“Yes, sir,” Corbin replied brusquely. His face was bright red.
Phillips turned to Clancy.
“It seems you may be right after all,” he said. “Good work.”
“How will you capture them, sir?”
Phillips blinked.
“We have an expert team,” he said. “They’ll come in by air. We have nets, tranq guns, the works. We just needed to know where they were. Now we do, thanks to you and Mr. Youmans here.”
Then he turned and left the room.
Corbin, still red-faced, rose to carry out his orders.
“Come on, experts,” he said. “You’re riding along.”
“My expert advice?” Malakai said. “Don’t send any helicopters. Not until they stop. Not until we know for sure where the main group is. They can hear the choppers coming from miles away.”
The Humvee bumped along the Shoreline Highway, taking steep, hairpin turns. The evening fog was rolling in, but it didn’t obscure the view.
There were no giant trees here, but rocky, broken slopes slanting and sometimes plummeting down to where the restless sea battered against rocky cliffs and narrow shingles. Gulls swarmed in the skies like the flying rats they were, and in the distance Malakai made out the singular profiles of pelicans. It had always interested him, what a difference a few miles could make in landscape, especially when the sea and elevation were involved.
This didn’t seem at all like the sort of place that apes would feel at home and yet a short traverse from here stood some of the tallest trees in the world.
A red SUV came around the curve, half in their lane. Corbin swore and honked as the vehicle hurtled by.
“I thought all of the roads were closed,” Clancy said.
“Can’t close this one,” Corbin replied. “It’s the only way in and out of the communities along the shore. We closed the Panoramic Highway, and there’s been plenty of hell raised over that. Hopefully we’ll get this whole mess mopped up pretty soon and get out of here.”
Corbin glanced at his GPS and suddenly slammed on the brakes, just before a car pullover. There was a brown sign informing them that this was where the Steep Ravine Trail began—or ended. The trail led up a steep hill thick with small trees and shrubs, becoming low scrub as it climbed. Beyond the hill, only sky was visible from this vantage.
“That’s the trail up there,” Corbin said, presumably for those who couldn’t read.
He popped the door open and stepped out, tranq rifle in hand. He scanned the hill above.
Trying to still his heavy breathing, Caesar watched the car stop, and the man get out. He concentrated on keeping still, on making even his thumping heart less noisy. If the man came over—if he took four steps—the shrub Caesar hid behind wouldn’t conceal him anymore.
The other humans weren’t paying much attention. They were talking to each other. He could hear them clearly. He watched the man with the gun, and he listened.
“I don’t know,” Flores said as Corbin took a step toward the trail. “About getting this over with. I mean, we might be safer up here, what with the plague and all.”
“Plague?” Clancy asked.
“Some damn virus,” Flores went on. “It’s killed like a few thousand people in San Fran. Seems like it’s pretty nasty. People start bleeding out of their noses, and the next thing you know they’re dead.”
“When did this begin?” Malakai asked.
“Just a couple of days ago. It just sort of started.”
“Sounds like Ebola,” Malakai said.
“Yeah, they’re comparing it to that. Except it’s a lot easier to get than Ebola.”
“That’s a weird coincidence,” Clancy said.
“Weird?” Flores said. “It’s more than that—it’s scary as shit.”
“No,” Clancy said. “It’s weird that the escape of a bunch of apes would coincide with the onset of an epidemic, especially an epidemic that resembles Ebola.”
“Why?”
“Well, because some scientists think Ebola, like AIDS, got into the human population from animals, and specifically non-human primates.”
“You mean we’re chasing the plague?” Flores said, his voice getting higher.
“Probably not,” Clancy said. “I’m just thinking out loud.”
But that would explain a lot, Malakai thought. A whole lot.
Like why the stores he had called had all had break-ins. In an epidemic, people panicked. They hoarded food and medicine. And if there was a link between the apes and the epidemic—if the apes were carrying it—it would explain the presence of Anvil, the secrecy, all of it.
“Talk a little louder,” Corbin snapped. “Maybe the apes haven’t heard you yet.”
“I don’t know about you,” Flores said, “but I don’t see anywhere you could hide three hundred apes right there. Maybe one or two.”
Corbin frowned and began to walk toward the trailhead, but he hadn’t gone more than another step before he glanced down at the locator.
“Crap,” he swore. “We missed them, somehow. They’re still going. And still headed northwest. They’ve already crossed our perimeter.”
“Headed to Seattle maybe?” a soldier named Kyung joked.
“No,” Corbin said. “But there are pockets of redwood forest all along the coast. God, if they get up to Sonoma County, we’ll never find them.”
“Can they do that?” Malakai asked.
“They would have to cover a lot of open ground, and cross a bunch of roads,” Corbin said. He looked back uneasily at the hill hunkering over them. “But we’ve closed some of those roads, and evacuated some of the homes. If they’re moving by night –” he glanced back at his tablet “– they could be headed for the Point Reyes seashore—the ridges are in forest. But surely someone would see them.”
Then he climbed back in the car and stepped on the gas, a determined look on his face. The Humvee lurched onward. Malakai kept his eye on the stark line between hill and sky.
Still breathing hard, Caesar watched the man get back in the big car. In a moment, it moved on, following the pickup truck, the truck into which he had, moments before, tossed the white rectangles as it slowed for the curve near his hiding place.
When it was clear, he hurried back up and over the hill, racing into the sheltering leaves of the forest. But his mind was busy, stirring around all he had just heard. He knew what disease was. Will had been trying to cure a disease, the one that was hurting Charles. It sounded as if many humans were dying of this new disease. And they seemed to think it had something to do with his troop.
He remembered the people fighting at the market. Was it because they were sick? Will’s father sometimes acted very strangely because of his illness. He didn’t mean to. Caesar remembered the time the man in the house next door had screamed at Charles and grabbed him, pushed and threatened him. That was when Caesar went to protect Charles, and bit the other man, and was sent to the shelter.
Had the man been angry at Charles because he was sick and acting strangely? Or was he afraid? And why did they think the apes brought the disease? There were injured in his troop, but that was different from sick. None of them were sick.
But it meant something. Whether it was good or bad, he did not know.
Delores Park was normally a pretty lively place, but today it was mostly empty. A few brave or deluded parents had brought their kids to the playground. A young couple lay on a blanket, flying a kite shaped like a sailing ship. An old man was walking his dog.
So it wasn’t hard to spot the red-headed woman in the green sweater, standing between the playground and Delores Street. As he approached she smiled uncertainly at him. She wore a white filter mask and carried a leather satchel.