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

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He caught up with Dreyfus as the crowd dispersed, waiting while he had exchanged a quiet word with one of his lieutenants. Then Malcolm approached him and spoke, trying not to sound angry.

“There is no alternative power source,” he said, keeping his voice low. “That dam’s our only option.”

“Fine,” Dreyfus said. “Then we’ll do what we have to do.” He started walking, and Malcolm went with him under the parapet and through a hall that led to his office. Maps of San Francisco covered the walls, each heavily annotated with information about earthquake damage, the location of resources that might not yet have been recovered, previous sites of fighting with long-gone gangs. Other maps of the Bay Area highlighted places they were planning to search. There were farms to explore so they could perhaps start growing more food, marinas to search for fishing boats that might still float… even other dams to assess, in an effort to get the lights back on.

As Dreyfus’s security entourage began to leave, Malcolm lingered over the circled spot on the map marking the dam he and his team had seen the day before. He mentally added a note: Here be apes.

“What does that mean, ‘we’ll do what we have to do’?” he asked when they were alone.

“I meant what I said back there.” Dreyfus looked at the regional map and put a finger right on the spot Malcolm had pegged as the apes’ location. “If we have to fight them, we fight them.”

“You can’t be serious,” Malcolm said. “Did you see them? That’s an army. They showed up to let us know they have an army. We can’t fight them. You think we can just hand out a bunch of guns and go after them? We’ll be massacred.”

Dreyfus turned away from the map and pointed back in the direction of the Colony plaza.

“You see what’s going on here,” he said. “These people are going to turn on each other. On me!” He brought himself up short. “But this isn’t about me. That power is everything. I’m not giving up on this.”

“Neither am I,” Malcolm said. “But you know you just put a big target on my back, right?”

“I had to do something,” Dreyfus replied. “You saw that crowd. They were this far from turning into a mob.” He held up one hand, thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

“So you pointed them at me instead of you. Thanks.”

Dreyfus sat and rubbed the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and sinking into his chair.

“Listen,” he said after a moment. “You can hate me for it if you want. But if the power doesn’t come back on around here, the next thing that’s going to happen is these people are going to turn on each other. I’m trying to keep that possibility as far away as possible.”

“By turning them on me instead,” Malcolm said.

“Would you rather I let them work themselves up to riot and start killing each other?”

If that keeps Alexander and Ellie out of it, Malcolm thought, then yes, that’s what I would rather have happen.

But it was done now, so all he could do was figure out how to make it work. They had tried getting the power plants at Potrero and Pittsburg back online, they had tried rewiring old solar panels… they had tried everything. Too much time had gone by. There was no fuel to run the big power plants, and the kind of delicate equipment needed to generate power with the solar panels had long since corroded to junk. Dams were much simpler, their basic technology unchanged since the invention of the steam turbine.

If Malcolm was going to keep Dreyfus’s promise, he was going to have to figure out a way to get that dam running again. And now he was going to have to do it even though the apes’ leader had made it very clear that he didn’t want to see the humans again.

Devil and the deep blue sea, Malcolm thought. But hey, as long as he was reciting proverbial expressions, might as well add in the old saw about necessity being the mother of invention. He sighed, trying to let go of the impulse he was feeling to punch Dreyfus in the mouth. It didn’t completely go away, but throwing punches wouldn’t solve anything. Malcolm had never been much for fighting. No point in starting now.

“Okay,” he said. “I think I have an idea.”

“You do?” Dreyfus looked dubious.

“Well, I better. You made sure of that.” Malcolm paused for a moment, getting himself the rest of the way under control. Dreyfus needed him to get the power going, but he needed Dreyfus on his side, too. It wouldn’t do anyone any good for the two of them to be enemies. “Here’s what I think I can do,” he went on, and started to lay out his plan.