Seize the Night

in entertainment.
    Eighteen.
    They were rhesus monkeys, the species most often used in medical research, and all were at the upper end of the size range for their kind, more than two feet tall, twenty-five or even thirty pounds of bone and muscle. I knew from hard experience that these particular rhesuses were quick, agile, strong, uncannily smart, and dangerous.
    Twenty.
    Throughout much of the world, monkeys live everywhere in the wild, from jungles to open grasslands to mountains. They are not found on the North American continent—except for these that skulk through the night in Moonlight Bay, unknown to all but a handful of the populace.
    I now understood why, earlier, the birds had fallen silent in the tree above me. They had sensed the approach of this unnatural parade.
    Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
    The troop was becoming a battalion.
    Did I mention teeth? Monkeys are omnivorous, never having been persuaded by the arguments of vegetarians. Primarily they eat fruit, nuts, seeds, leaves, flowers, and birds' eggs, but when they feel the need for meat, they munch on such savory fare as insects, spiders, and small mammals like mice, rats, and moles. Absolutely never accept a dinner invitation from a monkey unless you know precisely what's on the menu. Anyway, because they are omnivorous, they have strong incisors and pointy eyeteeth, the better to rip and tear.
    Ordinary monkeys don't attack human beings. Likewise, ordinary monkeys are active in daylight and rest during the night except for the softly furred douroucouli, an owl-eyed South American species that is nocturnal.
    Those who roam the darkness in Fort Wyvern and Moonlight Bay aren't ordinary. They're hateful, vicious, psychotic little geeks. If given the choice of a plump tasty mouse sauteed in butter sauce or the chance to tear your face off for the sheer fun of it, they wouldn't even lick their lips with regret at passing up the snack.
    I had tallied twenty-two individuals when the passing tide of monkey fur in the street abruptly turned, whereupon I lost count. The troop doubled back on itself and halted, its members huddling and milling together in such a conspiratorial manner that you could easily believe one of them had been the mysterious figure on the grassy knoll in Dallas the day Kennedy was shot.
    Although they showed no more interest in this bungalow than in any other, they were directly in front of it and close enough to give me a major case of the heebiejeebies. Smoothing the bristling hair on the nape of my neck with one hand, I considered creeping out the back of the house before they came knocking on the front door with their damn monkey-magazine subscription cards.
    If I slipped away, however, I wouldn't know in which direction they had gone after breaking out of their huddle. I'd be as likely to blunder into them as to avoid them—with mortal consequences.
    I had counted twenty-two, and I had missed some, There might have been as many as thirty. My 9-millimeter Glock held ten rounds, two of which I'd already expended, and a spare magazine was nestled in a pouch on my holster. Even if I were suddenly possessed by the sharpshooting spirit of Annie Oakley and miraculously made every shot count, I would still be overwhelmed by twelve of the beasts.
    Hand-to-hand combat with three hundred pounds of screaming monkey menace is not my idea of a fair fight. My idea of a fair fight is one unarmed, toothless, nearsighted old monkey versus me with a Blackhawk attack helicopter.
    In the street, the primates were still loitering. They were clustered so tightly that they almost appeared, in the moonlight, to be one large organism with multiple heads and tails.
    I couldn't figure out what they were doing. Probably because I'm not a monkey.
    I leaned closer to the window, squinting at the moon-washed scene, trying to see more clearly and to put myself in a monkey frame of mind.
    Among the hey-let's-play-God crowd that worked in the deepest bunkers of Wyvern, the most exciting and most generously funded research had included a project intended to enhance both human and animal intelligence, as well as human agility, speed, sight, hearing, sense of smell, and longevity. This was to be accomplished by transferring selected genetic material not just from one person to another but from species to species.
    Although my mother was brilliant, a genius, she was not—trust me on this—a mad scientist. As a theoretical geneticist, she didn't spend much time in