Planet of the Apes

by Rich Handley

  Cornelius’ eyes widened in alarm. “Garrison?”

  From somewhere in the near distance, there came the call of a hunting horn. The baboons foraging in the grove raised their heads as one upon hearing the unfamiliar sound, trying to locate its source.

  “Oh, no! No!” Cornelius moaned, his heart sinking like a stone.

  The gorilla cavalry burst from the surrounding woods in an explosion of leaves and flying sod, sabers and guns at the ready, trampling a dozen baboons under the hooves of their horses before they even knew they were under attack.

  As Cornelius watched in horror, tears pouring down his face, the red-garbed gorillas hacked at the fleeing baboons with their swords, riding down mothers and babies as if they were nothing more than human vermin in a corn field. Within moments, the bucolic grove was transformed into an abattoir, the screams of the terrified females and children echoing across the valley. Even worse, it was only a matter of minutes before the males would come running to the rescue. However, there was no way a few dozen baboons armed with clubs and throwing sticks could stand against even a small regiment of gorilla soldiers.

  “You’ve got to make them stop this madness!” Cornelius wailed, grabbing at Professor Tarquin’s tunic front. “Stop it before it’s too late!”

  “It’s already too late,” the older chimpanzee replied grimly. “And I couldn’t stop them now, even if I wanted to.”

  Before Cornelius could say anything else, the rest of the troop, led by Baako, came charging into the grove, waving their spears and showing their teeth in ritual challenge. Upon seeing his friend, Cornelius took a step forward in hopes of warning him, but Tarquin grabbed him by the upper arm and yanked him back behind cover.

  “What’s wrong with you, chimp?” he growled. “Have you gone completely native? Let the gorillas handle this—that’s what they’re good for. If you get shot in the crossfire while being rescued, Zira will never forgive me!”

  Baako’s followers managed to release at least one volley of spears, taking down one horse and its rider, before being cut down like wheat before a scythe. Cornelius clapped his hands over his ears as the cavalry opened fire, screaming in wordless rage as his friend’s head exploded in a burst of blood and gray matter, before dropping to his knees and sobbing in grief.

  “Caesar’s blood! Get back on your feet before anyone sees you!” Tarquin said gruffly as he lifted the younger chimpanzee by the scruff of his neck. “And try to act grateful for being rescued, why don’t you?”

  As Cornelius stared at the carnage before him, he realized his heart no longer felt heavy. Instead, he felt strangely hollow, as though someone had come by and scooped out his insides. All he could do was look at the mangled bodies strewn throughout the grove and shake his head and say, over and over, in a stunned voice: “There was no need to do this.”

  “‘No need’?”

  Cornelius turned to see a mature orangutan, dressed in the yellow vestments of his caste, seated on a horse. He recognized the ape as Doctor Zaius, the deputy minister of science and a noted up-and-comer in the Ape National Assembly. Like all orangutans, there was wisdom in his eyes, but also sternness.

  “If I am not mistaken, these savages murdered three, possibly four of your fellow apes in cold blood. Such actions cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Granted, the extinction of a species is always regrettable, but these baboons have earned their fate. I would not waste pity on them.”

  A gorilla officer stepped forward. “The enemy has been neutralized, sir,” he said in a voice that sounded like two rocks being rubbed together.

  “Thank you, Captain Ursus,” Doctor Zaius replied with a nod of his head. “But just to be on the safe side, I want this valley put to the torch. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir!” Ursus replied. He turned and shouted at the gorillas milling about behind him. “You heard the doctor! Burn it to the ground!”

  The orangutan shifted about in his saddle, leaning forward on its pommel to fix Professor Tarquin with a baleful glare. “And as for you, you are to be charged with scientific heresy upon our return to Ape City. However, given his tender years and his recent ordeal, no such charges will be filed against your protégé.”

  “Th-thank you, Doctor Zaius,” Professor Tarquin stammered, dropping his gaze to the ground. He then drove his elbow into Cornelius’ ribs to get his attention, signaling him to follow his lead. The young chimp bobbed his head in imitation of Tarquin, but could not keep from staring at the nearby body of a female baboon, her head nearly severed, and the broken infant she still clutched in her arms.

  “I can see, by the look in your eyes, that you are having a crisis of faith, my young friend,” Doctor Zaius said as he reined his horse about. “But do not let what you have seen today trouble you, Master Cornelius. It is true that the Lawgiver commanded that ape never kill ape. However, these were not apes. They were monkeys. They had tails. Not even humans have tails! Have no fear—we are still without sin in the eyes of the Lawgiver.”

  * * *

  Later, as Cornelius rode into the mountains under cavalry escort, he turned around in his saddle to look at the Southern Valley one last time, only to find it filled with fire. The smoke from the blaze billowed into the clouds, causing the sunset to glow as red as the sky above the Forbidden Zone.

  Professor Tarquin was right. If he was to have any hopes of a career, it was better to put this all behind him. Baako and the others were dead. Nothing he could do could change that. Whatever the Southern Valley may have been, it wasn’t the Garden. All he wanted to do now was go home and take Zira in his arms and never let her go. Maybe someday, if he was lucky, he might discover the true secret of the Garden and the origin of the species. Who knows—if he could stumble across a species believed extinct for millennia, perhaps he could find the missing link between human and ape as well.

  Stranger things had happened.

  * * *

  The landscape of the Planet of the Apes live-action television series expands in Will Murray’s “Blood Brothers,” offering fugitive astronauts Alan Virdon and Pete Burke a glimpse into a corner of their adopted world heretofore unseen and unimagined…

  * * *

  BLOOD BROTHERS

  by

  WILL MURRAY

  The situation was desperate.

  This was nothing new. For ANSA astronauts Alan Virdon and Peter Burke, the situation had been desperate ever since their spacecraft, Probe Six, had encountered problems en route to Alpha Centauri, and had crash-landed on an unknown planet.

  The year had been 1980 when they’d left. There was no reckoning of the year when they landed, for their ship’s chronometer had frozen at 3085. They only knew they were approximately 1,000 years into their own future.

  The world upon which they found themselves was inhabited by humans very much like them, although more primitive, eking out a subsistence life under a dominant society of intelligent, articulate apes which, while superior to the humans, was vastly inferior to twentieth-century man.

  It was not long after their advent, however, that they found conclusive evidence that this was not some alien world, but a future post-holocaust Earth where the natural order of things was upside down.

  In this depressing reality, Virdon and Burke sought survival—and any surviving technology that might help them return to their own time.

  Mounted gorillas led by Urko, Central City’s chief of security, had been pursuing them for months.

  The thunder of hoofbeats at their backs signified that the apes were chasing them again. Once more, Urko had picked up their trail.

  They had been pushing north for days, toward the Napa Valley. Village humans had told them that the apes avoided the Napa Valley. No one knew why. But it was a good place to find respite, and a steady supply of food, if the abundant vineyards still survived after generations.

  Feeling the ground rumble beneath their feet, Galen, their chimpanzee companion, turned and cried out, “I spy Urko!”

 
; All heads turned, and they saw, amid the swirling trail dust, a small detachment of cavalry, their hairy faces set and determined. The high, bulbous leather helmet signified Urko’s rank, towering above all other simian heads. He rode a dun stallion.

  Colonel Virdon took immediate charge.

  “Urko’s more than a mile behind us. Scatter! Good luck!”

  As part of their ANSA survival training, the two astronauts had planned for exactly this eventuality. Split up. Make it harder for any one individual to be intercepted and captured. Regroup later.

  Reacting instantly, Virdon broke left, while Major Burke shot off to the right. Scrambling on all fours, Galen melted into the underbrush and squeezed himself into a trembling ball. More than the humans, he feared the destructive power of the apes’ crude carbine rifles.

  Some of those rifles were already firing, but the range was too great to be a threat. Yet.

  The trio had passed beyond the throat of the valley, unaware that pursuit lay so close behind. The high mountains beyond offered shelter, but appeared to be too far away. Virdon’s blonde hair would be visible as long as light persisted. His homespun clothes, provided by human villagers, were a different matter. They blended well with the surrounding scenery.

  In the end, it didn’t matter.

  Urko’s squad, some twenty gorillas strong, plunged into the valley’s throat, firing for effect, but otherwise silent. Apes were not given to shouting as they rode.

  The ground shook under the relentless pounding of hoofbeats. Already winded, Virdon dropped into the shelter of a cork oak tree, took a chance, and peered around.

  A low growl escaped his lips as he saw three horse gorillas surround something. One dismounted. Galen was extracted from the brush, kicking but helpless.

  While Urko shouted commands in his brutal voice, the other gorillas fanned out in all directions.

  “Find the humans! Find them! When you capture them, shoot them dead! No prisoners! I am done chasing these astronauts!”

  Answering gunfire caused Alan Virdon’s heart to jump half into his throat, thinking that Pete had been shot. It was only gorillas answering their leader’s commands with boisterous gunfire.

  Mentally, Virdon cursed himself. Splitting up had been the only sensible thing to do, but now he had no way to communicate with Pete, no means to organize Galen’s rescue, even if that were possible.

  Looking upward, he decided to take to the treetops. A long-shot idea had come to him.

  Soon, Alan was crouched in the crotch of the tree, doing his best to remain immobile. From this high vantage, he could see the gorillas ranging deeper into the valley, moving in their shambling, clumsy way. Human horsemen would have dismounted and beat the bushes with whatever tools they had, but these horse gorillas preferred the comfort of their saddles to the difficult locomotion with which evolution had burdened their simian frames. It was easier to ride than to walk. So they rode.

  One plunged in his direction, unwitting.

  Shifting on his supporting branch, Virdon positioned himself. If the ranging gorilla did not change direction, he would pass beneath these very branches.

  And so he did.

  The gorilla did not sense the human until dropping feet smashed onto his leather-clad shoulders, forcing him out of the saddle, rifle cartwheeling.

  It had been a good plan—until its execution. Virdon was counting on landing on the ground next to the ape, then seizing the stunned soldier’s rifle.

  Instead, the ape fell one way, his carbine the other. Alan was stunned to discover himself slammed into the saddle. He seized the frightened horse’s neck to keep from being thrown.

  The plan had depended on the astronaut ending up in possession of the rifle…

  Accustomed to the weight of a gorilla, the horse reacted to its human rider. It reared up, whinnying and screaming; no doubt, its backbone was hurting.

  “Steady, boy! Steady!” Virdon cried, attempting to gentle the animal.

  No good. The steed began bucking and sun-fishing, attempting to throw the unfamiliar rider.

  The next thing Virdon knew, hairy hands reached up, endeavoring to pull him from the saddle, so he flung himself in the other direction, hoping to land close to the rifle.

  He hit hard. Close, but not close enough. Alan spotted the clumsy weapon. He finished rolling, began half-crawling, half-scrambling toward it.

  Unfortunately, his gorilla antagonist had the same idea.

  Human and ape seized the weapon at virtually the same time and a grunting struggle ensued. Here, evolution had the last word. Human muscles, no matter how well-developed, were not composed of the same tough fiber as gorilla limbs.

  The rifle was wrested out of Alan’s clutching fingers and swapped around, and suddenly its destructive bore was pointing directly at him.

  Colonel Virdon threw up his hands in surrender, knowing that surrender had no point.

  “Now you die!” shouted the gorilla hoarsely.

  His hairy finger groped for the trigger, almost touched it. Virdon flinched in anticipation of the gunpowder blast.

  It never came. Instead, the gorilla sputtered a weird, choking outcry, arched his back, and stood poised for a few seconds, transfixed by death.

  The ape finally fell forward. Protruding from his broad back was a willow shaft decorated in hawk feathers.

  Alan Virdon blinked. He recognized an ancient arrow. He had never seen humans of this era use the bow and arrow, but there was no question that the shaft had impaled the ape, its obsidian point piercing the thick leather armor.

  From the scrub foothills beyond, there came a strange, dry rain.

  Wave after wave of arrows flew upward, arced, and descended. They were not silent, for a hissing filled the air. When they whispered, they spoke of death.

  All over the valley, the gorillas were transfixed, knocked off their saddles, sprouting unexpected quills.

  The origins of this hissing rain were not clear. Alan had no time to consider that. He was too busy tugging the carbine out of the dead gorilla’s hands.

  When he finally wrenched it loose, Virdon turned and beheld a tableau he had never before witnessed.

  * * *

  The posse of Security Chief Urko was in total disarray. Some riders were already in retreat; others were firing wildly in all directions, desperate to battle back against a foe they could not see.

  In the center of this milling chaos, Urko stood firm in his saddle, wheeling his mount about, calling for order.

  “Stand fast! Do not break! That is an order! Do not break ranks!”

  A whistling shaft happened along and knocked his bulbous helmet off his head. Urko suddenly decided that his apes had the best idea after all. Wrenching his horse’s head about, he fled south. He was not alone.

  Horses crying and rifles completely silent, the gorillas retreated out of the valley, seeking shelter, not understanding the nature of the calamity that had befallen their ranks.

  It was over almost as soon as it had begun.

  Felled apes and their horses had remained behind, but the survivors were soon out of sight, only the rising dust of their hasty retreat remaining.

  * * *

  Virdon surveyed the surroundings, seeking the source of the arrows, but saw nothing and no one.

  Not knowing if it was safe to do so, he took shelter behind a tree, and called out, “Pete! Galen! Are you hurt?”

  Burke answered first. “No! What the hell just happened?”

  “Urko’s been stampeded. Galen, what about you?”

  Alan had to call three times before Galen’s mild voice squeaked up, “I have been roughed up, but I am whole. I do not understand any of this.”

  Muttering under his breath, Burke said, “Join the general confusion.”

  Turning his attention to the mountainsides, Alan called up, “Hello up there! We are two humans and a friendly chimpanzee. We are trying to reach the Napa Valley.”

  There was a silence. Then a heavy voice rolled out
.

  “Do you seek the Rez?”

  Virdon hesitated. “I don’t know what that is. I seek refuge from Security Chief Urko and his gorilla militia.”

  “Are you an enemy of Urko?”

  “He has made himself our enemy,” Alan replied.

  “Then we count you as friends. You are welcome on the Rez. Step out into the light. I guarantee you safe passage. You will ride with us.”

  “Thank you. Who are you?”

  The answer was not long in coming, but the seconds seemed to stretch out uncomfortably.

  Atop a brush-choked ridge, a figure appeared on a majestic appaloosa horse, squat but broad of shoulder, his head decorated by a war bonnet of eagle feathers the like of which Alan Virdon had only seen in old films.

  The rider resembled a war chieftain from the days of General George Custer. In one hand, he clutched his reins, while the other held a feather-decorated longbow.

  The dying sun painted his face clearly. It was not the face of a human being. This was the heavy mask of a bull gorilla, but a gorilla whose leathery features were marked by bands of red and ocher—warpaint.

  “I,” the rider called out, “am Apex.”

  * * *

  Down from the mountains, riding single-file, came a band of riders unlike anything Alan Virdon ever expected to see.

  In the lead came the full-grown bull gorilla in chief’s regalia, but those who rode behind him were human. They were clothed in buckskin, white breechcloths, and eagle feathers, dressed as Native Americans did in the days of old.

  Stepping out from behind a tree, Alan waited for Pete and Galen to join him.

  Pete was the first to trot up. “Am I seeing what I think I am?”

  “A gorilla tricked out like Geronimo leading a band of Native Americans?” Alan shot back.

  Pete grunted. “Glad to know I’m not hallucinating.” Searching the faces of the approaching war party, he added, “When I was a kid, I was into Native American lore. Still remember a lot of it. Every one of those human riders looks like a full-blooded something or other. If those costumes are authentic, this is the damnedest tribe that ever rode the West.”