by Alex Irvine
“What do we tell Dreyfus?” he asked. “You think he’ll believe us?”
“I’m not even sure I’d believe us,” Ellie said. “Are we certain that wasn’t some kind of weird echo?”
“I heard it,” Alexander said. “The chimp talked.”
14
Koba led Grey and Stone through the treetops, following the sound of the trucks. He didn’t need to keep them in sight. He knew where they were going. Trucks couldn’t go through the forest, so they had to be heading for the big road. If the apes got there first, they could see which way the trucks turned, and then they would know whether the humans had come from the city or somewhere else.
They reached the edge of the forest and listened. Koba stilled himself, learning everything he could about the humans by watching closely as the trucks rolled slowly down the last stretch of the dirt track. When they got to the edge of the road, they turned toward the city. Koba saw the humans’ leader driving one truck, with his female and boy. In the other truck were four men. The one who had shot Ash was driving.
You, Koba thought. You shot an ape, and you will die.
He would not tell Caesar that he thought this. Caesar was powerful and a good leader, but he thought too much. Thinking weakened apes sometimes. Koba did not think. He planned.
They will have to use the bridge, he signed to Grey and Stone. We must get there first.
As soon as the trucks were out of sight around a bend, the three apes dropped from the trees, ran across the road, and leaped into the forest canopy again, making a direct line for the orange bridge that glowed like fire every sunset. Koba’s anger grew hotter as they got closer to the city. He had never wanted to return to it. It held for him only memories of bad smells, cages, and pain.
Koba, Grey, and Stone reached the orange bridge, and then swung along the underside until they reached the first pillar sunk into the water. They climbed up to the road level. The trucks were still coming down through the hills, slowed by damage to the road. Koba led the way up the pillar, climbing all the way to the top, where the thick cables rested in steel brackets. They found secure places to stay, on the side of the bridge away from the open ocean, and settled in to wait and watch.
The bridge was not completely broken, but pieces of its surface had fallen away. Wrecked and abandoned cars clogged the pathways, leaving only one open. Koba thought it seemed like humans must have cleared it. All those cars would not have died or crashed in every path but one. He decided to include this in his report to Caesar. It meant the humans had been organizing and working here for some time.
That meant there were many of them.
And that meant they were a threat to apes.
He looked toward the city. Below the other end of the bridge was a large ship, damaged and partly burned. Perhaps the humans had fought each other on that ship. It rested at anchor near a heavy stone building, four stories tall, a long rectangle that reached under the curved steel supports holding that end of the bridge up.
Beyond it, the city looked quiet. Koba could not see any more humans.
He heard the trucks approach, and shifted around to watch them. They drove slowly across the bridge, coming to a stop at the far end. Koba squinted. His eye was not good enough to see what they were doing. He poked Stone, who saw farther, and signed.
What are they doing?
More humans are meeting them, Stone signed. Five. With more guns. They are talking.
That made twelve humans. Ten men, one woman, one boy. If there was only one woman, they would not let her go into the mountains. She would be too precious. So there must be more women as well… and if there were more women, there would be more children.
They all have guns?
Stone nodded.
This was enough, thought Koba. He signed to Stone.
Look over the city. Tell me if you see smoke.
Stone shifted around on the pillar to get a better view. He gazed out. Koba looked in that direction, too, but all his eye saw were buildings. Tall buildings, short buildings, made of stone or glass or steel. Some looked unfinished. He wished he could kill the human who had blinded him.
He grunted at Stone.
Well?
Stone eased himself back around the pillar, hiding himself from the distant humans at the other end of the bridge.
Yes, he signed. There is smoke.
Koba nodded. He signaled to the other two.
Back under the bridge. We will see what makes this smoke, and how many humans there are.
They dropped down the pillar, using it as cover to avoid the gaze of any human who might look their way. Caesar would learn much when they returned to the village, Koba thought. The apes could no longer go on believing they were alone, and humans had already proved they would use their guns first, and talk later. There would be no lasting peace between human and ape.
All that remained was to plan for the war.
15
Malcolm eased up to the security checkpoint on the San Francisco side of the bridge, and saw Finney coming out to meet him. Right behind him came Dreyfus.
The man himself, Malcolm thought. The whole colony must be on pins and needles waiting to see what we found up there.
Boy, were they going to get more than they anticipated.
Watching Dreyfus approach, Malcolm pondered the irony—was it irony?—of bringing this kind of information to a checkpoint that had been built during the desperate days when the Simian Flu was killing a million people a day. It was almost as if he was bringing a new panic, and once again it was apes that would be infecting the human survivors. Only this time the contagion was fear.
If anyone could handle it, though, Dreyfus could. He’d been police chief, and then briefly mayor in the last moments before the Simian Flu had destroyed human civilization. As more and more people died, the survivors looked to whatever authority was still there—and Dreyfus had been up to the challenge. He’d held them together through the plague and its aftermath, and through the spasms of violence that had threatened to tear the survivors apart.
Along the way he had put a lot of people in the ground. Maybe too many. But the Colony, their settlement in what had once been San Francisco’s downtown, was there because he had kept them together, and done what needed to be done.
Now he was expecting Malcolm’s report on an old dam up the valley. Malcolm had news about the dam… and a whole lot more. He wasn’t sure how to handle it.
As Dreyfus came around the front end of the truck, Malcolm rolled the window down.
“So? Did you find it?” Dreyfus asked.
“It’s up there,” Malcolm said. So are a bunch of pissed-off apes, he added mentally. “Right where the records said it was. The dam looks more or less intact. It could probably start generating power for us within a week… once we get a crew up there working on it.”
“That’s great,” Dreyfus said. He broke into a broad grin, and Dreyfus wasn’t a man who smiled that often. Then he caught something in Malcolm’s demeanor. He leaned a little closer to the window.
“What? What’s the matter?”
Malcolm cut his eyes at the sentries. Good people, but he didn’t want to spread this revelation too far, too fast.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
* * *
Malcolm needed the group together to figure out how they were going to handle this situation. He left Foster to drive the second vehicle and the rest of the group jammed into his truck, along with Dreyfus. They drove along the Presidio Parkway and into the city as Malcolm filled Dreyfus in on what they had seen.
“It was right after we found the dam,” he started. “We checked it over from the outside first, then went in and found a way to access the control room. There wasn’t any damage, just ten years of rust. Assuming we can replace corroded wiring and run it from the generators at first, it ought to be functional. Most of the transmission wiring is intact, but until we try to get power throughput, we won’t know if there are problems ther
e. Oh, and we’ll have to clear the logjam at the intake, but that’s just labor. So yeah, I think—”
“You didn’t bring me on your tour so you could give me a report I could have heard back at the Colony,” Dreyfus said. “What are you avoiding?”
Malcolm slowed and navigated around a block of storefronts that had collapsed in the earthquake that had struck a couple of years after the plague. By then, too many people were dead for there to be any kind of restoration effort. They’d abandoned most of San Francisco, leaving it to fall into ruin, and that’s exactly what had happened. Everything was overgrown, parks turned to pockets of wilderness and gardens spreading out to take over sidewalks and streets. It had happened with incredible speed, Malcolm thought. Without a million people making daily efforts to hold it back, nature took over.
“Apes,” he said. “We saw apes.”
He could feel Dreyfus’s gaze as he skirted another spill of bricks and masonry that was blocking part of the intersection at Lombard and Van Ness. He turned south.
“Apes,” Dreyfus repeated.
“On our way back after we inspected the dam. Carver went down to the river to fill his canteen, and two of them were there. He shot one of them.”
Dreyfus looked back at Carver.
“Damn right I did,” Carver said. “If either one of ‘em had taken another step, I’d’ve shot ‘em both.”
Malcolm was accustomed to Carver’s coarse bravado. So, he saw, was Dreyfus, who looked at the man a moment longer before turning to face forward.
“Go on,” he said. He was already thinking, planning.
“We heard the shot, and we came running,” Malcolm said. “One of the chimps was trying to take care of the one Carver shot. Then…” He took a deep breath, and let it out. “Then a lot more of them showed up. All at once. They had weapons they’d made themselves. Spears, clubs…” Malcolm trailed off, remembering the sight.
Dreyfus let him think for a moment, then prompted him.
“How many were there?”
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “Eighty? Ninety?”
Dreyfus shifted in his seat to focus on Ellie.
“Is there a risk of contagion?”
She shook her head. “For one thing, we’re all immune, or we wouldn’t be here. For another, we’re not sure the apes spread it.”
“Sure,” Kemp said. “It’s a total coincidence that the flu hit right after all those apes broke out. And for all you know, we could be infected again right now. You weren’t a doctor, you’re a nurse.”
Ellie bridled at the insult, but tried to keep her cool.
“I worked with the CDC,” she reminded him. “Before… everything collapsed… we were isolating the disease vectors. The flu started in a lab, that much we know. But the lab was working with a number of strains of different microorganisms. One of them could well have started the flu.”
“I don’t want to argue about the flu,” Dreyfus said. “Ellie, if you say we’re immune, I believe it. Malcolm, finish the story. Tell me everything.”
“Not much more to tell,” Malcolm said. “The apes showed up—mostly chimps, but there were some gorillas and orangutans, too. They looked at us. We looked at them. Then one of them, the leader, told us to get the hell out. They were… they were organized, Dreyfus. They looked to their leader, they took their cues from him, they…”
He stopped the truck so he could look at Dreyfus.
“They were intelligent,” he said. “You could see it in their eyes.”
Dreyfus stayed silent. Outside the truck, three coyotes loped across Van Ness in the direction of Lafayette Park. They had the run of the city now. There were mountain lions and bears in the Presidio. Only in the Colony did humans still hold sway… and Malcolm could almost read Dreyfus’s mind.
If there are that many apes out there, how long will it be until they decide to finish what the plague started?
“Sorry, I don’t know if you heard what he said,” Carver said. “They spoke.”
Dreyfus nodded. “Everyone, just, please… I’m trying to process this. Give me a second to process this.” After a beat, as if thinking aloud, he said, “I thought they were all dead? There were air patrols, fire bombings…”
There had been. Large swaths of the forest at the edges of Muir Woods National Park had gone up in smoke. Malcolm didn’t know the details, but patrols of armed mercenaries had gone after the apes, too—at least until the Simian Flu took priority. Dreyfus had been in charge. If he was confused, the apes’ survival must have been incredibly unlikely.
The image of the apes strung along the ridgeline over the river came back to Malcolm. However unlikely it might seem, they were there.
“Fire bombings, huh?” Carver said. “Mission not accomplished.”
In the truck behind them, Foster honked. Malcolm looked out the window and saw Foster waving him on. He was in a big hurry to get out of the abandoned city to the safety of the Colony. Malcolm put the truck in gear again. They couldn’t just drive around the city forever.
“What are we going to do?” Ellie asked.
“I don’t know,” Dreyfus said. “We need that dam running. Without power… oh, crap.”
They drove for a while in silence. Carver sulked and muttered back and forth with Kemp. Malcolm couldn’t hear the conversation, but he knew the man well enough to figure that they were griping about the failure to exterminate the apes, ten years ago. In the rear-view mirror, Malcolm saw Alexander scoot away from Carver. The boy didn’t like aggression, and it came off Carver in waves. Whatever happened, Malcolm thought, they would have to keep him away from the apes, or somebody would get killed.
“All right,” Dreyfus said. “Let’s not tell anybody about this. Not until we figure out what to do.” Malcolm started to argue, but Dreyfus went on. “I don’t want to create a panic. We’re barely holding things together as it is.”
He didn’t like it, but Malcolm nodded. A few minutes later they arrived at the Colony.
16
The Colony was built into the lower levels of a skyscraper that had been in progress when the plague struck, and still stood unfinished, its upper floors a steel skeleton with cranes still braced against the clusters of girders that framed elevator shafts.
The lower twenty floors or so had flooring, and had been turned into housing for the few thousand people who, for all they knew, were the last surviving humans on earth. The bottom six floors occupied the entire block, and enclosed what had been envisioned as an upscale mall and luxury office complex.
Dreyfus had chosen the location carefully. The triple arch of the building’s main gateway was easily defended, and other entrances had been blocked for years. At first they had built defenses against gangs and loose militias that had ravaged the city during the plague’s first years. As time went on and more and more people died, however, many of those marauders “came in from the cold,” as it were, joining what came to be called the Colony.
Now they all had to stick together.
Part of the mall was open to the air. Its roof had fallen in during the earthquake and they had never had the resources to spare for repairs.
An open area on the other side of the building had once offered parking and delivery space. The Colony’s mechanics and engineers had taken it over, and their meager supplies of fuel were stored there. Long lines for fuel were a fact of life. There was very little of it, and as the years passed, they were able to find less and less in sealed tanks throughout the city. Much of what they did find went to power the generators that gave the interior of the Colony power for a few hours a day.
Inside the ground floor of the Colony, where there were supposed to be salons charging sixty bucks for a haircut next to boutique clothing stores and gelato stands, they had established a bazaar where time was the only currency, and barter was the general rule. Every morning, groups went out into the city, ranging as far as they could while making certain they could return to the Colony by nightfall. Occasionally D
reyfus authorized longer expeditions, but some of those didn’t come back.
There were animals. There were accidents. What they didn’t have, Malcolm thought, was enough people.
A broad outdoor staircase led from the entrance to street level. Barricades and sentry platforms lined it and covered two of the three openings. The third had a reinforced gate. It had been a while since they needed to hold the Colony against any violence, but Dreyfus insisted they maintain the defensive measures. He called it—to anyone within earshot—a “better-safe-than-sorry” approach to the security of the Colony.
“You never know what’s coming,” he told everyone. “We can’t assume we’re the only ones left, and we can’t assume the next people we see will be friendly.”
Assume nothing… but if you’re going to assume something, assume the worst. That was Dreyfus.
* * *
They got out of the trucks and headed in. On the way, Malcolm dropped a hand on Alexander’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, noting his son’s morose demeanor. “I’m sorry you lost your bag back there.”
Alexander shrugged. That was his response to lots of things lately. Malcolm tried not to let it get to him. Fifteen was a tough age, even when you hadn’t grown up during the collapse of human civilization.
“You okay?” Ellie asked on his other side.
Alexander nodded after a moment. Malcolm focused on that moment. His son wouldn’t have given it to him. Ellie could get through to the boy, even though she wasn’t his mother. She made no effort to replace Malcolm’s mother. She was just there. She had made a point of being there until he trusted her. Also, she was a better listener than Malcolm, which meant she picked up on things he didn’t.
Right now, however, he exchanged a look with her and saw that they were both thinking the same thing. Behind Alexander’s hesitation was something that they all would have to talk about sooner rather than later. Call it fatherly instinct, call it something else, he knew something was on his son’s mind… and he had a suspicion that it had to do with the apes.