Planet of the Apes

by Jim Beard

  As the two apes stood together in a room that was stacked floor to ceiling with crates of rifles and grenades—enough in that one chamber to slaughter fifty thousand apes—Maximus seemed to catch the thread of Dante’s dark musings. And although neither had spoken more than a dozen words since entering the complex, Maximus touched his hand to his heart and murmured old words he had no doubt learned in church as a young ape.

  “‘And when the human child reached out his hands to beg for bread from its father, he was instead given a scorpion.’”

  Dante nodded. “The Eighth Scroll, fifteenth chapter, ninth verse.”

  Maximus cleared his throat and walked over to one of the metal racks that lined the walls. He curled his fingers around the barrel of a rifle of strange design. Unlike the smooth and elegant designs of the rifles he had always used, this one was all hard edges and ugly lines. He pulled the weapon from the rack and weighed it in his hands.

  “It’s light,” he said. “Feels like a toy.”

  Dante said nothing and watched as Maximus turned the gun over, making sense of its functions, experimenting with the action. Then the gorilla prowled the room until he found a stack of empty magazines beside an even taller stack of boxed cartridges. In the quiet darkness, there was the harsh, metallic click and rasp as Maximus fed one bullet after another into a magazine… the jolting slap of the magazine as the gorilla rammed it into the body of the gun. The captain glanced at Dante and then walked out of the room, and the cleric followed.

  They went into an adjoining chamber whose function was unclear to either of them. There were row upon row of tables on which sat boxes of metal, plastic, and glass, with boards of small squares with letters and numbers on them. Maximus raised the weapon, seating the stock against his hip. He glanced again at Dante, who nodded.

  The gorilla’s finger was almost too thick to fit inside the trigger guard.

  He pulled the trigger and held the weapon as it roared. Flame and smoke erupted from the barrel and bullets filled the air, punching into the small boxes, exploding them, scattering pieces everywhere. Dante cried out and clapped his hands over his ears, wincing and backing away from the thunder. It took only seconds to empty the entire magazine and silence crashed down at once.

  The gorilla stood panting, staring down at the weapon in his hands. His eyes were filled with strange lights. Fear and excitement.

  “By the tears of the Lawgiver…” gasped Maximus. “The power of this thing. Our best rifles are six-shot. I put thirty bullets in that and they all fired. Even after all this time, they fired. A dozen apes with guns like this could… could…”

  He swallowed and didn’t finish. Dante came and took the weapon from him, turning it over in his hands. Then he went back into the armory with the gorilla close at his heels. Dante placed the gun carefully atop a case marked “HIGH-CAPACITY MAGAZINES” and stood with one hand resting on it.

  “Tell me, my friend,” he began slowly, “what is the greatest danger to apes today? Is it man or is it something else?”

  The gorilla walked the length of the room, turned, and walked back before answering. “Man is nothing,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  The captain nodded. “Man isn’t man anymore.” He gestured to the room. “What man alive today could build this? No, point out any man you’ve ever met who could pick up a gun and know which end to point at an ape? If he pulled the trigger, it would be by accident and he’d likely blow his own foot off. No… man fell, and he fell all the way down to ruin and simplicity and stupidity.”

  Dante nodded encouragement. He liked this gorilla.

  “If man were to ever reclaim what he had,” continued Maximus, “it would take too long and we are always watching. Always.”

  “Yes we are,” agreed Dante. “So where is the real danger?”

  Maximus pointed the way they’d come. “It’s there,” he said. “It’s back home. It’s in Rock City and in Towering Tree and it’s in Simian Shores and Ape City and everywhere else. It’s us.”

  “‘Us?’” echoed Dante.

  “Us. Not you and me. Not the gorillas or the orangutans. It’s the chimpanzees and everything they believe.”

  Dante gestured for him to elaborate.

  “Cato wants us to farm this region. He has plans to extend the farmlands down south and out west. He wants to cut the hunting woods down to plant grasslands for cattle and sheep. He wants to build dams to flood the swamps so he can stock them with fish. And where will the labor come for all of this? I’ll tell you where.” He slapped his hand down on a crate with a sound like a gunshot. “Us. Gorillas. Cato will take the guns from our hands—as he’s always done—and turn us all into farmers. Not just a few, but every last one of us. He might as well geld us while he’s at it… the effect would be the same. Cato thinks the world is conquered, that there are no real threats out there and no need for an army, a militia, or even a police force. Oh, sure, he may let a few of us walk around in uniform as tokens, but that’s all we’d be.”

  “Do you think that is likely to happen?” asked Dante.

  “Of course I do. So do you. The chimpanzees breed like lice, and the more of them there are, the fewer of us get into any positions of real power. Mark me, Dante: Ape City may be different, Zaius and the elder orangutans may still be in power there, but that won’t last. It won’t. The intellectuals may be weak as individuals, but there are already too damn many of them.” He pointed a finger at Dante. “And be warned. If the military and police numbers go down, if the chimpanzees crowd us out, how long do you think you orangutans will hold power?”

  “Even though we are the guardians of the faith?” asked Dante, smiling.

  “Ha. You know that Cato doesn’t care about any of that. Atheist scum. Leave it up to him and every church would be razed and the land given over to pig farmers. He would tear down the statues of the Lawgiver and replace them with corn silos and then we would all have to pray to a new god—progress. Tell me I’m just being an alarmist, Dante. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Dante sat on the edge of a crate of grenades. “God is God. He is jealous and He is harsh in His justice. That is the law. That is the only law, and it has kept our people safe through the darkest of times.”

  Maximus nodded.

  “This place was consecrated in the name of the Lawgiver,” continued the cleric. “Everything between the hunting woods and Boundary Run belongs to the church. Every stick, every stone, every blade of grass. All of it is holy ground. And we have been told that the evil lies beyond the water, in the Forbidden Zone. Evil is there and righteousness is here. That is what the elders say, and that is what the law says.”

  Maximus was watching, nodding, saying nothing.

  “To find such a place,” said Dante, “filled with all of this… a weak mind and a weak spirit would see it and say that the law is wrong, that the church is wrong, that what we believe in is wrong because here is proof to the contrary. Here is proof that evil is everywhere. But I trust in the law, Maximus. I trust in the elders and in the writings of the Lawgiver and in all that is holy. If this is here, it is because God put it here. And if it was put here for us to find, God wants us to have it.”

  “Why? Why put this kind of temptation in our path?”

  “Do you see it as temptation, my friend? Or can you open your heart to see that God has revealed to us a way of purifying His flock and bringing His people back to the path of righteousness? Consider the scrolls of the Lawgiver and the passages that talk about separating the chaff from the wheat, of culling the sickly cattle from the herd so that disease does not flourish and our kind diminish. We have been taught to eschew the tainted meat of the deer that wander from the Forbidden Zone. Those are stories that run deeper than what is obvious. We have been taught to protect apekind by cutting away at the impure, just as a surgeon removes a gangrenous leg.”

  He ran his hand along the top of the crate.

  “Cato and his kind wi
ll bring us to ruin. He will weaken the apes and allow mankind to become strong.” He looked around the room. “Strong again. We will fall and the human will rise again. Or the great apes will become scattered and only those of superior number will survive. And, as you have observed, we orangutans and gorillas are few and the chimpanzees are many. So many.”

  “No,” growled Maximus.

  “No,” agreed Dante. They sat in silence for a long time, then Dante rose and crossed to the rifle and picked it up. “Tell me, Maximus, how many of the righteous would it take to change the course of history? How many true believers would it take to save Big Rock from itself? From the heresy that is Cato’s plans for this region?”

  Maximus took the rifle from him and studied it for a long, long time. “With God and the Lawgiver on our side?” he asked. “Not many. No… not many at all.”

  They stood in the lamplight, surrounded by the sacred objects provided for them by a jealous God, and they smiled.

  A QUESTION OF SIMIAN SURVIVAL

  AN AFTERWORD

  by

  JIM BEARD

  I don’t want to get too heavy here, especially after you’ve just finished reading sixteen mind-blowing stories, but let’s talk about the future.

  The future, you see, is bright.

  Yeah, I get it; that’s a funny thing to say in a book based on a fictional, dark, dystopian prediction of things to come for the human race, but I promise you I know what I’m talking about. How? Well, a few things…

  One, the past.

  I knew the strength of the Apes property at a very young age, just from looking at the newspaper. To my young self growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it seemed like every day I checked the “Now Playing” section of the local paper’s movie page, another Planet of the Apes film had hit town. In my perception, there was a new one, like, every other month. Now, that’s a strong franchise right there! Add in the TV series and the Mego figures and the bubblegum cards, and I just knew in my tiny human heart that apes were sure to rule the planet by the time I was twelve.

  (They actually took over when I was twenty-six in 1991, but that’s another story.)

  So, two, the present.

  When you’re putting together an original anthology of Planet of the Apes stories and you’re swept away, every single time one of your authors hands in work, by that person’s unbridled enthusiasm as he or she tells you how much fun it was to write (I don’t exaggerate here), that tells you something. And what does it tell you?

  It tells you that a) Such a book was long overdue, and b) People really, really love Planet of the Apes. Even writers.

  Especially writers.

  This is a healthy, vibrant, living franchise. When a writer joyfully exclaims a word that I cannot type here after being invited to join an Apes anthology, you pause a moment and reflect (and maybe cock an eyebrow in arch amusement). When that same writer delivers his tale and tells you it challenged and engaged him, enthusing him to write it, you wonder why you hadn’t thought to put together such a book years earlier.

  (For my own part in this, I couldn’t choose just one spot in the property’s two-thousand-year-plus storytelling potential for my own tale. Nope, I had to have them all, and jumped through time like an ANSA spacecraft on a Hasslein bender. The moment I’d finished writing, I was thinking of the next story I wanted to do. And the next. And the next…)

  My co-editor Rich Handley and I began to look forward to that email from each of our writers, because there would not only be a new Apes story attached to it (cause enough for celebration, yes), but also a message of hope and prosperity. To paraphrase a 1970 Fox executive:

  “Apes exist, anthology needed.”

  That brings us back to the future.

  Planet of the Apes is all about the future, dark as it may be. Far more than just a planet of possibilities, it is an entire universe of them. I knew this as a kid, and I was reminded of it as an adult working alongside some of the biggest Apes fans on this planet. It’s a property that can encompass nearly any storytelling genre and can take us on journeys far beyond the constraints of our own so-called real world. It inspires excitement in its admirers, and it elevates professional writers to even greater heights of creativity… or maybe it devolves them into kids again, staring at a grainy black-and-white announcement of what looks like the ninety-fifth film in the franchise.

  Rich and I had a nuclear blast putting this book together, and I hope it shows on every page. It was a series of thrills to have our pitch accepted by Titan and Fox, to build our murderer’s row of writers, and to read and edit each tale as it flew up and over the transom. Every editor should be as lucky as we were and are.

  Because the future of an ape-dominated planet is so bright, we want to keep the dream (or nightmare) of talking chimps and gorillas and orangutans alive and well for years to come. You can help in that by fanning that flame in your own heart—and asking for more anthologies like this one.

  It’s a question of simian survival, you know.

  JIM BEARD

  March 2016

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The editors of this anthology wish to thank every individual who helped to build the Planet of the Apes film and literature franchise—all of the writers, directors, producers, actors, makeup artists, effects teams, composers, and everyone else involved along the way. Without them, this book would not exist.

  In addition, we are profoundly grateful to Twentieth Century Fox, Titan Books, and editor Steve Saffel for allowing us to stake our claim on this corner of the mythos, and to the immensely talented writers who joined us on this journey.

  We thank the following individuals for their support: Joseph Berenato, Joe Bongiorno, Steve Czarnecki (beyondthemarquee.com), Joseph Dilworth, Paul Giachetti (hassleinbooks.com), Hunter Goatley (pota.goatley.com), Joni Handley, Neil Moxham (planetoftheapes.wikia.com), and Simian Scrolls editors Dave Ballard, Dean Preston, and John Roche. Special thanks to novelist Robert J. Sawyer for providing a cover quote, and to Pierre Boulle for giving us all a planet on which to monkey around.

  Finally, we dedicate this book to our wonderful and supportive wives, Becky Beard and Jill Handley, who keep us both sane when the world around us goes ape.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Dan Abnett is a seven-time New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning comic book writer. He has written more than fifty novels, including the acclaimed Gaunt’s Ghosts series, the Eisenhorn and Ravenor trilogies, volumes of the million-selling Horus Heresy series, The Silent Stars Go By (Doctor Who), Rocket Raccoon and Groot: Steal the Galaxy, The Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World, The Wield, Triumff: Her Majesty’s Hero, and Embedded. In comics, he is known for his work on The Legion of Super-Heroes, Aquaman, The Teen Titans, Nova, Wild’s End, and The New Deadwardians, and he also helped to craft Dark Horse’s Planet of the Apes comic line. Dan’s 2008 run on The Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel formed the inspiration for the blockbuster movie. A regular contributor to the United Kingdom’s long-running 2000AD, he is the creator of series including Grey Area, Lawless, Kingdom, and the classic Sinister Dexter. He has also written extensively for the games industry, including Shadow of Mordor and Alien: Isolation. Dan lives and works in the United Kingdom. Follow him on Twitter: @VincentAbnett.

  Kevin J. Anderson is the author of more than 130 books, 54 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists. He has won or been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Shamus, Scribe, and Colorado Book Awards. Kevin has written numerous Star Wars projects, three X-Files novels, and fifteen bestselling Dune novels with Brian Herbert, and also collaborated with Dean Koontz on Frankenstein: Prodigal Son, which sold a million copies during the first year of its release. He has written the epic science-fiction series The Saga of Seven Suns and a steampunk fantasy adventure novel with legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart, based on the concept CD Clockwork Angels. In addition, he has written a humorous horror series featuring Dan Shamble,
Zombie PI. As the publishers of WordFire Press, Kevin and his wife, Rebecca Moesta, have released more than 300 titles from Alan Dean Foster, Frank Herbert, Jody Lynn Nye, Allen Drury, Mike Resnick, Tracy Hickman, Jay Lake, Brian Herbert, Ken Scholes, and their own backlist. Kevin climbs mountains. He and his wife have been married for twenty-five years and live in a castle in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

  Co-editor Jim Beard became a published writer when he sold a story to DC Comics in 2002. Since that time, he’s written official Star Wars and Ghostbusters comic stories and contributed articles and essays to several volumes of comic book history. His work includes X-Files: Secret Agendas; Gotham City 14 Miles, a book of essays on the 1966 Batman TV series; Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker, a collection of pulp ghost stories featuring an Edwardian occult detective; Monster Earth, a shared-world giant monster anthology; Captain Action: Riddle of the Glowing Men, the first pulp prose novel based on the classic 1960s action figure; and an essay for Sequart’s The Sacred Scrolls: Comics on the Planet of the Apes anthology. Jim currently provides regular content for Marvel.com, the official Marvel Comics website.

  Nancy A. Collins is the author of numerous novels, short stories, and comic books. A recipient of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award and The British Fantasy Society’s Icarus Award, she has also been nominated for the International Horror Guild Award, the John W. Campbell Award, the James Tiptree Award, the Eisner Award, the Horror Comics Award, and the World Fantasy Award. Her published novels and collections include Sunglasses After Dark, Lynch: A Gothik Western, Knuckles and Tales, and Absalom’s Wake. Her critically acclaimed Golgotham urban fantasy series—Right Hand Magic, Left Hand Magic, and Magic and Loss—has been optioned by Fox Studios for series development at NBC. She is currently the writer on Dynamite Comics’ Army of Darkness: Damned If You Do, and her previous work in the comics industry includes a two-year run on DC Comics’ Swamp Thing, a year-long run on Vampirella, a Sunglasses After Dark graphic novel from IDW, and the current Army of Darkness: Furious Road limited series. Nancy, along with her Boston terrier, is a recent transplant to the Tidewater area of Virginia.