Caesar released the paunchy little orangutan, turned and looked. Looked at the gorilla version of a concentration camp. There was a large corral. There were prisoners. There were guards. The corral had been built for horses, but the prisoners were shocked and ashen-faced humans. Many were hurt. Some were lying on the ground, moaning. One or two were completely covered by blankets, still forms on the dirt.
The guards were gorillas, massive and black in their gleaming uniforms. Like elite troops, they strutted back and forth, automatic weapons cradled proudly in their arms. Others stood firmly at the gate, booted legs spread wide in a stance of immovability.
Behind them humans stood against the wire, looking out hopelessly. A small child peering out at a small chimp peering in. A cluster of men with long, matted hair, agricultural workers, squatting and smoking and looking at the gorillas with subdued hatred and resentment. MacDonald, Teacher, and Jake, standing close against the wire, scanning the passing apes.
“Caesar! Caesar!” MacDonald shouted suddenly, recognizing the distant chimp.
Caesar heard his name called. He started forward, toward the corral. He was horrified at this outrage. And there was Aldo, parading with his soldiers! Caesar’s eyes narrowed, his lips curled back, baring his teeth. He strode angrily.
A loud, shattering explosion nearly knocked him to the ground. He caught himself and whirled to see a pillar of fire and smoke rising from the ridge behind the grove. A towering black and brown cloud that cast its shadow across the whole city. Apes were frozen in their tracks, staring at it horrified.
Caesar closed his mouth and turned to Aldo and the rest of the gorillas.
“All right, you have your guns! Now let’s see what you can do with them!”
Aldo turned from staring at the explosion and saw Caesar for the first time. “Guns, yes! We’ll kill the humans! All the humans!” He barked at his troops to follow him. Quickly, he mounted his horse, wheeled it about and began riding down the main street toward the distant sound of firing. The noise came like a sporadic popping.
The rest of the gorillas shouted in triumph and waved their rifles. “We go to kill humans!” they cried, and galloped after their leader.
The battle had begun.
EIGHT
Another explosion shattered the afternoon, hurling rocks and chunks of dirt into the air. It was still far off, on the ridge of the gorilla outpost, but the city apes scattered in fright and confusion.
Caesar was already shouting orders, even while the thunder of the blast was still echoing through the valley. “Pile those wagons into a roadblock! Bring them down here!”
Chimpanzees and orangutans began scurrying to drag wagons and carts out to block the main road. Caesar and Virgil grabbed one of the nearest wagons, a massive heavy vehicle, and began dragging it toward the end of the street, toward the sounds of fighting.
The humans in the corral were forgotten. They pressed against the fence, watching the battle unfold before them.
Up on the ridge, at the gorilla outpost, a frenzied gorilla was trying to get his machine gun working. He fumbled with thick fingers, trying to unjam the frustrating gun, burning his fur and his skin as he did so. A second gorilla, still holding the belt he had been feeding into the gun, watched impatiently. Around them whizzed the bullets of the other gorillas. The rifles popped loudly.
Suddenly the mechanism was clear; the gun was unjammed. The gorilla shouted happily and jumped down behind the gun again, then fell to the ground abruptly beside the gun, his eyes glazed and startled.
Another gorilla seized the handles of the gun and, stepping over the body of his comrade, swung it around to face down the slope. He began firing in short, steady bursts.
Behind him other gorillas were firing their guns. Their automatic rifles rattled with staccato precision. But the gorillas were all badly shaken. They seemed ready to bolt.
The mutants came swarming up toward them. The column of vehicles rolled easily up the hard-packed road. Only the strongest of the mutant wagons had survived the trek across the desert, and now they came lumbering up the slope toward the gorilla outpost. Mutants were piling up toward the ridge, firing their guns and screaming, throwing grenades and occasionally falling and dying as gorilla bullets smashed into them. Here and there, a mutant would tumble backward, down the hill, but the main thrust of the mutant army was forward.
The mutants kept coming. The gorillas began falling back, edging up toward the top of the ridge. As the mutants drove them upward and backward, shells from the vehicles below began falling among them, cratering holes in the hillside.
For a moment, the battle hesitated as gorillas and mutants met face to face for the first time. The gorillas drew their swords and began hacking, only to fall helpless before the mutants’ guns. And then the mutants rolled forward, onward, and upward.
The mutant army reached the crest of the ridge and teetered precariously. The gorillas were trying to make a stand.
From his jeep, far below, Kolp watched through his field glasses. His gunners kept firing the big 105mm rifle in a series of small, almost apologetic, coughs followed by massive explosions on the ridge, gouts of smoke and flame.
Suddenly the gorilla defense crumbled. The first gorilla broke and ran, followed by another and another. The mutants screamed triumphantly and chased them up the ridge and over. They poured over the crest of the hill, tossing grenades into the machine gun emplacements. The explosions hurled guns and gorillas into the air.
But then the gorilla cavalry arrived.
They came riding up from the valley below. Slowly at first, they rode four and five abreast. They came moving steadily down the road, building up speed as they headed toward the battle. They urged their horses faster and faster. They drew their swords and held them high. They screamed their challenges before them. Aldo was in the lead, shouting, “Attack! Attack! Kill all humans!”
As the cavalry roared up the road, they ran into the gorillas retreating from the ridge. They scattered before the onrushing horses. The road ahead was almost jammed with fleeing gorillas, some walking, some almost running, some helping wounded comrades. But as they heard and saw the mounted gorillas approaching, they jumped for the sides of the highway. As the cavalry passed heavily through them, they stopped, began preparing places along the road to fight again. Some turned and began following the cavalry.
Some of the mounted gorillas were shocked at the sight of their troops in retreat; but Aldo and the other leaders only shouted louder, “Attack! Attack!” They waved their swords and urged their horses faster and faster. Hooves pounded harder on the road.
Watching them from the top of the ridge, Kolp smiled grimly. He lowered his glasses and remarked, “Here comes the circus. Monkeys on horseback. Get ready for the performance!”
The cavalry reached the bottom of the slope and began pounding up toward the ridge. Great clouds of dust rose up all around them. The charging black riders came galloping upward, a mounted, moving, thundering apocalypse.
The horses labored and puffed. The gorillas kicked them upward, heedless of their foaming sides and mouths. Flecks of lather spattered the riders. Dust clogged the noses and mouths of horses and gorillas alike.
And then they topped the ridge and saw a semicircle of automatic weapons trained on them. They were riding head on into the guns of the mutants; the mutants were spread out across the top of the road.
Aldo was the first to react. “Off the road! Off the road!” he shouted. He signaled desperately for his troops to turn.
But it was too late, the cavalry had too much momentum. The riders in front were trying to wheel about; their horses were rearing in fright. The riders from the rear came piling into them; horses toppled and screamed. Hooves flailing, bridles jerking, they whinnied and turned.
And then the mutants opened fire.
The bullets slammed into the cavalry. Aldo and a few of the others managed to get out of the way of the hurtling hot lead. Aldo’s horse leapt over a falle
n log and crashed through the trees. Behind him, other gorillas and horses followed.
The gorilla cavalry lost its organization. More and more riders were arriving all the time, piling into the confusion and bloodshed; horses were moving in all directions. The smell of blood panicked them even more.
“Fire!” shouted Kolp. “Fire! Kill the monkeys!”
The gunners held their fingers down on their triggers, too shocked by the carnage ahead of them to stop. Horses stumbling and screaming, gorillas falling beneath them, more riders charging up from behind them, the ones in front trying to escape, trying to get out from under and back down the hill.
“Fire!” Kolp kept shouting. “Fire! Kill the monkeys! Kill them! Kill them!”
The cavalry was trapped between charging and retreating, trapped between the automatic weapons of the mutants and their own, still arriving, rear. The cavalry died. Bloodily. Without honor. Without glory. In a savage, senseless, wasteful orgy of carnage.
They died violently. Without even the justification of having lived that way. They died for guns, and for Aldo’s game. And there was no honor in their death. Only ugliness, hate.
The gunfire began to peter out. From a steady rattle of explosions, it degenerated into recognizable bursts, and then only occasional staccato blasts. Whenever anything moved—a horse trying to get up, a gorilla moaning, an arm or a leg jerking—it was silenced by gunfire. Soon nothing moved.
For a moment, there was silence. Only the smell of smoke and guns crackling as they cooled. There were occasional distant pops, and then even those were silent. The mutants’ ears rang with the memory of the noise, and the heap of bodies steamed in the sun.
And now the road was clear.
Below, Ape City waited.
From the ridge, Kolp could see tiny figures running in and out of the trees. Chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. Here and there, a horse ran riderless.
“We’re wasting time,” he said. “Let’s finish it. There’s a whole city of them waiting for us.”
He leaned forward in his seat and signaled his driver to go on. The jeep lurched ahead, turned down the road. A couple of mutant infantrymen hung on the rear. A small advance force followed. The bulk of the army would not be able to follow until they had cleared some of the carnage from their path.
Kolp’s jeep passed around a clump of trees and the driver instinctively jerked to a halt. Kolp stood up in his seat and looked.
Below them were gorillas digging in and preparing to resist. Beyond stood Caesar’s flimsy barricade of wagons. And beyond that, behind it, the main street of Ape City was visible for the first time.
“Yeah,” grunted Kolp in satisfaction. “Yeah.” He turned to his gunners. “There it is. When we leave, I want no tree standing, no two pieces of wood still nailed together—nothing left alive. Do you understand? I want it to look like . . . like the city we came from.”
He pointed down the road at Caesar’s barricade. “First, clear that rubbish out of our path.”
The gunner rammed a shell into the 105mm rifle. He swung it around in its mountings and took aim, squinting in the sunlight. He squeezed the trigger.
The valley echoed with the crash. A column of smoke rose where a wagon had been before. Now, there was only a crater.
The barricade was manned by chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. They were crouching behind loaded fruit wagons and other farming equipment. Orangutans were dragging boxes of ammunition along, distributing it.
And Caesar sat behind a machine gun of his own. Virgil sat next to him, holding the ammunition belt, ready to feed it in smoothly when Caesar began firing.
“Here they come,” said Virgil, looking up the road. A single jeep was just emerging from the orange grove. The jeep stopped and the gun on it began to rotate.
“Get ready to fire!” Caesar shouted to the other ape defenders. Forgetting himself, he rose to his feet, his teeth bared in a grimace of anger. He stepped up on the barricade, growling. Virgil pulled him back down just as another explosion shattered the barricade, an earth-rattling, ear-breaking, crashing thunder of a sound that splattered rocks and clods of dirt in all directions. Pieces of wood and flesh fell from the air.
Caesar grabbed his ears. He had never heard anything so loud! He picked himself up and began returning the fire. Still blinking from the force and sound of the explosion, he set himself behind his machine gun again and took careful aim at the jeep. He began letting off short bursts, testing the feel of the weapon, then longer ones. His lips curled back in rage.
But the jeep was too far away. Their bullets were falling short, and the 105mm gunner was finding their range!
Behind him, the other apes were moving to follow Caesar’s example. They were stunned by the blast, but they moved to their places at the barricade and began firing, letting off single rounds with their rifles, unsure of what they were firing at, but firing anyway.
A third blast rocked the defense line. This was the closest and loudest explosion of all. The noise was incredible. The crash knocked the defenders back, physically lifting them and throwing them backward, shoving them to their knees. Smoke pillared into the sky, dense and black and ugly. A shower of things unidentifiable clattered to the ground.
The ape defenders were stunned, shaken by the force of the blast. Some dropped their guns in surprise. Others gasped in horror and pointed.
Caesar lay sprawled on his back. Unconscious. Covered with dirt and soot.
Some of the apes began to pick themselves up and duck behind shelter, but most were confused and terrified by the sight of their leader lying on the ground. They stood milling about.
Virgil leapt to his feet and began running along the barricade, shouting and urging the other apes to pick up their guns. He grabbed a fallen rifle and shoved it into the arms of a nearby chimp. The chimp accepted it, but held it limply. He stood there, staring back at Caesar’s unconscious form.
“Get hold of yourself! Fight!” shouted Virgil.
“But Caesar—is he dead?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. We’ve got to defend the city!”
Another thunderous explosion shook the barricade then, hurtling wagons into the air. Jagged pieces of wood, rock, and metal flew at them.
The chimpanzee dropped his weapon again and abandoned the fight. He scrambled for Ape City and disappeared into a tree house. Other apes began to break from their positions at the barricade, falling back away from the rain of deadly shells.
A loaded orange wagon exploded next. Oranges and fruity pulp splashed across the barricade, pummeling and splattering the deserting apes. All down the line now, they were turning from their positions, edging backward, trying to keep up a back fire. But to no avail.
An orangutan and a chimp ran for the cover of the city; they began clambering up into a tree house.
The tree exploded in a ball of orange flame, toppling slowly, tumbling, throwing the house clumsily downward, smashing it, and spilling its contents out onto the ground. The chimp and orangutan were nowhere to be seen.
From high on the ridge the bulk of the mutant army began to move, sweeping down the road toward the orange grove and Ape City. The trucks clanked and growled; the motorcycles sputtered; the jeeps banged and coughed as they swung down the last turn of the road toward the waiting victory.
Far ahead of them, Kolp’s jeep and a smaller advance force were just crashing through the ape barricade.
Kolp was laughing with hysterical excitement. “Get them! Go on!” he shouted to his driver. “Keep going! Chase those stupid animals back to their trees!” He picked up a portable flame thrower. “Then we’ll burn the trees!” The jeep plowed through the wooden barricade as if it were made of matchsticks. Kolp stood in his seat and torched the wagons and carts that made it up.
Delighted at the way they burned, he leaped from the jeep and danced happily down the line, flaming every wagon, every bush, every cart, every pile of wood, everything that wasn’t already burning.
Even the bodies of some of the chimp defenders. He aimed the torch at one, and it moved. Well, no matter. He started to pull the trigger anyway, then caught himself. He jerked the weapon aside so that even the short puff of flame that did escape would miss the ape.
He stepped forward curiously. “It is Caesar,” he said.
Caesar opened his eyes then. He was confused, but he had heard his name. He looked around, struggling to focus.
Kolp towered above him, grinning. His radiation-scarred face had an almost unholy gleam; it was the reflection of the flames of the burning tree houses. Behind him, the rest of the mutants were setting their torches to Ape City. Kolp was still holding his flame thrower; it was pointed almost casually at Caesar. Caesar noticed that its tip was glowing hotly.
Kolp scratched his face thoughtfully. His grin faded as he surveyed the ape. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and grating, but his tone was conversational. Almost casual. “You and your people thought you destroyed my city, didn’t you? But humanity survived. Look around you, Caesar. Men have returned to put apes in their proper places. We are going to build a new world!” And with that, he loosed a short burst at Caesar.
Caesar twisted and rolled out of the way, but Kolp followed. “No apes at all!” he said, firing another burst. Again Caesar dodged. “No apes anywhere!” He jerked the weapon savagely and fired again. This time Caesar wasn’t fast enough, the blast scorched his leg. Caesar backed away, trying to scramble, trying to rise to his feet. Kolp’s driver knocked him back to the ground with a rifle butt.
And all around, there was silence. Kolp’s 105mm gunners sat at their station in the jeep, tracking their gun slowly back and forth across the city to maintain order.
From above, and from the shelter of the trees—or what remained of it—the apes watched. Watched as their leader was humbled, humiliated, almost certain to be incinerated.
“No apes!” said Kolp, firing another burst. “No apes at all!” This time, he fired at Caesar’s other side. He was guiding the ape, herding him, playing with him, turning him and moving him up toward Ape City. “You’ve forgotten what it is to have a master, haven’t you?” Kolp punctuated his words with fire and flame. The smell of it was intense and stifling. Caesar’s nostrils were scorched by the heat, and his eyes were watering from the smoke. His leg ached where it had been burned, and his head hurt where he had been struck. The rest of his body seemed weak and numb from the concussion that had knocked him out.
Battle For The Planet Of The Apes Page 9
