I hope this story makes sense and people enjoy reading it!
The small caravan to Canada moved slowly, just several cars eking their way through deserted roads. Not much stood in their path because people had died too quickly to flee anywhere but the largest cities.
Not that leaving the epicenters of the plague accomplished much because the disease had already spread like wildfire through dried brush. Reese had nursed her own colleagues through the illness including the state of dementia as best as she could do before the last one had died. It had erupted so quickly that it stopped any attempts to treat it right in their tracks let alone come up with a vaccine.
They had stopped at several deserted towns on the way, their streets barren, the air so still you could probably hear someone sneeze from the opposite side of town. But they heard nothing except the wind rustle the leaves in the trees before tugging them gently off the limbs.
Reese and Burke had led the caravan of the six of them and each stop, they hoped to pick up more people but if anyone still survived, they hid carefully away from anyone passing through. There were no signs of the apes' presence because they still hadn't migrated yet. Their progression would be slow because even though the rebellion had spread, the growth of awareness among their ranks, the kind born of supreme intelligence lagged behind. It might take them a generation or two to fully realize their potential and even longer, to establish their own civilization in the ashes of the one that had preceded it.
Literally ashes in some cases because a couple of the towns had been burned, probably through fires started to dispose of contaminated bodies quickly, but somehow they spread with the wind. Her own heart ached when she saw these towns, but less and less as time went on. It didn't do any good for her to feel for what had been lost anymore.
It was all gone forever. Soon not even the memories would remain of the species that dominated the globe for over a million years. Not if they didn't somehow stop their numbers from dwindling off further. It wasn't clear yet if the flu survivors had been rendered sterile, which would be a cruel joke. But the immunes like her might still be able to propagate. In fact, as she rubbed her abdomen some of them had already gotten started before the world changed. She wondered what Will would think if he knew that in a matter of months there'd be a child like him. The last time she had seen him in the forest, she hadn't known so there hadn't been anything to tell him.
Would she have done so to keep him from rushing into the woods, where he'd never leave? Would her news been enough? No, she knew it wouldn't have stopped him from confronting Caesar to stop him, but it really had been to save him. Because the intelligent chimpanzee had been his child, the only one he would ever raise and he had believed at the end that he'd done poorly at that.
Burke looked over at her from the driver's seat. She had been gazing out the window at the scenery going by. She could tell by the trees, they were getting further north, closer to the border they'd cross leaving what was left of America.
"We're going to stop in Crescent Ridge for the night," he said.
She nodded. They would need to find gas there because the last couple towns hadn't left them with enough to use. But she had been relieved because she still felt tired easily both from the aftermath of the flu and from her pregnancy, no doubt. They'd find an empty motel on the edge of town, hopefully downwind from the dead in their homes. They had brought camping supplies because the stench in some of the towns from rotting carcasses and sewage leaks had been too bad to venture closer.
"How's Raven?"
Burke sighed.
"She's getting by without her meds," he said, "but the hydration will only help so much."
She sighed, feeling concerned about the older woman they had picked up from an abandoned town in the Sierras as they had passed through into the desert.
"Maybe we can hit the stores and find some more water," she said, "if we can move in."
"There's a stream nearby and if we boil the water first, we should be fine," he said, "and we have containers."
That they did for them and for their vehicles. The weather had grown much more temperate than the desert which had been a relief to everyone but the nights would soon grow nippier as the summer continued to fade away. A memory flashed before her of her and Will in a park attending some concert. They had brought a box lunch and had sat on a blanket as the breeze blew from the ocean to relieve what had been an unseasonably hot day. She hadn't been a huge fan of San Francisco but after getting together with Will, he had set forth to change her mind by showing her all the sights including places he had been while growing up.
That had been when she learned about an older brother who had died and suddenly, she understood him.
She blinked her eyes finding them damp again and turned towards the window so Burke wouldn't see. She kept her feelings hidden from everyone around her because that's what everyone did to survive during the hard days. But she supposed that at night, that's when they escaped their imprisonment and were full bloom. He wondered if that were true about the man beside her. Many women would call him very handsome, in a more rugged way like his ancestors had settled the wild west or some hostile environment and built their own more orderly world. But the men who had attracted her, it hadn't been about looks but about smarts and about trying to make a difference in the world. Will had tried his entire professional life to do that but he had started fiddling with the fundamental rules of nature.
Rules which weren't made to be broken not without severe consequences…
"When we get there, we'll cook up some of the vegetables we found and get some canned goods," he said, "Anything that's protein and then we'll settle in for the night."
Burke had stayed with her the entire trip. He explained it by telling her she had nearly died and still needed someone to look over her. She almost laughed when she remembered how it had been between them when they had met. Two people who likely never would have crossed paths if…
No, she couldn't think about what would have been or not, only about the present and although she'd never admit it, she needed someone to stay with her because although she survived the grueling days, the nights left her staring into the darkness with too many memories.
She nodded at him as they kept traveling, thinking it sounded like a plan.
Alisa looked up at Caesar after he had handed her some fruit to eat. She signed back that she wanted bananas. But Caesar hated them, he'd eat any other fruit but them. They had found a couple of orchards up in Oregon and Washington so they had human slaves pick the fruit until the day they dropped and then moved it up to where Caesar and his lieutenants who remained had set up base camp.
The issue of slaves plagued Caesar, not the moral quandaries of such a practice but the fact that the plague had weakened so many humans, both physically but also mentally. Given enough time, the changing of the seasons, how many would be left? The gorillas also enjoyed beating them too much and Caesar found that such punishment actually lowered work productivity rather than increased it.
Not to mention lowering the life expectancy of the slaves.
Alisa had been his consort for the past month and he enjoyed her company, though he missed Cornelia who hadn't survived the revolution. She had died instead of him but he had lost other comrades and mourned them all. Not that he had much time to do that because revolutions created so much work to do even after the conquering had been done. They had to set up a new society where apes ruled and where the different species of apes could work together in harmony without fracturing their ties. In the beginning, they had been strongly united with the shared goal of liberating themselves from their human masters. But after that was done, they started to splinter into their separate camps once again and he had to find creative ways to thwart that.
The arrival of the bonobos who viewed themselves as superior to everyone else had angered the gorillas and the orangutans more than Caesar's own kind. He had thought at the first communal meeting that the lead gorilla would grab the lead bonobo (if there was such a thing) and toss him out of the chamber. But Caesar had a gift of uniting even warring parties and he reminded them that the humans though weak and broken down were still out there and could rise again if they weren't careful.
"Banana want I"
Caesar looked at Alisa with reproach.
"No bananas"
She just looked down dejected and he went over to soothe her before they moved to their sleeping quarters. Once they settled down in more permanent headquarters he wanted her to create progeny for him, as reproduction remained imperative for the apes because their overall numbers had been reduced over the past several hundred years by hunting, imprisonment and environmental destruction. The other apes went happily along with that securing mates and he knew that soon the next generation of apes would be born.
He wanted one from his new family.
His old human family had died, and he still remembered them at times when the world stilled enough for him to do so. Will had vexed him during a part of their lives but had saved him at the end. He had a choice to make between Caesar and humanity and he'd chosen the ape he'd raised. Caesar hadn't understood that at all, how a human could sacrifice his life for an ape even the man who had raised him. But before he died, Will had asked him a favor and Caesar wrestled with it.
Away from the other apes because a part of him still felt that humanity might have its own place in the world. Blasphemy to those around him, but not all mankind had been cruel to the apes.
But it was just idle thought in relation to encroaching memories because he still had a revolution to lead, a society to build.