The last of the dinosaurs got to Ann. As its jaws descended upon her, Ann screamed. Its breath enveloped her in a cloud of noxious fumes, its teeth sliced the air, and then it took her in its teeth, pressing into her and lifting her up. She felt the twitch of its muscles as it was about to bite down.
She felt so cold. So tired. So far from home.
The bite never came. With a roar, Kong grabbed the V. rex’s jaws in both hands, keeping it from clamping down. He forced it to the ground, slammed it onto its back, thick fingers prying at its teeth with Ann still wedged in its mouth.
Ann stared into Kong’s face, into those yellowed eyes, saw every line and scar. With a grunt, teeth bared, Kong forced the V. rex’s jaws open. Ann pushed herself from its maw, bruised but not cut open, not gutted, not dead. She dropped to the ground and turned to see Kong forcing the dinosaur’s jaws further apart.
He ripped them apart at the hinge with a wet tear of flesh and a loud splintering of bone.
The V. rex sprawled on its back, dead.
Kong stood, panting heavily. He had been bitten, clawed, and cut but he was utterly victorious, and now he stomped his foot on top of his final conquest, the blood streaming out of its gaping, torn jaws. With a loud, long bellow, Kong raised his arms and began to beat his chest triumphantly. He did not even look at her, as though she meant nothing to him.
Then, to Ann’s amazement, Kong turned and began to walk off.
Ann hesitated. There might be another V. rex nearby. What were her odds of surviving another hour in this jungle, never mind another day? Kong moved slowly, as though to give her time to catch up.
She set off after him.
He must have heard her footfalls for he glanced back, grunted, and then continued on, still slowly, giving her time to follow. Something had been agreed between them.
The air echoed with gunshots. Ann flinched. She had been convinced that her fate lay with Kong, but those sounds were so close, so full of hope that at first she thought she had imagined them. More gunshots filled the air, not far away.
Kong roared angrily, looking around, chest heaving. If there was another threat, he would destroy it just as he had the V. rexes. Kong lifted Ann and placed her on the top of a ruined thirty-foot stone column that stood at the edge of the glade, another remnant of the ancient civilization that had once called the entire island home. She clung on to the top of the narrow pillar, safe above the jungle but unable to move.
Kong turned toward the sound of the gunshots, deadly intent in his eyes. Ann could only watch helplessly as he disappeared into the jungle.
21
HAYES HAD LOST THE trail hours ago. There was nothing to be done for it. They had two choices; go back to the ship, leaving Miss Darrow in the hands of a monster, or forge ahead as best they could manage and hope he could find some indication of the ape’s passing. He wondered how many of his men would have taken the first option if they knew he was navigating their course using his own sense of direction and his memory of the path before. There was guesswork as well. Above the jungle he could see one mountain towering above the others, odd shapes flying around its peak. It was directly in the path Ann’s abductor had been taking before Hayes had lost track of them.
It was a hunch, that was all. But they had nothing else to go on.
Or they hadn’t, until just now, when they had come onto a wide path that seemed to have been made over the course of many years. Flora had been trampled underfoot and branches had been snapped from trees. It led straight toward that peak in the distance, and he had found a trace of a recent foot print.
The ape had come this way.
Hayes hefted the pack on his back and gripped his gun. Somehow the heat and the sweat trickling on his forehead and neck had ceased to bother him. All that mattered now was moving forward, pushing himself beyond physical limits and just getting the job done. It felt like war again, and though it troubled him to admit to himself, war felt good. Simple and pure. The mission was all that mattered.
The terrain appeared to change up ahead. Before he continued on, Hayes wanted to check on the others, make sure no one was straggling too far back. Jimmy was just behind him, the others trailing along. Denham, Driscoll, and Preston walked together, though there was tension amongst them. The actor, Baxter, had been curiously silent since his mutinous speech a couple of hours earlier. He kept to himself now, but seemed as determined as the rest to soldier onward. Lumpy and Choy led the remaining sailors. Hayes tried not to let himself count how many had already died on this mission, and instead focused on the men still alive, and trying to make sure they stayed that way.
Hayes glanced at Jimmy and then turned to forge on. As he’d suspected, the terrain drastically changed ahead. Another fifty yards and they arrived at a dark vine-entangled chasm, spanned by a single, massive, fallen tree. Weak sunlight filtered through the dark canopy above, casting a sickly green hue over the place.
If he let them, the boys would hesitate. Hayes wasn’t about to give them the chance.
“Single file,” he called back to the others. “Jimmy, you follow me.”
He started across, with Jimmy close behind, leading the group across the slimy moss covered log. The going was treacherous.
“Don’t look down,” Hayes said.
Denham was behind Jimmy, struggling with the damned camera. Hayes wished the thing would just slip from his fingers and fall into the chasm below. Jack was behind Denham, and following him was Lumpy, who was mother-henning Choy, then Bruce and Preston. They were all on edge, but managed to put one foot in front of the other. The others were straggling, with a sailor named Turcotte coming last, just starting onto the makeshift bridge.
Hayes continued across, picking up his pace carefully. He was focused so much on his footing that he nearly missed the sound of something shifting in the jungle on the other side of the chasm. He stopped, muscles tensed, and scanned the opposite side. There were dark ruins in the foliage across the chasm, much like those so common to Skull Island. Whatever civilization had lived here in ancient times had spread its influence all across the rock.
He stared into the ruins and the trees with their spiderweb of hanging vines, and he knew something was watching them from the darkness. He could feel its eyes upon them.
“What is it?” Jimmy asked, his voice low.
Hayes motioned for Jimmy to be quiet. He tried to get a glimpse of whatever awaited them there in those foreboding ruins.
“Mr. Hayes,” Jimmy whispered.
Warily, Hayes tore his gaze away and turned to look at the boy. “If anything happens, you run. Understand?”
“I’m not a coward,” the kid said, indignant. “I ain’t gonna run.”
“It’s not about being brave, Jimmy. I want you to make it back.”
Jimmy gave him an uneasy look, but Hayes had nothing more to say. He kept one eye on the ruins as he continued across the log. With every step, he tried to get a look at what was hiding there, waiting for them. If they could get off the log quickly enough and spread out, with the guns they still had, they would probably be all right. The question was, would they have that kind of time?
Hayes stepped off the log onto the safety of the other side. Now that he had a different vantage point, he saw that part of that ancient structure had collapsed, stone columns tipped toward one another or tumbled down to create a kind of tunnel into the darkness.
A pair of gleaming eyes shone from within, and the moment he set foot on the ground, they were moving, rushing toward him.
“Go back!” Hayes shouted.
He bolted back toward the log. The men still crossing the chasm froze and then started to back away, slipping and sliding on wet moss. Hayes turned as he ran and shot into the darkness behind him, even as the watcher emerged from the ruins.
Jack saw the giant gorilla run at Hayes. It was as tall as the trees. The beast—the same one that had taken Ann?—was old and horribly scarred, but its teeth looked vicious and its fists were huge. All
throughout this nightmare journey, he’d had the chanting of the villagers in the back of his mind . Kong! Kong! Kong! And as he stared at the monstrous ape, he was certain it was not just a word, but a name. This giant. Kong.
With one sweep of its massive hand, it snatched Hayes up into its fist.
Jack faltered, watching in horror. Jimmy started to run toward the monstrous beast, but he held up a hand and the kid paused. Kong stared at them both, about to attack.
In the gorilla’s grasp, Hayes shouted. “No! Look at me! Look at me!”
Slowly, his hands still free, Hayes began to raise his gun. Disturbed by his captive’s angry shouts, Kong glanced down at Hayes, tightening his grip.
“You’ve got to run, Jimmy. Go back across. Do as I say,” Hayes commanded, voice deadly calm as he locked eyes with the beast. Then he spoke to Kong. “Keep looking at me!”
Hayes did not dare even glance at them, did not dare break the contact with Kong. “Go with Jack,” he instructed the boy.
Then he raised his gun and aimed at Kong’s face. “Run!”
Jack and Jimmy ran. There was one single shot from Hayes’s weapon, and then gunfire erupted all around, echoing back from the chasm below. Most of the shots went wild as the sailors tried to maintain their balance on the mossy log.
Jack looked up just in time to see Kong hurl Hayes through the air. He flew over their heads, tumbling, smashing against the far wall of the chasm with a sickening crunch.
“No!” Jimmy cried.
Kong roared. The desperate sailors scrambled and slid, trying to make it back across the chasm, to get off of that log. But not Jimmy. The boy wept tears of grief, and his eyes were wide with rage as he moved forward, toward the giant gorilla, fists bunched as though he might attack it with his bare hands. Jack had no doubt that he would.
Kong was at the edge of the chasm. Jack grabbed hold of Jimmy, forcing him down onto the log, pinning the both of them there. The gorilla roared as he brought a huge, leathery fist down onto the tree bridge, missing them by inches.
They had nowhere to run.
As that fist hammered down again, Jack grabbed Jimmy and rolled the two of them right off the log. He reached out and wrapped his arm around a thick vine that hung beneath it, saw Jimmy scrabbling for a handhold and catching another vine, and then the two of them were just hanging there, under the log. If they let go, they would plummet toward certain death in the chasm below.
Denham felt like he was flying. Nothing seemed quite real. The chasm yawned beneath him and the safety of solid ground seemed so far away, but a part of him felt no fear, as though he didn’t need any log to hold him up. It was that strange confidence he always had in his dreams, the certainty that whatever happened, he’d be all right. The sunlight streamed down through the break in the canopy above, casting a strange light upon the vines that dangled from the trees overhanging the chasm, adding to the dreamlike quality of the moment.
Hayes was dead. He’d heard the man’s bones break.
But Carl Denham was more alive than he’d ever been. Terror was exhilarating. He ran along the log, skated on the moss, and he kept his eyes on the other side of the chasm.
Then he stumbled and went down hard on his stomach. His camera slid out of his hands and struck the stump of a broken branch. It jammed fast, wedged in the fork of the stump.
The dream shattered. Shock or hysteria, whatever it was, he was over it now. His breath came in a ragged gasp and he keenly felt the approach of death. Up ahead the rest of the panicked sailors had stopped and were shooting wildly, but fear and lack of balance threw their aim off. Denham wanted to scream at them to just run, to get off the log. Hayes was dead, they couldn’t help him now.
Denham scrambled along the log toward the Bell & Howell, but up ahead of him, Lumpy was the nearest of the sailors. He was practically on top of the camera.
“Grab it,” he called. “Don’t let it fall!”
Lumpy glanced down at the camera. Denham nodded at him. Lumpy raised his foot and very deliberately booted the Bell & Howell into the chasm.
Stunned, Denham watched the camera tumble into the depths below.
And the log began to rise.
Denham was already on his belly. He grabbed hold of an upturned chunk of bark as he glanced back to see the gigantic gorilla—the same titanic creature he had seen carrying Ann into the jungle—lifting the end of the log. He saw Jack and the kid, Jimmy, hanging onto vines as they were raised higher.
The sailors near Denham started shouting.
The titan twisted the log. Men scrambled to hold on. The creature gave it a hard shake. Denham heard cries of terror and two of the sailors slipped and fell from the log. One of them struck his head on the wood as he tumbled down into the chasm. The other kept screaming the entire way down.
Choy shot a desperate look at Lumpy and threw himself down, scrambling for a handhold. The violent twisting of the log threw him then, and he too slipped away into the abyss. Lumpy screamed, and all Denham could do was watch.
Preston was nearest to the far side, to the edge from which they’d set out. He leaped and managed to catch hold of some hanging vines, hauling himself up to safety. Denham was about to shout to him, but in that moment, Kong roared again, a final sort of frustrated sound, and then he thrust the log sideways, over the edge, and the entire thing began its final descent into the chasm.
Denham couldn’t hold on any longer, and they all fell.
Bruce Baxter refused to die. He’d come close a hundred times on film sets, where the stunts were badly planned or executed, or where the animals weren’t as tame as producers claimed. Oh, he’d die eventually. But not here. Not now.
As the log tumbled into the chasm he felt it flipping over. The momentum of its turn threw him off, but he leaped at the same time, controlling the direction as best he could, and he managed to grab hold of a ledge halfway down into the chasm. It jerked his shoulders nearly out of their sockets and something gave way in his left wrist. But it wasn’t broken. And he wasn’t dead. Not today.
Jack held onto the vine, falling with the log, all sense of his surroundings gone. The log struck a curtain of vines that arrested its descent for an instant before momentum toppled it away again. Jack was flung clear. He saw other men twisting in the air but could make out only flailing limbs before he struck soft, slick mud that cushioned his impact.
As he sat up, it sucked at him and he had to pull himself free. He could only gaze down at his own body in disbelief—he was scraped and bloody, chafed raw where the vine had been wrapped around his arm, but he was otherwise uninjured. Alive. Unbroken.
Jack staggered to his feet, caked with mud. The bottom of the chasm was another jungle entirely, thick with moss and vines, overgrown with strange, twisted trees unlike anything he’d ever seen, and shot through with caves and damp vents in the ground that might have been burrows of some sort. It was strangely cool down there, and yet even more humid than it had been in the world above.
Denham lay nearby. He and Lumpy had both also struck the mud, and been saved by sheer luck.
But not all of them had been so fortunate.
“Choy!” Lumpy shouted.
The cook crawled toward his friend and comrade. Choy lay in shallow muck, his body splayed at an awkward angle. Jack flinched at the anguish in Lumpy’s voice, all of his bluster now gone. He could not look away.
Choy gasped for air. Quaking, he managed the hint of a smile. “What you think he say about this?”
Lumpy stared at him. “Who?”
“My guy…Charlie Atlas.” Choy twitched and swallowed hard. The way his body was twisted around it was clear he was shattered inside. “Training, see? Training make all the difference. Anyone else…after a fall like that…be curtains for sure.”
Jack finally averted his eyes, but he could still hear Lumpy’s reply.
“Yeah, I used to think it was a waste of time. But you held up.” His voice quavered only a little.
When Jack loo
ked to them again he saw Choy nod and smile. Lumpy turned away, then, so Choy would not see the anguish in his face.
“Hey, don’t worry. It’s oh-kay,” Choy said.
Lumpy kept his back to Choy as he nodded. He wiped tears from his eyes and managed a blank expression before he turned toward his friend again.
By then, Choy was dead.
Jack couldn’t watch anymore, allowing Lumpy to grieve alone. Instead he began to search for the others. Jimmy wasn’t far away. Unlike Choy he had landed at the edge of the thick mud, near enough to avoid serious injury. Yet the kid just sat there, knees drawn up to his chest, staring vacantly into space.
“Jimmy?” Jack said, kneeling down beside him.
The boy was unresponsive. He clutched his battered school exercise book in his hand. Jack took it gently, holding a finger in the page to which Jimmy had opened it. On the page was a poem written in the boy’s spidery handwriting.
Jack glanced around at the remnants of his search party. Denham was opening his eyes, rubbing his head. Lumpy cradled Choy’s body in his arms as though he held his own son. Not far off, he saw the corpse of Ben Hayes, lying where it had fallen on some rocks at the base of the chasm.
His gaze drifted back to the poem, and he read:
Today I have been happy. All the day I held the memory of you,
And wove its laughter with the dancing light of the spray,
And sowed the sky with tiny clouds of love,
And sent you following the white waves of the sea.
Jimmy looked up at Jack, tears filling his eyes. He fell into Jack’s arms, softly sobbing. Jack held the boy tightly, heart breaking for the loss of Hayes, for the dreams unfulfilled, but not only for that. For all of them.
Past Jimmy, he saw Carl sit up. The man had been one of his closest friends. He had tested that friendship over and over these past hours, and even the days before, but looking at him now, Jack knew he still cared for Denham. He just couldn’t help him.
King Kong Page 22