Greg Keyes - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Firestorm

Three groups had shown up at the same place and had a shoot-out.

Over monkey penis.

He went to the living room and flipped on the TV, where they were rehashing the riot that former Chief of Police Dreyfus had managed to quell. Then they started showing clips of him from various local talk shows. He was always urging calm, and he came off as smart, deliberate, and in control. Mayor House, by contrast, seemed to be steadily losing it. The polls were starting to look very good for Dreyfus.

He turned off the TV and picked up his tablet to check his messages.

Unsurprisingly, there was an email from Clancy. He had tried to call her the day before, to make sure she was okay, but then he realized she probably didn’t have reception up there.

What was surprising was the content of the mail. He read it, then read it again, wondering if it was some sort of prank, but it seemed pretty serious—and while Clancy was playful, she wasn’t actually the practical joker sort.

Okay , he thought, let’s have a look at this.

There were really two parts to what she had sent. One was a brief essay describing the relationship between Gen Sys and Anvil, and her suspicion that the cover-up Gen Sys had begun was still going on under Anvil. The other was a list of the names of the encrypted files she had come across. Ol86G, AgniP3, Chl223, RV113, Teetot, AH1/2F.

None of them meant anything to him, nor did an Internet search turn up anything that looked as if it might be a lead.

A quick search established the basic facts of the matter, however. Anvil and Gen Sys were indeed owned by the same parent company. After searching “Gen Sys + Apes,” he found an article that was eight years old. It was about a shareholder’s meeting in which the results of a drug trial were to be released, apparently with much fanfare. The drug, ALZ112, was supposed to be a cure for Alzheimer’s, and they had tested it on a chimpanzee. The chimp in question had shown considerable cognitive improvement, and was to be introduced to the public as proof that the drug was effective at helping the brain build new cells and repair itself.

Bizarrely, the chimp had gone berserk, broken into the meeting room, and been put down by a security guard. The drug was deemed too dangerous for further trials, and apparently that was that.

He leaned back.

That was that. Except that Gen Sys had been trashed by apes in the lead-up to the whole Monkeygate thing. And now Anvil seemed to be trying to cover something up, as well. And Anvil was in the employ of the City of San Francisco.

From his investigation of hijinks in appropriations at City Hall, he was already convinced that there was a lot more money moving around there than there should be if everyone was on the up-and-up. What if the mayor was being bribed to cover something up? What could be that big?

This was definitely worth checking out. Everyone was focused on the plague. This story could be very big—and it could be all his.

Talia wasn’t sure how long she had been on her feet, but they were numb. She had lost count of the hits, and had been admitting people all day. They just kept coming, one train wreck after another.

Her prediction to her father had proven all too true—almost all of the staff were dealing with the retrovirus, leaving her and a handful of others to deal with gun- and knife-wounds, vehicular casualties, and the like. What she was coming to realize was that that sort of morbidity wasn’t remaining at the rate she was used to—it was rising. Most particularly she was seeing an increase in assault victims, people with wounds from broken glass, bats, fists, and feet. As the local death toll from the virus hurdled over a thousand, everything else was ratcheting up, as well.

Some of the assault injuries came from their own waiting room, which was now being used for triage. Those who had tested positive for the disease were escorted to one bus, those who weren’t symptomatic went to another. The sick were then driven to isolation camps, while everyone else went to quarantine because they had potentially been exposed.

Security was being provided by National Guardsmen. Talia found it unnerving to look out at the waiting room and see men holding assault rifles, but she knew things would be far worse without them.

“Somebody’s been tweeting that we’ve got the goddamn cure again,” Randal said. They were patching up an eighteen-year-old boy who looked as if he’d met the business end of a switchblade. “We’re going to get mobbed, like St. Francis did.”

“They didn’t have National Guard at St. Francis,” she pointed out, stitching up an intestine.

“Yeah, but people’re just getting more and more desperate,” he said. “There was a kid in here yesterday—you missed it. His mom had given him some kind of herbal medicine, thinking it would cure him. I still don’t know what it was, but he was convulsing when she brought him in. He was in acute renal failure. Died on the table. And of course the mother broke down, started screaming about how our western medicine was to blame. It was a mess.”

“Jeez,” she said. She noticed how tired Randal looked, and figured she probably looked worse. “That’s too bad. He would have died anyway, but this way she blames herself.”

“No, she blames us,” he said. “Weren’t you listening?”

She shrugged. “You really can’t expect a mother to be rational two minutes after her son has died. They usually find someone to blame.”

“How about the quack who sold her the medicine?”

“That would be way too logical,” she said. “Okay, thanks—I think I’ve got this one now.”

“Right,” Randal said. “I’ll go see what’s next.”

As he was getting up, he suddenly sneezed. Talia looked up and saw that his mask was spattered red.

“Oh, God, Randal,” she said.

For a moment, Dreyfus thought Maddy was going to slap him.

He could see it in the set of her shoulders, the thin line of her lip. After twenty years of marriage he knew her that well. She was trying to decide.

Instead, she wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him so hard it almost hurt.

“You frigging idiot,” she murmured.

“Look,” he said, “I had no intention of getting into a situation. I just went down there to make an appearance, and things happened.”

She pushed him back and crossed her arms.

“You never do intend to get into situations,” she said. “Yet somehow you always do. God, I thought all of this was over. Twenty years, every day wondering if I was going to have to go identify your body, wondering how I would tell the kids. You finally leave the job—and now this! This is an addiction. You need help.”

“I’m not a cop anymore,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t live in the world. I’m trying to make a difference, here.”

“You weren’t even wearing a mask,” she said. “You might have caught it. This thing.” She waved her arms helplessly, as if the virus was even now all around them.

“If I did, I didn’t bring it home,” he said. “I scrubbed down carefully at the office. Head to toe, and changed clothes. As for the respirator—I’m the ‘don’t panic’ guy, remember? The mayor looks terrified. He wears one of the damn things. I have to be the other guy.”

She looked like she was going to continue, but instead she nodded.

“I know you do,” she said. “I know you do.”

“Hey, Dad, you’re home.”

Dreyfus looked beyond his wife to see John, his youngest.

“Hey, fellah,” he said. “How’s my boy?”

“I’m okay, Dad,” he said. At twelve, John was already nearly as tall as Dreyfus. He had his mother’s cheekbones and his father’s blue eyes, but there was a sparkle there that was all his own, that came from no place but John.