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

47

At the crack of the shot, Malcolm ducked, gathering Ellie and Alexander to him as he looked to see where it had come from.

“Get down!” he shouted. Kemp and Foster hit the deck, too. Who was shooting? The apes had destroyed all the guns they’d brought with them… hadn’t they?

Cornelia screamed from above them and Malcolm jerked back around in time to see Caesar fall from the platform built out from the trunk of his tree. He crashed through the brush and disappeared, the sound of his fall continuing for a terribly long time as his body tumbled down the steep slope into the ravine.

Blue Eyes stood, arms outstretched, watching. Slowly his arms dropped.

Rocket rushed past them up and up the tree. Other apes were shrieking and converging on the tree.

The gorilla, Luca, folded the wailing Cornelia into his arms as dozens of apes looked down into the ravine, searching for any sign of Caesar or whoever had fired the shot. Malcolm recognized some of them. There was one of Koba’s closest apes, the gray one, climbing up from the other side of the tree to join the search.

Blue Eyes spotted something and jumped from the tree down onto a rock outcropping below. From behind them came a fresh burst of panicked shrieks. Malcolm turned to see fire spreading through several of the ape dwellings between the raised stone platform and the village gate. It was moving fast, running along the wall and through the brush. Terrified apes fled from it into the open space.

They don’t know how to fight fire, Malcolm thought. We can help—

Then another ape charged from one of the dwellings and vaulted up onto the slab of stone, where he stood with the ape commandments behind him. In the smoke it took Malcolm a moment to recognize him, but when he did, he knew they were in trouble.

Uh-oh, he thought. One-Eye. Koba.

Pacing to the front edge of the stone slab, Koba raised his arms and roared, “Humans kill Caesar!”

“What?” Ellie said. “We didn’t—”

It’s a coup, Malcolm thought. It had to be. Carver didn’t have a rifle and nobody else in the Colony knew where the ape village was. But there was no way to tell the apes that at the moment.

Blue Eyes came through the smoke then, holding a rifle over his head. In his other hand, he held Carver’s cap. The apes parted before him as he made his way to the stone slab, sobbing without tears. Koba seized the rifle and raised it for all the apes to see. The fire still spread—it had caught on the other side of the village, leaping the dirt path on a breeze coming up from the ravine.

“You see?” Koba roared. “You see!” He pointed the rifle at the flames. “And now they take our home… with fire!”

The assembled apes erupted in primal screeches, with an undertone of basso roars from the gorillas. All eyes were on Koba, but Malcolm knew that wouldn’t last. He linked hands with Alexander and Ellie.

Maurice leaned in close to Malcolm.

“Run,” he said.

Malcolm didn’t need to be told twice.

Koba stood before his apes. His apes. He held the rifle over his head and shook it, rousing them to a greater frenzy. Now was the time to unleash them.

He looked across the stone slab, but the humans were gone. Turning, he searched the village, and saw them, keeping low, running through the fire. He screamed, the sound piercing the rest of the apes’ screeching, and pointed. A group of apes charged off after the humans, who were already through the gate.

Koba signed to Grey.

Females and children go down to the woods and stay. All others will follow me!

Grey started relaying the orders to other apes as Koba returned his focus to the assembly.

“Come!” he growled. “We fight! We fight… for Caesar!”

Over the roar of the flames came the renewed shrieking of the apes.

Fight for Caesar! Fight for Caesar!

Koba turned to Blue Eyes, who stood with his head down. Koba laid a hand on his shoulder. Blue Eyes looked up and Koba slid his hand around to the back of Blue Eyes’ head. It was the gesture of a father toward a son. Blue Eyes hesitated. Then he reached around to cup the back of Koba’s head.

Yes, thought Koba. I am your father now. I am father to all apes. He looked at the burning village. Groups of females and young moved up past Caesar’s tree to the open field beyond, where they would climb down into the woods. War parties massed together at the other end of the village, beyond the flames, waiting for their leader.

Fight for Caesar!

It was time to end the human threat.

The five humans ran for their lives into the night, getting off the path as soon as the terrain permitted and cutting down into the woods. Behind them, they heard the crackling in the branches—the sound of apes pursuing them. Their only hope was to get somewhere and hide. They couldn’t outrun apes, and the faster they moved, the sooner their sounds would give them away.

Just down the slope from the main path, beyond the totem gate, the ground gave way underneath them and they tangled their feet in dislodged vines. The shrieking of the apes was getting closer fast. Malcolm got Ellie loose and saw that Alexander was scooting farther down the slope, to where it leveled out in a small bowl. Ellie moved after him, and Malcolm saw where they were going.

He followed, making a beeline for a jumble of fallen trees, probably pushed together by a long-dead work crew on a job clearing the old road to the dam. He and Ellie and Alexander crawled under the pile, scraping through rotten wood and spongy masses of loam. Malcolm waited for Foster and Kemp to join them, but they were gone.

Had they split off in another direction? Had the apes caught them?

There was nothing he could do, in either case. They hunkered down as the sound of the apes grew closer, louder… overwhelming. This was more than the initial search party. This was hundreds of apes, stampeding along the ground, shaking the fallen trees as they leaped onto and over them. A storm of leaves fell from the forest canopy as hundreds more surged down the ravine. The three humans froze, not breathing, until at last the wave passed.

In the silence they could hear the fire in the ape village.

It was a long time before any of them dared to speak. Ellie was first.

“What do we do now?” she asked, very quietly.

At first Malcolm didn’t answer. He had no idea.