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

exhorting the assembled citizens of the Colony to return to their necessary business. They still had machines to repair, fuel to find, food to cook, children to raise.
    “This is our home,” he said. “Nothing will take it from us, and nothing will stop us from rebuilding our civilization and reclaiming what was once ours. Now let’s get to it.”
    The crowd started to break up, encouraged by Dreyfus’s guards spreading out and moving them along. Malcolm, Ellie, and Alexander stayed where they were, near the base of the stairs leading to the top of the parapet. A few people looked their way, but none approached them.
    “That was quite a performance,” Ellie said.
    “Yeah,” Malcolm said, watching the passers-by and keeping his voice low. “It sure was.” Then he looked straight at her. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit. Right now I have to find out what the hell he thinks he’s talking about.”

24
    He caught up with Dreyfus as the crowd dispersed, waiting while he had exchanged a quiet word with one of his lieutenants. Then Malcolm approached him and spoke, trying not to sound angry.
    “There is no alternative power source,” he said, keeping his voice low. “That dam’s our only option.”
    “Fine,” Dreyfus said. “Then we’ll do what we have to do.” He started walking, and Malcolm went with him under the parapet and through a hall that led to his office. Maps of San Francisco covered the walls, each heavily annotated with information about earthquake damage, the location of resources that might not yet have been recovered, previous sites of fighting with long-gone gangs. Other maps of the Bay Area highlighted places they were planning to search. There were farms to explore so they could perhaps start growing more food, marinas to search for fishing boats that might still float… even other dams to assess, in an effort to get the lights back on.
    As Dreyfus’s security entourage began to leave, Malcolm lingered over the circled spot on the map marking the dam he and his team had seen the day before. He mentally added a note: Here be apes .
    “What does that mean, ‘we’ll do what we have to do’?” he asked when they were alone.
    “I meant what I said back there.” Dreyfus looked at the regional map and put a finger right on the spot Malcolm had pegged as the apes’ location. “If we have to fight them, we fight them.”
    “You can’t be serious,” Malcolm said. “Did you see them? That’s an army. They showed up to let us know they have an army. We can’t fight them. You think we can just hand out a bunch of guns and go after them? We’ll be massacred.”
    Dreyfus turned away from the map and pointed back in the direction of the Colony plaza.
    “You see what’s going on here,” he said. “These people are going to turn on each other. On me!” He brought himself up short. “But this isn’t about me. That power is everything. I’m not giving up on this.”
    “Neither am I,” Malcolm said. “But you know you just put a big target on my back, right?”
    “I had to do something,” Dreyfus replied. “You saw that crowd. They were this far from turning into a mob.” He held up one hand, thumb and forefinger an inch apart.
    “So you pointed them at me instead of you. Thanks.”
    Dreyfus sat and rubbed the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and sinking into his chair.
    “Listen,” he said after a moment. “You can hate me for it if you want. But if the power doesn’t come back on around here, the next thing that’s going to happen is these people are going to turn on each other. I’m trying to keep that possibility as far away as possible.”
    “By turning them on me instead,” Malcolm said.
    “Would you rather I let them work themselves up to riot and start killing each other?”
    If that keeps Alexander and Ellie out of it , Malcolm thought, then yes, that’s what I would rather have happen.
    But it was done now, so all he could do was figure out how to make