Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: The Official Movie Novelization by Alex Irvine Page A

shadowy thickets along the ravine’s walls. It was slow going. Finally he decided he’d be able to move faster if he climbed up out of the ravine, and worked his way up the mountain along its edge.
    Just as he was about to do that, he saw a path ahead… and at the same moment, a structure that definitely had not occurred naturally. It was a tripod, made of three tree trunks bound together with rough rope. At the top, in the notch created by the crossing of the trunks, was an eyrie of sticks and brush, decorated with carved totems and a single antlered skull. It had to be an ape nest.
    The woods were quiet around him, except for the ever-present sound of birds in the trees and small animals in the brush.
    He was getting close.
    Past the nest, he climbed toward the head of the ravine, climbing a steep rocky slope with a clearly worn path ascending it. And at the far end of that slope, there was an open gate.
    It, too, was made of tree trunks and festooned with various totems. Beyond it was a well-worn path, almost like a dirt street. Malcolm approached it and saw carvings on the posts. Some of them were letters, some glyphs he couldn’t interpret. In several places he saw the word APE.
    My God , he thought. They can write, too?
    He almost turned back then, feeling that he was getting in way over his head. He had a son to consider, and Ellie. There had to be another way to bring electricity to the Colony.
    Didn’t there?
    Malcolm took a deep breath. No, there did not. This was the only way. They had tried everything else.
    He passed through the gate, feeling as he did that he had committed himself to some inevitable series of events, the outcome of which he couldn’t predict. More totems stood on posts near the street… and now he could hear apes in the branches that overhung the street.
    They were getting closer. And there were a lot of them. He kept his hands visible and his eyes front, and he kept walking. The apes’ noises were all around him now—behind him, on both sides, and above him. He couldn’t help it. He started to scan through the branches, and he saw a chimp looking back at him from just above his eye level. Malcolm raised his arms, palms out, like he was being arrested.
    The ape vanished.
    At the same time, a series of alarms sounded, the cries of apes echoing in a chain upward through the trees and away into the forest ahead of him. Malcolm kept walking, half-convinced he was about to die, but fully convinced that if he ran now he wouldn’t get ten steps before a spear punched through his lungs. He kept his hands in the air, walking nice and slow, determined but non-threatening.
    Apes began to emerge from the trees. Malcolm kept walking until they appeared in front of him. Then he stopped. They circled him and he started to turn, keeping as many of them as possible in view. He started walking again as he completed a full turn. Then he stopped dead.
    Right in front of him, within arm’s reach, stood the chimp with the blind eye. It held a harpoon twice its height, both hands on the shaft, the steel point gleaming in the sun. The other apes stopped moving, waiting for their cue. Malcolm knew this was one of the leaders. Both times he had seen this ape, it had been right next to the one who first spoke, whose eyes Malcolm had first met.
    And both times, seeing this one-eyed chimp, Malcolm had thought the same thing.
    This one really doesn’t like people .
    None of the apes were moving now. The one-eyed ape could almost have been a statue, if its good eye hadn’t moved up and down. Malcolm remembered how it had looked at the guns held by Dreyfus’s guards. He was glad he hadn’t brought a gun.
    “Listen,” he said. “I—”
    Before he got another word out, the one-eyed ape brought the butt of the harpoon up and around to crack into the side of his head, just over his left ear. Malcolm’s legs went out from under him. His ears rang and he couldn’t see. He had a sense of the ground hitting him,