He winkled his nose at the smell of them. The bat-things were rather pungent, and once more the writer in him was temptd to name creatures that were strange to him. He’d been schooled in Latin, of course, and now the name came to him. Terapusmordax, perhaps? Latin for “pungent-bat.”
And God, the stench was awful.
Jack crawled forward onto the ledge. He crept close to the back of the sleeping giant, whose shoulders rose gently with each breath. Jack crawled past Kong’s feet and looked up at the gorilla. His eyes widened and he stared in amazement.
Ann lay in Kong’s hand, fast asleep.
Kong growled.
Jack spun, hands up, ready to bolt. But the gorilla’s eyes were still closed. Kong was merely rumbling in his sleep.
Ann was only eight or ten feet away from him. Jack stared at her, wondering how to approach without waking Kong, when her eyes opened. For an instant she gazed blankly at him, almost as if she had been dreaming and now woken. She blinked, and he saw the realization strike her.
Jack had come for her. She stared at him with obvious disbelief.
He put a finger to his lips. Neither of them dared to move or make a sound. Very slowly, Jack approached. He gestured for her to stay motionless in Kong’s palm. There was more rustling and leathery fluttering in the cave, and then some of the terapusmordax flew out of the cave and began to fly around the ledge.
Kong might still be sleeping, but Jack’s arrival had disturbed the other things that lived here. Whatever fear they might have had of Kong, it was clear the presence of Jack and Ann was too tempting to resist. More of them fluttered about.
On the ledge, Kong stirred.
This was the only chance he and Ann were going to get. He extended his hand toward Ann. She reached out. Their fingers touched.
Kong’s eyes snapped open.
Time seemed to slow. Jack attempted to grab Ann’s wrist, but Kong’s fingers closed around her with stunning speed. Kong rolled to his feet, pulling Ann away. Kong snarled at Jack, who stood helplessly before him. The bat-things now swarmed above Kong in a predatory frenzy.
“Jack! Run!” Ann cried.
Kong swatted at Jack with his free hand. Ann struggled and kicked in the ape’s grasp.
“No!”
Kong placed Ann high on a small ledge just inside the cave and then turned toward Jack, who was cornered on the ledge, nowhere to run. Kong charged. Jack rolled to the side as massive fists smashed down around him. The giant gorilla raised a foot and stomped down, Jack diving clear just in time.
Jack lay on the ground with Kong rearing above him, no chance of escape. The creature’s eyes blazed with deadly intent. He raised his foot again, ready to crush Jack like a bug.
The cave echoed with a scream of terror and pain.
Kong spun around, while Jack scrambled to safety. Both of them stared at the ledge where Kong had left Ann. The terapusmordax had found her, and were whipping around her in a frenzy, sharp claws lashing her. She cowered against the rock face behind her, trying to protect herself.
With a furious roar, Kong abandoned his attack on Jack and charged at the bat-things. As he snatched Ann from the ledge, cradling her to his chest, the frenzied creatures struck at both Kong and Ann like a swarm of giant bees. Kong roared and thrashed out at them.
There were too many of them, tearing at his flesh. Kong put Ann down against the rocks so that he could use both hands to attack the vicious bat-things. With every sweep of his arm, he hammered several of the terapusmordax to the ground, but others clawed his head and body.
Jack seized his chance. He rushed along the edge of the cliff toward Ann, under the cover of an overhang. Kong had his back turned, fighting to protect Ann, even as Jack raced up behind him and grabbed her hand. He led Ann toward the only possible escape route.
The ledge.
At the edge they paused for only a heartbeat. One thousand feet above the jungle floor, they glanced into one another’s eyes. No choice. Jack grabbed a vine and Ann wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and he began to lower them both over the edge of the dizzying drop.
Hand over hand, he climbed down, dangling high above the ground. From above came the boom of Kong’s roars as he fought the winged vermin. Jack looked up to see Kong stagger onto the ledge. Several terapusmordax clung to the giant gorilla’s back, clawing at him. Kong drove himself backward, slamming into the stone face of the mountain, crushing them.
The surviving bat-creatures wheeled away, hissing angrily. They fluttered back into the cave, as though preparing their next attack.
No! Jack thought. Just a little more time!
Too late. Kong looked around for Ann and saw that she was gone.
Jack and Ann were no more than sixty feet down the vine. He began to swing them toward the rock face so he could get a handhold, get off the vine. If they had to climb down, they would find a way. But they had to move fast before—
As one, the two of them began to rise. Kong was pulling on the vine, drawing them back up toward the ledge, lifting Jack and Ann toward him like a fisherman reeling in his catch. Ann tightened her grip on Jack’s shoulders as bat-things swooped and soared around them.
Kong would have them both if the terapusmordax didn’t pluck them off the vine first and make a meal of them. One of them darted down and reached its claws toward Jack’s head.
Without thinking, Jack simply let go of the vine with one hand and grabbed his attacker’s taloned ankle.
“Hang on to me!” he shouted.
Ann clung to him for dear life as he grabbed the bat-thing’s other ankle, releasing the vine completely.
Their weight was too much for the terapusmordax. They dragged it down, descending rapidly. The bat-thing furiously flapped its wings but was unable to stop its spiraling plunge past the cliff face.
Up above on the cliff ledge, Kong roared with anguish.
The terapusmordax creature wobbled crazily in the sky, rapidly losing energy. Jack looked down. A fast flowing river ran now only fifty feet below, and he released his grip.
Ann screamed as they plummeted through the air and then splashed into the river. Immediately, the current grabbed them and swept them into the rapids and then down a small waterfall.
Moments later, coughing up water and gasping for breath, they surfaced in a less tumultuous part of the river. Half-drowned, they swam to the muddy riverbank, hauling themselves out of the water. They sprawled face down in the mud, too exhausted to move.
“Jack?”
“I’m here.”
“Did he follow us?”
“I think it’s safe to assume he will.”
Ann rolled over and looked at him. Even now, ragged and covered with mud, she was so beautiful he felt his spirits lift just to look in her eyes.
“Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked.
“Coming back.”
He looked at her. His throat tickled as though he had to cough, or like there were words waiting there that he couldn’t seem to say. Jack glanced away.
“I didn’t think you would.”
He hesitated a moment before replying. “Neither did I.”
A lightness touched her face, and it extended to her voice. “At least we can have a conversation now, without things turning hostile.”
Jack looked at her, lightly touching her cheek. Ann reached out to him and it seemed to him that the moment was suspended in time. There were so many thoughts and words and feelings churning within.
He pulled away. Whatever it was inside him that clamored for release, he couldn’t let it out. It just wasn’t the way he’d been built.
But she had to know, after all. He had come for her, hadn’t he?
And perhaps she did know, but then he could find no way to explain to himself the sting in her eyes when he pulled away, and the way she seemed to close off to him, then.
From above came a distant roar.
Jack stood. Ann scrambled to her feet. Neither of them seemed able to
look at the other. They looked up at the mountain, silhouetted against the waning night, and could see Kong quickly descending from his lair at a reckless pace, roaring again in rage.
Ann could do nothing but run. Worn down, emotions frayed, her mind roiled with confusion. There had been no real hesitation in her when Jack appeared. She had given up the idea of a rescue, had resigned herself to her fate, and when she saw him and saw that escape was possible, her heart had soared.
He had come for her. She might get off of this hellish, violent, lost isle. One day, she could set foot upon the shores of America again.
Yet even as she ran, lungs aching, throat rasping, legs like stone, she felt a shadow of guilt upon her heart. Kong had been alone for who knew how long. He had kept her alive. When he could have killed her, he had protected her and taken her in.
Her survival was a miracle, and of course she would never have chosen to stay. But he was the loneliest creature she had ever encountered, and a great gulf of sadness opened within her when she thought of him now.
Even as she ran from his fury, even as his roars filled the jungle.
Branches whipped at her face and she raised her arms to protect herself. The undergrowth scratched at her legs as she ran. Jack was beside her, his mere presence compelling her onward. A hundred times she wanted to ask how much farther, but she dared not, for she didn’t want to know the answer.
And then, through a break in the jungle ahead, she saw the wall.
They burst from the trees and just ahead was the grotto carved with the faces of ancient gods, the place where the villagers had set her out for Kong on an altar.
The thunder of Kong’s roaring reverberated all around them and birds exploded from the trees, flocks of them flying away in terror.
Between the wall and the grotto was a deep chasm. The altar to which she’d been tied was part of a structure that bridged that chasm…or it did when it was down. At the moment, it was raised, and hung just out of reach.
“Drop the bridge!” Jack shouted. “Carl!”
Ann ran, arms and legs pumping, but a terrible dread filled her as she looked to the top of the wall and saw that it was deserted.
“Help us!” she cried. “Please! Anyone!”
Another roar thundered through the jungle behind them, louder than before. Growing closer. Ann cast a nervous glance over her shoulder.
Trees crashed to the ground and now they saw him. Kong smashed his way through the jungle, moving toward the grotto.
Again Ann looked up at the deserted wall, desperate. She felt numb, her face slack.
“They’ve gone.”
Jack stared at the top of the wall. “Carl!”
Dawn was lightening the sky. Carl Denham hid behind the wall and listened to his friends calling, heard the terror in their voices, and did nothing. A small group huddled nearby. Preston, Jimmy, Bruce, and Captain Englehorn. He could feel the heat of their stares.
“Drop the bridge!” Preston snapped. “Do it now, for Christ’s sake!”
“Not yet,” Denham muttered. “Wait.”
Another roar filled the dawn sky, so loud, so close that it shook the wall. A sailor with a machete hovered near the rope that held the bridge up, ready to cut it at Denham’s command.
“Wait…”
Preston’s face was red with anger. Incensed, he stepped forward. “No, Carl.”
Denham shot him a withering glare, but Preston didn’t flinch. Ann and Jack’s cries for help resounded from the other side of the wall.
“You don’t make the rules,” Preston said. “Not anymore.”
Preston lunged forward and snatched the machete. He sliced through the rope, staggering back in pain as it flicked back, slashing him across the cheek.
Denham looked through the hole set into the massive gate just in time to see the bridge drop, at the very moment that Kong exploded from the jungle. The monstrous gorilla saw Jack and Ann and charged forward.
The two raced across the bridge, getting to the other side just as Kong leaped the chasm. They barely made it to the hole in the gate, as Kong began to smash the bamboo defenses set up around the wall, the whole village echoing and shaking with his fury.
23
DENHAM FELT A STRANGE calm settle over him. In the back of his mind he knew that he ought to have been paralyzed with fear, or fleeing in utter terror. Meanwhile, the gigantic gorilla hammered on the ancient wall and it shook with his efforts. His roars split the sky like furious thunder. The defenses the villagers had built on the other side of the wall—bamboo stakes sharpened to spear points—were nothing to the creature, who tore through it in seconds.
Preston, Englehorn, and some of the others had stared angry disapproval at Denham while he listened to Jack and Ann shouting for help, for rescue, but he couldn’t allow anyone to interfere with the plan now. If they could only have trusted him…which they should have, because now Jack and Ann were safe.
They ran through the small hole in the gigantic gate. From his vantage point he could see Ann looking around wildly as they raced into the village, leaving the wall behind them. Jack’s features were set in a grim mask.
Denham strode right past them and went to the gate. The monster—Kong—slammed his fists again and again on the gate, shaking the timbers, the whole structure quivering. The roaring of Kong jarred Denham’s bones.
In wonder, Denham stared up at the wall, imagining the ancient mystery behind it, and elated at the prospect of bringing that same feeling of awe and wonder to the world.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Ann and Jack approaching the rocks, where several clusters of sailors hid, grappling hooks ready. Preston lay to one side, a rag held against his bleeding face. Englehorn carried a large bottle of chloroform.
“What are you doing?” Ann demanded. She was scratched and bloody, clothes filthy and torn, her hair matted, and yet she was still beautiful, regal, and when she spoke many of the sailors sat up straighter and averted their eyes guiltily.
Denham was glad she was alive, that she and Jack were both safe. But he was even more pleased that the sailors were more concerned with Englehorn’s orders than they were with looking good in front of this woman for whom they all had such affection and respect.
Then another roar—louder than anything before—echoed across the village. A momentary pause came in the battering of the gate.
“Get ready!” the captain shouted.
The gate rocked with Kong’s assault, wood cracking, the splintering noise like gunshots. Denham backed off, running for cover. There came another blow, and then another. On the next, at last, the bar across the gate snapped in two, giant timbers cracked, and then Kong exploded through the gate with savage power.
Denham watched the sailors, about to give the word.
And he saw a remarkable thing. Kong stood, gazing around as though nothing he saw could threaten him, eyes searching until they located Ann. The moment he saw her, the giant gorilla seemed to deflate just the tiniest bit, and if Denham could have believed it, he would have said it was relief in the monster’s eyes.
Ann gazed at Kong in despair. The monster reached tentatively toward her.
“Bring him down!” Denham called to Englehorn. “Do it!”
Englehorn gestured to his crew. “Now!”
The sailors leaped from their hiding places like soldiers charging up from the battlefield trenches, throwing grappling hooks onto Kong—the hooks sinking into his flesh even as they hauled on the ropes, trying to immobilize him.
Jack had been so concerned with Ann, and focused on the gorilla, that he had barely noticed all the sailors, had not quite realized what was going on. Now a look of disgust and anger crossed his face.
“No!” Ann cried.
“Are you out of your minds?” Jack shouted, turning on Denham. “Carl!”
Englehorn pointed upward and Denham looked up to see the sailors that were on top of the wall getting into position.
“Drop the net!” the captain sh
outed.
A huge net from the ship rigged with boulders was shoved over the side of the wall. The net dropped over Kong and he was dragged to the ground by the boulders. That was all they needed to immobilize him.
Denham turned to Englehorn. “Gas him!”
Ann was walking toward them now, shaking her head, tears streaking her face. “No, please. Don’t do this.”
She started for Kong, but Jack held her back.
“Ann, he’ll kill you.”
“No, he won’t.”
Denham stared at them in disbelief. Whatever they’d gone through in the jungle, he figured it had addled Ann’s brain.
Kong tried to get up. Englehorn cocked back his arm and hurled the bottle of chloroform, which shattered on the ground right beneath the gigantic gorilla’s face.
“No!” Ann screamed.
As he tried to push himself up, Kong breathed in a noxious cloud of chloroform.
“Keep him down!” Englehorn shouted to his crew.
The sailors atop the wall had more rocks, not only the ones they had used to weight the net. Now they rolled those boulders to the edge and tipped them over, huge stones tumbling through the air. Several hit Kong in the head, one after another.
Ann tore herself away from Jack and rushed Englehorn, grabbing his arm as he prepared to throw another chloroform bottle.
“Stop it! You’re killing him!”
The captain ignored her, turning instead to Jack and shooting the writer a dangerous look. “Get her out of here! Get her out of his sight!”
Of course, Denham thought. He could see it now, could see it in the way that Kong’s eyes were locked on Ann. As long as she was near, he would fight them that much harder. Hell, from the look of it, Denham thought it almost seemed like Kong wanted to protect her from them.
Jack grabbed Ann’s arm. Despite the chloroform and the ropes and the blows to his head, Kong opened his mouth and let out a thunderous roar. The battle scars all over his face stretched and shone sickly, and his razor teeth seemed all the more threatening.
King Kong Page 24
