Fear Nothing

me swiftly and silently.
        I twisted toward the movement. The creature brushed against my leg and vanished into the fog before I could see it clearly.
        Orson growled but with restraint, as though to warn off something without quite challenging it to fight. He was facing the billowy wall of gray mist that scudded through the darkness on the other side of the bicycle, and I suspected that with light I would see not merely that his hackles were raised but that every hair on his back was standing stiffly on end.
        I was looking low, toward the ground, half expecting to see the shining, dark-yellow gaze of which Angela had spoken. The shape that suddenly loomed in the fog was, instead, nearly as big as me. Maybe bigger. Shadowy, amorphous, like a swooping angel of death hovering in a dream, it was more suggestion than substance, fearsome precisely because it remained mysterious. No baleful yellow eyes. No clear features. No distinct form. Man or ape, or neither: the leader of the troop, there and gone.
        Orson and I had come to a halt again.
        I turned my head slowly to survey the streaming murk around us, intent on picking up any helpful sound. But the troop moved as silently as the fog.
        I felt as though I were a diver far beneath the sea, trapped in blinding currents rich with plankton and algae, having glimpsed a circling shark, waiting for it to reappear out of the gloom and bite me in half.
        Something brushed against the back of my legs, plucked at my jeans, and it wasn't Orson because it made a wicked hissing sound. I kicked at it but didn't connect, and it vanished into the mist before I could get a look at it.
        Orson yelped in surprise, as though he'd had an encounter of his own.
        “Here, boy,” I said urgently, and he came at once to my side.
        I let go of the bicycle, which clattered to the sand. Gripping the pistol in both hands, I began to turn in a full circle, searching for something to shoot at.
        Shrill, angry chattering arose. These seemed recognizably to be the voices of monkeys. At least half a dozen of them.
        If I killed one, the others might flee in fear. Or they might react as the tangerine-eating monkey had reacted to the broom that Angela had brandished in her kitchen: with furious aggressiveness.
        In any event, visibility was virtually zero, and I couldn't see their eyeshine or their shadows, so I dared not waste ammunition by firing blindly into the fog. When the Glock was empty, I would be easy prey.
        As one, the chattering voices fell silent.
        The dense, ceaselessly seething clouds now damped even the sound of the surf. I could hear Orson's panting and my own too-rapid breathing, nothing else.
        The great black form of the troop leader swelled again through the vaporous gray shrouds. It swooped as if it were winged, although this appearance of flight was surely illusory.
        Orson snarled, and I juked back, triggering the laser-sighting mechanism. A red dot rippled across the morphing face of the fog. The troop leader, no more defined than a fleeting shadow on a frost-crusted window, was swallowed entirely by the mist before I could pin the laser to its mercurial shape.
        I recalled the collection of skulls on the concrete stairs of the spillway in the storm culvert. Maybe the collector wasn't some teenage sociopath in practice for his adult career. Maybe the skulls were trophies that had been gathered and arranged by the monkeys - which was a peculiar and disturbing notion.
        An even more disturbing thought occurred to me: Maybe my skull and Orson's-stripped of all flesh, hollow-eyed and gleaming - would be added to the display.
        Orson howled as a screeching monkey burst through the veils of mist and leaped onto his back. The dog twisted his head, snapping his teeth, trying to bite his unwanted rider, simultaneously trying to thrash it off.
        We were so close that even in the meager light and churning mist, I could see the yellow eyes. Radiant, cold, and fierce. Glaring up at me. I couldn't squeeze off a shot at the attacker without hitting Orson.
        The monkey had hardly landed on Orson's back when it sprang off the dog. It slammed hard into me, twenty-five pounds of wiry muscle and bone, staggering me backward, clambering up my chest, using my leather jacket for purchase, and in the chaos I was unable to shoot without a high risk of