living in the Florida Everglades, I would become an expert on alligators.
Here, now, deep in Dead Town, a troop of monkeys passed the bungalow, moving in the direction I’d been headed. In the moonlight, their coats looked silvery rather than brown.
In spite of this luster, which made them more visible than they would have been otherwise, I had difficulty taking an accurate count. Five, six, eight…Some traveled on all fours, some were half erect; a few stood up almost as straight as a human. Ten, eleven, twelve…
They were not moving fast, and they repeatedly raised their heads, scanning the night ahead and on both sides, sometimes peering suspiciously back the way they had come. Although their pace and alert demeanor might signify caution or even fear, I suspected that they were not afraid of anything and that instead they were searching for something, hunting something.
Maybe me.
Fifteen, sixteen.
In a circus ring, costumed in sequined vests and red fezzes, a troop of monkeys might inspire smiles, laughter, delight. These specimens didn’t dance, caper, tumble, twirl, jig, or play miniature accordions. Not one seemed interested in a career in entertainment.
Eighteen.
They were rhesus monkeys, the species most often used in medical research, and all were at the upper end of the size range for their kind: more than two feet tall, twenty-five or even thirty pounds of bone and muscle. I knew from hard experience that these particular rhesuses were quick, agile, strong, uncannily smart, and dangerous.
Twenty.
Throughout much of the world, monkeys live everywhere in the wild, from jungles to open grasslands to mountains. They are not found on the North American continent — except for these that skulk through the night in Moonlight Bay, unknown to all but a handful of the populace.
I now understood why, earlier, the birds had fallen silent in the tree above me. They had sensed the approach of this unnatural parade.
Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
The troop was becoming a battalion.
Did I mention teeth? Monkeys are omnivorous, never having been persuaded by the arguments of vegetarians. Primarily they eat fruit, nuts, seeds, leaves, flowers, and birds’ eggs, but when they feel the need for meat, they munch on such savory fare as insects, spiders, and small mammals like mice, rats, and moles. Absolutely never accept a dinner invitation from a monkey unless you know precisely what’s on the menu. Anyway, because they are omnivorous, they have strong incisors and pointy eyeteeth, the better to rip and tear.
Ordinary monkeys don’t attack human beings. Likewise, ordinary monkeys are active in daylight and rest during the night — except for the softly furred douroucouli, an owl-eyed South American species that is nocturnal.
Those who roam the darkness in Fort Wyvern and Moonlight Bay aren’t ordinary. They’re hateful, vicious, psychotic little geeks. If given the choice of a plump tasty mouse sauteed in butter sauce or the chance to tear your face off for the sheer fun of it, they wouldn’t even lick their lips with regret at passing up the snack.
I had tallied twenty-two individuals when the passing tide of monkey fur in the street abruptly turned, whereupon I lost count. The troop doubled back on itself and halted, its members huddling and milling together in such a conspiratorial manner that you could easily believe one of
Although they showed no more interest in this bungalow than in any other, they were directly in front of it and close enough to give me a major case of the heebie-jeebies. Smoothing the bristling hair on the nape of my neck with one hand, I considered creeping out the back of the house before they came knocking on the front door with their damn monkey-magazine subscription cards.
If I slipped away, however, I wouldn’t know in which direction they had gone after breaking out of their huddle. I’d be as likely to blunder into them as to avoid them — with mortal consequences.
I had counted twenty-two, and I had missed some: There might have been as many as thirty. My 9- millimeter Glock held ten rounds, two of which I’d already expended, and a spare magazine was nestled in a pouch on my holster. Even if I were suddenly possessed by the sharpshooting spirit of Annie Oakley and miraculously made every shot count, I would still be overwhelmed by twelve of the beasts.
Hand-to-hand combat with three hundred pounds of screaming monkey menace is not my idea of a fair fight. My idea of a fair fight is one unarmed, toothless, nearsighted old monkey versus me with a Blackhawk attack helicopter.
In the street, the primates were still loitering. They were clustered so tightly that they almost appeared, in the moonlight, to be one large organism with multiple heads and tails.
I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. Probably because I’m not a monkey.
I leaned closer to the window, squinting at the moon-washed scene, trying to see more clearly and to put myself in a monkey frame of mind.
Among the hey-let’s-play-God crowd that worked in the deepest bunkers of Wyvern, the most exciting — and most generously funded — research had included a project intended to enhance both human and animal intelligence, as well as human agility, speed, sight, hearing, sense of smell, and longevity. This was to be accomplished by transferring selected genetic material not just from one person to another but from species to species.
Although my mother was brilliant, a genius, she was not — trust me on this — a mad scientist. As a theoretical geneticist, she didn’t spend much time in laboratories. Her workplace was inside her skull, and her mind was as elaborately equipped as the combined research facilities of all the universities in the country. She kept to her office at Ashdon College, only occasionally venturing into a lab, supported by government grants, doing the heavy thinking while other scientists did the heavy lifting. She set out not to destroy humanity but to save it, and I am convinced that for a long time she didn’t know the reckless and malevolent purposes to which those at Wyvern were applying her theories.
Transferring genetic material from one species into another. In the hope of creating a super race. In an insane quest for the perfect, unstoppable soldier. Smart beasts of myriad design bred for future battlefields. Weird biological weapons as tiny as a virus or as large as a grizzly bear.
Dear God.
Personally, all this makes me nostalgic for the good old days when the most ambitious big-brain types were content with dreaming up city-busting nuclear bombs, satellite-mounted particle-beam death rays, and nerve gas that causes its victims to turn inside out the way caterpillars do when cruel little boys sprinkle salt on them.
For these experiments, animals were easily obtained, because they generally can’t afford to hire first-rate attorneys to prevent themselves from being exploited; but, surprisingly, human subjects were readily available, as well. Soldiers courts-martialed for particularly savage murders and condemned to life sentences were offered the choice of rotting in maximum-security military prisons or earning a measure of freedom by participating in this secret enterprise.
Then something went wrong.
Big time.
In all human endeavors, something inevitably goes woefully wrong. Some say this is because the universe is inherently chaotic. Others say this is because we are a species that has fallen from the grace of God. Whatever the reason, among humankind, for every Moe there are thousands of Curlys and Larrys.
The delivery system used to ferry new genetic material into the cells of research subjects — to insert it in their DNA chains — was a retrovirus brilliantly conceived by my mom, Wisteria Jane Snow, who somehow still had time to make terrific chocolate-chip cookies. This engineered retrovirus was designed to be fragile, crippled — that is, sterile — and benign: merely a living tool that would do exactly what was wanted of it. Once having done its job, it was supposed to die. But it soon mutated into a hardy, rapidly reproducing, infectious bug that could be passed in bodily fluids through simple skin contact, causing genetic change instead of disease. These microorganisms captured random sequences of DNA from numerous species in the lab, transporting them into the bodies of the project scientists, who for a while remained unaware that they were being slowly but profoundly altered. Physically, mentally, emotionally altered. Before they understood what was happening to them and why, some Wyvern
