Conquest of the Planet of the Apes - Jakes John - Страница 41

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Up came the muzzles. Fired, they gave off a loud popping sound. Twists of smoke marked the passage of the projectiles they discharged. One landed six yards ahead of Caesar’s force, and began to spread an acrid, choking cloud.

Within seconds, more of the projectiles exploded on the pavement. The entrance to the boulevard was filled with billowing gas. Caesar signaled a half-block retreat.

All around him, apes began to stagger. They seized their throats, dropped their weapons, uttered hoarse, barking coughs. Caesar’s own eyes stung. His throat burned. This could turn into a rout . . .

A huge gorilla near him doubled over, started to flee. Viciously, Caesar grabbed the gorilla’s arm to hold him, waved for attention with his other hand.

With all the power he could summon, he roared, “Watch!”

As the terrified gorilla and his comrades blinked watering eyes, Caesar inhaled deeply. He held his breath a few seconds, then exhaled and pointed around the group.

“DO!”

Once more he drew in a breath tinged with the debilitating gas. He grew dizzy—but saw that the apes were following his instructions. He spun and plunged ahead of them, straight into the center of the clouds settling at the end of the boulevard.

Behind him, he heard the apes moving.

Just a few at first. Then more. Now he was into the thick of the cloud, unable to see. His chest burned. He kept running—and burst into the open, out of the worst of it.

The astonished policemen began to break formation, retreat, grope for their side-arms as more and more apes came rushing through the clouds. Several apes staggered, fell. But most kept their cheeks swelled up, imitating their leader.

“Kill them!” Caesar screamed. “Kill them all!”

The apes closed on the confused policemen, pistols exploding, knives flashing. As Caesar drew in another breath of the tainted air, he saw a pathetic sight: an orangutan lifting a gas mask from a downed officer and clumsily attempting to fit it over his own face. Caesar’s brief smile was sad.

Some of the police kept firing gas charges, but the effect was less devastating now, because the officers had scattered to various points around the plaza. Caesar stepped over a man whose ripped-open throat gushed blood, began seizing hairy arms again, gathering a strike force of a dozen, two dozen, with shouts, barks, gestures. At the same time he fought off the bite of the fumes, inhaling only in relatively unclouded air.

When he had enough apes with pistols and knives, he left the rest to pursue the knots of men with gas rifles. His face a bloodied, grimy mask, his green uniform torn to pieces, he led the picked band toward the head of the stairs to the Command Post.

EIGHTEEN

The stairs descended to a landing, doubled back—and Caesar leaped aside as a gun crashed from below.

The slug tore chips of masonry from the wall inches from his head. At the bottom of the stairs, he saw two policemen shoulder to shoulder, pistols aimed.

Caesar launched himself down the stairs in a leap, hearing another pistol explode. Something hissed past his head an instant before he struck the pair, knocking them down.

Caesar hit with such force that he was momentarily dazed. Face contorting, the nearest policeman untangled himself, whipped up his pistol, pointed it straight at Caesar’s forehead. Caesar made an abortive roll to the side. Too late, he thought, as the policeman’s finger whitened on the trigger . . .

A hairy hand holding a cleaver came slashing over. The blade impacted the policeman’s skull just as he fired. The bullet ricocheted off the ceiling. The policeman sprawled out with the cleaver buried in grisly bone and tissue. Blood ran down his nose and into his sightless eyesockets.

Panting, Caesar clambered to his feet. Other apes were swarming onto the second policeman, snuffling over him, stamping, tearing, their hands and feet smeared red. Caesar darted along the concrete tunnel—and uttered an exclamation of fury.

Massive doors or dull gray steel had rolled shut to seal off the Command Post entrance.

As the bloodied apes formed up behind him, Caesar couldn’t hold back a cry of frustration. He stormed up and down in front of the doors, hunting desperately for some way to open them.

All he discovered was a metal box imbedded in the wall. It was stencilled with the legend Aux.

He opened the cover, peered at a tangle of wiring inside. Meaningless.

In a rage, he seized a pistol from a gorilla, raised it in both hands and began to fire into the wiring.

Sparks hissed, green and yellow. Insulation smoldered. The gun bucked in Caesar’s hand as he shot again, again . . .

Flames erupted briefly from the wiring. An acrid stink filled the air. Caesar flung the hot, empty pistol away and beat his fist against the concrete with another growl of frustration.

The steel doors remained shut.

Caesar leaned his head against the wall. Behind him, the gruntings of the apes changed pitch as they sensed his failure.

The darkness was sudden, claustrophobic—as every light and monitor in the Command Post went out simultaneously.

MacDonald whirled toward the center of the vast room, bawling, “What’s wrong with the secondary generator? Cut it in manually, for God’s sake!”

Then he heard Governor Breck’s shriek: “Open the doors—we’re trapped!”

“No, wait!” MacDonald yelled, as humans and animals began to mingle their voices in a confused, terrified clamor. He stumbled against bodies, felt human flesh, ape hair. He fought through the tangle toward a board carrying the reverse power controls. He located it, fumbled his hands across it in the dark till he found the right lever and threw it over.

The monitors and lights came back up. Then MacDonald saw the worst: Governor Jason Breck, pushing aside the supervisor who manned the door control.

He’s panicked, MacDonald thought, already running to the governor’s side. But he knew that panic did not adequately describe Breck’s state. The man was crumbling mentally under the almost unthinkable devastation being wrought on his city, his personal domain of power . . .

And now he was terrified for his own safety.

Shouting warnings, MacDonald was still too late by three steps. He heard the grinding of the machinery—and watched the glassy-eyed Breck charge for the stairs as the unseen doors rolled open.

Suddenly Breck stumbled, fell to his knees. He rose again—to run back toward the center of the Command Post, his face ghastly with the understanding of what his own uncontrollable fright had unleashed.

Apes. Armed apes. Caesar at their head, pouring down the stairs . . .

We are the instruments of our own destruction, MacDonald thought, listening to the howls that signaled the end.

A few supervisors attempted to surround and protect the governor. One, using a truncheon, dodged toward Caesar from the side. An attractive female chimpanzee with a long scratch on her face clawed the supervisor’s neck and pulled him off. Another young male chimp with a red-stained cleaver opened the man’s chest.

Caesar gave the female chimp an approving smile and said, “Thank you, Lisa.”

Apes were racing down the aisles, shooting, killing supervisors, smashing monitors with chains. Two immense gorillas bore down on MacDonald. He ran—and hairy hands seized him from behind. He was lifted high over the head of one of the bestially snorting animals.

“No!” Caesar’s voice rang sharply above the horrific din. “Put him down!”

Slowly, the trembling MacDonald was lowered to the floor. Caesar threw him a brief, pitying glance.

The human shrieks and moans were fading away almost as quickly as they had begun. Once the invading apes joined forces with the rebellious ones in the Command Post, the supervisors and few remaining guards had been slaughtered in a matter of minutes.

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