The man who sat beside her while they drove towards the sunset remained a mystery to her. Burke as he called himself hadn't said much about his past but then again, few people did because to talk about it was to remember what had been lost.

He was so different then the men she had known, the scientists who had holed up inside their laboratories for hours working on different research projects. Burke had obviously worked with his hands and used his intelligence in different ways, but he seemed to be more prepared for the new world than most of those he led.

'Earlier that day, they had encountered several encampments that had been abandoned but whether they had been used by apes or humans they didn't know. They had taken the usual precautions but hadn't run into any trouble.

They knew from messages on the CB network that humans that encountered apes had been captured, caged and then enslaved. Payback for all the years that apes had spent locked up in captivity to be stared at in zoos or experimented on in laboratories. It seemed that humans weren't the only creatures capable of vengeance.

"We almost there?"

Burke looked over at her.

"In an hour or so…"

Then she thought it might be time to breathe again, because the apes hadn't made any attempts to spread through Canada like they had what used to be known as America.

"So how far will we travel to get there?"

Burke hadn't revealed much about the encampment where they'd be staying or how many people were there already. Not that it mattered because they might not be there very long if they received word that the apes had changed their own strategies.

They'd been traveling for a couple of months though she didn't remember all of it because she'd been so sick for part of it. Unable to contribute much to the efforts of survival and thus expendable. While delirium had seized most of her attention, she'd heard some words here and there about how the sick had to be left behind to die in order to ensure the survival of the majority. Never mind that she had nearly worked herself into exhaustion since hooking up with the group, once she became unable to carry her weight, she was a burden to everyone.

Yet Burke had stepped forward and had taken responsibility for her. He told the group that he'd take care of her and make sure she didn't impede their movement away from California. He'd done what he promised, made sure they found a remote area of an old growth forest to hole up until the worst of her illness had passed. She'd lay there, drenched in sweat; her mind like it had been insulated in cotton. Had he sat there holding her hand, she couldn't recall. Her fragmented thinking until the fever finally broke had been on her old life with Will, his father and…Caesar.

Will and his father were dead and Caesar had led the other apes to revolution, the natural outcome of the accelerated intellectual development that they had experienced. Make an ape smart and he wanted the top space in the food chain above those who made him that way.

But in the end, mankind had killed itself off, when the virus that rode piggyback on the revolution wiped out most of the human race. As she rode now with Burke, she put her hand on her abdomen thinking about the baby that she had created with Will in the old world, how would it survive in the new one?

It had never been an easy place to raise a child but now with most of the members of their species either annihilated or enslaved, it would take everything she had left to keep him or her alive and free. Maybe Canada would provide the means to do that, at least she hoped so.

Then again, she'd kept her pregnancy a secret from everyone else like she had the rest of her background. If people in her group had known who she was when she'd taken ill, they'd have abandoned her for sure.

No way existed to make them understand that Will hadn't meant to end their world, he'd been trying to cure the form of dementia that robbed him of his father. She and others had warned him of the pitfalls of his actions but he'd been driven by love and more than a little bit of arrogance.

Not the best of combinations.

"They're expecting us."

She looked over at him.

"That's good. The more of us we can get together, the stronger we'll be."

He sighed.

"The people up there aren't much healthier than those in our group."

Meaning that many of them had gotten the virus and had suffered brain damage…enough to dull the edges of their intellect and other cognitive abilities…though she and Burke had been spared.

"We'll have to do the best we can," she said, "It's not like we've been given a choice."

Sometimes she wondered if it would have been easier if she had just succumbed to death, or rushed it along. Suicide wasn't uncommon among the remnants of the human race. Some felt it better than being captured by animals they'd once kept in cages. But she never focused on those thoughts because she had her baby to think about now.

One of its parents was already dead, perhaps a blessing given that she didn't know Will would have managed to not be consumed with guilt at the destruction his actions had catalyzed. He had died before the plague had hit San Francisco.

"Who was he?"

Burke had asked her a question as if he were discussing the weather and she'd almost missed it.

"He…what do you mean?"

He watched her closely.

"The man who makes you look like you did just now," he said, "miles away from her."

She shrugged.

"Someone I knew…we all left people we loved behind."

He nodded at that and she knew that he'd loved and lost at some point in his life even though the exterior he wore now shored up over time didn't reveal it.

"You weren't married?"

She shook her head.

"Oh no…we weren't even together that long," she said, "we were very different in many ways."

"Did he love you?"

She had often thought about that thinking that Will had mostly been in love with his work which had risen through the tremendous love he had for his father. During a lot of his life, his father had been too busy for him with his own research as a professor but after he had moved in with him, they had gotten closer.

Caesar's arrival had cemented the bond between them and the ape they had raised together like a child. She hadn't known where she'd fit in their lives but she did know she cared for Will, as much as he'd allow it.

"I think so…he…we really didn't have enough time."

Burke turned onto another road, that proved to be bumpy.

"What about your family," she asked him.

But he didn't answer, just kept driving.

Caesar hung from the tallest tree he could find in the forest that edged Seattle. It reminded him of the enormous freedom he had felt when Will and his girlfriend had taken him to the forest.

Only he hadn't been free because he'd worn a harness and when he saw humans walking dogs that wore them, he'd felt less than free. But no more, he and the other apes had ended their days of captivity forever.

Now the humans would be in cages and working to help build the new society that would enslave them. As he looked down on the layout of the nearly deserted city, he wondered what the humans who raised him would have thought about his actions. Will and his father, but then it didn't matter anymore. They were both dead and he had been instrumental in changing the world, seizing it away from humans and taking it over.

He had settled in his new role with Alisa by his side and soon enough he'd have offspring of his own. By the time they arrived, he hoped to have a society where they could grow and prosper but it would take some time to get there. Already fragmentation had taken place between the orangutans and the gorillas not to mention the delegation of bonobos who wanted to negotiate with a dying species over sharing the planet.

It had taken a couple arguments by him early on to unite the different factions into one army of apes and now that the war had pretty much ended, they were falling back into their patterns of segregation.

There had been talk about putting a council together with representatives from each and then the gorillas had said that since they provided most of the brute strength, they should get more representation.

The orangutans were the weak link, a friend of Armando's had argued. Caesar had to go raise his arguments again at impromptu meetings and that had settled things down for a while.

But the new world seemed to breed chaos and he knew the decisions approaching would be most crucial to keeping their movement cohesive and not allow it to fall apart because of the lack of a center.

He sighed as he began climbing down. Another meeting had been set for tonight and he knew he had to be ready for it and anything.

The life of a revolutionary leader never allowed for more than a moment of rest.

They crossed over into Canada and breathed a sigh of relief. Someone had found some old bottles of wine in a deserted store and opened them up so they could separate. Burke had offered her a glass but she refused.

He looked inquisitive but didn't push the issue. They set up a fire at an old campground and then headed back on the road to hopefully reach the next town by dark.

"That was nice," she said, "I think that's the first time I've seen some of those people smile."

He nodded.

"or laugh…but I think that some people thought we'd never get this far and since we did, they feel hope."

She digested that wondering if it were anything based on reality or whether something fragile that would be dashed. After all, so much had already been lost that there was precious little to hold onto any longer.

"So many miles behind us," she said, "So many more to go."

But hopefully they had put more miles between them and the apes, including Caesar. She wondered if the revolution had changed him even more and then figured it probably did. He certainly bore little resemblance to the ape that had been raised by Will and his father until they were forced to turn him over to the state.

While distancing herself further from her past, sometimes she still thought about him.