Alex Irvine - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

His tone changed a little, now that he’d brought them back from the brink.

“But you all know what we’re up against. We’re almost out of fuel. Which means no more power—which means we could slip back to the way things were. That dam up there was the answer. We just had no idea… they were up there, too.”

“So what do we do now?” someone cried. It was the same woman who had asked what they would do if the apes returned. Dreyfus had turned her attention toward the future, toward action rather than reaction.

Malcolm had always taken Dreyfus’s leadership for granted. The survivors of the flu had fallen into place around him because he had been the police chief, and then the mayor as the entire world sneezed blood and died. But now Malcolm saw that there was a reason for that. Whatever intangible characteristic it was that defined a leader, Dreyfus had it.

Maybe Malcolm had a little of it, too. He wondered about that. At least the ape chief seemed to think so.

“We will find another way,” Dreyfus said. “You all know Malcolm,” he added, pointing him out. Heads turned to look. “He’s not just a brilliant architect, he cares about the future of this community as much as I do. And I’ve already spoken to him about finding an alternative power source.”

Just like that, Malcolm’s opinion changed. He kept looking at Dreyfus, not trusting himself to stay impassive—much less hopeful—if he had to interact with the crowd at that moment.

Because there was no alternative power source. Dreyfus had suddenly gone all politician on the crowd, and on Malcolm in particular, waving a sign of hope that only Malcolm knew to be false. If they didn’t get the dam running, there would be no power, except what they could keep squeezing out of the generators. That would only last as long as they could keep finding drips and trickles of fuel, which were growing scarcer and scarcer.

That son of a bitch , Malcolm thought. What Dreyfus had done, more or less, was take the bull’s-eye off his own back and put it on Malcolm’s. It was one thing to lie in a political speech, but it was another entirely to tell a bald-faced lie in a life-or-death situation.

Especially when it was Malcolm’s death they were talking about. If they couldn’t get the dam operational and there was no other power option, the Colony would blame him. It wasn’t just possible, but probable that someone in the Colony would be so desperate and angry about the failure of the power project, that he would put a bullet or a knife in the person he blamed for it.

The crowd now focused on him. First Dreyfus had shifted their attention away from the apes. Then he’d shifted it away from himself. Dreyfus had made Malcolm the fulcrum of their hopes. And now he swung into full-on rallying mode.

“Because power isn’t just about keeping the lights on. It’s about giving us the tools to reconnect to the rest of the world. To find out who else is out there, so we can start to rebuild—and reclaim—the world we lost.” He paused for a professional beat, bringing the crowd back to him. “We will get there. You have my solemn promise.”

By which, Malcolm thought, he meant they had Malcolm’s promise.

Dreyfus wrapped up his speech by exhorting the assembled citizens of the Colony to return to their necessary business. They still had machines to repair, fuel to find, food to cook, children to raise.

“This is our home,” he said. “Nothing will take it from us, and nothing will stop us from rebuilding our civilization and reclaiming what was once ours. Now let’s get to it.”

The crowd started to break up, encouraged by Dreyfus’s guards spreading out and moving them along. Malcolm, Ellie, and Alexander stayed where they were, near the base of the stairs leading to the top of the parapet. A few people looked their way, but none approached them.

“That was quite a performance,” Ellie said.

“Yeah,” Malcolm said, watching the passers-by and keeping his voice low. “It sure was.” Then he looked straight at her. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit. Right now I have to find out what the hell he thinks he’s talking about.”

He caught up with Dreyfus as the crowd dispersed, waiting while he had exchanged a quiet word with one of his lieutenants. Then Malcolm approached him and spoke, trying not to sound angry.

“There is no alternative power source,” he said, keeping his voice low. “That dam’s our only option.”

“Fine,” Dreyfus said. “Then we’ll do what we have to do.” He started walking, and Malcolm went with him under the parapet and through a hall that led to his office. Maps of San Francisco covered the walls, each heavily annotated with information about earthquake damage, the location of resources that might not yet have been recovered, previous sites of fighting with long-gone gangs. Other maps of the Bay Area highlighted places they were planning to search. There were farms to explore so they could perhaps start growing more food, marinas to search for fishing boats that might still float… even other dams to assess, in an effort to get the lights back on.

As Dreyfus’s security entourage began to leave, Malcolm lingered over the circled spot on the map marking the dam he and his team had seen the day before. He mentally added a note: Here be apes .

“What does that mean, ‘we’ll do what we have to do’?” he asked when they were alone.

“I meant what I said back there.” Dreyfus looked at the regional map and put a finger right on the spot Malcolm had pegged as the apes’ location. “If we have to fight them, we fight them.”

“You can’t be serious,” Malcolm said. “Did you see them? That’s an army. They showed up to let us know they have an army. We can’t fight them. You think we can just hand out a bunch of guns and go after them? We’ll be massacred.”

Dreyfus turned away from the map and pointed back in the direction of the Colony plaza.

“You see what’s going on here,” he said. “These people are going to turn on each other. On me!” He brought himself up short. “But this isn’t about me. That power is everything. I’m not giving up on this.”

“Neither am I,” Malcolm said. “But you know you just put a big target on my back, right?”

“I had to do something,” Dreyfus replied. “You saw that crowd. They were this far from turning into a mob.” He held up one hand, thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

“So you pointed them at me instead of you. Thanks.”

Dreyfus sat and rubbed the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and sinking into his chair.

“Listen,” he said after a moment. “You can hate me for it if you want. But if the power doesn’t come back on around here, the next thing that’s going to happen is these people are going to turn on each other. I’m trying to keep that possibility as far away as possible.”

“By turning them on me instead,” Malcolm said.

“Would you rather I let them work themselves up to riot and start killing each other?”

If that keeps Alexander and Ellie out of it , Malcolm thought, then yes, that’s what I would rather have happen.

But it was done now, so all he could do was figure out how to make it work. They had tried getting the power plants at Potrero and Pittsburg back online, they had tried rewiring old solar panels… they had tried everything. Too much time had gone by. There was no fuel to run the big power plants, and the kind of delicate equipment needed to generate power with the solar panels had long since corroded to junk. Dams were much simpler, their basic technology unchanged since the invention of the steam turbine.

If Malcolm was going to keep Dreyfus’s promise, he was going to have to figure out a way to get that dam running again. And now he was going to have to do it even though the apes’ leader had made it very clear that he didn’t want to see the humans again.