“Come on!” he growled. Rowark and Stewart rushed to the bunker and waded their way into the oncoming torrent. Taylor and Dodge pushed people away from the downtrodden, enabling their teammates to pull the wounded to safety.
Klaxons wailed. Pulling the last man out of harm’s way, Rowark bellowed.
“Time’s up, Taylor!”
Taylor knew what that meant, and made sure he was clear of the doorway. Stewart did not.
“Just a few more seconds!” she shouted. Two more technicians raced toward the exit. Stewart stood in the doorway, urging the newcomers forward.
“Let’s go, gentlemen!”
“George!” Rowark roared. Taylor grabbed Stewart by her shirt and jerked her close to him just as the metal slabs slammed into place. Mashed against him in his arms, she stared up at him.
“Major?” she muttered.
A muffled thumping broke their attention: someone was pounding on the shielded doors—from the inside. The two techs hadn’t made it. Taylor and Stewart stared long and hard at the sealed doorway. Rowark and Dodge joined them.
After a few minutes, the banging stopped.
Taylor cleared his throat. “You have medical training, right?” he asked Stewart. She nodded. Across the field, the other astronauts were coming out of the commissary.
“Get them to help, too,” he added.
As Taylor, Dodge, Rowark, and Stewart moved off to assist the evacuees, Taylor growled deep in his chest.
Just what the hell is Churchdoor?
* * *
It had been days. Taylor had told Messias about the crash, Ape City, Zira and Cornelius, Dr. Zaius, and of course, Nova. He explained how he needed Messias’s help to get her back. All he would need would be a squad of sentinels and some kind of vehicle to get them across the desert fast. He would collect Nova, any peaceful apes who wanted to join them, and return to the city.
Messias would never need to be alone again.
The hybrid child had seemed to like this idea—at first. Yet he dragged his heels, telling Taylor that he needed to gather reports from the worker sentinels to determine how many he could spare and still keep the city safe. The creatures were outside, the boy had insisted, ready to strike anyone who left.
Look as he might, Taylor could find no evidence of any siege, no armies waiting outside the gates.
After that, the tours of the city stopped. Mostly Messias had “other things” that he needed to do. Taylor looked around on his own, but the sentinels kept most of the city on lockdown, inaccessible without Messias to override them. The boy still stopped by Taylor’s quarters and asked him more about the outside world, but whenever Taylor pressed him for progress, the reply would always be the same.
“I am still aggregating data.”
Taylor became aware that Messias was keeping something from him, holding the astronaut here so he could learn all about the outside world, and live vicariously through him. He wasn’t going to have it.
* * *
Genius or not, Messias was a child. If Taylor had to tan his behind to teach the boy a lesson, so be it. He showered, dressed, and examined his own face in the bathroom mirror, rubbing his jaw. His stubble was growing in.
He reached for the razor he had found in the cabinet. Uncannily, everything he needed seemed to be available in the deserted city. He hesitated.
Nova.
Taylor dropped the razor in the sink.
It was time for some answers, so he made his way to the grand hall. As he stalked down the corridor, however, he heard something. Almost like…
…talking.
Picking up his pace, he entered the grand audience chamber, and saw that it was Messias—and he was standing with someone, bathed in the sepias and oranges of the rising sun. The timid light from the bay windows cast long shadows from each of the many columns that lined the hall. Pulling to a stop, Taylor used those shadows to spy on them.
The man wore clothes similar to those of the boy, but was hooded. He had his back to the entrance, and the two were nodding, their heads low. Flanked by two hovering green-faced sentinels, it almost looked as if they were praying. Taylor slid from column to column, creeping ever so close.
He heard that strange something again, soft but distinct. He couldn’t place its source, as it seemed to be coming from all around. The closer he got to the two figures, the louder it was.
Deet-deet.
Deet.
It wasn’t recognizable speech, though. It was bursts of tone that somehow resembled words. Taylor slipped behind the column closest to the two humans and two bots. Moving quickly, he swung around the pillar to find—
Messias and the drones. Alone. Taylor blinked, looking around the bots.
“Where is he?” he growled.
“Where is who?” There was no one behind the drones. They were alone.
“I saw him.” Taylor was confused. “You were praying—standing here with—”
“It’s a mistake,” the boy said quickly. “I was programming the sentinels. There was no one else here.” Taylor hesitated. He’d heard that insistent beeping—something clearly more akin to machines than living beings. Could he have imagined the other person?
“Alright,” he conceded. “Maybe I did imagine it.” He smiled at the boy, and decided that it was time to press the issue, once and for all. “Messias, we need to go after Nova. It’s been—”
“Stop, stop, stop.” Pulling at his own hair and pacing, Messias lost his composure. Taylor was stunned speechless. The young scientist was now gone, leaving in his stead a spoiled child throwing a tantrum.
Pulling up what he could from his time as a father—although admittedly not a very good one—Taylor took the tone he used with his daughters when they didn’t get their way. Dominant but reassuring.
“Calm down,” he said. “It’s very simple. I’m going after her, with or without—”
“No!” the half-breed child screeched. “I don’t want to hear it!” Then he glared at the astronaut. “You were spying on me! Weren’t you?”
Taylor remained firm but rational.
“I heard a sound, Messias,” he said. “I looked into it. I just wanted some answers—I deserve some answers. Surely you see it. I need to understand what is going on here.”
The manic child stopped cold.
“Threat,” he said.
The two drones sprung to life, their angry faceplates turning blood red. The astronaut ducked as a clawed tentacle whooshed past his head. Sizing up his adversaries while on the move, Taylor was desperate to find a weak spot. He balled his fist and swung for the bot’s mechanical eye.
The only result was a set of bruised knuckles. Then in an instant they had him.
“Let me go, goddamn it!” he gritted. “Messias, I am not your enemy!”
“Aren’t you?”
The bots pushed Taylor to his knees, his eyes level with the boy’s.
“You don’t trust me,” Messias rationalized as he paced back and forth, holding a single digit aloft. “That means I can’t trust you,” he concluded.
Taylor struggled against the sentinels, but their strength was absolute.
“I’ve told you the truth from the begin—”
The boy scoffed. “An astronaut from the past. Who are you really? Why are you really here?”
Taylor despaired, then despair turned to anger. No one in this godforsaken future believes a single thing I say. Not Zaius, not Cornelius, and now not Messias.
The boy smiled. “Tell me, Mr. Taylor, do you fear God?”
That took him aback. Messias hadn’t mentioned anything about worship the entire time they had been there. He’d been under the impression the boy’s philosophy was one of pure science.
“Whose god?” Taylor questioned.
“Mine.” Messias’s face grew grim. “Let’s see what secrets you are keeping from me.”
“You little—”
The hybrid looked up at the bots and muttered a word.
“Ps
ychedrome.” The sentinels whirled, dragging Taylor with them like a sack of potatoes.
“Where are you taking me?” he yelled.
What the hell is a psychedrome?
* * *
The service was underway, and Reverend Minister Sabian, Pontifex Rex was officiating. While he had humbly asked to simply be called minister, in fact he had decreed himself a title which held more than a modicum of pomp and circumstance.
“Oh, God,” Minister Sabian preached with drama, dressed in full regalia, “bless, we pray You, our great army and its supreme commander on the eve of a holy war, undertaken for Your sake, grant, in the name of Your Prophet, our great Lawgiver, that we—”
His eyes darted to and fro, daring someone to interrupt. When no one did, the never-ending litany plowed on,
“—Your chosen servants, created and born in Your divine image, may aspire the more perfectly to that spiritual Godliness and bodily beauty which You, in Your infinite mercy, have thought fit to deny to our brutish enemies!”
It was dogma. It was also the longest sentence Zaius had ever endured. Of that he was certain. Personally, he was embarrassed, and more than a bit worried. He stole a glance at Ursus, curious as to what his response would be.
The general was succinct.
“So be it.”
* * *
Mungwortt had not been followed. He could see why. The shed tunnel was different. It was dank and stank of defecation and decay. Unlike the tunnels they had followed to get to the underground city, this one wasn’t just another long, abandoned passageway. Something lived here. Whatever it was, the White Ones wanted to avoid it.
After walking for a good half an hour, Mungwortt looked to Zao’s skull for guidance.
“I get it,” he said. “Either we go forward or we go back.” Mungwortt thought about that. Behind them were the White Ones. With the giant brains asleep, nothing would keep them from eating him, just as they had eaten Zao. No, the unknown was a better option than certain death.
“You’re right,” he told the skull. The half-breed nodded toward a half-open doorway that appeared at the end of the tunnel. “Maybe we’ll be safe this way.”
The skull stared back.
Mungwortt was glad for the company. Never mind that Zao was as cranky as ever. At least he wasn’t alone as he stepped out of the tunnel and into a dimly lit, smooth-walled chamber. Across from the door, set into recesses in the wall, he saw a series of bulbous glass jars. Most of them were murky. Many were smashed, some were empty.
Five were intact.
Floating inside each of these was a single fetus. The first two bobbed on their sides toward the tops of their tanks. Tapping Zao on the glass, he allowed the skull to get a closer look. The third jar was thick with a black fluid that Mungwortt could only guess must be blood.
The contents of the fourth and fifth jars, however, were alive. Connected to some hidden machinery, the liquid within the vessels bubbled and frothed. In one was an unborn with two additional heads. To Mungwortt it looked like three angry creatures had been squished together and were trying to pry themselves apart.
The final jar held what appeared to be a healthy simian fetus. Mungwortt knew what an ape fetus looked like—he had served as a city gravedigger for many years. A failed pregnancy in ape culture was always afforded full burial rites, and he had often stolen a glance at the contents of a casket. Mesmerized, he watched the little simian sway in the gelatinous syrup that suspended it. Mungwortt shook his head.
This isn’t how babies are made, he thought. Who puts babies inside jars?
Zao broke his concentration. Begrudgingly, Mungwortt complied. He pushed past the narrow corridor of jars and into the widening hall. It was a laboratory of some kind. Surgical. It was a lot like Dr. Galen’s private veterinary practice—a place where the doctor had done animal experimentation of his own. Grisly things had gone on there—the heads of humans surgically removed while they still lived, the grafting of limbs and other organs onto animals that didn’t need them—all in the name of science.
This place was like that, but alien. And deserted. Instead of organic shapes and earth tones, everything was angular, gray, and tiled. There were cages built into the chapped walls. Large animal pens, dark and putrid. They stank.
The cells were set into the wall two high and four abreast. Most of them had full cage doors, but some were bent outward and twisted, as if something powerful had attacked the bars from the inside. The table in the center of the room was a long-forgotten concrete slab, stained so that its center and sides were a relentless coppery brown.
What little light there was filtered down from the ceiling, which consisted of large wooden planks with gaps in their spacing. A soft glow, however, radiated from one of the upper holding cells. The stench of it was overwhelming. A tentative Mungwortt crept up to peer inside.
He gasped.
Mungwortt himself had seen plenty of dead bodies in his lifetime, and plenty of maggots eating them. The creature in the pen looked like an ape, albeit a malformed one. Its face was a mangled twist with uneven eyes set in a misshapen skull. Its asymmetrical jaw displayed a massive overbite. Its torso was splayed wide, the ghostly glow emanating from within it. Its incandescent innards seethed and churned, a mass of wriggling gore.
Maggots.
Irradiated ones. Luckily, the beast they were consuming was quite dead. Mungwortt swallowed bile. He covered Zao’s eye sockets, better to save the old skull from the sight of such horror. After a pause he noticed that the skull could still see through the crack between his fingers.
“Sorry,” he said. Then he cautiously examined the other pens nearest him. One held nothing but bones.
The next one, however, had the desiccated remains of what he could only guess was once human. Its face and forehead had sunken eye sockets, too many to be considered normal on any creature. Its cracked and dusty skin was pulled taut over skeletal remains.
“Well,” Mungwortt began, “I could be wor—”
Zao shushed him.
Mungwortt froze.
After a moment, he whispered, “I don’t hear any—”
But then he did. There was a sound coming from the recesses of the furthest pen. Sealed, it was one of the ones he hadn’t yet explored. The door was solid, with only a small grate, so he couldn’t see in. The sound was…
…whimpering.
As a child, Mungwortt never had a pet, but he was a garbage ape. As such, he’d had to keep wild animals out of the refuse he collected. The mewling reminded him of a sick raccoon. Placing Zao on the table in the room’s center, the gorilla-chimp made soft chittering sounds, like those the other children would make to call their pets home. He unlatched the gate on the pen and swung it open, ever so slowly.
Zao had something to say about that.
“I know what I’m doing!” Mungwortt growled. “I’m showing him that I’m a friend.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the frowning skull. “Unless you think you can do bet—”
A bubbling roar erupted. Mungwortt slammed into the floor, smashing his nose on the concrete.
“Oh, God,” he cried.
The thing in the darkness was on him. Whatever it was, it was no raccoon. Powerful fists pummeled his back. Mungwortt didn’t know what was attacking him, but it was big and mean. He rolled between blows, tucked his legs up and kicked hard. His boots caught the creature in the chest and sent it reeling.
Mungwortt tried for a better look at the thing. The monster had the upper body of an adult gorilla, but its lower torso was another thing. It had none. Legless, the beast’s digestive tract lay exposed where its belly should be.
Clambering back up onto its two muscular arms, the thing dragged its entrails around the laboratory as it sized up its prey. Its mottled and burnt skin was mostly hairless, save for a few scraggly patches here and there. It looked as if its skull had never fully formed, its swollen brain only partially enclosed within the deformed receptacle and barely covered by a thin
layer of leathery epidermis. Worst of all was its face. While its jaw was simian, its nose and milky white eyes were distinctly human.
The thing was an abomination.
It gurgled again and lunged at him.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Mungwortt lodged his forearm in the creature’s jaws—anything to keep it from going for his throat. Its fangs sank into Mungwortt’s soft flesh. He gazed into the thing’s clouded eyes.
Then Mungwortt heard—no, felt—screaming. Felt a scratching in his head—inside his skull. The abomination reached into his mind and squeezed. His nose and ears became warm and sticky. As the wet trickled to his chapped lips, Mungwortt licked them.
Blood.
Pushing backward with the creature still clamped on his arm and still in his head, Mungwortt slammed into the table. Zao clattered to the floor next to his free hand. With Mungwortt’s help, the orangutan skull made his move. Raised up high, Zao crashed down on the creature’s misshapen head. It yelped as the skull smashed into its soft cerebral issue.
The mental connection stopped.
Zao showed no mercy. Again and again he bashed into the abomination’s brains until it lay twitching in the corner.
* * *
Horrified at his normally civilized friend’s sudden savagery, Mungwortt gathered some rags from the corner and fashioned a bag. He put the orangutan’s head into it, and headed for the next room. He was thankful Zao had saved his life, but felt the skull had gone a little too far.
It had become unhinged. Better not to talk about what had happened, though. Better to give Zao a moment to regain his composure.
Mungwortt steeled his resolve. Whatever lay beyond the next door, it had to be better than this.
CHAPTER 18
PER ASPERA AD ASTRA
ANSA Launch Operations Center
Cape Kennedy, Florida
1967
The giant ANSA Stratofortress lumbered along the sky at 50,000 feet. The huge B-52 carried a considerable payload. Tucked under one wing like an obscenely large missile was a dart-shaped spacecraft affixed to the front of a very large booster rocket. That rocket would take the “Dyna-Soar” craft to orbit.
Death of the Planet of the Apes Page 19