Alex Irvine - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

He thought of Blue Eyes, and Cornelia, and his tiny new son, and he grew stronger.

“It is time,” he said to Blue Eyes.

There were fewer patrols around on the side of the skyscraper away from the Colony gate. The hundreds of apes on the beams and girders were mostly looking down on the site of the battle, or preoccupied with their daily routines. Caesar led his apes around. They scaled the walls of the Colony and rested a moment at the base of the skyscraper itself.

Any ape may leave this fight , Caesar signed. It is not yours. It is mine.

No one moved. Blue Eyes, standing in the middle of the group, looked strong. Calm and resolute, rather than angry and nervous. Caesar took this as a good sign. He smiled, and ducked his head to them, showing respect for their loyalty and their courage. Then he turned to the wall, and they began to climb.

The apes gathered on the beams above the finished part of the building started to notice them when they were only a few stories below. They screeched down at the interlopers, and the sound drew more apes, until the border between the finished and unfinished parts of the skyscraper was lined with them.

The escaped prisoners climbed together, in ranks of five or six. Rocket, Blue Eyes, Maurice, and Luca were in the first rank. They reached the edge and climbed over it, as the screeching of Koba’s apes grew louder and higher-pitched.

But those apes backed away when the escapees held themselves strong, shoulder-to-shoulder with the massive gorilla and orangutan in the middle, flanked by Blue Eyes and Rocket. More of Koba’s apes dropped down from the higher beams, adding to the shrieking and posturing. When the mood began to shift and the defenders had just about worked themselves up to attack, the escapees parted, and Caesar, alone, walked through the gap to face them.

He willed himself to stay tall and strong as he walked, his steps measured even though he was already tired from a climb that should have been child’s play. Caesar hid his pain. The raging apes immediately fell silent, shocked, eyes widening as if seeing the impossible. On the levels above, more and more ape heads looked down. They, too, were stunned, and could not believe what they saw. None of them rushed to attack. None of them asked him a question.

Each of them , he thought, has something to answer for. They know it . But at that moment he did not care. He had one thing on his mind, and only one.

“Where is Koba?” he asked.

He waited for a challenge, but none came. First a few, then all of the apes looked up at the top of the tower.

Yes , Caesar thought. It was as he had expected. The first part of his plan was working. He was through the outer ranks of pawns. He walked along a beam toward the nearest girder that extended to the highest level of the building. The apes parted to allow him to pass. Few of them would meet his eyes, and those who did looked ashamed.

He reached the girder and began to climb, feeling the eyes on him as he passed each floor. His loyal troop climbed with him, and a strange thing happened after Caesar had climbed five or six floors. He felt the steel structure begin to sway as more and more apes climbed with him.

He did not look back. The ape who thought of only one thing, would be the ape who won. His gaze fixed above, on the top of the tower, Caesar climbed, feeling the pain in his body and turning it into strength. He had thought he needed to draw Koba out… but perhaps he already had done so, by stripping Koba’s army away from him even though Koba himself had not moved.

Only time—and another fifteen stories—would tell.

Malcolm helped place bricks of C4 throughout the foundation while he silently debated how to forestall the explosion. He had a couple of choices: active resistance, or passive delaying tactics.

From time to time he dropped a couple of bricks, or made a show of hemming and hawing over placement. It only worked because Finney and Dreyfus knew he was an architect, and paid attention to what he said. They were glad to listen to him at first, but they were getting impatient.

“Let’s get out of here and blow this fucker,” Finney said. “How many more do we need?”

“Well, you tell me, Finney,” Malcolm said. “You want to try it and have it not work?”

Finney grumbled, but he went back for more C4. They were most of the way across the basement level. Back in the bunker, Werner was doing whatever he did with the radio. Dreyfus was planting C4 in still another area. The idea was to have at least one brick on every pillar—the higher the better, to cause an immediate sag in the entire floor. The building would pancake straight down, and the ape problem would be solved.

At least that’s what Malcolm had told Dreyfus, to strengthen his trust. The truth was that he wasn’t a demolition expert, and he had no idea what the building would do if a hundred bricks of C4 went off simultaneously.

Fall down? Certainly.

Fall in a controlled and predictable manner? Not a chance.

Deciding that the passive delay approach had just about run its course, he judged that the time had come to take a more active role. He hated the thought of what he was about to do, but lives were at stake… perhaps including his. The problem was, they were armed, and he wasn’t.

“Finney!” he called out. “Can you give me a hand?” Then he pointed up.

Finney walked over and looked. The ceiling was a little higher here, and there was a heavy crossbeam marked by a mending plate. “See the rivets there?” Malcolm said, pointing at the mending plate. “That’s a good spot for a charge, but I can’t reach that high.”

“Sure,” Finney said. He reached up, stretching as far as he could to work the brick onto the lip of the beam and press it in place. Malcolm saw the gun tucked into the back of his pants.

“Whoa, steady,” Malcolm said. He braced Finney with one hand, and lifted the gun with the other.

“Nah, I’m okay,” Finney replied.

“You sure.”

Finney nodded, and Malcolm let go. Holding the brick in place, Finney reached back.

“Hand me some wire,” he said. “No sense doing this Mr. Fantastic act twice.” Malcolm didn’t answer. “Hey, Malcolm—” Finney said, turning his head, and that was when Malcolm cold-cocked him with the butt of his own gun.

Finney dropped without a sound. Malcolm turned him on his side because he’d read somewhere you were supposed to do that to unconscious people so they didn’t swallow their tongues. Then he got his bearings.

“This is San Francisco…” Werner was repeating his monotonous call for help. Malcolm listened, and when Werner paused to take a drink of water, he heard Dreyfus scraping around toward the other end of the cavernous space. Looking in that direction, he saw the beam of Dreyfus’s flashlight, clearly visible in the smoky air. Without further ado Malcolm walked that way and found Dreyfus affixing a line of charges onto a concrete shelf, just under the ceiling. He was standing on an upended crate, using it to reach the shelf.

“Dreyfus,” Malcolm said.

Dreyfus turned around and peered at him in the gloom.

Then he saw the gun.

“What are you doing?” he asked. It was a real question. Dreyfus didn’t scare easily, and he’d had guns pointed at him before. He really wanted to know what Malcolm was doing. Sincerity radiated from every part of him, even the concrete dust in his hair.

“Listen,” Malcolm said. “You have to stop. You can’t do this.”

“What are you talking about? Put that gun down.” Dreyfus stayed up on the crate and pulled another brick of C4 from his coat pocket. Something about that struck Malcolm as funny, but he didn’t laugh.