I glanced at the nearer window, beside the table, but nothing was peering in there.
Orson stood on his hind legs with his forepaws on the table and theatrically expressed an interest in more pizza, lavishing all his charm on Sasha.
“You know how kids try to play one parent against the other,” I warned her.
“I’m more like his sister-in-law,” she said. “Anyway, this could be his last meal. Ours, too.”
I sighed. “All right. But if we aren’t killed, then we’re setting a lousy precedent.”
A second monkey leaped onto the windowsill. They were both shrieking and baring their teeth at us.
Sasha selected the narrowest of the remaining slices of pizza, cut it into pieces, and placed it on the dog’s plate on the floor.
Orson glanced worriedly at the goblins at the window, but even the primates of doom couldn’t spoil his appetite. He turned his attention to his dinner.
One of the monkeys began to slap a hand rhythmically against the windowpane, shrieking louder than ever.
Its teeth looked larger and sharper than those of a rhesus ought to have been, plenty large enough and sharp enough to help it fulfill the demanding role of a predator. Maybe this was a physical trait engineered into it by the playful weapons-research boys at Wyvern. In my mind’s eye, I saw Angela’s torn throat.
“This might be meant to distract us,” Sasha suggested.
“They can’t get into the house anywhere else without breaking glass,” Bobby said. “We’ll hear them.”
“Over this racket and the rain?” she wondered.
“We’ll hear them.”
“I don’t think we should split up in different rooms unless we’re absolutely driven to it,” I said. “They’re smart enough to know about dividing to conquer.”
Again, I squinted through the window near which the table was placed, but no monkeys were on that section of porch, and nothing but the rain and the wind moved through the dark dunes beyond the railing.
Over the sink, one of the monkeys had managed to turn its back and still cling to the window. It was squealing as if with laughter as it mooned us, pressing its bare, furless, ugly butt to the glass.
“So,” Bobby asked me, “what happened after you let yourself into the rectory?”
Sensing time running out, I swiftly summarized the events in the attic, at Wyvern, and at the Ramirez house.
“Manuel, a pod person,” Bobby said, shaking his head sadly.
“Ugh,” Sasha said, but she wasn’t commenting on Manuel.
At the window, the male monkey facing us was urinating copiously on the glass.
“Well, this is new,” Bobby observed.
On the porch beyond the sink windows, more monkeys started popping into the air like kernels of corn bursting off a hot oiled pan, tumbling up into sight and then dropping away. They were all squealing and shrieking, and there seemed to be scores of them, though it was surely the same half dozen springing-spinning-popping repeatedly into view.
I finished the last of my beer.
Being cool was getting harder minute by minute. Perhaps even doing cool required energy and more concentration than I possessed.
“Orson,” I said, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea if you sauntered around the house.”
He understood and set out immediately to police the perimeter.
Before he was out of the kitchen, I said, “No heroics. If you see anything wrong, bark your head off and come running straight back here.”
He padded out of sight.
Immediately, I regretted having sent him, even though I knew it was the right thing to do.
The first monkey had emptied its bladder, and now the second one had turned to face the kitchen and had begun to loose his own stream. Others were scampering along the handrail outside and swinging from the porch- roof rafters.
Bobby was sitting directly opposite the window that was adjacent to the table. He searched that comparatively calm part of the night with suspicion equal to mine.
The lightning seemed to have passed, but volleys of thunder still boomed across the sea. This cannonade excited the troop.
“I hear the new Brad Pitt movie is really hot,” Bobby said.
Sasha said, “Haven’t seen it.”
“I always wait for video,” I reminded him.
Something tried the door to the back porch. The knob rattled and squeaked, but the lock was securely engaged.
The two monkeys at the sink windows dropped away. Two more sprang up from the porch to take their places, and both began to urinate on the glass.
Bobby said, “I’m not cleaning this up.”
“Well, I’m not cleaning it up,” Sasha declared.
“Maybe they’ll get their aggression and anger out this way and then just leave,” I said.
Bobby and Sasha appeared to have studied withering sarcastic expressions at the same school.
“Or maybe not,” I reconsidered.
From out of the night, a stone about the size of a cherry pit struck one of the windows, and the peeing monkeys dropped away to escape from the line of fire. More small stones quickly followed the first, rattling like hail.
No stones were flung at the nearest window.
Bobby plucked the shotgun from the floor and placed it across his lap.
When the barrage was at its peak, it abruptly ended.
The frenzied monkeys were screaming more fiercely now. Their escalating cries were shrill, eerie, and seemed to have supernatural effect, feeding back into the night with such demonic energy that rain pounded the cottage harder than ever. Merciless hammers of thunder cracked the shell of the night, and once again bright tines of lightning dug at the meat of the sky.
A stone, larger than any in the previous assault, rebounded off one of the sink windows:
Fortunately their hands were too small to allow them to hold and properly operate pistols or revolvers; and with their relatively low body weight, they would be kicked head over heels by the recoil. These creatures were surely smart enough to understand the purpose and operation of handguns, but at least the horde of geniuses in the Wyvern labs hadn’t chosen to work with gorillas. Although, if the idea occurred to them, they would no doubt immediately seek funding for that enterprise and would not only provide the gorillas with firearms training but instruct them, as well, in the fine points of nuclear-weapons design.
Two more stones snapped against the targeted window glass.
I touched the cell phone clipped to my belt. There ought to be someone we could call for help. Not the police, not the FBI. If the former responded, the friendly officers on the Moonlight Bay force would probably provide cover fire for the monkeys. Even if we could get through to the nearest office of the FBI and could sound more credible than all the callers reporting abduction by flying saucers, we would be talking to the enemy; Manuel Ramirez said the decision to let this nightmare play itself out had been made at “very high levels,” and I believed him.
With a concession of responsibility unmatched by generations before ours, we have entrusted our lives and futures to professionals and experts who convince us that we have too little knowledge or wit to make any decisions of importance about the management of society. This is the consequence of our gullibility and laziness. Apocalypse with primates.
A still larger stone struck the window. The pane cracked but didn’t shatter.
I picked up the two spare 9-millimeter magazines on the table and tucked one into each of my jean pockets.
Sasha slipped one hand under the rumpled napkin that concealed the Chiefs Special.
