I snatched the cap off the ground but didn’t return it to my head. Instead, I folded it and jammed it into an inside pocket of my jacket.
Shakily, I assured myself that I was okay, that I hadn’t been bitten. If I’d been scratched, I didn’t feel the sting of it, not on my hands or face. No, I hadn’t been scratched. Thank God. If the monkey was carrying an infectious disease communicable only by contact with bodily fluids, I couldn’t have caught it.
On the other hand, I’d smelled its fetid breath when we were face-to-face, breathed the very air that it exhaled. If this was an airborne contagion, I was already in possession of a one-way ticket to the cold-holding room.
In response to a tinny clatter behind me, I swung around and discovered that my fallen bicycle was being dragged into the fog by something I couldn’t see. Flat on its side, combing sand with its spokes, the rear 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 a while. 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 Wyvern.
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,
fini,
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 slackerhood with no guilt whatsoever, with no qualms or doubts, because I was raised to be what all humanity might have been if we hadn’t violated the terms of the lease and been evicted from Eden. Like all who are born of man and woman, I live by the whims of fate: Because of my XP, I’m just more acutely aware of the machinations of fate than most people are, and this awareness is liberating.
Yet, as I walked my bicycle eastward along the peninsula, I persevered in my search for meaning in all that I’d seen and heard since sunset.
Before the troop had arrived to torment Orson and me, I’d been trying to pin down exactly what was different about these monkeys; now I returned to that riddle. Unlike ordinary rhesuses, these were bold rather than shy, brooding rather than lighthearted. The most obvious difference was that these monkeys were hot-tempered, vicious. Their potential for violence was not, however, the primary quality that separated them from other rhesuses; it was only a consequence of another, more profound difference that I recognized but that I was inexplicably reluctant to consider.
The curdled fog was as thick as ever, but gradually it began to brighten. Smears of blurry light appeared in the murk: buildings and streetlamps along the shore.
Orson whined with delight—or just relief—at these signs of civilization, but we weren’t any safer in town than out of it.
When we left the southern horn entirely and entered Embarcadero Way, I paused to take my cap from the jacket pocket in which I had tucked it. I put it on and gave the visor a tug. The Elephant Man adjusts his costume.
Orson peered up at me, cocked his head consideringly, and then chuffed as though in approval. He was the Elephant Man’s dog, after all, and as such, a measure of his own self-image was dependent upon the style and grace with which I comported myself.
Because of the streetlamps, visibility had increased to perhaps a hundred feet. Like the ghost tides of an ancient and long-dead sea, fog surged off the bay and into the streets; each fine drop of mist refracted the golden sodium-vapor light and translated it to the next drop.
If members of the troop still accompanied us, they would be forced to lurk at a greater distance here than they had on the barren peninsula, to avoid being seen. Like players in a recasting of Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” they would have to confine their skulking to parks, unilluminated alleyways, balconies, high ledges, parapets, and rooftops.
At this late hour, no pedestrians or motorists were in sight. The town appeared to have been abandoned.
I was overcome by the disturbing notion that these silent and empty streets foreshadowed a real, frightening desolation that would befall Moonlight Bay in the not-too-distant future. Our little burg was preparing to be a ghost town.
I climbed onto my bike and headed north on Embarcadero Way. The man who had contacted me through Sasha, at the radio station, was waiting on his boat at the marina.
As I pedaled along the deserted avenue, my mind returned to the millennium monkeys. I was sure that I had identified the most fundamental difference between ordinary rhesuses and this extraordinary troop that secretly roamed the night, but I was reluctant to accept my own conclusion, inevitable though it seemed:
These monkeys were smarter than ordinary monkeys.
Way smarter, radically smarter.
They had understood the purpose of Bobby’s camera, and they had stolen it. They filched his new camera, too.
They recognized my face among the faces of the thirty dolls in Angela’s workroom, and they used that one to taunt me. Later, they set a fire to conceal Angela’s murder.
The big brows at Fort Wyvern might have been engaged in secret bacteriological-warfare research, but that didn’t explain why their laboratory monkeys were markedly smarter than any monkeys that had previously walked the earth.
Just how smart
was
“markedly smarter”? Maybe not smart enough to win a bundle on
Jeopardy!
Maybe not smart enough to teach poetry at the university level or to successfully manage a radio station or to track the patterns of surf worldwide, maybe not even smart enough to write a
New York Times
bestseller—but perhaps smart enough to be the most dangerous, uncontrollable pest humanity had ever known. Imagine what damage rats could do, how rapidly their numbers would grow, if they were even half as smart as human beings and could learn how to avoid all traps and poisons.
Were these monkeys truly escapees from a laboratory, loose in the world and cleverly eluding capture? If so, how did they get to be so intelligent in the first place? What did they want? What was their agenda? Why hadn’t a massive effort been launched to track them down, round them up, and return them to better cages from which they could never break free?
Or were they tools being used by someone at Wyvern? The way the cops use trained police dogs. The way the Navy uses dolphins to search for enemy submarines and, in wartime—it is rumored—even to plant magnetic packages of explosives on the hulls of targeted boats.
A thousand other questions swarmed through my mind. All of them were equally crazy.
Depending on the answers, the ramifications of these monkeys’ heightened intelligence could be earth-shattering. The possible consequences to human civilization were especially alarming when you considered the viciousness of these animals and their apparently innate hostility.
Angela’s prediction of doom might not have been farfetched, might actually have been
less
pessimistic than my assessment of the situation would be when—if ever—I knew all the facts. Certainly, doom had come to Angela herself.
I also intuited that the monkeys were not the entire story. They were but one chapter of an epic. Other astonishments were awaiting discovery.
Compared to the project at Wyvern, Pandora’s fabled box, from which had been unleashed all the evils that plague humanity—wars, pestilence, diseases, famines, floods—might prove to have held only a collection of petty nuisances.
In my haste to get to the marina, I was cycling too fast to allow Orson to keep pace with me. He was sprinting full throttle, ears flapping, panting hard, but falling steadily behind.
In truth, I was cranking the bike to the max not because I was in a hurry to reach the marina but because, unconsciously, I wanted to outrace the tidal wave of terror sweeping toward us. There was no escaping it, however, and no matter how furiously I pedaled, I could outrun nothing but my dog.
Recalling Dad’s final words, I stopped pedaling and coasted until Orson was able to stay at my side without heroic effort.
Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life—and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.
Besides, the best way to deal with a rising sea of trouble is to catch the wave at the zero break and ride it out, slide along the face straight into the cathedral, get totally Ziplocked in the green room, walk the board all the way through the barrel, hooting, showing no fear. That’s not only cool: It’s classic.
22
With a gentle and even tender sound, like flesh on flesh in a honeymoon bed, low waves slipped between the pilings and slapped against the sea wall. The damp air offered a faint and pleasant aromatic mèlange of brine, fresh kelp, creosote, rusting iron, and other fragrances I couldn’t quite identify.
The marina, tucked into the sheltered northeast corner of the bay, offers docking for fewer than three hundred vessels, only six of which are full-time residences for their owners. Although social life in Moonlight Bay does not center around boating, there is a long waiting list for any slip that becomes available.
I walked my bike toward the west end of the main pier, which ran parallel to shore. The tires swished and bumped softly across the dew-wet, uneven planks. Only one boat in the marina had lights in its windows at that hour. Dock lamps, though dim, showed me the way through the fog.
Because the fishing fleet ties up farther out along the northern horn of the bay, the comparatively sheltered marina is reserved for pleasure craft. There are sloops and ketches and yawls ranging from modest to impressive—although more of the former than the latter—motor yachts mostly of manageable length and price, a few Boston Whalers, and even two houseboats. The largest sailing yacht—in fact, the largest boat—docked here is currently
Sunset Dancer,
a sixty-foot Windship cutter. Of the motor yachts, the largest is
Nostromo,
a fifty-six-foot Bluewater coastal cruiser; and it was to this boat that I was headed.
At the west end of the pier, I took a ninety-degree turn onto a subsidiary pier that featured docking slips on both sides. The
Nostromo
was in the last berth on the right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
That was the code Sasha had used to identify the man who had come to the radio station seeking me, who hadn’t wanted his name used on the phone, and who had been reluctant to come to Bobby’s house to talk with me. It was a line from a poem by Robert Frost, one that most eavesdroppers would be unlikely to recognize, and I had assumed that it referred to Roosevelt Frost, who owned the
Nostromo.
As I leaned my bicycle against the dock railing near the gangway to Roosevelt’s slip, tidal action caused the boats to wallow in their berths. They creaked and groaned like arthritic old men murmuring feeble complaints in their sleep.
I had never bothered to chain my bike when I left it unattended, because until this night Moonlight Bay had been a refuge from the crime that infected the modern world. By the time this weekend passed, our picturesque town might lead the country in murders, mutilations, and priest beatings, per capita, but we probably didn’t have to worry about a dramatic increase in bicycle theft.
The gangway was steep because the tide was not high, and it was slippery with condensation. Orson descended as carefully as I did.
We were two-thirds of the way down to the port-side finger of the slip when a low voice, hardly more than a gruff whisper, seeming to originate magically from the fog directly over my head, demanded,
“Who goes there?”
Startled, I almost fell, but I clutched the dripping gangway handrail and kept my feet under me.
The Bluewater
563
is a sleek, white, low-profile, double-deck cruiser with an upper helm station that is enclosed by a hard top and canvas walls. The only light aboard came from behind the curtained windows of the aft stateroom and the main cabin amidships, on the lower deck. The open upper deck and the helm station were dark and fog-wrapped, and I couldn’t see who had spoken.
“Who goes there?”
the man whispered again, no louder but with a harder edge to his voice.
I recognized the voice now as that of Roosevelt Frost.
Taking my cue from him, I whispered: “It’s me, Chris Snow.”
“Shield your eyes, son.”
I made a visor of my hand and squinted as a flashlight blazed, pinning me where I stood on the gangway. It switched off almost at once, and Roosevelt said, still in a whisper, “Is that your dog with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And nothing else?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing else with you, no one else?”
“No, sir.”
“Come aboard, then.”
I could see him now, because he had moved closer to the railing on the open upper deck, aft of the helm station. I couldn’t identify him even from this relatively short distance, however, because he was screened by the pea-soup fog, the night, and his own darkness.
Urging Orson to precede me, I boarded the boat through the gap in the port railing, and we quickly climbed the open steps to the upper deck.
When we got to the top, I saw that Roosevelt Frost was holding a shotgun. Pretty soon the National Rifle Association would move its headquarters to Moonlight Bay. He wasn’t aiming the gun at me, but I was sure he’d been covering me with it until he had been able to identify me in the beam of the flashlight.
Even without the shotgun, he was a formidable figure. Six feet four. Neck like a dock piling. Shoulders as wide as a staysail boom. Deep chest. With a two-hand spread way bigger than the diameter of the average helm wheel. This was the guy who Ahab should have called to coldcock Moby Dick. He had been a football star in the sixties and early seventies, when sportswriters routinely referred to him as the Sledgehammer. Though he was now sixty-three, a successful businessman who owned a men’s clothing store, a minimall, and half-interest in the Moonlight Bay Inn and Country Club, he appeared capable of pulverizing any of the genetic-mutant, steroid-pumped behemoths who played some of the power positions on contemporary teams.
“Hello, dog,” he murmured.
Orson chuffed.
“Hold this, son,” Frost whispered, handing the shotgun to me.
A pair of curious-looking, high-tech binoculars hung on a strap around his neck. He brought them to his eyes and, from this top-deck vantage point overlooking surrounding craft, surveyed the pier along which I had recently approached the
Nostromo.
“How can you see anything?” I wondered.
“Night-vision binoculars. They magnify available light eighteen thousand times.”
“But the fog…”
He pressed a button on the glasses, and as a mechanism purred inside them, he said, “They also have an infrared mode, shows you only heat sources.”
“Must be lots of heat sources around the marina.”
“Not with boat engines off. Besides, I’m interested only in heat sources
on the move.
”
“People.”
“Maybe.”
“Who?”
“Whoever might’ve been following you. Now hush, son.”
I hushed. As Roosevelt patiently scanned the marina, I passed the next minute wondering about this former football star and local businessman who was not, after all, quite what he seemed.
I wasn’t surprised, exactly. Since sundown, the people I’d encountered had revealed dimensions to their lives of which I had previously been unaware. Even Bobby had been keeping secrets: the shotgun in the broom closet, the troop of monkeys. When I considered Pia Klick’s conviction that she was the reincarnation of Kaha Huna, which Bobby had been keeping to himself, I better understood his bitter, disputatious response to any view that he felt smacked of New Age thinking, including my occasional innocent comments about my strange dog. At least Orson, if no one else, had remained in character throughout the night—although, considering the way things were going, I wouldn’t have been bowled over if suddenly he revealed an ability to stand on his hind paws and tap dance with mesmerizing showmanship.
“No one’s trailing after you,” said Roosevelt as he lowered the night glasses and took back his shotgun. “This way, son.”
I followed him aft across the sun deck to an open hatch on the starboard side.
Roosevelt paused and looked back, over the top of my head, to the port railing where Orson still lingered. “Here now. Come along, dog.”
The mutt hung behind, but not because he sensed anything lurking on the dock. As usual, he was curiously and uncharacteristically shy around Roosevelt.
Our host’s hobby was “animal communication”—a quintessential New Age concept that had been fodder for most daytime television talk shows, although Roosevelt was discreet about his talent and employed it only at the request of neighbors and friends. The mere mention of animal communication had been able to start Bobby foaming at the mouth even long before Pia Klick had decided that she was the goddess of surfing in search of her Kahuna. Roosevelt claimed to be able to discern the anxieties and desires of troubled pets that were brought to him. He didn’t charge for this service, but his lack of interest in money didn’t convince Bobby:
Hell, Snow, I never said he was a charlatan trying to make a buck. He’s well-meaning. But he just ran headfirst into a goalpost once too often.
According to Roosevelt, the only animal with which he had never been able to communicate was my dog. He considered Orson a challenge, and he never missed an opportunity to try to chat him up. “Come here now, old pup.”
With apparent reluctance, Orson finally accepted the invitation. His claws clicked on the deck.
Carrying the shotgun, Roosevelt Frost went through the open hatch and down a set of molded fiberglass stairs lit only by a faint pearly glow at the bottom. He ducked his head, hunched his huge shoulders, pulled his arms against his sides to make himself smaller, but nevertheless appeared at risk of becoming wedged in the tight stairway.
Orson hesitated, tucked his tail between his legs, but finally descended behind Roosevelt, and I went last. The steps led to a porch-style afterdeck overhung by the cantilevered sun deck.
Orson was reluctant to go into the stateroom, which looked cozy and welcoming in the low light of a nightstand lamp. After Roosevelt and I stepped inside, however, Orson vigorously shook the condensed fog off his coat, spraying the entire afterdeck, and then followed us. I could almost believe that he’d hung back out of consideration, to avoid splattering us.
When Orson was inside, Roosevelt locked the door. He tested it to be sure it was secure. Then tested it again.
Beyond the aft stateroom, the main cabin included a galley with bleached-mahogany cabinets and matching faux-mahogany floor, a dining area, and a salon in one open and spacious floor plan. Out of respect for me, it was illuminated only by one downlight in a living-room display case full of football trophies and by two fat green candles standing in saucers on the dinette table.
The air was redolent of fresh-brewed coffee, and when Roosevelt offered a cup, I accepted.
“Sorry to hear about your dad,” he said.
“Well, at least it’s over.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Is it really?”
“I mean, for him.”
“But not for you. Not after what you’ve seen.”
I frowned. “How do you know what I’ve seen?”
“The word’s around,” he said cryptically.
“What do you—”
He held up one hubcap-size hand. “We’ll talk about it in a minute. That’s why I asked you to come here. But I’m still trying to think through what I need to tell you. Let me get around to it in my own way, son.”
Coffee served, the big man took off his nylon windbreaker, hung it on the back of one of the oversized chairs, and sat at the table. He indicated that I should sit catercorner to him, and with his foot, he pushed out another chair. “Here you go, dog,” he said, offering the third seat to Orson.
Although this was standard procedure when we visited Roosevelt, Orson pretended incomprehension. He settled onto the floor in front of the refrigerator.
“That is unacceptable,” Roosevelt quietly informed him.
Orson yawned.
With one foot, Roosevelt gently rattled the chair that he had pushed away from the table for the dog. “Be a good puppy.”
Orson yawned more elaborately than before. He was overplaying his disinterest.
“If I have to, pup, I’ll come over there, pick you up, and put you in this chair,” Roosevelt said, “which will be an embarrassment to your master, who would like you to be a courteous guest.”
He was smiling good-naturedly, and no slightest threatening tone darkened his voice. His broad face was that of a black Buddha, and his eyes were full of kindness and amusement.
“Be a good puppy,” Roosevelt repeated.
Orson swept the floor with his tail, caught himself, and stopped wagging. He shyly shifted his stare from Roosevelt to me and cocked his head.
I shrugged.
Once more Roosevelt lightly rattled the offered chair with his foot.
Although Orson got up from the floor, he didn’t immediately approach the table.
From a pocket of the nylon windbreaker that hung on his chair, Roosevelt extracted a dog biscuit shaped like a bone. He held it in the candlelight so that Orson could see it clearly. Between his big thumb and forefinger, the biscuit appeared to be almost as tiny as a trinket from a charm bracelet, but it was in fact a large treat. With ceremonial solemnity, Roosevelt placed it on the table in front of the seat that was reserved for the dog.
With wanting eyes, Orson followed the biscuit hand. He padded toward the table but stopped short of it. He was being more than usually standoffish.
From the windbreaker, Roosevelt extracted a second biscuit. He held it close to the candles, turning it as if it were an exquisite jewel shining in the flame, and then he put it on the table beside the first biscuit.
Although he whined with desire, Orson didn’t come to the chair. He ducked his head shyly and then looked up from under his brow at our host. This was the only man into whose eyes Orson was sometimes reluctant to stare.
Roosevelt took a third biscuit from the windbreaker pocket. Holding it under his broad and oft-broken nose, he inhaled deeply, lavishly, as if savoring the incomparable aroma of the bone-shaped treat.
Raising his head, Orson sniffed, too.
Roosevelt smiled slyly, winked at the dog—and then popped the biscuit into his mouth. He crunched it with enormous delight, rinsed it down with a swig of coffee, and let out a sigh of pleasure.
I was impressed. I had never seen him do this before. “What did that taste like?”