both hands around its neck. I choked it, choked it until finally it
had no choice but to let go of Sasha.
The monkey weighed only about twenty-five pounds, less than one-sixth
of my weight, but it was all bone and muscle and seething hatred.
Screaming thinly and spitting even as it struggled for breath, the
thing tried to tuck its head down to bite at the hands encircling its
throat. it wrenched, wriggled, kicked, flailed, and I can’t imagine
that an eel could have been harder to hold on to, but my fury at what
the little fucker had tried to do to Sasha was so great that my hands
were like iron, and at last I felt its neck snap.
Then it was just a limp, dead thing, and I dropped it on the floor.
Gagging with disgust, gasping for breath, I picked up my Glock as
Sasha, having recovered her Chiefs Special, stepped to the broken
window near the table and opened fire at the night beyond.
While reloading, apparently having lost track of the last two monkeys
in spite of their glowing eyes, Bobby had gone to the light switch by
the door. Now he cranked up the rheostat far enough to make me
squint.
One of the little bastards was standing on a counter beside the
cooktop.
It had extracted the smallest of the knives from the wall rack, and
before any of us could open fire, it threw the blade at Bobby.
en busy learning simple I don’t know whether the troop had be military
arts or whether the monkey was lucky. The knife tumbled through the
air and sank into Bobby’s right shoulder.
He dropped the shotgun.
I fired two rounds at the knife thrower, and it pitched backward onto
the cooktop burners, dead.
The remaining monkey might have once heard that old saw about
discretion being the better part of valor, because he curled his tail
up against his back and fled over the sink and out the window. I got
two shots off, but both missed.
At the other window, with surprisingly steady nerves and nimble
fingers, Sasha fumbled a speedloader from the dump pouch on the .38.
She twisted the speedloader, her belt and slipped it into neatly
filling all chambers at once, dropped it on the floor, and snapped the
cylinder shut.
I wondered what school of broadcasting offered would-be disc jockeys
courses on weaponry and grace under fire. Of all the people in
Moonlight Bay, Sasha had been the sole one remaining who seemed
genuinely to be only what she appeared to be. Now I suspected that she
had a secret or two of her own.
She began squeezing off shots into the night once more. I don’t know
if she had any targets in view or whether she was just laying down a
suppressing fire to discourage whatever remained of the troop.
Ejecting the half-empty magazine from the Glock, slamming in a full
one, I went to Bobby as he pulled the knife out of his shoulder. The
blade appeared to have penetrated only an inch or two, but there was a
spreading bloodstain on his shirt.
“How bad?” I asked.
“Damn!”
“Can You hold on?”
“This was my best shirt!”
Maybe he would be all right.
I Toward the front of the house, Orson’s barking continued-but it was
punctuated now with squeals of terror.
I tucked the Glock under my belt, against the small of my back, picked
up Bobby’s shotgun, which was fully loaded, and ran toward the
barking.
The lights were on but dimmed down in the living room, as we had left
them. I dialed them up a little.
One of the big windows had been shattered. Hooting wind drove rain
under the porch roof and into the living room.
Four screamin monkeys were perched on the backs of chairs and on the
arms of sofas. When the lights brightened, they turned their heads
toward me and hissed as one.
Bobby had estimated that the troop was composed of eight or ten
individuals, but it was obviously a lot larger than that. I’d already
seen twelve or fourteen, and in spite of the fact that they were more