Alex Irvine: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Blue Eyes saw Caesar awake and came closer. There was a silent moment while the young ape watched him. Caesar wondered if he looked weak. He must. Death had been very close to him.

I’m so sorry , Blue Eyes signed. For everything . Caesar had a little trouble following the signs in the darkness, but he understood them. He also understood what Blue Eyes meant, where this feeling came from. There were many things he wanted to say in answer. He wanted to explain his anger, his harshness toward Blue Eyes, his fear as he saw his son fall under the spell of Koba’s unthinking hate.

Too many things to say.

Caesar raised his hands to sign, but he was too weak. His arms trembled and he lowered them back to his sides. He spoke in a strained whisper, saying only the most important thing.

“No. I am to blame.”

Even in the darkness he saw the surprise on Blue Eyes’ face.

But Koba betrayed you…

“I chose to trust him. Because he is ape.” Caesar looked away from Blue Eyes’ hands to his face. “Always thought… apes were better than humans.” He paused for breath. “But I see now… how much like them we are.”

Blue Eyes listened. Caesar realized how rare this was. His son had learned hard lessons in the past day. Something about him had changed. He had not told Caesar what it was, and Caesar would not ask. Apes had a right to their silence.

Thinking of his son’s pain strengthened Caesar. He spoke again, a little louder.

“Where is Koba now?”

He’s made the human tower his home, surrounded by the apes most loyal to him , Blue Eyes signed.

Caesar nodded. That was expected. Koba had taken the highest ground and made himself hard to reach.

“And those… who are not?”

Prisoners , Blue Eyes signed. Maurice, Rocket…

Fury rose within Caesar. Making prisoners of apes, for disloyalty? That was unworthy. Beneath them. Koba was a bully, a killer. Not a leader.

Blue Eyes kept signing.

The others only follow out of fear , he said. But once they see you are alive, they will turn from Koba.

“Not if I am weak,” Caesar said. “An ape always seeks… strongest branch.” He thought, turning over possibilities in his mind. “I must find a way… to stop him,” he said.

Blue Eyes started to sign again, then let his hands fall. He spoke aloud, something he almost never did. “What can I do? Something… I can do?”

Caesar felt a rush of pride. His son was learning. He had stood with ten toes over the edge of a plunge that took many back into animal savagery. Now he was stopping. Only a brave ape was capable of taking that step back. He watched his son for a long moment, several breaths dragging in and out. His wound hurt him terribly, but he had to be strong. For apes. Maybe for humans, too. He started to think of a plan, and nodded at his son.

Yes, there was something he could do.

Maurice sat in the stinking bus and waited to die. That was the only thing he could see Koba deciding to do. He would not free them without a pledge of loyalty. Maurice and Rocket had already refused to make such a pledge. The other apes in the bus had either done the same, or had been imprisoned because Koba suspected them.

He watched out the window that gave him a view of the tower over the human settlement. They had opened the bus windows to let out some of the heat, and the sound of gunfire had been coming from the top of the tower all day. Koba and his friends were shooting just for the pleasure of shooting, enjoying their power. Maurice had also seen apes pass by carrying a box of bottles he remembered from the weapon storehouse. Maurice was old, and had seen many of the bad sides of human behavior. He knew what happened when humans drank from those bottles.

He guessed that the same would happen to apes.

Koba was moving the rest of the humans into the pen. He wanted all of them captured before the female apes and children came down from the mountains.

Maurice watched the guards sign to each other, passing the word that they would arrive that evening. Some of them had already reached the far end of the orange bridge. Maurice thought it was strange that Koba—who hated humans so fiercely—was so quick to move apes into the human city. He preferred Caesar’s way. Humans could have their cities. Apes could have the mountains.

But Caesar was dead, and soon Maurice would be, too. He sighed.

A fresh group of human captives arrived, driven violently by apes into the tunnel. Some of the humans fought, and the apes took every chance to beat them violently until they were still. Then the bodies, living or not, were dragged in and left inside the fence. The guards locked the gates again, and Maurice looked away, disgusted. They were animals.

Something caught his attention on the rear window of the bus and he looked over at it. His eyes widened and he immediately looked back to the other prisoners to see if any of them had noticed. They had not. All of them sat, staring out the windows or sleeping, resigned to whatever Koba would do.

Maurice looked back at the window. There, drawn with a finger in the grime, was a circular sign. Caesar’s sign. He had seen Caesar draw it many times. Once he had asked him what it meant, and Caesar had explained that it reminded him of his home. Maurice had wanted to know more, but the sadness on Caesar’s face had stopped him from asking.

Now the sign was before him. It was a message. But from whom?

He nudged Rocket, who had barely moved all day. Rocket looked back, and the despair on his face was wiped away by surprise… then hope. They both searched out the windows, looking for some sign of who might have done this. Some of the other apes saw them looking, and they too started looking without knowing what it was they were supposed to find.

Luca grunted. Maurice looked to him and saw him point at the mirror on the side of the bus. In the tall rectangle, Maurice saw a reflection of Blue Eyes. Astonished, he turned to look out the back window again, and then he spotted Blue Eyes’ hiding place. It was between two abandoned cars where the guards could not see him. Blue Eyes raised a finger to his lips.

Luca nodded.

Maurice nodded, too.

Caesar awoke again in darkness. He looked out through one of the vine-covered windows and saw from the stars it was still early in the night. He could not sleep. His wound throbbed, but he knew now that Ellie had saved his life. He would survive. His strength would return.

He hoped it would return soon enough.

With great effort he moved through the house, past the bedroom where Malcolm and Ellie were asleep, and the other room where Will’s father had once slept. Alexander was in Will’s father’s bed, mouth slack, a flashlight beam dimming as its battery ran out. In its beam Caesar saw the bright boxes of the picture books Malcolm’s son loved. Maurice had been interested in them, too. Caesar wondered if Maurice still lived, or if any of the apes on Koba’s prison bus still lived.

Quietly he pulled down the folding stairs that led up to the attic. He climbed them as a human would, not daring to test his muscles yet. In the attic he found everything, almost as it had been the last time he was there, ten winters before. His drawings. The puzzle of the figure Will called the Statue of Liberty, in a place called New York. Even the Lucas Tower puzzle Will had used to test his medicine that made apes smarter.

Caesar smiled over all of it, but sadly, thinking back to what had started his life on this path. Will’s father, lost in the fog of his old age, trying to drive the neighbor’s car. The neighbor threatening Will’s father, and Caesar coming to his defense. The only act of violence Caesar had ever committed on a human was biting the neighbor’s finger. The taste of blood had awakened something in him—an animal hunger.