Battle For The Planet Of The Apes by David Gerrold Read Free Book Online

from pain and from the acceptance of death. Kolp protected her too. Kolp was strong, and she needed someone strong . . .
    Kolp liked to pretend that the city was still alive; it pleased him. He made Alma play the game too—only to Alma it was no longer a game. Alma believed it because Kolp had taught her to. Yet, sometimes . . . sometimes her brow wrinkled in puzzlement. If the city was still alive, why weren’t there more people? Sometimes she questioned the thought and followed it, but she was always careful not to follow it too far. That way lay rationality and the madness that the rational world had become.
    “Alma,” Kolp said suddenly. “Get me the Chamber of Commerce.”
    This was one of those moments for Alma. How to solve it? Ah . . . “There’s still a chamber. Mr. Kolp. But no commerce.”
    “I know that,” he growled irritably. “I just want to talk to somebody. Anybody. Isn’t there a doorman or something?”
    Alma knew how to play the game. She smiled sweetly in her madness, “There’s no door. You know that too.”
    Kolp made a noise deep in his throat. Sometimes Alma could be annoying. Dreadfully so.
    “If the bomb hadn’t killed the old governor,” he muttered, “then boredom certainly would have. This is a ghost city. There aren’t enough people to lead. There’s nothing left but bones. I want to put flesh on them.”
    “Radioactive flesh?” Alma knew what that meant. They all had taken drugs that made it possible for them to survive the intense radiation of the ruins. The drugs worked to speed up the process of regeneration, helped the ravaged flesh repair itself; the one drawback was that the genetic information was damaged. The cells divided and multiplied but not according to the body’s original plan. The drugs kept them alive; they didn’t keep them beautiful.
    Kolp didn’t respond to Alma’s remark; she babbled like that all the time.
    “We’re all radiated,” she was saying. “But at least we’re active.” Alma was playing word games again.
    Kolp decided to cut her off. “Get me the chief of . . .”
    But suddenly Alma said, “Mr. Kolp!” Her voice was frightened, like a child’s.
    “Huh?” He turned to look at her.
    She was pointing at her console. A tiny red light was flashing on it. “Look.”
    He advanced slowly. The two peered curiously at the insistent signal. “What is it?” He searched his memory.
    “It’s a signal. It’s an alert.” Old routines came flashing to memory.
    “There’s somebody in the tunnels?”
    She touched the console in wonderment, then flicked switches to isolate the location. “F-6,” she said.
    “Alert Méndez,” snapped Kolp. “No, I’ll do it” He hurried out of the rubble-strewn command center, followed by a nervous Alma. She ran in little half-steps after him, she didn’t want to be left alone now—not at a time like this when something new was threatening her lack of rationality.
    Kolp moved quickly through his underground world. His palsy vanished in his excitement, although his movements were still jerky. He crossed a balcony overlooking a work area where radiation-ravaged men and women were working at various tasks.
    Some of the mutated men were trying to repair a fleet of lumbering gray military vehicles. Others were polishing and oiling weapons, putting them in readiness for what unknown battles they couldn’t guess. The women were collecting huge mounds of canned food and clothing; there were daily search parties scavenging throughout the city. The life of the underground levels was the life of the pack rat and the scavenger. Nothing was wasted, this was a society of ragpickers and tramps. They moved like zombies, with an almost mechanical efficiency, the same kind of nonvolitional activity one might associate with a beehive or an ant hill.
    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