With titanic effort, the ape restrained himself while the Colonel lingered tauntingly before him, until it was obvious that he had made his point. He brusquely dismissed Preacher and Red, who led Caesar back down to the yard. The chill of the night came as a shock after the shelter of the Colonel’s lair. An unhappy Preacher shook his head as soon as they were out of earshot, and muttered, “Didn’t I tell you not to agitate him? That was not smart, man…”
Caesar was not a man, but he accepted the remark in the spirit in which it was intended. Alone among the Colonel’s followers, Preacher still seemed to have a spark of goodness and compassion in him. Caesar felt a twinge of sympathy for the young soldier, who reminded him, to some degree, of the best humans he had encountered in his life: good, caring individuals like Will and Caroline and Malcolm and Ellie. Glancing back at Red, Caesar lowered his voice.
“If this battle is coming,” he told Preacher, “you should leave while you still can.”
“Leave?” Preacher stopped and stared at Caesar. “What are you talking about?”
Caesar addressed him gently. “You are not like him.”
Preacher reacted as though he had been slapped. His voice took on a harsher edge.
“He was right, you do think he’s sick, don’t you?” he accused Caesar. “You’re just like them. He’s not crazy. The world’s gone crazy. And he’s the only one with the vision to get us through this. He sacrificed everything for us. You can’t judge him. Who are you to judge him?”
The soldier’s face flushed with anger.
“I was trying to give you a heads-up, keep you out of his way. I don’t even know why. But if you think you and I have some sort of relationship… that you’re gonna give me, what, advice? You can disavow yourself of that notion right fucking now.”
Preacher’s virulent response stunned Caesar—and disappointed him.
Not like Will, he realized. Or Malcolm.
Preacher gestured with his crossbow, sneering at the disillusioned ape. Whatever compassion he’d displayed had evaporated completely. Or maybe it had never really run as deep as Caesar had let himself hope.
“C’mon, kong,” Preacher snarled.
21
Rocket growled under his breath as, through the binoculars, he watched Red and an armed human march Caesar past the soldiers’ barracks, where the lights were going out one by one as the humans apparently retired for the evening after a long day of supervising the apes’ slave labor. Rocket wished them bad dreams and guilty consciences.
Concealed behind snow-topped boulders, the hairless chimp crouched on a ledge overlooking the camp. Maurice, bearing the human girl on his back, and Bad Ape climbed down the rocky cliff-side to join Rocket as he spied on the scene below. Worry showed on the orangutan’s face.
How is he? Maurice signed.
Rocket shook his head dolefully. Caesar didn’t look good, but at least he was still alive.
And badly in need of our help, Rocket thought.
He was not sure how they could rescue Caesar, let alone the rest of the apes, but he knew they could not do it by lurking on this ledge. They would have to go lower, to where Caesar needed them.
Rising and gesturing to the others, he started down the slope again. They set off to follow him.
Even Bad Ape.
* * *
Confined to the pen, chained to the other apes, Lake watched as Red and a human soldier brought Caesar back to the base of the platform where he had been strung up before. She was relieved to see that he was still alive, but her beaten-down spirits sank even further at the sight of Caesar, their great leader, being dragged about on a chain. He stood stoically at the bottom of the steps as the gorilla unshackled his wrists under the watchful gaze of the soldier, who was armed with a vicious-looking crossbow. She winced at the ugly welts crisscrossing Caesar’s back.
He suffers for our sake, she thought. For what little good it does.
Her fellow prisoners also pressed against the fence, watching Caesar’s ordeal. Like her, they were tired and hungry and thirsty and without hope. Caesar had tried to protest their treatment, and had briefly inspired them to stand up to the humans, but look what had become of him. Lifting his eyes, he returned their regard, taking in the sight of his people penned up like the animals they once were. The sorrowful expression on his face broke Lake’s heart.
You look weary, she signed to him.
He swept his gaze over his downtrodden people. A look of renewed determination came over his majestic features. Glancing furtively at his captors, he discreetly signed to the apes behind his back:
Do not lose hope. Some way, somehow, we will finish the journey to our new home. I will find a way to get us out of here.
Lake experienced a surge of hope, and knew that her fellow apes had to be stirred by their leader’s bold promise as well. She was too young to remember when humans had once ruled the world, back in the days when Caesar first led their people to freedom, but she remembered him saving the apes from Koba’s madness and shielding them from the humans who had been hunting them for years. Caesar had always found a way to protect them. She refused to lose faith in him now.
I believe in Caesar, she thought, just like Blue Eyes would want me to.
Over by the platform, Red finished removing Caesar’s shackles and returned the key to the human, who ordered Caesar to begin climbing the steps back up to where the cruel wooden X awaited him. Despite her confidence in Caesar, Lake wondered how he could possibly save them while roped to the cross. And how long could he truly survive the ordeal?
Weak and in pain, his shoulders slumping, Caesar started up the steps, only to lose his balance and stumble backward into the human soldier, who shoved him away forcefully, as though repulsed by the very feel of an ape body against his.
“Get off!”
The sheer disgust and anger in the human’s voice made Lake fear for Caesar’s life. She watched in terror as Red yanked violently on Caesar’s chain, dragging him away from the human and down onto the icy steps. Caesar lay there for a moment, at the mercy of his irate captors, before he slowly lifted his head and shot a furtive look at Lake and the others. Then, apparently recovering from his moment of weakness, he rose to his feet once more and continued slowly up the steps to the platform.
Lake was puzzled, not entirely sure what she had just witnessed. She couldn’t blame Caesar for stumbling; after everything the humans had done to him, she was amazed he was still standing. But what had been the meaning of that sly look he had given her? Was she missing something?
Then Caesar slipped his hand behind his back and subtly opened his hand to reveal a small metallic object hidden in his palm. Her eyes widened as she realized that it was the key to his shackles, which he must have stolen from the soldier during his “fall.” The key was on a ring, which was now looped around Caesar’s middle finger.
Lake couldn’t believe her eyes. It was hard to conceal her jubilation as she quietly pointed out the key to the other apes. A ripple of excitement spread through the prisoners, who gazed intently at Caesar as he reached the top of the platform, where his captors remained oblivious to what he had just done.
Lake kept silent, but she was hooting and doing somersaults inside. The humans thought they had beaten Caesar. They thought the apes had given up, that making an example of Caesar had broken their spirits. That killing Percy and Spear and Blue Eyes and the others had won this war.
But they were wrong.
* * *
A vast frozen expanse stretched before the unfinished wall guarding the entrance to the canyon. Large rocky outcroppings jutted up from the plain, which was bisected by obsolete railway tracks leading to a depot beyond the wall. Past rock falls had deposited a fringe of boulders at the foot of the slopes, along the edges of the expanse. The heaps of rubble helped to hide Rocket and the others as they crept down from the hills to scout the sleeping prison camp. Darkness was their ally, despite the searchlights and guard towers.
Better now than by day, Rocket thought.
Moving furtively, they snuck along the base of the huge wall until they found a gap where the construction had recently collapsed. Keeping low, they peered around the fallen rocks and timbers to spy on the camp’s interior. Anger burned inside Rocket’s chest as he saw Caesar strung up on the platform like a trophy on display and the rest of their people chained and locked up. Rocket was reminded of the cage he had once been kept in, back at the primate shelter in the city, before Caesar had freed him and the other apes. Seeing apes in cages again, after all their years of struggle and accomplishment, sickened Rocket to the core.
Never again, he vowed.
He was scoping out the sentries on the guard towers, trying to figure out the best way to slip past them and get to Caesar and the others, when the sudden clatter of pounding hoof beats, approaching from inside the camp, caused the apes to scramble away from the wall and dash across the expanse toward a mammoth outcropping about a hundred feet away. Hearts pounding, they hastily climbed the rocks, ducking for cover, as a mounted human soldier galloped out of the camp to patrol the surrounding terrain.
Rocket exhaled a sigh of relief. That had been a close call; if they had been just a little slower, they would have been spotted for sure. Along with Maurice, he peered out from behind the rocks at the heavily guarded prison camp.
How will we get in? the orangutan signed. Humans everywhere.
Rocket refused to be deterred. Must get in somehow…
He noted Bad Ape watching them anxiously, studying their finger movements in hopes of interpreting the signs. Rocket felt sorry for the illiterate ape and wondered just how much he understood. Did he have any idea what had to be done? A worried expression suggested that Bad Ape got the gist of the discussion. He tapped Maurice on the shoulder and tentatively mimicked the sign for “get in” by pointing with two fingers at the camp.
“‘In’…?” he whispered. “‘In’?”
Maurice nodded in confirmation.
“No!” Bad Ape’s eyes went wide with panic. “No go in—!”
Rocket disregarded the other chimpanzee’s warning; as far as he was concerned, they had no choice but to try to liberate Caesar and the other captive apes. But Bad Ape backed away fearfully.
“Friends!” he pleaded. “Friends! No go in! No go iiii—”
Without warning, he abruptly dropped out of sight, his hysterical voice trailing off as the ground opened up beneath him. Shocked, Rocket and Maurice rushed to where he had been standing only moments before—and found him hanging by his fingertips on the lip of a deep, dark pit that Rocket could have sworn hadn’t been there before.
What is this?
Rocket reached down and grasped Bad Ape’s forearm. Grunting, he pulled the chimp out of the pit, while hoping that more of the ground would not give way beneath them. To his relief, the snow-covered earth stayed where it was.
“Thank you, friend!” Bad Ape said when he was back on solid ground. “Thank you!”
Rocket ignored him. He was less interested in the silly chimp’s gratitude than in exploring the newly revealed pit. Squinting in the dark, he made out something in the hole and gestured for Maurice to come see.
An old rope ladder hung down the side of the pit, staked to one of the frozen dirt sides of the hole. The ladder descended into the utter blackness at the bottom of the pit. Rocket assumed that frozen leaves and branches had covered the hole until Bad Ape had inadvertently stepped on it.
Good for him, Rocket thought grudgingly.
A flicker of hope sparked inside him as he and Maurice exchanged knowing looks. The orangutan looked just as intrigued by the pit as Rocket was.
Perhaps they had found a way past the guards.
22
Whistles greeted the sunrise, jolting Caesar from what meager sleep he’d managed to obtain while hanging on the cross. To his relief, he discovered that the pilfered key was still hidden in his hand, which remained bound to one of the wooden beams making up the X. The shrill shriek of the whistles pierced his ears, adding to his woes.
Caesar felt more dead than alive. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything to eat or drink. Sometime before venturing down the cliff to find Spear and the other crucified apes? His mouth was so dry that even the dirty slush and mud puddles around the base of the platform tormented him. His empty stomach growled fiercely; he was more than just hungry, he was starving. His back still stung where Red had whipped him, over and over again; his muscles ached from hanging on the cross, his whipped back and tied wrists and ankles worst of all.
Human soldiers, responding to the whistles, banged on the bars of the pens, rousing the apes, who rose wearily to their feet to face another day of back-breaking labor upon the wall. Chained together, they were herded out of the pens into the yard. Watching helplessly from the cross, it pained Caesar to realize that they had been starved for even longer than he had. He yearned to lead them in battle against the humans, but knew he needed to bide his time. The stolen key was their only hope; he couldn’t afford to waste it on a doomed show of resistance.
Wait, he thought. Our moment will come.
The Colonel appeared on the walkway outside his watchtower. He looked down at the soldiers awaiting his commands and nodded to one of his lieutenants who signaled the other soldiers. Puzzled, Caesar watched as men approached the apes pushing wheelbarrows and toting pails. Water sloshed over the rims of the buckets as the soldiers spread out among the chain gangs, scooping out portions of what looked like horse feed and setting down the pails of water.
Caesar couldn’t believe his eyes. Could it be…?
Confused apes glanced at each other uncertainly, understandably suspicious of the humans’ intentions, until one hungry chimpanzee worked up the nerve to hold out his hands. A scowling soldier dumped a small mound of dry oats and barley into the open palms of the ape, who greedily bolted it down before anyone could take the precious food away from him.
His success set off a stampede as famished and thirsty apes shoved forward, cupping their hands to receive the unexpected bounty and gulping down water from the buckets. Their desperation tore at Caesar’s heart, even as he took pride in the fact that his people were not fighting amongst themselves for the food, as humans might have. It took more than starvation to turn apes into animals.
Lake held back, however. When a turncoat ape brought a wheelbarrow toward her and the rest of her chain gang, she signed urgently instead of helping herself:
No, no. The children first, please!
The ape shrugged and turned the wheelbarrow toward the pen holding the children, holding Cornelius. Caesar doubted that a human soldier would have heeded Lake’s plea and was grateful to her for thinking of the children first.
Blue Eyes chose well, he thought sadly. Lake would have been a fine mother to my grandchildren.
She looked across the yard to Caesar. Gratitude radiated from her eyes.
You did this, she signed.
Had he? Caesar had certainly confronted the Colonel in his tower last night, demanding that he provide the enslaved apes with food and water. The Colonel had seemed indifferent to Caesar’s arguments, but had he indeed managed to get the uncaring human to see reason?
It seemed so.
Not that Caesar was foolish enough to think that the Colonel’s change of heart had anything to do with mercy or compassion; he was under no illusions as to the man’s motives. At best, Caesar had merely reminded the Colonel that even apes could not work indefinitely without food or water.
He just wants his wall finished, Caesar realized, before his enemies arrive.
Red ascended the steps of the platform, bearing a pail of water. He paused before Caesar and looked up at the Colonel, who gazed down on them from his tower. Red slowly lifted the pail toward Caesar’s cracked, dry lips. Caesar scowled at Red, skeptical of the offering and reluctant to accept succor from the same renegade ape who had whipped him so savagely less than a day ago. But Caes
ar’s parched throat and ravaged body craved relief, so he swallowed his pride and parted his lips.
Perhaps, he thought, the Colonel intends to put me back to work as well?
Then Red tipped the bucket, spilling the precious water onto the platform before Caesar’s eyes. Anger warred with anguish as Caesar saw it splatter uselessly and drain away through the floorboards. He could practically taste it as the last few drips fell from the pail.
Red snorted at Caesar’s distress.
Caesar’s face hardened and he glared balefully at Red with bloodshot eyes. He knew, however, that this sadistic joke was not the gorilla’s idea. Lifting his eyes, he stared angrily at the Colonel, who watched in silence from his balcony before retreating back into his lair.
No work for me, Caesar guessed. Just punishment.
He held onto the hidden key, concealing it from Red.
Patience, he reminded himself.
* * *
A flashlight beam pierced the inky blackness of the forgotten underground tunnel. Maurice held the light as, grunting, Rocket cleared away more of the rubble blocking the way ahead. It was hard, laborious work, but the two apes had been at it for some time now; several yards of tunnel stretched behind them, all the way back to the bottom of the pit. Rocket shoved aside another rock, then paused to inspect their surroundings.
Looks like it caved in, he signed.
Maurice nodded in agreement. Using the flashlight, he peered past the obstruction they had just cleared. Frozen wooden planks reinforced the tunnel, which led away into darkness. A shattered kerosene lamp, which looked like military issue, rested on the floor of the tunnel, the cracked glass reflecting their beam of light. Maurice guessed that the broken lamp had been lying there a long time. No whiff of kerosene remained in the air.
It keeps going, he signed to Rocket. Wonder how far?
There was only one way to find out. Avoiding the broken shards of glass, the apes went deeper into the tunnel.
* * *
Bad Ape watched the beam of the flashlight recede down the tunnel as he fidgeted anxiously at the bottom of the pit. He was not at all convinced that exploring the tunnel was a good idea; he only descended into the pit after the other apes because he didn’t want to be left alone on the surface so close to the humans’ bad place. Glancing around nervously, he pined for the comfort and safety of his former home in the mountains. It was good to have friends again, after being alone so long, and he had wanted to help Caesar find the bad human, “the Colonel,” who had killed his child, but now Caesar was a prisoner and they were all in danger.