by John Jakes
He guided Caesar up the main street of Ape City, his jeep and gunners following slowly behind. “No apes, Caesar!” Burst of flame. “No apes at all!” Belching fire. “No apes anywhere!” Blasting heat. “No apes except the ones we choose to let live!” Burning hate. “In our zoos! Would you like that, Caesar?” Belching burning hate. “Or as our slaves! Perhaps you would prefer that—-to be a slave again. At least you would be alive…” Red-fire-blasting, burning hate.
Heat and fire surrounded Caesar. He was confused and shaken; no matter where he tried to go, flames roared up in front of him. He was exhausted now. He was limping on all fours. He was crawling. He looked like an un-evolved ape. “A slave, a slave,” the thought echoed through his mind. “It would be so nice to take orders—no responsibility, no pain, no worry, no Aldo— no Ape City! No Lisa! No Cornelius—no Cornelius!”
Caesar stopped crawling. He stopped trying to get away. He stopped and looked back at Kolp.
Kolp noticed. And smiled. “Ahh, you’re learning,” he said. “That’s good. You’re a clever ape, Caesar. Very clever. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll be one of the ones we let live. And then again, maybe not!” Another scorching blast of flame! Caesar twisted and dodged and tried to roll out of the way.
Kolp giggled at the sight. They were in the center of Ape City. Apes were all around him, on all sides, but not one had even dared move. None would. They were all staring aghast as he humiliated and destroyed their leader. After this, there would never again be an ape threat, not even an Ape City. They would be incapable of organizing. Ever. If any of them survived.
The ape crowd moaned with every burst of the flame thrower. They recoiled at every blast. They wailed and covered their eyes. One ape in particular—Lisa. Hearing the noise below, she had left her son’s body and come to the window, only to watch in horrified silence, the slow, step-by-burning-step, hateful, painful torture of her husband.
Kolp was just loosing a blast. “Crawl, ape!” he shouted. “Crawl!”
Caesar didn’t move. He stayed where he was, even though the flame was only inches from him.
“Crawl! I said, crawl!” Kolp’s voice rose in annoyance and anger. This ape was spoiling the game.
Caesar only glared back.
“I am your master. You will obey me. You will crawl!” This bloody, stupid ape was going to defy him! But he was Kolp! No ape defied Kolp! No ape embarrassed Kolp, not in front of other apes!
Caesar just glared.
“Crawl, ape. I said, crawl, you hear? I’m giving you one last chance. If you don’t start crawling, I’m going to kill you. I’ll burn you!” Kolp’s control was fraying. He was ready to end it now. He had to; the monster had defied him. “Crawl,” he said one more time, gesturing with the flame thrower.
But Caesar was through crawling. He gathered his strength for one last-ditch leap, a spring for Kolp. He tensed.
“All right! You forced me to do this. You did it yourself. It’s your own fault.” Kolp raised the flame thrower.
A voice, a shout! “No, Kolp, no!” A female voice. Alma? Here? He whirled.
It was Lisa, clutching the window frame. Lisa? Lisa! An ape? Saying “no” to him?
And then Caesar was on him, pulling him down, pulling at the straps that held the flame thrower in place. They struggled, rolling in the dirt, Kolp kicking and lashing frenziedly, Caesar clawing and grabbing.
Kolp kicked Caesar, away, trying to free himself. He rolled, half-twisted, trying to place himself between Caesar and the other mutants, trying to hold onto his flame thrower. And as he rolled the machine went off. The tongues of flame lashed out and touched the jeep. The mutant driver and gunners jumped out, rolling to extinguish the flames. The gasoline and ammunition exploded behind them, enveloping the vehicle in a ball of orange fire and a cloud of greasy smoke.
The blast crashed through Ape City, hurling Caesar and Kolp apart. Kolp was thrown aside where he fell, dazed and unconscious. Caesar rolled and somehow, miraculously, found himself on his feet.
“Caesar!” A voice called. It was Virgil, shouting and running. He tossed Caesar a gun.
Caesar caught it, released its safety catch with familiar efficiency. Watching him from above, Lisa hid her eyes. Caesar let off a short burst at a small crowd of mutants nearby.
Then, suddenly, all the apes began to fire at the mutants.
Startled by the sudden defeat of their leader, the mutants were caught off guard. They began running back down the slope, down the road. They scrambled and tripped over each other in their haste to escape the angry apes.
“Come on!” Caesar was shouting to his comrades. “Let’s fight like apes should! Come on! Kill the humans!”
All around him, chimpanzees and orangutans and gorillas cheered their support. They rallied around him and began charging after the fleeing mutants.
But more mutants were pouring down the road from the ridge. The bulk of the mutant army, a lumbering black mass of smoke-belching trucks, jeeps, and motorcycles, was heading eagerly toward Ape City. Kolp or no Kolp, they were bent on destruction.
The apes caught sight of this unstoppable juggernaut, and for a moment they faltered. They stopped in their tracks and moaned in fear. They wailed in fright, and one or two even dropped their weapons.
But Caesar was shouting, “Come on, apes! Defend your city!” And other apes, caught up in his passion, echoed his cries. “Get to the barricades! Kill the humans!”
The mass of the mutant army rolled on down the road toward them. They moved in a great cloud of dust and smoke and fumes, torching and burning whatever they encountered, leaving only ruins behind, heading inexorably for the apes.
They began letting off rounds, and the apes echoed their fire. The two armies were almost within range of each other now. They were about to touch—the barricaded apes and the rolling black Wehrmacht.
For a moment, the valley held its breath. And then Aldo and the surviving members of his gorilla cavalry, nearly a third of the original force, came down out of the hills above the road. They had regrouped and been tracking the mutants all the way. They appeared suddenly beneath the trees and came sweeping down on the unguarded flank of the mutant army, catching the mutants in a savage pincer-like movement between themselves and Caesar’s angry apes.
Caesar’s troops began firing at the suddenly disorganized mutants. Aldo uttered a throaty scream and charged. The gorillas waded into the mutants with flashing swords.
And machine guns! The gorillas had machine guns! And they knew how to use them. They fired indiscriminately into the mutant ranks at almost point-blank range. Horses fell, throwing their riders. They whinnied and fought for footing, stamping and kicking and trampling.
The mutant captains tried to organize their troops, tried to rally them. But even as they stood up and shouted, they were dying and their men were dying. It couldn’t be done. The men scrambled to desert an ancient school bus as a round of fire blasted out its windows. The gorillas were wielding their machine guns with a fanatic precision. A mutant on a motorcycle was chased by a gorilla on horseback—it was Aldo!
The mutant crashed headlong into a truck as Aldo’s bullets chewed up the ground around him. He fell to the ground and lay there without moving.
Then up from the barricades came Caesar and the other apes. They came running to join the fighting in the grove. Some of the mutants tried to return the apes’ fire from a stake-bed truck, but a hail of bullets ripped through it, splintering the wood and shredding the men.
Caesar led his apes onward into the thickest part of the battle, always after the fleeing humans. The mutants were starting to fall back, starting to retreat.
The mutant advance had slowed, then stopped; the inexorable approach of the black juggernaut had faltered, startled, stopped by Aldo’s warfare. Even now, the mutant Wehrmacht was trying to back up, trying to put itself into reverse. But, like a gigantic millipede whose nerve endings have suddenly become disconnected, the mutant army was confused, disintegr
ating into its individual segments. Those in the rear were still trying to advance while those in the front were trying to retreat. They piled up on each other and even fought among themselves.
The apes ran from tree to tree along their flanks, always keeping cover, yet always keeping up a steady hail of death. Other apes swung in the branches above, firing down on the hapless men.
The mutants were running now, openly running, back up the road. Running and sometimes falling and dying. Some had lost their goggles and were trying to find safety in the shadow of the trees. They stumbled and groped and found only death as ape snipers picked them off. Others, despite their sun-startled blindness, lurched after their comrades. Gorillas, chimps, and orangutans all came charging after the retreating mutant army.
The mutants were in full retreat now. It was a rout. The vehicles coughed and sputtered and smoked and died. And the mutants abandoned them and kept running. They abandoned their guns and kept running. Anything to get away from those apes and their deadly, hacking bullets.
Some of the trucks and jeeps were still running. They rolled haphazardly through their own troops, men clinging to them, grasping for handholds, others jumping out of the way, the blinded ones not quite making it and falling under the wheels. Their screams were atrocious. The sound of their retreat was agony, with cheers of ape victory riding closely after them.
The apes came running and riding. They came with guns and swords and death. They came with vengeance. They came with Caesar.
The hideously disfigured men fled before them, riding when they could, running when they couldn’t. The angry apes slaughtered them and left them where they fell, moving on to slaughter others.
And above it all, ahead of the other apes, rode Aldo. General Aldo! Proud and tall and waving his bloody sword! “Kill them!” he shouted. “Kill them all! Let no one get away!”
His gorillas echoed his cheer and charged after him, charged eagerly ahead, screaming and trampling the fleeing men, firing and killing. Cheering and laughing.
Caesar and the other apes stopped at the ridge, at the ruins of the old gorilla outpost. But Aldo and his horseback troops rode on, still raiding the mutant army from the rear. They would ride in and separate a small pack of men, surround them, circle them like Indians around a settler’s wagon, the circle always getting smaller and tighter, like a noose, the mutant army always getting smaller. The gorillas would circle and kill, firing their blazing hot guns, slashing with their heavy iron swords. Circling and killing until the last man was dead. Then, cheering at their victory, laughing with the joy of it, the gorillas would reload their guns, heft their swords anew, and go charging again into another pack of frightened, running men to repeat the performance.
Again and again they did this. They chased the mutants across the desert until there was no longer a pack, just a disorganized rabble, scattered men all running in the same direction.
The gorillas rode them down. They charged across the sand, their horses’ hooves pounding like thunder. They came like a very devil and ripped into the terror-stricken men where they found them. They trampled the men, beheaded them, shot them, sliced them, and hacked at them.
The men scattered like cockroaches, and the gorillas went galloping after, a pack of them howling after every one, hunting them down as men once hunted animals.
In the desert, the radiation-torn survivors of the last human war at last met their final destiny. Each man died alone. The gorillas laughed at the humans’ lonely, painful deaths. Then wheeled their horses about and went looking for more to kill.
They would be at it for hours, all the way across the desert. And of the vast human army not one man would survive.
9
There were three who survived the battle. But they would not survive the war.
Two were no longer soldiers, would never be soldiers again. They were just two frightened men, managing somehow to elude the marauding gorillas, managing somehow to make it back to their blasted city.
They were wounded, and they had lost a lot of blood. For the last few miles they had to hold each other up, and they made it on will power alone. But they got far enough to deliver their message. They made it to the tunnels, where they finally collapsed and died.
But that was message enough.
The message was that they had lost the war.
When Alma heard about it, she went to look at the bodies. She surveyed them without emotion. “I know what I have to do,” she said.
Beside her, Méndez was appalled. “He said to wait for his signal.”
She pointed at the bodies. “I’ve just received it.” She turned and strode purposefully down the hall.
* * *
The third man was Kolp.
Ragged and exhausted, he went stumbling headlong across the desert. Back to his own power—Ape City would be destroyed! He still had one weapon left.
He lurched across the sand, muttering orders to nonexistent troops. How he had escaped from the apes he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. He only remembered walking, running, fleeing. No, not fleeing! Kolp wouldn’t flee. Kolp must have walked out like a man.
That’s it. Kolp had walked out like a man. Dazed, battered, confused, shocked, bloody.
The apes had been too busy to notice him, preoccupied with their side of the slaughter. He had gotten up and walked out, startling those who had seen him but encountering no interference.
Somehow he had made it through the orange groves. Somehow he had made it over the ridge. And somehow he would make it across the desert. To his city. To where the Alpha-Omega bomb waited.
He staggered on, blind and deaf to the carnage around him, to the burning vehicles, abandoned where they had stopped, to the strewn bodies of his troops, their blood drying on the sand. He moved through them, not seeing them, refusing to see them. The sand was littered with death.
It wasn’t until he stumbled over a broken rifle that he began to realize. He held the weapon curiously, looking at it for a long time before he recognized it as a gun. He didn’t notice that it was broken, that it would never fire again.
“My army,” he said. “One of my troops has lost his gun.” He looked around him, still not seeing the scattered bodies. “One of my troops has lost his gun!” He shouted it loudly. “Where’s my army? Come on, there’s a war to fight! Pick up your guns! Let’s go!”
He began exhorting them. He waved the rifle weakly over his head, a shadow of his former fury. “Kill the apes! Get up, you sluggards! Kill the apes!” He stumbled, caught his footing, and went on. “My army is the best in the world! Let’s kill the animals! Kill the dumb animals!”
There was something ahead of him. He staggered toward it, still babbling: “Kill them! Time to regroup! Counterattack—get them with the big guns. The biggest guns. Kill them!”
He lurched into the object and stopped. It was a horse. “Horse,” he said, steadying himself against it.
And rider. Kolp looked up. Aldo stared back, frowning, puzzled.
Kolp blinked confusedly. “Gorilla?” And then he realized. He fumbled with the broken rifle; he was still carrying it, had forgotten to drop it. He tried to raise the weapon and take aim.
Aldo’s bullets caught him where he stood, spun him about, punched through him and hurled him ten feet across the sand.
Kolp was one of the lucky ones. He died without pain. As he had lived—without feeling.
Aldo grunted in satisfaction.
“Now we go home,” he said. “To our city. Gorilla City!”
* * *
Alma’s hand rested on the missile control console.
Méndez’ hand came down on top of it.
“Alma! For pity’s sake! Wait for the governor’s signal.”
“He’s dead,” she said tonelessly. “They all are. We would have heard by now. This is how he would have wanted it.” Her hand strayed across the surface of the panel.
Méndez grabbed it again. “Alma! Hasn’t there been enough killing?”
“No!” she shouted back at him. “No—there hasn’t! They killed Kolp! Those apes killed my Kolp!” She jerked her hand away from his grasp. Her voice rose in pitch. “They destroyed our city and left us with nothing but ruins, and now they’ve taken Kolp from me and left my life in ruins! There’s nothing left for me! I want them to die!”
Méndez took a step toward her, but she backed away, toward the bomb.
“Alma, listen to me!”
“I don’t want to! You’ll only try to confuse me! You’ll tell me things I don’t want to hear about! I don’t want to hear your facts! Kolp told me what to do, and I’m going to do it.” She stopped against the cool metal of the tall, silvery bomb.
Méndez spoke quietly, calmly. “Alma, come away from there. Let’s leave here, now. Just listen to one thing, listen to me. If you really do want to destroy the apes, you can destroy them anytime. This missile will wait. So can you. Just wait a few days, a week even. Give Kolp a chance to come back. Give yourself a chance to think about it. Make sure it is the right thing to do.”
“I have thought about it!” Her eyes blazed. “It is the right thing to do! Kolp told me!”
Méndez took another step toward her.
She took a step backward, moving around the missile. Suddenly she froze. “Oh, no…” she whispered.
“What is it?” Méndez came around the bomb to look. She let him; she made no effort to move away. Instead, she pointed at the dull black letters painted on its side: “ALPHA-OMEGA NUCLEAR DEVICE.”
“So that’s what the signal meant,” she gasped. “He never told me.”
“The final weapon,” said Méndez. “This is it, the final weapon. The last bomb!”
“He never told me.” Alma echoed.
“If he couldn’t win, he was going to let the whole world lose,” said Méndez. “He was… he was mad!”
“Oh, no,” moaned Alma. “Not, not… not… mad. Please, not mad!” She covered her eyes, sobbing.
Gently, Méndez pried her hands away. “Face it, Alma.”
“No, no, no, not mad. Not mad.” She looked up at him, eyes wet. “I’m not mad. Please. I’m not mad. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know, that’s all. Please don’t let them hurt me.”