Battle for the Planet of the Apes - Gerrold David. Страница 17

She looked up at Caesar, tears streaming down her cheeks, and she could barely speak. “He’s . . . hurt, Caesar,” she sobbed. “Horribly.”

Caesar’s knees gave way under him. He sank to the ground beside her. He felt weak and wobbly; there was an icy, sinking feeling in his stomach, and the world seemed to be shredding into little bits.

Slowly, he reached his hand out and gently touched his son, trying to discover how badly he was hurt.

There were a few apes and humans standing around, more arriving every moment. Doctor pushed through them, coming up to kneel beside Lisa and Cornelius. She looked tenderly at Lisa, “May I . . .?” she asked. Lisa nodded, almost imperceptibly.

At first Doctor didn’t touch the little ape; he was so broken and pathetic. She had to determine what had caused his injury. She saw the broken tree branch, and that made her look up into the tree. The top of it was stark, and broken; the jagged break a clawlike silhouette against the moonlit clouds.

Doctor bit her lip. She touched Cornelius now with gentle hands. Her voice was very soft amidst the murmur of apes and humans. “I think we’d better make a litter and carry him home.”

As she rose and turned away, her face was marked with hopelessness. Caesar and Lisa didn’t see it, and when Doctor turned back, her expression was more controlled. “I need some branches and a couple of shirts,” she said and moved out to start picking some up.

MacDonald began picking up branches too. One branch in particular. He examined it closely.

His eyes narrowed. The break was too clean. Too sharp. There were hack marks in the wood.

Beneath him were the red embers of a campfire. The fire had been hurriedly and not completely extinguished. MacDonald kicked at them thoughtfully, suspiciously. He looked up again at the tree and frowned.

Behind him, the apes began to carry Cornelius home.

SEVEN

Lisa sat, almost in a trance, beside Cornelius’ bed. Caesar sat nearby, his face in his hands. On the bed, Cornelius tossed and moaned.

Doctor stepped into the room. She sat down beside Cornelius, examined him, took his pulse, and tried to look like she was doing something helpful. As she rose to leave the room, Lisa followed her.

The chimpanzee touched the woman’s arm. “Tell me the truth,” she said calmly.

Lisa looked up at Doctor. Her face was so open and so trusting. Doctor said slowly, “He’s all . . . broken up inside.” Her throat tightened as she went on. “Even if we had a hospital . . .” She tried to finish the sentence, but couldn’t. The words wouldn’t come.

Lisa accepted it. Her large brown eyes remained clear, her manner firm. She touched Doctor’s cheek gratefully. Doctor returned the touch. There was love and understanding between them.

Then the moment was over, and Lisa was turning sadly back to her son’s room.

“Will you tell Caesar?”

Lisa stopped. “No. Not yet.” She wore a strange little smile. “He still believes he can change the future.” She went in to her husband and her child. She walked like a queen, determined and erect.

Far off, across the desert, the ruined city was coming to life. Ghouls that once were men were again walking the earth. Like the dead returning to life, like corpses climbing out of their graves, they were an army of living dead, echoes of a savage past.

Ghost trucks. Ghost uniforms. Ghost weapons. An ancient jeep and a mutant driver. A 105mm recoilless rifle, rusty and corroded, dangerous to fire, mounted on the back of the vehicle. Ammunition, cases of it, stacked around the mountings.

A troop carrier truck with torn and sagging canvas hanging on its sides. Shapeless men in shapeless uniforms. Red goggles, high black hats, scarred faces. Gleaming guns.

Motorcycles, several of them. Battered and dirty. Sputtering motors, loose, rattling chains, grinding gears.

A school bus. Incongruous. Listing to one side. Covered with dirt and dust.

A sagging black Cadillac from an unremembered year. Tail fins. Shattered rear window. Dented grill. Dirt.

Troops. Unable to bear light. Goggles, glasses, protective visors. Uniforms—not only military but postal, doorman, police. Weapons—rifles, pistols, shotguns, clubs, scythes, hoes, machetes.

Radio messages: “Keep all emergency channels open.”

“Yes, Mr. Kolp. All emergency channels open.”

“Remember, Alma. Remember our signal.”

“Yes, Mr. Kolp.” A sigh. “I remember.”

And motion. A sense of direction. Imperceptible at first, then a nudge, a gesture, a step, a movement. An order: “Let’s get moving!” A gathering of energy, a beginning of a feeling, a flowing, building wave, a surging crashing vector of savagery.

Explosion of action! Motorcycles were stamped to life. Engines coughed, then caught, then roared. The caverns smelled of carbon monoxide. The old metal came alive, sputtering, clattering, and banging. The walls echoed with mounting excitement and noise—shouting, screaming, rumbling, battering, moving, climbing waves of energy roaring upward, out of the tunnels, out of the city!

And into the cold, cold desert. The night was black, the sky speckled with stars. Clouds of choking dust, clogging sand, slogging troops. The night was filled with the clatter of motors. The old engines choked and stuttered and missed, coughed and gasped and occasionally died, then coughed again and lumbered magically back to life.

An army of Lazaruses, they marched across the cold, glassy sand, a rag-tag gaggle of black-clad zombies. The vengeance of a dead city advancing toward the apes.

The sun peeked over the horizon behind them and began climbing up into the sky.

The desert began to warm up.

Within hours the glaring sun and the hot, reflecting sand had begun to take their toll. The desert heat was lethal.

The mutants sweated in their shabby uniforms, and the smell of their unwashed bodies was incredible. They moved in a cloud of stench that heralded their coming for miles, a stench of carbon monoxide, sweat, excrement, and decay.

Their vehicles limped across the desert. The engines rattled and popped, and occasionally one would pull out of the column and chug to a painful stop. When that happened—and it happened often—the mutants would abandon it, sorting themselves out into the remaining trucks and cars and jeeps.

Kolp raged and swore. He cursed and railed and lashed out at his men. Kolp was their fear, their anger, the fiery red hatred of a lumbering black beast.

The beast went rolling on.

The first apes to see the mutant army were two of Aldo’s gorillas out on patrol. They were concealed behind a sand dune, staring across the desert, when they made the sighting. “Ah,” grunted one, “look there.” He passed a spyglass to the other.

“Humans!” growled the other. He snorted contemptuously at their trucks. “They’d move faster on foot.”

The gorillas laughed.

The first gorilla pointed to the head of the advancing column. One of the black-clad figures, far in advance of the rest, had stopped to tinker with his stalled motorcycle.

The second gorilla made a noise in his throat. “Let’s show them, huh?” He drew his sword and scrambled over the dune. Keeping low, ducking between the piled sweeps of sand, he ran toward the unsuspecting soldier.

His boots pounded across the desert floor. His eyes narrowed with purpose; his nostrils flared with determination. At the last moment he uttered a throaty scream of triumph. The man just had time to look up curiously.

The gorilla came charging down on him, hacking viciously at him with his sword as he had been taught by General Aldo. The man didn’t even have time to scream—he just grunted. He crumpled slowly, a startled expression on his face.