Caesar had been much younger when Will had taken him to the forest that first time. He'd never been outside of the city filled with buildings and cars, noises and people milling all over.
He'd been wearing a harness and lease past a couple walking the dog and for the first time, he noticed a parallel between him and another species treated as a pet by humans. Will and his girlfriend, the vet had brought him there to give him a chance to explore and exercise in more natural surroundings. The trees had been taller than he could see but when he climbed up them so nimbly he saw the world and the people grow smaller below him.
Will had called after him to be careful but he had felt something inside of him explode with excitement, a calling of sorts to a new world that beckoned. Will's attention had been on his girlfriend anyway and that left Caesar with plenty of time for expanding his boundaries.
He remembered those woods as the place where he and the apes had holed up waiting for humanity to die off once it became clear that the armies wouldn't return. The memory of the warring apes had faded as humanity struggled in those final frantic weeks to save itself. Whatever had reduced their numbers had done so at lightning speed.
After they had finished off the small army that attacked them, Caesar had separated himself off from the pack to go find her so she would know what had happened with Will but when he approached where she might be, he saw more men with guns and armor arrive so he retreated back into the shadows of the forest.
Now different forests surrounded where they stayed and yet they didn't call to him in the same way as those in his memories. He felt more and more drawn to explore the new world out there and to figure out what the apes needed to do next now that armies of apes worldwide had launched their offensives.
Not that there was much left to fight against because the plague had spread globally. Ape messengers of sorts had reported back that they had been trying to figure out how to use the flying machines at air fields to spread their numbers. Right now, Caesar sensed that their numbers remained highly fragmented.
The Orangutans had felt a more pressing need to enlarge their numbers because they were the least represented. Caesar had signed to Maurice who was his aide and main sign language instructor that the majority of his kind were located far across a huge ocean on some islands clear on the other side of the world. If they traveled by boat, it'd take months. By plane, hours but learning how to fly proved to be more complicated than they thought.
Maurice communicated that answer back to the others and they didn't like it very much. The gorillas wanted to separate themselves into two subdivisions, the mountains and the lowlands as Caesar identified them from books and get double the representation. The bonobos were still angling for their piece of the new government even though they sat out most of the revolution and the chimpanzees wanted to kick them to the curb.
Caesar had explained the concept to the apes that each species was a stick that could easily be broken by their enemies but if they bundled up together as apes, they'd be much more formidable to their opposition. That hadn't really been tested because their enemies were perfectly equipped to wipe themselves out but now, the separatism had already started to rear its ugly head.
Alisa signed him to be patient but he fretted anyway. He'd been very resourceful in uniting them together against a common enemy, now in more peaceful times they were relearning their estrangements from each other.
Maurice came back and reported to him on the progress at the television station, that the power cables had been repaired by some human slaves who had been more accustomed to being in front of the cameras than behind them but one look at Armando and his cadre and they'd gotten quickly to work.
Caesar had hoped to set it up so he could do a broadcast though it wouldn't do much good if there was no one to watch it. There had to be a way to reach other apes, there had been that thing called the internet but it had disappeared.
The orangutan had signed to him that they had also found a small group of gibbons who might be good messengers if they could be taught rudimentary skills. Caesar had found that the smart serum as it had been called, had given them intellect but had made them more hyperactive.
They'd driven some of the other apes crazy so they had been given some assignments right now that kept them out of sight.
But he sent a couple of chimpanzees to keep them in line. He watched as Maurice signed him a growing list of jobs that needed to be done before they could get their newly redone city up and running.
Like selecting a ruling council after Caesar made it clear he didn't want to be king. Not to mention that several other familiar characters had challenged for that spot. No, there would be a council with representatives from every species…except maybe the gibbons.
But he didn't want to deal with that right now, he felt the responsibilities weighing on him more and more and inside he felt more conflicted than he'd ever been instead of less. But there was no getting away from one's destiny once it caught you in its grasp and refused to let go.
They hiked through the dense forest wearing packs, and brushing away the gnats from their faces. She kept up with Burke and a couple other men as they trudged through some overgrown trails that had once connected places. Now, the forest had started to take over civilization again and that made the going tougher. The previous day they'd received a scratchy broadcast on the radio that there had been a cluster of people up about 10 miles over some hills.
And that one of them might be a doctor. So Burke had put together a quadroon of people to go hike to meet with them. She had insisted on going and initially he had vetoed it until she reminded him she fully intended to carry her own weight. He acquiesced when she agreed that if there was a doctor, she'd talk to him or her about her pregnancy.
She could deal with that. Except for morning sickness, she felt perfectly fine though she needed a nap sometimes when she could squeeze one in. Burke had watched over her and she had just accepted it.
Walking through the forest, she tried not to remember those times when she'd gone to another forest with Will and Caesar. She'd enjoyed those times, that joyous period before Caesar had to leave them to go live in the sanctuary run by an abusive father and son. By the time she and Will had figured out that they'd left him in a virtual prison, it'd been too late. Will had been reluctant to send him there but she'd told him it was for the best because he couldn't spend his whole life living in a house.
But the forest had offered them all some respite from what would follow and they'd been a family of sorts.
"We should be there," Burke said, "It should be just over the hill."
He kept glancing back at her, probably to make sure she didn't fall too far behind but he'd been giving her these looks. Like he'd been about to ask her something but had decided against it.
She had so many questions to ask him but the present didn't allow it, and the future remained too uncertain. The past, it just hurt too much for everyone. Hers had become a blur of anger, fear and pain when she learned of Will's death. Sometimes she tried to remember her last moment of happiness…but no she had to focus on the future for both her and her only reminder of her old life.
Burke looked over at her, and decided she didn't look too tired. She did like the rest of them hiked through the forest as if they'd done it before, even though most of them had never been to Canada.
He thought back to the photo he had found next to her bed while she'd fallen asleep. He knew what it represented the moment he saw it because the scant press coverage on the genesis of the apes revolution on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco had reached him. Everyone knew that the primary instigator had been a chimpanzee named of all things, Caesar and that he had not been a run of the mill primate. There'd been unnamed sources claiming that he'd been a test subject in a series of experiments, some said for medical research, others for the military.
One scientist, a young man, had been in charge of those experiments and had stolen a young primate from the laboratory, one that was supposed to be destroyed after other primates who were test subjects had suddenly gone on a rampage. A curtain had fallen on that part of the narrative but later, it'd been said again by unnamed sources that Caesar had grown up with the scientist, his father and a young woman.
Until he'd attacked a neighbor mutilating him and had been transported to a sanctuary for apes…which is where the details got fuzzy but somehow a group of apes united behind him and went on the attack. He heard somewhere that a group of scientists were put under investigation by a commission put together to address what was first a public relations nightmare but most of them had either died or been killed.
The scientist who raised Caesar he remembered reading somewhere, had also died though the circumstances, he couldn't recall. Something about him having gone native and joined up with the apes? The guy had to be crazy to do this type of experimentation in the first place. But he'd probably been another arrogant guy in a laboratory coat who thought he could control nature, well humanity had certainly paid for that gross misassumption.
He'd been too busy getting over his own tragedies to focus on the world falling apart around him. Until he realized that everyone around him had started dying and old military buddies had called him saying that the apes who had escaped from the laboratory where the experiments took place, hadn't been alone.
A lethal mutated virus had escaped too and started its journey around the globe. Just when you thought the world couldn't get anymore messed up, some group of scientists playing God came along to prove you wrong.
But as he hiked, clearing a path for the others, he wondered what had happened to the woman, idly but now he knew.
And Reese hadn't been her real name.
Had she been one of those scientists, he couldn't remember. He had many questions for her that lacked answers but he knew not to ask them. He also knew that if others in their group figured out who she was and her connection to the origins of what had begun in San Francisco, they'd turn on her.
No love was lost between the few survivors and the man identified and vilified in the media for putting them here. 'They wouldn't find out from him, he decided, she had worked hard since he'd known her and had pushed herself past exhaustion to help ensure their survival. Not to mention she was beautiful in a world that lacked that quality, not that it mattered.
She didn't wear a wedding ring so she didn't have a husband but there had been this scientist, the one who had catalyzed the destruction of the world. In his eyes, he had seen the grief he'd seen everywhere else, and now he knew who she had lost.
They reached the top of the hill and reached into their packs for their water bottles. The heat of the sun had permeated the canopy of trees and he felt the perspiration beneath his shirt.
"Just across the meadow over there and we'll find a trail," he said, "The village should be on the other side."
Reese nodded at him and then took a sip from her bottle, then spilled a little on a handkerchief to wipe across her face.
"You feel okay?"
She looked up at him almost as if it'd been a challenge and nodded.
"Believe it or not, I spent my share of time in a forest not much different than here."
"Okay just checking," he said, "We're going to stay overnight there but it'll probably be rustic."
She shrugged putting her water bottle back.
"Done my share of that too…"
He smiled at her, not able to help himself. Her background might piss most of the people off if they'd known it but it only intrigued him.