Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization

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They made it to the trucks at a dead run, throwing their gear into the backs, and grinding gears in their terrified haste to get the hell away from the spear-wielding apes. Malcolm drove one truck, with Ellie and Alexander. Carver drove the other with the rest of the crew. Malcolm had already decided that he and Carver were going to straighten a few things out when they got back to San Francisco.

What the hell was he thinking, shooting at a pair of chimps before he even told anyone else they were there?

That was the problem. Carver wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t much of a thinker. He was good with his hands, but he’d absorbed the legends about wild apes killing and eating people in the mountains, back in the days when the Simian Flu had thrown everyone into a panic. Apes had spread the disease to humans, sure. Fine. But shooting them wasn’t going to make the flu any less contagious—and in any case, if Carver had been vulnerable to the flu, he wouldn’t have lived long enough to be at that river and see those chimps in the first place.

Stupid.

Malcolm’s truck bounced off the dirt road and onto the highway, following it down out of the mountains toward the city.

“What do we tell Dreyfus?” he asked. “You think he’ll believe us?”

“I’m not even sure I’d believe us,” Ellie said. “Are we certain that wasn’t some kind of weird echo?”

“I heard it,” Alexander said. “The chimp talked.”