Another cry arose in the murk and was answered by a low hooting from
two other locations.
Orson and I kept moving briskly, but I resisted the urge to bolt.
If I broke into a run, my haste might be interpreted-and rightly as a
sign of fear. To a predator, fear indicates weakness. If they
perceived any weakness, they might attack.
I had the Glock, on which my grip was so tight that the weapon seemed
to be welded to my hand. But I didn’t know how many of these creatures
might be in this troop: perhaps only three or four, perhaps ten, maybe
even more. Considering that I had never fired a gun before-except
once, earlier this evening, entirely by accident-I was not going to be
able to cut down all of these beasts before they overwhelmed me.
Although I didn’t want to give my fevered imagination such dark
material with which to work, I couldn’t help wondering what a rhesus
monkey’s teeth were like. All blunt bicuspids? No. Even
herbivores-assuming that the rhesus was indeed herbivorousneeded to
tear at the peel of a fruit, at husks, at shells. They were sure to
have incisors, maybe even pointy eyeteeth, as did human beings.
Although these particular specimens might have stalked Angela, the
rhesus itself hadn’t evolved as a predator; therefore, they wouldn’t be
equipped with fangs. Certain apes had fangs, though. Baboons had
enormous, wicked teeth. Anyway, the biting power of the rhesus was
moot, because regardless of the nature of their dental armaments, these
particular specimens had been well enough equipped to kill Angela
Ferryman savagely and quickly.
At first I heard or sensed, rather than saw, movement in the fog a few
feet to my right. Then I glimpsed a dark, undefined shape close to the
ground, coming at me swiftly and silently.
I twisted toward the movement. The creature brushed against my leg and
vanished into the fog before I could see it clearly.
Orson growled but with restraint, as though to warn off something
without quite challenging it to fight. He was facing the billowy wall
of gray mist that scudded through the darkness on the other side of the
bicycle, and I suspected that with light I would see not merely that
his hackles were raised but that every hair on his back was standing
stiffly on end.
I was looking low, toward the ground, half expecting to see the
shining, dark-yellow gaze of which Angela had spoken. The shape that
suddenly loomed in the fog was, instead, nearly as big as I am.
Maybe bigger. Shadowy, amorphous, like a swooping angel of death
hovering in a dream, it was more suggestion than substance, fearsome
precisely because it remained mysterious. No baleful yellow eyes. No
clear features. No distinct form. Man or ape, or neither: the leader
of the troop, there and gone.
Orson and I had come to a halt again.
I turned my head slowly to survey the streaming murk around us, intent
on picking up any helpful sound. But the troop moved as silently as
the fog.
I felt as though I were a diver far beneath the sea, trapped in
blinding currents rich with plankton and algae, having glimpsed a
circling shark, waiting for it to reappear out of the gloom and bite me
in half Something brushed against the back of my legs, plucked at my
jeans, and it wasn’t Orson because it made a wicked hissing sound. I
kicked at it but didn’t connect, and it vanished into the mist before I
could get a look at it.
Orson yelped in surprise, as though he’d had an encounter of his own.
“Here, boy,” I said urgently, and he came at once to my side.
I let go of the bicycle, which clattered to the sand. Gripping the
pistol in both hands, I began to turn in a full circle, searching for
somethin to shoot at.
Shrill, angry chattering arose. These seemed recognizably to be the
voices of monkeys. At least half a dozen of them.
If I killed one, the others might flee in fear. Or they might react as
the tangerine-eating monkey had reacted to the broom that Angela had