You Are Not Ape

Chapter 10

Mary, with Alexander's drawing still clutched protectively to her chest, wandered a bit aimlessly towards the heart of the new women's quarters in this alien landscape. How could humans stand to live here? She thought. The forlorn young ape girl wondered if she'd ever feel anything but mixed up ever again in her whole life.

Before she went too far, a huge shadow seemed to materialize directly in front of her. With a cry, Mary froze, but when she looked up, it was a familiar face looking down on her. Not the most welcome of faces, but still no enemy, either.

"Oh, Red," she exclaimed, glaring in exasperation at the gorilla. "You scared me!"

"I'm sorry," the gorilla signed back to her. "I tried calling out, but you didn't answer. You usually at least tell me off."

Mary blinked in surprise but otherwise did not smile at his comment. It was nothing but the truth. She usually just tried to ignore Red, who almost always seem to be somewhere close to where she was a lot of the time. The gorilla was still acting as if he thought he were still assigned as Mary's gorilla guard, and it had not been an actual assignment, at least not as far as she knew, as far as she knew, for years now.

It would have to be him who finds me. Why couldn't it have been Winter, Mary thought, but not unkindly.

"I ... I really didn't hear you," she confessed quietly.

Red only shrugged. He knew full well that if she were trying to ignore him, she would do a much better job of it.

"You lost?" he signed.

She shook her head. Without another word, and with a heavy sigh, Mary slipped easily by him and kept on walking. If he wanted to follow her, he would, if he did not, she would not miss him too much. But the gorilla easily fell in to step beside her, and Mary resigned herself to his company for a little while. She was just too tired and too heartsick and confused to try and evade him. She was not even sure she could keep putting one foot in front of the other, in fact.

"What do you want, Red," she asked bluntly.

"To. See You. Safe home," Red responded out loud.

Mary stopped dead in her tracks, the gorilla stopping along with her, and she gaped up at him in pure astonishment. She had never heard him try and speak before and did not know what to make of it now.

What's happening to everyone, Mary thought. It felt like more and more apes were starting to speak or at least try, and this should have made Mary almost ecstatically happy. It was one of the things she would miss most about the humans, their speech. All her life, she had longed for other apes to talk to aside from Caesar and her Father, neither of whom talked much, and had all but given up hope of it happening. And now, instead of being able to enjoy it, it just confused her more than ever. The change was too sudden for Mary to process. All the new changes were just too sudden, and this place they were now in, though full of curiosities, was just too unnatural and alien.

As they rounded a corner in the remains of the human city, a hastily scrolled picture confronted the two apes. Violent, stark and nearly obscene, it seemed to scream back at them from the crumbling wall it was painted on. It shrieked of human hatred for all apes. And though it was obviously an old picture, it was the mirror image, Mary thought, feeling sad and sickened, of her Father's soul.