Alex Irvine - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Through the fire came apes on horseback. One, in the center, held a heavy machine gun. Dreyfus recognized him, the one with the blind eye who had looked so longingly at their guns when the ape army had made its first appearance. He did not see the other one—the one with whom Malcolm had talked. Seasoned political hand that he was, Dreyfus put two and two together. This ape had decided that Malcolm and the other ape were too chummy. He was taking matters into his own hands…

That made it even more likely that he had seen the last of Malcolm and the rest of the team which had gone up into the mountains. Hell of a sacrifice they had made.

The Colony would honor it.

He ran along the parapet, pointing at the one-eyed ape.

“That’s the leader!” he bellowed, pointing to their target. “Take him out!” He repeated it all the way down the line. A spray of bullets tore into the wall around him, stinging him with masonry shards. “Shit!” he cried out. Right in front of him, a pair of recruits was blazing away with their AR-15s. They had a rocket-propelled grenade leaning up against the parapet between them.

“The RPG,” Dreyfus shouted. “Give me the RPG!”

He lifted it to his shoulder, flipped up the sight, and tried to track the ape leader, who raked the parapet with his machine gun. Dreyfus recognized the weapon, and wondered what kind of world it was where apes on horseback shot M240s at you? Try as he might, he couldn’t get a bead. The ape was smart, and didn’t ride in a straight line. But tracking it, he saw a pickup truck with stacks of fuel cans lined up in its bed.

Now that’s not going to move , he thought, and he fired.

The truck and its cans of fuel went up in a huge explosion that cut off the apes’ direct approach to the Colony gate. The lead apes on horseback wheeled around and looked for another way forward, but the scattered debris from the destroyed vehicle burned in their way, and the other street rubble was catching. A few apes charged up and around the fire, using the building facades on either side, but they were cut down as they appeared.

The Colony had halted the ape advance.

“Keep it up!” Dreyfus shouted. His voice was getting ragged. “We’ve got them!” He hoped it was true. If they could handle the initial assault, they had the advantage. A good defensive position was their trump card.

The apes massed behind the wall of fire, shrieking and firing blindly through it as their frustration increased. Several of them lay dead in the flames, and others were badly burned, crying and rolling in the street. Ash lay stunned from the blast. Rocket gathered up his son and pulled him back, into the shelter of a car. Blue Eyes joined them, and after a moment so did Maurice.

Blue Eyes was trembling with fury and the energy of the battle. He wanted to charge back in, find some way through, lead the apes as his father would have done. But Maurice quieted him, putting both hands on Blue Eyes’ shoulders and then lifting one to sign.

Wait.

Some of the apes, however, could not. Crazed with the battle, they leaped up onto buildings and rubble around the flames, but the humans were ready for them. Gunfire picked them off before they could bring their own weapons to bear.

Koba reined in his horse and looked for a way forward. He caught sight of a tangle of heavy wires, mounted to a fallen pole. They led through the flames. Koba shouted something to a group of gorillas and they went to the pole, hoisting it upright and pulling on it until the wires were drawn taut over the fire.

The humans were still firing from the other side, through the flames, keeping the apes from gathering… but now, Blue Eyes saw, there was a way over. Dozens of apes rallied to the base of the pole, climbing up and massing at the top. Koba held an arm up, commanding them to wait. Blue Eyes saw what he was thinking. It would do no good for a few apes at a time to use the wires. The humans would shoot them down as quickly as they appeared.

Apes together strong , Blue Eyes thought, recalling his father’s words. Yes. Together they would go over the wires, and the humans would see how strong they could be.

Dreyfus ran up and down the parapet, pointing out individual apes as they tried to make an end run around the fire. The defenders of the Colony loaded fresh magazines into their weapons, and dragged their wounded back for treatment.

He shouted hoarse commands, making sure everyone knew that the battle wasn’t over yet. The apes would not be broken. They would try again. But there was only one other approach, around the block and up the street from the other side. That was covered. If they apes tried it, they’d never make it to the gate.

As he had that thought, Dreyfus saw motion in the air over the blazing wall of wreckage. He looked, and couldn’t believe what he saw.

“On the wires!” he bellowed. “Shoot!”

Apes came, not in small groups but in a single mass, swinging on the old trolley-car wires, using them as a trapeze to fling themselves over the fire. Even—incredibly—running across them, somehow avoiding the grasping hands of the apes swinging below. They fired as they came, more focused and deadly now as they got closer and had a higher vantage to see their targets on the parapet and behind the defensive works in front of the gate.

Dreyfus ducked out of the field of fire and picked up his own rifle. He came back up, sighting at the wires over the fire, and saw the apes dropping by the dozen onto the street, firing as they came. Gorillas, one at a time, swung behind them and picked up pieces of flaming debris as they dropped back to the ground. The debris crashed down behind the Jersey barriers, scattering the defenders and giving the chimps cover that enabled them to advance.

Dreyfus saw the leader, jumping through the flames on his horse.

“That one! He’s the one! Get him! Get him!” He aimed and fired, but missed.

Near him, the teenager with the grenade launcher aimed at the one-eyed ape. Out of the corner of his eye, Dreyfus saw motion. On the roof of a trolley car across the street, an ape had spotted the grenade launcher. Dreyfus switched targets, but he was too late.

The ape fired and Dreyfus heard the bullets hit the boy. He spun back and dropped in a spray of blood, the grenade launcher falling over the parapet and down into the street.

The ape on the trolley car bared his teeth and screeched at One-Eye, who answered the cry.

For the first time, Dreyfus thought they might not survive. He aimed and fired, aimed and fired, but there were too many targets. The one on the trolley car dodged back and forth, mocking them. Apes leaped onto the facade of the Colony building and were shot down. But they kept coming.

Dreyfus was about to call a retreat when he heard a sound he hadn’t heard since his days in the army—the unmistakable thump of artillery. A split second later the trolley car disappeared in a massive fireball that caught a dozen other apes and rolled up the front of the building across the street, shattering its remaining windows.

Dreyfus turned and saw a tank rolling down the street, smoke from its turret blending with the fog. From its hatch, a fire-control officer shouted commands, and the tank’s .50-caliber machine gun opened up, tearing through the apes in the street.

Cheers broke out along the parapet and from below, in front of the gate. Help had arrived. Dreyfus shouted into the radio-room feed.

“Finney! Get that tank driver on the radio and tell him to park it right across the gate!” There was a crackle of static, and again Dreyfus had the fleeting sense he’d heard a voice. Then it was gone.

“On it, boss,” Finney said.