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

He glanced back down at the humans, passing beneath him. Then he glanced at Koba, and saw how taut his muscles were, every inch of him a threat.

Koba , he signed. Stay high in the trees, follow, warn us of flying things .

Koba stared at him for a moment, then acknowledged.

As Caesar turned back to his band, one of the humans looked up, and their gazes locked.

He had known many human expressions: kindness, love, fear, anger. He had seen meanness in the eyes of Dodge, his “caregiver” back at the shelter.

The gaze of this man was made of something he had never seen, and could hardly understand. But it felt very, very dangerous.

Then other heads turned toward him.

Follow me , he signed. Then he flung himself from limb to limb, down, toward the forest floor. He heard the humans shout as they caught sight of him and his band, and he began the chase. A glance back showed them following.

He felt a prickling on his exposed back, and expected them to start shooting at any moment, but for some reason they did not. That made things a little easier, since the trick was to keep them following, and avoid getting killed.

When Koba reached the top of the trees, he glanced around, but didn’t see anything in the air. He did see the city where the humans dwelt—where he had dwelt, where his mother had died, and he had been tortured.

Why had Caesar put him in the high canopy? The other chimps in the band had better eyesight. After all, he only had one eye. He would be more useful down there, where he could fight.

But it was good up there, so near the sky. He reached for it, but it was still too far away. How far could it be?

Koba shook his gaze from the heavens and refocused on his job. From this vantage point he could see what transpired below, but he was starting to realize something. There weren’t as many humans as he had thought chasing Caesar’s band. It looked like only eight or nine, at most.

He was trying to figure out what that meant when the unmistakable sound of the flying cages reached his ears. He scanned the sky, and saw the source of the sound. They were in the distance, not moving toward Caesar at all.

They were flying toward the troop.

Suddenly there was a crashing in the tree branches above. Caesar looked up as Koba came hurtling down. He was trying to swing and gesture at the same time. He kept pointing up, so finally Caesar peeled off from the band and followed him. They reached the treetops, and from there he saw the helicopters.

Most not chase you , Koba signed.

And Caesar suddenly understood. This time he had been tricked. The helicopters were moving toward the troop.

Koba, find Rocket. Bring him to the troop , he commanded. Then he turned and raced back the way he had come. As he whipped over the heads of the humans this time, they started firing at him, but within seconds he was beyond their sight, swinging as fast as he could, hoping he wasn’t too late.

The ape was gone, rushing off through the trees, but the fierce intelligence of his gaze remained with Malakai. It was like nothing he had ever seen in an ape.

He remembered the first gorilla had had ever seen, when he was with his uncle. There had been something there—an awareness, something on the level of a child, but caged in an outsized body. He had recognized a cousin, but knew it was a distant one.

When his uncle had shot it, the gorilla looked confused. It kept touching the hole and making pitiful noises. He asked his uncle to shoot it again, to make the sounds stop.

“I’ve already killed it,” his uncle said. “He just doesn’t know he’s dead yet. Bullets are expensive.”

He was right, and the gorilla soon died. They butchered it while the rest of its family looked on. None of the apes really seemed to know what had happened.

The thing that had just looked down at him was not like that. The fierce intelligence, the will and purpose, were all there. And they were far from childlike.

That was him , he thought. The leader .

“They went for it,” Corbin said.

Clancy was just staring at the apes as they quickly receded from view.

“That’s the first time I’ve seen one, since we started this whole thing,” she said. “A live one, I mean. I was starting to doubt they really existed.” She turned to Malakai. “Did you see…?”

He nodded.

“It’s amazing. I wish I could just study this… this… whatever is happening. It could change everything we know about apes. About ourselves.”

“Whatever,” Corbin said dismissively. “Which way?”

“Where’s the capture team?” Clancy asked.

“We call them in when we find the herd,” he said.

“This way,” Malakai said. “Quickly.”

He heard the choppers in the distance.

Suddenly a group of chimps went racing off in front of them, screeching at the tops of their lungs. A couple of the men shot at them with their tranq guns, but he didn’t think they hit any of their targets.

“Ignore them!” Malakai said. “They’re just trying to distract us. Push on.”

“The choppers think they have them spotted,” Corbin said, holding one hand up to an earpiece. “But they want visual confirmation from the ground.”

The apes in the trees buzzed at them again, but this time no one fired.

“There are signs everywhere,” Malakai muttered, looking around, seeing the remains of nests, the scuffed areas. “They were here, not long ago. A lot of them.”

“They’re on the move again.”

“Yes,” Malakai said, “but this time there are too many for them to hide their movements.”

The helicopters were already there when Caesar arrived, yet they weren’t doing anything, as far as he could see.

Maurice had the troop in motion, but some still were not moving very quickly. Caesar was raging at himself for letting his own tricks be used against him, and terrified that more apes would be killed. What’s more, it was abundantly clear that the men on foot would find the troop this time, and soon.

With a shiver, he realized that he didn’t have a choice. He had misled the humans as much as he could. After the battle on the bridge, he hadn’t wanted to fight again. He just wanted to be left alone. But that wasn’t going to be possible.

Overhead, the helicopters turned and began to fly away. Caesar watched them, wondering why. But without the helicopters…

It could be a trick.

He didn’t have a choice.

He started moving through the troop, picking out the strongest and fastest.

Malakai noticed that he no longer heard the sound of the helicopters. He couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing.

Corbin had noticed it, too, and was on his two-way, arguing with somebody.

That’s when, looking up, Malakai caught the motion in the trees, a glimpse of rust. Then another, this one black, surely a chimp.

“They’re here,” he said, his voice low. The treetops were rustling violently now as the branches above them filled with apes. He saw the orangutans first, moving almost like giant spiders above them. Then more chimps were there, frenetic, bouncing from tree to tree, screeching.

Tens of apes, maybe more than a hundred of them. Realizing what was missing, he shifted his gaze to look through the boles of the trees, searching for the ground troops. And there they were, the gorillas—not acting as gorillas should, but prowling, moving from the cover of one tree to the next.

“Do not shoot,” Malakai said, softly.

“Oh, shit,” Flores gasped, suddenly understanding the situation.