Alex Irvine - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

And unless he was mistaken, they hadn’t come for battle. From the look of things, they wanted to parley.

“I’m going to talk to him,” Malcolm said.

“Him?” Dreyfus said. “Who’s him?”

Malcolm pointed at the chimp on horseback, front and center.

“See the one with the red on his face? That’s the one who spoke before.”

“Spoke, like said words out loud,” Dreyfus said.

“That’s what I told you before,” Malcolm said.

“I know you did, but I didn’t believe it.”

“You believe it now?”

Dreyfus, still looking out at the ape army, replied, “I don’t know what the hell to believe. You want to talk to him? You sure?”

“I have a feeling that’s why they’re here,” Malcolm said.

Behind them, one of the sentries said, “I got a feeling they’re here to kill us.”

“If that’s what they wanted, you’d already have a spear in your gut,” Malcolm said. “Look at them. You think they couldn’t get in if they wanted to?”

The sentry didn’t answer.

Dreyfus leaned in close to Malcolm.

“You think you can talk to them, go ahead,” he said. “I’ll even come with you. But they make one move, and we’re going to protect ourselves.”

Malcolm looked the chimp leader in the eye. He was met with a steady gaze.

“Don’t be in a rush to start a war,” he said to Dreyfus, quietly. “Let’s see what they have to say.”

The Colony gate made an ear-splitting metallic screech as they swung it open. WD-40 was hard to come by these days. Malcolm took a step through the entryway, keenly aware that what he did in the next moments could make the difference between a conversation and a bloodbath.

He walked forward with Dreyfus right behind him, and a dozen armed men with Dreyfus. The crowd massed in the doorway and on the parapets built above the arches, hundreds of people taking in the sight and telling those behind them what they saw. Malcolm heard people swearing, some angry shouts, isolated crying from children who had grown up hearing stories of the simian flu. Apes were their boogeymen, the monstrous villains of stories told to keep them from ranging too far into the city when the Colony gates were open.

The ape army was a terrifying sight, even from the relative safety of the parapet. On the ground, out in the open, it was overwhelming. The sound of maybe a thousand apes shifting their weight, softly grunting to one another, was like nothing Malcolm had ever heard before, or imagined hearing. The thick smell of them hung in the morning air.

Malcolm took ten steps out from under the arch and stopped, waiting to see what the apes would do. After surveying their lines, he kept his eyes on the leader, who made a sign to the apes on either side of him. One of them, Malcolm saw, was the other chimp who had spoken up in the mountains. The angry, scarred one missing an eye. The leader tapped his horse’s flanks and rode forward, followed by three others. One was an orangutan.

The watching crowd fell dead silent.

The leader stopped halfway between the ape lines and the small group of humans. He looked at each of them in turn, lingering on the armed men behind Malcolm and Dreyfus. There was no trace of fear on his face. The one-eyed ape at his flank gripped his spear and glared pure hate. Malcolm felt Dreyfus shift next to him. He looked over and saw Dreyfus drop a hand to the gun holstered at his belt.

Malcolm shook his head.

He looked back at the apes and saw the leader staring at him. Okay , he thought. I get it. You came this far, now it’s my turn.

He started walking toward the apes.

“Malcolm,” Dreyfus said. Malcolm ignored him, keeping his eyes on the leader. He stopped in front of the small group, just out of range of a spear thrust, or so he hoped. Then he waited.

The leader regarded him for a long moment. Then he spoke, slowly.

“Apes… do not… want war.”

Reaction swept through the human crowd, disbelieving gasps at hearing a chimpanzee speak. The chimp looked up at the crowd, observing the reaction—and, Malcolm thought, enjoying it a little. What should he say in return? Neither do we? Then why did a thousand of you show up with spears?

The chimp saved him the trouble of a response by speaking again.

“But we will fight,” he said. “If we must.”

Malcolm did not like this turn in the conversation at all. He wanted to run, to gather up Alexander and Ellie and make a break for it, south all the way to Santa Cruz, or hell, San Diego. But he stood his ground. If the apes were there for a show of strength, humans needed to return that show.

The chimp glanced back and from within his ranks, another chimp appeared. As he came out into the open, he raised one arm, showing the assembled humans Alexander’s satchel. Malcolm couldn’t believe it. The apes had mustered an army and marched down the mountains and through the city, to give them back a bag Alexander had dropped? This was a more sophisticated gambit than Malcolm would have believed them capable of planning, even knowing what he knew from seeing them yesterday and this morning. They had combined a ferocious show of strength with a good-will gesture, exactly the way a head of state would do when initiating diplomacy with a rival.

Malcolm realized he wasn’t looking at just a general, or even a king. This ape was a statesman.

It boggled the mind.

He stepped forward and reached out to accept Alexander’s satchel from the chimp. Was it the same one who…? He saw the wound on its shoulder and was stunned all over again. Not only had the ape leader brought the satchel back, he had deputized the wounded ape to make the gesture. This demonstrated a grasp of symbolic nuance that Malcolm wouldn’t have believed, if he hadn’t been right there to witness it.

When the bag was in Malcolm’s hands, the young chimp turned and rejoined the ranks. Malcolm followed its progress for a moment, and then looked back at the leader. He nodded his thanks.

The chimp, holding Malcolm’s gaze, pointed at the Colony.

“Human home!” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. Then he pointed in the other direction, arm lifted at an angle to indicate that he meant the distant hills and mountains beyond the bay. “Ape home,” he said.

He dropped his arm and said, more quietly but still loud enough for Dreyfus and the nearer humans to hear, “Do not come back.”

Malcolm said nothing. A moment passed and then the chimp signaled to his army. Slowly and purposefully they began to retreat, first the infantry—that was the only word that fit, even though Malcolm was astonished to find himself applying it—then those mounted on horses. He stood and watched them go. The leader did not look back.

The grizzled, one-eyed ape did, though. Malcolm saw him, looking long and hard at the guns in the humans’ hands. On his face was an unsettling combination of hatred and desire.

I hope you keep a handle on that one , Malcolm thought. He wants trouble.

He stepped backward, watching the apes until they were gone and he was back in the company of humans again.

Maurice and Caesar rode together back through the city, returning along a different route than the one they had used to approach. Caesar had no desire to see the fence and bones again. Nor did he wish to view the image of hate on the building near the mouth of the tunnel. Everything he had seen worried him. He thought of the ape village and the human settlement. The apes seemed more settled, happier. Every moment he had spent in the presence of the humans stank of fear.

It was natural for them to be afraid, he thought. So few of them were left compared to before the sickness. But natural or not, their fear was a danger to apes.