Ann stared at him, and the giant stared back, leaning forward on his knuckles, chest rising and falling as he breathed deeply, as though inhaling her. The intelligence in his eyes was remarkable and she was completely entranced, unable to turn away.
Suddenly, Kong stood to his full height, massive fists beating against his chest as he let out a deafening roar that seemed to shake the very ground.
At last, Ann could scream—she shrieked in terror and despair.
Her anguish brought a response from the islanders up atop the wall. They began to wail again, screaming down at her and at Kong in that guttural language.
All the strength went out of Ann. She did not lose consciousness, but still she could not even hold herself up. Numb in both mind and body she fell slack against the ropes and just hung there between the posts.
Faint, half-conscious, she barely flinched when Kong reached out a huge hand and ripped her bonds away from the posts, roughly clutching her and carrying her off. She saw the faces of those ancient idols, lit by oily flames, watching, but the faces receded as Kong took her from the altar.
The night echoed with the sudden eruption of gunshots on the other side of the wall.
Bitter sorrow rose in Ann’s heart.
Too late, she thought. You’re too late.
The islanders scattered as the men from the Venture came down from the ridge, firing warning shots in the air. The gunfire echoed off the wall, the whole plateau lit up by the fire that burned along its top like a scene from Dante. Jack could hear Englehorn shouting orders at his men and knew the captain was nearby, but he wasn’t paying attention.
All he cared about was Ann.
The villagers cleared a path, ducking into their huts or hiding in the ruins as several more shots were fired. Jack ran for the wall. From beyond it came the distant sound of Ann screaming.
Then the night was shattered by a roar so loud it shook the wall and the earth beneath his boots.
Englehorn came to an abrupt halt a few feet away, staring up at the top of the wall.
“What in God’s name was that?” Englehorn asked.
Jack had no answer.
The islanders continued to melt into the darkness, vanishing as fast as they had appeared earlier in the day. Even those who had been ranged across the top of the wall were disappearing, coming down by stairs and ropes and ladders. Ahead of Jack, the way was clear.
Jack rushed to the wall and began to climb. As he did, he glanced down and saw Carl Denham hurry up to the massive, heavily fortified gate. Carl pressed his face to the gate, trying to peer through the latticework of sharpened bamboo.
From the way he flinched and took a step back, Jack knew Denham had seen something. He kept climbing, desperate to reach Ann.
When he reached the top of the wall, he raced across and peered over the edge, but there was nothing to see there, no trace of Ann at all. There was a primitive altar and a grotto whose walls were carved stone faces, ancient and grotesquely leering, beyond that was the jungle, the nearest trees lit with firelight, but then only darkness.
“She’s gone!” he shouted down to the others, unable to keep the disbelief from his voice.
Denham had seen it briefly, but still wasn’t sure he believed it. The gorilla that had carried Ann into the jungle was without a doubt the biggest animal he’d ever seen, at least twenty-five feet tall. In all his life—in his entire career as a filmmaker—he’d never seen anything so fantastic. It was as though he’d gotten a glimpse of the remnant of another world, of an age when the impossible strode the earth.
If he could put that on film, audiences around the world would storm movie theaters for that same glimpse, a window into the extraordinary. Not only would his discovery become legend, but his own name would go down in history.
His mind raced, fueled by both fear and by possibility. Ann was in the clutches of that monstrosity. But in his heart he knew that even if she had not been in peril, he would still have had to give chase. He’d been waiting all of his life to brush against the incredible, and his moment had finally arrived.
The first mate, Mr. Hayes, had come ashore with a second wave of sailors. They dragged boxes of ammo and guns had been carried up from the beach. All around Denham, sailors pried open the lids and started distributing ammunition.
Jack hurried down from the wall. “She’s gone!” he called again, coming up to Denham, who quickly looked away.
“What is it, Carl?” Jack asked, staring at him. “You saw something.”
“You can have Hayes and fifteen others,” Englehorn said, his expression grave.
Denham was barely listening. His pulse was racing.
“I don’t believe it,” he said under his breath. Preston and Bruce were nearby, but the only one close enough to hear him was Herb, who looked at him with concern. Denham felt his stomach twisting into knots of despair. “I just snatched failure from the jaws of success. How did I do that?”
Herb frowned. “What?”
“The camera equipment…I left it on the boat,” he said, despondent. How could he have been so stupid?
“No, you didn’t, Mr. Denham,” Herb said. He reached down and pulled aside a rain slicker to reveal the box that the Bell & Howell came in. “I always bring the camera. You should know that.”
Joy lit Carl Denham up like it was Christmas morning. He could have kissed Herb right then and there. Then he saw Hayes watching him with a grim expression, and tried to contain his excitement. This was a somber moment, after all, and if he wasn’t quite as somber as he ought to have been, he could at least fake it.
“What was it, Denham?” Hayes pressed, even as the sailors unpacked the rest of the weapons. “What did you see?”
They were all watching him now, Jack and Englehorn, Herb and Bruce, Preston and Hayes. And the sailors had begun to gather around, armed and ready. Lumpy, Choy, Jimmy, Chet Trask, Hal Shannon, and a small army of others. Denham was a showman and he craved the spotlight, but not in moments like this.
“Jesus, I don’t know,” he said. “It was dark. I only caught a glimpse. It was some kind of…ape.”
From the man’s expression, it was obvious Hayes did not like this news at all. Denham glanced away, not liking the disapproval and distrust in Hayes’s eyes.
Jack slung his pack on, shot Denham a look of utter disdain, and strode toward the gate. He grabbed the bamboo barricade and tried to pull it away by himself. It was foolish. No one man was going to get through the barricade without help.
“Step aside, Driscoll,” Hayes said, raising the barrel of a Tommy gun.
Denham’s eyes widened in appreciation. He hadn’t been aware the weapons were on board, but he was glad to have them.
Jack leaped out of the way and Hayes fired a stream of bullets into the bamboo, neatly slicing a splintered path through it.
Hayes thrust the smoking Tommy gun into Jack’s hands. “Can you be trusted with this?”
Denham almost laughed out loud—Jack held the gun with all the familiarity of an apartment-dwelling writer, a true city boy. But something in his eyes must have satisfied Hayes, for the first mate didn’t take the gun back from him. Instead, he turned to survey the other men who had either volunteered or been chosen by Englehorn to go along.
The kid, Jimmy, was among them. He loaded a rifle with what seemed like expert swiftness to Denham’s untrained eye, then checked its sight. Hayes’s expression grew stormy and he marched over to Jimmy and grabbed the barrel.
“Not you, Jimmy,” the mate said.
The boy was visibly upset. To Denham, he looked insulted. “Come on, Mr. Hayes,” he protested. “Look at ’em. None of them knows which way to point a gun. You need me. Miss Darrow needs me!”
The most troubling thing about the kid’s argument was that he might be right. That didn’t matter to Hayes, who pulled the rifle out of his grasp.
“She needs you coming after her with a gun like she needs a hole in the head. You’re staying here.”
&n
bsp; Denham turned away, letting the two of them get on with their argument unobserved. None of his business, after all, and he had more important things to attend to.
He went to where Herb and Preston were double-checking the contents of the camera boxes and crouched down between them. They looked at him expectantly. Both men knew him well enough to know there was no way he was going on this expedition without the Bell & Howell.
“Bring the tripod,” he said in a hushed voice. “And all the film stock.”
“You wanna go with the six inch lens?” Herb asked.
“The wide angle will do just fine,” Denham replied.
The ground crunched with the tread of boots and Denham turned to see Englehorn scowling down at him with contempt.
“This is a rescue mission, Mr. Denham,” the captain said tersely.
Denham stood and met his gaze. “Correct, Mr. Englehorn. I am fully committed to saving Miss Darrow…and whatever is left of my failing career.”
He turned his back on the captain and gestured to Herb and Preston, who hastily repacked the camera equipment and began to pick it up. Bruce was nearby, talking to one of the sailors, a rifle already in his hands. Aside from Denham’s people and Jack Driscoll, there were Hayes, Choy, Lumpy, and eight or nine others. A sizeable rescue party.
Englehorn gave Denham a final, disapproving look and then surveyed the group. He turned to Jack.
“You’ve got guns. You’ve got food. You’ve got ammo. And you’ve got twenty-four hours,” the captain declared.
That gave Bruce pause. The actor stared at Englehorn. “Twenty-four hours?” he asked, incredulous.
“This time tomorrow, we haul anchor.”
Some of the men looked as though they might hesitate, even argue the point. But Jack just slung his rifle over his shoulder, turned and started through the now open gate.
After a moment, the rest of them followed.
16
BRUCE BAXTER HAD PLAYED at adventure his whole life. He was, in every way, a pretender. But there was nothing make-believe about what he had stumbled into now, and nothing at all wonderful about it either. Real adventure, he was quickly discovering, was filled with fear and peril.
As a young man attempting to enter the world of motion pictures, Bruce had often been afraid, often faced situations that were fraught with certain perils. On soundstages and back lots, in front of the camera, he had made of himself a hero, afraid of nothing. More often than not he had done his own stunts, risked his neck a thousand times to get a good shot. Bruce Baxter laughed in the face of danger.
At least he did when the threats were props, when the wild animals were old and tired or even caged.
Now he was living the very sort of tale he’d so often pretended to, and only the embarrassment he’d have suffered if he showed his cowardice in front of the other men kept him from going back to the ship with Englehorn.
You’re selling yourself short, pal. That’s not the only reason you’re out here.
He was scared, true enough. But when he thought about Ann Darrow and how terrified she must be, he knew there was no way he could go back to the ship. He had a gun and a dozen other men alongside him. She was alone, and from all accounts, in the clutches of some jungle beast.
If she’s even still alive.
The thought drove him on, forced him to grip the rifle tighter and grit his jaw. As anxious as he was—as afraid as he was—he couldn’t just leave Ann out there in the jungle. They hadn’t even gotten along that well, and he’d been worried all along about her stealing screen time from him. But her life was in the balance, and he was no coward. He wasn’t leaving her behind.
Even at night, the jungle was warm and humid. They walked through clouds of tiny insects that stuck to the light sheen of sweat on his face until he brushed them off. Branches scratched his arms, but Bruce had spent long days and nights exploring the forests and swamps around the house where he’d grown up, and so the jungle itself did not trouble him.
It was the sounds that were unnerving, the shifting and hissing in the deep brush and up in the canopy of the trees above. He reacted to every unknown noise, but he wasn’t alone. Most of the sailors were on edge, not to mention Denham, Preston, and Herb, who had paused several times to shoot some quick footage, but with the air of dread hanging about them. Only Driscoll, blinded by his fear for Ann, seemed not to notice. Mr. Hayes certainly took note, but the man was unafraid.
The island was supposedly volcanic. Denham had said or speculated something about it sinking into the ocean. Bruce wasn’t a geologist—he hadn’t had enough science to last out the eighth grade, so he certainly didn’t understand how such a thing could be, unless the earth was just so unstable underneath the island that it was being swallowed up.
He just hoped it didn’t sink—or erupt for that matter—before they were well away from here.
The volcanic history of the island made its terrain strange and imposing. Previous eruptions had left a jagged, tortured landscape of rock outcroppings, deep crevasses, and towering cliffs. The soil was rich and dark, and thick vegetation grew wildly all around them, so that even during the day, Bruce imagined it was quite dark in the depths of the jungle.
Ancient gnarled trees twisted out of the ground. Thick lichen and long mosses hung from branches and tangled vines. Steam rose from festering swamps, super-heated by the volcanic magma far below the surface.
Hayes led the way through all of this formidable terrain. Lumpy, Choy, and a couple of other sailors were near the front with him and Driscoll. Bruce traveled with Denham, Herb, and Preston, the remnants of the film crew sticking together. Herb carried the movie camera, stumping along on his artificial leg with an obvious limp but no less quickly than the rest of them. The rest of the sailors brought up the rear.
The atmosphere amongst the men was tense, heavy with dread. Unseen creatures scurried away from them, moving out of their path through the underbrush.
Up ahead, Hayes paused, holding up a hand to indicate that they should all be silent and follow suit. Everyone froze, watching him a moment, and then a strange, low moan echoed from the surrounding jungle. Bruce glanced around, trying to see in the impenetrable darkness of the jungle. The men all stared into the jungle, watchful and on edge.
There came a sudden noise, a cracking of branches and the thud of heavy footsteps. Bruce raised his weapon, wondering if this was it, if they had found the gorilla Denham had supposedly seen.
His fingers gripped the rifle so tightly they hurt.
He had no idea who was the first to fire, but suddenly guns were blazing. The staccato burst of firing from the Tommy guns ripped the darkness, muzzles flashing as several of the sailors panicked and shot blindly into the jungle. A couple of them raised their rifles and fired. Bruce was itchy to fire as well, but he kept his eyes on the landscape around them. There weren’t many rounds in a rifle and he didn’t want to expend them shooting at nothing.
“Cut it out!” Hayes shouted. “Hold your fire!”
Military, Bruce thought. He’s definitely a military man.
Hayes ignited a flare, instantly flooding the clearing with a sickly red light. They could see far better, but the crimson illumination cast such a hideous pallor over the jungle it was somehow worse than the dark.
Something moved and Bruce swung the barrel of his rifle toward it, then backed off a few steps, cursing loudly as a dead creature, thirty feet tall, toppled from the jungle like a mighty tree being felled. It crashed through the gloomy foliage and thudded to the ground in front of the men.
Bruce could only stare. The thing possessed enormous legs and had obviously stood upright, bent like a kangaroo. It had a long tail, a narrow head with a beaklike snout, spikes along its shoulders and sides, and horn-covered oval plates like armor all over its green, mottled hide. On its head was a sort of fin.
Dinosaur, Bruce thought. Impossible, but what else could it be? He was almost giddy with disbelief and relief that it was dead.
&nb
sp; “Gimme that camera,” Denham said excitedly to Herb. “We gotta get this.”
Before any of them could move there came a violent, thrashing noise from the jungle. Branches splintered, leaves shook.
Another of the fin-headed lizards crashed into the clearing, blood streaming from a bullet wound in its side. It shrieked in pain and fury as it ran at the men, and they all scattered, trying to keep out of its path as it charged wildly among them.
“Watch out!” Jack shouted.
The creature was thirty feet high, but its tail was nearly half that length and it whipped it through the air, knocking several sailors off their feet. Then the dinosaur spun, about to attack again.
A sudden flash of gunfire erupted, lighting up the clearing. Bullets riddled the dinosaur and it staggered, then dropped to the ground amidst the smell of cordite and the copper stench of blood.
Hayes stood nearby, finger still on the trigger.
There was silence for a moment. The men began to gather around again, slowly approaching the dead dinosaurs.
Preston, his boyish face pale and drawn, stared at the creatures. “Aren’t these things supposed to be extinct?”
The grizzled English cook, Lumpy, scratched at his stubbled face and spat on the ground. “They are now.”
Choy started to back away from the dinosaurs. Bruce couldn’t blame him, but he was less concerned about the dead ones at their feet than what else might be out there in the jungle. Rattled, he looked around at the darkness, even as the flare began to fade.
“What the hell kind of place is this?” he rasped.
Ann focused on just breathing. The giant gorilla clutched her so tightly that her ribs felt as though they would break. Her tears were gone. No longer was she trembling with fear. Her initial terror had been sublimated by the primal need to survive.
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