Written by Lowell Boston

Fear

That's what I felt when I saw the thing they call General Kang. The Ape was massive, nearly Ten feet tall with eyes that were as cold and lifeless as nail heads. In its hand he held something that looked to be a club and pole axe at the same time. Then it struck me - what it truly was... a solid iron jaw bone of a wool mammoth, a twisted replica of early man's first weapon ergonomically designed with spikes and a tight leather grip. The weapon was designed for one thing - to shatter bones and kill with one blow.

The Ape general fearlessly strolled out of his panic room followed by his harem of she-apes, and to my disgust, blonde, pear shaped Rubenesque Human women whose bodies looked more like the Venus of Willendorf than the shapely, thin fantasy of any male. They hung back, perhaps more afraid of Marcus than the General himself. Behind them I saw why.

The Panic Room was lavished with every luxurious comfort you could imagine. Nest shaped beds, couches and chairs, an ornate wooden bar, and several flat plasma-screen monitors on which a view of the room was fully shown. They had watched Marcus fight with the Ape guards on the surveillance video camera.

The women grouped together - Human and Apes alike as they watched their Alpha-Male advance. Kang stopped and stood directly over Marcus, watching him as if wondering how a
single Human could cause so much trouble. I stood between them, torn between screaming for Marcus to get up, or to lunge at the General's eyes in an attempt to gouge them out with
my ghostly form.

Kang's heavy nostrils flared as his mouth parted in a soundless growl. With savage fury I watched as the Ape general lashed his
simian Tomahawk into the air and slam it down with all his Ape born strength - and miss!

At the last instant Marcus rolled away as Kang's weapon smashed it into the ground. As quick as a cat the Marksmen was on his feet. He had been playing possum the whole time. That's why he allowed the Ape guard to strike him. He needed Kang to believe that he had been beaten. It was the only way the General would come out. The Ape women screamed as Marcus rushed through their throng, driving for a single, deadly item - his sword FedderWolf. Behind him Kang struggle to wrench his weapon from the hole he pounded into carpeted floor. With a supreme effort it tore free.

Standing, the Ape General marched towards Marcus with renewed purpose. Marcus stood his ground with that damn Devil-may-care grin of his. With another silent roar Kang charged, then suddenly stopped. Stuffed in his pants Marcus pulled out another surprise - his last grenade. God help me, he actually pulled the pin with his teeth and tossed the thing at, and over General Kang - over to the room's far wall under the river view windows. She-Apes and Women screamed as they rushed back into the panic room while General Kang dove behind an over turned table half a second before the bomb exploded. The wall shattered in a dirty orange fireball as concrete and glass showered across the room followed by a force all apes hate, and fear - water.

The river came gushing in with the force of a small tsunami. Marcus and Kang were swept to the room's opposite side in the violent torrent, crashing into the stair well before separating as the the force of the deluge threw them in opposite directions - Marcus to the left, towards the stairs themselves and Kang towards the Panic Room. To the Ape General's horror the vault door began to close. Lumbering against the current in knee deep water he tried to stop the portal's advance, but was too late.

With madness in his eyes the General swung towards the river wall as more water came pouring in. Despite the creature's genetic advances, ten million of years of ancestral memory ran deep. Kang panicked and clawed at the walls, managing to even find a hand hold before falling back into waist deep water. Whirling around he spotted Marcus watching him from the height of the second step. Their eyes met in a cold, calculated understanding, one shared only by predator and prey. With 'Wolf expertly held Marcus walked into the water, slowly and steadily towards General Kang. Chest deep, then chin... until only his eyes remained, piercing into the eyes of his prey. Marcus descended into the water leaving only 'Wolf to cleave the surface before it too was gone.

That's when felt it - the drawing, pulling me up and away from the room and through the shattered break of the river wall. Weak daylight surrounded me as my ghostly body was pulled by an unknown force towards... a boat, the same one I had seen earlier before, only this time it was occupied by more than one person. A body laid on its deck.

A body that was me.