immobilized by fear, the two increasingly agitated crealures in the
broken-out windows now swung inside and moved in opposite directions
along the counter, forming pairs with each of the first two
intruders.
Either Bobby began to sing louder or stark terror sharpened my hearing,
because suddenly I could recognize the song that he was singing.
“Daydream Believer.” It was golden-oldie teen pop, first recorded by
the Monkees.
Sasha must have heard it, too, because she said, “A blast from the
past.”
Two more members of the troop climbed into the windows above the sink,
clinging to the frames, hellfire in their eyes, squealing monkey-hate
at us.
The four already in the room were shrieking louder than ever, bouncing
up and down on the counters, shaking their fists in the air, baring
their teeth and spitting at us.
They were smart but not smart enough. Their rage was rapidly clouding
their judgment.
“Wipeout,” Bobby said.
Here we go.
Instead of scooting backward swung sideways in it, rose fluidly to his
feet, and brought up the shotgun as if he’d had both military training
and ballet lessons.
Flame spouted from the muzzle, and the first deafening blast caught the
two latest arrivals at the windows, blowing them backward onto the
porch, as though they were only a child’s stuffed toys, and the second
round chopped down the pair on the counter to the left of the sink.
My ears were ringing as though I were inside a tolling cathedral bell,
and although the roar of the gunfire in this confined space was loud
enough to be disorienting, I was on my feet before the his chair to
clear the table, he
12-gauge boomed the second time, as was Sasha, who turned away from the
table and squeezed off a round toward the remaining pair of intruders
just as Bobby dealt with numbers three and four.
As they fired and the kitchen shook with the blasts, the nearest window
exploded at me. Air-surfing on a cascade of glass, a screaming rhesus
landed on the table in our midst, knocking over two of the three
candles and extinguishing one of them, spraying rain off its coat,
sending a pan of pizza spinning to the floor.
I brought up the Glock, but the latest arrival flung itself onto
Sasha’s back. If I shot it, the slug would pass straight through the
damn thing and probably kill her, too.
By the time I kicked a chair out of the way and got around the table,
Sasha was screaming, and the squealing monkey on her back was trying to
tear out handfuls of her hair. Reflexively, she’d dropped her .38 to
reach blindly behind herself for the rhesus. It snapped at her hands,
teeth audibly cracking together on empty air.
Her body was bent back-ward over the table, and her assailant was
trying to pull her head back farther still, to expose her throat.
I dropped the Glock on the table and seized the creature from behind,
getting my right hand around its neck, using my left to clutch the fur
and skin between its shoulder blades. I twisted that handful of fur
and skin so fiercely that the beast screamed in pain.
It wouldn’t let go of Sasha, however, and as I struggled to tear it
away from her, it tried to pull her hair out by the roots.
Bobby pumped another round into the chamber and squeezed off a third
shot, the cottage walls seemed to shake as if an earthquake had rumbled
under us, and I figured that was the end of the final pair of
intruders, but I heard Bobby cursing and knew more trouble had come our
way.
Revealed more by their blazing yellow eyes than by the guttering flames
of the remaining two candles, another pair of monkeys, total kamikazes,
had sprung into the windows above the sink.
And Bobby was reloading.
In another part of the cottage, Orson barked loudly. I didn’t know if
he was racing toward us to join the fray or whether he was calling for
help.
I heard myself cursing with uncharacteristic vividness and snarling
with animal ferocity as I shifted my grip on the rhesus, A I getting