Matt Ruff - Bad Monkeys

That really made him nervous—as he headed into the back, he took a last look at the train layout, like he was sure I was going to trash it the minute he was out of sight.

Which, come to think of it, wasn’t a bad idea…

As I stepped back towards the layout, my foot kicked something. It was the magazine Arlo had been reading when I first entered the store: Model Train Enthusiast’s Monthly, something like that. The cover photo showed a sleek locomotive chugging towards a railroad crossing, where—this was weird—a pewter figurine of a boy with a soccer ball had been placed on the tracks, his back to the oncoming train.

The locomotive had a monkey on its side. Not Curious George, or any other friendly cartoon simian—this was a badass nightmare monkey, with sharp fangs tipping a blue-and-red snout. THE MANDRILL, screamed the caption, ON SALE TODAY.

Inset in a box in the lower right-hand corner of the magazine cover was a second, smaller photo, of two women in train-conductor uniforms. The uniforms must have been digitally added, but the doctoring job was so skillful that I almost didn’t notice that the women were me and Annie. The caption on this photo read: “They’re coming for you—details, pg. 23.”

The door to the store’s back room was locked. I kicked it until it wasn’t. The space beyond was lined with more shelves, but instead of trains they held teddy bears, cereal boxes, and toothpaste dispensers…There was a workbench, too, covered with papers and tools, and a couple of empty soccer-ball cartons.

Arlo was gone, of course. I ducked out a side door into the alley. There was no sign of him there, either, but that china doll I’d first seen almost two weeks ago was still sitting in the dumpster, still holding out its hand to shake. Someone had dropped a paper bag over its head.

I broke out my headset: “Hello? Anybody?”

“This is True.”

“Arlo’s on the run,” I told him, hoping this wasn’t news.

“What happened?”

“The short version is, his monkey friends sent him a warning…Please tell me you saw him leave.”

“We’ve had some difficulties with the surveillance.”

“Ah, man…”

“I’m tasking additional resources to the search as we speak; Dexter shouldn’t get far. How long ago did he—”

“Hold on.”

A corkboard had been mounted on the wall above Arlo’s workbench. Looking back at it from the alley door, I noticed that the board didn’t hang quite flush. When I grabbed it by the edge and pulled, it swung outwards. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“I found the briefcase.”

“You did?”

“Arlo must’ve been in too much of a hurry to take it with him.”

“Perhaps,” True said warily. “But before you open it—”

“Too late.”

There was a brief silence, and I had this clear mental picture of True pursing his lips. “Very well,” he continued. “Describe the contents, without touching them.”

“Right…The case is foam-lined, with slots holding what look like digital stopwatches. Each watch has three small buttons on the left side and one big one on top—don’t worry, I’m not going to push any of them. The brand name on the watch-casings is—”

“Mandrill.”

“Yeah.”

“This next question is very important, Jane. Are any of the stopwatches running right now?”

“Counting down, you mean? No—trust me, that’s the first thing I’d have mentioned. But there is some bad news: Arlo may have left the briefcase behind, but it looks like he took a couple of the watches with him. Two of the slots are empty.”

“All right, I’ll notify the other teams. What I need you to do next is look around the area where you found the case. Can you see anything that might indicate where Dexter is headed?”

“Maybe…” I moved aside a soccer-ball carton. “There’s a map of SFO airport here.”

“Are any of the terminals circled?”

“Yeah, all of them…Listen, True, assuming these watches are what I think they are, is Arlo going to be able to get them through airport security?”

“That’s an irrelevant question.”

“Why?”

“He wants to blow up a crowd, not an airplane. All a security checkpoint will do is save him a few steps.”

Oh, right. “OK then, let’s stop him before he gets there. You want me to go after him on foot, or—”

“No. Stay with the briefcase until Catering secures it.”

“What? Wait a minute, I’m supposed to be hunting Arlo, not—”

“You’ve done your job,” True said. “Stay with the case; another operative will get Dexter.”

“Shit, True…”

He wasn’t listening. I could still hear him on the headset, but he was talking to other people now, ordering a close watch on all bus stops, cab stands, BART stations, even the parking garage where Arlo’s grandmother kept her car. Between that and the general surveillance blanket already covering the neighborhood, Arlo would almost certainly be picked up within a matter of minutes, and there was no way he was getting to the airport. I should have been happy about that, and content to have done my part without any foul-ups, but of course I wasn’t.

I stuck my head out the alley door again, on the off chance that Arlo had doubled back to let me take care of him personally. No such luck. I locked the door, and carried the briefcase into the front of the shop to wait for Catering.

Arlo’s train layout was still running. I watched the remaining passenger train wend its way through town, past the miniature city hall, the department store, the candy shop, the church, the police station, the school…

The school. It was wood, not brick, but just like the real elementary school at Orchard and Masonic, it had an attached playground: a fenced-in lot, packed with tiny figures.

I got back on the headset: “True, forget about the airport. I know where he’s going…True?…True?”

I ran outside. The taxi had taken off, and when I looked up at the second floor of the hotel, Annie was gone from the window. I kept trying the headset, getting back mostly static; but in between the stretches of white noise I caught snippets of other transmissions, enough to figure out that I wasn’t the only one having communication problems.

The school was only seven blocks away, and Arlo had enough of a head start that he might already be there. I had to hope that, knowing we were looking for him, he’d opt for a slow and stealthy approach.

I took off running. Four blocks later, as I rounded the corner onto Masonic, I saw an off-duty cab stopped for a red light just ahead. “Hey!” I shouted, and started towards it.

The world changed color. Like the firing of an NC gun, the explosion of the Mandrill bomb was silent: a bright noiseless flash of orange and yellow with a translucent cab-shape at its center. I felt something pass through me—the shockwave, I guess, though it was more like a jolt from a power outlet—and then I was flat on my back.

I sat up slowly. Steam was rising from my arms, and my face felt hot. I got to my feet—we’re talking at least another minute, here—and went to check on the taxi.

The vehicle itself had suffered remarkably little damage. The windows and mirrors had all shattered and fallen out, but the chassis seemed untouched, not even lightly scorched. The driver was a different story. It was like he’d spontaneously combusted: all that was left of him was a pile of smoldering clothes. I leaned in for a closer look, caught a whiff of something awful, and pulled back gagging. That’s when I noticed the pedestrians: three separate pairs of shoes in the crosswalk in front of the taxi, each with its own accompanying clothes-pile.

I gagged again, and my knees buckled. It was OK: I needed to check beneath the taxi anyway. Sure enough, in the shadow of the undercarriage I saw the remains of a burst soccer ball.