She left the table while Burke just watched and walked straight over to the table where Thomas had joined the other men.

They looked up at her.

"What are you doing," one of them asked.

Thomas just sneered.

"She was trying to talk me out of going after those damn monkeys."

The other men reacted by their bodies growing rigid and throwing her hostile stares. One of them, Denny stood up to face her.

"What are you going to do about it," he said, "as soon as we're done here, we're going over there and take care of it."

Thomas nodded.

"Yeah, kill them before they kill us," he said, "I'm not waiting for them to come over here and slaughter us in our sleep, to finish what that damn plague started."

"The others nodded. She knew that they had been in the population of those who had gotten sick but recovered. The course of the disease had been agonizing according to those who lived to talk about it and to those who had watched others die, gasping for breath while their organs imploded. Caroline had seen Ebola while in Zaire and remembered how it had taken lives. But this virus scarred its survivors in more ways than just residual damage.

"You don't know that's what will happen."

Denny gritted his teeth.

"That's exactly what did happen where I came from," he said, "An army of apes came one night, swooping right out of the damn trees and no one got away alive."

Caroline hadn't seen that during the standoff on the Golden Gate Bridge because the apes had been interested in escape not conquest then. But she had heard about the carnage in the Muir woods when they had attacked the apes after tailing Will. She had known that and had tried to warn him.

But it had been too late.

"You don't know shit lady," Denny said, "Some said they ate the babies."

Caroline knew that didn't happen, but as the apes spread their reach, stories like that sprung out of the violence. And as it spread, the stories took on a life of their own.

"They aren't carnivores," she said, "They don't eat people."

Thomas glared at her.

"You are calling Denny a liar?"

She sighed, knowing she was outnumbered here.

"No…I'm just saying what I know," she said, "I'm sorry that you saw such violence, that you lost the people you knew and loved but that plague took out way more people than these apes did."

"They didn't need to kill everyone because of the plague," Thomas said, "Doesn't mean they didn't want to or that they won't kill the rest of us."

These men had gotten themselves all worked up and Caroline knew they wouldn't stop to listen to reason. But if she didn't dissuade them, they could spark a battle that would kill many here.

"Think about it," she said, "If those apes aren't alone, many more could come and you can't fight them. There's too few people and too weak. You don't even have an infrastructure yet."

Hopefully that side of the argument would get through to them, through the anger, the hatred and the fear but the men just looked at each other and started to get up. She stood in their path.

"Don't do it," she said, "You've got people here who can't defend themselves, do you want to sacrifice them?"

Denny spit on the ground.

"Fuck, what are you some kind of ape lover?"

She just stared at him not knowing how to answer that without giving it all away. There was so much she wanted to tell people but she couldn't, not without endangering herself and her child. She had a feeling that Will had earned a place on the list right beneath the apes as someone to hate enough to kill.

But she couldn't let them go after those apes.

"Sit down and calm down before you do something you can't take back."

Denny snarled at her.

"Get out of my way bitch."

Caroline sighed, not everything in the old world had died with it. But she kept her focus on doing what she needed to do to stop them.

"No."

He didn't like that much and before she knew it, he had taken a fist and punched her in the face, knocking her to the ground. She saw stars and felt the jolt of pain rush through her but she knew to get back on her feet before he could move past her. She sprung up to put herself in front of him when suddenly; a man grabbed Denny and threw him against the table.

She didn't need to look closely through her blurred vision to know it was Burke. Denny recovered enough to leap at him and a couple of the other men tried to strike at Burke. But he'd been trained to fight hard enough not just to get away but to kill. Caroline knew that from looking at him.

Will had been shorter and wiry than Burke but once he had punched out Dodge one of the cruel handlers assigned to care for Caesar at the so-called sanctuary he had been taken to after the incident with the neighbor. She knew he had done it for Caesar and hadn't cared if Dodge had beat the crap out of him, he had been so angry. Afterward, a doctor bandaged his hand and she'd taken home to her house.

She knew how he had felt taking on larger adversaries because all she could think about was stopping the men from killing the apes for different reasons, some of which had to do with their own survival. But also because those apes hadn't harmed anyone and perhaps had been struggling for their own survival in a changing world.

She knew that most survivors wouldn't see her point of view. Burke in the meantime had quickly dispatched two of the men but Denny wouldn't give up. She got up and stood behind him as he finally slammed the guy on the table face down and then put pressure on his back until Denny stopped wiggling.

He twisted his arm tighter behind his back to get him to keep still.

"Okay, this is how it's going to go," he said, "I know you want to kill those apes, but if you do that, they'll be more of them showing up here to fight than we can handle and innocent people will die."

"They need to die…they're like lice.

Burke leaned over closer to his ear.

"Our day's going to come when we'll fight back," he said, "but it's a numbers game and right now they have the numbers since they're immune to the plague and we're not so we got to be smarter instead."

Denny's next words were unintelligible.

"Did you hear me," Burke, "You going to stay away from them?"

A nod from the table and Burke loosened his grip.

"Okay then I guess we understand each other," he said, "Now there's a generator pump that needs fixing so get moving."

Denny got up and started brushing off his clothes, not looking at Burke. As he started to go, Burke grabbed his arm again.

"And if you ever hit a woman again," he said, "You won't be getting up next time for a while."

Denny nodded and then shot a resentful look at Caroline. Burke turned to look at her, concern etched on his face.

"You okay…hurt?"

She reached to touch her face where a bruise was forming.

"Yeah he packs less of a wallop than an ape," she said, wincing.

"We'll go get you looked at to make sure the baby's fine…"

She touched his arm.

'It's fine, I'm fine. Maybe one of those cold packs."

He nodded and they left the building.

Caesar looked over at Alisa who had walked off to get some water. They had eaten a meal of cereal with some dried fruit. Not really his favorite foods but they still had to gather up whatever looked edible until they learned how to produce food on their own. Maurice and the other orangutans had debated with Alpha and other chimpanzees on creating a research committee to start collecting information on the humans and their technology that they could use. Caesar had been reluctant to do anything related to science given how a group of them had managed to wipe their own people off the planet. Kobas when he got wind of it signed "kill scientists". Some other apes had waved their arms and hooted in approval.

He had seen enough records that were kept on virus 113 as it had been called to know that it had been created in the same laboratory that essentially created him. But Maurice signed that the research would be very limited, information gathering through observation only, no experimentation of any kind. That made him feel a little better but he knew that the humans hadn't zoomed down the path to their own destruction overnight but had gotten there one step at a time.

Not what he wanted his own kind to repeat.

He glanced over at Alisa who had never seen the inside of a laboratory. He hadn't either until the night he broke the apes out. Only the outer walls of the building when he had been taken there by Will to explain his origins…after he realized the man who raised him wasn't really his father.

And he wasn't human or really ape either. He had seen pictures of apes that looked like him in books given to him by Will but he hadn't felt a part of them either. Not until he'd been dumped in that jail. Then he saw others like him, only they weren't only in appearance until he found the serum in Will's house.

Alisa brought the water to him and he sipped it, as she watched him. She'd been wanting to have young but while Caesar enjoyed her company he didn't know what his offspring would be like. Would it be like him and the other apes, or would it be like they had been before they'd been changed by the serum? He had some understanding of genetics from reading but he had grown up to be even smarter than his mother.

Was what had changed them permanent or would it die with them?

"Want baby Caesar"

Alisa had signed that a lot lately and he answered with "later" and he'd thought about it since. But the questions that arose about its future and that of his kind never left him. Maybe he should allow for the creation of Maurice's research committee to get some answers.

One step at a time.

Caroline put the pack over her face that Burke had given her.

"What were you doing getting into it with those men?"

She sighed, having waited for him to confront her about it.

"I couldn't let them do it Burke."

"You're pregnant," he said, "You have to think about that."

Anger filled her then and her eyes flashed as she slammed the pack down.

"And you think I don't," she said, "I think about it all the time…what's going to happen to it…what it's going to be like giving birth in a world that's changed without him…and whether it's going to live or die."

"I know it's not easy."

She sighed.

"You're right about that. Sometimes I don't think I'm going to make it and I don't want to," she said, "I miss everything that used to be…that's gone because of what a group of scientists did including the father."

He picked up her pack and placed it in her hand again. Her fingers wrapped around it as she looked at him.

"A few more minutes…and that will eliminate most of the swelling."

She nodded.

"Thanks…"

He paused and then he brushed a strand of hair away from the ice pack.

"And you're not alone," he said, "We're all just trying to figure out what the new rules are and we need each other."

She nodded.

"And if you knew me, you'd know I was the last person who would ever be saying that."

With that, he walked away but she knew in time he'd be back.