They had a choice—leave the undercity and let the gorillas and mutants slaughter each other. Head back toward Ape City, its waterfalls and cornfields, its jungles. Or—
Goddamn it, Taylor thought. He turned to Brent.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
The younger astronaut nodded. “I’m thinking just that.”
Taylor tossed Brent the mace and pulled a second one from the wall rack. With a nervous Nova in hand, they turned back down the corridor toward the cathedral, narrowly avoiding a gorilla squad that was escorting a captured mutant. Confrontation avoided, they deftly turned another corner.
A lone gorilla soldier stood there, machine gun at the ready. Taylor ducked back behind the archway, pulling Nova with him. He hadn’t seen them, though, and slowly the three humans backed away up a short flight of steps. Stopping, Brent pressed himself against the nearest wall.
Then there was a nearby burst of gunfire, loud enough that Nova panicked. She bolted, the gorilla saw her, and fired. Bullets followed her, spraying the wall.
Taylor and Brent swung their maces. Both struck the gorilla in the face and head. His skull crushed, he collapsed.
Riddled with bullets, Nova swayed dizzily against the far wall. Taylor rushed to her, catching her and lowering her gently to lie on the steps.
“Nova?” Her eyes were already glassy. He reached for her hand and saw the extent of the wounds. If we can stop the bleeding… But it was too late. The bullet had struck something major. She stopped moving, stopped breathing.
Nova was dead.
And with her, their unborn child.
“Nova,” Taylor said quietly. “Ah, God.” It was a sigh. He bit back the tears. “We should let them all die—the gorillas, every damn…” Taylor trailed off, his thoughts no one’s but his own. “When it comes time.”
He thought about the baby. Of the life that could have been. Past the Forbidden Zone, in the jungle beyond. Just over the next sunrise.
“It’s time it was finished.” He stroked Nova’s cheek and looked past Brent into oblivion. “Finished.”
* * *
Everything was falling apart. Assured Destruction was upon them. Ongaro was dead—Albina had recognized his absence. She had not realized it, but the ever-present echo of his presence had soothed her. Their bond had been stronger than she had wanted to admit, and now his mind was gone. Now her thoughts were cold.
He was dead. As were the others. Only she and His Holiness lived. They had waited too long. Caspay had not attempted to usurp Mendez, so she had taken no action, either. For all their secret thoughts of change, the mutants were too steeped in tradition. They were unwilling to evolve.
And for that, we must all die.
Lost in her grief, she had wandered back toward tracks 19–11, back to the amphitheater, carrying a stoppered crystal carafe. This place was abandoned. Most likely His Holiness awaited death in the cathedral.
He’ll try to put the fear of God into them.
She believed in God, but unlike the others, she doubted the resurrection. Albina had suspected for some time that the salvation of the Almighty Bomb was the salvation of annihilation. Their kind had been reborn once; however, it would not be reborn again. Assured Destruction was imminent.
Weapons fire echoed through the station. Soon the invaders would reach the Corridor of Busts, and then they would be upon her. She knew what savage creatures these apes were; she had touched their minds.
Sick. Hideous. Perverse. Albina knew what the gorillas would do to her. Looking to the carafe, she knew what she must do.
* * *
Sweeping their way through the terminal, the two gorilla squads cleared out the human nests. Heavy weapons fire came from Ursus’s direction—the general seemed to be falling behind.
Zaius’s commandos, however, were making good time. It was a simple matter, when the enemy’s forces ran from them. Entering the Grand Central fortress, they worked their way deeper inside, finally coming to a hall lined with busts.
Statues of reverence lined the walls, each a ceramic object that appeared to be coated in a different fine metal. Each was very much human, many of them looking akin to one another. The sight gave them all reason to pause.
“They are obscene!” Zaius took the rifle from the closest gorilla soldier and swung at the nearest bust. It shattered across the floor. Inspired by his action, the gorillas plowed through the hall, smashing each statue to dust.
At the end of the hall, Zaius pushed the doors wide. The room beyond was both cavernous and abandoned—empty save for a stone seat facing the far wall. On that seat sat a human woman, her arm draped over the side, the exposed platinum blond hair cascading over her shoulder. She appeared to be unconscious, yet Zaius approached her with caution.
On the floor, not far from her dangling hand, the scientist discovered a crystal vial—empty. Putting it to his nostrils, he inhaled. It was a powerful acid, and the human creature had ingested it.
Suicide.
A most gruesome act. Her esophagus and digestive tract would be dissolved by such a solution. From the peaceful look on her face, however, he surmised that there must have been an anesthetic agent mixed with it. It looked as if she had felt nothing.
Zaius was stunned at the level of intelligence these creatures exhibited. Knowledge of chemicals, sophisticated clothing, able to make the complex decision to kill themselves rather than face their enemies. It was everything he feared and more.
Behind him he heard Sergeant Duignan and the other gorillas. They simply stood there and peered at him, looking very uncertain.
Ursus was right, Zaius acknowledged. They needed to put an end to this, needed to wipe mankind off the face of the planet before it was too late.
“Follow me.” He headed toward the stairs and up to the next level. The other gorillas obeyed, but Duignan stayed behind. The gorilla pushed the creature’s head back so he could get a better look at her face, but it was her hair that appeared to fascinate him. Her glistening blond hair. The silky fibers shimmered in his gloved fingers.
Standing at the stairs, Zaius saw that the sergeant had fallen behind, saw that he was with the deceased woman. What he was doing was a perversity of nature.
“Sergeant!” he barked.
Duignan snapped to attention and hurried to follow.
* * *
Nova was gone. Brent gave his commanding officer a minute. There must have been more to the relationship than he could have guessed. But then there was more gunfire in the distance, closer than before.
They had to get to the church.
So far, the gorillas had passed them by without spotting them. Any moment, however, that could change. Any minute, one of those fanatics could launch the bomb and destroy the entire goddamn planet.
“Taylor…” Brent didn’t want to die here. He had to do something, and he needed Taylor’s help. “Come on, come on,” he urged. “The bomb.”
Shaking his head, Taylor seemed to notice Brent for the first time since the shooting.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “Why not?” Tenderly, he lowered the young woman to the floor. Then he rose to stand with Brent. They nodded and moved in the direction of the cathedral.
Toward their destiny.
* * *
The Verger saw to the cathedral doors, barricading and bolting them before slipping out through the catacombs. Finally emerging from an adjacent subway station, he paused. A contingent of gorillas swept through the streets, gunning down any mutant that moved.
So he made certain he remained absolutely still. As they moved away, the crack of their guns diminished with them.
A hush descended over the scene, and he began to make his way again, gliding across the alley and toward the plaza beyond. Abruptly, an anxious bleat stabbed the silence.
He froze again.
A young gorilla in an ill-fitting uniform faced him. How barbaric, he thought, to bring a child into war.
Though underdeveloped and we
ak, the animalistic creature still held aloft a weapon, and it was aimed at the Verger’s heart. Both were frozen in time and reluctant to make the first move. Their eyes locked, and the caretaker concentrated.
* * *
Separated from his unit, Marcus’s son looked the strange human over. Dressed in gray and white robes, it also wore a brown hood. The beast’s face had no hair save for its brows. Jaffe had seen human savages before, and they were nothing like this.
Unwilling to look away, he heard a distant ringing, but not in his ears. The echo enthralled him, filled him with despair. Humans had killed his father, and they were going to kill him, too.
You left your home undefended, the sound accused him. Humans have overrun it.
The young gorilla knew he had to get to the church. General Ursus and the others would be regrouping there. Dr. Zaius had assigned him to Aurelios. He was needed.
Look what you’ve done. Your mother is dead.
Jaffe began to weep.
Your siblings are next, but there is still time to save them. Leave. Go back to your home. Go before it is too late.
The gun barrel wavered.
The hooded human turned, and Jaffe fired. The bullet pierced his right shoulder, bisecting the blade before cleaving his clavicle. Being spun and slammed to the ground, the creature’s breath turned sharp and shallow.
The echo of the shot squashed the echo in Jaffe’s brain. His own breath equally ragged, he ejected the spent shell and approached his first kill. To his astonishment, the beast spoke.
“I reveal my inmost self, unto my god.”
Lying in its blood, the creature tore its own face off.
Horrified, Jaffe aimed for its eyes and fired again and again.
* * *
“You there!” the major demanded. Mungwortt had emerged from the Grand Central building with nothing to show for his efforts. He hadn’t found Tay-Lor, and he had lost the White Ones.
Dinge is dead, he reminded himself. At least the fat man and Four-Eyes are, too.
Now he had earned the attention of this platoon’s sergeant.
“You look like a strong one, soldier.” The gorilla grabbed Mungwortt by the arm and led him over to a tunnel. Other apes had gathered around a twisted piece of metal that lay there. “Get that rail loose,” the sergeant ordered them all, “I want it as a battering ram!”
“Sir, yes, Major, sir!” Mungwortt exclaimed, mimicking what he had heard other soldiers say. Relieved that his disguise worked, he put his back under the rail and shoved. Centuries of debris shifted, metal bent, and rust snapped. The other gorillas pulled, and finally the rail loosened.
“Take up positions.” The sergeant stabbed a finger at a building across the street. It had tall, pointed towers, and was far more ornate than any structure in the vicinity. “Bring down that door!” Ten gorillas hefted the weighty rail and trotted toward the church. Falling in with them, Mungwortt considered himself lucky.
Tay-Lor might be in there, he thought. And he might not. Regardless, at least the army believed he belonged with them. If he stuck with them, he might actually get out of this alive.
Zao said nothing.
CHAPTER 31
REVELS NOW ENDED
The ape army descended on the mutants’ high sanctuary. General Ursus’s vanguard group reached the cathedral doors, with Zaius’s team not far behind.
Seizing the twisted metal rail, Major Dangral’s gorillas used it to ram again and again until the giant wooden doors gave way. Pushed up against the entrance, the gorillas poured into the church, down the center aisle, and spilled over the pews. Expecting to find a crowd of humans, Ursus was surprised to discover a single mutant human, kneeling before a podium of some kind.
If this wasn’t their fallback shelter, the general reasoned, there must be something important here that they’re protecting. Signaling caution, Ursus followed as his apes filed into the church. The human stood as they approached. The way he moved, the clothes he wore, he almost seemed civilized.
Humans playing ape, Ursus thought. It’s sickening.
“Sergeant!” he called to Duignan. “Arrest that creature.” Before the sergeant could move to comply, however, that creature spoke.
“This is the instrument of my god.”
“He can speak!” the sergeant said. Cries of astonishment flowed through the crowd. The rumors had been true—talking humans existed. The creature manipulated some crystal rods that were propped in the podium. As they sank into the mechanism, a huge object began to rise behind.
* * *
Zaius had hoped he was wrong all along. Hoped that Taylor was an aberration from the past, and that a tribe of talking humans did not yet exist. Hoped against hope there were no more bombs.
Yet rising out of the floor was what appeared to be the very instrument of death about which his father had warned him—the weapon that he had only seen as drawings in both the Forgotten and Secret Scrolls. It was a missile, and above it stretched a vertical shaft he had to assume led to the surface. Through it, the bomb could be fired.
This was everything the orangutan had feared.
Ursus was quick to regain control of the room.
“Your god, eh?” he said mockingly. “Sergeant.” Submachine gun at the ready, Duignan squeezed, and the figure at the podium was cut down in a spatter of jacketed lead. Ursus gestured and Dangral surrendered his weapon to the general as he made his way forward.
“Your god didn’t save you.” He spat at the human’s corpse. “Did he, huh?” The hairs on his back bristling with his power, Ursus lifted his weapon and sprayed a hail of bullets at the mutants’ metal god.
“Ursus!” Zaius snapped. “That weapon is built by man. You can’t shoot it down with bullets!”
But the general was livid with rage.
“If we can’t shoot it down, we’ll pull it down. Rope!” he shouted to his apes. “Block and tackle!” As Duignan and the troops rushed forward to do their general’s bidding, Zaius tried to reason with him.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he warned. “It will kill us all!”
* * *
Mungwortt didn’t like the sound of that. If he had known that the giant bullet was trouble, he would have ordered the White Ones to eat it earlier.
As the other gorillas tackled the metal effigy, he hesitated.
This doesn’t feel right, he thought. The thing hit the ground with an echoing clang. Its housing cracked, and scalding steam poured out over the troops. The sergeant screeched and covered his eyes. Others scrambled away to avoid being burned. Pandemonium erupted, and the general tried to contain it.
“I’ll find a way to stop it,” Ursus said, but he didn’t sound terribly confident. He reached a leather-gauntleted glove out toward the podium, but didn’t appear to know which lever to grasp. Eager to have no part in this cluster of errors, Mungwortt quietly backed away. Posing as a lookout, he spied around the church, searching for any sign of Tay-Lor.
There.
It was a human with a gun, running low and keeping to the shadows. The lithe figure sprung up the stairs toward a large group of metal pipes, but there was something off about him.
Too short, he realized. It was not Tay-Lor. But where there was one…
Sure enough, there was more movement, on the other side of the hall. His objective was there, sneaking up to the pillar that stood nearest Ursus and Zaius.
Tay-Lor was up to something.
* * *
It was all Brent could stand. He wasn’t going to let any goddamn ape kill them all—and by accident. Ducking behind the church organ, he slammed the butt of his rifle down on the keys. As it bleated its untuned disgust, the general and Zaius turned their attention on him.
Ursus ordered his gorillas to attack. As the apes descended on Brent, Dr. Zaius shouted over the din, and pointed.
“Ursus,” he bellowed, “someone at the pillar!”
Machine gun ready, the general whirled and fired.
; * * *
“Give it a whirl!” Milo shouted. On the banks of the Dead Lake, a miracle was underway. His head peeking out from the starcraft’s nose hatch, the scientist yelled to Dr. Lykos below.
All they had needed was a simple electrical spark to trip the Liberty 1’s circuit breaker and commence ignition. The elaborate array of wires, clay batteries, cogs, and water wheels they had devised might just do the trick. The elder chimpanzee nodded an affirmative, and he and his team spun the oversized crank they had crafted to jump-start power to the flying beast.
As the crank spun, a crackle and a boom burst from somewhere in the starbird’s belly.
Liberty 1 began to whistle.
An ecstatic Milo hooted before ducking his head back in the craft and working his way to the cabin. It wasn’t a simple thing to crawl down the access tube, especially while covered in the bulky space suit, but Milo had seen fit to wear it during startup. In the cockpit, Cornelius and Zira sat in two of the three command chairs. All around them, haphazard lights blinked and control panels beeped out of tune.
“Of course, this isn’t what the original cabin configuration was like,” Milo explained with delight. The panels that drove the starbird now rested in the front and center of the cockpit, and he had moved a command chair to that position. “We had to make some minor changes to bypass some shortcomings in the rebuild.” He regarded the lights and sounds. “But she works!”
“Unbelievable.” Always the practical one, Cornelius was too astonished to say anything more. As always, however, Zira had plenty to say.
“Milo, this is so exciting,” she enthused. “This craft is proof that Taylor spoke the truth!”
“Yes,” he agreed as he touched a pointer to his muzzle, deep in thought, “and Landon, as well.” When Seraph had returned without Landon, he had known the human must be dead.
“If only we had known about him before,” Zira averted her eyes. “That is—”
Cornelius put his hand on hers. “Before Dr. Zaius had him lobotomized,” he finished. “Zira studied him afterward—he would perform the same tasks over and over again all day long. But he didn’t live much longer.”
Milo’s heart sank. It was the astronaut Landon who had led him here in the first place, and he had left him alone in his brother-in-law’s private lab, stuck in a cage.
Death of the Planet of the Apes Page 35
