wheel was the only part of the bike still in sight, and it almost
disappeared into the murk before I reached down with one hand and
grabbed it.
The hidden bicycle thief and I engaged in a brief tug of war, which I
handily won, suggesting that I was pitted against one or two rhesus
monkeys and not against the much larger troop leader. I stood the bike
on its wheels, leaned it against my body to keep it upright, and once
more raised the Glock.
Orson returned to my side.
Nervously, he relieved himself again, shedding the last of his beer. I
was half surprised that I hadn’t wet my pants.
For a while I gasped noisily for breath, shaking so badly that even a
two-hand grip on the pistol couldn’t keep it from jigging up and
down.
Gradually I grew calmer. My heart worked less diligently to crack my
ribs.
Like the hulls of ghost ships, gray walls of mist sailed past, an
infinite flotilla, towing behind them an unnatural stillness. No
chittering. No squeals or shrieks. No loonlike cries. No sigh of
wind or sough of surf. I felt almost as though, without realizing it,
I had been killed in the recent confrontation, as though I now stood in
a chilly antechamber outside the corridor of life, waiting for a door
to open into Judgment.
Finally it became apparent that the games were over for awhile.
Holding the Glock with only one hand, I began to walk the bicycle east
along the horn. Orson padded at my side.
I was sure that the troop was still monitoring us, although from a
greater distance than before. I saw no stalking shapes in the fog, but
they were out there, all right.
Monkeys. But not monkeys. Apparently escaped from a laboratory at
Wyvem.
The end of the world, Angela had said.
Not by fire.
Not by ice.
Something worse.
Monkeys. The end of the world by monkeys.
Apocalypse with primates.
Armageddon. The end, finding, omega, doomsday, close the door and turn
out the lights forever.
This was totally, fully, way crazy. Every time I tried to get my mind
around the facts and pull them into some intelligible order, I wiped
out big time, got radically clamshelled by a huge wave of
imponderables.
Bobby’s attitude, his relentless determination to distance himself from
the insoluble troubles of the modern world and be a champion slacker,
had always struck me as a legitimate lifestyle choice. Now it seemed
to be not merely legitimate but reasoned, logical, and wise.
Because I was not expected to survive to adulthood, my parents raised
me to play, to have fun, to indulge my sense of wonder, to live as much
as possible without worry and without fear, to live in the moment with
little concern for the future: in short, to trust in God and to believe
that I, like everyone, am here for a purpose; to be as grateful for my
limitations as for my talents and blessings, because both are part of a
design beyond my comprehension. They recognized the need for me to
learn self-discipline, of course, and respect for others. But, in
fact, those things come naturally when You truly believe that your life
has a spiritual dimension and that You are a carefully designed element
in the mysterious mosaic of life. Although there had appeared to be
little chance that I would outlive both parents, Mom and Dad prepared
for this eventuality when I was first diagnosed: They purchased a large
second-to-die life-insurance policy, which would now provide handsomely
for me even if I never earned another cent from my books and
articles.
Born for play and fun and wonder, destined never to have to hold a job,
destined never to be burdened by the responsibilities that weigh down
most people, I could give up my writing and become such a total surf
bum that Bobby Halloway, by comparison, would appear to be a compulsive
workaholic with no more capacity for fun than a cabbage. Furthermore,
I could embrace absolute slack erhood with no guilt whatsoever, with no
qualms or doubts, because I was raised to be what all humanity might