by Maurice
“Go with Lake,” he told you.
Then he turned to leave.
You’re not going after them? I signed.
“Not them,” he said. “Him.”
Caesar, you are our leader. We can’t leave without you!
“You must,” he said. “The soldiers will be back soon. When I find him, the soldiers will all come after me. That may give you the best chance to get out of the woods.”
As he walked away, you cried and signed father. Apes noticed Caesar leaving. Where is he going? they asked. Like Lake, they couldn’t believe it. Since the shelter, Caesar had always been with us, always been our leader. The only exception was when we thought him dead, when Koba took over. And that was a very bad time. Now we needed him more than ever.
But I saw he was determined. And I could not let him go alone.
Luca and Rocket felt the same, so we left Spear in charge and followed him.
He turned at our approach and shook his head.
The soldiers’ camp is always moving, Luca said. My guards think they know where it is. Let me take you.
You need me to back you up, Rocket put in.
“No,” Caesar replied.
Please, Rocket said. I know what it’s like to lose a son.
That reached Caesar. But he was still reluctant.
“I may not make it back,” Caesar warned us.
That’s why I’m coming, I told him. To make sure you do.
We rode through the forest until we reached the sea, and then followed the shore. In time, we came to a cluster of human buildings. They looked old, abandoned.
When we rode in, we didn’t see anyone. We began searching. Maybe they were hiding, or asleep. Caesar went off one way. The rest of us stayed together.
But then we heard a clattering, and a human came into view, carrying an armful of firewood. He had a gun hanging by a strap on his back. He looked at us, surprised. Afraid. He dropped the wood, but at the same time yanked the gun around. None of us had time to react. His gun fired, but the bullets all hit the ground, and he fell over, dead.
Caesar stepped from behind a building.
I had seen Caesar kill before. Afterward, I could always see his regret. I did not see it now. He had given the man a chance to show he was good, like Malcolm or Will. The man had tried to kill us. Caesar studied the dead man as he might a bug he’d stepped on.
The man had the same odd mark on his skin as the soldiers. The letter A and an O broken at the bottom.
A great crashing sounded in the building the smoke was coming from. We rushed to it, kicked in the door, ready for anything.
We didn’t see anyone at first, just broken jars of food on the floor. We moved on through the house, toward the back.
She was lying on a bed, watching us in fear but also wonder. I put my hand on Caesar’s gun and pushed it down. She was a young one, unarmed. She was no danger to us.
Caesar saw that, too. He looked at her for another moment and then turned away.
“Look around,” he said. “Take what you can.”
I stayed with her, trying to ease her fear. I found a small toy—a doll—on the floor and gave it to her.
Then it seemed she tried to speak. Odd grunts came from her throat, but no words. I made soothing sounds, as I might to an ape child. I stroked her doll with my finger.
Something was wrong with her. She wasn’t an infant; I thought she was closer to being an adolescent. She was old enough to talk. But she didn’t seem to be able to.
I told Caesar.
“Come,” was all he said.
As he mounted his horse, the girl came outside. She looked at the man Caesar had killed.
She’ll die out here alone, I said.
“We cannot take her, Maurice,” Caesar said.
I understand, I said. But I cannot leave her.
She rode behind me, holding on to my back. Caesar wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t try to stop me. Later I would name her Nova. But at that time she was just “the girl.”
What Winter Told Us
Toward nightfall we found it. A narrow canyon in the cliffs bordering the beach led away from the water. We ventured in and, in the open space beyond, saw tents, fires, the shadowy figures of humans moving about.
We had found the soldiers’ camp.
In the building where we found the girl, Caesar had discovered a human tool for seeing far things as if they were close. Two flared cylinders, to be held up to the eyes. Through them, he searched the camp from afar.
His even breath grew rough with anger.
Did you find the Colonel? Luca asked.
No, Caesar said. Winter.
I could make him out, even without the glasses, a large, pale shape in the distance. Helping the humans. I took the glasses and looked next. I noticed the signs the humans put up. They reminded me of the laws I wrote behind my teaching rock.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it
The only Good Kong is a Dead Kong
Remember the Golden Gate
It wasn’t hard to figure out what a kong was…
It seemed to me that there were many fewer soldiers than the camp could hold. It was easier than it should have been for Caesar, Rocket, and Luca to creep around the tents to the woods behind them. I watched from a distance, with the girl, as they slipped into the tent Winter went into.
Rocket said they found Winter standing with his back to them, doing some sort of chore. He could see the word donkey written on the gorilla’s back. Winter saw Caesar’s reflection in the dirty mirror on the wall and turned. He was frightened.
“Where is the Colonel?” Caesar asked, softly. They could hear humans outside. If they made too much noise, they would be caught.
Winter saw Rocket and Luca now.
Gone, he said. He left this morning. Took many men with him. More soldiers are coming down from the north. The Colonel is going to meet them at the border.
“What border?” Caesar asked. “Why?”
I don’t know, Winter signed. But the rest of us are going tomorrow. The donkeys think the soldiers from the north are coming to help finish off the apes for good.
Winter shrank lower as Caesar drew near.
That day after the battle on the hill, Winter said. The donkey we caught promised me the Colonel would spare my life if I told them where you were hiding. Forgive me.
He held his hand out in submission. He didn’t know.
“My son,” Caesar said. “My wife. Are dead.”
Winter still had his hand out, but he started panting in panic. Some soldiers chose that moment to walk near. Winter made his decision. He had never been brave. He had always feared death, even as a child. He thought his pale coloring made him more vulnerable than other apes. No one liked to hunt with him.
Now he understood that he couldn’t go back with us. His only chance was to draw the humans’ attention.
Caesar didn’t give him a chance. He hit him, hard. Rocket and Luca held him down while Caesar covered his mouth. At first, Rocket thought Caesar only meant to keep the gorilla from crying out. But Caesar always looked farther down the road. If we let Winter live, he would still raise the alarm. He would tell the Colonel that Caesar was coming for him.
Caesar kept the wind from Winter’s lungs until his heart stopped beating.
I felt sorry for Winter when Rocket told me what had happened. His own fear of death had killed him.
Humans probably had a word for that. I do not.
We slipped out of the camp as easily as we had entered it. We went farther up the beach, walking our horses at the water’s edge. The tide was coming in, and soon no trace of our passing would remain. Then we went into the woods, made camp, and built a fire. None of us talked on the ride. Nothing seemed worth saying. But once the fire warmed us, we had to plan.
Now what do we do? I asked.
Wait till the soldiers go, Rocket said. Follow them to the Colonel.
Caesar looked over at the hum
an girl, then back at the fire. I saw his eyes widen with horror. He seemed to be looking at something beyond the flames.
“Koba,” he gasped.
I looked where he was staring, but saw nothing, just shadows.
The next morning, the soldiers left their camp in trucks and on horseback. We watched from a safe distance until the last of them were out of sight and then rode after them, following the tracks of their machines in the sand.
Eventually they turned inland, and the terrain lifted into mountains. Gray clouds filled the sky, and it began to snow. The wind whipped it against us, stung our eyes. The girl clung to me more tightly than ever.
One day we suddenly heard human voices, and ahead we saw red lights through the trees. The lights on the tails of trucks.
“They’ve stopped,” Caesar said. “Get down.”
We dismounted and took shelter behind a rock outcrop.
Then we heard the familiar sound of gunfire.
What are they shooting at? Rocket asked.
“I don’t know,” Caesar said.
We waited, until we heard the trucks leave. When we were sure the humans were gone, we came out of hiding.
We found what they were shooting at.
Three bodies lay under a fine cover of snow. Blood stained the snow where bullets had pierced them. They were shaped like humans, not apes, and soldier things—their helmets, the metal necklaces they hung around their necks—had been hung on sticks stuck in the ground near their heads.
Caesar peeled back the hood of one, which had been drawn to cover the human’s face. The man’s eyes were closed and his features still.
Rocket pulled back the hood of the next and was about to move on when the human’s eyes suddenly opened. He began to shout, but not like any human we had ever heard. He was clearly in agony, confused, terrified. He seemed to be trying to say something, but he couldn’t seem to form any words.
Like the girl.
“Why did they shoot you?” Caesar asked.
The man stared at him as if he didn’t understand. His mouth seemed to work more deliberately, now, as if he remembered once having been able to speak. But though he had the breath to talk, nothing of sense came out.
Like her, I told Caesar, pointing at the girl. He cannot speak.
Caesar’s brow wrinkled.
He will die of those wounds, I said.
But it would take a long time. He would suffer.
Caesar ended his pain.
Bad Ape
We lost the trail of the soldiers. They were traveling on rigid human roads now, and the snow swiftly covered their tracks. We were moving slower, too.
We came to a tall metal tower and climbed it, hoping to see the soldiers from a higher vantage.
Where did the soldiers go? I asked.
“Winter said they were going to a border,” Caesar said.
Yes, but which way is that? Luca asked.
We didn’t know. But we kept examining the mountains and valleys around us for clues.
While we searched, Luca noticed someone below us, in a hooded parka. Stealing one of our guns.
Luca yelled. The thief instantly jumped on Rocket’s horse and rode off.
We raced down the tower and mounted, Rocket sharing a saddle with Luca. We chased after the thief. He shot back at us with the stolen gun but missed badly.
Finally, he rode into an old human settlement. By the time we got there, the thief had already dismounted and gone into one of the buildings, or what was left of it. The roof was broken in places, and snow lay on the floor. Daggers of ice hung all about. We could clearly see the thief’s tracks leading into a large fireplace.
Caesar cocked his gun and pointed it into the darkness. Rocket and Luca did the same.
The stolen gun came clattering out, followed by a flashlight and the look-far glasses.
Then the thief slowly emerged, bent over, hands up.
When he looked up, and his hood no longer concealed his face, we saw he was an ape. A chimp.
“Bad Ape!” he said. “Bad Ape.”
Who are you? Rocket signed.
What are you doing here? Luca added.
The ape just looked perplexed.
I don’t think he understands, Luca said.
I don’t recognize him, Rocket said. He’s not one of us.
“Are you alone here?” Caesar asked, aloud.
The ape understood that. He nodded yes. Then he saw the girl and me, watching it all from a distance. He took off his coat and pointed to the girl.
“Cold,” he said. He gave the girl his coat.
We built a fire and got to know the strange ape. The girl kept trying to pick up his things, and he kept telling her no, that those were his things. She liked one shiny object in particular, which he kept taking away from her.
Bad Ape explained that he had seen the girl on the horse but not us up on the tower. He had assumed he was stealing from humans.
“But you ape, like me,” he said. I could tell he was surprised. As if he didn’t know there were other apes.
“How long have you been here?” Caesar asked.
“Long time,” he said. He grew excited and ran off. He rummaged through some things and came back with something.
“Home,” he said. “Old home.”
It was a toy lizard of some kind. On its belly was written SIERRA ZOO.
Caesar asked if there were more apes like him, apes from the zoo.
“Dead,” Bad Ape said. “All dead. Long time. Humans get sick. Ape get smart. Then human kill ape. But not me. I run.”
He got excited again and ran off. He fell and went crashing among his things again.
I was amazed. I thought we were the only ones. But then I thought about how the zoo apes we freed got smarter over time. And Ellie had told us that the medicine that made us smarter was the same as the disease that killed so many humans. I wondered if it had happened everywhere humans and apes lived together, if there were more apes like us somewhere.
I began talking to the others about this, but then Bad Ape returned.
“Eat!” he said. “New friends! Special day!”
It was food in a human package. It had writing on it.
California Border Quarantine Facility.
Caesar asked Bad Ape where it came from.
“Bad place,” he said. “I find long time ago. After zoo, I look for food. I find human zoo. Zoo for sick. Big walls. Sick human climb. Bad human kill. And then, all got sick. All dead now for a long time.”
“Bad humans?” Caesar said. “Soldiers?”
“Soldiers,” Bad Ape said.
A deserted military outpost, Rocket said. Maybe that’s where the Colonel is taking the soldiers.
“Can you take us there?” Caesar asked.
“No, no, no,” Bad Ape said. “Not go back there. Everyone dead, I come here. Very safe here. Never go back.”
“Please, you must take us,” Caesar said.
But Bad Ape continued to refuse. He gave the girl the shiny thing she had been trying to play with, hoping to appease us. A word, made of metal. Nova.
When we went to sleep, it seemed nothing could persuade Bad Ape.
And yet, in the morning, he had changed his mind. He and Caesar had talked in the night, when the rest of us were asleep. When I asked why Bad Ape finally agreed to take us to the border, he just said: Bad Ape had a child, too.
We Find the Colonel’s Base
Once again, we rode out in the cold and snow, on twisting paths through mountains. Finally, from high on a mountainside, we could see the place Bad Ape called a “human zoo.” The soldiers’ base.
Luca and Caesar crept closer. They stopped when they saw some humans ahead, doing something with beams of crossed wood stuck in the ground. They also saw two horses, without riders.
Rocket, still perched up with me, saw the riders sneaking up on Caesar and Luca. He leapt down the hill, but they were already attacking. One stabbed at Caesar with the knife on his gun, bu
t Luca pushed Caesar aside, and the knife plunged into him instead. Caesar rolled up, facing another human with a rifle. Rocket arrived and struck him down.
Luca crushed the man who stabbed him, but his own wound was fatal.
At least this time, I was able to protect you, he told Caesar.
Caesar, I signed. This must stop. It’s not too late to join the other apes.
We cannot turn back, Rocket said. Luca gave his life.
Please, I said.
Caesar was unmoved.
“They must pay,” he said.
Now you sound like Koba, I said.
It made him angry, as I knew it would. He told us that it was a mistake bringing us, that it was his fight, and he would finish it alone. He told us to go and join others.
And then he left.
Later I would learn of his journey down the mountain. Of finding apes nailed to the wooden crosses. Finding Spear on one of the crosses, just before Spear died.
And worst of all, discovering that our troop was not on its way to our new home. The humans found them. The Colonel hadn’t killed them. He kept them alive to work. To build a wall.
And as Caesar learned this from the dying Spear, Red crept up behind him and knocked him senseless.
When Caesar woke he was in chains, in a dark place. The Colonel, the man who had killed his wife and child, was there, too. The Colonel knew who he was. He asked Caesar where he had been. Why he hadn’t been with his apes, leading them.
“Have you finally come for your apes?” he asked.
“I came for you,” Caesar told him.
“For me?” the Colonel said. “Who did I kill that night?”
“My wife,” Caesar said. “My son.”
“I’m sorry,” the Colonel said. “I was there for you.”
The Colonel asked how Caesar found him. Caesar said he’d been told that the Colonel was coming here to meet soldiers from the north, who would help him finish off apes.
The Colonel laughed at him.
“Who told you that?”
Caesar didn’t answer.
They hauled Caesar outside in chains, for all the apes to see. They dragged him by you, Cornelius, in the cage with the other young ones. You called out to him, they say.
