Monkey Wars (35 page)

Afterward they all gathered in a circle as Cadby told them about the fear he had felt, the sense of utter worthlessness.

“And that's exactly what Tyrell has done to
us
,” Mico said after Cadby had bared his soul. “He's turned us all into outsiders. He's built a world where we don't exist. Which is why we have to destroy him.”

M
ico looked up at the sky, waiting for the monsoon.

This was the most dangerous season for monkeys, when the rain pummeled down, wild and unpredictable, stinging like thorns; when food was hard to pilfer because market traders were driven from the streets; when storm gullies were monstrously transformed into raging torrents, hurtling unlucky monkeys to their deaths.

No monkey ventured out in the monsoon unless it was essential, which was why Mico decided that it would be the perfect time to declare war on the langur. It was the very last thing they would be expecting, and it was why the final section of rhesus training was devoted to water war.

They began in Kolkata's famous Dancing Fountains. At dusk every evening, crowds of human children trooped to the park for a surreal nightly show: dramatic music thundered through the loudspeakers, banks of colored light burst into life as countless moving nozzles squirted torrents of water into the air in perfect sequence, painting fleeting pictures in the evening sky.

Swinging deftly along the telegraph wires, the rhesus dropped down into the splash pools just before the show was about to start. They were not there to play or bathe, but to conquer their fear of water, to sit absolutely still as the sprays pounded them.

The opening sequence of the show was quite restrained
—alternating pulses of water shot up into the air, and as the patterns dissolved into rain the monkeys were soaked just like in a regular storm. But as the show progressed the high-pressure jets spun into action, creating elaborate concentric swirls, turning the splash pools into a raging confusion of painful spray.

In the early days, this was the point when most of the monkeys dived out of the fountains. The water was just too fierce and frightening—it felt as if you were drowning.

Fig was the first to conquer her fear, standing frozen like a statue as the water battered her from all directions, absorbing the pain without complaint.

Seeing Fig's resolve, Papina refused to be outdone, and where the females led, the males had to follow. Cadby put on a brave face and endured it even though he clearly hated every moment. But the biggest turnaround was with Joop and Rafa. At first they were terrified and had to be dragged into the splash pools, but once they realized that they could still breathe even though water was firing at them from all directions, they relaxed and started to enjoy the sheer anarchy of the experience.

As the troop's water confidence grew, Mico and Gu-Nah moved on to the Hooghly River.

It was a huge step—the murky water of the great river was a world apart from the Dancing Fountains. Here they were confronted by frighteningly fast currents that whipped branches and debris past with unrelenting energy.

“The trick is to remember that the currents may be strong, but they'll pull you right across the city with very little effort. They're your friends,” said Mico. “And who doesn't want to have strong friends?”

They started by rummaging among the flotsam in the mud and experimenting to see what floated, what sank, and which bits of debris were big enough to keep a monkey above the water.

Clasping these improvised floats, they launched themselves into the Hooghly. Under no circumstances were they to paddle or swim; they had to let their floats do the work while they concentrated on feeling the river, steering by changing the position of their legs.

With practice, fear turned into excitement
—surrendering to a massive force while using ingenuity to surf it gave the monkeys a huge thrill. Within days, they were riding the river for the entire length of the curve that arced all the way from the Howrah Station Jetty to the Botanical Gardens.

It meant the rhesus had mastery of land, air and water. Now all they had to do was watch the sky and wait for the rains to come.

Tyrell barely looked at the sky these days—the monsoon didn't concern him. In fact, the routine business of ruling his empire no longer held the fascination it once did. Tyrell was now absorbed by only one thing: the great plan.

This was his bid for immortality; driving humans out of their own city would mean that never again would humans
anywhere treat monkeys
as inferior.

No effort was spared in visualizing the great plan. Sweto and Breri, now the most trusted of Tyrell's inner circle, worked tirelessly in the rooms at the top of the summer house tower. Under the lord ruler's direction, they recarved the wall map, flattening some areas, shaping new ones, creating a bold three-dimensional impression of what the city would look like after the great expulsion.

What made Tyrell happy, though, made Hummingbird uneasy. When the Barbary had once asked
how
the humans were to be driven out, Tyrell flew into a rage, accusing him of disloyalty, implying that to harbor such doubts bordered on treason.

So everyone stopped asking. But Hummingbird could see disaster looming, which is why one evening he secretly gathered all his troops on the canopy above the stage of Kolkata's open-air theater.

“We are Barbaries,” he declared. “We fight for hire. That's why we came. And Tyrell rewarded us well. But Tyrell has lost his mind.”

An uncomfortable murmur ran through the troops—such blunt speaking nearly always heralded a bitter fight.

“His lust to fight the humans has blinded him. We must abandon Tyrell before his world collapses. Or we'll be dragged down with him.”

Disappointed silence. So it was all over. The Barbaries would have to move on, leave this life of ease and take their chances on the road once again.

Then just as they started to disperse, a lone voice spoke up; not the laconic voice of a typical Barbary, but a smoother, more articulate one.

“Perhaps there's another way of looking at this,” said Oatsack.

“My decision is made,” pronounced Hummingbird.

“But,” Oatsack persisted, “surely the facts speak for themselves?” He stood up, determined to make his case. “We Barbaries have roamed far and wide, fought many battles for many leaders, but which of us has ever encountered a troop as powerful as these langur of Kolkata?”

Oatsack let the question hang in the air for a few moments, but no one had an answer.

“The fact is,” he continued, “Tyrell has built the greatest empire known to monkeykind, and it is frankly inconceivable that it will collapse.”

“Everything crumbles!” boomed Hummingbird, infuriated by Oatsack's oily rhetoric, which mimicked the tricksy manner of the langur. “Even things the humans build crumble. Remember the temples we saw in the jungles? Reduced to rubble and ruin!”

“Tyrell's point exactly,” persisted Oatsack. “If mere creepers can triumph over humans, why can't monkeys?”

“I'll tell you why,” said Hummingbird, his patience wearing dangerously thin. “Because most langur don't want to fight humans. They're too frightened to say it, but look into their eyes. A rift has opened between Tyrell and his troop.”

“Then
we
should step in and take the langur from him,” Oatsack retorted defiantly. “We can depose Tyrell and rule the langur ourselves. We can keep the empire he's created and enjoy our privileges without having to uproot all over again.”

He gazed at the troops, making his appeal directly to their indolence. “How far will we have to roam, how many battles will we have to fight before we find a life as good as the one we enjoy now?”

Tentative nods of agreement told Oatsack that his point had hit home. All eyes turned to Hummingbird for a response.

The leader drew himself up to his full height. “We are warriors who fight, not politicians who talk. Barbaries fight. It's served us well for generations. If Tyrell knew who he was, he wouldn't have dreamed up his great plan. But he is doomed. And I tell you this: long after Tyrell has fallen, the Barbaries will still be a force that is feared and respected.”

Hummingbird sat down with the gravitas of unshakeable conviction; his words had chimed with deep tribal memories, and in the silence the will of the Barbary troops swung behind him.

Only Oatsack didn't feel it. “Well, you're wrong!” he blurted out petulantly. “All of you! This is just the kind of primitive thinking that condemns us to a life of brutality!”

Hummingbird kept frighteningly calm. He stared Oatsack in the eye, and saw that this young monkey would always be trouble.

“That's not how the rest of us see it,” Hummingbird said coldly.

It was Breri who made the gruesome discovery.

He had risen early to walk the perimeter wall, and saw a strange shape hanging from a branch of the lemon tree that marked the start of the Barbaries' quarters.

Breri strained his eyes in the dim light, trying to make out what the shape was, but couldn't place it. He swung through the canopy to get a closer look…then froze in horror.

Hanging by its feet was the battered and bloody body of Oatsack. His face had been pummeled until it was barely recognizable; his body was twisted and broken, the fur matted with thick clots of blood, some of which still dripped lazily into the dust.

Desperate to raise the alarm, Breri stumbled past the lemon tree and into the Barbary compound…only to find it deserted. The apes had vanished in the night as if they'd never existed.

Fear gripped Breri's throat; he struggled to stop himself retching.

Get to Tyrell. Must get to Tyrell, tell him what's happened. Maybe the lord ruler already knew. Maybe he had sent the Barbaries on some secret mission.

But even as he thought it, Breri knew it wasn't true.

And then he felt a drop of rain patter down on his head.

T
he rhesus were perched on the water tower when the first drops of monsoon rain landed like falling berries hitting the dust.

Finally the waiting was over.

They gazed up at the menacing sky in silence, wondering which of them would survive the coming days.

It took Joop's agitated cry to tear everyone's eyes from the storm clouds, but as Mico watched the young monkey scurry across the steelworks yard his stomach tightened. Joop had been on lookout duty on the synagogue tower and wasn't due to return until the middle of the day—if he'd abandoned his post, something must be wrong.

“The Barbaries…” Joop gasped when he got within earshot. “The Barbaries have
gone
!”

“Gone?” exclaimed Mico.

Joop started laughing as he scrambled up the ladder. “They moved out of the cemetery at dawn. All of them, the whole troop. At first I thought they were on a mission, so I followed. But they headed out of the city and just kept going!”

Mico and Gu-Nah looked at each other, hardly daring to believe it could be true.

“I don't trust it,” Twitcher said with a frown. “They're setting a trap.”

“I swear! It was the whole troop. Even their young,” Joop retorted.

“Barbaries never mobilize as a whole troop,” said Gu-Nah. “They prefer small strike squads.”

“I saw it with my own eyes,” said Joop. “They were heading into the sunrise, pacing themselves for a long journey. I tell you, they've gone!”

Mico looked at his troops; a fleeting smile passed across his face. “Then let's go to war.”

By noon the whole sky had turned black, as clouds tumbled over each other in the race to deluge the city. Not long after, the winds arrived, great battering rams driving through the streets, forcing those with homes to flee inside, and those who lived in the shanty towns to pray their flimsy dwellings wouldn't blow away.

Cars put on their lights, confusing the street dogs, who howled plaintively; children dangled excitedly out of windows.

Finally the deluge was unleashed with merciless ferocity, pouring off roofs in glistening sheets, overwhelming gutters, surging through every twisting street and alley, soaking rich and poor alike.

At first, life in the city ground to a halt. People laughed and drank and celebrated the watery bombardment, but by the following morning the novelty had worn off; life had to get back to normal, rain or no rain…

And the same applied to the langur.

Because Tyrell used food to underpin political control, he needed a plentiful supply regardless of the season. To help keep the langur storehouses full, he had instigated daily raids on the trucks that got stuck in the traffic jams gridlocking the city every morning.

Langur elites would hide in the shadows, waiting until the traffic ground to a halt; then a scout would hurry down the line of trucks smelling for the juiciest produce, steal a sample and take it back to his commanding officer. If the C.O. deemed the food good enough, the squad would swing into action, pilfering and ferrying as much as they could to a temporary store until they were chased away by the drivers.

The system worked well—by targeting a different approach road each day, the langur made sure that no individual truck was hit so often that it provoked a violent backlash; and by using a makeshift store they ensured that even if a mission was cut short, they would still return with some supplies. That was the crucial thing—if you wanted to have a future in the langur, you never returned empty-handed.

It was precisely because these raids had become such an important part of Tyrell's regime that Mico made them the target of his first strike.

Scampering across the glistening rooftops, Joop and Jola made their way to the synagogue in the center of the city and clambered up the maintenance rungs until they were at the weathervane on top of the spire; from here they had a commanding view over the streets. They had brought with them a set of religious masks stolen from a street market a few days earlier; these were to be their signal flags, each mask representing a different approach road.

As soon as the traffic started to snarl up, Joop spotted a langur squad moving toward Central Avenue—that meant Ganesh. Jola hung the elephant's head mask from the weathervane and, across the city in his temporary command post, Mico saw it.

“Central Avenue!” he shouted, and swooped down onto the roof of a ring-road tram, quickly followed by Twitcher, Fig and three of the strongest young rhesus. Speed was everything; it was vital they got into position before the langur started their raid.

Mico's team leaped off at the end of Madan Street; Gu-Nah, Papina, Cadby and the others who were riding the following tram stayed on for a few more streets. They knew that when the Central Avenue gridlock was targeted, the langur used a derelict bakery as their temporary store; Gu-Nah's team was to surround this bakery.

The monsoon floods had made traffic congestion even worse than usual, and many truck drivers had given up all hope of moving anywhere before lunch. Bunkered down in their cabs with newspapers and cigarettes, they paid little attention to their loads, which made the monkeys' job a little less dangerous.

Mico's team worked their way down the line of trucks, trying to decide which ones would be carrying delicacies that would be irresistible to the langur palate. Twitcher suggested a load of walnuts, but Mico shook his head. “If you could steal anything, would you choose nuts?”

“We have to decide soon!” urged Twitcher. Further up the line he could already see two langur scouts approaching the traffic jam.

“It has to be just right,” said Mico, “or there's no point.”

Holding their nerve, the rhesus moved to the next truck…and the next…until suddenly Fig froze. She breathed in deeply, savouring the smell. “Peaches. A whole truck of them.”

“Now
that
is irresistible,” Mico said with a broad smile.

The monkeys scampered up the sides of the truck, slid under the tarpaulin and hid between the crates of fruit.

It should have all been so routine for the langur—dive under the tarpaulin, smash the crates, grab some peaches and ferry them away.

But then a primal scream tore out of the darkness.

The langur scout spun round and saw a flash of teeth. A split second later they plunged into his neck and he felt the sticky warmth of blood on his fur.

The others heard the grotesque gurgle from his punctured throat, reeled back, and were suddenly overwhelmed by rhesus fighters dropping down on them, smashing into their chests, twisting their necks.

The langurs' training kicked in immediately. They fought back, lashing out with fists, tearing into whatever flesh they could reach with claws and teeth.

Trapped in the spaces between the fruit crates, it was an ugly fight, a raw, brutal battle for survival.

In the mayhem, hidden from daylight, Fig unleashed her rage, pouncing on one of the langur troopers, battering his limbs and clawing at his face, venting her black hatred on his flesh like a monkey possessed. He collapsed under her relentless blows, but Fig didn't stop. She hammered her fists down on his broken body, beating every last drop of life from him. Even when the bottom of the truck was slippery with blood, still she kept destroying until the pain in her own heart had emptied.

It was Twitcher who reached out and grabbed her. “Enough. That's enough.”

Fig caught her breath, then gazed dispassion
ately at her ghastly handiwork. She looked up at the others and blinked.

“What next?”

At the disused bakery the langur squad commander was busy organizing the pilfered supplies. So far this morning, they'd grabbed some sugared sweets, a sackful of cakes and some cartons of orange juice. They'd need far more if they were to impress high command, but the morning was young, the line of trucks long, and hopes for a bumper haul were high.

Until one of his troopers ran into the bakery, breathless and frightened.

“They're dead!”

The commander stared at the trooper in astonishment. It had been a while since he'd seen terror on a langur face; usually it was on the faces of their victims.

“Something attacked them!”

“Show me,” growled the commander.

They splashed through the mud of the rain-soaked streets, back down the gridlock of trucks, until the trooper stopped at the entrance to a dark alley.

“In there, sir,” he said fearfully.

The commander strode into the alley…and stopped dead as he saw the broken bodies of three of his troopers, the blood pouring from their wounds, mixing with the rain that swirled down from the gutters.

Shock. Then confusion.

“How?”

The trooper pointed fearfully to the peach truck. “Something in there killed them. Some…monster.”

The commander hesitated. What could have cut his monkeys down with such ruthless force? Part of him wanted to retreat—wh
atever was in that truck clearly had ferocious power. But his orders were to steal a day's worth of food, and if he returned without it he would be harshly punished. Circumstances may have changed but his orders hadn't.

The commander had no choice but to gather his entire squad, both the pilfering monkeys and the ones at the bakery, and marshal them into a ring surrounding the peach truck.

“GO!” he ordered, and in one coordinated move, his troops scrambled up the sides and dived under the tarpaulin, swooping in from all directions so that whatever was inside had no chance of escape.

The langur surged through the darkness, banging crates with their fists, driving their sticks into the gaps, ransacking every hiding place…

And found nothing.

No monster. No enemy. Nothing.

Keep moving, keep changing the parameters of battle—that was the key for Mico's monkeys.

No sooner had they dumped the langur bodies than they scurried away, letting the heavy rain cover their tracks and wash away their scent. Then, doubling back through the sidestreets, they linked up with Gu-Nah and Papina's team.