Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (26 page)

Clancy
, he thought.
What’s happened to her?
The email she’d sent, supposedly in secret, hadn’t been private at all. He knew that now. Someone had found out about it—and tried to kill him, very nearly doing so.

They still may succeed
, he mused. But if they had tried to kill him, had they killed Clancy, as well? Had
he
killed her, by publishing the article?

He continued watching. The scene switched instead to a fire, raging out of control. It was a quarantine center, and another case of arson by the organization identified on the screen as ‘Alpha/Omega.’

As he stared at the flames, he felt the cloud coming back over his brain. He reached for the water again, and remembered that he had knocked it over.

The images on the television hazed together, and then dimmed into darkness.

* * *

Malakai studied the map.

“This isn’t going to work,” he told Phillips. “Not as it stands.”

“Why not?” Philips demanded.

“You’re encircling the entire area, then contracting, hoping to force them all to a common point, where you can launch a concentrated strike.”

“Exactly,” Philips replied.

“It looks fine on a flat piece of paper, but there’s a vertical dimension to this. They can go
over
your line.”

“If they try, then we’ll make it rain monkeys,” Phillips said. “Shoot them out of the trees. Some may not survive the fall, but we can’t afford to be too precious.”

“Beautiful,” Malakai said. “But you’ll need three times the ground forces you have to make that work—because you have no way to know
where
they will try to punch through your line. They’ll find your weakest point, and exploit it.”

“There are only so many National Guard to go around,” Phillips noted. “We’re lucky the governor gave us
anything
, considering the shit that’s going on down in Los Angeles.”

“Then my point remains.”

“Okay, then,” Phillips snapped, “What do you suggest?”

“How many helicopters do you have?”

* * *

Later, trying to get some sleep, Malakai thought about Hans, the mercenary he had met in Uganda. He was in his thirties at that time, and the mercenary was older by two decades. They were in a camp near the Rwandan border, drinking Scotch, just as he and Clancy had done not so long ago.

And just as it had the other night, whisky loosened tongues.

Hans became a little maudlin, started talking about how horrifying the business could be. Malakai had agreed with him, but in fact nothing Hans had said made any impact on him. As far as Malakai was concerned, the man was just making whinging sounds. Being a mercenary was just a job. You did what you were
supposed to do, you got paid, and you moved on.

Don’t you feel anything?
Clancy had asked.

“There was this one village,” Hans said, his voice getting sloppy. “East of Butembo. Tiny place. It was during that whole Simba mess back in the sixties. My first job, actually. Had this real hard-ass Afrikaner boss. He told us to kill everybody. He said if we left anybody alive we would be fired, without pay.

“I doubt any of the villagers even knew what Simba was, or what communism was, or anything like that. And there we were, just shooting them. I remember this one little girl, she didn’t have a clue. But I couldn’t shoot, you know? I couldn’t. And then this kid, this skinny kid, runs up from behind me and jumps on my back. And I just—I just freaked out, you know? The next thing I knew I was hitting him in the face with the butt of my rifle, hitting him and hitting him.”

Hans rubbed his red face, then took another drink.

“Jean-Francis,” Malakai murmured.

“What?” Hans said.

“Jean-Francis,” Malakai repeated. “You know those Congolese—they’re all named Jean-Francis.”

“Right,” Hans said, tossing him a strange look. “Yeah. It’s just…” He stared at his drink.

“I guess shit happens, especially in this business,” he said.

“I guess it does,” Malakai said. He looked at Hans, and wondered if he should kill him. But when he wasn’t drinking, Hans was one of their best fighters. They were going to need him. And besides, it would be hard to do it without someone noticing, and then he would likely be executed himself. What would be the point of that?

Hans, as it happened, was killed two weeks later by a land mine. Malakai didn’t feel anything then, either.

* * *

He heard a soft knock on his door, and wasn’t too surprised to discover it was Clancy. She had what remained of the Scotch with her.

“What do you think?” she asked. “Should we finish it?”

“Sure,” he said.
I’ll play Hans again, tell you all of my sad stories
.

But she didn’t ask him to tell stories. She talked about her own life, about growing up, about her family, as if she was trying to get it all straight in her head. Eventually, though, she got quiet, and he thought she was going to leave. Instead she smiled wistfully.

“The first ape I ever saw was an orangutan,” she said. “My dad was working in Malaysia, and Mom and I went for a visit. I guess I was about seven, because Renee wasn’t born yet. We went to this place where they take orangs that have been captive or injured, and rehabilitate them back into the wild. Sort of a halfway house.

“We were on this sort of boardwalk, raised above the jungle floor. There was a feeding platform built up around a tree, and when feeding time came, the orangs came in from everywhere. And this one just dropped down next to us, and he looked right at me. We were no further apart than you and I are now. And I saw… Well, there was somebody in there, behind those eyes. A mind, and a heart, and a soul. A person. Not ‘almost human,’ but
completely
orangutan. Perfect the way he was. Except then I noticed he was missing an arm. I was told later that he’d touched an electric fence, and it basically set him on fire.”

An odd, distant look crept into her eyes.

“The thing is, whatever we do with apes—experiment on them, train them to perform, even teach them language—everything we do just keeps them from being
what they are. What they’re supposed to be. We got kicked out of a paradise, not them. Yet we feel like we have to drag them out with us. I guess misery loves company.”

She took another drink of the whisky and passed the bottle to him.

“I love orangutans,” she said, and she smiled. “They’re my favorites. They’re so deliberate…” She frowned. “I’ve told you this before, haven’t I?”

“Yes,” he said. “The zookeeper joke.”

“Am I boring you?” she asked.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I think I am,” she said. “I’m naïve, and I’m boring, and what else?”

“I think you’ve maybe had too much to drink,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Not too much.” She suddenly stood, walked over to him, and began to work the top button of his shirt.

“What on earth are you doing?” he asked.

“How long has it been, that you have to ask that?” she said, undoing the second button.

“I’m twice your age,” he protested. “No, you’re more than twice my age,” she said. “Are you saying that’s the line you won’t cross? That’s the
one thing
you find objectionable?”

“No,” he said. “I just didn’t think—”

“Just shut up,” she said, “I want this, and you’re what I’ve got.” She was trying to sound flip, he realized, but then he saw it in her eyes, heard it in the quiver of her voice. She was terrified, and trying to be brave. Again, his respect for her intelligence rose a notch.

He had that one little glance before she bent and began kissing his neck.

She was right about one thing. It had been a while—a long while. But he hadn’t forgotten, and his body certainly
hadn’t. Her skin was soft, and as smooth as glass. No scars, anywhere. She gripped him as if they had been together all of their lives, and at times he actually found himself embarrassed at both her willingness and her dominance. It left him panting, wishing he
was
younger, wishing he was someone else.

When it was done, he wasn’t certain what to do, but she snuggled into his arms. He just lay there, feeling his arm go to sleep.

“Thanks,” she after a bit. “I know you weren’t that into it, so thanks.”

“No,” Malakai said. “It was… I am very satisfied, believe me. It was such a surprise, you know?”

“Yeah,” she said, and she chuckled. “The look on your face was priceless.”

“Are we ‘hanging out’ now?”

“No,” she said. “I think this was just a one-time deal. But I enjoyed it. And I made you feel something.”

“I suppose so,” he said.

“Score one for me.”

He thought she was falling asleep, but then she murmured something.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Did you love her?” she said again. “Solange?”

He took a deep breath and let it out, again wishing he had a cigarette.

“Yes,” he said. “Very much.” “And your son.”

He felt his throat constrict. He nodded.

“I was in the bush,” he said. “Hunting chimps. My uncle wasn’t with me, that time. He had an infected leg, and so stayed home with Solange and my boy. There was a rebellion, of sorts. Bands of Hutu men, killing every Tutsi they could get their hands on. This was long before
the genocide in Rwanda. It was a sort of warm-up to it.” He stopped, then continued. “So they killed my parents-in-law, and my uncle who was, of course, not Tutsi, and Solange. And the boy. They had been dead a day when I got back.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It taught me something,” he said. “It taught me you can’t lose something unless you have it.”

“That’s a terrible lesson,” she said. “All the more because it makes sense to me. Last week it wouldn’t have. Now it does.”

She kissed him on the cheek and sat up. She reached for her shirt.

“I talk too much after sex,” she said. “I know this. It’s one reason…” She trailed off. “Never mind. Look, I’ll let you get some sleep.”

He caught her hand.

“Unless you very much object, I would like you to stay for a while,” he said.

“Well,” she said after a few breaths. “Maybe for a little while.”

She lay back down and spooned against him, and in what seemed a short time, she was asleep.

Dreyfus rubbed his eyes and closed his laptop. Then he reached for the television remote.

There was little there to give him hope. All of the rough patches of the world were heating up. Serbs and Croats, Hutus and Tutsis, Shi’ites and Sunnis and any of another fifty ethnic and religious groups blamed one another for the plague that was killing them all. Minority groups in eastern China were rising against Beijing and being brutally punished for it.

Indonesia, which had the fewest reported cases of the Simian Flu, had closed its borders and was violently enforcing the isolation. Christians were being burned alive in Egypt and Muslims were being beaten to death in Tennessee. The Ganges was aflame from a chemical spill near the city of Varanasi. Some people were taking it as a religious sign of some sort and were immolating themselves in the burning river.

He absorbed all of that for a few minutes and then switched to a local channel.

He found himself regarding Claire Sang, the Channel Five anchor. The newsroom set was poorly lit, and
everything about it looked messy. Sang looked as if she hadn’t slept in days, and no amount of makeup could hide the dark circles under her eyes.

“We have breaking news,” she said. “Word has come in that detainees in the Haight Ashbury quarantine zone have broken through police lines. Many have armed themselves with police firearms, and have begun moving through town, setting fire to buildings as they go. The police and the National Guard have been able to provide little resistance to this armed and highly dangerous mob.”

The screen cut to shaky, hand-held images as she talked, showing hundreds of dirty, desperate looking men and women walking, running, and, in some cases, crawling through the streets. Fires leant an unearthly glow to the scene, and the patter of gunfire rang somewhere off-camera.

Dreyfus felt as if the floor was dropping out from under him.

“No, no, no,” he said. “I’ve got to get down there.”

“No you don’t,” Patel told him.

“We have to stop this!”

“No sir, with all due respect, you’ve put yourself in the path of too many of these things already.” Patel didn’t move, and he looked as if he was ready to stop Dreyfus, as well—physically, if necessary. “You aren’t running for anything anymore. You’re mayor now. The city is your responsibility. That –” he gestured at the screen “– is not the only thing that demands your attention.

“We’re up to two hundred thousand dead. Two more hospitals have been torched by these Alpha/Omega assholes. That joker in South San Francisco says they’ve officially seceded from California or the Union—which one isn’t clear—and claims they’ll shoot to kill anyone who crosses into their ‘sovereign territory.’ Meanwhile, city services are down everywhere.”

“I know that,” Dreyfus muttered, massaging his forehead. “Don’t you think I know all that?”

He leaned back in his chair.

“Ah, God,” he murmured. “What am I going to do?”

* * *

Malakai woke before the dawn. He was alone, so he dressed and went outside, filling his lungs with the cool mist that was in the air, knowing that at last something was happening. Something was moving. A wind was coming.

* * *

After Solange and the boy died, Malakai became very still inside. He left Burundi and found work as a mercenary, and he did that work for decades. The faces of the dead became more familiar to him than the faces of the living.

And at last, one day, he found himself back in the Virunga Mountains, along with some of the men with whom he worked. Zaire had become the Democratic Republic of Congo again, and rebel groups had been forced into the mountains. It was different, though—the mountains with their gorillas had become a national park. It was illegal to kill the beasts, and there were rangers to enforce such laws, at least in theory.

Some, he knew, poached the beasts themselves.

But rangers were in short supply, as various forces from the Congo war hid and fought each other in the mountains. Malakai and his mercenaries were one such force. Retreating from a defeat in the lowlands, they were trying to cross into Rwanda, where hopefully the rest of their company would be waiting for them.