“Let this be your last warning.”
* * *
As Zaius neared the base of the hill, Zira descended upon him.
“Doctor, I demand that you either free my fiancé at once,” she insisted, “or put me in shackles beside him.”
Dr. Zaius blinked. Twice.
Is there no end to this?
The chimpanzee psychiatrist thrust her arms out in front of her, closed her eyes, turned her head, and lifted her snout. Defiant.
Zaius scoffed.
Impetuous chimp. He thought of Lucius. Make that “chimps.” All of them.
“Very well, then.” Zaius looked to his guards, and nodded toward Lieutenant Aurelios. Immediately the security officer moved forward, shackles at the ready. As he approached, however, Zaius raised a hand.
“Lieutenant, your key, please.” The confused gorilla returned the cuffs to his belt, reached into the pocket on his bandolier, and produced a master key. Zaius took it, and examined it. Zira still stood with arms outstretched, but then opened one eye, tilting her head ever so slightly. When Zaius looked up at her, Zira immediately turned her head away and slammed her eye shut. The minister sighed deeply, and slipped the key into the palm of her right hand.
I do not enjoy my role in this, he mused. Even his old mentor, Zao, had needed to be silenced before he could expose the truth—that man had once ruled the planet, and that ape had risen from the ashes of man’s society. The secret had to be kept, lest ape society collapse under its weight.
It must!
Zira looked at Zaius and smiled.
“Go,” he said simply, gesturing with his snout. Before I change my mind.
Without another word, Zira swept up a blanket and pillow and scrambled toward the wagon.
“But you are still under arrest,” he added. “All three of you.” She turned and bowed, then continued on her way. As he watched her go, Aurelios addressed him.
“Orders, Doctor?”
“Collect the boy and bed down for the night.” Zaius waved at the hill. “We could all use some sleep.”
* * *
Cornelius napped lightly, his mouth still covered in leather, his hands shackled by chains to a rung in the wagon’s floorboards. Zira swung open the cage door and sprang to her lover. She untied the mask and quickly unlocked his shackles.
Then Cornelius was awake. “Zira!” he said in alarm. “We are in enough trouble—”
“No, no, it’s alright.” She peppered his face with kisses. “The good doctor himself gave me the key.”
“The good… I see,” Cornelius rubbed his strained wrists. “And the charge of heresy?”
Zira cast her eyes down and shook her head, then sat next to him, her back to the wagon’s wall. Settling in, she rested her head on his shoulder and drew a deep breath.
“It’s alright, Zira. They can’t put us away for—”
“It’s not that,” she interjected. “Cornelius, it’s…” Zira grew silent. Patient as ever, Cornelius waited for her to continue. “I’m worried about Taylor.”
“Taylor?” Cornelius scoffed. She frowned, and her eyes were knives. Instantly he knew his error. Taylor had tried to save them from Zaius’s accusations of heresy.
“Zira, I… understand.” Unable to meet her gaze, he looked straight ahead and slowly nodded. “I’m… concerned as well.” Taylor had tried to strike a deal with Zaius, urging him to grant Zira and Cornelius clemency. The human had shown his gratitude for their help, and tried to help them in kind.
Gratitude, from a human.
“He is quite insufferable, there’s no doubt about that,” Cornelius said. “But he is unique, and not only because he talks.” He could hardly believe the words coming out of his own mouth. “But because of his mind.”
A thinking human.
“Oh, Cornelius!” Zira exclaimed, “Y-you…” She stammered. “You love him too, don’t you?”
Cornelius sighed. Does she have to use the word… “love”? It’s so… dramatic. Still, he knew better than to argue with his fiancée. He thought of his childhood pet, a simple raccoon. One can love an animal, he said to himself, and Taylor is indeed much more than any animal.
“I suppose so.” He nodded and squeezed Zira’s hand. “Whatever becomes of us, I hope he finds what he’s looking for.”
“They have to survive, Cornelius. They just have to,” she said vehemently. “This could be the start of a new species.”
As Zira curled around him and drifted off to sleep, Cornelius thought about it.
It’s a good thing Dr. Zaius was unaware of Nova’s… condition.
A good thing indeed.
CHAPTER 3
DIAGNOSES
Roughly one week earlier
Taylor and Nova had escaped, thanks to Zira. Her nephew Lucius had tricked the guard and they were free. Now Cornelius, Zira, and Lucius joined them on a trek to the Forbidden Zone. Their destination was the archeological site where Cornelius and his team had dug the previous year. The apes’ goal was to find proof that intelligent humans were the missing link in ape evolution. Taylor’s goal was, as he put it, to “get the hell outta Dodge,” find a jungle beyond Zaius’s reach, and start anew.
They stopped at the head of a gorge. Ahead of them, the terrain fell away abruptly to a vast, irregular river of deep blue-green water. The wagon would only slow them down. Taylor and the apes unloaded the wagon and repacked their provisions and equipment on the backs of horses.
He and Lucius moved toward the precipice of the cliff as Nova wandered off. Suddenly, she dropped to her knees. The apes noticed something was amiss, and it was Lucius who mentioned it.
“Something’s wrong with your mate,” the young chimp declared. Taylor peered in her direction. Nova was retching. He and the others moved quickly to her.
“Nova?” he asked gently, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Zira squatted down beside them. “Let me handle this.” When Taylor hesitated, she grew defiant. “You may be smarter than I am,” she said, “but I’m the veterinary here.”
He saw there was no arguing with the lady chimp. She was strong, and he admired her for it. So he acquiesced.
Zira led Nova back toward the wagon. Taylor watched the females leave and promptly decided he should occupy his thoughts with other things. He looked down at the twisting river as Cornelius fetched the horses.
“Cornelius,” Taylor echoed through the canyon, “where does this river lead to?”
“It flows into a sea some miles from here,” the chimpanzee replied. “That’s where we’ll find the diggings.” From where they stood, they could see massive sandstone cliffs that rose from either riverbank. Taylor’s curiosity was piqued.
“And beyond that?”
“I don’t know,” Cornelius admitted. “You can’t ride along the shore at high tide, and we had no boats on our last expedition.”
Taylor thought about that. “You’ve never told me,” he said. “Why do you call this the Forbidden Zone?”
“No one knows,” the chimp said. “It’s an ancient taboo, set forth in The Sacred Scrolls.” He swept his arm across the horizon. “The Lawgiver pronounced this whole area deadly.”
Lucius was more than a little spooked.
“Shouldn’t we be moving on?” he queried.
“I’m for that.” Taylor squeezed the words out the side of his mouth. He scanned for Nova. She stood in the shade of the wagon, leaning against it as Zira looked after her. The young woman’s sickness seemed to have passed. As the males approached, she rushed to Taylor, smiling all the way.
“What’s the diagnosis, Doctor?” he asked as Nova threw her arms around him. “A touch of the sun?”
“She’s not sick at all,” Zira declared. She could tell he didn’t understand. “She’s pregnant.”
Instantly the look on Taylor’s face was one of confusion. Slowly, consternation gave way to wonder. Finally, a broken jagged smile claimed his face.
“So,” Taylor said, and
he beamed, “I’m not an altogether different breed after all.” He turned to an astonished Cornelius. “You see?”
As the gaping scientist nodded, Zira turned and shook her head. It had been a simple thing to diagnose Nova. The nausea, sudden weakness, the desire to nest—even the way the human female looked at her mate.
Zira knew it because she felt all the same symptoms. Looked at Cornelius the same way. The human female wasn’t the only one who was pregnant.
Zira, too, was with child.
* * *
Now
Zira could not sleep. She and Cornelius lay beneath an ancient desiccated tree, not too far from Lucius and equidistant from both the wagon and Zaius’s tent. The makeshift camp formed a triangle with the tent at its apex. Aurelios and his security team slept in the center around the fire, with two gorillas walking the perimeter, one guard awake at the tent, and another pretending to be awake, stationed near the three chimpanzees.
Staring at her slumbering lover, Zira cupped his hand and brought it to her abdomen, giving flight to the fancy that Cornelius might dream he felt the baby move.
The baby he doesn’t know about yet.
Her belly had swollen. She was certain he had noticed that she had put on some weight, but he was much too proper to say anything, or even care. She was his fiancée, and that was all he would care about.
He will make a good husband. She smiled. That smile quickly faded with doubt. But should he be a father?
If they were going to be imprisoned for heresy, then at the least they would be marked for their entire lives. There would be no careers for either of them. In all likelihood they would have their degrees revoked, and they would be demoted to the rank of second-class citizen. The burden of shame would fall not just on them, but on their offspring, as well. A child of heretics would not have an easy life. There would be no enrollment in the academy. They might wind up a clerk, a farrier, or worse.
Zira harrumphed. She pushed Cornelius’s hand away, flopped around and turned her back on him. Any child of hers deserved a better life than that. Her expression darkened.
If my child can’t have a better life, she thought, should I have a child at all?
She had colleagues who took care of such things, and quietly. They were veterinarians, of course—not proper medical doctors—but with their knowledge of comparative anatomy, it wasn’t much of a stretch for them to apply their skills to apes, as well. Dr. Galen had operated a back-alley office himself, disguising it as a private practice.
Zira squeezed her eyes almost shut.
Cornelius cannot know.
Turning flat on her back, she looked to the heavens and sighed. The soft glow of the cloud-shrouded starless night was framed by the tree’s petrified limbs. She imagined that its arthritic branches were reaching out to the sky for a taste of rain that would never come.
Then it did.
She was sure she had imagined the first drop. The second not so much—it splashed right across her brow.
Those drips weren’t alone.
The sky fluttered, and a torrent crashed to earth.
* * *
They were drowning in the desert.
The northern tip of the Forbidden Zone received its first rain in seasons. Water plummeted from above like a waterfall. Cornelius and Zira took refuge against the tree, clutching each other close as the ground at their feet turned to mush, threatening to hold them fast. Rivulets glided over his fur and down his nose. Then the stiff breeze transmogrified into a gale and the torrential downpour went sideways.
Confused, Aurelios and his apes attempted to secure the horses, lest they run. Eager to help his compatriots, the guard assigned to watch over the apostates stuck his ruddy finger in Cornelius’s face.
“You!” He reached behind his belt. “Give me your hands.”
As the soaked gorilla brought his handcuffs around to bind the chimpanzees, he suddenly arched his back and collapsed in a heap. A short figure stood behind the fallen ape, wielding the guard’s purloined club.
“Lucius!” Cornelius said breathlessly. What has the boy done now?
“Come on!” the rebellious youth said, crouching low and sloshing through mud and rain, moving for the horses. Cornelius realized what he had in mind. With the gorillas distracted and Zaius still in his tent, now was the time.
“Lucius?” Zira looked up. Cornelius grabbed her hand and yanked her away from the tree. “No, Cornelius,” she protested, “tell him to stop! We mustn’t… I can’t—” Nevertheless he pulled her along the slick ground. The desert floor was so much sludge.
Worse than that, the ooze beneath them began bubbling. As he struggled to keep Zira and himself upright, the nearest of those mud bubbles burst.
Within it sat a monster.
The size of a melon, it was black, fat, and slick. Its dual knobby tongues were horned and its two bulbous eyes bulged. Similar creatures emerged all around them. One of them licked its eyes as it sprung, and its freakish brethren did the same. Toad-things bounced and whizzed, to and fro.
Cornelius had heard of such things, but he had never seen one in person. Feral toads hibernated beneath the cracked desert floor, awaiting a rain that never came—until now. They had been awakened by the first drops of wet and shed their muddy shells, eager to find both food and mates. As he and Zira batted the things away, Lucius plowed right through them. He gestured toward a pair of horses tied to a bush just past the tent.
The creatures crisscrossed the camp like cannon fire. The chimpanzees were all but forgotten as the gorillas fought against the downpour and the hellish amphibian assault. And there was the croaking.
So much croaking.
“Can you stand?” Cornelius shouted over the rain and cries of alarm.
“Yes, but we can’t go.” Zira stopped and peered at him, as if making a decision. “Cornelius, I’m—”
“Stop there!”
It was Lieutenant Aurelios, pistol drawn. Rain poured down the gorilla’s glossy features. The lieutenant nodded at his fallen guard—the gorilla Lucius had clubbed. “So, we add assault to the charges.” Aurelios’s eyes became slits. “Or is it murder?”
Zira was quiet.
“What, him?” Cornelius said. “No, no, you’ve got it wrong.” With a hand raised in supplication, he reached down to the prone gorilla and tapped the guard’s carotid artery. A steady pulse greeted him.
“No, he is very much alive—you see?” he said. “He, ah, slipped in the mud, yes? Hit his head on a toad, I’m afraid.” As if on cue, one of the wild amphibians hopped past Aurelios. Another flew at the tree and smashed into it.
Aurelios looked over the two prisoners.
Two.
“Where is the other one?” he demanded.
* * *
Lucius had been lucky. Zaius had remained in his tent, and the gorillas hadn’t noticed him. Aurelios’s and Zaius’s steeds in tow, he sloshed through the muddy field. Fleshy projectiles zigged and zagged. Water poured from the sky. A choir of the grotesque throbbed, and beneath it, he felt a rumble rising from the ground. Pausing at the tent he looked up. On the hill above them, the ribbone boulders were moving. Swaying.
They’re sliding.
The tent flap flew open, revealing an enraged Zaius. Peering through the rain, the orangutan squinted at the figure leading the two horses. A moment later it dawned on the minister what he was seeing.
“Guards!” he bellowed over the din. “The apostates are escaping! Arrest—”
He didn’t get to finish his words. Lucius dropped the reins and charged headfirst. The minister braced himself for an impact.
Rain and toads continued their assault.
* * *
Near the tree, as Cornelius was preoccupied with Aurelios, Zira watched the drama at the tent. The hillside dissolved into a cascade of mud, and the craggy boulders that had rested there for millennia were loosened. The nearest one slammed onto its side and slid down the incline.
“Lucius!” Zira
shouted.
Cornelius and Aurelios turned.
The purloined horses galloped away in panic. The young chimpanzee body-slammed Zaius, throwing him past his tent. The doctor slid away in the mud, but Lucius wasn’t so lucky. The boy’s foot became tangled in the tent line, and he went down.
The boulder slammed into the tent.
Mud and toads splattered.
Zira screamed again.
“Lucius!”
CHAPTER 4
A PORTENT OF INTREPIDITY
Morning chased away the storm. The clouds receded rapidly with the sun, vaporizing as if they had never been, the destruction they had wrought the only evidence of their passing.
The camp was buried in a foot of mud and a ton of fallen stone. It was littered with toad-things, living and dead. The apes had lost the two horses and much of their supplies. The wagon, at least, was intact.
Lucius, however, was dead.
The gorillas buried him in the firmest ground they could locate, nervously watching for more of the melon-sized monsters. Zaius oversaw the ceremony, and as he finished reading from the funerary scroll the gorillas all raised their rifles and fired into the sky. Clutching the scroll in his hand, he approached the two grieving chimpanzees, offering genuine condolences.
“He was—” The doctor lowered his voice and leaned in closer. “He saved my life. I caught him stealing the horses and called for the guard. He could have run, but instead—”
“Just let us go,” Zira said. She buried her head in her fiancé’s chest and wept.
“You know I cannot.” He stopped and thought for a moment. Opening his satchel, he replaced the scroll and his hand brushed against the crumpled parchment he had snatched from Lucius—the beginnings of Taylor’s tale.
A wave of compassion seized him.
“Is there anything I can do—within the limits of my authority—to ease your sorrow, child?” he asked.
After a beat, it was Cornelius who spoke.
“Marry us,” he said. “Here.” He stood tall. “Now.”
Zira raised her head. “Cornelius?”
The chimpanzee’s gaze was unflinching. “Lucius gave his life, first trying to save Zira and me from prosecution, and then to save you from certain death. He believed in truth and freedom. He loved Zira and wanted her to be happy. He wanted the two of us to be together.” He stopped to weigh his words. “If you refuse to drop these charges we will face them with dignity, grace, and conviction. But if we must face a tribunal”—Cornelius sighed—“let us do so as ape and wife.”
Death of the Planet of the Apes Page 4
