Kong: Skull Island

by Tim Lebbon

  In the growing darkness, with distant explosions reverberating like thunder, the three of them set out into the heart of the island.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  This is it, Packard thought. This is my moment. This is my time. This is my world.

  He sat shrouded in shadows, motionless and alert to movement and danger, while in the darkening distance fires burned and explosions flowered and faded once again. He was a man used to conflict. He could already smell the faint trace of smoke on the air, and it settled his nerves and calmed his galloping heart. Violence was his drug, fire his fuel.

  He waited, knowing that everything was drawing closer. Kong. The fight. The end; for one of them or the other.

  He could hardly wait.

  “Fox Leader to Fox Two,” he said into his radio. “Ignite secondary charges.”

  Several more explosions erupted closer to his hiding place, flashing across the canyon and the lake at its base. The echoes reverberated back and forth, sounding like a living thing voicing its displeasure. As the explosions and echoes faded away, Packard held his breath as he waited to see whether it had worked.

  Come on, monster, he thought. Come to me, Kong.

  He looked around the clearing at the places where his men were hiding. He knew where they were but could see none of them. They knew their business.

  In the distance he heard another dull impact.

  “Fox Two?” he muttered into his radio. “That you?”

  “Negative. All our charges are expended. That’s not us.”

  “Then it’s him. Get ready, everyone. Target approaching.”

  Another boom echoed in, then another, and a shadow danced on the canyon wall on the far side of the lake, thrown by moonlight and the guttering fires from seismic charges. The shape was humanoid, hunched and huge. He had taken the bait.

  Packard hefted the torch he’d made and sparked it with his lighter. It flared alight and he squinted against the sudden glare. He touched it to the piled branches on either side and flinched back when they both ignited, fuel-soaked timbers spitting and crackling as the flames consumed them.

  He stared ahead across the lake, just as several trees close to the shore were sent splintered and torn into the water.

  And there he stood, the mighty Kong, come to try and finish what he had begun.

  “I’m ready for you this time,” Packard muttered. “Come to me, you son of a bitch.”

  Kong roared and pounded his chest. The sound it made was as loud as the seismic charges, and Packard saw moonlight dancing across the lake as its impact drove ripples across the water’s surface. His hand tightened on the flaming torch, but his resolve did not waver. The ape was doing exactly what he’d intended.

  He charged into the lake and started splashing his way across, sending six-foot waves in confused patterns to surge against every shore. The water came up to his ankles, then his knees, as the animal moved incredibly quickly through the water.

  Packard stepped forward as if to meet the charging beast. He could feel his men around him watching, and with his free hand he signalled for them to stay low and hidden. If Kong sensed anything of an ambush he might back off and come for them another way.

  They hadn’t planned for that.

  As it was, Packard’s plan worked perfectly. As Kong reached the centre of the lake, Packard swung his hand back and hefted the torch overarm, out across the water.

  Kong paused, and perhaps for a moment Packard saw understanding in his eyes. He hoped so. He hoped the monster had some inkling of the agony about to engulf it.

  The napalm spread in the lake erupted into white-hot flames, encircling the giant ape. He screamed and thumped his chest, smashing his huge fists down into the water in an attempt to douse the flames. It succeeded only in spreading the fire further across the surface and splashing it up into his fur. His shadow performed a jagged dance as the fires cast his silhouette in a dozen directions, and Packard grinned as he saw flames licking against the ape’s fur.

  “Kill it,” he said.

  His remaining men—Mills, Slivko, Reles, Cole, and Landsat Steve—started shooting at the huge beast, concentrating their fire on his head. When their mags were empty they reloaded and fired again, Cole using his grenade launcher to fire grenades out over the blazing water. The cacophony of sound was a concerto to Packard’s ears, and Kong’s roar of pain made it sublime.

  The colonel added to the maelstrom of hot lead, firing his rifle at the beast’s head, picking his shots, aiming for the eyes. Kong’s hide must have been inches thick, his flesh and blubber more than dense enough to swallow a million bullets, but if they could put some rounds through his eyes and into his brain…

  The ape stormed forward, wading through burning water, brushing flames aside, coming for the shore.

  Packard paused, doubting his plan for the first time. Then he continued firing.

  Kong emerged from the lake with blazing napalm sticking to him in a dozen places, flickering across his body like dancing clothing. His roar was rage and pain as he flailed towards Landsat Steve, and Packard watched in awe as the ape fell forwards and crushed the man from existence. Kong landed on his front, the impact knocking the other men from their feet, uprooting trees, and sending a huge wave back across the lake, burning napalm rolling in complex, beautiful patterns.

  They found their feet again and drew close around Packard, guns trained on the fallen giant. But he was not dead yet.

  His breath was laboured and uneven. His panicked heartbeat pounded at the ground. Fires still sizzled across his body, fur as thick as tree branches shrivelling and crackling. The stench of burning flesh was almost overpowering. It reminded Packard of ’Nam.

  “Men, you’re looking at a relic of a bygone era,” he said. “We brought it down and now we have the privilege of finishing the job. Place those charges. It’s time to kill Kong.”

  The surviving Sky Devils started to move in, cautious and afraid, carrying the charges that would blow holes in the fallen giant’s shivering body. Reles carried the final three seismic charges, and he lobbed them from a distance, his aim true. They landed beside Kong’s head where it rested on the ground. The ape blinked slowly, eyes watering heavily. If he had any inkling of what these objects meant, he did not show it.

  As the other men stood guard, Reles unwound a wire as he backed away from Kong. He reached Packard and handed him the wire. The colonel nodded his thanks, started connecting the wire to the detonator, and already he was seeing the effect of the explosions in his mind’s eye. He would leave another dead enemy behind, and over time Kong would rot and his skeleton would stand as testimony to the brave men who had killed him.

  “Packard, don’t do it!” The voice came from behind and he recognised it instantly. Conrad. He should have expected the ex-SAS man to appear at some point. Packard hadn’t trusted him from the start.

  As he turned around, his Sky Devils all spread and aimed their rifles at Conrad. He was pointing a pistol at Packard’s torso. The colonel smiled, feeling relaxed and in control. He was at the centre of things, and that gave him the perfect edge.

  “Conrad,” he said. “I’ll give you three seconds.”

  “I asked you people nicely, last time,” Marlow said. He’d approached silently, and now he was standing behind Reles and pressing the tip of his sword to the man’s back. If Packard had ever doubted him, Marlow had now revealed himself to be just as much of a fighter as the rest of them.

  Cole and Mills turned their weapons against Marlow. Reles, eyes wide, kept his aim on Conrad, along with Slivko. It was a stand-off, and Packard knew that he had the balls to see it through.

  “We don’t want a fight here, Packard,” Conrad said.

  “That thing brought us down,” Packard said. “Killed our men!”

  “You brought the war to Kong,” Marlow said.

  “It’s not a war at all,” Conrad said, aim never wavering. “Kong was just defending his territory. Your job, Packard, is to bring thes
e men back home.”

  “Not without its head,” he whispered, his words carrying to everyone.

  “You’re not thinking clearly,” Conrad said. He took a step closer and the tension built, weapon barrels fixed on targets, Marlow’s sword twitching and eliciting a sharp intake of breath from Reles.

  We’re one eye-blink away from violence, Packard realised, and that was always the time when he felt most alive.

  “We’re soldiers,” he said. “We do the dirty work so that our wives and children don’t have to cower scared. They shouldn’t even have to know that a thing like this exists.”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” Conrad said.

  Packard glared at him for a moment, then continued wiring the detonator.

  “Put it down!” Conrad snapped.

  “You’re gonna have to shoot me, Captain.”

  “Stop!” The voice came from behind him and Packard rolled his eyes. He should have known that where Conrad was, Weaver would be close behind.

  But it was not the group of men she approached. She sprinted past them towards the fallen ape, standing less than ten feet from his face and the explosive that would soon blow it off. His eyes fluttered open and a heavy, low rumble came from somewhere deep in his chest.

  While everyone else watched the woman, Packard pressed the last wire between his thumb and the point on the detonator. One twist of his hand and it would go off.

  “If you kill him, you kill me,” Weaver said.

  “Get her out of there,” Packard said to Reles. Eyes wide, Reles glanced across at Weaver, while Marlow still pressed the sword against his back. One move and he could be gutted, if Marlow had it in him to do so. None of them could predict. He’d been marooned here for so long, the sun might have fried his brain.

  “Packard, last warning,” Conrad said. “Put it down!”

  “Soldier, I am ordering you,” Packard said to Reles. He looked at Weaver. “Move. I don’t want to kill you, but—”

  “I’ve shot nothing but destruction and dead bodies for the last six years,” Weaver said, backing even close to the ape’s head. “I know you’ve lived in it, Packard. But there’s more. It existed before us and it’ll be here long after we’re gone. Don’t do something that accomplished nothing. Don’t kill just because you can.”

  “Put it down, sir.” That was Slivko. And even before Packard turned his way, he knew what the soldier was doing.

  Aiming his rifle as his commanding officer.

  “Son,” he said, but then he looked around at his other men and saw uncertainty working beneath their expressions, too. Reles was the first to lower his gun. Cole followed. Then Mills, his face showing vague disgust.

  “Come on, Colonel,” Conrad said. “It’s over.”

  Every sinew of Packard’s body, every instinct he had, urged him to fight against his men’s betrayal and strive to achieve his aim. One twitch of his hand and the beast would die, the woman would die. And so would he.

  He knew that a moment’s hesitation could change his world, and so it did. His soldier’s mind was convinced, but his natural fear of the void held his hand still.

  The surface of the lake rippled and the ground began to shake as something broke the water’s surface far out. A screech ripped the sky. A chill went through Packard as deep as his soul, like something unseen drawing a claw down his back and parting the skin.

  “The big one,” Marlow said. “The Skull Devil. It knows he’s down!”

  “Fall back!” Conrad shouted. “Go. Go!”

  The fearful men and the woman ran, but Packard stood his ground. He hadn’t come this far to run. He hadn’t gone through everything to simply fail. He stared out over the lake, detonator still clasped in his right hand.

  “Colonel! Sir!” Conrad shouted, but he ignored him. Let them run, Packard thought. They don’t deserve to die here with me.

  A geyser of water erupted from the lake and powered into the sky, burning napalm splashing up with it and lighting the heavens. Rising beneath the geyser, as if pushing it up into the sky, rose the glistening mass of a creature the likes of which Packard could have never imagined. It was huge, its mass even greater than Kong’s. Snake-like, reptilian, its head was the size of a small house, body long and supported on several strange, flexible limbs. The Skull Devil’s eyes burned, perhaps reflecting the fires, perhaps bearing some diabolical light of their own. Its mouth was surely the gateway to hell.

  Sensing movement to his right, Packard turned towards Kong. The ape was lifting his head, glaring at Packard and then past him at the monster rising at the centre of the lake.

  Packard lifted the detonator as if to show it to Kong. My last act is to take you to hell.

  “You mother—”

  Before Packard could react, Kong’s fist fell, shutting out the sky and the stars, the lake and the fires, and then finally ending everything.

  * * *

  “Packard,” Weaver said, but there was nothing of the man left. She could not mourn his loss. He was an obsessive driven by blood and conflict. Like many such men he’d died ingloriously, ground into the soil beneath Kong’s fist.

  What she could do was wonder at Kong’s strength and resilience. Here was pure power in physical form, machine-gunned and set aflame, now rising again to combat his one true enemy. He pushed down, levering himself upright and turning at the same time towards the looming Skull Devil. They faced each other, Kong on the shore, the monster in the lake surrounded by floating fire, like two mountains drawing each other with a terrible gravity.

  Weaver lifted her camera and framed the shot just as the beasts rushed each other, collided, and crashed together with a ground-shaking impact.

  Conrad grabbed her arm and tugged her back into the tree line, and for a while Weaver staggered back and tried to bring her camera to bear.

  “We have got to go!” he shouted into her ear, even his raised voice sounding small beneath the sounds being made by the fighting beasts.

  Weaver turned, nodded, and ran into the trees. With every step she could feel the ground vibrating, and she remembered the steady thud, thud of Kong’s heartbeat as he’d been lying on the lake shore. She’d believed him close to death. How wrong she had been.

  Rushing through the trees, she hoped with every part of herself that he would survive.

  TWENTY-NINE

  In the west, across the heart of the island, the sky was growing light. It was a beautiful sunrise, smearing the rugged horizon and piercing the trees that smothered distant ridge lines and mountaintops. At any other time Brooks might have spent time taking it all in, but he didn’t believe he had any time. It could be that they were already too late.

  “What’s taking so long?” he asked for the tenth time.

  “The window’s going to close,” San said. “We’re running out of time.” That sentiment had been repeated several times, too. They were both struggling to hold onto reasons to remain where they were. But as the sun rose and a new day began, the reasons were harder to find.

  We can’t just leave them! Brooks thought. Neither of them were saying that anymore. Speaking the words shamed him, and guilt was already building, even though everyone else might already be dead. We can’t! He could feel himself wavering. A decision loomed.

  San held up her hand, head tilted to one side. Brooks frowned, listening.

  He heard a sound like thunder in the distance, even though the sky was clear and cloudless. Then a roar.

  A claw of fear scraped down his back, sending ice through his veins.

  “They told us to leave at dawn,” San said.

  “I know.”

  “It’s dawn.”

  “I know.”

  Another roar echoed out to them, startling aloft a flock of birds from the trees along the shore. There was no telling where the sound had come from. It had sounded far away, but if the thing making that noise was as big as most of the monsters here, maybe it would be able to reach them in the blink of an eye.

  �
�So what are we going to do?” San asked. She and Brooks stared at each other for a beat, because they both knew what had to be done. They’d known since the first smear of colour in the western sky.

  Brooks nodded once, and San started the boat’s engine.

  * * *

  If he’d had any sort of plan to begin with, it was in tatters now, so Conrad just ran. Weaver was close behind him, still hefting her camera in one hand. She’d probably die still taking pictures. He didn’t like that thought. If the situation didn’t change rapidly—if he didn’t come up with a plan that involved more than simply running blindly into the jungle—death might visit them all far too soon.

  Behind Weaver came the surviving Sky Devils Cole, Mills, Reles and Slivko. Marlow brought up the rear. He was probably fitter than all of them from his many years on this strange island. However fit they were, however fast they could run, there would be no outrunning the Skull Devil.

  Conrad also knew that time was ticking. Dawn had come, and although that helped them navigate through the trees, it also meant that their window for getting to the extract point was beginning to close. If San and Brooks had any sense, they’d have already started the boat and sailed north.

  Unsure of the direction they were taking, aware that they were throwing caution to the wind in their headlong rush away from the battling creatures, still he did his best to peer through the trees and tangled undergrowth ahead of them. With terrible danger behind them, he didn’t want to run them off a cliff or into a giant rodent’s nest. At least the threat behind was known.

  Machete drawn, he hacked through vines and hanging plants, always checking to make sure he wasn’t slicing at the legs of some waiting creature. Spiders scuttled away, but they were only as big as his hand. Snakes coiled around branches around them, but most seemed a normal size. It stood to reason that the island’s ecosystem would not support hundreds of giant beasts, and that those that existed must be rare and long-lived. He had no wish to meet any more.

  Spying a clearer space ahead of them, Conrad increased his efforts. Reles and Mills helped him, hacking at hanging vines until they burst through the last of the trees into a wide open space.