She had wondered how it had started, the beginning of the end of their world.
The news broadcasts had said that one man came into contact with the virus that infected him. It made him very ill before killing him but not before he started spreading it through the population of San Francisco. Rumors had been that he'd worked in the top secret laboratory where they'd been working on the viral agent that was intended to be a cure.
And it did, it cured the apes of their primitiveness, making them as smart as the humans who had crafted it. But unfortunately, the virus turned on its creators by killing them. She felt overwhelmed whenever she let her mind dwell on what was, so she stopped. They were packing up their vehicles after some men had siphoned off enough gas to make it across the border by tomorrow, maybe the day after. They had been slowed by unexpected traffic on the highways.
Dead traffic of course, meaning vehicles which had left the towns as if to evacuate but had ultimately been abandoned by their owners, probably during the tertiary phase of the illness when they went mad. She had seen it enough in her colleagues who had come down with it to the point where they had to be locked up, sequestered from everyone else including each other.
Everything had been so crazy after the standoff at the bridge and then later where the apes had holed up deep in the forest. She and a couple others had only gone in deep enough where they found Will's body waiting for them where it had been left just so they'd know.
Caesar must have known they'd want to bury him. They had just done that when the illness struck amid news reports on the progress of locating the apes so that they could be eradicated like an illness themselves. If they could just kill the ones who got infected by the smart virus, but that agent had began to proliferate and spread on the air currents just like its deadlier cousin.
The group had been awakened by the screams of someone who had survived the infection but whose brain had been altered permanently. Nightmares including those that drove the victims to sleep walking had been etched into their experiences. Some people had wandered off and never been seen again. She'd recovered fine from a more ordinary flu bug and had returned to work. Between her and Burke, they had enough medical training to stock the medicines in an organized fashion and begun distributing them.
But they'd go through them so quickly she knew. Antibiotics were always hardest hit and some of the medications for chronic conditions. Burke had been on the CB radio and managed to patch into their rendezvous point in Canada.
Where they'd set up their own compound and shore up their defenses which had been started if the apes came calling.
"We're finished with the cars," Burke said, "It's time to get moving again."
She rubbed her forehead, always were they on the move when they weren't eating just enough to get by and sleeping fitfully. She had been a little queasy in the mornings still but she could eat later on and she knew that she needed to do that for her baby. But she often wondered, what kind of world would it be born into where humans were coming close to being extinguished by what they had believed to be a subordinate creature?
Oh the tables had clearly turned and one man, the one whose memory made her rub her abdomen now had been responsible. Too big a price to pay even for the best of intentions, and now the survivors were paying that price. All Will had really wanted to do was cure his father of his dementia and his way of doing that, of feeling less helpless in the face of it was to create a cure and creating a viral agent that could stimulate brain growth had seemed the perfect solution.
Hindsight erased all that and he and millions of others were dead from that solution. But as she followed Burke into their vehicle, she hoped that there would be some place for the stragglers of the plague to start anew up north. They started driving and this time chose secondary roads hoping to avoid the jams. All of them felt the pressure of getting out of what used to be America, hoping that if they did, they wouldn't wind up caught and caged by the apes.
"I heard today that the apes are spreading into the Great Plains," Burke said, "I guess that explains the gorillas."
She looked out the window at the woods that passed by. Woods far different than the ones where she and Will had taken Caesar to explore.
"You really think they won't go into Canada?"
"Not for a while," Burke said, "My contact said that the apes in the zoos all took off down south when they got smart."
The scientist part of her wondered about that. Maybe they preferred being in warmer climates which made sense because of their origins.
"That'll be good," she said, "It'll give us time to breathe again at least for a little while."
Burke looked at her.
"Are you feeling better," he said, "I noticed you looked sick this morning."
She nodded.
"I think it's what's left of that flu I had," she said, "I still feel a little tired at times."
Ah, great cover she thought but for some reason, she felt it crucial to hide her pregnancy for as long as possible just like it had been to hide her real identity including her connection to Will.
The scientist who most of the surviving world resented right now for what he'd done. She closed her eyes, if they only knew the truth about him. That he'd done what he did out of compassion and empathy, as well as ambition and the arrogance that often befell those in his position.
"We'll make sure you get plenty of rest when we get there," he said, "They started cultivating the gardens so the food will be much better than what we've been eating."
She smiled, missing some of the fruits and vegetables. They picked what they could find but had stuck mostly to canned and packaged goods, that were more easily and quickly prepared.
Hopefully when they got to Canada, everything would slow down for a while.
Nothing was slowing down for Caesar who had apes coming in at all hours of the day reporting on their progress at restoring some order to Seattle, or more often their failure to do so. He could only imagine what was going on in the other major cities but it took reports a while to trickle in when couriers arrived to deliver the news.
Alisa signed the words that came the closest that she could to telling him to be patient but he had to be a leader first and stabilize everything so that their society wouldn't fall apart before it got built. Will had given him history books dealing with different civilizations and occasionally when he found one in his explorations here, he'd pick it up to read later.
All civilizations started with a spark including revolution and then were built, they progressed until they peaked and became successfully. But always at some point, they'd start to degrade.
Just like humanity had been doing after destroying itself. But the apes could avoid all that, they could build their new society and keep it going forever. Even long after he and his descendents were gone. If the humans died, that wouldn't stop their own progression except for losing slaves of course.
And at the rate the gorillas were going with how they treated them, maybe he'd better issue a release to offer them better food and shelter so that they'd live long enough to do the work needed to build their society.
Of course with Armando, more than one directive from Caesar might be in order. He leaned back in his chair in a position of leadership thinking how much everything had changed in such a short period of time. The apes had retreated into the forest, waiting for a larger contingent of armed forces to come and eradicate them. Caesar hadn't known what he'd do in a situation where greater fire power would be used on them.
But as it turned out, that hadn't happened because the humans had already started dying off. Will had been dead already and he'd forgiven him for what he'd done and everyone that his human father had known had probably died as well. A few of them had been kind to him but they were all dead and only those who had been cruel to the apes had remained. They needed to be treated in kind to know that the social order had changed forever.
If not, then they'd be caged and hosed until they did know. Just as they had always treated the apes…his position on that remained very strong. As he explained to the bonoboes who wanted to enter into negotiations with the humans, there would be no mercy.
The bonoboes had retreated to their own compounds to think that over. Like all the subspecies of apes, they had started sorting themselves out by their species. The gorillas went back to milling with gorillas and the orangutans had done like with their own kind.
Caesar knew that unity among the species was still critical for society to succeed, to avoid multiple power plays including possible civil wars down the road.
But how would he accomplish it now that there wasn't anything left to fight?