The sun had already set when Galen signaled to the others to stop, but the sky was still a translucent blue, and the diffuse light allowed him to survey the area. The marches were almost behind them; the ground under his feet had stopped squishing, and was gently sloping upwards, and the vegetation had changed from willows and poplars to elms and ash trees. A battered yellow and black sign, half-overgrown with honeysuckle, announced that they were dangerously close to tainted ground.

Solid ground, though - easier for horses to tread, easier for patrols to ride. Galen supposed he should be grateful to get out of the mosquito-saturated marshland, but his muscles were humming with tension. Their guide had left them before the sun had touched the horizon, slipping back into the swamp like a little animal. Galen fervently wished he could slip back as well, hide in the swaying, dripping, whirring labyrinth until Urko gave up and rode back south.

Realistically, though, that would never happen; Urko would sooner drain the swamp and burn down the trees, if he suspected they were still hiding in it. Galen sighed and directed his attention towards his little tribe that had made him, by some strange process, their temporary leader.

Alan held on to the neck of the gelding, but he looked as if he'd break down any moment; his face was pale and sweaty, and his gaze was turned inward, probably focusing on the last reserves of his strength.

Zana caught his gaze and turned around to inspect Alan herself. "Mothers, Alan! Sit down before you fall over!" She let go of the rope that she had used to lead the horse, and urged the human to sit down, handing him a water bottle.

"I'm... fine," Alan gasped. "We can't stop now."

"Yes, we can," Zana said firmly. "It's only for a few moments, and then you'll ride on Ah..pah... Peet, why that name? It sounds like an illness!"

Their other human ambled over to her, gun resting comfortably in the crook of his arm. Galen tried not to tense at the sight; Peet and his gun had saved all their lives when Urko and his men had descended on them this morning.

"It's Apachee, not Apachoo, Zana," he grinned. "One is an illness, the other is an attack helicopter."

The last words had been an unintelligible yammer, probably from his own language. Peet seemed to sense both their irritation. "It's a machine that flies," he explained.

Zana shook her head. "What could a horse and a flying machine have in common?"

Peet patted the horse's neck. "They're both lean, mean, killing machines."

Galen supposed that was what had enamoured Peet to the other beast in the first place - their shared aversion against apes. It was the reason that horse had been so cheap that he could afford it. He had needed a second horse, and figured that he could leave its care to the humans. It worked out better than expected - Peet had adopted the gelding, although he still claimed not to care for horses in general.

"Any sign of Urko and his troupe?" Galen asked him.

Peet shook his head. "The kid was really good. Almost sunk our horses." He patted the gelding's neck again; the horse ignored him, busying itself with the hard grass instead.

Galen's own horse, on the other hand, hadn't touched the grass since they had stopped, and that wasn't a good sign. She was favoring her hind leg on the side that the bullet had grazed. He quickly inspected the wound; it needed stitching.

After another glance at their exhausted human, that looked as if he wouldn't be able to make another step anytime soon, Galen decided that he could as well clean and dress the horse's wound, and discuss their next steps in the meantime. He ordered Peet to hold the horse, and quickly removed the saddlebags.

"We're right at the border to the Forbidden Zone," he said as he began to clean the wound. He glanced at Alan, and gestured uphill. "As you can see."

The humans turned their heads, only now noticing the sign whose colors had already dulled to various shades of gray in the dusk. Everyone stared at the ancient symbol for a moment.

"Huh," Peet said finally. "Funny what survives the centuries. How old is that sign?"

Galen shrugged. "They are being renewed every now and then. I have no idea how old this one is - ten years, twenty?" He doubted that a lot of people came by this place and had need of warning. The fact that a sign had been placed here, however, indicated that this path was frequented often enough, and that meant that Urko might find it, too.

Suddenly, stopping here seemed like an exceptionally bad idea.

"Oh, good," Peet muttered. "For a second, I thought it had been there since they nuked the place."

He was silent for a while; Galen finished his last stitch and thought that he was beginning to shape up as a surgeon. Of course, treating animals that couldn't talk was pretty helpful in that regard. He dabbed some chamomile oil on the suture. Time to get moving again.

"You know," Peet spoke up hesitantly, "now that we're all on the same page about where I and Al really came from... I wondered how far we jumped into the future. I mean..." He gestured towards the sign. "Did this happen five hundred years ago? Five thousand? Five hundred thousand? 'Cause that could answer the question of how dangerous it is in there."

"Too dangerous," Galen said tersely and closed his doctor's bag. "The villagers told me that monstrous creatures live in the cursed zone. Sometimes they haunt the edges of the villages; sometimes... they get into a barn, or a human hut." He looked at them in turn, Alan, Peet, Zana. "Nobody survives those encounters."

Zana shivered, but the humans looked unconvinced. Galen felt his irritation grow.

"We've already been in two Forbidden Zones," Alan pointed out. He was still sitting on the ground, clutching the water bottle. He looked as exhausted as before. "We haven't come across any mutations at all, not even mutated plants."

"Believe me, Alan, mutated plants will be the least of our concerns," Galen said sharply. "Not all Zones are equally dangerous, and Peet is almost out of bullets. And Zana is pregnant. I'm not going to risk her life, or that of our child... or yours, just to take a shortcut."

"It's not about taking a shortcut," Alan argued, struggling to his feet. "It's about shaking off Urko..."

"Urko has already lost his inhibition to cross into the Zones," Galen pointed out. "You, of all people, should be aware of that."

"Yeah, but he almost lost his life in there, and he lost one of his men," Peet cut in. "That'll make him think twice, I bet. He wants to kill us, not himself. And he doesn't know how much ammo I've left."

Galen shook his head. "Maybe he'll back off because of that, but those creatures won't calculate how much ammunition you might have, Peet. They'll attack anyway, and then what? Are you going to defend yourself with nothing but your teeth and claws?"

Peet stared at him, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "If I have to. But I don't believe any old wive's tale I hear. Maybe they just heard some 'possums having a party in their pantry..."

Alan choked on his water bottle, and Zana giggled. Galen flopped the saddlebags with more force than necessary on Tala's back, and the horse buckled when one of them grazed the suture.

Why must he always argue with me?

"Well, I suppose you know exactly what kinds of horrors might or might not expect us in there," he said acidly, "since your kind created them in the first place."

"How do you wanna know that?" Peet asked, his tone now sharper, too. "Maybe we nuked the cities, but that doesn't create hellhounds or godzillas. The only thing it makes is cancer."

"Oh, that makes... nuking... those cities so much better!" Galen sneered. "Tell me, weren't there people living in those cities? Fellow humans? Your brethren?"

"Hey, I didn't nuke anything, and I've no idea what happened, okay?" Peet raised his hands defensively, and scowled at him. "That was after we... after we fell through that hole in spacetime..."

"It's not about you, it's about your species," Galen hissed. "Huge areas are forever unusable, impassable, because of what you've done!"

"Galen, darling," Zana piped up. "These are Alan, and Peet, not some faceless Man-beasts from ancient times. They've done nothing wrong, and we know them, they aren't like that..."

"Most people weren't 'like that'," Alan added, looking at him with a worried expression that made Galen even more furious. As if he was the dangerous creature here. "Most people just wanted to raise their families in peace," Alan continued, "and to not have to worry about having enough money to pay their bills, and not get sick, and... just live their lives. They were just caught in a system they couldn't control..."

"A system isn't a sentient entity," Galen snapped. "It's the sum of the people, and your people were always eager to get more, have more, consume more, until they had consumed everything, and then they went looking for the things their neighbours had, to consume them, like a forest fire! You know, that reminds me of scroll 29, verse 6: 'Yea, he will murder his brother, to possess his brother's land'!" He pointed at the sign. "And if he can't possess it, nobody else can have it, either!"

"Galen, enough!" Zana propped her hands on her hips. "That's all very fascinating, but we really don't have the time for a philosophy... or a history lesson. Urko could be right around that grove, laughing at you tearing into our humans. We belong together, so let's not start bickering!"

"I'm not bickering!" Galen snapped. "I'm just tired of Peet fighting every single one of my decisions..." He flicked a glance at the human, who had fallen conspicuously silent, and was avoiding his eyes all of a sudden. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Galen thought that Peet looked pale, and somehow ill.

"Well, in this case, I agree with him," Zana said briskly. "If those rumors are also circulating in Trion, Urko's men will have heard them all, too, and he'll have great difficulties getting them to cross that border. And that gives us an advantage we can't pass up. So I'm afraid you're outvoted, dear. Let's go!" She tugged at Ahpahchee's rope, and the gelding snorted and shook his head, annoyed at the disruption of his grazing.

"It's too dangerous..."

Something cracked and splintered in the distance. They all froze, searching each other's faces for confirmation.

Yes. They had all heard it. Horses crashing through dead wood...

Galen snatched up Tala's rope. "... but it seems to be the only path open for us now." He urged the mare past the sign, not looking up at it. Behind him, he heard Ahpahchee snort, and Peet muttering to the horse. He threw a last glance over his shoulder, into the darkening wilderness behind them. He couldn't see the shadows of their pursuers, but he could feel them, predators stalking them, eyes glinting with anticipation. He pursed his lips and and tugged at the mare's rope again.

Maybe they would meet monsters. But he wasn't sure anymore that they wouldn't have simian faces.

Despite her bold words to Galen earlier, Zana felt increasingly nervous as the night pounced on them like a bushcat - one moment, the woods around them were a graying tapestry of trees and vines, the next moment, darkness had engulfed them as if it was rising from the forest floor itself.

It was just because the canopy was blocking out the sky, she told herself - out in the marches, dusk would have settled first around the eastern horizon and given her time to adjust her eyes. Still, she couldn't help but feel as if the forest itself was watching her from the whispering shadows... as if the eyes of unnatural creatures were tracking their every move. All that talk about monsters and human abominations was shaping every bush into a crouching menace. She was growing annoyed at herself - but she couldn't shake off the tension that had settled in her shoulders.

Splashing sounds from Galen and Tala before her alerted Zana to another shallow creek they had to pass. The woods were full of them, and their rushing noise drowned out any sounds of approaching... predators, natural animals like bushcats, or, or... she had no idea what kind of animals lived in those woods, but in any case, nothing monstrous.

She stretched out her leg to feel for the embankment, and stumbled when the horse made a sudden jump over an obstacle that it could more sense than see. Behind her, she heard a crash and a muffled yelp, as Alan lost his grip on the animal and fell into the underbrush. His leg had given out under him again. Zana splashed through the water to catch the gelding, guilt burning in her chest. She had led the horse; it was her responsibility to make sure that Ahpahchee didn't push their injured human to the ground.

"I'm so sorry, Alan," she apologized when the human caught up to her, "the rope slipped through my hand..."

"I guess... that was... unexpected for... both you and me," Alan said. His voice sounded strained; he had to be in a lot of pain.

"You know what, you'll sit on Ahpahchee's back," Zana said resolutely. "Nobody can see you in the darkness, and you can't walk with that leg anymore."

This time, the human didn't protest, which told her how much in pain he had to be. She called Peet, who helped Alan to get on the horse's back, and wound the rope around her hand to make sure she wouldn't lose it again.

Ahpahchee seemed to sense her new determination, and followed her along like a little lamb, and soon enough, Zana's thoughts had returned to Galen's dark mutterings about man-made horrors stalking lonely farmhouses. She tried to think logically about it. Nobody possessed the ability to create new kinds of animals, monstrous or not. Not beyond the usual selection by breeders, anyway. Anyone with that ability would be equal to the Mothers... and to claim that humans, of all creatures, had ever wielded that god-like power... it was nothing short of blasphemy.

She wondered if Galen had gotten those ideas from his book. The book that chronicled the true history of Man and Ape, as he claimed, a history that had been kept hidden from them by old men like Zaius, presumably to protect simple apes like herself from nightmares about Man's potential for absolute, unimaginable power...

What if that book was full of lies? Who had even been the author? What intentions had guided his hand? According to Galen, the book was a copy of an older work, one that had already crumbled when the unknown scribe had copied it hundreds of years ago. But of course, they only had the words of that ape (or human? had a human written these outrageous claims?) for that...

... but she had a human from that bygone era riding beside her. In the whispering, rushing darkness, he suddenly was no longer Alan; he had become the ghost of a lost eon, a messenger of tales that had been buried by her people on purpose. Tales that would haunt her if she asked him now...

A muffled moan shook her from these increasingly fretful musings, and suddenly, Alan was just Alan again, a human - her human - with a bad leg, still tormented by the aftermath of that gunshot that had crippled him weeks ago. Zana wished she could ease his pain. Well, at least she might be able to distract him a bit.

"Alan..." She waited until he had grunted an acknowledgment. "When Peet mentioned the last time we were in a Forbidden Zone, I remembered something. You know how I caught up to you when Galen and Peet pulled you and Urko out of that sinkhole?"

Galen and Peet and that lieutenant of Urko, Nelva - who had felt bound to his word, despite being in Urko's service for who knew how long. But that wasn't what she wanted to talk about right now.

"That day is... hard to forget," Alan said dryly.

"I was only able to reach you in time because I used a... a tunnel that ran under the city." And she had only been able to use that tunnel because she had grabbed the daughter of their human hosts from the nearby village, and forced her into her service as a guide. The memory sent a little stab through her gut. True, she had sent Delia home before she had entered the tunnel, but still... she had been The Ugly Ape that day, stealing human children...

She shook her head and continued, "I had long wanted to ask you about that tunnel, but so much happened in the meantime, I just forgot. What was that? Why burrow into the ground like, like rabbits?" She didn't want to compare his contemporaries to fire-spiders, but she couldn't suppress a shiver of disgust when she pictured the web of connected tunnels that were still hiding under those ruins. Fortunately, Alan wouldn't be able to see her reaction in the darkness.

After a moment of silence, Alan's voice reached her ear from behind, still halting and tense... controlling his pain. "It was mostly for... for reasons of efficiency. These tunnels had... had wagons running in them, and," she heard him draw a deep breath, "and only one wagon was allowed in a tunnel at a time. So they wouldn't... block each other's passage. So people could traverse the city much faster... than above ground."

"I think I came across such a wagon," Zana confided. She wondered how it had run without horses - the track hadn't looked as if a horse could walk on it. "It was filled with human skeletons."

"They... they died in the wagon?" Alan's voice sounded... strange. Zana wished she could see his face.

"Yes," she confirmed. "But they were all still seated. Nobody had tried to flee the wagon, there were no signs of struggle, only... only glass everywhere. Inside the wagon."

There was a long silence.

"An explosion," Alan finally murmured. "A blast that hit them completely unprepared. But... underground? Maybe guided missiles..."

"I didn't understand those last words," Zana prompted him after another moment of silence.

"They were under attack from someone," Alan said finally.

"From other humans," Zana concluded.

The ground had begun to slope upwards for a while now, and she grabbed Ahpahchee's withers to let the horse drag her up the hill. It had been a long day; her feet were aching so much that she contemplated joining Alan on the horse's back.

"... yes." The admission came after an even longer pause, almost inaudible over the loud rushing to their left. It sounded like a small waterfall.

"But why?"

"I have no idea. We weren't at war with... well, nobody was attacking us on our soil when Pete and I left." Alan's voice didn't sound so strained anymore. It sounded tired.

Maybe she should have found another topic to distract him with. "Is it true that you could create new creatures... unnatural creatures?"

So much for a different topic.

She heard Alan sigh. "Some scientists did experiments in that regard... although the intent was to find cures against rare diseases, not to create new beasties for the zoo."

"So you really did have these abilities," Zana marveled. "Amazing. It's... hard to imagine."

Alan huffed a laugh. "You could say that. Looking at my descendants, I can hardly believe it myself."

Zana suspected that they were both having the same thought: what in the world had happened that mankind had fallen so deeply? And how had the apes ascended?

Maybe they should send a team of historians into those ruins, Zana mused. Whatever had happened back then must have left traces - relics that were buried somewhere under those old cities of humans past, relics that would speak not just of Man's decline, but also of Ape's rise to power. But maybe the Elders already knew the truth.

She wondered what about that truth was so terrible that they had kept it hidden throughout the centuries.