Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization by Alex Irvine

Author:Alex Irvine [Irvine, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan
Published: 2014-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

38

Twenty minutes later, Malcolm and Kemp had been back down and up the ladder three times recovering gear. After the third trip, he motioned to the gorilla.

“That’s it, Luca. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

The gorilla eased the wall slab back into place. With a rumble, loosened debris fell to the bottom of the tunnel. A moment later, Luca squeezed through the opening the apes had dug around the side of the wall slab. Malcolm climbed up ahead of him and reflexively reached to give him a hand up out of the shaft. Then he caught himself, realizing how dumb it was for a human to lend strength to a gorilla.

Luca worked his way up through the hatch—a very tight fit—and knuckled his way up the stairs and out of the powerhouse. Malcolm and Kemp followed him along the catwalk and up onto the logjam. Seeing Malcolm struggle with the heavy pack, Luca stopped to lift him up. He did the same for Kemp. They got back to the open, rocky flat near the edge of the impoundment, with the logjam and waterfall below. The waterfall wouldn’t last long now that the penstock tunnel was draining the impoundment. Before a few days had passed, the top of the dam would be visible again.

The group of humans sat under the watchful eyes of maybe a dozen apes. One of them was Caesar, on horseback. He saw Malcolm and dismounted. Next to him, a younger chimp did the same, and then a baby—God, Malcolm thought, it couldn’t be more than a few days old—reached out and rode the young chimp’s arm down to the ground.

He paused on his way to talk to Caesar, checking on Carver. Ellie and Alexander were bandaging his leg. Sticking out from either side of the bandage was a stick she had used as a splint.

“Like this?” Alexander asked, holding the end of the roll of bandages.

Ellie nodded. “That’s good.”

He brushed a hand across her shoulders and ruffled Alexander’s hair as he passed them. Then he met Caesar.

“Thank you,” he said. “You saved our lives.” Caesar nodded. Malcolm gestured toward the young chimp and the baby. “Your son?”

Another nod.

“Both of them?”

This time Caesar came close to a smile of fatherly pride. Malcolm waved a greeting at the young chimp, who kept his distance. The baby dodged in and out of his older brother’s legs.

“Well,” Malcolm said, “we got the water running. Now we just need to repair the generators, clear debris so the intake doesn’t jam, and we’ll be in business. I hope.”

He was about to go on and explain the use of C-4, wanting to make sure Caesar knew why they’d had to use it, when the baby chimp bounded away from his brother toward the humans. He hopped on Ellie’s back, startling a short scream out of her. Then she saw it out of the corner of her eye and quieted, allowing it to climb over her shoulders and tug at her hair.

“My God,” she said.

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