Fear Nothing

swept it to the floor. Sparks spurted from the wall receptacle when the plug tore out of the socket.
        I remembered Angela's account of the rhesus bombarding her with apples hard enough to split her lip. Bobby maintained an uncluttered kitchen, but if these beasts opened cabinet doors and started firing glasses and dishes at us, they could do serious damage even if we did enjoy an advantage in firepower. A dinner plate, spinning like a Frisbee, catching you across the bridge of the nose, might be nearly as effective as a bullet.
        Two more dire-eyed creatures sprang up from the porch floor into the frame of the shattered window. They bared their teeth at us and hissed.
        The paper napkin over Sasha's gun hand trembled visibly-and not because it was caught by a draft from the window.
        In spite of the shrieking-chattering-hissing of the intruders, in spite of the bluster of the March wind at the broken windows and the rolling thunder and the drumming rain, I thought I heard Bobby singing under his breath. He was largely ignoring the monkeys on the far side of the kitchen, focusing intently on the window that remained intact, across the table from him-and his lips were moving.
        Perhaps emboldened by our lack of response, perhaps believing us to be immobilized by fear, the two increasingly agitated creatures in the broken-out windows now swung inside and moved in opposite directions along the counter, forming pairs with each of the first two intruders.
        Either Bobby began to sing louder or stark terror sharpened my hearing, because suddenly I could recognize the song that he was singing. “Daydream Believer.” It was golden-oldie teen pop, first recorded by the Monkees.
        Sasha must have heard it, too, because she said, “A blast from the past.”
        Two more members of the troop climbed into the windows above the sink, clinging to the frames, hellfire in their eyes, squealing monkey-hate at us.
        The four already in the room were shrieking louder than ever, bouncing up and down on the counters, shaking their fists in the air, baring their teeth and spitting at us.
        They were smart but not smart enough. Their rage was rapidly clouding their judgment.
        “Wipeout,” Bobby said.
         Here we go.
        Instead of scooting backward swung sideways in it, rose fluidly to his feet, and brought up the shotgun as if he'd had both military training and ballet lessons. Flame spouted from the muzzle, and the first deafening blast caught the two latest arrivals at the windows, blowing them backward onto the porch, as though they were only a child's stuffed toys, and the second round chopped down the pair on the counter to the left of the sink.
        My ears were ringing as though I were inside a tolling cathedral bell, and although the roar of the gunfire in this confined space was loud enough to be disorienting, I was on my feet before the 12-gauge boomed the second time, as was Sasha, who turned away from the table and squeezed off a round toward the remaining pair of intruders just as Bobby dealt with numbers three and four.
        As they fired and the kitchen shook with the blasts, the nearest window exploded at me. Air-surfing on a cascade of glass, a screaming rhesus landed on the table in our midst, knocking over two of the three candles and extinguishing one of them, spraying rain off its coat, sending a pan of pizza spinning to the floor.
        I brought up the Glock, but the latest arrival flung itself onto Sasha's back. If I shot it, the slug would pass straight through the damn thing and probably kill her, too.
        By the time I kicked a chair out of the way and got around the table, Sasha was screaming, and the squealing monkey on her back was trying to tear out handfuls of her hair. Reflexively, she'd dropped her.38 to reach blindly behind herself for the rhesus. It snapped at her hands, teeth audibly cracking together on empty air. Her body was bent back-ward over the table, and her assailant was trying to pull her head back farther still, to expose her throat.
        Acutely aware of the presentiment of loss that had troubled me earlier, certain that Sasha was the one who would be taken from me, I dropped the Glock on the table and seized the creature from behind, getting my right hand around its neck, using my left to clutch the fur and skin between its shoulder blades. I twisted that handful of fur and skin so