Beneath the Planet of the Apes - Avallone Michael - Страница 26

Everything was going so smoothly now.

Once out of this damnable corridor, they would come face to face with the half savages who had dared to mock gorilla might and abuse gorilla people.

Yes, he would show them.

Show everybody.

The ineluctable power of Force.

There was just no other way to run a country. A people. A civilization. Foolish man had learned that, hadn’t he, to his sorrow. Trying to rule a world with the milk of kindness.

Damn chimpanzee philosophy.

Weak-kneed, thin-skinned. Hopelessly . . .

Grunting happily, his eyes shining, General Ursus moved down the long shining corridor at the head of his troops.

Dr. Zaius tagged along, just behind him.

Zaius was still unhappy.

He did not like the signs all around them of a vastly superior race of beings.

A race of intellects.

For which no gorilla could ever be a match.

Beyond the maze of octagonal corridors, in the cold glare of the metropolis above, nothing moved on the streets of the Forbidden Zone. There was a curious, almost frightening emptiness to the streets. No little knots of playing children, no passers-by, no single solitary streetwalkers. Nobody.

Only the wind fanning eerily over the half-buried building tops, the windowless structures which resembled so many headstones and tombstones jutting from the depths of the faraway mountains.

Only the mammoth silhouette of the great cathedral poking into the slate-gray skies.

The cathedral that housed the Bomb.

The Almighty Bomb.

Dedicated to the Holy Fallout.

And ultimate Oblivion.

13.

APE AND MAN

“They’re coming,” Brent said.

Outside their cell, they could hear the thunderous united tramp of marching feet. The sudden rumble of movement and equipment moved Taylor faster than any warning could have. Quickly he lugged the corpse of the Negro to the base of the cell wall. Brent and Nova joined him there, flattening out along the ground, hugging the wall. Out of sight of the peephole in the door of the cell.

A helmeted gorilla face loomed there.

He couldn’t see Taylor, Brent and the girl, or the Negro lying directly below him out of his line of sight. The gorilla face winced briefly and then the black muzzle of a machine gun appeared, poking into the cell.

The weapon stuttered, erupted, blasted and raked the interior of the cell with lateral fire. The stench of cordite filled the room. Soon the firing ceased and the gorilla moved on, joining the tramping hordes in the corridor. Not until the sound of marching feet diminished did Taylor, Brent or Nova move.

“Wait,” cautioned Brent.

They didn’t know that Company A of the ape army had just trooped by their place of confinement.

The marching sounds faded into silence.

Taylor rose to his feet, picking up a club which lay in one corner of the cell. He used this now to batter away at the cell door, smashing it open with a burst of tremendous blows. Brent’s bandages were oozing blood. He was sweating and his face was gray with pain. Taylor hesitated, but peered down the corridor beyond the battered door. Then he looked at Brent. Brent looked at him. Each man in that instant recognized what the other had in mind. Nova stood, waiting eternally, as she always had to, with her men.

“Let’s go!” Brent snapped impatiently. “Let’s go!”

Taylor nodded, and let Brent push into the corridor. He took Nova’s hand and led her out.

The corridor was empty.

Taylor eyed Brent with fresh respect.

“You’ve got the same crazy thought I have, haven’t you?”

“Except, it’s not crazy,” Brent panted, the pain searing him. “If these—‘people’—think they’re going to lose to the apes, they’ll explode the bomb. Which is the end of the apes, but also the end of everything else. The end of life. The end of the world. You told me that yourself.”

“I should do it alone,” Taylor said.

“Let’s double our chances.”

Taylor frowned. “I don’t know if you’re much use. You’re bleeding pretty good . . .”

“I’m all right!”

Before Taylor could answer that, a sound of gunfire hammered near them and they heard the hoarse screams of some gorilla soldiers. Taylor jumped. He had caught sight of three gorilla soldiers coming down the passageway. He backed quickly into the cell, pulling Nova with him. Too late. They had been seen. With a whoop of something akin to pleasure, the gorillas bounded forward, weapons upraised. Obviously, they had already had some casualties and this was a chance to even up a few scores. Grimly, Taylor and Brent braced to meet the attack. Taylor had his club; Nova shrank into one corner of the cell.

The fight was brief and bloody.

Brent and Taylor, motivated by a tremendous fear and a desire for survival, swarmed over the gorilla trio. Taylor swung the heavy club with telling accuracy. But as the scuffle ensued and Brent chipped in as best he could, one of the gorilla rifles got off a random shot. Soon, however, his face a contorted mask, Taylor won the day. The club smashed out, battering gorilla heads and faces. Suddenly the corridor was a pile of inert soldiers. Taylor swayed, panting from the effort. And then he turned back to Nova and Brent, almost smiling.

The smile vanished.

Nova lay crumpled on the floor of the cell. Her slender, lithe body did not move. There was an ugly stain spreading over the pitiful rags that covered her left breast.

She was dead. The random shot had found her as truly as any marksman’s well-aimed bullet.

The face of Taylor crumpled. Strength fled from it. He moved to the girl, fell to his knees, cradling her still head in his lap. Brent stood by, helpless. The moment held, Taylor holding the girl, silently dying within himself. Then he stood up, his dirty, bronzed face flooded with an almost uncontrollable anger. Beyond the walls of the cell, the sounds of street combat echoed dimly.

“I should let them all die!” Taylor raged, his voice rising on a sob. “Not just the gorillas! Everyone! Every living thing! Us too! Look at how it all ends—! It’s time it was finished—finished!”

He clawed at the air, a monument of bitterness and frustration. His great body trembled.

“Come on, Taylor,” Brent spoke up, more strongly than before, trying not to think about Nova. About anything that had to do with love and gentleness. “Come on!”

He moved out of the cell, not looking back.

Not daring to recall.

Forgetting Nova and her mute, appealing goodness.

He knew that Taylor would follow him.

Taylor the man had to.

Taylor did.

But Taylor was remembering . . .

His brain was alive with images. Swirling, exploding pictures of the grand error which had begun with a space flight from Cape Kennedy. The disastrous flight, the time differential, the coming down into the smooth blue lake in the middle of nowhere. The death of the woman astronaut, shriveled like a mummy on landing. The planting of the small American flag in the middle of nowhere. The capture by the apes; the lobotomizing of one of the others. His own escape from Ape City with the help of a beautiful savage girl who had trusted him from the very beginning. Without words, without complaints. The sight of the Statue of Liberty poking from the sands, the wall of ice and—losing the girl. Finding himself here in this underground civilization of mutants.

And Cornelius, Zira and Dr. Zaius.

And now Brent, a man from that same world that had vanished. Brent—almost the reflection of himself. What he had once been, at any rate.

And Nova . . .

Nova!

By God, he had loved her. More than any woman he ever knew back on the planet in the time when all men hoped for the best in order to avoid the worst.