They drove closer to the border and passed several dead towns to get there. Most of the time they had camped outside of them after foraging for food, gasoline and whatever medical supplies they could find. Burke seemed to know quite a bit about medications, the different uses and their shelf life without saying why.

He didn't talk much about herself but then none of them did. Because to do that meant dredging up the past which was a whole different lifetime ago, she thought as she went inside a pharmacy with him on a drug run. They found the place emptied out, any remaining items strewn in the aisle but the place looked abandoned. After picking an item here and there including a couple first aid kits, they reached up the pharmacy section. They expected to find it locked up tight but the door had been ajar. So they had slipped inside.

Antibiotic…hypertension, medications for diarrhea and for her, prenatal vitamins which she tucked away in her pocket when he wasn't looking.

"Do you think we have enough," she asked, "we go through the tetracycline so quickly."

He sighed.

"Might as well use it all up and not let it go to waste," he said, "When these medications go over, won't be any left."

That sent a chill through her because then what would they do to fight even the most basic of infections like strep throat or kidney infections? She grabbed some prescription medication for poison ivy and oak because they had been running into that the past couple days. She looked around the medication storage area and her eyes fell on a lab coat draped over a chair, the stark whiteness of it contrasting with the colors of all the medications. She felt a lump in her throat, memories of her own days working as a scientist.

Working alongside with him…no she mustn't think about what had been. She had to focus on the future for herself and their baby…the one that he would never see.

But he had made his choice and mankind would hate him for it if they knew. If they knew that in a pivotal moment in the uprising when the army had been closing in on the apes, he had used his own life to protect that of the ape that he raised in his home. Many would say that he chose the apes over his own kind even though humanity had already set the dice in process of killing itself off.

She blinked her eyes and returned to her work. Burke looked over at her,.

"Did you get the cholesterol medicine for Wallis?"

She walked over to look for it and then grabbed a couple of bottles. He had already been restricting his diet to whatever fruits and vegetables they could find and basic staples. Already preparing for the day when the medication would be gone, but they needed to invest in each person because their numbers remained so small.

"Okay I think we're done here," he said, "We'd better head on back."

But when they got to the front door to scope out the area before they left, they heard some noises and he pulled her behind him as they looked out and saw a small group of gorillas carrying firearms wandering around the streets. They had been more recently seen armed with more sophisticated firepower than spears and knives. But with all the guns lying around, not surprising that the apes would exploit that as they did everything else.

After all, intellectually they were now man's equal.

So they crept back in the store to hide in the pharmacy area until the apes cleared out. They went back there and this time they secured the door. Sitting on the floor, they prepared to wait it out. She looked over at him dressed in jeans and a black shirt accentuating his muscles, the kind you get from working outside for years. His hair, a dark brown was tousled and he shaved just enough to avoid a beard. She wondered about him a lot, wondered if he had a family that he'd loved and lost. A wife, and children who had died in the plague. The world had changed too quickly to properly grieve the dead who had started to pile up so quickly in the hospitals and the morgues. Many had crawled to churches nearby to die in the pews perhaps knowing that the end was near and seeking last minute redemption.

After burying Will right next to his father, she had buried herself in taking care of her friends and colleagues as one by one they got sick, got weaker, and died. By the time there had been no one left she knew, she'd been exhausted and she'd taken off, packing up a few things and saying goodbye to the dead city now overrun by apes. She'd slept during the day and walked at night until she met up with Burke's group. He sat there with his eyes closed and waited just like she did.

"So were you a doctor," she asked.

He opened them and gazed at her.

"No…I trained as a medic in the marines but only so far."

She nodded, not at all surprised that he was ex-military. Being so fit and so intense, at the same time, the label fit him.

"What about you?"

She furrowed her brows at him.

"No like I said, I'm a scientist," she said, "I studied the great apes."

He chuckled at that and she didn't blame him considering the circumstances. Then they fell silent because they had heard footsteps inside the store. He pulled her as they crept further in the back, fitting into a tighter space in the darkness. If the apes found them…but that wouldn't happen.

She wondered if they even knew Caesar or who he was or had just been meandering apes who had escaped from a zoo after having been exposed to the airborne virus that gave them their smarts. Had they just woken up one morning with awareness? If she were still in her own life, she would be fascinated by that but now, she just focused on survival. She looked down an aisle and saw the shadows of the apes getting close to the pharmacy section of the store and then her heart stopped as she heard the door knob turn and rattle.

They were trying to get inside.

She shrunk herself even further and Burke grabbed hold of her tucking her body against his own warmth.

"It's going to be okay," he whispered, "I think they'll leave."

She saw one of the gorillas peer into the glass but then she saw that Burke was right, when he turned around to join the others and they heard some sounds associated with pillaging and left the store.

She felt like she could breathe again, but her heart now thudded in her chest.

"Reese…"

She hesitated, still not warming to her new name.

"What…?"

"I guess it's going to be like this from here on out," he said, "Always struggling to remain a step ahead of them, of this new order."

She nodded, thinking about how life had radically changed so quickly all because of the actions of one man. She rubbed her abdomen reflexively, wondering if he had died knowing that humanity had no future in this new world of apes. When he had saved Caesar as the military had claimed, she had believed it.

After all the chimpanzee was the only child of his he'd ever know.

Caesar inspected the grid at the utility plant and nodded his satisfaction, not that he really knew what he had just approved. He had listened to the slaves explain the whole process of generating electricity to him but had left them to do the work under the supervision of Armando and the other gorillas. He had tried to spend more time at home with Alisa but being the leader of the newest revolution on earth, he had plenty to keep him busy.

He hadn't known his destiny when he'd been born and raised by a man and his father. But it felt clear and strong in his body right now and as soon as the last human had been enslaved, then it could be considered a success.

But he wondered about that during the moments when he allowed him to rest. He remembered what his human father had told him about his place in the world. Only Caesar hadn't liked it especially when the sadists at the primate institution had abused him in a sea of taunts. That's when the anger inside him began to grow, that and when he realized that Will had moved on with his own life and research after he had been shipped there.

Still his human father had given his life for him and he didn't consider that a small sacrifice. In fact there were moments, that he missed him, that he wished he could seek out his advice on what to do next. But he was gone now, leaving Caesar to figure out everything on his own.

Armando walked in the office.

"Work done, come see."

Caesar nodded and signed back his approval before getting up to join Armando to test the system on a small corner of Seattle near the tall concrete tree that stood above everything else.

With the power back on, it would push their revolution into where it needed to go.