War Technicalities [UNDER REVISION]

Redemption

[Unrevised. 5 Years Old. Prepare for inconsistencies with previous chapters.]

Haley never stopped running - from the moment she left Pacific Heights, she hadn't allowed herself to even stumble or pause. She couldn't bring herself to. Caesar's words kept repeating mercilessly in her head - over, over, over, and over again. "Was Koba." They made her subconscious bleed with a knowing, but she didn't want to believe it, so in her subconscious is where the reality was kept. She didn't stop to give herself the chance to think about it. She was fooling herself, a part of her knew, but it didn't matter. There was something in her, something painful that kept her from facing the truth of what Koba had done. Caesar, in all his might, had realize it was fear that was clouding her, but Haley still couldn't - or wouldn't - discern it for herself.

The farther Haley sped, the less she could recognize the streets and buildings. She's seen the area multiple times in her past, but what was left was nothing more than an empty and broken shell of the past. The buildings were falling apart, camouflaged behind withered graffiti, and stained in the smoke of whatever flame they had come in contact with. To Haley, it looked as if color had been drained from the inner parts of San Francisco and it had left any structure weak and lifeless as a result. But she wondered if it was really that much different from how it had been in the past, because every time she was driven to some new hospital, the effect was the same - the world got more shriveled and dry with each tick of the clock that she moved. Or maybe then and now are both an illusion, because, the farther she ran from Caesar and the others, the worse the discoloration became. It was haunting - it was cold and chilly, too.

But despite the signs of history's casualties on the walls that built the city, Haley did not spot any remains withering away in the streets or alleyways. She slowed into a stride, looking around cautiously. She knew millions died from the Simian Flu, but if that was the case, the matter of what happened to the dead was a mystery. Haley shivered suddenly under a non-existent breeze. She was quickly ambushed by her own imagination and saw the disgusting image of desperate and starving humans feeding on their own kind, and from what she had last seen of civilization, she honestly didn't put it pass any of those animals to resort to cannibalism. Shaking her head, Haley pushed on.

It took a while, but eventually, Haley saw those corpses that she so naively asked for - but these were different. Some still twitched and crawled weakly for survival while others stared wide-eyes into whatever the dead see when they meet their end. Her heart tugged violently at the fresh deaths all around her - apes and man. Luckily, none of the apes were suffering on their path to death. But something told Haley that this was deliberately the case, and she felt sickened by the idea of apes having to put their own kind out of misery. Somehow, the air got even colder. Is this what apes were charging after when they scattered to find revenge for their fallen king?

'No,' Haley answered herself immediately, 'this is not what any of them wanted.'

Gentle gibbering quickly interrupted Haley's track of mind and made her head whip up in alarm, but her horror only grew at the sight she found. Peeking out from behind the corner ahead and standing on the side of another abandoned street, Hayley spotted an unmoving and filthy bus, anchored down by its own dead weight. But it was different than any bus she knew. She tried reading the words printed on the back, to read what it was, but the giant machine was painted in mud, dust, and dirt. What she did see was that each window was bolted down with security bars. Whether they were meant for protecting the purposed humans inside or to simply keep something outside, Haley wasn't sure; right now, however, it was to keep something within its powerful, unbreakable, steel walls, and it made Haley gasp in horror. Peeking out between the metal bars, Haley could see hairy faces watching her closely, and though she hadn't closed any distance, she knew who they were: the council. For a moment, Haley paled. Had the humans won? She had assumed by the sight of the dead and dying that it had been the apes, but did the humans just not have the heart to shoot their own and rather shot apes to appease themselves?