Текст книги "Battle for the Planet of the Apes "

Автор книги: David Gerrold

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

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 pincerlike 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, disintegrating 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.

NINE

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.”

“Alma, you know what this is, don’t you?”

She nodded. Slowly.

“Tell me.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Say it!”

“Nooo!” she moaned.

He slapped her. Hard.

“It’s the Alpha-Omega bomb. It can destroy not only the apes’ city but the entire Earth.” Suddenly, she was babbling. Almost hysterically. “Activate it and we become nothing. Leave it and its very presence will insure that at least we remain something—and may become something better.” She repeated everything she had ever heard about the device. “Mankind must never, never detonate the bomb. Never!”

“Alma,” Méndez stopped her. He held her by the shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. “You are not mad. Do you understand me? You are not mad.”

“Not mad,” she repeated.

Méndez realized then that they were not alone. A small crowd of curious men and women had entered the silo.

He turned to them. “Listen to me. We have been reborn today. This missile, this device, is a symbol of our rebirth. We must venerate it as a responsibility, a responsibility that our ancestors entrusted us with. We were given that responsibility because we are human. Because we are human, we are beautiful, we are good.”

“We are beautiful,” the crowd echoed. “We are good.”

His face was scarred, his skin ravaged by radiation, but his eyes glowed with a holy mission. Méndez raised his hands and proclaimed, “We are men! We are human!”

And again the crowd echoed him.

Only Alma was silent. Her gaze kept straying back to the bomb. But whatever she was thinking about remained unspoken.

TEN

Ape City was a shambles. Trees were scorched and toppled, some still burning. The sky was clouded by black smoke from the fires. And there were too many bodies. The chimpanzees were beginning to clear them up. But there were too many bodies. Caesar’s chest ached at the sight of it.

He strode slowly up the long street, Virgil beside him. He was heading for the horse corrals. As he came into sight, the humans there began to rouse. They recognized him and began to cheer and call his name.

At the sound, other apes, chimpanzees and orangutans especially, began to come out of their tree houses or look up from their work. They began to cheer Caesar, too.

Caesar didn’t acknowledge their accolade. He didn’t wave, didn’t smile, just kept walking toward the corral. His face was grim. His body ached, and his arms and legs were sore. He was tired and numb and still shocked at the carnage he had participated in, even encouraged. He had thought—no, prayed—that he had fought his last battle nine years before.

Behind him, the cheering grew louder. He ignored it until he heard the sound of galloping hooves thundering up at his back. The gorilla cavalry was returning.

Caesar didn’t bother to look around. He hurt all over. He didn’t want to hurt any more. He walked the last few steps to the corral and stopped. The humans inside looked at him expectantly. He started to move, then realized he just didn’t have the strength. “Virgil,” he said. “Open the corral. Let them go. Let them all go.” And then he turned to look at the approaching gorillas.

Virgil started to undo the bolt, but General Aldo came pounding up on his horse, shouting. He jerked the animal viciously to a halt, spraying Caesar and Virgil with dirt and rocks; the animal reared once and whinnied in protest, but the gorilla ignored it. He dismounted angrily. “No!” he growled at Caesar and Virgil. He pointed at the humans. “They stay in corral!”

The two apes looked at him.

Aldo thumped his chest. “Aldo will say what to do now!”

Caesar shook his head. “These people did nothing. They can go free.”

Aldo sneered. He looked Caesar over as if he were no longer worth arguing with. “I am General Aldo,” he said calmly. “I give orders.” His expression changed slowly. “You like humans? You want them not in corral? Okay, good—I fix.” He turned to his gorillas, his elite troops who had ridden with him across the desert. They were covered with dust and blood, laughing in their murderous glory. “Kill them!” barked General Aldo. “Kill them all! Kill the humans!”

The gorillas raised their guns to fire into the corral. The humans, terrified, backed away, cringing, some of them moaning with fear.

Caesar stiffened in outrage. Then he seemed to grow in stature. The gorillas stared at him, waiting to see what he would do. Despite his wounds, his numbness, and his shock, he managed to stand tall. He hobbled over to stand in front of the gate, between the humans and the gorillas’ guns. Something about his manner made the two gorillas guarding the gate edge away; they moved to stand with their fellows.

Caesar spoke slowly, and when he did, his voice betrayed his exhaustion. But his words were firm. “There will be no more killing, Aldo. Put down your guns. Take them back to the armory. The war is over.”

Aldo’s anger rose. How dare Caesar speak to General Aldo this way? But he controlled himself. Even his most loyal gorillas were startled by this sudden face-to-face confrontation and might hesitate to shoot Caesar. But Caesar was only a puny little chimp, hardly bigger than Cornelius. Aldo was stronger. Aldo would win. He was general of all the gorillas, and he was in charge now. His chest swelled as he declared, “No! We keep guns now. Move! Or we kill you!”

Caesar shook his head. Beside him stood Virgil. And now Lisa. And Doctor. The four faced the gorillas. A crowd of chimps and orangutans watched, shocked and horrified.

Virgil spoke for Caesar. “Ape shall never kill ape . . .” It didn’t really need to be said, but the next part did: “. . . let alone an ape child!”

Aldo’s eyes narrowed. He sneered. He raised his hand as if to give the order to fire, but behind him the faces of his gorillas showed that the meaning was beginning to sink in. Ape shall never kill ape! Holy words! Yet here they were with their guns pointed at Caesar and Virgil and Lisa!

And Cornelius! Their faces betrayed their realization! Aldo had killed Cornelius!

The rifles wavered.

The gorillas frowned in confusion, puzzling over this terrifying new thought. Apes were better than humans because apes didn’t kill. Apes never killed apes! But Aldo . . .

They looked at their leader, aghast.

One of them stepped out of the line. He pointed and gestured inarticulately. “Aldo . . . Aldo . . .” But he couldn’t, just couldn’t bring himself to utter the deadly words, the ultimate accusation. The thought kept catching in his throat. Behind him, other gorillas began muttering, began pointing and whispering and grunting nervously. “Aldo . . . Aldo . . . Aldo . . .”

Aldo whirled to stare at his troops. “Get back in line!” he shouted. “Back in line!” But his self-confidence was faltering. They ignored him, and he became flustered. He looked from side to side, as if seeking aid—or an exit.

“Aldo has killed an ape child,” Virgil declared loudly. “The branch did not crack. It was cut by Aldo’s sword!”

Around them the apes gasped. Chimpanzees wept. Orangutans barked in angry reaction. All recoiled as if struck.

Aldo snarled at the accusation and the accuser. His expression froze into a hateful glare. His lips curled back in fury. His posture became more savage, more brutal. Deep in his throat he began making a deadly sound. Aldo had become an animal, a total animal. All pretensions of intelligence had fled in his murderous urge to survive and conquer and kill.

All around him, the apes were pointing. Pointing and staring and muttering among themselves. There was no escape.

In the corral the humans were silent and wide eyed. Except for MacDonald, who murmured softly, “Welcome to the human race . . .”

The words touched Caesar’s ears, and he straightened. Yes. Welcome to the human race. Welcome to killing and hatred and war. Welcome.

Around him the muttering and whispering was dying out. All were waiting for him to act. He shook off Lisa’s attempt to hold him back and took a step toward Aldo. “You . . . murdered . . . my . . . son!”

Aldo’s eyes were wary. He was an animal at bay. He began to edge backward, away from Caesar. Caesar kept moving forward. He was unarmed but he didn’t need a weapon, not now. Weapons were for the weak in spirit.

Aldo drew his sword, the same short sword he had used to chop away Cornelius’ branch. He swung the sword around and pointed it at Caesar.

Caesar didn’t pause. He kept moving toward Aldo.

Aldo kept backing away until he could back no more. He held the sword out in front of him.

Watching, Lisa moaned in fear. Behind her, two of the humans, Jake and MacDonald, were wrenching loose a length of chain that had been entwined in the corral fence. MacDonald wrapped it in a ball. “Caesar!” He threw the chain.

Caesar saw it coming. He sidestepped it as it hurtled past, then scooped it up from the ground. He turned back to Aldo. He started swinging the chain to knock Aldo’s sword from his hand.

But at the sight of the heavy metal links, Aldo panicked. He remembered too well the chains that the humans had put on him so many years before. Now they wanted to chain him again! He broke and ran, pushing his way through his gorillas. He ran for the trees.

Caesar broke into a run, too. The apes cleared a path for him to pass, then flowed after him.

Aldo picked a tree and was up it. Seconds later, Caesar followed. Aldo was up there, terrified now, crashing his way through the heavy branches. Caesar paused and listened. Yes, there he was. He scrambled after.

Aldo stopped near the top; the branches bent under his weight. He cast around nervously for an escape. Caesar was coming! The branches creaked precariously, announcing his position.

Caesar’s face appeared suddenly below him, then his hand—the chain was wrapped around it. No! Not the chain! He shifted his position so that he could swing his sword.

Caesar peered upward. The sunlight was glaring, turning the treetop into a weird jumble of shapes and flashes. He squinted, trying to make out Aldo’s form in the glare. Trying to . . .

Wfffftt—thunk! Aldo’s sword bit into a branch only inches from Caesar’s hand.

Without thinking, Caesar swung upward with his length of chain. Aldo leaped to avoid it, but it struck him on the leg. He jumped, but the branch supporting him cracked and gave way.

The crowd below screamed.

But Aldo had managed to grasp a limb of another tree. For a moment he hung there precariously swinging back and forth. Then he swung himself up and moved rapidly across the treetop, leaping across to a third tree.

Caesar followed. Inexorably.

The two apes moved from tree to tree, Aldo fleeing, Caesar pursuing. They moved without words, just an occasional grunt as the air was forced from their lungs by the impact of grabbing or landing on a branch.

They were getting to the end of the grove now. Aldo stopped and turned, jabbing with his sword as Caesar came climbing. He struck and caught Caesar on his side! Then Aldo leaped free as Caesar swung his chain.

Caesar ignored the pain. All he could think of was Aldo—and Cornelius! He kept following. Aldo had moved into the last tree of the grove.

This tree was comparatively isolated. Caesar made his way along the branch of the nearest adjoining tree, trying to figure how he could best make his attack. The branch he was on was a thin one, it began to crack and break, making Caesar’s decision for him. As it fell away, he made a great leap and an arm-wrenching grab.

He was clutching a branch of Aldo’s tree, heaving himself into it, moving in after Aldo. There was no other tree for either of them to move to. Caesar began closing in on Aldo. Aldo clutched his sword and waited.

Caesar paused, listening for the gorilla’s heavy breathing, then moved in. Aldo began swinging his sword, slicing the air, reaching and slashing, trying to kill, to maim, or even to halt the inexorable advance of the murderous Caesar. He was backing along a thick, wide branch, always keeping Caesar at arm’s length—but only with great effort. His sword was getting too heavy. He wished he could drop it, wished he could be free of it. But no, he was a gorilla! The sword made him strong! He kept jabbing and poking and slashing.

Caesar countered with his chain, swinging it through the air, trying to knock the sword from Aldo’s hand, trying to knock Aldo from the branch. He swung again and again.

Aldo backed away. He had reached the end of his branch now—he could go no farther. He raised his sword as if to throw it.

Caesar paused and surveyed the situation, cocking his head and frowning.

The branch creaked and bent. Aldo tensed.

Caesar moved. He brought his chain around.

Aldo struck. He slashed viciously forward, slicing a wicked gash across Caesar’s chest. Caesar toppled backward, grabbing another limb close to the main trunk. But even as he fell, he swung his chain. It wrapped itself around Aldo’s head.

Aldo fell.

The fall seemed to take forever, the body crashing downward through the branches, each impact brutal and graphic, the last one, the most awful of all. Aldo hit the ground with a thump. He lay motionless, his eyes still furious and staring.

Caesar began to climb down. He dropped slowly from branch to branch, the blood leaking from his chest and side. He fell the last twenty feet, landing on top of Aldo’s broad body.

Almost immediately Lisa and Virgil were at Caesar’s side, trying to help him up. He shook them off. He rose to his hands and knees by himself and found himself staring into the sightless eyes of his enemy. At the sight of Aldo’s face a wave of nausea and exhaustion swept over him. He allowed himself to accept Virgil’s help and stood unsteadily, supporting himself on the shoulder of the paunchy little orangutan.

“Virgil,” he murmured. “You are the philosopher. Tell me—should one murder be avenged by another?” He looked down at Aldo. “I am no better than he. I have killed too.”

And then he collapsed.

He slipped to the ground in exhaustion, Virgil trying to hold him up, but failing. Doctor and Lisa came rushing in to attend him. “Get some water,” Doctor said. “And some bandages and a splint.”

“He’ll be all right?” Fear edged Lisa’s voice. She had lost too much already.

“Yes, I think so,” said Doctor.

But Virgil murmured, “No, none of us will ever be all right. Never again.”