Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Read Free

starting to drift.
    It felt nice, but there was something possessive about it that worried him. He liked Clancy—she was fun, smart, sexy, and very accommodating in bed. She was also pretty casual. She knew he saw other people, and she didn’t seem to care. She never asked anything of him that he wasn’t willing to give, and there was never any implication that this was going in any particular direction, or that she had a goal in mind.
    At least, it had never felt that way until now.
    “I’m going to be gone for a while,” she said, drowsily. It was eerie, as if she had read his mind.
    “I thought you just had an appointment downtown.”
    She was silent for a moment.
    “Look,” she finally said. “I know you’re a reporter, but if I tell you something, can we keep it—you know—off the record?”
    “Sure,” he said, feeling alert now.
    “I’m not supposed to tell anyone about this,” she said. “I signed a non-disclosure document.”
    “About what?”
    “I’ve been hired by the city to go up to Muir Woods and check out the apes.”
    “Check out the apes?”
    “Yeah. They’re trying to figure out the best way to capture them. Me, I’m just interested to see how they’re adapting to an environment so different from what they evolved in.”
    “Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked. “Aren’t they violent?”
    “Not usually,” she said. “Not unless they’re pressed, or feel threatened. Whatever happened on the bridge—that’s not normal. Hey,” she added, “I know my stuff—I’ll be okay.”
    “The Dian Fossey of the Muir Woods,” he murmured.
    “Dian Fossey was hacked to death by gorilla poachers with machetes,” Clancy pointed out. “I think maybe in this case you should think of me as the Jane Goodall of the Muir Woods. Better ending.”
    “Or maybe just Jane, like in Tarzan,” he replied.
    “Does that make you the Lord of the Jungle?”
    “If I remember right, that would make us cousins,” he said.
    “
Eew
. Well, you
are
from the South.”
    “Hmmf,” he said.
    “I’m excited about this,” she told him after a moment.
    “I can tell,” he said. “I hope you have fun.” He yawned then, and closed his eyes.
    “Thanks for letting me sleep over,” she said. “I know it sort of freaks you out.”
    “Does not.”
    “It’s okay,” she said. “You have nothing to worry about.” She squeezed his shoulder.
    “Call when you get back,” he said. “We’ll do something. We’ll hang out.”
    “That sounds good,” she said. “Okay, that’s enough—let me catch another hour of sleep.” Then she rolled over, and within just a few minutes he heard her breathing even out.
    A few minutes later, he was dropping off, too.
    * * *
    Talia blinked as sweat stung her eyes, and for a moment all she saw through her blurred vision was the blood.Sometimes she felt her whole life was about blood. She knew other emergency-room doctors who would have nothing red in their homes—drapes, carpets, tomato sauce, grenadine. At least one trauma surgeon she knew had become vegetarian, because seeing so much raw human meat made the idea of steak or hamburger unthinkable. Once she had considered that to be silly. Now she was starting to sympathize.
    “Wipe,” she said. Tran dabbed her forehead with a cloth as she went back to examining the chest cavity. The kid was a holy mess—and he
was
a kid, probably no more than fifteen. She wondered why anyone would want to put three bullets in him.
    But that wasn’t her concern, was it? Her job was to put him back together.
    “This is going to be a long one,” she said. “See if you can find Dr. Selling. I want him to look at this spleen.”
    * * *
    Six hours later, close to shaking with exhaustion, she pushed back from the patient.
    “I’ll close him up,” Selling told her. “You go get some coffee.”
    She nodded and slipped out of the operating room. She went first to the lavatory to splash water on her face and put her long black hair