Death of the Planet of the Apes

by Andrew E. C. Gaska

  Mungwortt scratched his head.

  He’s calling you an idiot, idiot, Zao explained.

  “Oh!” Mungwortt said aloud.

  WHO ELSE IS THERE? Be-Six boomed, and the half-breed bent with the pain. Who are you conversing with?

  Zao, he can’t read your thoughts! Mungwortt thought. This would give them an advantage.

  “You better let me go,” Mungwortt demanded, “or my friend will hurt you. He killed your pet!” He visualized the brutal death of the brain’s pet, hoping that Be-Six could see what was in his mind. Once again there was silence—this one longer than before. Then the brain’s thoughts invaded his head again—and they sounded angry.

  I concede, Be-Six responded. Leave at once.

  Mungwortt smiled. “Come on, Zao. Let’s go.” As he visualized his friend, safely tucked away in the sack, the brain reached out.

  One moment, Be-Six instructed. Your friend… He probed deeper into Mungwortt’s mind. Zao is a skull? The entire chamber seemed to swirl with his anger. You aren’t just stupid, he concluded, you’re insane.

  The buzzing became an explosion of pain.

  Mungwortt screamed. The psionic assault was deafening. If the abomination was a cudgel, this was a scalpel. He could feel the blade spiral behind his eyes, deep in his skull, and hear a continuous screeching.

  The screeching was his.

  On his knees, he dug through his satchel.

  What are you doing? Be-Six’s mind demanded. Is that a weapon?

  It was, of course.

  “Get him, Zao!” Mungwortt thrust forward, the skull in hand. Over and over he pounded it into the base of the intellectual aquarium, aiming for the bisecting crack that slivered across it.

  Stop! I command you! The bone began to chip away, but a spiral of cracks began to splinter the glass. The Overseer panicked and the mental onslaught increased. Whether through sheer stubbornness or because of his limited mental capacities, the half-breed refused to give up.

  Filthy beast!

  Drawing back, Mungwortt roared. He slammed Zao into the break one last time. The cracks snapped. The glass shattered, the bottom of the tank gave way, and a viscous wave crashed over him. Be-Six crashed to the floor in a cascade of sludge, while Mungwortt and Zao were washed away.

  The mucoid fluid splashed through the theater, creating small but swift rivers which wound their way through the calcified tomb. Soon the slime settled, and Mungwortt pulled Zao from the gelatinous muck. He gave the skull a moment to catch his breath before tucking him back in his bag.

  Tiger…

  Mungwortt heard it in his head.

  “Zao, did you—?”

  The skull affirmed.

  The ape steeled himself for another assault.

  Tiger buy…

  There was none. He frantically scanned the chamber. Mangled medulla was strewn everywhere. A dagger of glass bisected Be-Six’s cortex.

  Tiger buys a tow.

  Eenie Meenie Doe.

  Ray Meenie Moe.

  * * *

  Groom Lake, Nevada

  Area 51

  1967

  “I shouldn’t have done that.” Taylor adjusted his bandages and lit his cigar. Alone in her quarters, he and Stewart had just made love for the third time.

  I shouldn’t have done it the first two times, either.

  Clenching the lit stogie in his teeth, he climbed out of bed and pulled his pants back on.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re spoiling the mood.” Still in bed, Stewart lit her own cigarette and breathed deep.

  “Eddie was my friend, too,” she exhaled. “People bond over death. Do you think this would have happened if I didn’t want it to?”

  Taylor considered. “I suppose not.” He sighed and more smoky haze filled the room.

  What am I going to say to Gillian? He hadn’t even seen their newborn daughter yet, and he had slept with another woman.

  “Listen,” he started.

  “Don’t worry, George,” she said, “this stays between us.” Wearing only the sheet, Stewart sat up in the bed. “I was going to wait until you got back,” she offered, “but we need to talk.”

  She inhaled and continued. “About Churchdoor…”

  Churchdoor, again. In the nearly five years since the name had first cropped up, none of them could find anything to indicate what it was. Nothing besides the incident in the bunker, he corrected. Scanning the floor, he found his dog tags.

  “I’ve been doing a little snooping around the medical archives,” she said.

  “Oh?” Taylor tucked in his shirt.

  “The men who died at the bunker?” she reminded him. “I managed to get their autopsy reports.”

  Taylor raised an eyebrow at that.

  “A base doctor likes me,” she admitted.

  “I’m sure he does,” Taylor hummed. Stewart threw a pillow at him. “So,” he said as he buckled his belt, “what have you got?”

  “So,” she said, “they died of a lethal dosage of radiation.”

  “That’s not unexpected,” Taylor puffed. The bunker’s shield doors were designed to shut in biological agents, toxins, and radiation. It had to be one of them. At least it wasn’t biological. A probable cause came readily to mind. “The GDM engine is a fusion reactor—”

  “Yes, not a fission one,” she countered. Fusion yielded much less radiation—it was almost clean energy. Opening her nightstand drawer, she produced a file and tried to hand it to him. Taylor wouldn’t take it.

  “Look at the numbers, George,” she pleaded.

  He accepted with a frown, and leafed through the purloined documents.

  “This can’t be right,” he muttered. The radiation dose the two technicians had absorbed was higher than what was produced by the Tsar Bomba. A Soviet weapon exploded in the late fifties, the fifty-seven megaton Tsar was the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated. This rivaled that without the accompanying blast.

  “It’s a super weapon,” Stewart said.

  “Hold on, now—”

  “George, it’s got to be.”

  “It could be an experimental propulsion unit,” he argued. “Something other than the GDM.” Taylor paced the room. “Maybe the photon drive Hasslein keeps talking about.” Stewart just stared at him. After a while, she spoke.

  “Do you trust Hasslein and Stanton?”

  The question was a difficult one. Taylor had grown to like Otto Hasslein, but the man was mysterious. Stanton, on the other hand, was a twerp.

  “Do you trust your father?” she added.

  Taking another drag on his cigar, Taylor looked at the numbers once again.

  What are you, Churchdoor? he thought.

  * * *

  Messias was fast. The boy stayed ahead of Taylor the entire run to the Main Hall. Once he was inside, the two-foot-thick steel slab came rolling shut to seal him in.

  To seal me out, Taylor knew. Taylor dove for the portal, tumbling across the foyer and into the hall just as the door crashed into place.

  SLAM!

  The sanctum was in lockdown.

  “You made it,” the boy shouted. “Good!” A yellow light strobed on the hybrid’s command chair. “Outer defenses have been breached!” Messias slid into the command chair, reading coded light patterns that signified what was happening outside, and translating them for the irked astronaut.

  “The creatures have taken the bridge!”

  Taylor wasn’t buying it. Any of it. Once again, the “mysterious creatures” were on the attack. As always, it was all a little too convenient.

  “Messias,” Taylor said, “Nova didn’t die on my spacecraft. Stewart did.”

  Messias ignored him. “Deploying sentinels to intercept.”

  “That wasn’t Nova, was it?” Taylor stepped forward. “She’s not dead.”

  “The sentinels have failed!” the boy exclaimed.

  “Stop it,” Taylor snarled through gritted teeth. “Right now.”

  A li
ght on the control panel burned an indignant red.

  “They’re inside!”

  Taylor balled his fists and stepped forward.

  “Messias, so help me, I’ll—”

  Wham!

  The room shook. Loud cracks echoed throughout the sanctum. Dust fell from the ceiling and the foundation shook. It was as if the city had taken a hit from a bomb blast. During World War II, he’d been stuck in a bunker when the enemy blanketed the area. This felt like that, only the source of the rumbling wasn’t the ceiling. It was the door.

  Messias sprang to his feet. “They’re here.” The two of them stared at the shaking barrier.

  Wham.

  Wham.

  Wham.

  Doubt crept across Taylor’s face, and with it, Messias grew bold.

  “You have to protect me,” he demanded. Giving in, Taylor scanned the chamber. He would be much more comfortable with a weapon in hand.

  Better armed than not.

  Moving swiftly to the dining table, he picked up a wooden chair. Gripping it with both hands, he swung it at one of the many stone columns that dominated the sanctum. The chair shattered, its legs splintering into makeshift staves. Taylor picked one up and examined its sharpened edge. When it met his approval, he tossed it to Messias.

  “Here.”

  “What’s this?” The boy regarded the weapon with disgust. “Barbaric. I don’t want this.” He threw it back. The stave skittered across the tiled floor, coming to a stop at Taylor’s feet.

  Wham.

  The steel door buckled under the onslaught.

  Wham. Cracks drew themselves across the marble door frame.

  The sharpened stave lay at his feet. Taylor reached for it. At that moment the door exploded across the room with a deafening impact, setting his ears ringing. The force of it shattered columns and splintered stone. Though warped, it wasn’t the door that had failed them. Rather, it was the wall that had held it.

  Murky shadow-things spilled into the room. They weren’t apes, but their forms were ape-like. The gloomy shades were tall, much taller than Taylor. Their shoulders were broad, their arms thick and powerful. They cast deep shadows behind them that suggested giant leathery wings, but they had no such appendages.

  The nearest one swiped at him. Taylor dove, narrowly avoiding its spindly claws. He rolled and came to his feet near the dining table, only to find himself face to face with two more of the creatures.

  The closer one leered at him.

  Taylor struggled to understand what he was looking at. Its form radiated heat, its exhales wet and steamy. Though he was only inches away from the thing, its features were indiscernible. Where it should have had eyes, there were two crimson coals. Aside from that, the demon was a hazy blur that seemed to shimmer and change with each heartbeat.

  His face damp with its breath, Taylor tightened his grip on the stake and swung. The wooden weapon sliced across the creature’s ember eyes, blinding it. The other creature grabbed for him, and Taylor ducked under the table. The wounded demon bellowed. It was the same unearthly howl he and Messias had heard echoing through the city during the last attack.

  Messias.

  He slipped out the other side of the table and scanned the room. Thankfully, all of the creatures were focused on him, and not on the boy. But his relief was short-lived, as one of the things drew near to Messias.

  Taylor prepared to lunge.

  The thing passed through the boy. Not a single demon attempted to touch him.

  That does it.

  The creatures converged on Taylor.

  He did nothing.

  The wounded demon raised its fists high over his head. The others followed suit. Taylor threw the stake to the floor, where it landed with a clatter.

  “Look out!” Messias shouted.

  Taylor closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Mungwortt and Zao climbed the stairs. From a chamber up ahead he could hear something new. Not thoughts, but a muffled voice. Speaking words, though the voice was distinctly unsimian. As they grew closer, Zao could make out the words.

  Reaching the top of the stairs, Mungwortt could understand them, too.

  “…take you over my knee,” the strange voice echoed beyond.

  Curious, the skull reflected. The dimwitted ape agreed.

  “What now?” he muttered.

  There was something else, too. A trill. A whine. Its pitch grew steady as they homed in on the source. It was a beacon, drawing them in. They slid through the creaking door.

  We must be cautious, Zao urged.

  Mungwortt gulped and nodded.

  * * *

  Fists fell as the demons assaulted Taylor. They tried to, at least. As the blows landed, the shadow beasts burst into plumes of ash and smoke. Quickly, he and Messias were alone.

  “Phantoms,” Taylor seethed. “How did you do it? Holography? Psychotropics?”

  “You do not know what you are talking about,” Messias said.

  “I ought to take you over my knee,” Taylor growled. His anger was palpable, but so too was Messias’s. The hybrid seemed to feed on Taylor’s rage.

  “You want to threaten me or protect yourself?” Messias nodded at the abandoned stake. “Pick it up,” he taunted. “Go ahead, pick it up.”

  Hesitant, Taylor stared.

  “Do what I say,” the boy demanded.

  “No.”

  Messias closed his eyes, and a high-pitched whine filled the astronaut’s ears. Taylor swept the stake up and put it to his own throat. Some force was pushing at him, egging him on.

  Kill yourself.

  The suggestion rattled around his brain, but it wasn’t his thought. It was Messias—and it was overpowering.

  ACT III

  INTO THE LABYRINTH

  CHAPTER 20

  THE QUALITY OF MERCY

  There was light.

  Above, soft luminance penetrated high, broken windows, and was diffused through dust before descending to the disheveled hall. Below, the floor’s weathered wooden planks creaked with the weight of Mungwortt’s footsteps.

  The room he and Zao had entered was as large as the inside of the Zaius Museum. Three stories tall, the hall’s center was open wide, with two floors of balconies wrapping around the upper levels. Row upon row of dust-laden shelving created a maze of aisles. Squarish leather-jacketed packages lined every overloaded shelf, some orderly, others in disarray. Mungwortt peered closely at one of them, staring at its outer edge. Bound in a stiff cover, it was packed with dozens of small sheets of papyrus.

  Books! the skull whispered over the buzzing in his head.

  “Books,” Mungwortt repeated. Modern apes kept scrolls, not books, but he had seen one, once, in the old temple when he was very young. Called The Book of Simian Prophecy, it was a religious text that some apes had revered in addition to The Sacred Scrolls. That stopped when the church initiated reforms and the temple that held it was burned. As they watched the fire, Mungwortt’s aunt explained that the book had to be destroyed, because it told of a savior other than the Lawgiver—someone called “the Unknown Ape.”

  “Having two saviors encourages two faiths,” she had told him. “We need only one.” As she spoke, she reached down and collected a bundle of twigs. Holding them tightly together, she tried to snap them. Instead, they only bent. “Apes together are strong.”

  Then she discarded all but one of the sticks, applying the same pressure. A crisp snap startled him as the twig broke in two.

  “Separate, we are weak.”

  It was a lesson he had never forgotten. The Book of Simian Prophecy was the only book he had ever known—and it had been something dangerous.

  Here there were so many around him. Could all these be dangerous, too? he wondered. The thought boggled his diminutive brain. Keen on finding out, however, Mungwortt forgot his place. He pulled a pretty red book from its nestled spot between two others, eager to have Zao read it to him. The thing burst into dust.

  “Zao?”
a confused Mungwortt whispered. The skull would not talk, though—it only emanated sadness. Old beyond reckoning, the bountiful knowledge locked in this room would remain lost—the books shelved around them were worn from exposure to vermin, the elements, and worse.

  Abruptly, there was a voice, and the buzzing increased.

  “No,” it said, the sound echoing. The source was around the next corner, beyond the far bookcase. His attention renewed, Mungwortt looked to Zao for guidance. Depressed, the elder had withdrawn.

  “Don’t worry, my friend,” Mungwortt murmured. He patted the skull in his makeshift satchel. “I’ll get us through this.” Ready to face fuzzy White Ones or wagon-sized brains, Mungwortt leapt forward.

  There ahead stood the source of the voice.

  It was a human—and aside from his striking blue eyes, a rather plain-looking one at that. He wasn’t alone. The human was talking to a child.

  A child ape—a very strange one.

  The two just stood there, frozen.

  * * *

  The hybrid boy was in his head. His movements weren’t his own.

  Telekinesis, Taylor thought fiercely. The harder he fought to pull the stake away from his own throat, the stronger the resistance became. So he decided to try a different strategy.

  He didn’t fight it. He let go, and the projectile sailed past him, clattering to the floor.

  “How did you do that?” Messias wailed in his head. “You cannot stop me!”

  Doubling over, Taylor clutched his skull. Terrors reverberated in his mind.

  “Messias,” Taylor bellowed. “Get the hell out of my head!” But there was no more Messias. The hybrid child split in two as a monster emerged from his shell. It was like the others, but bigger still—a good five yards tall. The inky ape’s eyes burned like stars. Its legs trapped in Messias’s chest cavity, the shadow behemoth writhed like a genie, pulling itself from the boy’s hollow form. Taylor groped the floor nearby until his hand found purchase—the stake.

  “None of this is real,” he gritted, “and I’m guessing you aren’t, either!”

  The shadow ape lunged. Taylor thrust the stake forward, and felt an impact. The room fluttered.

  The world fell away.