This huge underground vault was a partially collapsed public air raid shelter. Now it had become one of the collection centers for the salvaged remains of the city’s wealth in goods.
Overlooking the far end of the vault was another control center. This one was more extensive than the one that Kolp had made his headquarters. Méndez, Kolp’s chief lieutenant, used it for coordinating the collection and distribution of supplies. He too was marred by radiation, as were all the mutants living in the levels below the ruins. He was devoted to Kolp, slavishly so; he was happy to play at war, but even happier that there was no enemy to fight.
“Méndez!” barked Kolp, striding up to him in his control center. “Someone’s breached the warning signal at entry point F-6.”
Méndez was calm. “Must be one of our scavengers.”
“No. That entry’s locked. We’ve never used it.”
Méndez scratched his cheek thoughtfully. “The warning is still operational?”
Alma nodded eagerly.
“So it can’t be one of us,” insisted Kolp. “It must be someone else. I want the security forces alerted.”
“Well,” said Méndez doubtfully. “I don’t know. We ought to check it first. Sir,” he added.
“Well, then do so!” snapped Kolp, “And quickly!”
Méndez led them to a set of consoles; here was a bank of still functioning television screens. He leaned across the control panel and began switching them on. One after the other, the monitors blinked alive, flickering with images of the underground corridors and of the blasted city above.
“Come on,” said Méndez impatiently.
Méndez began stabbing buttons. The images on the screens began to flicker and change with dizzying rapidity. Then suddenly, abruptly, there was a startlingly close shot of a fierce-looking chimpanzee, a curious orangutan, and a nervous black man, moving cautiously through a dimly lit passage. The image flickered on to another. Kolp almost screamed.
“No! There! Go back!”
Méndez reversed the scan. The image of the three reappeared on the soundless monitor.
“My God!” gasped Kolp.
“What is it?” asked Alma, Méndez looked at him sharply. Kolp’s face was ashen. “It’s Caesar!”
“Caesar?”
“That damned chimpanzee! He’s come back to reconquer the city!”
“Doesn’t he know that the bombs did that?” Méndez’ voice was edged with bitterness.
“He must know now . . .” They watched as the two apes and the man moved into a brighter section of corridor.
“It’s cleaner here,” Virgil was saying. He was referring to the radiation count. He moved slowly ahead of Caesar and MacDonald, watching his meter carefully.
“Could anything live here?” asked Caesar. “I mean after so long?”
Virgil was matter of fact in his answer. “Oh, yes. But I don’t think it would be much of a life.” The three moved on slowly, carefully. MacDonald had his machine gun loaded and ready; its muzzle swung back and forth, searching for targets.
Watching them on the monitors, Kolp wished the microphones were still working. He would have given anything to know what they were talking about.
“Who are the others?” asked Alma.
Kolp said angrily, “The black man is the brother of Breck’s personal assistant, the one who helped Caesar escape. It figures—it must run in the blood. Damned traitors! Betrayers of the human race! His name is MacDonald; he used to supervise the general archives. Now he’s helping apes!” He spat the words. After a moment he added, “I don’t know who the orangutan is.”
Caesar, Virgil, and MacDonald climbed over a sudden pile of rubble where a wall had collapsed, then turned a corner. They stopped in shock. Ahead of them in the tunnel, in the midst of all the dirt and tumbled concrete, were fragments of newspapers, rotting briefcases, bits of old clothing, and bones. Lots of bones. A skull grinned hollowly at them.
“This isn’t a city,” said Caesar. “It’s a catacomb.” He pushed forward, anyway, taking care to step around the rotting skeletons. Virgil followed. The two apes kept their eyes averted. MacDonald didn’t—he had realized something that they had missed. Not all of the skeletons were whole. Some of the bones were scattered about. And some of them looked gnawed.
He raised his gun and moved closer to Caesar, without explaining why. Maybe there was nothing alive down here now, but there had been at one time.
In the control center. Méndez switched to another camera to keep them in view.
“There are only three of them,” he said.
“There must be more,” said Alma. “I wonder how many?”
Kolp rubbed his hands together slowly. “That’s a question we’ll get answered when we get them.”
On the screen they saw that the three explorers had reached a narrow, short, dark tunnel. The two apes lit their torches and poked them carefully into the gloom. They moved cautiously forward, sniffing and listening. The air smelled of death, tasted of foulness and decay. Somewhere something was whirring softly.
The passage was jammed with debris and rubble. There were places where it was piled so high that it brought them up close to the ceiling. They had to stoop to get through. As they moved through the tunnel, they could see that someone had once tried to live in one of its nooks. There were blankets, empty food tins, and a forlorn photo in a warped frame.
Suddenly, startlingly, a figure leaped up before them, an ugly, misshapen silhouette. MacDonald tensed. He fumbled with his tommy gun, but before he could fire, the figure scurried off. He dropped his torch and grabbed the gun with both hands, but whoever or whatever it was had disappeared down a side corridor. Its footsteps echoed loudly and hung in the air for a long moment.
The two apes and the man exchanged a startled glance. MacDonald forced himself to relax. He picked up his torch again and relit it from Virgil’s. He forced himself to take a deep breath, then another. And then he tensed again; he frowned and moved toward a wall, holding his torch close to it, his machine gun ready in his other hand.
Written on the wall, dimmed by nine years of dust, dirt, and decay, were the words: “CONTROL CENTRAL—ARCHIVES SECTION.”
“This is the place,” said MacDonald quietly. He gestured with the torch. “In there.” The light flickered to illuminate a twisted door and a crumbled room beyond. They began to clamber over the rubble and twisted metal, squeezing their way into the archives room.
Kolp finally turned away from the monitor screens. He picked up a microphone and, obviously enjoying himself, announced: “All security forces alert! Check out all sections in areas M-5, R-7, and R-8. Apprehend three strangers—one human and two apes.” Below him, on the floor of the great vault, the workers hesitated; they turned toward him curiously and stared up at the control center. Then, as the meaning of his words sank in, the crowd moaned with an odd wail of anticipation and foreboding, a long drawn out “Aaaah.” A mutter of fear.
“But use caution!” urged Kolp. “I repeat, use caution! If they resist, you may shoot.”
Beside him, Méndez winced.
Kolp added, “But shoot only to maim. We want them alive for interrogation.”
The crowd began to move then; it began to surge and flow in new directions. Like a great, amorphous, gray and white mass, the grotesque figures rolled restlessly through the cavern, sorting themselves into action, jerky and unsure. Section leaders began calling directions, but the movement was spastic.
Gradually the routines and the drills took hold. The men began breaking out the savage tools of destruction. Hands reached for weapons, pulled them off racks on the wall. Other hands broke open cases, pulled out ammunition. The smell of excitement—and fear—rose in the air. The rifles were passed eagerly from hand to hand; the bolts were slid back and checked in their action. Cartridges were dropped into chambers. Bodies began to move toward the tunnels. They poured into the corridors, Kolp’s last speech still resounding through the cavern. Over and over, the words “Caution, caution!” rang along the walls.