by Greg Cox
He moved steadily, assuredly, through the ranks, speaking loud enough to be heard by humans and apes alike. That the apes could also hear him speak plainly of his plans for their total extermination did not seem to concern him. Their demise was a foregone conclusion, apparently.
“We cannot fail. We’re the last defense. Somewhere in this world there are more survivors. And whether they know it or not, they are counting on us. To show the will to protect them against this new plague.” He shook his head pensively. “We’ve seen it here. And it’s already spreading up north. If we lose this battle, there will be nothing to stop it from spreading everywhere. If we lose, in a matter of months, the human race will gasp its last words and go silent. Just another dumb animal, left to roam a godforsaken world.”
He came to a stop in the midst of his troops. Preacher stood close by, listening intently to his leader with a rapt expression on his youthful face that dashed whatever illusions Caesar might have had about the soldier’s innate decency. Like the rest of the humans, he was committed to the Colonel’s genocidal crusade.
“Most of you are still young men and women,” the Colonel said, adopting a more intimate, almost affectionate tone. “And if we win, years from now, you may be sitting somewhere with your children, your grandchildren, and they’ll ask you: what did you do in the greatest war? And you can tell them, you fought—viciously—for a gentler world.”
Preacher swallowed hard and lifted his chin in pride. Like the other soldiers, he appeared genuinely inspired by the Colonel’s speech. Despite the army bearing down on them, their eyes shone with a fervency that scared Caesar to the marrow of his being. It was clear that they would gladly commit any atrocity to maintain humanity’s dominance over the planet and bring about the idyllic future the Colonel foretold. A peaceful world where humanity could thrive and grow as it had before the virus.
A world without apes.
* * *
Whistles shrieked as the Colonel’s executive officer dismissed the troops from the rally and set them to work forcing the chained apes out of the pens and into the yard, where the apes dragged their feet and knuckles, in no hurry to resume their labors. The Colonel waded through the chaotic operation, accompanied by Preacher and Red, until he reached Caesar’s cage.
Drawing his sidearm, he signaled Red. The gorilla dutifully unlocked the cage for Caesar, who remained on the floor.
He gave the Colonel a hard, weary look, making no move toward the open gate. He was in no hurry to help the humans build their wall, for when the wall was finished, so were his people. If the Colonel wanted him to budge, he would have to do more than send Red to fetch him.
I’m a prisoner, he thought. Not a slave.
The Colonel proved up to the challenge. Scowling, he cocked his gun.
Caesar considered his options. Working on the wall was giving the Colonel what he wanted, and hastening the end of the apes’ usefulness, but then again, Caesar could do nothing to save his people with a bullet in his brain.
I must lose this battle if I hope to win the war.
Sighing, he reluctantly rose to his feet and stepped out of the cage, tottering slightly upon shaky legs. Despite the food and water the girl had brought him last night, he was still recovering from his recent ordeals. Just walking upright required more effort than it should have.
The Colonel regarded him coldly.
“Send him up to the quarry,” he ordered. “Alone.”
Caesar remembered the apes he’d seen prying rocks out of the cliffs for use on the wall; apparently, the Colonel didn’t think that working on the wall was hard enough labor for Caesar. Or perhaps he simply wanted to keep Caesar isolated from the other apes to forestall any further insurrections.
Probably a smart move, Caesar conceded. I would do the same if I were him.
Red fastened shackles back onto Caesar’s ankles and wrists, which were already rubbed raw by the ropes that had bound him to the cross. He tried his best not to flinch as the tight metal restraints clamped shut, but was not sure he succeeded.
Wanting to lock the shackles into place, Red looked to Preacher for the key. Caesar maintained a poker face as the young soldier searched through the key rings on his belt, looking more and more concerned as he failed to find the key to the shackles. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he licked his lips nervously as he checked over and over again, as though hoping that the missing key would somehow miraculously reappear. He glanced anxiously at the Colonel, no doubt terrified of screwing up in front of his unforgiving leader.
Caesar almost felt sorry for him.
“Is there a problem, soldier?” the Colonel asked impatiently.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Preacher said. “Just give me a minute.”
Frowning, the Colonel called out to another soldier, who was herding a gang of chained apes past them, jabbing them with the barrel of his rifle to keep them moving. He seemed, at a glance, to be even more impatient than the other guards.
“Boyle!” he barked and nodded at Caesar. “His cuffs.”
The other soldier, a blond, white-skinned human with a surly expression, hurried over to lock the shackles, leaving a couple of fellow soldiers to watch over the other apes. Preacher flushed in embarrassment as Boyle carried out the Colonel’s orders with a key from his own belt. The Colonel looked on, apparently wanting to make sure the job was done to his satisfaction, as the locks clicked shut. He started to turn away when his gaze fell on the cage behind Caesar—and something lying inside it. His head jerked up in surprise.
The doll, Caesar suddenly realized. I forgot about the rag doll.
Striding forward, the Colonel reached into the cage and plucked the discarded toy from the ground. He stared at the dirty, beaten-up doll, visibly perplexed. Caesar would have enjoyed the man’s obvious confusion if not for the danger the doll’s discovery posed to the girl, Maurice, and Bad Ape, not to mention Caesar’s plans to free the other apes. The colonel’s soldiers were already on the lookout; what if the Colonel took this as confirmation that Caesar still had more allies on the loose?
The Colonel thrust the doll in Caesar’s face.
“What is this?” he demanded.
Caesar did not answer. He racked his brain for a plausible explanation, but there was nothing he could say that would not put his friends at risk. He mentally kicked himself for not trying to hide the doll somehow, although he had been distracted by everything that had transpired last night. The doll, lying in the dark, had completely slipped his mind.
Frustrated by Caesar’s silence, the Colonel turned on Preacher, presumably because he was the human who had helped cage Caesar in the first place.
“How did this get in there?”
The blood drained from Preacher’s face. Already in hot water over his inability to produce the key, the soldier gulped and fidgeted nervously, looking utterly miserable. His voice quavered as he responded.
“I really don’t know, sir.”
The Colonel examined the doll, unable to make sense of its inexplicable appearance in the cage. Caesar could see how this odd, aberrant detail might leave the human commander at a loss. Hostile forces, rebellious apes, even a mutating virus… those were things that his military training and experience had equipped him to handle. A crude, handmade shank hidden in the cage would have been cause for concern, but perfectly within the realm of expected possibilities. But a floppy rag doll, appearing as though by magic…
Caesar didn’t blame the Colonel for looking confused.
Could be worse, he consoled himself. Better the doll than the key. The cold steel of it pressed against his palm, hidden from view.
The Colonel eyed Caesar suspiciously, staring at the chimpanzee’s inscrutable face as though the answers were somehow hidden in his enemy’s simian features. Caesar maintained a stony expression, his face an impenetrable mask revealing nothing. He stared back at the Colonel, not giving an inch.
The human blinked first. “Get him to work,” he said irritably.
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Red shoved Caesar forward, toward the waiting quarry where hours of back-breaking toil surely awaited him. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw the Colonel staring in silence at the doll in his hands, whose button eyes looked back up at him.
Good, Caesar thought. Keep thinking about the doll. So you won’t see what’s truly under your nose.
27
High above the prison yard, on a dangerously narrow perch, Caesar strained to quarry heavy rocks from the icy cliffs. The granite ledge had been roughly hacked out of the side of the cliff, above the camp, but below the slopes where the apes had been crucified before. Chimpanzees did not perspire as profusely as humans did, but now sweat dripped into his eyes, stinging them. Slippery palms made it hard to keep a tight grip on the handle of his pick as he chipped away at the frozen stone face of the canyon, wresting more building materials from the stubborn granite. A savage part of his soul wished that he were swinging the pick at the Colonel’s skull instead. Only the armed guards keeping watch on him from below prevented him carrying out his bloodthirsty fantasies.
His precarious position upon the ledge required him to watch his footing, a task made all the more difficult by the heavy iron shackles around his ankles. Caesar was not afraid of heights, having scaled towering redwoods and skyscrapers in the past, but he respected gravity. One wrong step and he could plunge to his death more than a hundred feet below.
Careful, he told himself. No accidents.
He toiled beneath a bleak winter sky. The day had barely begun and he was already tired and thirsty. If the girl hadn’t smuggled him a modicum of food and water last night, there was no way that he could have managed this arduous chore on top of everything he had already endured. Was the Colonel hoping that he would drop dead of exhaustion? Caesar still wasn’t quite sure why the Colonel hadn’t simply executed him the way he’d casually killed Percy. Was he afraid of turning Caesar into a martyr… or did he simply think that it sent a better message to the other apes to show that even Caesar had been reduced to toiling for the humans?
The pick tore loose a hefty chunk of rock from the cliff. Caesar scooted backward to avoid getting a foot crushed beneath the falling stone, but the bulk of his concentration was directed elsewhere. He peered furtively at the yard below, where impatient human overseers were still trying to get the weary, slow-moving apes over to the wall. Scanning the crowded, hectic scene, Caesar spotted Rocket among a chain gang that was just now being dragged out of a pen. That the hairless chimp had been beaten badly only hours ago did not exempt him from being put to work along with the other apes, it seemed.
Just as well, Caesar thought. That fits our plans.
Rocket surreptitiously made eye contact with Caesar, confirming that he was ready to play his part. Confident that Rocket would get the job done, Caesar next sought out Lake. As planned, her group had paused not far from the children’s pens to pick up their tools and ropes for the day. Lake lingered at the task, stalling until she was sure Caesar was watching, before letting her gang be poked and prodded toward the wall by the unsuspecting humans.
Good, Caesar thought. Everyone is in place.
Turning his gaze back toward Rocket, he observed carefully and covertly as the other chimp trudged ploddingly toward the wall, his downcast eyes fixed on his furry feet, counting every step as his group approached an obsolete train signal switch posted by the old railway tracks running through the center of the yard. The same switch, Caesar knew, that marked the location of the underground tunnel Rocket had told him about last night. He couldn’t help looking for the peephole Rocket had dug near the switch, but it was far too small and inconspicuous to be glimpsed from this distance.
Probably just as well, he thought.
Rocket passed the switch and signed to Caesar.
Thirty-seven.
Caesar nodded back at him and committed the number to memory before shifting his gaze to Lake. As she and her group were led past the switch, she looked up from her feet and signed to Caesar.
Fifty-five.
He acknowledged the message with a nod, adding it to the information he had just received from Rocket.
That’s all I need to know, he thought. The rest is up to me.
He began to scale the icy cliff face, pulling himself up onto a higher ledge above. Before he could climb any further, however, gunfire from below slammed into the stones around him, pelting him with bits of shattered rock and ice.
Caesar froze and looked down at the guards below, who were posted on the large, stationary fuel tanker railcars. One of them lowered his rifle and shouted angrily at Caesar:
“That’s high enough, kong!”
Relieved that the guards had not simply killed him, Caesar raised his hand submissively to show that he had gotten the message: this far but not farther. The soldiers watched him carefully as, making no sudden movements that might provoke them, he returned to his work, just a little higher up the cliff than he had been before.
But maybe just high enough.
He waited until the guards had lowered their rifles and relaxed their vigilance to a degree, letting them think that he was doing nothing more than continuing to pry rocks from the cliff, before finally peering out over the wall at a distant outcropping beyond the camp, where Rocket had told him the others would be hiding and waiting. The monumental rock formation squatted like an island on the vast frozen waste past the canyon. If Caesar squinted, he could just make out a large shaggy form lurking behind the boulders…
* * *
Maurice spotted Caesar upon the ledge. He had been monitoring the camp for hours, ever since Rocket had bravely walked right into the humans’ base to distract the soldiers and, hopefully, make contact with Caesar. The plan all along had been for Rocket to find some way to signal Maurice from inside the camp, perhaps even from the wall or quarries. Seeing Caesar, the orangutan prayed that Rocket had been able to share their plan with Caesar at some point, so that their captured leader knew what to do.
His prayers were answered when Caesar put down his pick and paused long enough to sign to Maurice across the distance between them:
Thirty-seven steps to adult cage… fifty-five to the children.
Maurice nodded, even though he knew that Caesar could not see him doing so without binoculars. That was the information that Rocket had promised to transmit to him in some way: the precise distances between the pens and the signal switch near the tunnel opening.
Now we can get to work.
Lowering the binoculars, he crept further back among the rocks, where the girl and Bad Ape waited for him. Maurice was relieved to see that Bad Ape had not managed to misplace the girl again. Perhaps he had learned his lesson after letting her get away from him before.
Maurice pointed to the child, then up at his eyes. He pantomimed looking around to indicate that he wanted her to keep a lookout and gave her the binoculars. He hoped that by giving her a job he would encourage her to stay put. Plus, they really did need someone to watch out for any approaching soldiers who might come this way. Security in and around the camp had increased noticeably since Rocket’s incursion last night. Maurice and the others had been dodging the humans’ patrols ever since Rocket had been captured.
Nodding gravely, the girl accepted the binoculars. Maurice was amused by the seriousness of her expression.
My little soldier, he thought.
Leaving the girl safely concealed among the boulders, or so he hoped, he led Bad Ape down into the tunnel he and Rocket had excavated until they were directly below the train switch they were using as a landmark. Bad Ape employed the flashlight while Maurice consulted the compass Luca had salvaged from the oyster farm, taking a moment to thank his lost comrade for his foresight. The device proved useful when it came to orienting their position with respect to the camp above. Maurice double-checked the readings before finally pointing out two different locations along the wall of the tunnel.
There, he indicated, and there.
Bad Ape
nodded eagerly. Moving to one of the spots Maurice had indicated, he began to tentatively dig at the wall. He looked over at the orangutan, who nodded back in approval, appreciating Bad Ape’s enthusiasm and cooperation; despite his intense fear of “the bad place,” the hermit chimp seemed willing to do whatever was necessary to help Caesar, Rocket, and the other apes.
Good, Maurice thought, I need his help.
Lumbering over to the other location, he began digging too.
28
The wall was finished, but the work continued into the night as the exhausted apes were forced at gunpoint to roll massive pieces of artillery across the camp from the depot under the mountain to the wall at the entrance to the canyon. Enslaved gorillas were made to hoist cumbersome steel rocket launchers to the top of the wall, where both soldiers and apes wrestled the powerful weapons into position, in anticipation of the encroaching forces from the north. The feverish activity told Caesar that the enemy army was very near; the Colonel was obviously running out of time to complete his fortifications and prepare for the assault.
War is on the way, Caesar thought, and apes are caught in the middle.
He did not delude himself into thinking that the approaching humans were coming to liberate his people. The Colonel had made that clear enough; he had crossed a line only by executing infected humans, not because of his brutal campaign against the apes. Caesar could expect no mercy from the other humans, even if they managed to defeat the Colonel and his troops.
Our only hope is escape.
He contemplated the formidable weaponry being deployed on the wall as Red and Preacher marched him back toward his solitary confinement in the cage. Most of the other apes, the ones not currently employed in hoisting the weapons, were finally being returned to their pens as well, after being worked practically into the ground. They were being used up without concern for the future. Caesar doubted that they would be fed again, now that the wall was complete.