King Kong

by Christopher Golden

  Clad only in her chorus dress, Ann shivered. The winter night was merciless against her skin. Sirens screamed and echoed off of the buildings as three police cars careened down the street, racing past her.

  Ann followed, running to the intersection, and looked up the street. Several blocks away, in Times Square, pandemonium had erupted.

  She was well aware of what performance had been scheduled to take place there this evening.

  Chest tight, pulse racing, Ann ran toward the chaos.

  Kong circled Times Square snatching up any woman with blond hair, desperately looking for Ann. Dodging bits of flying debris, Jack tried to push his way toward Kong through crowds of fleeing people. As Jack watched, the great ape stomped on a car, killing all the occupants.

  Shouts of alarm drew Jack’s attention. People were pointing, and only then did he see the tram heading straight for Kong. The giant gorilla thrust out an arm protectively and his fist punched through the tram’s windows. Startled, the beast drew his arm back, with the tram firmly attached. Jack could hear the screams of the dying and the terrified inside.

  Like a cornered animal, Kong seemed to go into a blind panic. He flailed his arms and swung the tram through the air, smashing it into buildings in an attempt to get it off. Kong staggered out of Times Square, caroming off of buildings, shattering glass and buckling walls.

  Most of the area was now clear of people. Cars were abandoned, doors hanging open, cluttering Times Square. Jack dared not stop to consider how many had died, either at Kong’s hands, or trampled underfoot by other men and women fleeing the scene.

  Kong headed south along Broadway and Jack knew he had to follow. In the middle of the road was a stopped cab. The driver was too awestruck, too shocked to run or drive away. The man stood just outside his door watching the scene with his mouth agape.

  Jack jumped into the back of the cab and gestured toward Kong.

  “After him—go!”

  The man stared at him incredulously, then raised his hands in surrender. “It’s all yours, buddy!”

  Jack scrambled into the front seat of the cab, threw it into gear, and headed down Broadway after Kong. He cut the wheel to the left to swerve around a huge, crumpled piece of the tram that had fallen, then had to cut it the other direction and weave around other parts of the tram that were tearing loose and plummeting to the street from Kong’s fist.

  As he righted the wheel, he looked up to see that Kong had stopped. He had no choice but to accelerate. Jack floored the gas and the cab shot through Kong’s legs. He held his breath, eyes wide, when he saw the building dead ahead. Gritting his teeth he twisted the wheel and the cab spun around, nearly toppling over before it settled on the pavement. Jack’s foot was on the brake and he stared out through the windshield and saw that the cab was facing straight at Kong.

  The gorilla threw back his head and roared, pounded his chest, and then glared down at a car full of people that was in his path. Kong raised one fist up and Jack saw what was about to happen.

  He hit the horn.

  The blare of the cab’s horn made Kong pause, and then turn. The winter wind whipped through the taxi, but it was a more profound cold that filled Jack now, an ancient terror that went down to the bone.

  Kong looked through the windshield, right at him. There was no question in his mind that the gorilla would recognize him. He had done so once already tonight.

  With a snarl that revealed black gums and huge, sharp teeth, and stretched gleaming scars on his horrid face, Kong started after Jack.

  As he moved, panicked drivers coming up Broadway honked and tried to swerve around him, crashing their cars into one another. Vehicles collided with the cab, rocking Jack in his seat, but he hung on to the wheel. A useless gesture. With the cars that had piled up around him, there was no way he was driving out of there.

  He tried his door, but it would not open. Frantic, Jack looked around and found he was wedged in by cars on either side. His throat was dry and felt closed off. He looked around, trying to figure some other way out of the taxi.

  A huge hand came down into view just ahead. Jack started, threw himself against the seat, as though he might somehow pass through solid objects and escape. Kong lifted the car directly in front of him. The beast raised the vehicle high above his head and then, with a roar that shook the glass in the cab windows, hurled it into a building, where it exploded in flames and shards of glass and metal.

  Kong bent down and his huge eyes stared through the side window of the cab. But the beast had just cleared Jack a path.

  Jack hit the gas. Wheels spinning wildly, a cloud of burning rubber behind him, Jack sped up the road, weaving in and out of the path cut by Kong’s destruction. Pulse thumping in his head, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw Kong bounding after the cab on all fours, loping along with a speed that crushed any hope he had of escaping.

  But he’d damn well keep trying.

  The cab shot like a bullet across an intersection. Dozens of abandoned cars filled the streets, along with others whose drivers were still shouting angrily, trying to figure out how to extricate their vehicles, unaware of what was going on nearby. Jack swerved up onto the sidewalk, the only clear passage ahead.

  Screaming, pedestrians scattered, leaping from his path. As he shot past them, he saw that most of them weren’t paying any attention to him, but were looking behind him. Jack could see the primal terror etched in their faces and knew it reflected his own.

  Kong was in hot pursuit.

  Jack scanned the street, searching for any chance, something small enough to at least slow Kong down. His fingers tightened on the wheel and he narrowed his eyes as he spotted a tiny alley off to one side.

  Gunning the engine, he pointed the cab toward the alley’s mouth, afraid it might even be too narrow for the vehicle. Then he shot into the alley, rearview mirror snapping off the cab, paint scraping on the walls. The alley was barely wide enough for the cab.

  Jack looked over his shoulder to see Kong at the mouth of the alley, roaring with frustration.

  The cab erupted from the other end of the alley into the midst of Herald Square. Kong’s rampage had not reached this far south as yet and he heard screeching brakes and blaring horns. Cars slewed to one side as drivers tried to avoid collision.

  Then he could drive no farther. The traffic was moving, but slowly. Jack twisted around in his seat, looking out every window for a sign of Kong’s approach.

  The beast dropped from above, landing on the street right in front of him, impact buckling pavement. Once again Jack swerved onto the sidewalk and steered the cab wildly, scattering pedestrians in all directions.

  Kong followed. Jack swung the cab through a couple of tight turns, keeping track of the huge gorilla’s pursuit. Then he came around a blind corner and slammed the cab straight into a fruit vendor’s stall. Out of control, blinded by the ruined stall on the hood, Jack crashed the cab into a building, the impact throwing him forward so that his head struck the windshield.

  Dazed, he shook himself, looking around. The windshield was shattered. He ignored it. As he turned in his seat again, hand on the door, about to get out to continue his flight, Kong rounded the corner and bounded right past the cab, which was hidden now safely beneath the rubble of the wall and the wrecked fruit stall.

  Kong paused, glancing around for the cab, and roared in frustration.

  Then Jack saw the beast freeze, there in the middle of the street.

  No, he thought. No, it’s impossible. It can’t be…unless she saw the chaos, knew what was happening…of course she’d come to try to help…of course she’d come to him.

  Disoriented, shaky on his feet, he climbed out of the cab and his worst fear was realized. There, in the street, was Ann. Kong inclined his head as though unsure that she was real, that he had found her at last.

  But it was her. The real Ann, this time. She walked toward him. Kong roared and took a step nearer, then stopped. Ann stopped as well, and for a long mom
ent they just stared at one another.

  A small, soft smile lit her angelic features.

  Kong reached out and gently lifted her off the ground, his eyes never leaving her face. Ann held tightly to his hand as Kong turned and carried her off, disappearing into the night.

  26

  THE TROOP CARRIER RATTLED, engine growling, as it sped through the New York streets. In the bed of the truck, Sergeant Bissette rubbed a hand across the light stubble on his jaw and stared in disgust at the fear he saw in the faces of the soldiers under his command.

  “Listen up! This is New York City and this is sacred ground, you hear me? It was built for humans, by humans, not for stinking, lice-infested apes! The thought of some mutant gorilla crapping all over the streets of this fair city fills me with disgust.”

  Private Hautala, a new recruit, was pale and wide-eyed. Bissette merely glared at him.

  “So this is how it’s gonna be; we find it, we kill it, we cut its ugly head off and ram it up its—”

  He saw Hautala’s eyes widen, saw the kid’s face contort with terror, and as the sergeant spun to find the source of that terror he saw the gigantic gorilla looming up beside them, and the fist driving down toward them.

  It struck the front of the truck like a piledriver. The troop carrier flipped into the air, men and helmets and weapons scattering everywhere. Sergeant Bissette hit the ground at a bad angle, splintering his leg, but had no time to even let out a cry of pain before the truck’s cab crashed down on top of him, pulping flesh and bone.

  Ann clutched Kong’s fingers, holding tightly as he scaled another building and then bounded along rooftops at high speed. A searchlight swept across the sky, light splashing upon buildings, and then it locked onto Kong from below. Ann turned away from the glare of the light and looked back the way they’d come to see army vehicles racing along the quiet streets. Soldiers on an armored transported fired at Kong. Right behind them was a truck carrying a mobile searchlight.

  The streets teemed with these vehicles as the army flooded into the city to hunt for Kong. Ann knew she ought to have been terrified. Bullets whizzed around Kong, all too close to Ann. Yet she felt a curious calm, surrendering herself to forces she could not control. Denham had set it all in motion, and she would never forgive him for that. In the midst of this cruel, unforgiving, and unfamiliar landscape, Kong had gathered her up as his lifeline. Bereft for so long of any tribe or family, he had almost adopted her as family and tried to protect her.

  Ann felt sure that Kong had seen Jack’s rescue of her as an abduction. In his limited capacity, it was obvious he still believed she belonged with him. And now, in this terrifying place, he was trying to protect her again, even as he sought some refuge, some sanctuary for them both.

  But this was not Skull Island. There was nowhere Kong could hide here, and no enemy he could defeat that would not bring more.

  Kong leaped across the street as though it was some canyon, ten stories high. He landed on the opposite rooftop and bounded away. Another searchlight found him, and then a third. The army was closing in. Machine gun fire ripped past them as Kong leaped another great distance across the street. Ann shut her eyes, not wanting to see anymore, not wanting to feel the dreadful inevitability that was all around them now.

  Then Kong paused, and she opened her eyes. Armored cars and mobile searchlights converged on them. Kong had run out of rooftop. Ahead of him, across the chasm of 34th street, rose the sheer wall of the Empire State Building.

  Jack understood why Ann had given herself up to him. Somehow she had been in the area, had seen the chaos erupting, and had known that her presence might calm Kong. She had been trying to stop the rampage, to keep anyone else from being hurt, Kong most of all. But the sight of her being scooped up into his hands again was like a knife in Jack’s heart.

  How had it come to this? He felt that there had been a moment, back in the jungle, when he could have changed the course that had led them here. If he had just told her all of the feelings that were in his head and his heart, the things he kept caged inside of him, maybe the voyage would have ended differently. Denham and Englehorn and all of the others had commended him for his courage on Skull Island, but Jack knew the truth.

  He had been a coward.

  For his physical safety, he cared little. Flesh and bone would mend, or not. Ann’s safety had been far more important to him than his own. But he had been unwilling to let her in close, to let her really know him. Emotionally, he had not been willing to take that risk. It was just not the kind of man he was, not the way he had been put together.

  Driscoll men were stoic, and all his life he had equated that quality with strength.

  But the second that passed between them in the jungle, the moment when he could have spoken the words to her, he knew that was all wrong. His father and grandfather had been wrong, and he had learned by their example.

  If only he’d spoken up, he and Ann might not even have been in the city tonight. She might have been spared this.

  Jack was convinced that the moment in the jungle had been his one opportunity. If anything happened to Ann now, there might never come another. So once again he was determined to save her, to rescue her from Kong, but this time was different, for in doing so he would also be rescuing himself.

  Police and military vehicles were all converging in one direction. Jack ran along the street in pursuit. A mobile anti-aircraft gun screeched to a halt on 34th Street. Kong clung to the side of a building several stories up, right across from Empire State Building. Hundreds of guns were aimed at him.

  Ann looked so tiny and fragile in his hand.

  What are they thinking? They’ll kill her if they fire!

  A short distance ahead of him, an army commander shouted to his men. “All units, stand by to fire!”

  Kong roared defiantly as the anti-aircraft gun’s barrel swung toward him.

  Another officer ran up to the commander. “I can’t give that order, sir! The ape’s holding a girl—”

  The commander rushed past the officer. Over the shouts and sirens and groaning engines, he could barely make out the man’s words, but they chilled him.

  “Then I guess it’s her unlucky day,” the commander said. Then he pointed at Kong and shouted to his gunners. “Take aim!”

  “Sir!” the other officer said.

  “Shoot to kill!” the commander barked. “Fire!”

  Jack froze. It couldn’t end like this. Ann would be killed instantly. Kong, high on the side of the building, was a sitting duck.

  A sudden bloom of fire erupted from the gun barrel, artillery speeding straight toward Ann and Kong. The beast leaped across 34th Street just as the missile slammed into the wall where he’d been a second before, exploding glass and metal and stone into a shower that rained down on the street below.

  Kong smashed into the side of the Empire State Building. More glass rained down twelve stories to the street as Kong used windows for hand and footholds. He was one handed, his other still holding Ann protectively to his chest. Jack shuddered with relief to see that she was unhurt.

  Then Kong placed her carefully on his broad shoulder. She grabbed hold of his fur. Jack stood amidst the noise and confusion and could only stare helplessly as Kong began to climb.

  Jack had to save her, no matter what it took, or what it cost. He looked around, and then he saw that all eyes were turned upward, all attention on Kong, and the dark entrance to the Empire State Building was unguarded.

  The night sky to the east had turned a cobalt blue, a hint that dawn was not far off. Ann felt the chill of the winter night cutting through her and she pressed herself more tightly to Kong’s body, clinging to his shoulder, both for safety and for warmth. Though she’d felt resigned to whatever fate held for them, fear shot through her now. The ground seemed so far away. Kong continued his ascent and the wind plucked at Ann, tried to tear her off of him and drop her hundreds of feet to the street below. With every motion, every shift of his body, she
felt as though she might be shaken loose.

  But Ann did not scream.

  She was frozen, just wanting to hang on, praying that she did not fall.

  Higher and higher Kong climbed. Soon they were one thousand feet above the street, the dizzying drop yawning beneath Ann. Then, at last, Kong reached the observation deck and gently put Ann down.

  Ann could only look at Kong, wishing they were both far from here, wishing he was still back on Skull Island, in his lair. It would have been better if Jack had never come for her. What good had come of it?

  Kong regarded her carefully as though checking to see that she was all right. Ann was fine, but the gigantic ape had dozens of small wounds. Blood seeped slowly from those injuries, matting his fur.

  Then he turned away, sitting down on the observation deck and staring out across the city. There was an ache in her heart as she remembered him sitting just that way on the ledge of his mountain lair, looking out over the jungle. To Kong, this building must have seemed the closest thing to that he could find. He thought he was bringing her somewhere safe, a sanctuary.

  The sadness in her, watching him there, was deeper than anything she’d ever felt before. Kong only sat there. To the east the sun was rising, casting a soft glow over the tops of the buildings below them and glinting off the waters of the East River.

  Kong looked down at her and gestured with his hands, touching his heart, then spreading his arms wide. Ann looked at him, confused, and he repeated the gesture.

  Then she remembered, and understood.

  “Beautiful…” she whispered.

  She stood beside him and looked out, trying to see the city as he did. Here, so high above the squalor and noise and confusion, it seemed quiet, almost peaceful.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  Jack raced into an elevator and hit the uppermost button. Nothing happened. The elevator was shut down. He stepped out, back into the lobby, and nearly ran into a white-haired security guard.