Текст книги "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes "

Автор книги: John Jakes

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

SIXTEEN

The boulevard stretched away black and empty into the distance. Many lights had been extinguished. All first floor offices and shops had likewise been darkened. Under the looming wall of a high rise, Caesar led the van of his little army, halting at each corner to look both ways before signaling the cross.

The apes were intimidated by the silence; by the dark, empty ways between the towering buildings. On the march, Caesar had passed the word that he had signaled for city-wide rebellion, but the apes following him saw no indication of it. Unless there were some sign of the rebellion to encourage them, some spark to ignite their momentarily forgotten hatred, Caesar knew his ape army might turn and scatter. The immense gamble might come to noth . . .

An explosion and spurt of fire from high on the right shattered the pavement inches from Caesar’s left foot. Police sniper! his mind screamed as he dove for the pavement, crawled wildly ahead. The rifle exploded twice more . . .

He had not acted solely from self-preservation. If he were killed, the leaderless apes would surely be slaughtered. So he let the hammering rifle expend its loads on animals who had been only a few steps behind him. Backed against a wall out of the line of fire, he saw six apes down, dead or dying.

The reverberations faded away. Several apes bent to touch their fallen comrades. The rifle crashed again. A gorilla pitched over. With a long, howling cry, Caesar ran into the open.

He dashed straight to the opposite side of the street, ending up directly beneath the arched walk where the gunman was hiding. From above, the sniper would have a difficult time aiming at him.

Behind, he heard a blood-cry from many throats. Good. His deliberate sacrifice of the animals shot down had provided the spark to rekindle the fire.

His own howling fanned it—and in a moment, he was once more dashing down the center of the boulevard at the head of his screaming band.

Other snipers blazed away, dropping apes in twos and threes. But the blood lust was running high. The apes did not turn back.

Caesar took an erratic, zig-zag path, his next target clear in his mind . . .

The cordon of men stretched across the boulevard in the distance.

At the Civic Center, the apes clustered at the head of the street rounded their eyes when they heard the faraway shooting. The explosions were followed by a mounting roar that rippled excitement through the skulking animals. One barked orders. He and two others risked running a dozen yards into the plaza, spilling kerosene from open containers.

The other apes cleared the mouth of the street.

The leader, a large orangutan, used a lighter from his uniform pocket to ignite a soaked rag. He tossed the rag on the kerosene trail. It lit with a roar, flamed all the way back into the street, kept burning till it reached the mouth of the washroom passage—blowing the kerosene stockpile with a thunderous puffball of heat and fire.

Windows shattered along both sides of the street. The pillar of fire leaped high. The orangutan racing across the plaza waved jubilantly to animals cowering nearby. He pointed to a similar burst of fire visible down another thoroughfare.

The signal had been given. The revolt had begun.

An unstoppable tide of hairy brute power, Caesar and his band crashed against the linked arms of the helmeted policemen lined across the boulevard. Rifles blasted from nearby terraces. Apes fell. But so did policemen.

Caesar was constantly moving forward, dodging and twisting, kicking and gouging. The apes shattered the police line, then charged the second rank—firemen backed against their huge chromed vehicles.

A fireman clumsily tried to aim an unfamiliar gun at Caesar’s chest. The chimpanzee dove into the man at waist level, knocking him back against a fender, wrenched the pistol from the man’s hand and blew his head off.

All around, in brutal hand-to-hand combat, gorillas and chimps and orangutans struck and tore at the ranked defenders—and broke through, rallied by the sight of Caesar leaping to the top of one of the fire vehicles, brandishing his pistol as he pointed the way to the inner city. An instant after he leaped down on the other side, a sniper’s bullet dented the steel cab top where he’d been standing.

Apes poured up and over the barricade of vehicles while humans and animals struck down in the initial melee shrieked and moaned. Caesar forgot about them. To win the city required striking at its heart—the Civic Center. He raced that way, encouraged all at once by the gleam of fire.

“Look!” he cried over his shoulder. “Our brothers—rising to help us!”

The apes pouring over the vehicle barricade began the mass howling again, a blood-cry that thundered between the high rises and all but drowned out the occasional burst of rifle fire.

Caesar’s apes roared into the huge plaza where he had first arrived with Señor Armando.

Halting to draw deep, ragged breaths, Caesar saw other apes streaming into the plaza from the opposite side.

The first link with the city forces established, Caesar permitted his troops a brief foray of looting.

He dashed from spot to spot, cheering them on. Something deep within him responded with a thrill to their chilling, blood-crazed yells. All around the plaza, fires burned . . .

A shop window smashed with swung shackles permitted two orangutans to arm themselves with a brace of razors each. More broken glass allowed a group of gorillas to strip a gunsmith’s of pistols and ammunition. By now, the unclothed apes who had marched with Caesar were all but completely mingled with the garbed slave apes—and all were united by their common purpose.

Caesar dashed by a restaurant, responded to a hail—and saw the chimpanzee busboy inside. The grinning chimp ignited a chafing dish, then scattered its flaming contents to set the restaurant ablaze before returning to the street, a cleaver winking in his right hand.

With a force now three times as large as that with which he’d begun, Caesar stormed deeper into the city. Dozens of fires had been started. The sounds of carnage echoed along every street.

Still, he was fully aware that resistance thus far had been relatively light. The greatest concentration, he was sure, would lie ahead, near the Civic Center, as those in power prepared to defend the focal point of their control.

Down cross-avenues he glimpsed the revolving lights of emergency fire vehicles, permitted above ground to try to quench the innumerable conflagrations. He deployed clothed and naked apes down these side streets in groups of ten or twenty, with instructions to harass the firemen, then converge upon the Civic Center from all sides.

Safely back in the Command Post, Governor Breck glanced from monitor to monitor, his face shiny with perspiration. The scenes on the monitors trained on the plaza overhead distressed him most. He saw miniature parks afire, shadowy anthropoid figures flitting back and forth through the gloom.

Reports said that rebellious city apes had now joined the invading force. In minutes, the situation had grown extremely precarious.

And he had let it happen.

An assistant slammed down a phone. “Mr. Governor? The main forces are forming up to repel them three blocks from here.”

The Governor leaned forward to twist up a volume control. “Forming up! We should be hearing gunfire right now!”

In the dimness, MacDonald turned away. Breck was beginning to sound like a man whose control was slipping.

SEVENTEEN

The ape army surged forward along the boulevard like some hallucinatory reverse image of a human fighting force. They carried human weapons, but there the resemblance ended. This army shambled and snapped, growled and slavered.

Caesar operated from the protective cover of the third or fourth rank, repeatedly pulling out small groups while the larger mass rolled ahead. He sent these smaller strike forces hurrying down side streets to seek entrances to the service tunnels; their orders were to come up from the tunnels as close to the Civic Center as possible. He knew that many of the apes would get lost in the mazes below the city, but if even a few got through, the tactic would strengthen his attack, and this surprise force striking from the rear might very well be needed to overcome the next, highly formidable barrier just two blocks distant.

Again the apes confronted cordons of men stretched across the boulevard. But now the humans carried more weaponry—ranging from riot sticks and shields to rifles. The vehicles ranked behind the double row of men were not the vans and fire pumpers of the first barricade, but heavily armored police equipment. Slots replaced windows. Top turrets bristled with the muzzles of mini-cannon.

Calling a last word of encouragement, Caesar ran to the right side of the street. He dodged behind the concrete rail of a walkway and scuttled up the incline to the second level, Where he could watch the engagement like a general from a hilltop vantage point.

The turrets of the armored vehicles revolved until all the muzzles pointed at the advancing apes. The rifles and pistols of men in the front ranks poked out between riot shields. Abruptly, the apes in the van recognized the threat, slowed their pace.

With perhaps fifty yards separating the apes and the humans, a helmeted officer brought a megaphone up to his mouth.

“No! NO!”

Like thunder, the command pealed away down the boulevard. For perhaps five seconds, the command conditioned reflex brought the apes in the front ranks to a dead halt.

Others crowded up behind them, progress blocked. Caesar knew an instant of hopelessness. Then his nerve returned. He gripped the edge of the parapet, started to stand up in full view to exhort the confused, hesitant apes . . .

A sound stopped him. The beginning of a wild, collective gibbering among the animals that grew louder, more mocking by the second. Joyfully, Caesar realized that the conditioning had ultimately failed. Ape intelligence had triumphed over gut fear.

Louder and louder the apes gibbered, as the front ranks began a shuffling advance.

The officer with the megaphone tried one last time: “Home! Go home, all—”

A rock whizzed toward him. He ducked behind the barricade of shields, his shouted orders all but drowned out by the massed howling of the apes.

Chunks of debris flew. A gorilla fired a pistol. The report triggered a screaming animal charge. They know we can win! Caesar thought, exulting. The first rank of foot police advanced to join the battle. A moment later, apes and police melted together into a furious melee.

Then Caesar realized the humans were still committing a tactical error. In their false belief in their own superiority, they were convinced that they could subdue this uprising without massive firepower. The police used their sticks mostly, with only occasional shots fired when an officer found himself seriously threatened.

But riot sticks were virtually useless against giant gorillas, who towered over the humans, their heads well up out of harm’s reach. Caesar watched gorillas pick up policemen bodily, wrench away their shields and sticks, then hug, strangle, fling, or trample the men into unconsciousness—or death.

One of the armored turrets began to chatter. Someone screamed a countermanding order when as many policemen as apes dropped under the withering fire.

Where the great stature of the gorillas helped overcome the riot policemen, the smaller size of the agile chimpanzees also carried an advantage. They could duck in beneath the stick-blows and shields to slash with their knives. Policemen fell with bellies ripped open. Caesar even saw one of the chimps leap onto the shoulders of hapless men, poised piggy-back a moment while knife hands plunged over and down to slash necks open from behind.

As the gorillas crushed and the chimps wielded their wicked blades, the orangutans darted in and out among the casualties, picking up whatever weapons the humans dropped. They unbuckled the gunbelts of the police, some orangutans draping themselves proudly with the captured equipment, others distributing the holsters and guns to members of the gorilla force—whose biggest members had already completely penetrated the police lines and were advancing toward the armored vehicles.

Still the armored turrets held their fire. Caesar could only thank some commander’s misguided humanity. At any moment the commander might give the order that would slay the apes and sacrifice his own men. But while the advantage lasted, the apes seized it—gorillas in the forefront, some already clambering up on the armored cars.

Just when it looked to Caesar that this inner defense line might be stormed, a new weapon was introduced from the boulevard’s opposite side. A panel sprang open in the side of an armored vehicle parked in semidarkness. From the compartment in the vehicle’s side, men began to unreel thick hoses.

A brutally powerful jet of water spouted from the first hose, the second, the third. The water stunned and panicked the attacking apes, knocking them off the turrets, spilling them among the bodies of the blood-slimed pavement. Ape yells of terror racketed between the buildings. The apes who shrieked loudest were those carrying police shields that the streams of water pounded thunderously.

Directly below Caesar, a second vehicle brought its hoses into play. Six powerful streams, angled in from both sides of the street, began to wreak havoc in the ape ranks, battering the animals back, sending them retreating a few steps, then more . . .

In seconds, the strategic balance shifted. Perhaps the human commander knew what he was doing after all. Why slaughter his own when the huge hoses, each requiring half a dozen men to hold it, seemed to be doing an effective job?

Something must be done to nullify the power of the hoses. That responsibility was Caesar’s.

The walkway he’d mounted continued down, reaching the street at a point some yards to the rear of the parked vehicles. Caesar raced down the incline, broke into the open, and ran full speed away from the conflict. He’d taken no more than four long strides when one of the vehicle turrets began to chatter. Slugs chewed the pavement behind him.

Cursing his bad luck in being spotted, he ducked low, angled toward the wall of a building. The relentless bullet-pattern followed him. Zigging and zagging wildly, he dove head first into the opening of a street as high-powered bullets ripped chunks from the corner of the building.

Behind him, the gun chattered away to silence. Panting, he crept back to the corner, risked a glance out and to the right.

Beyond the armored vehicles, great plumes of water caught the light. The roar of the hoses blended with the shrieks of the terrified apes. They were retreating . . .

He couldn’t possibly take out the two hose vehicles alone. The situation looked hopeless—until he heard a soft gibber from across the boulevard.

Urgently waving for his attention from the opposite corner was one of the groups dispatched to the tunnels with orders to come up near the Civic Center. Caesar almost yelped with joy.

He counted seven apes, including pistol-armed gorillas—and the busboy brandishing his cleaver.

He’d found his commando force. Now if he could only utilize them in time . . .

Caesar drew in one quick breath, ran across the boulevard. No devastating blasts came from the armored turrets. Evidently the gunner who’d fired on him had turned his attention elsewhere, convinced he’d driven the lone ape into hiding—or killed him.

Caesar skidded to a stop in front of the group, rapidly issued orders in a combination of words and gutturals. Then he slipped down along the buildings fronting the boulevard, followed by the other apes.

They came howling up over the top of the vehicle at the left of the street, dropping among the hose-handlers before they were detected. An astonished policeman near the adjacent vehicle aimed his pistol at the attacking group—and took a bullet in the center of his forehead. One of Caesar’s gorillas grunted pleasurably and waved his smoking gun.

Men holding the hoses stumbled, struck from behind. Gorillas fired—not with great accuracy, but at close range, accuracy didn’t matter. As the men fell, Caesar pantomimed to the busboy. He cut through one hose, then the others, with swift efficient slashes of his cleaver.

Water flooded around Caesar’s feet, making footing treacherous. But the intimidating power of the hoses had been eliminated from this side of the street.

Yelling, Caesar jumped up and down to attract the attention of apes who had retreated.

A quick assessment showed many humans lying dead in the boulevard—and a smaller number of apes. But Caesar’s yelling had attracted the desired attention. Halfway down the block, the apes who had fled from the hoses on this side of the street saw that they were no longer threatened. They regrouped and came forward in a body as Caesar jumped to the hood of the hose vehicle.

A nearby turret revolved to aim its muzzle at him. The turret chattered—but Caesar was already gone into the darkness.

The busboy joined him, and, momentarily, more apes, clambering up and over the now useless hose car. Caesar and his little band had successfullly opened a path. Renewed howling from ape throats signaled the realization of this success.

A few blocks further on, Caesar glimpsed the place where the boulevard opened into the plaza at Civic Center. If they could only gain entrance to the Command Post, Caesar knew he could use the equipment to confuse and demoralize the city’s defenders even further. To judge from the firelight down nearly every street, the humans were waging battles against rebelling apes almost everywhere.

To the rear, the turrets swiveled again. Chattering guns began to mow down sizeable numbers of apes who had broken through Caesar’s hard-won avenue. Trying to shut out the sound of animal screaming, he kept on, running for the objective that loomed clearly ahead.

In the Command Post, all pretense of order was gone. Every monitor showed a picture of citywide carnage. Panic had set in. Even here the apes on duty in the dim underground chamber were growing restless. Some turned on their masters.

One of Breck’s assistants arrived in a rush: “Governor, we think a small group of them has gotten past the armored cordon. We could be under direct attack very soon.”

Jason Breck felt sick; weak in the legs. On every hand, screens and amplifiers brought reports of destruction. Apes rising, entering private apartments, butchering, burning. The calls for assistance had multiplied so fast that Breck knew all the human forces at his disposal could never answer even a fraction of them.

He asked, “How many police can we deploy from here?”

“Thirty or forty,” said the assistant.

“Send them up to the plaza. With gas. Order them to put down a screen immediately. As soon as the men are outside, seal the doors.”

“But that means they can’t get back in if—” MacDonald began.

“I know exactly what it means,” Breck cut him off. “Do it.”

The assistant disappeared in the light-flecked gloom. Within moments, a ghostly file of policemen hastily donning gas masks could be seen disappearing up the stairs. Breck listened to the last of their booted feet hammering away on the concrete steps. A moment later he let out a long breath, soothed by the grinding of the machinery that was shutting the maximum-security doors at the landing half way up.

He jerked his gaze back to the monitor covering the plaza, saw the police with their large-muzzled gas-firing rifles deploying. The lenses of their masks shone like huge, eerie eyes.

MacDonald was so tired he wished his mind would blank out. But he gestured to another flickering monitor, trying to offer what little hope he could.

“The shooting seems to have died down near the armor line, sir.”

“Because they’ve broken through!”

“Maybe they’ve been turned back.”

“No,” Breck said in an empty voice. “No. They’re coming to kill us all.”

Half a block from the point at which the boulevard opened onto the broad expanse of the Civic Center Plaza, Caesar held up his hand.

About a hundred apes had broken through where the hoses were put out of action. Now they snuffled and snorted, restlessly awaiting his sign to move forward again.

But policemen were deploying in the plaza. Lights flashed from the eyes of strange masks they wore over their faces. They carried what appeared to be rifles, but with unusually large, cylindrical devices lengthening the muzzles.

The police formed a double rank facing directly toward the boulevard. Apprehensively, Caesar called for the advance to resume. A moment later, he understood the function of those peculiar weapons.

Up came the muzzles. Fired, they gave off a loud popping sound. Twists of smoke marked the passage of the projectiles they discharged. One landed six yards ahead of Caesar’s force, and began to spread an acrid, choking cloud.

Within seconds, more of the projectiles exploded on the pavement. The entrance to the boulevard was filled with billowing gas. Caesar signaled a half-block retreat.

All around him, apes began to stagger. They seized their throats, dropped their weapons, uttered hoarse, barking coughs. Caesar’s own eyes stung. His throat burned. This could turn into a rout . . .

A huge gorilla near him doubled over, started to flee. Viciously, Caesar grabbed the gorilla’s arm to hold him, waved for attention with his other hand.

With all the power he could summon, he roared, “Watch!”

As the terrified gorilla and his comrades blinked watering eyes, Caesar inhaled deeply. He held his breath a few seconds, then exhaled and pointed around the group.

“DO!”

Once more he drew in a breath tinged with the debilitating gas. He grew dizzy—but saw that the apes were following his instructions. He spun and plunged ahead of them, straight into the center of the clouds settling at the end of the boulevard.

Behind him, he heard the apes moving.

Just a few at first. Then more. Now he was into the thick of the cloud, unable to see. His chest burned. He kept running—and burst into the open, out of the worst of it.

The astonished policemen began to break formation, retreat, grope for their side-arms as more and more apes came rushing through the clouds. Several apes staggered, fell. But most kept their cheeks swelled up, imitating their leader.

“Kill them!” Caesar screamed. “Kill them all!”

The apes closed on the confused policemen, pistols exploding, knives flashing. As Caesar drew in another breath of the tainted air, he saw a pathetic sight: an orangutan lifting a gas mask from a downed officer and clumsily attempting to fit it over his own face. Caesar’s brief smile was sad.

Some of the police kept firing gas charges, but the effect was less devastating now, because the officers had scattered to various points around the plaza. Caesar stepped over a man whose ripped-open throat gushed blood, began seizing hairy arms again, gathering a strike force of a dozen, two dozen, with shouts, barks, gestures. At the same time he fought off the bite of the fumes, inhaling only in relatively unclouded air.

When he had enough apes with pistols and knives, he left the rest to pursue the knots of men with gas rifles. His face a bloodied, grimy mask, his green uniform torn to pieces, he led the picked band toward the head of the stairs to the Command Post.