Seize the Night by Dean Koontz Page B

get you killed.”
    “This is for a friend,” I reminded her, meaning Lilly Wing. “Anyway, I’ll be all right. Bobby’s coming.”
    “Ah. Then I’ll start working on your eulogy.”
    “I’ll tell him you said that.”
    “The Two Stooges.”
    “Let me guess—we’re Curly and Larry.”
    “Right. Neither of you is smart enough to be Moe.”
    “Love you, Goodall.”
    “Love you, Snowman.”
    I switched off the phone and was about to turn away from the window, when I saw movement in the street again. This time it wasn’t merely the shadow of a cloud gliding across a corner of the moon.
    This time I saw monkeys.
    I clipped the phone to my belt, freeing both hands.
    The monkeys were not in a barrel and not in a pack. The correct word for monkeys traveling in a group is not pack or herd, not pride or flock, but troop .
    Recently, I have learned a great deal about monkeys, not only the term troop . For the same reason, if I were living in the Florida Everglades, I would become an expert on alligators.
    Here, now, deep in Dead Town, a troop of monkeys passed the bungalow, moving in the direction I’d been headed. In the moonlight, their coats looked silvery rather than brown.
    In spite of this luster, which made them more visible than they would have been otherwise, I had difficulty taking an accurate count. Five, six, eight…Some traveled on all fours, some were half erect; a few stood up almost as straight as a human. Ten, eleven, twelve…
    They were not moving fast, and they repeatedly raised their heads, scanning the night ahead and on both sides, sometimes peering suspiciously back the way they had come. Although their pace and alert demeanor might signify caution or even fear, I suspected that they were not afraid of anything and that instead they were searching for something, hunting something.
    Maybe me.
    Fifteen, sixteen.
    In a circus ring, costumed in sequined vests and red fezzes, a troop of monkeys might inspire smiles, laughter, delight. These specimens didn’t dance, caper, tumble, twirl, jig, or play miniature accordions. Not one seemed interested in a career 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 sautéed in butter sauce or the chance to tear your face off for the sheer fun of it, they