by Jim Beard
Alma was a limp pile of bloody cloth discarded on the floor. Steven knelt near his father, his expression tear-streaked as he and Gorman held Mendez’s hands. The others in their party knelt around them, praying.
“How could this happen?” Steven asked.
Mendez showed no sign of having heard his son. His quick breathing was shallow and raspy.
“Why, in the name of the Bomb, would Alma do this?” Steven stammered. “She was your friend since before I was born. It makes no sense.”
“It’s this place,” Gorman told him. “It is unholy. God is absent here. In bringing us beyond our city, your father unknowingly removed us from grace. We must return home. He and even Alma must be renewed on sacred ground.”
Mendez’s breathing came more jaggedly now. As Caesar knelt beside them, Gorman and Steven lowered their heads in prayer.
Can you hear me, Mendez? Gorman asked. But it wasn’t words. It was something beyond words, beyond the limits of language. Mendez heard, or rather felt, Gorman’s question in his mind, but could neither comprehend nor respond in kind.
I know you’re confused, but you are not dreaming, my friend.
“How?” Mendez asked aloud in a dry rasp.
Steven’s voice broke at the sound. “We don’t know, Father. It all happened so fast.”
“Gorman…”
“I am here, Mendez.”
I am here, Mendez. God has granted a gift—an inner voice, control of others’ thoughts and actions. I was the first to receive this gift, but others will follow. I can feel it. It is the will of the Bomb, and it is good. God forbids us from killing, Mendez, but He protects His Children. Through His gift, our enemies will kill each other for us.
Alma’s sacrifice was unavoidable, as was yours. Though she will be called a traitor, her loyalty never wavered. Take comfort in knowing how hard she fought my mind’s touch. The chimpanzee’s mind was less evolved. His kind is not as open to the gift. The death of his wife provided a trigger, but he resisted with all his will and the effort damaged him.
I take no pleasure in what had to happen this day. You were a great leader, Oscar Mendez, and I shall mourn you. I wish you could have continued to guide us on our path. I wish… but you strayed from that path when you brought us here, to this unconsecrated place of the Devil in ape’s clothing. The Fellowship doesn’t belong here among blasphemers and beasts. You failed to see that, but a single whispered word, echoed at the edges of your son’s mind, helped Steven to recognize God’s wisdom: “animals.”
Mendez choked up blood as two gorilla orderlies pushed those praying aside so that MacDonald’s widow, ignoring her own tears, could reach him. “Animals…” he repeated. The gorillas grunted at each other, but continued trying in vain to save his life.
Steven shall become Mendez II. He shall bring us home to the Holy City, far from those who would turn us away from God, and we shall praise you both in psalm. Goodbye, my friend. We will meet again in the Shadow of the Bomb Everlasting.
* * *
It had been a beautiful memorial. That’s what many in Ape City had told him, offering their support but no real comfort. He couldn’t remember. He’d been too numb to take notice of any beauty save for Lisa’s still features.
In one horrifying, inexplicable moment, Caesar had lost his wife, his son, and his friend. Virgil had lost his grandson. Those from the Forbidden City had lost their leader. Ape had killed ape, human had killed human… and his legacy had died with them all.
Mendez II had led his people back to their irradiated land, steadfast in his refusal to continue what his father had begun. “We will not meet again. God has made clear his desire that we remain separate,” he’d told Caesar. “Your people are not welcome in our city. Consider it forbidden. Your name for it is finally suitable.”
The human doctors had suggested possible causes to explain the bizarre, simultaneous homicides—a rage-inducing virus, or radiation sickness—but it was all just conjecture. Brutus’ body showed no signs of illness, and so it remained a mystery, his son forever to be remembered as a crazed killer and not as the good ape Caesar and Lisa had raised him to be.
A month after the tragedy, Virgil and Caesar visited the grave Tanya had arranged for her mate. “BRUCE MACDONALD,” it said on one line, with “HUSBAND, FRIEND, LEADER” etched underneath.
“I miss him, Virgil. He was a good man,” Caesar said.
“Yes,” Virgil agreed. “The best I’ve known.”
The cool breeze felt comforting against their thick pelts.
“I failed him. I failed all of them.”
“Caesar…”
“I should have known that what I was after was unattainable. MacDonald knew. I should have listened to his counsel. It was always wise. I didn’t, and so many paid the price.”
“You had hope. That is no small thing.”
“Where did that hope bring us, Virgil? Here, to this stone? Not a place I wish to be.”
“Hmm, perhaps,” Virgil said. “But without hope, there is little joy.”
“My joy died when Brutus did this,” Caesar said, waving a hand toward the grave. “When my lack of vision made him try to kill his own father. Their deaths are on me.”
“Monkey-feathers.”
Caesar stared at his friend. “How can you say that? Your grandson was among those buried.”
“Brutus pulled the trigger, not Caesar.”
“I’m his father. I should have noticed he needed help, should have realized Seraphine’s death still affected him. It was my job to stop him from doing something so unthinkable.”
“We all have the capacity to kill, Caesar. We choose as a people not to act on it, but it is there, submerged behind our First Law. We may never know why Brutus did what he did, or why the human woman did the same, but I know this: you have two children who need you, and an entire city that does as well.”
“What kind of father am I if I couldn’t help my son? What kind of leader if I couldn’t protect my own wife, or even a young child?”
“One who cares enough to ask such questions—who understands, beneath the self-pity and recrimination, that life goes on. We still follow your will, Caesar, for you have never led us astray. We need your vision now more than ever.”
Caesar closed his eyes. “And what of the Forbidden City, Virgil?”
“It remains forbidden.” Virgil grumphed. “But we do have peace. And hope.”
Caesar pondered that for a moment, tears glistening his cheeks, then grasped his friend’s arm. Perhaps Virgil was right.
Perhaps, for now, that was sufficient.
* * *
Finally, never before have orangutan and gorilla joined forces such as they do in Jonathan Maberry’s “Banana Republic,” a devious political tale with far-reaching ramifications for the future of the planet…
* * *
BANANA REPUBLIC
by
JONATHAN MABERRY
“Master Dante!”
The cry roused the orangutan from a light doze and he jerked awake, turning on his stool, spilling scrolls and knocking a wooden cup of fig wine to the floor. Dante snarled as the wine splashed across the papers, and the sound of his fury made the younger ape skid to a halt, one hand on the threshold of the cabin, the other pressed to his mouth. The younger orangutan’s hair was windswept and there was rock dust on his face.
“What is it?” roared Dante as he stooped to try and slap wine away from the reports he had been reading. “Speak up, Caleb—does a human have your tongue?”
“M-Master,” stammered the boy, “it’s K-K-K-Krastos, h-h-he f-found s-s-something.”
Krastos was the chief engineer of the excavation and a smart and sensible ape. Young Caleb was a second-year seminary student and served as a general assistant at the construction site. There were more than forty students from the School of Holy Law and half again as many manual laborers, all of them working long hours to clear the land and dig the foundation for the planned Shrine of the Tenth Scroll. It was
backbreaking work and comforts were few. Dante considered it an honor for them, however, to be part of something so important. And the way in which each accounted himself would allow the senior clerics to get their measure. Some would be asked to leave and return to secular life. Most would, in the end, because serving the will of God and following the true path of the Lawgiver was not for everyone. Not for most. When the toiling was done and the shrine constructed, only a handful of apes here would live there as clerics or servants. Caleb, young as he was, often showed some promise and aptitude, but at the moment Dante would gladly have sent him to burn ticks off of humans.
“Y-y-you must c-c-come s-s-s-see what he f-f-found,” urged the boy, his words juddering out like automatic rifle fire, hard and discordant.
Dante sat back on his heels, a dripping scroll held carefully away from the other documents, and cocked his head to look up at the boy. There was a strange light in Caleb’s eyes.
“Exactly what did Krastos find?” he asked.
* * *
The young assistant ran ahead faster than Dante wanted to walk. The cleric was amused by the boy’s enthusiasm, though he was still annoyed about the wine on the scrolls. Dante was also curious. This construction site had been well-planned, but the process had been long, arduous, and frustrating. When Dante had first approached the church elders with his scheme, he was shot down three times, and in each case had to burn away weeks or months in lobbying for support. Then, when the council had finally given their grudging approval to build a shrine such a long way from the metropolis of Ape City, Dante had forwarded fourteen different locations, each in a spot that would draw on commercial trade routes, civilian travelers, itinerant scholars, and pilgrims. The shrine, the elders told him, needed to be anchored by a town that would benefit from the increase in tourism, but which would not be marginalized by the presence of a holy place. Politics. It was always politics. Even more than faith, even more than the evangelical demands of their faith, it was politics.
Or, as he privately saw it, it was chimpanzees.
Sure, all of the apes played politics in their own way, and his kind, the orangutans, played it very well—especially since they were the traditional keepers of the faith. But for years now, it had been the intellectual nitpickers, the politically correct, the let’s-find-a-common-ground chimpanzees who had slowed the process to a lame shuffle. Even here in Big Rock, which everyone in the world regarded as the mole on the left buttock of civilization, the chimpanzees were delighting themselves by cluttering up what should have been an easy process. And the town’s energetic young mayor, Cato, was no friend of the orangutans. Dante suspected that the brash upstart was probably a closet heretic, though proving it would be virtually impossible. Cato was no fool.
Dante frowned at how empty the worksite was. Where was everyone? It was still only late morning and there were enough clouds to keep the day cool even in mid-summer; surely, the lazy louts were not taking a midday rest.
No, he thought as he saw that there were tools scattered around as if dropped during startled flight. What could be happening? Caleb had sputtered so badly he hadn’t been able to say much more than Krastos had found something and everyone was terribly excited. Thoughts of what that “something” could be made Dante slow his pace for a few strides, and he cast a quick, uneasy glance toward the east. Big Rock was bordered on one side by a rain-swollen river, on another by impassible marshlands, but rich with fertile grove lands everywhere else. Pecan and peach trees grew in abundance, and the lush woods were heavy with game.
But there was a darkness here, too, and a big part of the reason this site was ultimately chosen was to fight that darkness. The lands allotted to the shrine butted up against a series of low, broken hills through which narrow rivers ran. The first of those rivers was known as Boundary Run, and everything beyond it was left unnamed. Not a brook, not a hill, not a grove, not a lagoon was given a name because they were all already labeled. They formed the tip of a longer finger of land into which no sane ape would travel.
The Forbidden Zone. Or, Dante privately conceded, one of them—because, in truth, there were several areas collectively known as the Forbidden Zone. Never Zones. Singular, because they represented a single, shared thing.
Evil.
Nothing that went into the Forbidden Zone did so because it was drawn by anything save sin, madness, or darkness. And nothing came out of there that was not an abomination in the eyes of God.
The shrine was to be built here as a statement, and one day the church’s greatest stoneworkers would erect a monolith on the banks of Boundary Run. It would say these words: “HERE AND NO FARTHER.”
And it would say that on both sides, the one that faced the people of the town and the one that looked out across the river. It was a bold statement, and one of Dante’s devising. As much as he appreciated subtlety, this was not a time for metaphor. The chimpanzees, of course, spent days debating whether it should read “farther” or “further.” Dante wanted to brain the lot of them.
Up ahead, he saw that all of the workers—the laborers, the assistants, the monks and priests and novices—were clustered around the edge of the broad pit that was being dug so they could lay the shrine’s foundation. Caleb was so excited he actually grabbed Dante’s hand and tried to pull him, like a child tugging his father along to watch the humans cavorting in the circus. Dante nearly snatched his hand back, but did not, and allowed himself to be pulled toward the throng. As he closed on them, the cleric could hear snatches of the questions they threw at one another in tones of whispered excitement.
“…what is it… what’s it for… who put it there… what’s it mean…?”
Only when he was within a few feet of the massed people did Dante pull his hand free and call out in a ringing tone, “What’s all this nonsense?”
Everyone whirled at the sound of his voice, from the smallest assistant to the largest of the burly gorilla laborers. And every single one of them backed away, bowing in deference. Unlike chimpanzees, the apes here knew their place and they understood respect. Even so, Dante had a certain reputation to uphold, so he glared at them and watched every set of eyes briefly meet his own and then fall away. Even young Caleb suddenly remembered himself and stood to one side, head down, hands clasped in front of him. Dante gave it all a moment, allowing their silence to be the substance of any lesson this required.
“Step aside,” he said quietly, and the crowd parted like a curtain to reveal the great pit beyond. Dante walked to the edge and looked down to see a lone figure standing in the deepest corner of the foundation hole. Dante recognized the lumpy, sturdy shape of Krastos, senior engineer for the shrine project—a steady ape upon whom Dante thoroughly relied. The engineer stood facing a section of dirt wall, leaning on a long-handled spade whose blade was buried in the hard, dark soil. The distance was too great for Dante to see what the engineer had found, but there was both tension and defeat in Krastos’ posture. A chill swept up Dante’s back and made the hairs on his neck stand out straight as needles.
A single word escaped his lips.
“No…”
* * *
Dante ordered everyone to leave the dig site and return to their tents for meditation and prayer. They obeyed, but not without throwing lingering looks back at the pit. Their eyes were filled with thousands of questions, and Dante knew that he would have to concoct some kind of answers.
For now, he needed answers of his own. His guess, though, as he climbed down the ladder to the floor of the pit, was that his answers were not going to satisfy their curiosity. No. He knew that this was going to be a problem. Possibly a fatal one for the shrine project. Perhaps even fatal for Big Rock.
Young Caleb lingered, shifting from one foot to the other in his nervous agitation. “Sh-sh-should I-I c-c-come w-w-w—?”
Dante patted him on the arm and then gave him a gentle shove. “No, my boy, this is not for you. Go on, now, and make sure no one else comes down here. Mind me, and see that I am
obeyed in this.”
Caleb straightened as if he’d suddenly been tasked with saving all of apedom from the hordes of Hell.
“Yes!” he said without a trace of a stutter.
Dante watched him go, amused and touched by the young ape’s dedication. But as he turned back toward the excavation, his smile melted away and the coldness was there again. The chill. The fear.
He stepped to the ladder, swung around and climbed down into the pit.
Krastos came hurrying over, his spade still clutched in one hand. The old engineer had massive shoulders covered in graying orange hair, but had lost most of the whiskers around his face. It made him look even older than he was. He nodded to the cleric, then fell into step with Dante as they began walking toward the far wall.
“We thought we’d hit a layer of rock,” said Krastos, jumping right in, “and I ordered the diggers to clear it off. I figured that if it was big enough and solid, then maybe we could level it and use it as the under-floor for the shrine.”
“But…?”
“But it was already level. See there?” Krastos pointed to a cleared section of the ground. At close range, Dante was able to see that there was, indeed, a hard layer beneath the dirt, but it wasn’t raw stone. He went over, bent, and ran his fingertips over the exposed gray-white surface. “It’s concrete.”
Dante snatched his hand back.
“Poured concrete,” elaborated Krastos. “Very good quality, too. Industrial. Whoever laid it knew what they were about. I had my people drive rods down through the dirt to establish its size, and it covers nearly half the pit we’ve dug. Flat and nearly square, too. Call it forty yards per side, though it might be bigger because some of it goes under the ground we haven’t dug.”
Dante did not comment on that. Instead, he rose and walked slowly over to the wall. Krastos kept pace with him, and when they reached it the old orangutan sighed heavily. “And… then there’s that,” said the engineer.
The flat concrete pad ran up to the side of the pit, but it was evident the pit itself had been excavated within a few yards of another wall. A concrete wall. “When we found this I cleared everyone else out,” said Krastos quietly.
