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

55

Malcolm drove over the bridge and saw smoke coming from the Colony. As they approached the checkpoint, a man with a rifle came out of the shack and flagged them down. Malcolm debated. They needed to know what was going on, how bad things were in the city, so they could make the right choice about what to do to help Caesar. The problem was that if things were very bad, they couldn’t be seen with an ape.

Behind the guard came a group of armed men. They looked ragged and exhausted.

“Don’t stop,” Ellie said.

She was right. Malcolm didn’t accelerate, but neither did he brake. He drove right through the checkpoint. As they passed the sentry, he waved wildly at them.

“What’re you doing?” he shouted. “You gotta turn around, it’s not safe! Hey!”

Malcolm ignored him, avoiding eye contact. If they recognized him, they would get word to Dreyfus if they could. If not, then it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting Caesar taken care of without exposing him to a bunch of panicking men with guns.

He glanced back at the chimpanzee, who seemed to be holding on, and then flinched as he heard a burst of gunfire from behind them. In the truck’s side mirror he saw the humans dodging into defensive positions at the checkpoint as a band of armed apes swung up onto the bridge from its underside.

“Oh my God,” Ellie said. She was turned around and could see the battle through the back window on the truck’s cap. Alexander was watching, too. The apes peppered the checkpoint with focused and disciplined fire, as if they’d been shown how to do it. It was an incredible sight. Malcolm hit the gas and got the hell out of there, racing off the bridge and down onto the Presidio Parkway.

“The hospital’s out,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of the area.”

“Where are we going to go?” Ellie asked. She was still looking back up at the bridge.

“I don’t know,” Malcolm responded. He had a thought as he saw Divisadero coming up, and dragged the truck into a too-fast right turn. “Maybe Pacific Heights.”

“Pacific Heights?”

“Nobody goes up there since the quake. There were gas leaks, fires…nothing to loot up there, either, unless you wanted to collect expensive furniture and contemporary art.”

“I see your class consciousness survived the Simian Flu,” Ellie said. One of the things Malcolm loved about her was the unpredictability of her sense of humor.

In the back of the truck, there was a dry gasp as Caesar tried to speak. They all heard it. Malcolm kept his eyes on the road. As they climbed into Pacific Heights, cracks in the road became chasms. He cut around onto side streets, looking for a place where they might be able to stop and do a emergency surgery on a chimp to stop the other chimps from killing all of their fellow humans.

Just another day in post-Simian Flu San Francisco.

“What?” Ellie asked. “What is it, Caesar?”

Caesar took a breath, then spoke, slowly and painfully. As he did, Malcolm started to see the outlines of a plan.

They had found nearly a hundred humans hiding in City Hall. Apes were now driving all of them across the plaza, where other humans stood under guard. The hunt was going well—Koba thought he had found most of them… and they had not killed any more than they had to.

He stood on a balcony outside the office for the city’s leader. At the edge of the balcony was a flag, torn to rags and flapping in the wind that also brought the smell of smoke from the human settlement. MAYOR was the word on the door. Maybe Koba was mayor now. He watched as the guards drove the humans in a single group, away to a place where they could be held and watched while he decided what to do with them.

It would be simple to kill them. Koba wanted to. But he thought it would be smarter to learn what they knew first, to use them so he could understand what they did in the city, and how they used the power that turned on the lights. Then, when he had learned everything they knew, that would be the time to kill them.

Behind him, the office door opened. Koba turned to see a group of his apes bringing in Rocket and Maurice. Maurice did not resist. He was not the kind of ape to fight, especially when he could not win. Rocket thrashed and raged in the grip of two other chimps. When he saw Koba, he snarled.

“You… kill… my son!”

Yes, Koba thought. He had. Rocket was stupid. He had challenged Caesar long ago, before the apes had been led to freedom. He had suffered at human hands like the rest. But when Caesar decided to make the apes weak by letting humans grow strong, Rocket had stayed loyal to him. Caesar’s weakness had killed many apes, Koba thought. Every ape who had died in fire, or from a human bullet, was Caesar’s fault.

So it was also Rocket’s fault.

Koba bared his teeth in a grin. He had learned a new word and wanted a use it.

“Your son…” he said. “A traitor. Like father.”

He nodded to the apes, who dragged Rocket and Maurice away. Rocket screeched all the way out of the building. Maurice never made a sound. Of the two of them, Koba thought Maurice was more of a threat. His patience made him dangerous. But neither of them would be a danger to him for long.