She did as she promised him, she saw the doctor when they arrived at a small camp filled with about two dozen survivors. Two of which had never gotten sick from the plague and the others had been left with various levels of damage.

But first, there had been hours of working alongside them to get the pumps of a couple of wells working again so they could have fresh water flowing from the taps of the structures there. The few buildings had fallen in various stages of abandon and disrepair having been left at some point when the plague had been at its most intense as it swept from the United States

She dug in there alongside Burke and the leader, an older woman named Ruth who had once been a school teacher and part time mayor of a town about 20 miles that had been burned to the ground by the last of those to die, in hopes that burning the bodies of those infected would spare them the same fate. A few of them lined up to push a wheel which had rusted shut from some rains that had fallen recently and after some intense pushing, it began to moan and then squeal as it released a flow of water.

"I think that will do it," Ruth said, "We'll need to boil it for a while to make sure it's safe until I can run some tests."

She had rudimentary equipment good enough to check the water for parasites like giarrdia and bacteria as well. But they'd been boiling water for weeks anyway taken from a local stream.

"If the apes decide to pay us a visit," she continued, "We have some defense against them. Guns, some explosives but so far…"

Burke nodded.

"They're keeping their nucleus tight in various pockets of America," he said, "and I imagine in other places around the world as well."

Reese spoke up.

"Have you ever seen them fight," she said, "They're so strong, so fast though at first they just were trying to get some place safe."

Before…they had decided that humans weren't worth anything but either being dead or enslaved. She still didn't know what had turned the tide but the slaughter in the woods had been so much different than what had happened on the bridge. Men ripped apart by the strength of adult primates in a fit of rage, all except for Will.

Burke looked at her and she glanced away but she'd seen it first hand when it first went down at its epicenter. Before it spread outward like water rippling after a rock dropped in its center.

Ruth sighed.

"We got reports of uprisings everywhere," she said, "Most were very violent and not very long but when the plague hit, those battles stopped. If we hadn't destroyed ourselves, we might have won."

Reese just shook her head mostly to herself. She knew that Caesar and his army would have never given up until they prevailed. When Will had died, Caesar had lost his remaining link to the species that had raised him.

"They'll populate the earth while our numbers continue to fall," Ruth said, "Hard to believe actually being alive to witness the conquest of one species by another."

Burke shook his head.

"That's not going to happen," he said, "We've still got all that technology…we just have to get access to it and use it against them while they're still trying to figure out a very steep learning curve."

Not so steep, Reese knew, she'd seen firsthand how adept Caesar had been at developing intellectually even though for most of the time she hadn't known the truth. When Will finally told her she had told him exactly what she'd thought about his haphazard research trying to get him to listen.

"They'll adapt quickly enough," she said, "while we're trying to scramble to survive. We've traded places with a species that's only a couple degrees separated from us on the evolutionary scale."

She felt the scientist of old, who'd made a career out of studying apes reemerge. Burke watched her but she focused on Ruth.

"Their numbers are thin…but with the plague taking out probably over 95% of us, that'll even the scales."

Ruth shook her head.

"Whoever thought they could play God, I'd kill them myself if I ever got my hands on them."

Reese heard the very familiar anger and resentment inside the woman who after all, had been thrust in a nightmare like the rest of them. Maybe those who had succumbed to the plague had been spared not those who were still alive.

She didn't know what she was going to do, and what kind of world awaited for her baby to be born and grow up in. She felt overwhelmed suddenly with emotion that she'd been left alone to raise it, that Will had been taken, that he had chosen to run after Caesar in the woods leaving her. But she couldn't succumb to the despair that threatened to overtake her, she had to keep mining the strength to survive.

Caesar had often involved himself in discussions through signing about what to do with the humans they encountered. Most of them wound up in cages rather than were killed in battle because when the virus wiped out most of their numbers, many of those that remained had been weakened enough to lose their will to resist the new order. Those enslaved worked hard until they dropped, and at first they had lost large numbers of them because they'd forgotten the basics like feeding and watering them.

So they'd thrown food in their cages and watered them down with the hose which lowered their resistance even further. When Caesar and the apes had been treated like that, it had taken their supersized intellect to prod them into rebellion.

Caesar had known kindness from his human family but then one day, he'd been driven off by Will and the female vet to a facility and just abandoned to cruelty. He had harbored resentment towards Will and that had fed his drive for revolution but somehow in the woods, when he and Will met up and Will had asked him for his forgiveness, something had changed inside of him.

He had considered that there might be a chance for him and the apes to coexist with the humans. But then the military forces that had tailed Will had shown him otherwise. If it hadn't been for Will, he'd be dead. But Caesar's apes had attacked the army with the greatest ferocity and there hadn't been any survivors to crawl back and provide an accounting to the other humans.

Leaving the quiet of the forest around him and a few moments for him and Will to say their goodbyes…but then what Will had asked him. He didn't know if he could respond. He had moved on from that first battle and now, he and the other apes were trying to get one city back up and functioning just like their counterparts were doing in other places loosely knit together by the messengers.

"Kill them…"

Caesar looked up at the chimp's signing, recognizing the one that had been liberated from the lab that born him. He signed no more killing. Need workers to build cities.

The other ape just waved his hand dismissively and went back to his corner apart from the rest of the group as he always did. Caesar knew he had to watch him carefully because if their movement splintered, it might be surrounding him. But Caesar remained stronger.

The bonobos who had crashed the impromptu meeting still signed, negotiate, work, build together but Caesar remained too jaded to ever allow that to happen. After watching humans kill a human to get at him, he'd been more than happy to see them dwindle in numbers through their own actions.

They weren't fit to rule any longer and the apes would take their places all over the planet, leaving it in much better hands. After all, ape would never destroy ape.

And that would become their very first law.

Reese slipped her clothes back on, relieved to feel less exposed than she just did during her examination by a man who looked too young to be a doctor. But he had just finished his residency when the plague broke in Fargo North Dakota leaving him and a couple other doctors to cope with the stream of plague victims that had quickly turned into a flood.

When he had finally left Fargo in the dead of night, it had become a ghost town.

"So what's your verdict?"

He filled out some notes on a piece of paper and ripped it off.

"You're definitely pregnant," he said, "Nearly three months along give or take a couple of weeks."

She nodded and then asked the question that had weighed on her.

"Is the baby…all right?"

He smiled despite being all serious during the exam.

"Just fine…nice and healthy," he said, "Of course you were a bit sketchy on the family history."

She adjusted her shirt with her hands.

"The father's not here…he died."

"The plague…?"

"Yeah…that."

"Any known medical conditions that he had," he said, "Any risk factors on his side of the family?"

"His father died of Alzheimer's but I guess it's too soon to worry about that."

The doctor couldn't argue with that, but he reached for a bottle of what looked like vitamins.

"I lifted this during our last pharmacy run," he said, "Take one a day, get plenty of good food, fresh if possible and rest."

She nodded and reached for her pack.

"Thanks…what do I owe you?"

He lifted his hands.

"It's on the house," he said, "though I'd like to see you in a couple of months…if you're still here."

She didn't feel that she could make definitive plans but she nodded.

"We'll see what the future holds."

He looked at her thoughtfully.

"For you, it's a baby that's going to be born in a very different world."

She rubbed her abdomen.

"I know that…sometimes it's really hard because I didn't plan on it happening, it just did and with Will…him gone…"

He looked at her kindly.

"These are times when we're going to have to depend on each other," he said, "I'm glad that your settlement's going to network with ours that will make us all a little less alone."

She agreed and Burke had been doing his best to help her. She didn't know why but she didn't' question it.

In fact, when she said goodbye to the doctor, Burke was outside talking to Ruth and she walked up to him. He asked her how it went.

"Baby's fine…and he just gave me a couple things I got to do."

Burke nodded.

"Well we're going to get some food and I dug up a place for you to get some sleep," he said, "work slows down here in the afternoon and picks up in the early evening."

She nodded feeling suddenly tired.

"I was so worried…about the baby…I mean when I got sick…"

He took a couple of his fingers and tilted her face up to look at him.

"Hey everything's going to be just fine," he said, "We've still got a lot to figure out but I think we've made some ground today."

She agreed, finding the people nice. Ruth directed them to their mess tent and they walked over, and when he slid his arm around her shoulder, she didn't say anything.