Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes (20 page)

The elevator door opened. Caesar and his apes rushed into the reception area, some leaping to overcome the startled guards on duty at the fingerprinting barrier, others following Caesar toward the door that led to the communications center beyond.

A guard at the barrier went down under the ape onslaught. One of the operators on duty beyond the glass saw the sudden carnage and leaped to trigger a locking mechanism that bolted the door from inside.

Frustrated, Caesar let go of the handle and glanced around. He signaled two of the apes. They helped him pick up the fingerprinting table, hurl it against the glass. Inside the communications center, a woman screamed and fainted as Caesar clambered through the sawtoothed opening.

Other apes followed, blood-maddened and less careful about the glass. They landed on the floor with slashed feet, their anger that much greater. They fell on the hysterical men and women manning the center, snarling, battering them down . . .

Caesar scanned the banks of lighted equipment. He freed one man from the grip of two chimpanzees, twisted the front of the man’s smock.

“Can you open all the cages from down here?”

The man’s mouth went slack. “Good God! a talking—”

“I said can you open all the cages from down here?”

“Only—only about half of them,” the helpless man gasped.

“Then do it—or you’re dead.”

He released the man, gestured for the gibbering apes to stand back. The man reeled to one of the equipment boards and began throwing switches. Behind him, Caesar’s mouth curled up at the corners. He waved the eager apes forward.

The man swung around, realizing the betrayal. “You—!” The single syllable of accusation became a scream as a mass of hairy bodies swarmed on top of him. The grunts and exclamations of the apes soon muffled his screams.

A siren began to howl, joined by a klaxon. Caesar ran to the dock side of the room, looked through the glass at more apes struggling with handlers. The sirens and klaxons multiplied, adding to the din of animal voices, triumphant in their fury.

With the sirens, Caesar’s brief advantage of surprise was gone. Now the war would begin in earnest.

One of the operators in Fire Conditioning heard a click. It sounded as if the door of the cage-wall bisecting the room had unlocked. He ran forward to check, pulled—and to his horror, the door opened.

Three female chimpanzees grouped at the rear lunged forward en masse. They bore the operator to the floor on the human side of the bars as the second operator fled.

Eyes glinting, one of the chimps yipped commands. The others hoisted the dazed operator between them while the first chimp surveyed the console. Finally, she poked a control.

With a whoosh-and-roar, the horizontal column of fire jetted from the wall aperture. The chimp at the console signaled, and the other two pitched the writhing attendant directly into the blast of flame. Howling, he hit the floor, all his clothing afire. His hair blazed as he rolled, trying to extinguish the flames devouring him. The bright-eyed chimp at the console continued to scrutinize it, one finger still pressed down to maintain the roaring jet.

The stench of searing human flesh began to fill the oval chamber. The chimpanzee picked up a pen from the console. Experimentally, she wedged it into the switch. She lifted her hand away—and grinned as the column of fire continued to roar.

Chittering delightedly, the chimpanzees ran for the door.

In a dim, hexagonal chamber perched on the roof of the ape management tower, five men hunched over monitors and control boards. Through the smoked glass windows, the floodlit grounds surrounding the center looked peaceful. But the confusion of lights on the boards indicated hell breaking loose.

“This is Master Security,” one man yelled into a mike. “Come in, Reception Communications. I said come—”

He gave up, cursing the garble from the speaker in front of him. He heard glass breaking, apes gibbering, and most frightening of all, humans crying out in pain.

The men in the chamber had already activated sirens and klaxons in response to a sudden influx of alarm signals: the report of a murdered man in No Conditioning on nine; a suddenly aborted request for help from Training Reception on three. Now another cry went up inside the rooftop outpost.

“Where’s the supervisor? I’ve got sensors picking up a fire in Fire Conditioning.”

A shadowy figure shouldered up alongside. “Do they answer?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t know what the hell’s happening, but we’d better not let all this prime flesh get burned up by accident.” The supervisor slapped a control, swiveled a gooseneck mike up close to his mouth: “Attention all handlers and keepers. Attention all handlers and keepers. This is Master Security. We have a possibility of a serious fire on six, as well as some kind of trouble in reception. We have fifty thousand dollars’ worth of apes in jeopardy if that fire spreads. So get them out of here—repeat, get them out of here, alive. Fire crews, report to six.”

He broke the connection, whipped his head around. “Did the sprinklers kick on?”

“Yes, but the sensors show they’re not doing much good. It’s spreading. There’s enough heat and flame in just one of those conditioning rooms to melt iron—”

“Then I’m not taking any chances.” He grabbed the mike again. “Attention. This is Master Security. We are triggering, repeat, triggering the over-ride to open all the cages in the building.
Get those animals out to safety!”

His palm came down hard on the button that opened the remaining cages not yet unlocked from the communications center. Beyond the smoked glass windows, a rosy light was growing.

The supervisor kept his hand on the button longer than necessary, wondering in his confusion whether he had done the right thing—or unleashed some kind of holocaust.

In the sumptuously furnished office on the fifth floor, Dr. Chamberlain roused with a groan.

A single lamp on his desk lit the whiskey decanter and glass next to it. After the unnerving session in No Conditioning, the director of the center had retired to his private suite, poured himself three strong shots in a row, sprawled on his leather couch and closed his eyes.

Now a confusion of sounds had jerked him awake. He rubbed his eyes, identifying sirens and klaxons—the harbingers of real trouble at the Center.

Still less than sober, he staggered toward the office wall. He definitely smelled smoke . . .

Chamberlain began throwing switches under monitors set into the wall. One by one they lit, casting pale highlights on his strained face as he stared in absolute disbelief.

The below-ground communications center was a shambles; wreckage, fallen bodies everywhere.

Berserk apes poured through the corridors. One screen showed the apes dodging past doorways filled with flames.

But on other monitors he saw keepers and handlers actually urging apes from their cages.
What
was
happening?

He turned up a couple of the audio controls, heard a dreadful din. Screaming. Gibbering. The crackle of fire. The crash of furniture. Monitor after monitor displayed unbelievable images.

A handler was trying to shackle the right wrist of a just-released orangutan. The ape suddenly raised his arm and brought the free end of the shackle whipping down to smash the handler’s face.

In the midst of blowing smoke, a keeper was desperately trying to subdue a chimp by injecting him with a hypodermic. The chimp twisted the keeper’s arm brutally. The hypodermic dropped into the chimp’s other hand. He rammed it needle-first into the keeper’s stomach.

On the first floor near the main lobby, a squad of security guards confronted a mob of apes that spilled from an elevator. One of the squad members dropped to his knee, aimed a tranquilizing gun at the nearest ape. He fired. The ape slumped. Other tranquilizing guns were leveled—but a chimpanzee sprang, seized the nearest squad member, and used him as a screen at the last second. The man took the deadening, dart in one arm sagging . . .

“Rebellion!” Chamberlain breathed. “Then in Christ’s name—” his glance flashed to monitors showing handlers still busy urging boisterous apes from their cages
“—why are they letting out the rest?”

Chamberlain ran for the door. He recoiled at the smoke-filled hallway. The sirens and klaxons created almost unbearable noise. Covering his nose, he dashed for his personal elevator, concealed behind a plain, locked door at the end of the corridor. He did not know what was going on, but he intended to save himself at all costs; seek sanctuary via his limousine in the subbasement garage. Whatever the outcome of this inexplicable nightmare, he would be held responsible by Governor Breck. But he would face that lesser risk in preference to being incinerated.

He fumbled his key into the lock of the plain door. The key slipped, fell to the floor. With a moan, Dr. Chamberlain dropped to his knees. The smoke stung his eyes, he couldn’t find the key . . .!

While he was still scrambling for it, four gorillas appeared from the white billows, seized him and tore him to pieces.

The two-story command tower marked the farthest limit of the center’s grounds. From inside, the Perimeter Watch Commander stared at an almost incomprehensible sight.

The middle three or four floors of the central tower showed flames at every ruptured window. In the wash of sweeping searchlights automatically triggered by the alarm sirens, a mass of apes could be seen charging up the ramp from the underground reception area.

“Get through to the tower—Chamberlain—someone, goddam it!” the commander yelled.

Flipping switches on consoles nearby, his assistant cried back, “I’m trying. Nobody answers. Even Master Security seems to have been abandoned.”

Outside, on the tower’s railed balcony, three guards with tranquilizing rifles peered at the incredible spectacle. The commander kept issuing rapid orders. His assistant began summoning patrols from other points on the grounds.

Grabbing field glasses from a drawer, the commander ran outside.

Against the background of the mindless sirens and klaxons, a roar was rising in the night. It came from the seething mass of apes at ground level near the tower. Half-shackled apes. Burned apes. Bleeding apes—even some animals dragging handlers or keepers—human hostages! Gaping, the commander lowered the field glasses.

What looked to be virtually the entire ape population of the tower was breaking loose!

They milled at the head of the ramp from underground, waving shackles, bellowing, leaping up and down as the flashing searchlights swept back and forth. For a moment, the confusion continued. Then a segment of the ape mob broke away, its destination instantly apparent.

“My God, they’re heading this way!”

“They’re panicking, Commander,” said one of the men with a tranquilizing rifle.

The commander almost agreed—until he saw the tangle of apes rapidly becoming a ragged procession. Three and four abreast, they moved in the direction of the tower.

“Like hell they’re panicking,” the commander breathed. “They’re
organized.”

He assumed his tower was the target of the marching apes. He ordered the guards to begin firing. As the searchlights scythed, the rifles went
chuff.
An ape dropped. Another. The rest kept coming.

The commander’s legs started to shake when he saw that the rebellious apes were not marching leaderless. In front of them, dodging the tranquilizing charges, was a large chimpanzee in a bloodstained green uniform. He walked upright, like a man.

Incredibly, the apes did not bother with the perimeter tower. They surged by it on both sides, the forefront of the column quickly gone into the darkness. From that darkness rose a savage, howling chorus of ape voices that blended into one vast bay of hate.

The shaken commander dashed back inside the tower.

“Send a priority alert! Those damn animals are heading for the city!”

Out in the darkness, the baying grew louder. The last of the long column of apes bypassed the tower, vanishing in pursuit of the one who led them.

Caesar led his band of gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans past the perimeter watch tower and on across the rolling parklands shrouded in darkness. The baying and gibbering of the animals excited him, as did the success of the escape.

Many apes had been left behind, of course—dead or injured, the luckless victims of battles with handlers, keepers, or guards who had realized, finally, what was happening; even though they didn’t know
why
it was happening. But thanks to a combination of swift action and human error, Caesar had managed to rally enough apes to form the nucleus of a small effective army, an army whose passage was announced by that incessant bloodthirsty howling.

As he tramped ahead of the rest, Caesar planned strategy. He knew that the unfamiliarity of trying to deal with an organized ape force would work against the humans. Still, that advantage could be offset by the superior numbers and armament of police and other paramilitary forces that could be mustered. Warnings were certainly being relayed to Governor Breck by now. Therefore . . .

His decision made, Caesar raised a hand, calling a halt to the march.

Around him lay dark, open grasslands. Caesar had deliberately chosen a route that would avoid the vehicular highways. A glow on the horizon showed the way to the city. It was toward this glow he pointed, as he squatted down and issued instructions to half a dozen apes chosen from the milling ranks.

He selected the six because they were unwounded and looked strong. His instructions would send them racing ahead, to infiltrate the city as best they could. Even if only one or two got through, it might be enough.

Caesar’s orders were explicit. The six were responsible for spreading the message that the hour of the rising had come.

A few moments after the six had gone, Caesar raised his hand and started the little army marching again. By his gait and bearing he tried to inspire them; to make them believe that he, personally, harbored no fear. His chin was high as he strode over grassy hillocks, the ovals of his eyes reflecting the steadily brightening glow of the city.