Chuck and Frank propped the gate shut with 2-by-4s, and didn’t waste time hopping into the cab. They crouched low in the bench seat.

Sturm held up the other revolver as well, aiming both arms, arms straight, elbows locked, at the bank across the street. The pearl handles shimmered and flashed in the sun.

Sturm fired. Chuck floored it. The bullets punched the bank sign; the sign buckled inward slightly, but the damage was small, like someone getting playfully hit in the gut. A few pieces of glass the size of quarters hit the sidewalk. Everyone snapped their safeties off and jerked their guns up, itching to turn around and shoot, as the trailer door fell open and monkeys scampered through the cloud of dust and dead grass. The truck tires gripped first grass, then sidewalk and a quick jolt of grass again, finally bouncing down onto pavement.

“Three seconds,” Sturm hollered. Nobody knew if he meant that three seconds had passed, or if there was three seconds left.

Chuck’s truck made it to the alley and started gaining speed. The horse trailer bounced once as the hitch hit the center of the road. Most of the monkeys went for the trees immediately, but some stayed in the trailer, looking for the dried apricots that Frank had wedged between the loose slats in the floor.

“Set” Sturm shouted.

Hammers clicked back.

The monkeys shook dust into the air as they clambered into the dead trees.

Sturm turned his pistols to the bank sign again, yelled, “Shoot!” and kept squeezing the trigger until he was empty.

The hunters turned and fired, nearly as one, an explosion of gunfire that reverberated through the town and went rolling out through the pasture and fields until dying in the ravines and creeks and hills.

Girdler had thought ahead. Where the Assholes had laboriously spent half an hour carefully shoving shells into brand new bandoliers, he’d simply dumped all his shells into the hip pockets of his safari jacket. He’d fired and reloaded a thirteen round magazine four times before Asshole #3 could pinch six shells out of the bandolier to reload just once.

Dead and dying monkeys fell out of the trees like rotten fruit.

* * * * *

Chuck and Frank pulled around the block and parked alongside the lunch tables. The tubs of ice were just tepid bowls of water, now alive with wasps. Frank got low and tried to come in under the wasps and ended up getting stung twice as he groped for three warm beers. He danced away, crushing one wasp in the crook of his neck, and another against his chest with a beer can. A couple followed him for a while, but gave up when Frank dumped two beers in his pockets and shook up the third one, but instead of spraying it at the wasps, Frank cracked the beer open into his mouth and then spit beer at the insects. He was glad that that all of the hunters were too busy shooting monkeys to see him. Chuck didn’t see Frank either, because he was too busy going for his shotgun in the back window of his truck. Chuck pumped it quick and announced he was gonna join the hunt.

Frank retreated to shade of the fire truck. Behind him, the shooting gradually tapered off. Girdler and Asshole #1 ran out across Sutter Street, firing at the rest of the monkeys that had scattered down the alley, but the heat of the day made them walk back to the park, gasping and sweating. The rest of the men kicked through the monkey carcasses, arguing over who shot which monkey.

* * * * *

The low, purring sound of a luxury car rose slowly above bickering. Frank bolted upright, convinced, for just a second, that the quiet gentlemen in one of their long black cars had finally found him.

But the Mercedes that rolled up Main Street was pale blue, not black. It turned left on Third Street and parked next to the tables. The man that got out wasn’t as short as Sturm, but was quite small nevertheless. He wore a white linen suit with a matching white hat and some kind of red ascot and carried a tiny dog close to his chest, like a fragile egg. The dog had huge, bulging eyes and some kind of fluffed mane, like some hair stylist’s idea of a toy lion.

“I em lookeeng fah Meestah Hoooreece Stahmmmmm.” It sounded like the stranger’s voice was coming out of his nose, and every syllable ran together, as if enunciating the crisp notes of each word was simply too much trouble. He tilted his head so far back Frank was surprised that white hat didn’t toppled backwards into the street. It was an odd accent; definitely French, but he wasn’t from France. Maybe Quebec.

Sturm ambled up to the man, not quite eye-to-eye, more like eye-to-nostrils. Sturm now wore his new pistols strapped into a glittering silver-studded gunbelt and holsters. “That’s me. What can I do for you, Mr….?”

“Meester No-hweee.”

“No-weee?”

“Meester No-hweee, yes.”

Frank already hated the guy. Only an asshole would wear a fucking ascot in this heat. The little dog yipped and struggled within Noe’s arms. Frank couldn’t even call it a bark. He thought back to the little dogs he’d treated as a vet student and none of them were any damn good.

“Hush, Maxeemus, hush.”

“Well, Mr. Noe. What exactly can I do for you?”

Mr. Noe smiled. “I am here to hunt, yes?” he said simply, looking at the dead monkeys strewn across the brown grass.

* * * * *

Something cold nuzzled Franks’ palm. He looked down and found it was Petunia’s nose. She stared up at him, her thick stump of a tail wriggling frantically. “Well, I’ll be damned. How are you, you big girl you.” He crouched down and let Petunia lick his face, scratching her haunches, her chest, her ears with both hands in long, slow strokes. “What are you doing here, huh?”

“She missed you.” Annie smiled down at him, all aglow in a scandalously short baby-doll dress and cowboy boots. She’d come up behind Frank while he was watching Mr. Noe and his little rat, Maximus. “She thought she should come visit.”

“Did you now,” Frank said, massaging the loose folds of skin around Petunia’s neck. The dried blood on his head and neck itched.

Annie sat down next to him on the fire tuck’s running board, and he could smell something sweet, not perfume exactly, more like she’d washed her hair in honeysuckle. Her tan skin glowed in the shade. She patted his thigh and he was glad they were out of sight from the hunters.

Frank was trying to think of something clever to say, something maybe even downright romantic, when Mr. Noe’s dog, all four pounds of pop eyes and bristling fury, came around the corner, strutting through the dead grass with his sharp nose and sharper teeth, and caught sight of Petunia.

But instead of flinching and barking, as Frank expected, he pranced right on over, and now Frank could see quite clearly that Maximus was indeed quite male, as his penis suddenly erupted like an embarrassingly red and swollen cocktail straw.

Before Petunia even knew Maximus was there, the little dog was on her. Frank didn’t even have a chance to stop scratching her ears. Maximus rose up and launched his pelvis at the base of Petunia’s wriggling stump of a tail. Petunia jerked sideways at first contact, somehow swiveling with her front shoulders, kicking her hindquarters into space; she brought her sledgehammer head around faster than Frank’s eyes could follow, and crushed Maximus’s skull in one chomp. It sounded like hitting a shotgun shell full of #9 shot, when you’ve got it in a wood vice and you’re bashing away at the primer with a ball peen hammer, all dry and crackling.

Petunia wouldn’t let go. If anything, she sunk her teeth even deeper, locking those jaws into place. She shook the tiny dog’s body viciously, like she was trying to water the lawn with his blood.

“I guess Petunia wasn’t in the mood,” Annie said.

“Was she in heat?” Frank asked. For some reason, this seemed important, as if it might be some kind of shelter in the face of the inevitable storm.