He leaned forward in his seat and signaled his driver to go on. The jeep lurched ahead, turned down the road. A couple of mutant infantrymen hung on the rear. A small advance force followed. The bulk of the army would not be able to follow until they had cleared some of the carnage from their path.
Kolp’s jeep passed around a clump of trees and the driver instinctively jerked to a halt. Kolp stood up in his seat and looked.
Below them were gorillas digging in and preparing to resist. Beyond stood Caesar’s flimsy barricade of wagons. And beyond that, behind it, the main street of Ape City was visible for the first time.
“Yeah,” grunted Kolp in satisfaction. “Yeah.” He turned to his gunners. “There it is. When we leave, I want no tree standing, no two pieces of wood still nailed together—nothing left alive. Do you understand? I want it to look like . . . like the city we came from.”
He pointed down the road at Caesar’s barricade. “First, clear that rubbish out of our path.”
The gunner rammed a shell into the 105mm rifle. He swung it around in its mountings and took aim, squinting in the sunlight. He squeezed the trigger.
The valley echoed with the crash. A column of smoke rose where a wagon had been before. Now, there was only a crater.
The barricade was manned by chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. They were crouching behind loaded fruit wagons and other farming equipment. Orangutans were dragging boxes of ammunition along, distributing it.
And Caesar sat behind a machine gun of his own. Virgil sat next to him, holding the ammunition belt, ready to feed it in smoothly when Caesar began firing.
“Here they come,” said Virgil, looking up the road. A single jeep was just emerging from the orange grove. The jeep stopped and the gun on it began to rotate.
“Get ready to fire!” Caesar shouted to the other ape defenders. Forgetting himself, he rose to his feet, his teeth bared in a grimace of anger. He stepped up on the barricade, growling. Virgil pulled him back down just as another explosion shattered the barricade, an earth-rattling, ear-breaking, crashing thunder of a sound that splattered rocks and clods of dirt in all directions. Pieces of wood and flesh fell from the air.
Caesar grabbed his ears. He had never heard anything so loud! He picked himself up and began returning the fire. Still blinking from the force and sound of the explosion, he set himself behind his machine gun again and took careful aim at the jeep. He began letting off short bursts, testing the feel of the weapon, then longer ones. His lips curled back in rage.
But the jeep was too far away. Their bullets were falling short, and the 105mm gunner was finding their range!
Behind him, the other apes were moving to follow Caesar’s example. They were stunned by the blast, but they moved to their places at the barricade and began firing, letting off single rounds with their rifles, unsure of what they were firing at, but firing anyway.
A third blast rocked the defense line. This was the closest and loudest explosion of all. The noise was incredible. The crash knocked the defenders back, physically lifting them and throwing them backward, shoving them to their knees. Smoke pillared into the sky, dense and black and ugly. A shower of things unidentifiable clattered to the ground.
The ape defenders were stunned, shaken by the force of the blast. Some dropped their guns in surprise. Others gasped in horror and pointed.
Caesar lay sprawled on his back. Unconscious. Covered with dirt and soot.
Some of the apes began to pick themselves up and duck behind shelter, but most were confused and terrified by the sight of their leader lying on the ground. They stood milling about.
Virgil leapt to his feet and began running along the barricade, shouting and urging the other apes to pick up their guns. He grabbed a fallen rifle and shoved it into the arms of a nearby chimp. The chimp accepted it, but held it limply. He stood there, staring back at Caesar’s unconscious form.
“Get hold of yourself! Fight!” shouted Virgil.
“But Caesar—is he dead?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. We’ve got to defend the city!”
Another thunderous explosion shook the barricade then, hurtling wagons into the air. Jagged pieces of wood, rock, and metal flew at them.
The chimpanzee dropped his weapon again and abandoned the fight. He scrambled for Ape City and disappeared into a tree house. Other apes began to break from their positions at the barricade, falling back away from the rain of deadly shells.
A loaded orange wagon exploded next. Oranges and fruity pulp splashed across the barricade, pummeling and splattering the deserting apes. All down the line now, they were turning from their positions, edging backward, trying to keep up a back fire. But to no avail.
An orangutan and a chimp ran for the cover of the city; they began clambering up into a tree house.
The tree exploded in a ball of orange flame, toppling slowly, tumbling, throwing the house clumsily downward, smashing it, and spilling its contents out onto the ground. The chimp and orangutan were nowhere to be seen.
From high on the ridge the bulk of the mutant army began to move, sweeping down the road toward the orange grove and Ape City. The trucks clanked and growled; the motorcycles sputtered; the jeeps banged and coughed as they swung down the last turn of the road toward the waiting victory.
Far ahead of them, Kolp’s jeep and a smaller advance force were just crashing through the ape barricade.
Kolp was laughing with hysterical excitement. “Get them! Go on!” he shouted to his driver. “Keep going! Chase those stupid animals back to their trees!” He picked up a portable flame thrower. “Then we’ll burn the trees!” The jeep plowed through the wooden barricade as if it were made of matchsticks. Kolp stood in his seat and torched the wagons and carts that made it up.
Delighted at the way they burned, he leaped from the jeep and danced happily down the line, flaming every wagon, every bush, every cart, every pile of wood, everything that wasn’t already burning. Even the bodies of some of the chimp defenders. He aimed the torch at one, and it moved. Well, no matter. He started to pull the trigger anyway, then caught himself. He jerked the weapon aside so that even the short puff of flame that did escape would miss the ape.
He stepped forward curiously. “It is Caesar,” he said.
Caesar opened his eyes then. He was confused, but he had heard his name. He looked around, struggling to focus.
Kolp towered above him, grinning. His radiation-scarred face had an almost unholy gleam; it was the reflection of the flames of the burning tree houses. Behind him, the rest of the mutants were setting their torches to Ape City. Kolp was still holding his flame thrower; it was pointed almost casually at Caesar. Caesar noticed that its tip was glowing hotly.
Kolp scratched his face thoughtfully. His grin faded as he surveyed the ape. When he spoke, his voice was harsh and grating, but his tone was conversational. Almost casual. “You and your people thought you destroyed my city, didn’t you? But humanity survived. Look around you, Caesar. Men have returned to put apes in their proper places. We are going to build a new world!” And with that, he loosed a short burst at Caesar.
Caesar twisted and rolled out of the way, but Kolp followed. “No apes at all!” he said, firing another burst. Again Caesar dodged. “No apes anywhere!” He jerked the weapon savagely and fired again. This time Caesar wasn’t fast enough, the blast scorched his leg. Caesar backed away, trying to scramble, trying to rise to his feet. Kolp’s driver knocked him back to the ground with a rifle butt.
And all around, there was silence. Kolp’s 105mm gunners sat at their station in the jeep, tracking their gun slowly back and forth across the city to maintain order.
From above, and from the shelter of the trees—or what remained of it—the apes watched. Watched as their leader was humbled, humiliated, almost certain to be incinerated.