Alex Irvine - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The old human understood this, too.

“Please,” he said. “Please don’t.”

Ash looked from ape to ape. All of them looked away to Koba as soon as he met their eyes…. All of them except Blue Eyes. Blue Eyes looked at his friend. He did not know what to say or do.

Koba came part of the way down the stairs, cutting the distance between him and Ash in half.

“Kill this one,” he growled.

Ash looked down at the old human, then at the metal pole in his head. He grunted something softly to himself. Blue Eyes couldn’t hear what. Then he shook his head.

Koba’s eyes narrowed. He came the rest of the way down to the landing, his gaze never leaving Ash. When Koba stepped off the last stair and was standing over the terrified human, Ash lifted his head. Blue Eyes was surprised to see a burning anger on Ash’s face. He set the metal pole down and signed.

This is not what Caesar would want.

Blue Eyes too looked up at Koba. If Ash could face Koba, so could he. And Ash was right. Caesar would not have done this, and Caesar would never kill an old, injured human—one who was no threat.

Koba nodded, rumbling deep in his throat. Blue Eyes had a flash of hope that Koba would see that he was going too far. All of this had gone too far. Blue Eyes had been wrong to defy Caesar. By doing that, he had given Koba more strength. Now, how many apes were dead? How many humans?

Blue Eyes hoped Koba was thinking the same thing.

Koba reached out and seized Ash by the scruff of his neck. Ash screeched in sudden fear as Koba dragged him up the stairs and around onto the balcony just above. Blue Eyes ran after them, and the other apes followed. If there was going to be punishment, they wanted to see it. Blue Eyes wanted to make sure Koba did not hurt Ash. Most likely he would make an example of Ash to cow the other apes. Blue Eyes understood that.

But Blue Eyes would not stand by and let Ash be hurt. He too would defy Koba, standing with his friend.

Yet he never got the chance. When he reached the top of the stairs and turned out onto the balcony, Koba lifted Ash into the air and threw him out over the railing.

As much as he tried, Blue Eyes could not look away.

Shrieking in terror, Ash flailed in the empty space and fell. The other apes were silent. Koba, too, watched Ash fall, and smiled when Ash’s body hit the floor far below, landing with a wet crunch. Stunned, unable to know how to feel, Blue Eyes looked down at his friend. Ash had been hurt by humans, but had stood up for humans… because of Caesar. His death left an emptiness that could not be measured.

Blue Eyes had betrayed his father.

This was his fault.

He looked up at Koba, aching to fight him. But Koba was too strong.

“Caesar gone,” Koba said into the silence. He spoke to all the apes, but he looked at Blue Eyes. “Apes follow Koba now.”

Blue Eyes did not challenge Koba. He looked around him and saw that the other apes would not help him.

He was alone.

Malcolm drove over the bridge and saw smoke coming from the Colony. As they approached the checkpoint, a man with a rifle came out of the shack and flagged them down. Malcolm debated. They needed to know what was going on, how bad things were in the city, so they could make the right choice about what to do to help Caesar. The problem was that if things were very bad, they couldn’t be seen with an ape.

Behind the guard came a group of armed men. They looked ragged and exhausted.

“Don’t stop,” Ellie said.

She was right. Malcolm didn’t accelerate, but neither did he brake. He drove right through the checkpoint. As they passed the sentry, he waved wildly at them.

“What’re you doing?” he shouted. “You gotta turn around, it’s not safe! Hey! ”

Malcolm ignored him, avoiding eye contact. If they recognized him, they would get word to Dreyfus if they could. If not, then it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting Caesar taken care of without exposing him to a bunch of panicking men with guns.

He glanced back at the chimpanzee, who seemed to be holding on, and then flinched as he heard a burst of gunfire from behind them. In the truck’s side mirror he saw the humans dodging into defensive positions at the checkpoint as a band of armed apes swung up onto the bridge from its underside.

“Oh my God,” Ellie said. She was turned around and could see the battle through the back window on the truck’s cap. Alexander was watching, too. The apes peppered the checkpoint with focused and disciplined fire, as if they’d been shown how to do it. It was an incredible sight. Malcolm hit the gas and got the hell out of there, racing off the bridge and down onto the Presidio Parkway.

“The hospital’s out,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of the area.”

“Where are we going to go?” Ellie asked. She was still looking back up at the bridge.

“I don’t know,” Malcolm responded. He had a thought as he saw Divisadero coming up, and dragged the truck into a too-fast right turn. “Maybe Pacific Heights.”

“Pacific Heights?”

“Nobody goes up there since the quake. There were gas leaks, fires…nothing to loot up there, either, unless you wanted to collect expensive furniture and contemporary art.”

“I see your class consciousness survived the Simian Flu,” Ellie said. One of the things Malcolm loved about her was the unpredictability of her sense of humor.

In the back of the truck, there was a dry gasp as Caesar tried to speak. They all heard it. Malcolm kept his eyes on the road. As they climbed into Pacific Heights, cracks in the road became chasms. He cut around onto side streets, looking for a place where they might be able to stop and do a emergency surgery on a chimp to stop the other chimps from killing all of their fellow humans.

Just another day in post-Simian Flu San Francisco.

“What?” Ellie asked. “What is it, Caesar?”

Caesar took a breath, then spoke, slowly and painfully. As he did, Malcolm started to see the outlines of a plan.

They had found nearly a hundred humans hiding in City Hall. Apes were now driving all of them across the plaza, where other humans stood under guard. The hunt was going well—Koba thought he had found most of them… and they had not killed any more than they had to.

He stood on a balcony outside the office for the city’s leader. At the edge of the balcony was a flag, torn to rags and flapping in the wind that also brought the smell of smoke from the human settlement. MAYOR was the word on the door. Maybe Koba was mayor now. He watched as the guards drove the humans in a single group, away to a place where they could be held and watched while he decided what to do with them.

It would be simple to kill them. Koba wanted to. But he thought it would be smarter to learn what they knew first, to use them so he could understand what they did in the city, and how they used the power that turned on the lights. Then, when he had learned everything they knew, that would be the time to kill them.

Behind him, the office door opened. Koba turned to see a group of his apes bringing in Rocket and Maurice. Maurice did not resist. He was not the kind of ape to fight, especially when he could not win. Rocket thrashed and raged in the grip of two other chimps. When he saw Koba, he snarled.

“You… kill… my son!”

Yes, Koba thought. He had. Rocket was stupid. He had challenged Caesar long ago, before the apes had been led to freedom. He had suffered at human hands like the rest. But when Caesar decided to make the apes weak by letting humans grow strong, Rocket had stayed loyal to him. Caesar’s weakness had killed many apes, Koba thought. Every ape who had died in fire, or from a human bullet, was Caesar’s fault.