Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm - The Official Movie Prequel

1

David Flynn woke around four in the morning, as he usually did. It didn’t matter what time he went to bed, how much he’d had to drink, whether he had run a marathon or spent all day writing. At four, he woke up. It had started when he was in his early twenties, when he’d moved from Atlanta to the Bay Area. Even after ten years, his body wouldn’t let go of the Eastern Time Zone.

He started to sit up, and felt the extra weight in the bed before remembered that Clancy was still there. Her fine, long hair spread out on the pillow. It looked dark in the faint light, but in the day it was the color of hay, with touches of goldenrod where the sun had lightened it. She was only half-covered by her sheet, and he studied her a moment, wanting to trace the contours of her body with the tips of his fingers. He liked the feel of her skin, the shape of her.

But he didn’t want to wake her. She usually didn’t stay over, but she had some sort of early appointment downtown, and his apartment was a lot closer than hers. He was pretty sure “early” didn’t mean four o’clock.

He eased out of bed, went into his small living room, and glanced at his laptop. He could stand to tighten up the piece on the appropriations cover-up in City Hall, but he was frankly kind of sick of it at the moment. So he switched on the television, cruised through several infomercials and syndicated comedies before one of the news channels caught his eye. They were showing footage of the bizarre events on the Golden Gate Bridge five days ago, when hundreds of apes had escaped from all over the city, fought their way through police blockades, and escaped across the span. It was certainly the strangest event on record in San Francisco, and what made it stranger was the complete blackout of information that had followed it. All of the parklands north of the bridge—the Muir Woods, Mount Tamalpais—everything had been closed, and all but the most essential roads blockaded.

While there were a lot of rumors swirling around about how the apes had escaped in the first place, there was very little of what he as journalist would call fact. Mayor House and Chief of Police Burston had assured the public that everything was under control, that the numbers of the apes had been exaggerated, and that the eyewitness reports given by those who had been there were the result of hysteria.

Most of the footage of the event, flickering across the screen, was amateur, taken with cell phones, and it had been a particularly foggy day, anyway, so it was difficult to assess the claims one way or another.

The scene cut to a studio, where a local talk-show host was interviewing a man with a dark, thin face. David recognized him as Clancy’s boss, Dr. Roberts, so he turned up the sound a little.

“…primatologist at Berkeley,” the host was saying. “People involved in the incident claim very peculiar behavior coming from the animals. They say that the apes acted with organization and purpose, and seemed to have a plan. As someone who studies primates, how would you assess these claims?”

“Well, first of all,” Roberts began, “apes are intelligent, and capable of learning a wide range of behaviors. They are also social, and do act in concert. Chimpanzees, for instance, will sometimes band together to hunt colobus monkeys for food.”

“I thought apes were vegetarian.”

“That’s a misconception,” Roberts pointed out. “Chimps are omnivores—they eat a lot of insects, in particular. Gorillas a little less so. The only species that is almost entirely herbivorous are the orangutans.”

“Interesting,” the host said. “But we’ve gotten off subject.”

“I think several things are going on here,” Roberts said, nodding. “The first is that we humans tend to see everything in our own image. We anthropomorphize. We do it even with dogs and cats—assign human motives and emotions to them. We have an even greater tendency to do that when apes are involved, because they seem more like us. The other factor is that most of these apes were born in captivity, and in many cases trained to act human—for movies, television, circuses. The apes you see on TV are usually young, still cute, and not too dangerous. But when they get older and lose some of their charm—not only in appearance, some get very aggressive—they are often ‘retired’ to shelters or sold to laboratories for medical testing. So they may well have been superficially mimicking human behavior. The final thing I think that comes into play here is ourselves.”

“You mean other than anthropomorphizing?”

“Right. We humans are natural storytellers. It’s what we do. There have been some pretty good studies that demonstrate that eyewitness accounts of any kind—especially when strong emotions like fear and surprise are involved—are substantially inaccurate even a few hours after the events. That’s because to make sense of what we’ve seen, we background it with some sort of logical framework. We tell ourselves a story that makes sense in our own minds—then we tell the story to each other. The details that make the most sense to the most people stay in the story, while the rest drop out. It gets bigger.”

“So you’re saying that what Mayor House says is true…”

David actually jumped out of his seat when a hand fell on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Clancy said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Wow,” he said. “Yeah. Was the TV too loud?”

“Not really.” She nodded at the television. “It was Piers’s voice. Thought I was back in his class or something.”

“With no clothes on?” He raised an eyebrow.

She glanced down at her state of dishabille and grinned.

“Funny man,” she said. “I can put something on, if you want.”

“No,” he said. “No need to go out of your way.” He turned the sound down. “There,” he said. “Better?”

“Yep.” She nodded. “So why are you up? Bed too crowded?”

“No,” he said. “I always wake up around four. I’ve learned I can either lie there, staring at the ceiling, or get up for an hour or so and piddle. Then I can fall back asleep.”

“I can think of a third alternative,” she said, stepping around behind him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m kind of tired, and I know you need your rest.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, kissing the nape of his neck. It sent tingles through his whole body.

“Now, that’s not fair,” he said.

“I never said I was fair,” Clancy replied, kissing him again, working around toward his ear. She reached around his chest to pull him against her.

“Fine,” he said, “let’s try this so-called third alternative.”

Afterward, she nestled against him, and he felt himself starting to drift.

It felt nice, but there was something possessive about it that worried him. He liked Clancy—she was fun, smart, sexy, and very accommodating in bed. She was also pretty casual. She knew he saw other people, and she didn’t seem to care. She never asked anything of him that he wasn’t willing to give, and there was never any implication that this was going in any particular direction, or that she had a goal in mind.

At least, it had never felt that way until now.

“I’m going to be gone for a while,” she said, drowsily. It was eerie, as if she had read his mind.

“I thought you just had an appointment downtown.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Look,” she finally said. “I know you’re a reporter, but if I tell you something, can we keep it—you know—off the record?”

“Sure,” he said, feeling alert now.

“I’m not supposed to tell anyone about this,” she said. “I signed a non-disclosure document.”

“About what?”

“I’ve been hired by the city to go up to Muir Woods and check out the apes.”

“Check out the apes?”

“Yeah. They’re trying to figure out the best way to capture them. Me, I’m just interested to see how they’re adapting to an environment so different from what they evolved in.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked. “Aren’t they violent?”

“Not usually,” she said. “Not unless they’re pressed, or feel threatened. Whatever happened on the bridge—that’s not normal. Hey,” she added, “I know my stuff—I’ll be okay.”

“The Dian Fossey of the Muir Woods,” he murmured.

“Dian Fossey was hacked to death by gorilla poachers with machetes,” Clancy pointed out. “I think maybe in this case you should think of me as the Jane Goodall of the Muir Woods. Better ending.”

“Or maybe just Jane, like in Tarzan,” he replied.

“Does that make you the Lord of the Jungle?”

“If I remember right, that would make us cousins,” he said.

“Eew. Well, you are from the South.”

“Hmmf,” he said.

“I’m excited about this,” she told him after a moment.

“I can tell,” he said. “I hope you have fun.” He yawned then, and closed his eyes.

“Thanks for letting me sleep over,” she said. “I know it sort of freaks you out.”

“Does not.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “You have nothing to worry about.” She squeezed his shoulder.

“Call when you get back,” he said. “We’ll do something. We’ll hang out.”

“That sounds good,” she said. “Okay, that’s enough—let me catch another hour of sleep.” Then she rolled over, and within just a few minutes he heard her breathing even out.

A few minutes later, he was dropping off, too.

Talia blinked as sweat stung her eyes, and for a moment all she saw through her blurred vision was the blood. Sometimes she felt her whole life was about blood. She knew other emergency-room doctors who would have nothing red in their homes—drapes, carpets, tomato sauce, grenadine. At least one trauma surgeon she knew had become vegetarian, because seeing so much raw human meat made the idea of steak or hamburger unthinkable. Once she had considered that to be silly. Now she was starting to sympathize.

“Wipe,” she said. Tran dabbed her forehead with a cloth as she went back to examining the chest cavity. The kid was a holy mess—and he was a kid, probably no more than fifteen. She wondered why anyone would want to put three bullets in him.

But that wasn’t her concern, was it? Her job was to put him back together.

“This is going to be a long one,” she said. “See if you can find Dr. Selling. I want him to look at this spleen.”

Six hours later, close to shaking with exhaustion, she pushed back from the patient.

“I’ll close him up,” Selling told her. “You go get some coffee.”

She nodded and slipped out of the operating room. She went first to the lavatory to splash water on her face and put her long black hair back up, wondering if it would be better to cut it short. Then she proceeded over to the little room they called the Café Trauma. Someone had actually put a sign up, written on cardboard and picturing a coffee cup above a crossed femur and scalpel. Café Trauma consisted of a sink, a small fridge, a coffee maker, a snack machine, a drinks machine, a card table with four chairs, and a smallish flat-screen TV.

There wasn’t any coffee brewed, so she started a pot herself, then stepped out to see what was incoming. Fortunately, there was nothing as serious a triple gunshot wound, but there was plenty more lined up, and she still had three hours on shift.

She returned to the café and gulped down some of the somewhat disgusting coffee. Randal from Acute Care came in just in time to see her expression.

“Not exactly Starbucks, is it?” he said.

She shook her head, making a face and staring into the cup.

“Every time I drink this swill I swear I’m going to go straight from work to buy a grinder and some decent beans to bring in,” she said. “But I always forget. This stuff just makes it all the more tempting to switch to speed or something, which wouldn’t be good.” Then she turned toward him. “What’s up?

“You went to that symposium on respiratory infections last month.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said. “Sexiest symposium ever. Better than that rectal bleeding thing, even.”

“I’ve got a woman I’d like you to take a look at.”

“What are her symptoms?”

“She’s sneezing up blood,” he said.

“Allergic rhinitis?”

“She says she never has trouble with allergies—I had a look, and didn’t see anything,” he said. “I’ve ordered a CT scan, but they’re backed up. Plus, she has a temperature of a hundred and four. She’s also showing some signs of subcutaneous bleeding.”

Talia was about to take another grudging drink, but stopped with the coffee cup halfway to her mouth.

“How old is she?” she asked.

“Thirty-two.”

“Let me see her,” she said.

Judging from her fair hair, the woman was probably light-skinned anyway, but at the moment she was positively pallid—except in places where light-greenish patches had developed. Her eyes were dull and moved around sluggishly, so Talia knew immediately that this wasn’t just a bleeding polyp in her sinuses. Or if it was, she had some other, unrelated illness, as well.

“Have we bled yet?” Talia asked softly, standing at the room’s entrance.

“I was about to,” Randal replied.

“Send for labs, priority,” she said. “I’ll take a look.”

She went into the room, glanced at the chart, then at the patient.

“How are you feeling, Celia?” she asked.

“Not so good,” the woman managed, weakly.

“Any idea where you got this bug?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t usually get sick,” she said. “I don’t have a GP, so I waited, hoping it would go away.”

“I’m going to ask a couple of questions that might sound strange,” Talia said.

“Okay.”

“Do you work closely with animals?”

“No,” Celia replied. Then a thought seemed to strike her. “I have a cat.”

“Have you eaten anything out of the ordinary?” Talia asked. “Taken any prescription or non-prescription drugs? Tell the truth—this is important. You won’t get in trouble.”

“I can’t think of anything,” the woman said, shaking her head. “I was just in France, but I’m not very adventurous, food-wise.”

“France? How recent was that?”

“I just got back to San Francisco a few days ago.”

“Did you go anyplace else? Anywhere in Africa or Southeast Asia?”

“No, no place like that.”

“Okay,” Talia said. “We’re going to draw some blood and send it to the lab. Meantime, we’ll give you some chicken soup in the arm and something to bring that fever down. How does that sound?”

The woman smiled weakly and nodded.

“Let me look at your eyes for a sec,” Talia said, moving in close. She took out a small penlight and shone it on one, then the other, holding the lids open with her free right hand.

“Okay,” she said. We’re going to be moving you to another room. Have you got anyone in the waiting room?”

Celia shook her head. Talia nodded, picked up her coffee cup, and exited the room.

Outside, she took Randal aside.

“Some subconjunctival bleeding,” she murmured. “Could be some kind of hemorrhagic fever.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Randal said. “Like what? Yellow Fever? Ebola?”

“Whoa, Tex,” she said. “I said it could be, but it’s still not likely. She might just have a bad case of the flu and a nose bleed. But let’s be on the safe side. Put her in a clean room. Strict isolation, okay? Just in case. And let’s turf it to someone who really knows about this stuff—Collins, maybe, or Park. Okay? And don’t spread any Ebola rumors around. I was just thinking out loud.”

“Okay,” he said.

She had almost finished her coffee when Ravenna stuck her head around the corner.

“Incoming SCUD,” she said. “Motor-vehicle accident.”

“My lucky night,” Talia sighed, and she went to scrub up.

By the time she had the guy stabilized enough for real surgery, her shift was almost up. Which was good, because she was dead on her feet. She was pulling herself together to go when she ran into Randal.

“Get her settled in?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “And you know what? We got another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another blood-sneezer. Old African-American lady. I sent her straight to isolation.”

“Huh,” Talia said, and she frowned. “I don’t know. This is starting to sound like a thing. Have you called around?”

“I’ve kind of had my hands full,” he said.

“I’ll check it out tomorrow,” she said.

She wore her scrubs home, showered, and pulled out a pair of pajamas.

“It’s just us, baby,” she told the pj’s. “We can be together all night.”

She fixed herself a Moscow Mule and just sat for a moment, savoring the slight sting of the ginger beer and lime over the kick of the vodka. She checked the messages on her landline. Some of her friends thought she was a bit out of it for having one, but landlines worked in power outages, and they worked when towers or satellites were down. And here in earthquake-land, that seemed like a good thing.

Also, landlines—hers anyway—didn’t have texting, so she could safely give the number to people from whom she didn’t want to get texts all of the time. Like the people who had left the four messages on her phone. Her father, a guy named Dean she had met last week at a bar called the Choirboy, another guy named Serge who got her number from, of course, her father. And another one from her father.

Tonight, he counted as two people.

Deleting the messages, she sat back and took a sip. Halfway through her drink she remembered to turn on her cell phone. It had been off all day.

She had a text from St. John, a guy with whom she had done her residency. She hadn’t heard from him in a while—he worked at another hospital in the Bay Area, also in the ER. Curious, she checked the message.

“Wow,” she said to her pj’s. “It must be a thing.”