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

59

Maurice sat in the stinking bus and waited to die. That was the only thing he could see Koba deciding to do. He would not free them without a pledge of loyalty. Maurice and Rocket had already refused to make such a pledge. The other apes in the bus had either done the same, or had been imprisoned because Koba suspected them.

He watched out the window that gave him a view of the tower over the human settlement. They had opened the bus windows to let out some of the heat, and the sound of gunfire had been coming from the top of the tower all day. Koba and his friends were shooting just for the pleasure of shooting, enjoying their power. Maurice had also seen apes pass by carrying a box of bottles he remembered from the weapon storehouse. Maurice was old, and had seen many of the bad sides of human behavior. He knew what happened when humans drank from those bottles.

He guessed that the same would happen to apes.

Koba was moving the rest of the humans into the pen. He wanted all of them captured before the female apes and children came down from the mountains.

Maurice watched the guards sign to each other, passing the word that they would arrive that evening. Some of them had already reached the far end of the orange bridge. Maurice thought it was strange that Koba—who hated humans so fiercely—was so quick to move apes into the human city. He preferred Caesar’s way. Humans could have their cities. Apes could have the mountains.

But Caesar was dead, and soon Maurice would be, too. He sighed.

A fresh group of human captives arrived, driven violently by apes into the tunnel. Some of the humans fought, and the apes took every chance to beat them violently until they were still. Then the bodies, living or not, were dragged in and left inside the fence. The guards locked the gates again, and Maurice looked away, disgusted. They were animals.

Something caught his attention on the rear window of the bus and he looked over at it. His eyes widened and he immediately looked back to the other prisoners to see if any of them had noticed. They had not. All of them sat, staring out the windows or sleeping, resigned to whatever Koba would do.

Maurice looked back at the window. There, drawn with a finger in the grime, was a circular sign. Caesar’s sign. He had seen Caesar draw it many times. Once he had asked him what it meant, and Caesar had explained that it reminded him of his home. Maurice had wanted to know more, but the sadness on Caesar’s face had stopped him from asking.

Now the sign was before him. It was a message. But from whom?

He nudged Rocket, who had barely moved all day. Rocket looked back, and the despair on his face was wiped away by surprise… then hope. They both searched out the windows, looking for some sign of who might have done this. Some of the other apes saw them looking, and they too started looking without knowing what it was they were supposed to find.

Luca grunted. Maurice looked to him and saw him point at the mirror on the side of the bus. In the tall rectangle, Maurice saw a reflection of Blue Eyes. Astonished, he turned to look out the back window again, and then he spotted Blue Eyes’ hiding place. It was between two abandoned cars where the guards could not see him. Blue Eyes raised a finger to his lips.

Luca nodded.

Maurice nodded, too.

Caesar awoke again in darkness. He looked out through one of the vine-covered windows and saw from the stars it was still early in the night. He could not sleep. His wound throbbed, but he knew now that Ellie had saved his life. He would survive. His strength would return.

He hoped it would return soon enough.

With great effort he moved through the house, past the bedroom where Malcolm and Ellie were asleep, and the other room where Will’s father had once slept. Alexander was in Will’s father’s bed, mouth slack, a flashlight beam dimming as its battery ran out. In its beam Caesar saw the bright boxes of the picture books Malcolm’s son loved. Maurice had been interested in them, too. Caesar wondered if Maurice still lived, or if any of the apes on Koba’s prison bus still lived.

Quietly he pulled down the folding stairs that led up to the attic. He climbed them as a human would, not daring to test his muscles yet. In the attic he found everything, almost as it had been the last time he was there, ten winters before. His drawings. The puzzle of the figure Will called the Statue of Liberty, in a place called New York. Even the Lucas Tower puzzle Will had used to test his medicine that made apes smarter.

Caesar smiled over all of it, but sadly, thinking back to what had started his life on this path. Will’s father, lost in the fog of his old age, trying to drive the neighbor’s car. The neighbor threatening Will’s father, and Caesar coming to his defense. The only act of violence Caesar had ever committed on a human was biting the neighbor’s finger. The taste of blood had awakened something in him—an animal hunger.

After that, he had shut it away forever.

Koba felt that hunger, and embraced it.

Caesar saw his old chessboard. Then he thought of the chessboard in his tree, up in the mountains. Was it still there? Where were Cornelia and the baby? He moved one of the pieces forward, two spaces as Will had taught him… then he noticed Will’s video camera, still sitting on the table. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands, remembering how it worked.

He opened the side of it to expose the screen and pressed the button to turn it on.

Light came from the screen and the camera beeped. On the screen a red rectangle flashed. Caesar knew that meant the battery would die soon. He pressed the sideways triangle and stared as an image came to life.

Maurice waited. It was almost time. Night had fallen and the guards were whooping and screeching at more human captives, forcing them into the tunnel. He looked up toward Luca, who was watching the mirror.

Luca nodded.

All of the apes reached up and grabbed the bar that ran along the side of the bus over the seats. They lifted themselves up and swung, crashing their feet into the wall and pushing off. The bus rocked to the side, then back. The apes rode its momentum, swinging back as the bus groaned on rusty springs, and then on the return swing smashing into the wall again. They swung a third time, a fourth, and with each swing the bus rocked a little farther.

Between his feet Maurice saw that two of the guards had noticed. The others were too busy with the human captives. The pair of chimps left their post at the fence and came toward the bus. If the prisoners didn’t get out soon, they would be at the mercy of the guards’ guns.

Maurice growled, and the rest of the prisoners took up the sound, roaring and shrieking as together they swung back one last time and drove into the side of the bus, using all their weight.

With a loud groan the bus tipped onto its side. The two approaching apes had made a fatal mistake. They came too close, and were crushed as it toppled onto them. Their dying screeches were drowned out by the crash and the noise from inside.

Maurice heard a thump on the top of the bus and looked up to see Blue Eyes forcing the door open. The prisoners climbed out, still bound at the wrists. Maurice was the last one out and he stood on the bus, amazed at what had happened. Perhaps he would live after all. He looked back at the human pen, and was amazed all over again.

The humans, taking advantage of the guards’ distraction, had forced the gate and were stampeding out of the tunnel. They flooded the plaza, running around both sides of the bus and scattering into the dark in every direction. The three ape guards fired their weapons, but then they were trampled.

Maurice turned to Blue Eyes. He made a circular gesture with one finger. Blue Eyes made a fist. He had a bag over his shoulder and he took a knife from it. It took him only a minute to cut the bonds while the humans kept pouring out of the tunnel, and the shrieks of alarmed apes echoed through the city. The sound was answered from the direction of the tower.

They had gained themselves a little time, Maurice thought. But not much. He looked to Blue Eyes and signed.

Where do we go?

Follow me, Blue Eyes signed.

This was a different Blue Eyes, Maurice thought. He was born of Caesar, but had seemed to want to be Koba instead. Now he was Caesar’s son again, strong and good. Maurice was happy to follow him.