by Greg Keyes
An odd, distant look crept into her eyes.
“The thing is, whatever we do with apes—experiment on them, train them to perform, even teach them language—everything we do just keeps them from being what they are. What they’re supposed to be. We got kicked out of a paradise, not them. Yet we feel like we have to drag them out with us. I guess misery loves company.”
She took another drink of the whisky and passed the bottle to him.
“I love orangutans,” she said, and she smiled. “They’re my favorites. They’re so deliberate…” She frowned. “I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?”
“Yes,” he said. “The zookeeper joke.”
“Am I boring you?” she asked.
“I didn’t say that.”
“I think I am,” she said. “I’m naïve, and I’m boring, and what else?”
“I think you’ve maybe had too much to drink,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Not too much.” She suddenly stood, walked over to him, and began to work the top button of his shirt.
“What on earth are you doing?” he asked.
“How long has it been, that you have to ask that?” she said, undoing the second button.
“I’m twice your age,” he protested. “No, you’re more than twice my age,” she said. “Are you saying that’s the line you won’t cross? That’s the one thing you find objectionable?”
“No,” he said. “I just didn’t think—”
“Just shut up,” she said, “I want this, and you’re what I’ve got.” She was trying to sound flip, he realized, but then he saw it in her eyes, heard it in the quiver of her voice. She was terrified, and trying to be brave. Again, his respect for her intelligence rose a notch.
He had that one little glance before she bent and began kissing his neck.
She was right about one thing. It had been a while—a long while. But he hadn’t forgotten, and his body certainly hadn’t. Her skin was soft, and as smooth as glass. No scars, anywhere. She gripped him as if they had been together all of their lives, and at times he actually found himself embarrassed at both her willingness and her dominance. It left him panting, wishing he was younger, wishing he was someone else.
When it was done, he wasn’t certain what to do, but she snuggled into his arms. He just lay there, feeling his arm go to sleep.
“Thanks,” she after a bit. “I know you weren’t that into it, so thanks.”
“No,” Malakai said. “It was… I am very satisfied, believe me. It was such a surprise, you know?”
“Yeah,” she said, and she chuckled. “The look on your face was priceless.”
“Are we ‘hanging out’ now?”
“No,” she said. “I think this was just a one-time deal. But I enjoyed it. And I made you feel something.”
“I suppose so,” he said.
“Score one for me.”
He thought she was falling asleep, but then she murmured something.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Did you love her?” she said again. “Solange?”
He took a deep breath and let it out, again wishing he had a cigarette.
“Yes,” he said. “Very much.” “And your son.”
He felt his throat constrict. He nodded.
“I was in the bush,” he said. “Hunting chimps. My uncle wasn’t with me, that time. He had an infected leg, and so stayed home with Solange and my boy. There was a rebellion, of sorts. Bands of Hutu men, killing every Tutsi they could get their hands on. This was long before the genocide in Rwanda. It was a sort of warm-up to it.” He stopped, then continued. “So they killed my parents-in-law, and my uncle who was, of course, not Tutsi, and Solange. And the boy. They had been dead a day when I got back.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It taught me something,” he said. “It taught me you can’t lose something unless you have it.”
“That’s a terrible lesson,” she said. “All the more because it makes sense to me. Last week it wouldn’t have. Now it does.”
She kissed him on the cheek and sat up. She reached for her shirt.
“I talk too much after sex,” she said. “I know this. It’s one reason…” She trailed off. “Never mind. Look, I’ll let you get some sleep.”
He caught her hand.
“Unless you very much object, I would like you to stay for a while,” he said.
“Well,” she said after a few breaths. “Maybe for a little while.”
She lay back down and spooned against him, and in what seemed a short time, she was asleep.
22
Dreyfus rubbed his eyes and closed his laptop. Then he reached for the television remote.
There was little there to give him hope. All of the rough patches of the world were heating up. Serbs and Croats, Hutus and Tutsis, Shi’ites and Sunnis and any of another fifty ethnic and religious groups blamed one another for the plague that was killing them all. Minority groups in eastern China were rising against Beijing and being brutally punished for it.
Indonesia, which had the fewest reported cases of the Simian Flu, had closed its borders and was violently enforcing the isolation. Christians were being burned alive in Egypt and Muslims were being beaten to death in Tennessee. The Ganges was aflame from a chemical spill near the city of Varanasi. Some people were taking it as a religious sign of some sort and were immolating themselves in the burning river.
He absorbed all of that for a few minutes and then switched to a local channel.
He found himself regarding Claire Sang, the Channel Five anchor. The newsroom set was poorly lit, and everything about it looked messy. Sang looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, and no amount of makeup could hide the dark circles under her eyes.
“We have breaking news,” she said. “Word has come in that detainees in the Haight Ashbury quarantine zone have broken through police lines. Many have armed themselves with police firearms, and have begun moving through town, setting fire to buildings as they go. The police and the National Guard have been able to provide little resistance to this armed and highly dangerous mob.”
The screen cut to shaky, hand-held images as she talked, showing hundreds of dirty, desperate looking men and women walking, running, and, in some cases, crawling through the streets. Fires leant an unearthly glow to the scene, and the patter of gunfire rang somewhere off-camera.
Dreyfus felt as if the floor was dropping out from under him.
“No, no, no,” he said. “I’ve got to get down there.”
“No you don’t,” Patel told him.
“We have to stop this!”
“No sir, with all due respect, you’ve put yourself in the path of too many of these things already.” Patel didn’t move, and he looked as if he was ready to stop Dreyfus, as well—physically, if necessary. “You aren’t running for anything anymore. You’re mayor now. The city is your responsibility. That –” he gestured at the screen “– is not the only thing that demands your attention.
“We’re up to two hundred thousand dead. Two more hospitals have been torched by these Alpha/Omega assholes. That joker in South San Francisco says they’ve officially seceded from California or the Union—which one isn’t clear—and claims they’ll shoot to kill anyone who crosses into their ‘sovereign territory.’ Meanwhile, city services are down everywhere.”
“I know that,” Dreyfus muttered, massaging his forehead. “Don’t you think I know all that?”
He leaned back in his chair.
“Ah, God,” he murmured. “What am I going to do?”
* * *
Malakai woke before the dawn. He was alone, so he dressed and went outside, filling his lungs with the cool mist that was in the air, knowing that at last something was happening. Something was moving. A wind was coming.
* * *
After Solange and the boy died, Malakai became very still inside. He left Burundi and found work as a mercenary, and he did that work for decades. The faces of the dead became more famil
iar to him than the faces of the living.
And at last, one day, he found himself back in the Virunga Mountains, along with some of the men with whom he worked. Zaire had become the Democratic Republic of Congo again, and rebel groups had been forced into the mountains. It was different, though—the mountains with their gorillas had become a national park. It was illegal to kill the beasts, and there were rangers to enforce such laws, at least in theory.
Some, he knew, poached the beasts themselves.
But rangers were in short supply, as various forces from the Congo war hid and fought each other in the mountains. Malakai and his mercenaries were one such force. Retreating from a defeat in the lowlands, they were trying to cross into Rwanda, where hopefully the rest of their company would be waiting for them.
However, they were surrounded on all sides, mostly by Hutu militias. The good news was that most of the Hutus didn’t know they were there. The bad news was, that wasn’t going to make it any easier to move through them. So instead, they went higher into the mountains.
He found evidence of the gorillas on the fifth morning, and took his ragged, half-starved band toward them, thinking that at least they would eat well tonight. But before they arrived, gunfire began ahead. Crouching low in the brush, they hurried to see what was going on.
They found about fifteen Hutu militiamen, firing at a family of gorillas. They shot one in the leg, and laughed as it fell and began to turn in the grass. A big male charged, and they opened up on him, shredding his chest and face. When he went down they starting picking off the little ones, shooting to wound, not to kill. They were plainly enjoying themselves.
Malakai took careful aim at the Hutu leader. The man never even heard the sound of his rifle. Then the rest of his men followed suit, and started firing.
It was over in moments. He went among them, finishing the Hutus with his knife.
The gorillas were watching them. The big one was dead. The one with the wounded leg was dragging itself toward the trees. Malakai put a round in its head.
One of his men, Daniel, raised his weapon to shoot another.
“No,” Malakai said. “Leave them be. This is more meat than we can eat or carry. Who knows, we may need them later. And bullets…” He remembered his uncle. “Bullets are expensive.”
“But if we leave them, the Hutu will have them to eat.”
Malakai watched the females trying to calm one of the little ones that had been shot. She was looking right at Malakai, mixed terror and confusion in her gaze. He remembered the story of the brothers—Whiteman, Blackman, and Gorilla. But it seemed to him that there were really only two brothers—man and gorilla. Men, white and black, killed each other, and for thousands of different reasons. Men killed gorillas, too. But the only time a gorilla ever killed a man was in defense of its own, and even then very rarely.
So there were men, and there were gorillas.
And he was not a gorilla.
“That’s a good point,” he said. “Kill them all.”
He walked away as they started shooting, and began to smoke a cigarette. He thought to go only a short distance.
Instead he kept walking until he was in Uganda. There he withdrew the money he had been saving for almost thirty years, two thirds of every cent he had ever made as a mercenary. The next day he boarded a plane for the United States.
* * *
“I guess we’re ready,” Clancy said, from behind him.
He turned and gave her a little smile. She looked impossibly young in the morning light.
“Last night—” she began, a little awkwardly.
“Was last night,” he said. “And today is today.”
She nodded.
“Do I still scare you?” he asked.
“Malakai,” she said, “you scare the shit out of me. But I like you, too. I can’t fix it. I’m not going to try.”
* * *
It had been too quiet, Caesar knew. No helicopters, no human patrols, nothing. It worried him. So when Koba came hurtling into the camp with news that humans were once again in the woods, it was almost a relief.
Scouts arrived from every direction shortly after. Based on their reports, he knew that the humans were all around them. Maurice held up his hands, forming a circle. Caesar nodded, then called his scouts over.
Find where the circle is weakest, the least humans. Come back and tell.
They went out, moving fast. Nearby, Rocket looked doleful. He was recovering quickly, but was still too slow and stiff to run with the scouts.
Below, the rest of those who were fit enough were gathering together spears. The troop had been making them for days, lengths of wood ground against stone to sharpen them. Even now, Caesar hoped to avoid fighting again—spears against guns would not end well. But they might help intimidate their attackers.
He had been thinking more and more about what would happen if the humans attacked this way. He thought he knew what to do, and had been planning with Maurice and Rocket how to do it. His main worry was that, after their victory in chasing off the enemy, many of the apes seemed overconfident. He was still convinced that the humans had—for whatever reason—simply changed their minds. It had not been a victory.
Now they seemed to have changed their minds again. He thought back to the fight at the grocery store and the conversation near the sea. Were they growing more determined, or was this their last, desperate attempt? Maybe, if his troop could get through this, it would finally be over.
Whether or not that was true, he reflected, they still had to get through it.
He noticed Rocket pointing, and saw the first helicopter, flying from the direction of the sea. It was distant yet, looking no bigger than an insect.
Rocket hooted again, and now Caesar saw another of the flying machines, this one coming from the direction of the sunrise. He scanned the sky for more. In all there were eight, ranged in a vast circle around them, tightening in on them just as the men on the ground were. That would make things more difficult. It meant that only in the mid-canopy would they be relatively safe.
He sent Rocket down to spread the word, and continued waiting impatiently for the news of where the weakest point was in the tightening noose. He could guess a few places where it might be…
But why guess? If they went down into the canyon, the humans would have to come downhill in at least three directions. If apes couldn’t climb, it would be bad to be at the bottom of a hole.
But apes could climb.
He realized another thing, too. The helicopters were moving very slowly, probably no faster than the men underneath them. They wanted to be able to see the tops and the bottoms of the trees at the same time.
Which meant he already knew where the outside of the ring around them was located—it was where the helicopters were.
He called Koba to his side, and went down to Maurice.
Take them, fast, to the top of the valley, Wait there.
He could see it in his head, almost like a drawing. Wild apes—apes that didn’t know human ways—would run from the nearest edge of the circle toward the farthest. That would give the circle time to tighten around them, like a choke collar on a neck. By doing the opposite, by moving closer to the nearest edge of the circle, they put the rest of the circle farther away, where most of the humans couldn’t hurt the apes.
The humans would bunch there to try and stop them from breaking through, and the rest of the circle would grow thin, especially if they were forced to deal with uneven ground.
Koba, he said. Find gorillas, brave ones. And some chimps. I need them for a special job.
Yes, Caesar.
And Koba—tell them they might be captured or killed. Only apes willing to die.
Understand, Koba signed. Then he was away.
There was a rush in the trees as the whole troop began to move. Caesar felt a swell of pride at the sight of them. The orangutans were the best in the trees—it was true beauty, the way their long arms reached and reached, pulling them a
long. They never failed to find their hold. As unhurried as they normally were, in the trees they could move with impressive speed. Many of them had young chimps or gorillas clinging to them, and the largest carried injured chimps and orangs.
The chimps weren’t as masterful in the trees as their orangutan brethren, but they were able to move readily from earth to tree in a way that the orangs, who were clumsy on the ground, could not.
The gorillas moved slowly and clumsily in the trees, and for that reason Caesar hadn’t sent any of them out on patrols—they would have left tracks. But gorillas had their own virtues.
Caesar watched them go, then dropped down to where Koba was gathering the volunteers. He surveyed them: six gorillas and five chimps. All of the gorillas were zoo apes, but two of them knew a little sign. None of them had breathed Will’s mist, but they could follow simple commands, as they had demonstrated on the bridge.
Two of the chimps were from the shelter. The others were from Gen Sys. He didn’t know any of them well enough to know who would make the best leader.
Koba watched him for a moment.
Koba also go, the bonobo signed.
Caesar turned to Koba.
I asked you to find these. You go with me.
Koba straightened a little and put his chin out.
Need leader, he said. Koba lead. Koba willing to die.
Caesar regarded the one-eyed ape.
Can Koba think of plan first, Koba second?
Plan first, Koba signed. Apes first. Koba next.
Okay, Caesar agreed. Go that direction. Break through their line, keep them there as long as you can. Draw them to you.
He looked at the other apes.
“Koba,” he said out loud. “Leader.”
The apes acknowledged.
Caesar grasped Koba by the shoulder.
Bring them back if you can, he said. Bring yourself back.
Koba nodded, then screeched to the others, and they lit out for the trees.
Caesar felt the weight bearing down on him again. They were all counting on him to keep them alive. But not everyone was going to survive today. And what about the day after that? That was for later. There was plenty to do today.
