by Jim Beard
* * *
Parth hung back in the shadows as Zaius hobbled forward, following the sounds of whispered ape voices. His beam of light settled on figures huddled at the end of the hallway. He recognized dark gorillas, the green jumpers of the chimpanzees, the orange of an orangutan uniform. “Karah? Is that you?”
Her voice was unmistakable. “Zaius!”
He spotted the gorilla holding a rifle at the ready. “Verus, hold your fire. I have someone with me. A helper.”
“Who?” Captain Caetus demanded as he stalked into view from the shadows, pointing a rifle at Zaius. “Everyone else is dead!”
Unable to contain his excitement, Markos stepped out from behind Caetus. “Zaius, we made the most incredible discovery! This place is a museum. Man is not an unevolved ape! Humans—”
“Shut up!” Caetus backhanded the chimpanzee and sent him sprawling. Turning back, he raised his rifle higher. “Who is with you?”
Stunned by the gorilla’s behavior, Zaius did not immediately respond, but the sauroid creature moved forward, revealing itself. “I am Parth,” it said in its whispery voice.
“You are one of them!” Caetus fired his rifle, and the muzzle flash blinded Zaius. Beside him, Parth fell to the floor with a grunting wheeze of pain.
“Caetus!” Zaius lurched in front of the sauroid, placing himself in the line of fire. “Lower your weapon!”
The gorilla aimed the rifle at Zaius instead. “I do not take orders from you!”
“Yes, you do. By order of the Academy!”
“Bah! Lies—all of it!” Caetus stomped his feet. “Is your great orangutan Lawgiver even real? No! All lies to keep power for yourselves, to keep gorillas under your control. No more. I am in charge now, and I have had enough of you, Zaius!”
He swung the rifle, bringing it up to fire, but Karah lunged forward, colliding into Caetus as the gun went off. The bullet missed, and the enraged gorilla punched her in the throat, dropping her on the spot. He turned down at her, infuriated, and without a moment’s hesitation he pointed the rifle and shot Karah in the chest.
With a howl of horror, Zaius ignored the pain in his ribs and lunged forward, but something grabbed his ankle and tripped him. He sprawled with a grunt of agony, and his light skittered across the floor and went out, plunging the corridor into darkness. More gunfire rang out, bursts of muzzle flares as the gorillas simply fired at anything that moved.
Explosions and screaming filled the hallway—and then more things were moving, creatures that came through the shadows from behind them in the museum.
Zaius sprawled, moaning with pain as well as grief from witnessing Karah’s murder, and heard Parth’s rattling voice weakly in his ear. “The lacerators are upon us. Help me.” He was still alive, but gravely wounded from the rifle shot. He pressed something hard and cold into Zaius’ hand—one of the metal canisters he had taken from the laboratory. “Twist the valve on top. When I ignite it, throw it away from you, back toward the lacerators. The heat will blind them.”
Zaius found the handle and turned it. The cylinder hissed, releasing a foul stench. Parth gasped. “Be ready. Here is the flame.”
A ball of fire erupted in Zaius’ hand, singeing the hair on his face. He flailed, nearly dropping the cylinder, but the sauroid creature summoned a shout. “Throw it!”
Unable to rise, Zaius lobbed the flaming cylinder where he thought the lacerators were. The fireball illuminated the hall, revealing two monsters throwing themselves on the remaining apes.
Caetus fired as the first lacerator tore into Markos, ripping open the green jumper. The second lacerator clamped jaws down on Verus’ rifle, then flung it away from the gorilla. Two more shots hit the clawed beast that attacked the screaming chimpanzee. Karah desperately crawled toward Zaius, her face bloody in the firelight.
Parth forced a second cylinder to Zaius. “Throw this one at the lacerator.” Slick with blood, it had flame already coming out of a three-inch nozzle.
Zaius threw, and the canister hit the lacerator in the side as it finished killing Markos. The painful flame distracted the monster long enough for Caetus to shoot it again. As the lacerator fell, the second creature leapt over its body and landed on Caetus, snapping the rifle in two. Ignoring the gorilla’s mighty punches, the lacerator sliced him to ribbons with its talons.
“Shoot at the fire…” Parth’s voice was weak and hard for Zaius to hear over the simian screams. With a death rattle deep in its throat, the sauroid pushed Zaius’ rifle to him. “Shoot at the fire.”
Lifting the weapon, Zaius aimed at the flaming canister near the taloned feet of the lacerator and pulled the trigger. The bullet spanged off the floor and missed. The lacerator swung its bright gaze at Zaius, snapped its jaws, then began to move. Zaius fired again at the hissing canister.
The explosion was deafening.
* * *
After the fires had burned out, Zaius had cinched bindings around his ribs, keeping the pain down to a tolerable level. He cradled Karah’s body and squeezed her hand, but she did not twitch. Caetus had killed her, and then the lacerators had slain the rest.
But Zaius had work to do, even if the rest of the expedition was dead. After long and tedious dragging, he lay Parth’s body in the empty container next to its preserved siblings in their suspended animation chambers. When the other mutant creatures woke, if they ever did, they would know nothing of the time Parth had spent watching over them, or the sacrifice Parth had made for an ape it did not know.
Watching the blinking lights on the control apparatus, Zaius considered destroying the machines, but he knew their world, their destiny, was not his, nor was it his to command. He left them sleeping.
* * *
As Zaius limped into the bright desert sun and squinted at the desolate landscape of the Forbidden Zone, the words of the Lawgiver haunted him. “For he will make a desert of his home and yours…” What they had found in the museum was much too dangerous to become widely known.
Finally, Zaius understood why the Defender of the Faith was quick to watch over relics of the past and shun dangerous technology. If the Lawgiver’s Word were brought into question, the gorillas—and perhaps all of ape society—could no longer be kept under control. Zaius vowed not to forget the sacrifices of his expedition in the name of Truth and Knowledge. But not every ape deserved Truth and Knowledge. Not everyone could handle it.
The landscape blurred in front of him like a mirage, but it was no illusion, no radiation shimmer, merely a film of tears as Zaius imagined Karah encouraging him on.
He spat the acrid dust of the Forbidden Zone out of his mouth. Leaning on the rib-bone cane, he took the first step of his long walk home.
* * *
General Urko, of the Saturday-morning animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes, steps forward in Drew Gaska’s “The Unknown Ape,” opening up a Pandora’s box of multiple universes and dire portent for their inhabitants…
* * *
THE UNKNOWN APE
by
ANDREW E.C. GASKA
General Urko barked.
“Sergeant, I want that weapon ready to launch now!”
He and his commando force were in an ancient cathedral, miles beneath the surface of the Forbidden Zone. The general’s archeologist had surmised that some cataclysm in the distant past had dropped the former metropolis, part of the remnants of a vast city, into a fissure. It had then been buried by thousands of years of desert sand and storms.
Zako gave the go-sign to his troops, and the work began. Thrown lines snaked over the cathedral’s buttresses and through its latticework. Seconds later, gorillas clad in green oxhide leapt from gargoyle perches atop sturdy marble columns. Their uniforms stood in stark contrast to the general’s pale blue and orange leathers.
Pulling the ropes with them, Urko’s gorillas descended gracefully, spinning down the lines in a sort of simian aerial ballet. As they fell, the line and tackle pulled, raising the prone cylindrical device attach
ed to the other end of the cordage. Slowly at first and then gaining momentum, the metallic beast’s cone-shaped head began to ascend.
It was a weapon of yesterday. Its appearance reminded Urko of a brass Rea Voom 88 hunting rifle cartridge with small winglets on either side.
This missile would be far deadlier than any bullet, Urko enthused. Far deadlier than any aeroplane, even. This weapon will be the means of my revenge!
As the ape soldiers rappelled to the floor, the massive rocket lifted into its firing position. Its worn hull groaned in protest as the missile stood up. After millennia of slumber, it rose like a phoenix, shaking ash and debris from its tarnished shell. Upright now, its base cradled the projectile in its launch apparatus. It was an angry and omniscient god of destruction.
And it was in Urko’s hands.
Urko’s revenge plan had been simple—invade the subterranean home of the mutant Underdwellers and locate the secret weapon hidden there: a flying bomb capable of destroying an entire city.
His gorilla scouts had found it down a tunnel that the Underdwellers had sealed up centuries before, in a long-abandoned house of worship. It lay down the aisle between rows of gothic pews—dirty, dented, and scarred from eons of abuse. A relic of a bygone age, it had been entombed in the same cathedral that was once its house of worship.
Discarded and forgotten.
Until, that is, a loyal archeologist had found proof of its existence in the Forbidden Zone.
Until Urko had learned it was real.
The general’s lead engineer, Doctor Inzari, had pored over the unearthed technical tomes on the matter, and had told Urko what needed to be done:
Elevate the weapon to its firing position on the pad recessed behind the altar. The controls would then activate and rise up from it. Set the range of the humanoids’ city, and obliterate them for good.
As the missile’s full weight came to rest on its pad, it triggered ancient machinery that churned and stalled and churned again before finally cycling to life. Just as Inzari had said, the altar split in two and slid apart. A control panel emerged from the space beneath it, clicking into place and coming to rest right beside Urko. He could hear the distant hum of turbines as ancient electrical pathways rerouted themselves to summon power to the controls. Kicking aside the body of an unlucky Underdweller, Urko stepped up to the console. The face of the panel was just as described. He had memorized the important switches. He quickly found the keypad used to input target coordinates, as well as a red firing cylinder with a safety shield over it. Depressing it would launch the missile.
Urko’s luck was changing.
He had been disgraced by the council, over a war started with a less technologically inclined ape colony. Exiled, the rogue general and his loyal gorillas had since waged a guerilla war against both sides. They raided enemy settlements and then melted into the night. Now, his tactics would change.
Now, he had the weapon.
With a whirl and a click, the lights on the control panel hummed and stuttered to life. Glancing over his shoulder, Urko made certain his troops had barricaded the cathedral’s massive doors. No one would be able to stop him now.
“Maps! Where are my maps?” Urko shouted. He needed the exact coordinates of the humanoid enclave.
In a rush to obey his orders, two of his soldiers collided. Normally, Urko would be furious, calling them idiots and demanding their heads for their incompetence. Instead, the general bore his teeth. In another gorilla, it might have seemed like a demonstration of power. For Urko, it was the closest thing to a smile of which he was capable.
“Now, we’ll see what the council has to say with this power at my fingertips.” Urko slammed his fist down on the edge of the control panel, hard. The lights flickered.
“Death to the humanoids! Death to Zaius!”
His mantra summoned an unearthly response. The wind squealed in defiance. Vertigo overtook him as the cathedral skewed and darkened around the edges of his vision. Something in the air was coalescing.
An ape-skulled wraith took shape before him, as tall as the bomb itself. Its eyes were swirling embers in the voids of its pitch eye sockets. No sooner than the thing had appeared, it spoke. “You desecrate this holy chamber!” the apparition howled. Its voice came from everywhere, yet nowhere, all at once.
“Return,” it shrieked inside his skull. “Return to the surface now, or face the Lawgiver’s wrath!”
As his troops fled, Urko grabbed one of them—Private Mungwort—by the collar. “Coward! Fool! Don’t run from it!” Urko ripped the soldier’s automatic rifle from his hands, throwing the dimwitted ape to the ground.
“Shoot it!” Urko slid back the rifle’s bolt, releasing its safety. “Kill it!” He emptied his entire clip into the phantom. And with that, it was gone.
An illusion? Urko pondered. Created by the minds of the Underdwellers, no doubt.
As the specter had never truly been there, however, the general had instead fired on what was behind it.
The enormous weapon once again towered before him, but now it was riddled with bullet holes. Jets of noxious steam vented from the wounded missile, scalding the gorillas nearest to it. The burst cleaned the soot and debris from the device’s left wing, exposing two archaic symbols, the meaning of which Urko could only guess:
AΩ
For the moment, he did not even care. The venting steam seemed to have no end. The gorilla general adjusted his bulbous orange war helm, a gesture intended as much to maintain a dignified appearance as it was a thinly disguised face-palm.
“Uh-oh,” Urko said.
The colossal trajectile was damaged and, from his understanding, exposing him and his men to high doses of lethal radiation. Urko needed to get it in the air fast—not only to accomplish his goal of wiping the humanoids off the planet, but to save himself from his own error as well. The punctured missile continued to spew steam. Distressed, the general bellowed, “Where are my maps?!”
“Here, sir!” Sergeant Zako had rushed to his general’s side, scrolls in hand.
Finally—an ape who follows orders. When this is said and done, Urko reflected, I’ll let Zako live. So many of the other officers, however, had to go. Traitors, all of them!
Urko spread the appropriate map on the control panel in front of him. With agency, he began punching in the coordinates of the humanoids’ Hidden Valley.
He only got one axis code entered. Then, there was chaos.
An explosion burst through the barricaded entrance. The doors shredded and splintered off their hinges. Wooden shards perforated the gorilla commandos, impaling those nearest to the foyer with ragged timber stakes.
Urko’s ears were ringing. Dazed from the concussion blast, the gorilla clumsily concealed himself behind the split altar. The air was thick with chalk dust and steam. Urko bit back the urge to cough.
Emerging from the smoke and debris of the cathedral’s foyer was a single ape—a chimpanzee. A rifle slung on his back, the chimp was wielding some kind of portable rocket cannon. He quickly discarded the used weapon, beckoning to some unknown force in his wake.
“Now,” the chimp roared, “fight like apes!”
Emerging from the smoke behind him was a troop unlike any Urko could have imagined.
Chimps. Orangutans. Even treacherous gorillas, and—
—humanoids?
A humanoid and ape hybrid army—working together? Urko boiled. Blasphemy!
The chimpanzee’s followers swarmed the cathedral, firing indiscriminately at General Urko’s stunned forces. Using the temple’s pews for cover, Zako quickly organized his surviving commandos into flanking teams. While the hybrid army may have made headway inside, most of them were pinned down, just as many of the gorillas were. From his protected position behind the cathedral’s stony altar, Urko sized up his enemy. The chimpanzee flowed through the disheveled temple, deftly weaving in and out of machine gun fire. The other apes in the charge followed the chimp with a fever, almost fanatically devoted
to this new leader. There were other commanders as well. Most were humanoid—and leading apes into battle!
The dark-skinned male humanoid in the blood-red shirt was among the charge. Urko was certain he had been the partner of the one Doctor Zira had named “Blue Eyes.” There were at least three other intelligent beasts as well—one young and dark-skinned, the other older, fair-skinned, and blonde. The blonde man wore modern clothes like his compatriots, but with a primitive oxhide vest over them.
The third was bearded and bushy-haired with a tanned hide, and dressed in typical humanoid loincloth and rags. Despite his primitive appearance, that one commanded particular attention. He was older than the others, wiser-looking, but with a wild fire in his eyes. A barbarian wielding an automatic weapon was a frightful image, Urko noted. He would have to keep his eye on that beast.
The three of them were unrecognizable to him.
The filthy animals all look alike!
Among the ape leaders was Doctor Zaius himself, shielded by a mixed force of armed chimpanzees and gorillas. The duplicitous Cornelius and an unknown squat orangutan, carrying an automatic weapon slung on his back, accompanied the doctor.
Perfect, Urko schemed. Most of the thorns in my side, gathered in one place.
All he had to do was kill them, then launch the weapon on the humanoids’ valley. New Ape City—and all other ape colonies—would then be his.
Urko watched them all, looking for a weakness to exploit. The humans held their own. The chimpanzee warrior broke from the group, making his way up a forgotten stairwell and toward an organist’s balcony. Exposed from Urko’s position, the chimp erroneously thought he was safe. The general grasped a discarded rifle lying nearby. In hand, he checked its chamber, finding but one round within.
That’s all I’ll need, Urko grinned.
Bringing the rifle up to his shoulder, he steadied his arm and focused through its sight.
Ape or not, a headshot would be best. Clean and efficient.