Alex Irvine - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The woods were quiet around him, except for the ever-present sound of birds in the trees and small animals in the brush.

He was getting close.

Past the nest, he climbed toward the head of the ravine, climbing a steep rocky slope with a clearly worn path ascending it. And at the far end of that slope, there was an open gate.

It, too, was made of tree trunks and festooned with various totems. Beyond it was a well-worn path, almost like a dirt street. Malcolm approached it and saw carvings on the posts. Some of them were letters, some glyphs he couldn’t interpret. In several places he saw the word APE.

My God , he thought. They can write, too?

He almost turned back then, feeling that he was getting in way over his head. He had a son to consider, and Ellie. There had to be another way to bring electricity to the Colony.

Didn’t there?

Malcolm took a deep breath. No, there did not. This was the only way. They had tried everything else.

He passed through the gate, feeling as he did that he had committed himself to some inevitable series of events, the outcome of which he couldn’t predict. More totems stood on posts near the street… and now he could hear apes in the branches that overhung the street.

They were getting closer. And there were a lot of them. He kept his hands visible and his eyes front, and he kept walking. The apes’ noises were all around him now—behind him, on both sides, and above him. He couldn’t help it. He started to scan through the branches, and he saw a chimp looking back at him from just above his eye level. Malcolm raised his arms, palms out, like he was being arrested.

The ape vanished.

At the same time, a series of alarms sounded, the cries of apes echoing in a chain upward through the trees and away into the forest ahead of him. Malcolm kept walking, half-convinced he was about to die, but fully convinced that if he ran now he wouldn’t get ten steps before a spear punched through his lungs. He kept his hands in the air, walking nice and slow, determined but non-threatening.

Apes began to emerge from the trees. Malcolm kept walking until they appeared in front of him. Then he stopped. They circled him and he started to turn, keeping as many of them as possible in view. He started walking again as he completed a full turn. Then he stopped dead.

Right in front of him, within arm’s reach, stood the chimp with the blind eye. It held a harpoon twice its height, both hands on the shaft, the steel point gleaming in the sun. The other apes stopped moving, waiting for their cue. Malcolm knew this was one of the leaders. Both times he had seen this ape, it had been right next to the one who first spoke, whose eyes Malcolm had first met.

And both times, seeing this one-eyed chimp, Malcolm had thought the same thing.

This one really doesn’t like people .

None of the apes were moving now. The one-eyed ape could almost have been a statue, if its good eye hadn’t moved up and down. Malcolm remembered how it had looked at the guns held by Dreyfus’s guards. He was glad he hadn’t brought a gun.

“Listen,” he said. “I—”

Before he got another word out, the one-eyed ape brought the butt of the harpoon up and around to crack into the side of his head, just over his left ear. Malcolm’s legs went out from under him. His ears rang and he couldn’t see. He had a sense of the ground hitting him, and then everything faded to a dim gray. As it did, he had one last coherent thought.

Well, there was a chance .

He never quite made it to unconsciousness, but for what must have been several minutes Malcolm was drifting. He had the sensation of moving, and of something wrong with one of his feet. Briefly he put those two things together and realized he was being dragged somewhere. He tried to speak but couldn’t figure out how. All around him was an overwhelming wave of screeching. Apes , he thought as his head started to clear. He blinked and his eyes started to focus. At the same time the pain from the side of his head hit him again, and he grimaced.

He was on his back, being dragged along the muddy path. Above him he saw an arch, with wooden walls extending away into the woods on either side. Along the tops of the walls, pointed timbers stuck out. Apes were everywhere, running along the walls, swinging down from the outthrust timbers, dropping from the top of the gate, running out from huts on either side of the path. Huts! They had built houses …!

They came close, peering down at him and signaling to each other as they screeched. He was amazed how loud they could be.

The sound changed as his body was dragged. Without warning he was on harder, packed earth—and stone, he realized as a protruding rock gouged its way up his back and dug into his shoulder blade. Still there were apes all around, and ape houses everywhere… it was astonishing what they had done.

Abruptly the ape that was dragging him flung him around. Malcolm got to his hands and knees, not sure if he could stand. But when he saw the point of the harpoon in front of his nose, he decided to try. He managed, although his head still spun, and the one-eyed ape gestured with the harpoon, nudging him forward.

Malcolm turned around and was amazed all over again. Before him was an immense crowd. Chimps, gorillas, orangutans, all watching him. Some of them looked curious, some angry, others laughed and joked with one another. He saw young apes ducking and weaving through the group to get a better look at him, and it occurred to him that he was probably the first human they had ever seen.

The butt of the harpoon prodded him in the back and Malcolm started walking. The sea of apes began to part, leaving him a narrow path forward. He walked, hearing them sniff at him as he passed, seeing the intelligence in their eyes as they watched him watching them. Most of them looked hard and hostile.

He didn’t maintain eye contact for very long with any individual, remembering a movie he’d seen once where a biologist stayed alive by lowering her head. He wasn’t going to do that. These weren’t just apes. They were rational—something had been done to them. The jungle rules of submission didn’t apply here, in a village built by their own hands.

The body of apes finished dividing in two, and ahead of him Malcolm saw the leader, standing alone before a stone wall. On the stone wall he saw words. APE SHALL NOT KILL APE jumped out at him. Then he saw APES TOGETHER STRONG. There was a third line he didn’t catch because the one-eyed chimp shoved him forward again and then cracked him across the backs of his legs with the harpoon butt. Malcolm dropped to his knees. He was about eye level with the chimp leader.

“Please,” he said. “Please don’t kill me until you hear what I have to say.”

The chimp said nothing. He stared stone-faced at Malcolm. Whatever understanding he had thought they shared that morning, it was gone. Malcolm thought again that he might just have gotten himself into a hole way too deep to climb out of.

“I know you said not to come back,” he said. “I get it, I understand why… what you’ve been through. It’s just…” He got one foot under him and started to stand. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t absolutely— unh !”

The one-eyed chimp smashed the harpoon shaft down on Malcolm’s shoulder, driving him back to the ground.

“Please!” he cried. His arm was numb. “There’s something I need to show you, it’s not far, if I could just—”

“Human lies,” the one-eyed chimp said.

“No, no, I swear—”

Stepping past Malcolm, the one-eyed chimp signed to the leader. Malcolm didn’t know sign language, but he recognized the violence of the gesture. One-Eye wanted to kill him, and was asking permission. He’d bet… well, he’d bet his life on it.