Carpathian 23 - Dark Storm

holding on as if their lives depended
     on it. As a rule, woolly monkeys lived in the higher elevations, farther up in the
     cloud forest, and they weren’t threatening to anyone. They lived in social groups
     of up to forty, but the numbers dropping from the trees and attacking all members
     in their party were far more than forty.
    Sobbing, Riley threw monkeys off of her, uncaring that they were using teeth and claws
     to drive her to the earth, and every time she hurled one away, they shredded skin.
     She rose to her feet fast, whirling in a circle trying to orient herself. The woolly
     monkeys were everywhere, an army of them, and the men were trying to fight them off,
     just as she was.
    She kicked at them, and one sank his teeth into her leg, trying to drag her down just
     as she spotted the dense foliage where her mother fought off the crazed primates.
     The entire scene was surreal, unreal, a nightmare of violence and blood and screams.
     A gun barked behind her, and somewhere in front of her, another answered. She ran
     forward, kicking and swearing, sweeping a path clear to get to her mother. Twice she
     shot one of the monkeys in midair as they flung themselves at her face.
    She ran toward the spot where she was certain her mother had been dragged. Annabel’s
     screams were loud and shocked and horrible, an animal in pain, pierced through with
     utter terror. Riley couldn’t see her through the screen of bodies. She had no idea
     where the porter, Capa, or Gary was, so there was no way to fire into the thrashing
     bodies of the primates safely even though every cell in her body commanded her to
     do so.
    Woolly monkeys arrived in masses, far more than one troop of forty, dropping through
     the trees faster than the humans could get on their feet. The battle was something
     out of a horror movie, vicious and unreal. Her mother’s screams abruptly stopped.
     Riley’s heart jumped and more adrenaline flooded her body. The lack of sound was far
     worse.
    Cursing, sobbing, Riley fought her way through the solid barriers of maddened primates
     to get to the place where Annabel had been driven off the trail. There was blood everywhere,
     dark pools of it. As she kicked away an aggressive monkey, a crimson arch sprayed
     into the air, splashing across the leaves of nearby brush, across tree trunks and
     the monkeys. For a moment she thought the monkeys were bleeding, but then she saw
     him. The porter. Not Raul, but his brother, Capa, chopping down over and over with
     a bloody machete.
    Her heart stopped. She couldn’t see if it was her mother or the monkeys he was attacking,
     but there was so much blood. Far too much. With another vicious kick, she sent another
     monkey sprawling on the ground, giving her a glimpse of her mother’s body. She squeezed
     the trigger over and over, emptying the magazine into Capa, running forward as she
     shot him, knowing it was already too late. She slapped the second magazine into place.
    Simultaneously, Gary shot, his bullets entering the porter from the side, spinning
     him around. Uncaring that she was running into a blaze of gunfire, Riley rushed forward,
     kicking and punching and even shooting the monkeys to get to her mother. Capa went
     down hard, the machete flying from his hand. Gary continued to shoot the primates
     surrounding her mother.
    Riley pushed aside the brush and stopped abruptly, her mouth wide open, an agonized
     scream nearly shredding her vocal cords. She stared into the brush with absolute horror
     and shock filling her. She wasn’t even certain what she was seeing, comprehension
     impossible. For one moment, it looked as if she’d stumbled on a massacre. Her mind
     tried to tell her that everything soaking into the ground and brush was from monkeys,
     but her body had gone into some kind of shock, almost numb, frozen and somewhere deep
     inside she knew, she just couldn’t accept the truth. There was so much blood. She
     couldn’t see flesh, only strips of cloth and hair. She forced her body to move forward,
     bile rising.
    “No, Riley.” Arms came around her, preventing her from moving. Hands covered hers,
     removing the Glock. “Come away from here. There’s nothing you can do and there’s no
     need to see this.” Gary’s voice was extremely gentle, coming from a long distance
     away.
    The world faded in and out. Her stomach lurched and she tried to turn her head, to
     look away from the mangled body, but it was impossible. The