“No, it can’t be. Bloody hell,” she said as she looked out the cockpit window. “Have I gone mad? What’s that through the windscreen?” she asked the pilot.

“What? Mother of God!” the pilot said. He banked the plane right, circling around the winged simians. “They’re must be 100 or more and they’re armed!”

“Yes, indeed they are,” Dr. Munroe said. “Chinese assault rifles – a variant of the AK-47. I’ve had them in storage since the Cold War.”

The monkeys were closing in on them, firing at will. Two of them landed on the windshield and began firing into the thick cockpit glass.

“Move aside, you bloody wanker,” Stella said to the pilot, pulling him from his seat. “I’ll take it from here. Just keep an eye on Dr. Munroe.”

She sat down and pulled back hard, causing the two monkeys perched atop the plane to fall. “They won’t be able to breathe once we hit 14,000 feet.”

But one of the larger monkeys held on, slamming the butt of his assault rifle into the cockpit as Stella struggled to shake him from the plane.