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

33

Koba, Grey, and Stone swung along the underside of the orange bridge. They had left at dawn, not telling Caesar because he would have forbidden what they were planning to do. They stopped and settled themselves against the great steel beams, looking down at the square building under the bridge, with heavy stone walls and small windows. Near it was a giant steel ship, its top like a table with a building and airplanes on it. The ship was damaged and partly sunk.

The night before, after nearly baring his fangs to Caesar, Koba had gone away to think. Much later, after everyone else but Grey had gone to sleep, Koba had returned to the fire pit, accompanied by Stone.

The wood parts of the guns were gone, ashes and embers. The metal parts lay near the fire, bent and dented by Maurice and Rocket. Koba touched one of them. It was still hot. He used a stick to push it away from the coals and waited patiently for it to cool. He picked it up and looked closely at it. It was a tube of black steel, with a long slot near one end. Another part of it, rectangular and with a spring, had been broken off and was in the coals somewhere.

“Without these, they are nothing,” Koba had said, quietly. Then he had noticed marks on the tube. He turned it toward the dying glow of the fire, but could not read it. Stone, he signed. Read this.

Stone took the metal tube and held it at different angles over the fire pit. He signed the letters and Koba put them together into words:

There is also a picture, Stone signed. Koba put his head close, looking hard at the part of the barrel Stone indicated… Yes. He could see it. Barely.

An anchor, with rope twisting around it. Koba thought. He had seen that sign before. He thought harder, and remembered.

Now he was looking down at that sign, visible through the streaks of rust on the side of the flat-topped ship.

So. There would be guns here.

He was committing a grave offense against Caesar. Apes together strong… but knowledge was strength. Koba was here for knowledge. He was here to keep humans from killing apes. If Caesar could not see that, then his two eyes did not see as clearly as Koba’s one.

Even so, Caesar would never agree. Neither would many of the other apes. Koba understood this. He was prepared to accept the consequences of it. The one thing he could not do was allow Caesar to make apes forget what humans would do to them, once they had the chance.

If it was up to the humans, apes would be dead. All of them.

Grey and Stone looked over at him. What do you see? Koba signed.

Koba himself saw a fenced place outside the building… he remembered the word. Strong buildings with small windows like that were called forts. Outside the fort, but inside the fence, were trucks, cars, and larger vehicles. He could see humans, but not how many.

Count the humans, he signed.

Stone nodded and looked back down to the fort. He counted and signed.

Twenty-three. More inside.

Koba pointed at large metal boxes, big enough to put trucks inside. What is in those? he asked. But neither Grey nor Stone could see.

Then we must get closer, Koba signed. They moved in, slowly. From the closest pillar they dropped to the deck of the ship. Chimps and orangutans could swim, but Koba did not know how. Even if he had, he did not trust the water swirling through the narrow gap between the bridge pillar and the fort. They crept along the railing, and then climbed a metal frame tower coming up from the top of the building on the ship’s deck. They moved slowly, to avoid drawing attention, and watched from the top of the tower.

Just inside the fence, near enough that the apes could hear their voices, two humans were talking while six others used metal bars to pry open crates.

“Bottom line,” one of the humans said. “How much of it still works.”

“We’re still taking inventory,” the other said, “but so far most of the arsenal seems functional.”

The first human nodded.

“Good. Because we may have to go up there, if Malcolm and the others don’t come back down. Deal with those animals ourselves.”

Animals, Koba thought. So be it.

As the tops came off the crates, Koba saw guns. One of the crates held guns like the ones they had burned… yet not the same. They had no wood parts. They looked new. Koba thought about this and decided they must have been in those boxes for ten winters. So the humans were not just taking care of guns they already had.

They were looking for new weapons… and finding them.

The second crate opened. Inside it were long metal tubes with bulbs at one end, shaped like the bulb of a flower just before it bloomed. What were those? On the side of the crate were letters, roughly painted over older, smaller letters.

What are RPGs? he signaled to Grey and Stone. Both shook their heads. Koba did not know either. But he intended to find out.

His focus was broken by the sound of gunfire. Many shots, in a burst. He looked across the open area to the fence line on the other side. A large warehouse stood there, built onto one side of the fort itself. The gunshots came from that direction.

The sounds drew Koba. He could not resist them.

They worked around the fence and along the steep rocky bluff separating the fort from the overgrown area at the base of the bridge. The bluff ran under the bridge and the apes followed it toward the area from which they had heard the gunshots coming.

Koba sped up when they got under the bridge again, unable to stop himself. They got to the corner of the fence and peered through it, around the side of a metal building. Two humans stood with a crate of guns, near a pile of sandbags in a narrow space between the metal wall of the building and another wall inside the fence. One of them removed a curved part of one of the guns, and put it on another. He squatted behind the pile of sandbags and aimed the gun at an old car, out under the bridge on the shore.

Grey and Stone were tense on either side of Koba. He was just still, watching as one of the humans fired many shots, at least ten, the bullets punching holes in the metal body of the car and breaking its windows.

The sound was deafening. Koba loved it.

His hands ached to hold a gun.

We must get closer, he signaled. Stone began to motion as if he might argue, but Grey grabbed his hands and pushed them down. The three apes watched again.

There was a fence in the way. How did they get closer? Koba could be patient when he had to be, especially if he could pass the time watching the two humans firing. One of them was big and hairy, wearing a black leather vest. His chin fur reached over his chest. The other was stringy, with very short hair and no beard. He looked, Koba thought, like any ape could break him in half.

Another burst of fire chewed at the car. Then the firing stopped.

“Terry!” the thin human called. “Jammed.”

The large bearded human took the jammed gun. Koba watched. He would need to know everything about the things. The bearded human, Terry, removed the curved bullet box. Then he pulled on a little lever on the gun. It wouldn’t move.

“Damn,” he said. “I’ll take it inside.”

Inside, Koba thought. He looked at the warehouse wall, seeing the door that until then had blended in. Terry opened it.

“Hold on,” the other human called. “It’s your turn to shoot, man. I don’t want to bogart the AKs.”

“Square deal, McVeigh.” Terry walked back out and took a new gun from the crate. He put the bullet box in it and pulled the little lever. The gun clicked. Koba imagined making that click. He imagined the fear on the face of the human at which he pointed the gun.

When Terry began to shoot at the car, Koba jumped from the rocks over the fence. Grey and Stone came immediately after. He motioned them to stay back, near the fence while he scooted toward the door which Terry had left open.

Terry fired and fired.

Koba got to the door and looked in.

He could not believe what he saw. Crate after crate after crate, all like the gun crates and the RPG crates. They were stacked higher than Koba’s head, higher than a human’s head. Rows and rows, hundreds of crates… thousands of guns. Koba moved into the warehouse, unable to resist. He came closer to the nearest crate and reached out.

“What the—?”

Koba spun around to see the spindly human, McVeigh, pointing a gun at him. Not the jammed one, a new one.

“Don’t you move. Understand me? I know you can talk.” He called out over his shoulder. “Terry! Get in here quick!”

Koba did not move. He showed the human no fear, but neither did he show aggression. He had not yet decided what to do.

Terry came through the door.

“Holy shit,” he said. Koba didn’t know the word holy, but he knew shit. Terry pointed his gun at the ape.

Behind the two humans he saw Grey and Stone, peering in. Koba made a small sign, as small as he could possibly make it. Back. They eased out of view, but he knew they would stay close by. Then he studied the humans again, deciding what to do next.