by Tim Lebbon
“At least, not on foot.”
“You gonna tell me you got your plane flying again,” Nieves said, a tone of mockery in his voice.
“Oh, better than that,” Marlow said. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
He grinned at Weaver, and she replied by taking his photograph one more time.
SEVENTEEN
Mills held his breath as the colonel aimed the rifle, and he looked at the target one more time, confused, scared, disbelieving.
The bird was the size of a man, but unlike any Mills had ever seen. It resembled a gigantic vulture, sparsely feathered, leathery winged, its head large and bulging with bright red nodules, its skin lined and creased. It was almost prehistoric, and when it leaned its head back and called, the deep cry did nothing to dispel that notion. Behind it a tall black tree seemed to be its home. They suited each other.
Still, Mills saw no reason to blast it to hell.
They were hunkered down behind a huge fallen tree. There was a big enough gap beneath it for them to walk through, but Packard had called a halt when Cole saw the bird a hundred yards away. It was a good time to rest and take in just one more feature of this amazing, terrifying place.
Packard breathed in deeply, out slowly. “That is one ugly bird,” he muttered. Then he fired.
The bird’s head exploded and its body slumped heavily to the ground. Even from this distance, Mills heard it. Then behind the bird, something strange started happening to the tree.
Bullet went right through, Mills thought.
The trunk fractured.
Shattered the tree, made of stone perhaps, nothing like—
The branches drooped and then fell, splitting, fragmenting.
Not a tree at all.
The tree was composed of hundreds of those strange birds, melded and clasped together, shocked apart by the gunshot and the death of their companion, and now their strange conglomeration was falling apart, the birds crying out, flapping, drifting and soaring.
“Everyone down!” Mills shouted, but he already knew it was hopeless. If the birds came for them, they were finished. With their combined weapons they might be able to shoot down five more, or eight, but then they’d be smothered, picked apart by angry beaks and cruel claws. The sudden sound was terrifying, a combination of shrieks and the heavy flapping of wings. Mills hugged the ground. Cole was beside him, staring at Mills as if not seeing. Maybe he was praying.
The birds did not attack them. Instead they streamed skyward, spiralling up in patterns which Mills could only admit were beautiful. On the ground they might have been ugly, but once aloft they were graceful.
Packard was already on his feet again, shouldering the rifle as if nothing had happened. “Let’s move,” he said.
Mills brushed himself down, trying to still his hammering heart and not show his fear. The colonel was already walking away, and Mills and the others scampered out from beneath the massive fallen tree and followed.
“Jesus,” Cole said.
“We’re in hell,” Reles said. “Only explanation. This place is hell.”
“Dear Billy,” Mills said, “monsters exist, under your bed and signing your pay checks.”
They fell into step behind the colonel. He was twenty yards ahead, pushing through the undergrowth and constantly alert. He seemed unafraid.
“Anybody believe we’re gonna make it?” Mills asked. He kept his voice low, not wanting Packard to hear.
“Make what?” Reles asked.
“The exfil,” Mills said. “If we’re not there in a day and a half we miss the flight out, and this freak show of an island becomes our home sweet home.”
“We’ll make it,” Cole said. He spoke with finality. He didn’t like the colonel being questioned, but Mills couldn’t help that. Normally he’d follow Packard anywhere without question, but the doubts were his now, and this operation was far from normal.
“I dunno,” Mills said. “We’d have to beat feet even without the Chapman detour.”
“If it was me out there, I’d understand,” Reles said. “I’d be okay with you guys getting out. I think.” He glanced around at his companions. “Are we sure Chapman is even—”
“The colonel said he’s there, he’s there!” Cole said.
“Okay, Cole, don’t get all bent,” Mills said. “He’s there. And we get him, and we load out the munitions, and we go find the giant ape and wage war. That about cover it?”
“That’s a lot of burned daylight when we’ve got a hard walk out to the exfil,” Reles said.
They fell silent for a few steps, lost in their own thoughts. When Reles spoke again, he said what Mills had been thinking.
“Is he okay?”
“Who?” Cole asked.
“The colonel. He seems a little…”
“Like he’s losing it,” Mills said. “Like he’d rather kill that ape than get off the island.”
None of them replied. Not even Cole, to defend the colonel he’d follow into a lake of fire and out the other side.
Losing it, Mills thought, watching Packard as he led the way. The colonel seemed taller than ever before, as if a sense of purpose gave him life. Mills only hoped he wouldn’t let that hold on life go simply to fuel his aims.
* * *
Marlow led Conrad and Slivko past the village and along the riverside towards the vast wall. They walked for a few minutes and the wall barely seemed to come closer, and Conrad realised just how huge it was. It was a staggering architectural and engineering feat. He wondered at the fear these people must hold to force them into a task that must have taken many generations. Its maintenance would be an ongoing effort as well, something that the villagers would commit their lives to performing.
A mile or so past the village, they followed Marlow onto a wooden dock extending out into the river. At last they saw what he wanted to show them.
Whatever Conrad had been expecting, it wasn’t this.
“Gunpei and I started building her together years ago,” Marlow said. “Finished a couple of years back. Almost finished, anyway. Pulleyed the engine parts from my P-51, the screw from his old Zero. We were gonna head to open sea and civilisation. But that’s when one of them got him.”
“What happened?” Conrad asked.
“We’d gone down to the beach to salvage more parts from my plane. It’s half-buried in the sand down there now, washed way up on the beach by storm surge. We were hoping to tear out some of the electronics so we could rig some sorta ignition switch, and we wanted…” Marlow waved his hand, and Conrad was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “Anyway, on the way back we heard a noise coming from a deep ravine. Sounded like a kid screaming, calling for help. You’ve seen these villagers, Conrad. You know they don’t say much, not even the kids. So we ran to help and…” He trailed off.
“It wasn’t a kid,” Slivko said.
“Not a kid,” Marlow said. “Gunpei had started climbing down into the ravine, while I fed him rope. He always was the stronger one of us. The braver. He was maybe thirty feet down when the strange voice stopped, and then I heard it.” He fell silent again, staring out over the river.
“Marlow,” Conrad said, touching the man’s shoulder.
“Maybe it was laughing,” Marlow said. “I dunno. It was like a deep clicking sound, a heavy rattle coming from somewhere inside it. Gunpei looks up at me, his eyes are wide, and I start pulling, because I know we’ve made a terrible mistake. I hardly even see what takes him. Something whips down there in the dark, reaches out, snags his legs and tugs. And I… I can’t hold on. The rope rips through my hands, burning them, and Gunpei is gone.”
Conrad and Slivko remained quiet, giving Marlow his moment.
“I didn’t even hear him scream.”
“That’s a good thing,” Slivko said, and Marlow glared at him. “Right, Conrad?”
“Right,” Conrad said. “A good thing, Marlow. He didn’t know what hit him.”
“But I know,” Marlow said. “One of them hit him.
I spend whole nights lying awake, thinking about how I can pay them back. But…” He shook his head. “I can’t. No one can. Not them.”
“So let’s see this boat you made with your friend,” Conrad said, and Marlow smiled.
They walked out along the dock towards the craft these two island-bound enemies had built together as friends.
Conrad inspected the boat, and the more he saw, the more impressed he became. It was constructed from salvaged parts of aircraft and finely crafted timber, all patched onto what looked like the hull of an old World War Two torpedo boat. It wasn’t graceful or beautiful, but the engineering abilities used to construct something like this out here were staggering.
“Lovely,” Conrad said.
“Does it even float?” Slivko asked.
“Well… she needs work…” Marlow looked around, then leaned in close to Conrad. “But nothing a few extra hands can’t fix! We’ll have to gather tools and start work after dark. Like I said, our friends aren’t keen on anyone splitting town, in case it stirs things up even more.”
“You think they’ll try to stop us?” Conrad asked. He was aware of the weight of the pistol on his belt, but also keen not to use it. Not on these people. He wasn’t sure he could.
Marlow shrugged. “They survive. That’s their life.”
“So if they see us potentially threatening their survival,” Conrad said, but he did not finish his sentence. He really didn’t need to.
Time would tell.
* * *
Now that the truth was out, Randa felt invigorated. They were within reach of everything they had set out to find. That it had already found them only made things easier.
People had died. That weighed heavy on his conscience, and Packard threatening him with a gun might have been the closest Randa had ever come to death. Now that moment was passed, and they were making their way towards the crashed Sea Stallion, he had time to really appreciate the truths they had discovered.
Everything he’d ever hypothesised seemed to be coming true. If that beast existed, then it stood to reason that the other things he had speculated on were also here, somewhere—the vast underground world that no one had ever seen; the creatures that lived there, separated from evolution for millions of years.
The monsters.
The ape was only the first. Randa believed there would be more, many more. His only hope was that they did not encounter them face to face.
From a distance, though, would be fine. He carried his film camera after all, and once they were away from Skull Island, he would be ready to confront the world and show it that he had been right all along. Brooks and San had always doubted, along with many others in the scientific community. To some he was a pariah, a mad scientist lucky enough to have a monied organisation backing him. Calling someone a hollow-earther had become something of a joke.
He looked forward to seeing their faces when he presented his evidence.
He and the other survivors moved slowly through the jungle, carrying supplies and gear, guarded by the soldiers and following their lead. Packard was treating this like a war zone, and that caution suited Randa. They had seen the destruction and chaos that carelessness could cause.
Randa saw so much here that must have been exclusive to the island. Plant life, insects, several unusual species of small mammal, unique birds of paradise that danced and sang from the tree canopy. The trees themselves were huge and primeval, towering so high up that their heads were often lost in a haze of jungle mist, thrown up by the steaming temperatures and high humidity. A closed ecosystem, this was truly a wild land.
It was also unpredictable. One minute they were pushing through huge ferns, the next they emerged into a wide clearing of knee-high grasses and sparse, thin shrubs. The going was tough, and Randa was soon exhausted. Excitement kept him alert.
“Check it out,” one of the soldiers said pointing his gun to their left.
A sheer cliff rose to a ridge line a hundred feet above them. Pressed to the face of the cliff was what could only be a handprint, marked in blood and buzzing with flies and skittering lizards. The ape had come this way.
“Magnificent,” Randa breathed, filming the scene.
“It bleeds,” Packard said, moving up beside him. “We did that. And when we reach Chapman, there’s enough munitions on his downed Sea Stallion to finish the job.”
The column moved out, but Randa could only stare at the handprint. It was like a tribal marking, reminding him of ancient cave paintings from pre-history. There were many theories, but no historian could discern exactly what those long-dead artists had been thinking when they’d made their impressions. There was something about this that was similarly unknowable, as if in pressing his blood to the stone the ape had left something of his unknowable mind for all to see. A statement in blood.
Randa shivered. Cole nudged his shoulder.
“Keep moving, Mr Scientist.”
They moved out, and Randa knew that the massive handprint had troubled the soldiers as much as him.
“Man, whatever happened to letting sleeping dogs lie?” Mills muttered.
“They all wake up eventually,” Randa said. “The question is, are we ready?”
Walking ahead of Randa, Cole held up his AK-47 like a trophy.
“You know why I carry this instead of an M-16?” he asked. “Took it off a farmer fighting for the NVA. He surrendered after we levelled his village, one of the only ones who didn’t fight to the death. He was maybe fifty years old. Told me he’d never even seen a gun until we showed up. Sometimes an enemy doesn’t exist until you go looking for one.”
“And what happens when they show up at your front door?” Randa asked.
Cole waved the weapon again. “I’ll still have his gun.”
“Best of luck with that, soldier,” Randa said. “You’ve seen what the enemy here looks like.”
“Yeah, but now we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Sure,” Randa said. “It’s what we haven’t seen yet that really worries me.”
The group walked on across the wide clearing and into jungle once more. To Randa, there were eyes everywhere, and all were focused on them.
EIGHTEEN
Mills hoped he never saw another goddamned jungle for the rest of his life. He’d been days away from going home. He wanted out. Out of the jungle, out of the army, out of this crazy mission. He hadn’t asked for this, and he hadn’t even been told whether they were being paid combat pay for this fun little jaunt.
Man, this was FUBAR.
The landscape of this place was all messed up too. After traversing more jungle they’d started pushing their way through a forest of bamboo stalks. The stems were thick and solid, the leaves sharp, and soon his knuckles were sliced from the leaves’ cruel edges. Blood dripped. He thought of that big handprint, and here and there he made sure he left his own mark on the thicker of the bamboo stems.
Something touched his neck. He slapped it away, the dark shape as big as his thumb scurrying out of sight. “Damn it!”
“What’s up?” Cole asked.
“Spider. I hate spiders.”
“I’m sure they speak very highly of you.”
“They just need to mind their business, is all. Stay away from me, stay unscathed. It’s a fair arrangement.”
“You ever heard of the mouse and the lion and the thorn?” Cole asked.
“Yeah?”
“There you go. In case we see that thing again.”
“You know that story is about a mouse becoming friends with a lion after pulling a thorn out of its paw,” Mills said.
“No it’s not,” Cole said. “The mouse kills the lion with the thorn.”
“Man, who told you that?”
“My mother.”
Mills raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Cole was a Sky Devil, but he was also a hard man with a variable-length fuse. He didn’t want to diss Cole’s mother and light it.
They headed into a thicker patch of tall
bamboo. Taking point, Packard began to hack into the stems, carving their way ever forward.
“Man, it stinks in here,” Mills said.
“Yeah, like something dead,” the soldier to his right said. They called him Jammers for reasons Mills could no longer remember. Jammers wiped his forehead and lifted his canteen to his lips.
“Not that,” Mills said. “Not the smell of the dead. It smells like something alive.” He looked around, lifting his M-16 and sweeping it in an arc left to right. Nothing. Just bamboo, more and more bamboo.
“What the…?” From ahead, Packard stood staring at the thick stems he’d just hacked through. They were dripping a heavy, dark black fluid, viscous as runny honey. It smelled sweet. One crop landed on the colonel’s boot. The stalk he’d cut began to move, and all at once Mills knew.
“Contact!” he shouted, but by then it was already too late.
Just as Jammers lowered his canteen a long, thick stem punched down and skewered him through the throat. He threw his arms out wide, eyes bulging, as the stem burst from between his shoulder blades and blood and flesh spattered the ground around him. He shook, water splashing from the canteen still gripped in his left hand.
Mills looked up at whatever was attacking them, swinging his gun to follow his line of sight, finger already squeezing the trigger. At first his vision was confused by the many bamboo plants swaying around them, heavy leaves seeming to come to life as the shouting and panic fed them. Then he saw the dark mass almost directly above him.
A spider. Huge, horrible, its body the size of a man, long pale legs fifteen feet tall and holding it up above the jungle floor, allowing room for unsuspecting prey to wander beneath.
Now they were the prey. Its wet mandibles clicked together with the promise of food as it lifted Jammers up towards its multi-eyed head.
Mills opened up, the weapon jumping in his hands, gunshots pounding his ears, but already his vision was blurring. He blinked several times, and then something sticky and warm landed across his face, chest, arms. Its touch bore an awful intimacy. He tried to shift the gun but it was like moving underwater, and his breath was stolen just as rapidly as his other senses.