Monkey Wars

by Richard Kurti

  He tried to marshal his thoughts.

  The resistance. That was the most pressing issue. They were the force driving a wedge between the two troops, ramping up the violence. He had to identify the resistance and stop them.

  Taking Papina by the hand, Mico led her out of the square and up onto the rooftops where he had hidden three small metal blades that he’d recovered from the undercroft.

  “Have you seen these before?” he asked.

  Papina turned the shiny blades over in her hands.

  “Are they human?”

  Mico shook his head. “Resistance. We cornered them but they slipped away. But those”—he pointed to the small, vicious weapons—“those are our biggest clue. Have you seen monkeys making things like that?”

  Papina shook her head and ran a finger gently along one of the blades. “Must be difficult to make.”

  “Have you seen monkeys with cuts on their hands?”

  Papina thought for a moment, then shook her head again.

  “What about Twitcher?” Mico finally asked, giving voice to his deepest suspicions.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Twitcher knows more than he’s telling. I want you to keep a close eye on him. The resistance must be scouring the dumps for metal. See where he goes, who he meets. But be careful.”

  “Are you going back to her?” Papina said quietly.

  “I have to. But it won’t always be this way, I promise.”

  He tried to make it sound as if he knew how everything could be resolved, but he fooled neither Papina nor himself.

  Mico didn’t go straight home; he had a hunch he wanted to follow up. He suspected the enemy would be keen to recover their weapons from the hideout at the railway station, and as it had now been searched it was doubtful the langur would return in a hurry. To Mico’s mind this made the undercroft the most likely place to find the resistance.

  Now was his chance to find out who they really were.

  He made quick progress through the evening streets bustling with humans buying food for their supper. Arriving back at the station, he decided against using the doors to the undercroft—if the resistance were holed up in there he didn’t want to confront them head-on. Not yet.

  Instead he clambered onto the station roof and found the chimney that led all the way down. Craning his head into the darkness of the shaft, Mico listened. As his ears filtered out the background noise of the city, he could just make out the low, gruff murmur of monkeys talking.

  They were down there, all right.

  Stealthily, Mico clambered into the shaft and started to edge down, but the going was tricky. Soot had caked the chimney walls and he knew that if he dislodged any it would fall into the opening below, alerting the resistance. It made progress painfully slow, but little by little he slid deeper and deeper, and the voices became steadily louder.

  Pausing a short distance from the bottom, Mico jammed his arms and legs into the wall to anchor himself. He could hear the chink and rattle of metal being worked—they must be making more weapons, beating the tin with stones, perhaps.

  Every now and then he heard a swell of malevolent laughter, but the fragments of muffled conversation drifting up the shaft were even more chilling. Mico heard talk of “rewards,” of plans to “increase the body count” and spread “a reign of terror.”

  This was not the language of resistance that Mico had expected. Where was the camaraderie of heroes fighting against the odds? Where was the talk of freedom? All Mico heard was the language of professional violence, as hard and cold as granite.

  “We’re three short,” accused a gruff voice.

  “Check again,” replied another, testily.

  The weapons—they were talking about the missing weapons.

  There was a shuffling sound and Mico realized to his horror that one of them was coming back to check the hiding place in the base of the shaft.

  Suddenly a monkey’s arm appeared in the opening, just below Mico’s feet. Mico held his breath, his muscles froze. The slightest noise would give him away.

  He rolled his eyeballs down and saw the monkey’s arm at full stretch, hand groping in the gloom, trying to find the weapons.

  “Nothing,” the fighter grumbled, but as he turned, a shaft of light fell on his face…and with a shock Mico realized this wasn’t a rhesus monkey at all.

  The bony brow that gave the impression of a permanent scowl, the dark brown fur and, most unnerving of all, the complete lack of a tail…this was a Barbary ape.

  A wave of nausea swept over Mico. Barbaries were the stuff of dark legends. Fearless, violent monkeys, whose love of anarchy had earned them the nickname “The Wild Ones,” they would roam in packs, stealing, biting, intimidating, sometimes for food, sometimes just for their own amusement.

  When faced with stubborn opposition, the Barbaries’ favorite tactic was to herd together and charge at full speed, trampling underfoot anything or anyone in their path. According to the stories Mico had heard, they came from far-off lands, where they had terrorized humans.

  They were fanatical.

  They were beyond reason.

  And now they were here.

  —

  Worry was turning into panic.

  Papina had been searching for her mother all evening, but no one had seen Willow since the langur patrols’ rampage, and deep down she knew something was very wrong; her mother would never just go off without saying anything.

  There was one place she hadn’t searched yet, but it was a few streets from Temple Gardens, so Papina asked Twitcher to come with her.

  “How often does your mother come here?” said Twitcher as Papina led him up a rusting fire escape.

  “Every day. It’s her special place.”

  “She’s kept this one quiet.”

  “She doesn’t want everyone joining in,” Papina said, flashing Twitcher a look warning him not to go spreading the word.

  Twitcher shook his head. “I just hope her secret’s not got her into trouble.”

  “It’s the one thing she misses most of all from the cemetery,” Papina said, feeling she had to defend her mother’s judgment. “No matter what the day brings, if she can relax in a bath and watch the clouds go by, she can cope.”

  At the top of the ladder they scrambled over the parapet and across the roof, picking their way through a jumble of pipes and fans, until they came to a large zinc water tank.

  And then the sickly fear gripped Papina.

  Ominous signs were everywhere—huge puddles of water were splashed across the roof as if there’d been a ferocious struggle; a clump of fur was caught on the corner of an air-conditioning unit; most sinister of all, smears of blood ran down the side of the metal tank.

  Papina felt herself buckle. She reached a hand out to steady herself and Twitcher grabbed her.

  “She’s a strong monkey,” he said, trying to sound hopeful. “We have to keep looking.”

  Papina nodded. She didn’t want to accept what the evidence was screaming at her; she wanted everything to be just as it was yesterday. But deep down, she feared the worst news of all.

  —

  Hister had been waiting up half the night, worried. She knew Mico’s work was secret and she was never sure when he would be home, but this time no one seemed to have any idea where he’d gone. He’d told Breri that he was heading back to the cemetery, but that was in the afternoon, and now the moon was high.

  So Hister waited, quietly fretting in the entrance to their home, until finally she saw Mico’s familiar outline moving through the shadows toward her. She hurried over and clasped him tightly.

  “I thought something had happened!”

  “I’m fine. It’s just work.” He always tried to keep Hister’s feelings at arm’s length, reminding himself that theirs was a partnership of convenience, but her concern was so genuine he felt he owed her a better explanation.

  “The resistance are a tougher enemy than we’d imagined.”

  “I w
as so frightened,” she said as she ushered him into their home. “I thought something terrible had happened, Mico.” And she rested her head lovingly on his.

  Her warmth triggered a heavy pang of guilt in him, and tonight it was quickly followed by another emotion: the desire to protect her.

  Hister’s trusting innocence wouldn’t stand a chance against the Barbary darkness that was now invading the city. With chilling clarity, Mico imagined how pitiless a full-scale Barbary onslaught would be. Everyone was now in grave danger. Somehow, he had to stop them. But who could he turn to for help?

  Mico’s first instinct had been to go to Lord Tyrell and tell him everything; if the Barbaries were here to conquer the city, langur and rhesus should bury their differences and join forces to defend themselves.

  But there was a terrible complication: Tyrell hated the rhesus and had made sure the grisly details of resistance atrocities were known to all langurs; fighting the resistance was a key reason for Tyrell’s popularity—it was what made him the Protector of the Troop. But if it was now revealed that the rhesus were not behind the attacks, that all along it was Barbary apes, then Tyrell would be humiliated. The langur would see that his judgment was fatally flawed, that the bile and hatred he had vented on the rhesus was totally misplaced.

  A humiliated leader would not last long and, faced with downfall, who knew how ruthless Tyrell could become?

  The only logical step for Tyrell would be to suppress the truth about the Barbaries, and to silence anyone who contradicted him.

  Which meant that if Mico spoke out, he would put himself in mortal danger.

  Mico sat quietly, Hister’s arms wrapped around him, while his mind wrestled with the impossible choice.

  And then came the knock on the door.

  The cadet who brought the message didn’t know any details, just that there had been a resistance attack directly on langur homes.

  For a dreadful moment, Mico imagined that somehow the Barbaries had followed him back from the undercroft, that he was responsible for this raid.

  “Are they still here?”

  “No, sir. It was in the Eastern Province,” the cadet reassured him. “General Pogo has it under control.”

  Escorted by an elite patrol, Mico hurried across the city in the cold dawn light; when he arrived at the Eastern Province, it was immediately obvious where the resistance had struck—some creepers had been slung from an overhanging tree, allowing them to scale the high walls.

  “Their target was the larder,” said General Pogo as he led Mico through the gates and pointed to a low stone building that the langur used to store food for those monkeys who were too old to forage for themselves.

  Something about this didn’t make sense to Mico. “Why take the risk of scaling the wall? There’s easier food to be had all over the city.”

  Pogo rolled his eye wearily. “They want to hurt us in any way they can. There’ll never be peace until the rhesus problem is sorted.”

  Mico nodded silently, but the burden of his secret was painfully heavy. He scrutinized General Pogo, wondering if he dared risk telling him about the Barbaries. At least then there would be two of them to deal with Tyrell’s anger.

  When suddenly the general pointed to some shrubs. “They left one behind.”

  Mico spun round. “You’ve captured one of the resistance?”

  “You could say that.” Pogo strode to a shady area at the base of the wall.

  Mico followed, his heart pounding—this would change everything. If Pogo had discovered a Barbary corpse, then the truth about the resistance would be there for all to see, whether Tyrell liked it or not.

  “Over there,” said the general, pointing to the body of a monkey splayed in the undergrowth.

  Immediately Mico saw it wasn’t a Barbary; even though it was facedown in the dirt, the tail was clearly visible. As he got closer, disappointment turned to dread. This was the body of a rhesus monkey, a female, and, worse still, he recognized the flecks of color in the fur.

  Mico felt his mouth go dry. Desperately trying to control his emotions, he bent down, stretched out a hand—the body was cold. He took a deep breath and rolled it over.

  A wave of nausea swept through Mico; he wanted to howl with anguish, but he couldn’t, he mustn’t. Pogo was watching—he had to react the way a colonel would, with cool disdain for the enemy.

  But this wasn’t his enemy.

  It was Willow who lay cold and dead, tangled in the undergrowth.

  —

  Papina staggered backward and slumped down, struggling to take in the enormity of the news.

  Mico stood there, utterly helpless, not knowing what he could say to console her. It was only after her breathing steadied that Papina’s head sunk into her hands and her grief echoed through the trees.

  Immediately Fig and Rowna pushed their way across Temple Gardens to be at Papina’s side and enveloped her in their arms, trying to absorb her pain.

  Rowna looked at Mico accusingly, blaming him for everything, but there was still kindness in Fig’s eyes. “Thank you for telling us the truth,” she whispered. “It was brave of you.”

  And gently they led Papina away.

  Mico watched her with a heavy heart, remembering the promise he had once made to protect her. If he was going to honor that, Willow’s death must not be in vain.

  Quickly Mico made his way back across the gardens to where the elders usually sat. Knowing the truth about the resistance at least meant that he could now trust Twitcher, and that could mean a valuable ally.

  “I know what’s going on,” Mico said, dropping down between the stone pillars.

  Twitcher squared up to him angrily. “Why should I believe anything a langur says?”

  “We haven’t always seen eye to eye,” said Mico appeasingly, “but we have to put that behind us.”

  “Forget it!”

  “A troop of Barbary apes is hiding in the city.”

  The words struck dread into Twitcher. “Barbaries?” he whispered, hoping he’d misheard.

  “They are the resistance. But every time they attack, they make it look like rhesus work. I think they killed Willow and left her body to stir up langur hatred.”

  “No, it doesn’t make sense—”

  “I’ve seen them. I’ve heard them.”

  “You’ve talked to a Barbary and lived?”

  “What I don’t know, is why they’re doing this, why they want to start an all-out monkey war.”

  Twitcher shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to understand. You just have to help. I need a handful of your fiercest monkeys.”

  “Why? What are you going to do?”

  “Kidnap a Barbary ape.”

  —

  They had no military training, but they were strong and fearless. Mico could tell that much from the way Twitcher and his rhesus volunteers sped through the shadows of the backstreets—not hesitant and nervous, but aggressive, ready to defend themselves. They knew their troop was in trouble and they relished the chance to strike back.

  Mico led them to a door canopy on the opposite side of the street from the undercroft. If the Barbaries always moved as a pack, his young fighters didn’t stand a chance, but Mico had a hunch that the apes often moved around the city in ones and twos to avoid attracting attention.

  So they waited silently, watching the moon creep higher in the sky, until finally their patience was rewarded—Twitcher spotted a lone Barbary lolloping quietly in the shadows, moving down the street toward them. The ape was obviously an expert at covert operations, instinctively picking a path that would keep him hidden from view—but a path that would take him right underneath the canopy.

  “On my signal, we drop down and take him,” Mico whispered to Twitcher, who relayed the command to the others.

  They watched as the Barbary got closer…closer…then Mico flicked his tail and they all leaped, landing on the ape in a chaotic tangle of arms and legs.

&n
bsp; Immediately the Barbary heaved his bodyweight left, then right, trying to throw off his attackers. Mico and the rhesus gripped ferociously onto his torso, shocked by the immense strength of his muscles under their fingers. There was no going back now—they had to subdue the Barbary or die.

  The ape lurched forward, sending two rhesus smashing to the ground.

  “Get his legs!” yelled Mico, and the monkeys grabbed the Barbary’s knees, trying to pull them apart and force him to the ground, but his limbs were like steel.

  Twitcher made a desperate lunge for the Barbary’s eyes but was met with a thundering head butt that sent him flying into the wall, blood pouring from his smashed nose.

  The ape drew a breath and pursed his lips—he was about to howl for reinforcements. Desperately Mico launched at the Barbary’s head and grabbed a lip, yanking down painfully on the soft flesh, clawing the ape’s mouth, forcing him to lower his head or have his lip ripped off.

  Mico clamped his arms around the Barbary’s snout and squeezed with all his might. Great angry snorts came from the Barbary’s nose, but it was now impossible for him to cry out.

  “The vines!” yelled Mico. “Use the vines!”

  Twitcher shook his head, trying to clear his senses and sent a spray of blood splattering in an arc across the wall.

  “Up there!” Mico pointed to the canopy, and finally the message got through. Twitcher hauled himself up and threw down a coil of vines. Mico and the others immediately tried to wrap them around the Barbary like a rope, but the ape flexed his muscles and snapped the vines clean in two.

  The rhesus had never seen anything like it.

  “Coconut him!” Mico shouted as a desperate last resort. “NOW!”

  The fiercest rhesus grabbed hold of a large coconut they’d hidden, and lofted it high above his head. He looked down at the Barbary and had just taken aim when suddenly the ape spun his burning eyes on the rhesus with such malevolence that the rhesus froze.

  “DO IT NOW!” screamed Mico. “OR WE’RE DEAD!”

  The rhesus closed his eyes and brought the coconut smashing down on the Barbary’s skull.