Monkeying Around Read online

  Drunk Monkeys 10

  Monkeying Around

  Can the Drunk Monkeys save the day before the clock runs out?

  Tank isn’t a student, a hacker, or twenty-two-years old. The major is a deep-cover military intel officer, and she’s got orders to help save the world. That means protecting the group of student hackers she’s embedded with.

  Initially, Papa and Alpha aren’t sure what to make of Tank, until they learn the truth about her identity. Monkeying around takes a backseat to stopping an apocalypse, and the world isn’t safe from Kite just yet.

  Time’s quickly running out—and not just for the human race. Reverend Silo and President Kennedy might both be about to reap what they’ve sown as General Arliss sets his plans into motion. And when the final pieces are moved into position for an epic showdown, Papa and Alpha realize that surviving an apocalypse is nothing compared to overcoming their greatest challenge yet—Tank’s father.

  Genre: Futuristic, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Science Fiction

  Length: 66,777 words

  MONKEYING AROUND

  Drunk Monkeys 10

  Tymber Dalton

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  MONKEYING AROUND

  Copyright © 2016 by Tymber Dalton

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-68295-031-9

  First E-book Publication: January 2016

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2016 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Monkeying Around by Tymber Dalton from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Tymber Dalton’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Tymber Dalton’s right to earn a living from her work.

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  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  DEDICATION

  For Hubby, who makes it all possible. For Sir, who knows why. And for all my readers, thank you for supporting this series, and for your patience while I finished it. I hope you enjoy this last installment. I had a blast writing this series, and I’m glad so many of you had fun going on the ride with me. Thank you.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is book ten in the Drunk Monkeys series and focuses on Alpha and Papa. The books in the series are best read in order. All titles available from Siren-BookStrand.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  About the Author

  MONKEYING AROUND

  Drunk Monkeys 10

  TYMBER DALTON

  Copyright © 2016

  Chapter One

  “That damn, batshit crazy asshole fucker in charge there in Pyongyang is the one who stirred the shitpot. Then Beijing made him lick the goddamned spoon and nuked his fucking ass. Problem is, when they did that—not saying they weren’t justified, mind you—our first and best chance to reverse-engineer this clusterfuck went up in a mushroom cloud. All the rest of us could do was fucking bend over and pray for lube and a reacharound.”

  —Gen. Robert K. McCammeron (Our Last History? by Willard M. Sterling. Interview date May, 2143)

  “In the time since we first became aware of the virus, and the subsequent events that have followed, we’ve come to understand that we have no idea why, much less how, they [North Korea] created it. Unfortunately, when Beijing wiped Pyongyang off the map, they also wiped out any hope we had of creating an effective vaccine in a timely manner to prevent transmission to a majority of the world’s population. It’s estimated that within another five years, over ninety percent of the world’s population will either be dead or infected unless we get lucky and figure it out.”

  —Dr. Arnold P. Almer, CDC (Our Last History? by Willard M. Sterling. Interview date April, 2143)

  “In terms of [Kite, the drug’s] addictive nature, it makes meth look like baby aspirin.”

  —Kimberly Coates, PhD, University of Florida (February, 2143)

  “Well, fuck.”

  —President Charlotte Kennedy’s reported reaction upon learning that China authorized the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea on July 29, 2142, in response to Pyongyang allowing thousands of people they supposedly infected with the Kite virus to flood across the border into China several days earlier

  “The Drunk Monkeys? Those crazy motherfuckers don’t exist. And boy, are they good at what they do. Thank god.”

  —Gen. Joseph Arliss (June, 2143)

  * * * *

  Long story short…

  Well, here we are. When last we left our intrepid band of Drunk Monkeys, they’d just arrived in Canada.

  Why?

  Not simply because it was there
, that’s for dang sure.

  They evacuated from the US because the lab at the CDC facility in Atlanta had come under attack by some hired guns. Hired by one Reverend Hannibal Silo, founder of the Church of the Rising Sunset.

  Fortunately, the Drunk Monkeys didn’t lose any team members during the attack. In fact, the scientists on the research team actually hit upon the right combo to finally form an effective Kite virus vaccine that could be put into production.

  Yay!

  But the attack meant their location was no longer secure, and they would have to move yet again.

  Boo!

  Hence traveling to, oh, Canada.

  Eh? What’s so special about Canada, you ask? (That’s right, you did ask that, didn’t you?)

  They’re certainly not there for the maple syrup, hockey, and beer. Although those are pretty damn good reasons to start with.

  General Arliss has trusted contacts in the RCAF and has secured the team a safe refuge at a base there. A base which also has an advanced medical research facility capable of completing the work needed to develop a Kite virus vaccine. The whole Drunk Monkeys crew has moved there en masse, including the scientists from The List that they’ve brought in, the women who’ve partnered with the Drunk Monkeys—and now they’ve been joined by a small college hacktivist group led by a woman named Tank…

  A woman who is definitely far more than she first appears to be, as we learned at the end of the last book.

  Mary Silo—excuse me, Kali Enyo—is closer than ever to her goal of taking down her husband, the same Reverend Hannibal Silo. Helping her is Ax, who also wants to carve out a chunk of Silo’s hide.

  But Silo has even bigger problems than he thought. His right-hand guy, Jerald Arbeid, wants Silo gone, since he’s realized his batshit-crazy boss has traveled way too far into Insanity Land.

  Not just gone as in hit the road, gone, but gone as in here’s a few more shovelfuls of dirt on top of you, gone. The two men are now locked in a battle of wits.

  To be honest, it looks like Jerald might win. Especially since Hannibal is batcrap crazy and Jerald’s at least two steps ahead of the man.

  Not to mention in their battle of wits, Hannibal has been showing up insufficiently armed as of late.

  But let’s go back and talk about Tank for a moment, shall we? Turns out Bubba and General Arliss had secret friends in more places than even the Drunk Monkeys knew about. And I sort of left you hanging a little at the end of the last book.

  Eh, sorry (not sorry). I am a bit of a sadist.

  Which is why, for one last time, we’re going to start this tale just a little bit before the previous one ended.

  Context, yo.

  Thanks for coming along for the ride. So buckle up, buttercup. The end of the apocalypse is close at hand…

  Or is it?

  Chapter Two

  In an apocalypse, as in anything else, the key is location, location, location…

  Noel Tanaka, or “Tank,” as her group called her, was having anything but an easy night. Late on a Sunday night, not quite early Monday morning yet, and Kansas City’s bitterly cold late November air certainly felt a world away from California’s milder climate.

  Actually, it wasn’t even that night stressing Tank out in particular, but the series of events that were only amplified by what happened on Saturday, the attack on the CDC facility in Atlanta. If she had to take a reasoned guess, the attack had been Reverend Hannibal Silo’s doing, but she wasn’t keyed in to that convo.

  Not my circus, not my monkeys.

  She already had her plate more than full over the past two years, and it had taken a heavy toll on her. Of all the possible deep cover assignments for her to accept, this one had, surprisingly, been the most difficult to pull off long-term. And that was just the technical aspect of it, as well as the passing as someone she wasn’t. That wasn’t even counting how, several times already, she’d faced death and almost lost the group to world events beyond her control.

  The fall of LA.

  Barstow.

  If I ever stand face-to-face with Arliss again, I’m going to want to deck him.

  She took a deep breath and held it for a long moment before she released it. In the frigid night air, it frosted as it drifted away from her.

  No, socking my commanding officer is baaaaad.

  Even if he did deserve it. Sort of. No, he wasn’t responsible for Barstow, and had actually gotten them out of there and saved their lives.

  And there was the fact that she had willingly accepted this assignment in the first place.

  But that was before Kite, before TMFU, and before she now had to keep these fourteen fucking clueless civvie hackers alive long enough to get them to a place of permanent safety so she could make sure the mission was a success.

  How was she supposed to know that an apocalypse would crop up? She’d thought it was going to be a simple infiltration, steering them in the right direction, feeding them the information given to her by her handler, using them as a tool, a means to achieve an eventual desired end. A clueless collective of political pawns that would leave her superior officer’s hands squeaky clean and yet get the country back on the right track.

  TMFU changed all that.

  Yes, after it was obvious that LA was lost, she’d been given orders that she had permission to save herself, to bail if need be and get her own asset self back to Washington.

  She didn’t feel right doing that, though. Especially after she’d gotten to know them.

  It would have meant certain death for the kids, and it would have meant a total mission failure. Staying with them meant she might still pull this off and keep them alive. Being shuffled to a new handler earlier this year had dramatically helped. She didn’t know who he was beyond his code name, Bubba, but he was better to deal with, easier, far more deeply connected and responsive than any other handler she’d had before.

  Because of him, she’d gotten the group out of California, alive and uninfected with Kite. He’d also kept them financed, even though the rest of her group didn’t know that.

  They damn sure didn’t need to know that.

  Right now, she needed to focus on how to get them out of Kansas City and to Topeka. To the secret base that not even the brass at Leavenworth knew about.

  That’s where the Drunk Monkeys would be heading, and that’s where she needed to herd this clueless bunch of college kid hackers sometime in the near future. The situation was starting to grow far too complicated, too dangerous for her to guarantee their safety on her own any longer. She’d need assets at her disposal. Backup security to guard them.

  Meaning she could actually get some sleep before she collapsed from exhaustion.

  Or worse, before her exhaustion caused her to make a mistake that might cost her the mission, or cost someone their life.

  One more circuit around the roof, and she spotted nothing out of place, nothing to cause her any alarm.

  The truth was, even if they did have a sentry, they wouldn’t know what to look for even if she told them. Not a single damn one of these kids had a lick of common sense. They’d never had to. They’d either grown up privileged, with lives of ease and parents who had money to smooth their way, or they’d spent their lives with their noses in a book to earn them scholastic scholarships. Neither of those scenarios conducive to becoming street smart.

  I bet their dads didn’t make them “survive” war games to earn their learner’s permits.

  Satisfied everything was all clear, Tank left the roof and headed back down to the main level, where the others still soundly slept inside the makeshift tarp tent walling off a corner of the office area, holding in heat from a small space heater.

  Her idea.

  Gatsby, their group’s unofficial “leader,” was only the leader by popularity. No one had elected him, and he really didn’t have any experience in the area of command knowledge or survival skills.

  Not that Tank wanted to openly take over. That might draw more
attention to her than she needed right now. If she lost the group’s trust, it could compromise her whole mission.

  It was, however, starting to take a toll on her. She was the only one interested in getting up and checking things out. She couldn’t stay awake 24/7, but not having a qualified sentry watching their six meant she wouldn’t sleep, either. Not while they were so vulnerable.

  With what happened in Atlanta, it wouldn’t surprise her if the regular military assigned priority status to taking out their little “anarchist” group. Several times already they’d had to leave hideouts sooner than planned because one of their members hadn’t covered their electronic tracks.

  Like damned Sylvan leaving messages, trying to find her parents.

  Tank sympathized with her, because she didn’t even know if her own father was dead or not.

  But no way would Tank do something to jeopardize the safety and lives of the group just to find out, either.

  Damn kids.

  They simply didn’t get it. They understood on an intellectual level that they were in danger, had escaped danger, had to avoid endangering themselves, but they didn’t feel it. Not really. Tank had been able to keep them two steps ahead of trouble and insulate them from threats to a certain extent but only because of the secret assets at her disposal.

  Hell, it was her job, even though the others didn’t know it.

  They didn’t even know her real name or age. Like the fact that she wasn’t twenty-two, she was thirty-four. And she wasn’t a college student like them.