any and all doors–residential knobs, shopping center push / pull handles, and even car door latches–so there's no way to escape 'em.

But that info is conveyed exactly like this:  "The Bats learned to open doors."

There's no discussion of the physiology involved, nor the reasoning process.  Just—BOOM!—they can.

2)  Turns out The Bats have intentionally picked their civilian targets (which now encompass almost all of The South, all the way up to Washington, DC and out to Texas and Florida) to create, when connected on a map, a goofy picture because–I kid you not–THEY HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR.

I'm Not Even Joking

3) And then there's the last fifty pages.  Krishna H. Vishnu, the ending.

A wizened, mysterious, inscrutable South American professor–who happens to be The World's Foremost Chiroptera Expert–flies to Louisiana to join our heroes.  He has some theories, see, that will save Humanity if he's right or doom it if he's wrong.

What are his theories, you ask?  Don't bother–he won't tell, because he doesn't want to offer false hope!

"Helpful, I Am Not.  Useless, I Am."

And he really doesn't have to say a word, because the solution becomes apparent in the literal last ten pages of the novel when MILLIONS OF REGULAR, GARDEN VARIETY BATS OF ALL SPECIES FLY IN OUTTA NOWHERE TO CHOMP HOLES IN THE SWARMING BATS' WINGS, CAUSING THE BAD BATS TO CRASH INTO THE EARTH AND DIE.

Yes, that's the ending.  Deus Ex Flappina saves the planet.  And this ritual, too, has seemingly been going on since The Dawn Of Time.

And, as the genre demands, some last-page Evil Bats escape to breed again....

In conclusion, Bats fucking sucks.

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RPG Relevance:  Doesn't get much more Dungeons And / Or Dragons than giant, diseased bats slavering for the blood of the living, but making them cunning geniuses definitely amps the threat.

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Final Review Score:  One-and-a-half Jerry Dandriges outta five.