Zombie Kong - Anthology

by Wilson, David Niall; Brown, Tonia; Meikle, William; McCaffery, Simon; Brown, TW; T. A. Wardrope

  I had grown fond of the long hunting expedition for which the African bush is particularly suited, and so when we tired of conversation (as we quickly did, having very few interests alike), I suggested a trip to show my brother the local fauna, and to acquire what trophies we were able. He agreed to the suggestion, and after hiring a few hunters to go with us, we set forth. George never knew how to pack for things and insisted on buying a large wagon, nearly twenty feet long, in order to carry what he referred to as the goods––the ivory and other trophies he anticipated returning with. He also bought eight donkeys to pull the wagon. It seemed a ridiculously cumbersome thing to me, and I tried to talk him out of it, but he persisted.

  We had been tracking a herd of springbok. On the third day, we found ourselves at the edge of some deep jungle that grew denser the more we tried to make our way out of it. After several hours of struggle, we came out into a clearing with a wide lake, surrounded on all sides by the thick forest. We could see the sky from that clearing, and I was surprised to note that the sun was nearly gone. Night was fast approaching.

  “Well, George,” I said, “how do you fancy roughing it again?”

  “Not well, Simon,” he said, “but I suppose if you can do it, so can I.”

  This was not strictly true, for there were plenty of things I could do that my brother could not.

  George might have been willing, but the hunters, who had been acting nervous since we had entered the clearing, refused to camp at the spot.

  “Not here,” the hunters begged. “This is a bad place.”

  “Come now, what do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “This is near the home of a white monster,” they said. “We should not disturb it.”

  I was curious about this ‘white monster’.

  “It is tall,” the hunters said, “Taller than the mountains, and whiter than you. It will kill us all. We are mighty hunters, but this monster, no man can kill.”

  “What manner of monster is it?” I asked.

  “Like an ape,” they said, “but larger than any ape could be. It has a heavy brow and roars like a lion, and when it walks, it shakes the earth.”

  “I suppose it is some sort of ape,” I told George, but when I questioned the hunters further they would say no more. I assumed it was just a story with no legs, and disregarded it as such. I do not approve of encouraging superstitions, so I refused their request and determined that we would camp there. It was an okay spot, and I did not relish stumbling through the dark searching for another place that was more acceptable to the hunters.

  While we were setting up camp, George scared a flock of a sort of bustard and the hunters made quick work of them, laying low three brace. I dropped one as well, but George pulled a little high and missed his mark.

  We roasted the birds over the fire. The fat falling into the flames made little pops and sizzles that were quite pleasing to me. We ate well that night and soon fell into that companionable, comfortable silence that comes from being full in the night air. Only the donkeys were restless, nosing each other softly and walking around and around their tethers.

  We settled down to rest with one of the hunters tending the fire. George fell asleep quickly, right in the middle of protesting that he would never be able to sleep. It took me some time longer to get comfortable. I had the feeling that something was amiss. The hunters’ warning loomed large in my mind and I couldn’t shake it, not even as the night wore on and we remained unmolested.

  At first I thought it was just nerves, and berated myself for getting shook up by all that superstition nonsense. But then the moon rose and, in the shafts of silvery light that cut through the trees, I saw something glinting in the bush.

  I turned over very slowly, so that I could get a better view. My blanket scuffed slightly on the rough ground and I froze. At that very moment, the lights in the bush blinked out and back on again, and I realized, to my horror, that the lights were a pair of eyes.

  I reached out my hand, my fingers groping for the rifle I kept at my side. The first set of eyes was joined by a second, then a third. They glared out at my sleeping companions, and I may be forgiven for ascribing a certain malevolence to their steady, piercing gaze. I suddenly felt very strongly that I should not be in that place. Never before in my time in Africa had I felt so unwelcome, so much apart from the natural rhythm of the land. I wished desperately that I had listened to the hunters and found another camping spot. But we were there now, and I pulled my rifle to me and determined to see it through.

  “Simon!” George whispered. “Do you see it, or am I going as crazy as you are?”

  I hadn’t realized my brother was awake.

  “Keep still!” I said, sharply. “I see it. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think it likes us much.”

  “It is the white monster!”

  The hunters had woken, too, and I spared a glance around to see them huddled together. One or two had had the presence of mind to take up their rifles or assegai. The spearheads reflected the same firelight that glinted in the eyes in the bush.

  “It’s probably just a springbok,” I said, but I knew it was not.

  “We should not be here,” one of the hunters moaned.

  “Nonsense,” I said, trying to be tougher than I felt. I cupped a hand around my mouth and shouted into the bush. “You there! We see you… come on out!”

  The brush rustled. There was a low grunt, a series of deep uhks and snorts. I could pick out three separate “voices”. They went back and forth, and then the bushes parted, and the watchers stepped into the light.

  It was a gorilla… or rather, three gorillas. They were terribly huge, not a one less than fourteen feet tall. Their enormous fists pounded the ground, kicking up clouds of dust as they landed. They were all impressive beasts, but I confess I paid the most attention to the creature that led the way. The other two were black, but the third––he was a white monster, indeed. He was a devil of a beast. His hair was pure white. Not a single dark spot adorned his muscular frame. His eyes bored into me, pale pink, but deep and brooding. He flared his nostrils at us and curled his massive lip. I have never before or since seen an animal as impressive as that giant white gorilla.

  “Hush,” I whispered, motioning for George to keep still. The gorillas, catching my voice, swung their large heads to look at me. I had risen to my knees, but I dared not stand. So I knelt there, staring up into the great pink eyes of the beast.

  The theory has sometimes been advanced that animals are capable of emotions as deep and as varied as those that plague you or I. It was never as believable as when I was face to face with the white monster of the jungle. I must be clear that I saw no anger in his face––irritation, perhaps, that we were intruding on his place, and curiosity, and a sort of stern lordliness. That beast was more regal than any lion I had seen in my travels. But there was also something youthful about him, as if he were a princeling investigating for the first time the extent of his future kingdom.

  Something passed between us in that moment. I felt a sort of kinship with the beast. Slowly I stood, gaining my feet, all the while keeping my eyes locked with the gorilla’s. When I had reached my full height, which seemed nothing compared to that of the creature before me, I reached out very slowly with my empty hand. I’m not sure what I intended by this gesture, but I was so drawn into that moment of communion with the beast that it felt the thing to do.

  I truly believe that the situation would have resolved peacefully if it wasn’t for George’s big mouth. As I reached out to the white gorilla, my brother opened his mouth and said, quite loudly, “Ho, Simon! Watch it doesn’t bite your hand off!”

  The beasts swung their great heads to look at him.

  “Keep still, George,” I hissed, but my brother was never very good at following advice. When the giant gorillas fixed their eyes on George, he yelped and stumbled back, raising his rifle and letting off a wild shot into the canopy. The sharp report echoed through the brush.


  The giant white gorilla started, and then, with an ear-splitting roar, he charged.

  I would not have been able to get my gun up in time, but George had never let his guard drop. Through a rain of assegai thrown by the hunters, I saw George drop his rifle, raise a second gun, take aim, and fire.

  The shot hit the white gorilla full in the chest. It stumbled in its charge, one massive knee hitting the ground. Several of the assegai had hit the beast in the chest and some of the hunters, who had smaller rifles on them, had also marked its broad breast with gunshot. It was bleeding from several wounds, but still it was fierce. It roared its defiance at my brother, who acted as coolly as I’d ever seen. He dropped the rifle, reached out his hand, and grabbed an assegai that had fallen near him. He lunged forward and thrust the spear into the broad chest of the beast and buried it up to the hilt. The monster roared a final time and collapsed.

  I tore myself from the astounding scene and whirled around, afraid that the other two gorillas would charge to avenge their leader. I was faced with an empty jungle––they had faded back into the bush, without even the glint of their eyes remaining.

  Behind me, George started hooting and hollering like the damn fool he was.

  “Did you see that shot, Simon? Whoo-ee!”

  I was about to answer when I felt the earth shake beneath us. The hunters, already unnerved by the charge of the white beast, fell to their knees, moaning and crying out.

  “The white monster!” they cried. “The white monster comes to avenge the death of its child!”

  That shook me. I had assumed that George’s gorilla was the white monster. The thought that that beast was only a child, and that its parent, by necessity even larger, was coming after us––well, that put a fear into us. We bundled up the camp as quickly as we could. I was all for leaving the corpse behind, but George wouldn’t dream of it. He bullied several of the hunters into helping him load it into the wagon. The donkeys pulled the wagon behind us as we fled.

  It was this delay that almost cost us our lives. The shaking had grown worse as we struggled to move the corpse––we later found it weighed nearly two thousand pounds!––and just as we finished securing the donkeys and started off, a roar like thunder echoed from above us. I glanced back and saw the most terrifying thing it has been my misfortune to see.

  The corpse we had in the wagon was an infant, and its father was pursuing us.

  This giant gorilla was tremendously tall, fifty-feet if it was an inch, and must have weighed several tons. It was still far away, but the very size of it ensured that we could see it coming from far off. It, too, was an albino, and the white of its hair shone in the moonlight. It was as if a snowy mountain had grown legs and was bearing down on us.

  “Run!” I yelled. “Run for your lives!”

  And we ran, George upon the wagon creaking after us.

  I have had many frightening experiences since that night, but nothing has yet compared to those hours we spent crashing through the dense jungle, falling and rising again and again, afraid to rest, lest the enormous beast catch us. Once it was so close behind us that I could see, even in the dark, its enormous broad chest and large head. Its pink eyes gleamed like the devil. It was a curious thing––I thought I could see, in the light of the moon, a network of gashes that ran all down the beast’s breast, open wounds that were not bleeding and injuries that should have killed even a monster of that size.

  We ran until we reached the edge of the jungle and tumbled out onto the plain. It was a relief to be free of the roots that grasped at our ankles and the slick undergrowth that threatened to make us lose our footing at every step, even though I knew that the open plain would allow the monster to gain ground more easily, as well.

  Strange, then, that as the giant gorilla reached the tree line, it stopped. It would not step foot onto the plain, though we were within sight and it could have had us in two strides of its long, long legs. It beat its chest and roared, and shook the trees with a sound like a storm, but it would not follow us. I could even more clearly see the monster now, and saw its dead eyes and the blood around its mouth where it had eaten an unlucky hunter. George wanted to stop and take a shot at it––I think his earlier success had gone to his head––but I refused. Although we were exhausted we pushed on, wanting to put as much distance as possible between the beast and our crew.

  It did not come, though, and when we were far enough away that we could no longer see its head towering over the canopy or hear its shattering roars, we rested, and two days later made our way back to civilization, having suffered only one casualty in that unfortunate hunter. I paid the other hunters double what I had promised them, for the encounter with the giant white gorilla was more than anyone had anticipated when we set out.

  George had his smaller white gorilla stuffed; he took it with him when he left for home a month later. I was relieved to see it go. Every time I looked on that still, giant body, I remembered the intelligence and majesty I had seen that night in the clearing. It made me sad, and it was also, to some extent, unnerving. George had set the beast just outside the study windows, on the veranda, and sometimes on a quiet night I would have sworn I’d seen the corpse move. It stood there, a white shadow beyond the dim lights of the study, and its arm would seem to twitch, or its head to turn. It was nonsense, but I almost hoped it would move, or come alive again. Its corpse upset me, for I much preferred the way I had seen it: alive in the moonlight.

  The night after George departed, I went to the village and found an old hunter who no longer went out, but sat by the fire and told stories. After some money and some shared whiskey, he imparted to me surprising information about the mysterious giant gorillas of the inner jungle. Perhaps I should have shared my new knowledge with George but, to tell the truth, I was angry with him for shooting the young gorilla. In my few moments of communion with the white beast, I felt more brotherhood than I had in years of life with George.

  Sometime later I received a letter from George. He indicated that he had arrived at home safely and that the previous troubles, which had driven him to Africa, had been satisfactorily resolved. He begged me to come celebrate Christmas with him. Since I had been home, I felt I had recovered sufficiently from my previous illness to chance a trip back to colder and wetter climes. I sent a quick note in return, accepting, and began to arrange for the journey. I was not much interested in seeing George, but I did miss England, and I must admit that I was also looking forward to seeing the white gorilla again, especially considering what I had heard from the old hunter.

  It was snowing when the train pulled into the station. I stared out at the large white flakes and thought of the snowy white hair of George’s gorilla. He met me at the station––George, not the gorilla––looking very fat and merry, and chattered the whole way home, about people I had forgotten and gossip I had never known.

  “Do you ever think about that gorilla?” I asked, as we rattled down the dark country roads. George looked at me curiously, then laughed.

  “Of course, old boy!” he said. “It’s standing in my study, the first thing visitors see. I tell the story at every possible opportunity! I’m practically famous for it! Some of the girls think it’s haunted and they flock to see it.”

  We arrived at the house and I was surprised to find it dark and empty. George explained, somewhat embarrassed, that he was between housekeepers. When I pressed him, he reluctantly admitted that no less than three sets of housekeeping staff had quit their positions in his service since he had arrived home.

  “I’ve never known you to be a harsh taskmaster,” I said, disapprovingly.

  “It’s nothing like that,” George said, flushing a bit. “You know me, Simon. I barely asked them for hot water once a day.”

  “Then why would they take their leave so quickly?”

  “Nonsense, really. Talk of ghosts, strange noises, moving shadows… and I suppose there is that maid who disappeared. But I am sure she just ran off with the groomsman, who
also disappeared around the same time. They were both fine looking young folk.”

  We were in the house by then, and when we had the lights on, I turned around and looked up to see those same pink eyes that had so haunted me on our first meeting.

  The gorilla looked as alive and majestic as he had in the clearing the night my brother shot him. I could almost imagine that I saw his nostrils flare and the hair around his mouth rustling gently as he breathed. It was just the flickering of the light, I told myself to still my leaping heart, and turned away. But I kept a close eye on it from that moment on, and each time I entered the high-ceilinged study, I spent some time near it.

  Several days after I arrived, George held a Christmas party. It was a lavish, decadent occasion, and one that I had very little intention of attending. George’s friends were annoying and trite and often quite offensive to me. They were of that set who finds it pleasurable to make a mockery of all things, quite cruelly, and among them there was not one person who had any sort of honor or redeeming quality.

  I made an appearance at the party, for George’s sake, but after an hour of watching his guests act deplorably, I was content to call it a night and retire. The last glimpse I had of my brother was as he drunkenly acted out the killing of the giant white gorilla, knocking into the beast as he staggered to and fro. He leapt towards a similarly inebriated young lady with a roar––she jumped with a little shriek and spilled her glass all over the gorilla. The wine dripped red stains down his white fur. I frowned and spent the rest of the evening in my room, where I fell asleep over a book in front of the fire.

  I was woken several hours later by screams.

  Leaping to my feet, I grabbed for my gun, which of course was not near me, as I had left it in my house in Africa. I took up the heavy iron poker from the fireplace, instead, and, carrying the lantern in my other hand, ventured down the stairs. I walked into a scene of utter carnage.

  Bodies were strewn everywhere. The young lady who had spilled her wine was near the door, hand outstretched as if to escape. The top of her head was ripped open, her brain missing, and her head was torn from her shoulders. Near her was another young man, his head equally ruined. I saw, in fact, that among their different wounds, each victim had suffered the same treatment––the head torn open and the brains removed. I knew at once what had happened.