The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick

I can see their faces painted to look like monkeys, and their wild eyes that want to kill us.

 
    Â 
    M ONKEY B OYS . I’ve heard of them. Monkey Boys control this latch like the Bully Bangers control theirs. But the creatures pouring out of the ruins no longer act human; they’ve become as wild as the paint on their faces. And it isn’t only the face paint — their teeth have been sharpened into fangs, and their fingernails are like yellowed, curving claws.
    â€œSomething’s wrong!” Ryter hisses to me.
    â€œNo kidding!” I hiss right back at him.
    As the crazy clawed hands reach out to grab us, Ryter twists around and looks me in the eye. “Do not resist,” he warns. “They’ll tear us limb from limb.”
    I figure that may happen anyway, but fighting won’t do any good: There’s way too many of them and not enough of us. I try to keep hold of Little Face, but as the swarm lifts us he gets separated. The little guy yells, “Chox! Chox!” and it means
help me!
but I can’t help him or Ryter or myself because we’re being carried away by a hundred howling madmen with ferocious snapping fangs.
    I’m thinking the Bangers never act like this, not even when they’re canceling a victim, but the Monkey Boys don’t seem to have a leader making rules and telling them what to do. The old gummy’s right — something
is
wrong. The Monkey Boys don’t just look like animals and act like animals — they’ve
become
animals.
    The screaming swarm carries us back into the ruins, under the long steel shadows of the giant scrapers, to a place where the air smells of blood and rust.
    They bring us to a strange dark structure, a fortress made from the iron bones of a fallen building. Great iron beams hammered into the ground and bound together with woven steel cable. Splat guns and cannons stick from slots in the walls. The swarm of wild Monkey Boys surrounds the fort, leaping and howling,
ah-hee-hoo-hoo, ah-hee-yip-yip!
    The howling becomes a word.
    â€œMongo!” they howl. “Mongo! Mongo! Mongo!”
    They keep screaming for Mongo until a section of the great iron wall is lowered by cable, and we are carried into the fort. The entire swarm tries to get inside, but a squad of teks is guarding the fort, and the teks hold their ground, chopping at the mob with chetty blades and stunstiks, driving them back.
    The Monkey Boys drop us to the dirt and back away. The great door is raised behind us, shutting out the swarm, and for the first time since we’ve been seized, the howling stops.
    For some reason the quiet is even more terrifying.
    The teks point their weapons at us and indicate that we get up.
    Ryter can barely stand, but he waves me off when I try to help him. “Show neither aggression nor fear,” he whispers to me urgently. “Just play along.”
    Play along? I’ve no idea what the old man is talking about. How do you play along with a dozen armored thugs who communicate by grunts? The best I can do is keep Little Face close by as the teks herd us deeper into the fortress.
    The smell is terrible and gets worse. No plumbing, obviously. Very little power, because the lights keep flickering. Whoever is in charge of this place, he’s not paying attention, that’s for sure.
    We pass a stockade crammed with prisoners who stare at us with dead eyes. They’re all bone thin, wearing tattered rags. They don’t even have the strength to moan or beg for help or keep themselves clean.
    â€œA good sign,” Ryter says out of the side of his mouth.
    A good sign? The old gummy must be losing it. But then I realize what he’s getting at. If they keep prisoners, that means their victims aren’t canceled immediately. Which means we might have a chance to survive, at least for a while.
    The teks shove us down dark, winding passageways, and we make so many turns, there’s no way I could find