Kong: King of Skull Island

by Strickland, Brad

  “Maybe you do not know them all,” said the Storyteller.

  “He knows nothing!” Kara’s voice was like a cracking whip.

  “He will learn,” the Storyteller said quietly. She stopped in her tracks and lifted the torch high. “There,” she said. “Ahead.”

  Vincent’s heart thudded. There before him reared a gargantuan form, bent forward, fists raised, mouth agape, fierce eyes fixed on him with a vengeance that made his blood run cold. The flicker of the torch made the creature almost breathe—

  No. It, too, was an idol. Yet the eyes, the eyes practically glowed with an intelligence that was almost human.

  “You see,” the Storyteller said. “Kong.”

  Vincent staggered. Kara supported him and then led him back to his bed, a wooden-framed cot, he could see now, with a thin mattress, made of thin, tough leather stitched over a stuffing of something soft, resting on the stretched, heavy skin of some great reptile. Kara helped him lie down, then the Storyteller held the bowl to his lips again. He drank, first tentatively, then greedily. The liquid must have been the juice of some tropical fruit, spiced and warming. He was hungry, ravenous.

  As if reading his desires, the Storyteller said, “No solid food for a little time yet. More of this if you wish it, and all the water you want. You can hold the vessel?”

  Vincent took the bowl in both hands. He forced himself to take small sips, not to gulp. “It’s good,” he said.

  “You have had nothing but medicines and water for several days,” she told him. “I know why you have come.”

  Vincent drained the bowl, let it rest on his stomach. The archaeopteryx fluttered to his knee, pinch-walked up his thigh, then pecked at the bowl. “I came to find my father,” he murmured.

  “The murderer!” snarled Kara.

  The Storyteller raised a thin hand, shushing the younger woman. “I will help,” she said.

  “How?” Vincent asked, warily eyeing Kara.

  The old woman pulled her wooden stool close to the side of the bed and sat on it. “By doing what I do,” she said simply. “I am the Storyteller. I will tell you a story.” She tilted her head back. “It is day,” she said. “Look up.”

  Vincent did. In the darkness overhead he saw what he at first thought was the moon. It was round, at least, and shone with a silvery light. “A window?” he asked.

  “A window now,” the Storyteller said. “It is covered with hide, scraped, stretched thin, and oiled. But once it was more than a window. Once it was a portal to another time. A time when the fate of my people hung in dangerous balance.”

  “When?” Vincent asked.

  “I cannot tell the count of years,” the Storyteller said. “But I can tell you this: My story is different from anything you know or have heard. And yet, Vincent Denham, it grows, like a jungle vine, and it twines around other stories. Yours not least of them. Listen to me. Listen to my story.”

  And Vincent lay back and listened. .

  CHAPTER FIVE

  UNDERGROUND

  June 29, 1957

  Jack Driscoll had wandered into a catacomb. Six skeletons lay on the floor of the tunnel. He crouched, studying them, not liking what he saw.

  “The devils,” he grunted aloud. The nearest skeleton wore rotten shreds of clothing, and not the wraps and skins of the islanders, either. Canvas clothing. European clothing. At first Driscoll wondered if these were the bodies of some of his shipmates from the first expedition, but he had found a pistol that dispelled that notion. It was an Eley’s, a weapon manufactured in England, according to the engraving, in 1873. Carl Denham had not equipped his men with antiques.

  But the skeletons were European, at least. And the tough shaft of a spear still transfixed one rib cage, showing how the man had died.

  The islanders. The devils.

  Grimly, Driscoll stood up and lifted his torch high. The tunnel, floored with dark sand, led off into the distance. Something faintly gleamed ahead. And patches of some kind of fungus or lichen on the walls nearly glowed in iridescence when he moved the torch. With his rifle slung on his back, his torch in his left hand and his drawn pistol in his right—a Colt automatic, not an antique—Driscoll left the chamber of death and headed deeper underground, either toward the Wall or the unknown.

  SKULL ISLAND

  The Past

  Gray rain lashed the village. The wind tore at thatched roofs, and lightning stabbed from roils of cloud. Young Ishara knelt beside the opening of her hut and gazed at the world, her eyes bright as the lightning.

  “This is what Bar-Atu prophesied,” said her betrothed, Kublai, from behind her.

  “Just a storm,” she replied. “That’s all.”

  Kublai growled. “Not to Bar-Atu. He’ll call it a sign, an omen, and he’ll make the people believe that, too. You know the Shaitan. That’s what they do.”

  Ishara closed her hand over the artifact that had been given to her long ago by the Storyteller of the village. It was a simple statuette, graceful in its lines, worn by time. There was no telling how old it really was. It came from the time when such things were plentiful, from a time before the Shaitan priests swayed the minds of the people from understanding of the beasts beyond the Wall to stark fear. To worship.

  “Your father doesn’t have long to live,” Kublai said, kneeling beside Ishara and staring out into the storm. “When he passes, Bar-Atu will proclaim the kingship at an end. He’ll make himself ruler.” He gave Ishara a sidelong glance. “Then he’ll want to kill you. Bar-Atu can’t leave the old king’s only child alive.”

  “But you’re of the Atu,” replied Ishara. “Bar-Atu can’t object to one of his own people. When we marry, you’ll be king.”

  Kublai turned his troubled eyes back to the rain. “Bar-Atu knows I don’t agree with him. I’m as dangerous to him as you are.”

  Ishara did not answer. She was think-ing of her childhood. It seemed so long ago, and yet she could count only fifteen suns, her betrothed only two more than that. If she had been an ordinary young woman, she would have been married by now, would have a child. But she was Tagu and of the ruling house of that people. The rules were different for her.

  Lightning found the top of a wind-whipped tree, snapped it into flame, and the earth shook with the explosion. With the thunder deafening her ears, Ishara stared into the darkness. The fitful, hissing flames showed her the Wall.

  Beside her Kublai rose, took his shield and spear, and strode into the rain. She saw him standing tall and strong, like a prince indeed. She put down the statuette and stepped into the rain, joining him. “The Wall,” he said bitterly, pointing with his spear. “Long ago our people built it to protect themselves. Not to become slaves to it.”

  Ishara pushed her thick hair back from her eyes. No matter where she stood on the peninsula, the Wall was always to be seen, hiding the world beyond. She had grown up with it, had become so accustomed to it that she never thought of it.

  Or had not, until Bar-Atu had made a god of Gaw.

  The wind rose even more, sending spears of rain stabbing against their flesh. Ishara stood against it, staring at the dark outline of the Wall, at its serrated spine. Was Gaw out there now? After a storm like this, Bar-Atu would cry out for sacrificial victims, would claim that the beast-god Gaw was angry and had sent the lightning and the wind. To ward off more storms, he would say, the villagers would need to feed the blood-cravings of their god with human sacrifice.

  “It’s wrong,” Ishara said in a voice hardly louder than a whisper. The voice of the Storyteller filled her mind, stories of the days when the islanders controlled the creatures of the island without fearing them. Without worshiping them.

  Without feeding them—

  The world turned white. Ishara stumbled back, collapsed to her knees, her ears ringing.

  Kublai staggered before her, pointing with his spear, yelling something. “What?” she asked, after-images dancing before her eyes.

  “The Wall!” Kublai shouted. “Look! The W
all!”

  Ishara struggled back to her feet. The tree had gone out, its flames put out by the torrents of rain, but part of the Wall smoldered with a red light—

  No. Not part of the Wall.

  Part of the Gate.

  Ishara saw at once what had happened: the last bolt of lighting had struck the Gate, had blasted a smoldering hole near the base of one of the two massive doors. And now the wind came howling through the Gate like the groan of some wounded giant.

  “Get the people into the longhouses!” shouted Kublai. “Warriors, to me!”

  Ishara dived back into the hut, emerged a moment later with a spear and shield. She dashed through the village, shouting a warning. She heard voices raised in alarm, saw the villagers struggling through the wind and rain toward the strongholds. The younger men joined her, and in a group they ran to Kublai, who stood at the foot of the Wall. Lightning showed his furious face as he shouted, “Ishara! You get to safety!”

  “I have a spear!” she shouted. “You need every weapon!”

  She could see now that the lightning bolt had broken more than one of the massive timbers of the doorway. A gap much wider than her body, and more than a head higher, jaggedly ran all the way to the sodden earth. “Close in!” yelled Kublai to the young men. “A shield wall! I’ve seen slashers!”

  Ishara caught her breath. Slashers! Man-sized killers that hunted in packs. And if one of the deathrunners, the stronger, eerily cunning herders of the slasher packs, had found the gap in the Wall, a whole group would descend on them. Kublai was pointing and shouting directions for a work party to repair the gap. She stepped through the rain, up to the opening. Her breath came tight and hard. She had never looked through the Gate before.

  Warriors were bringing torches that sizzled and spattered in the rain. Their light did not go far, but in the darkness beyond the Wall, Ishara saw two green sparks and then dozens.

  Eyes.

  “Slashers!” she yelled. “Slashers!”

  She felt rather than heard the charge as the creatures piled into the Gate. In momentary flashes, she saw the beasts launch themselves screeching, felt their claws assault the wood. An evil head, half-bird, half-reptile, burst through the gap, teeth ripping at the opening. With a shouted battle cry, Kublai charged past Ishara, stabbing with his spear. He found his target, and the wounded slasher jerked back through the opening, screaming.

  Ishara heard the other slashers fall on the bloody creature, heard their snarls and the ripping of flesh as they tore it to pieces, heard the crunch of teeth on bones. She turned toward Kublai. “Can we—” she started.

  A scream, a human scream, spun her around. A slasher had thrust its head through the opening, had closed its jaws on a warrior’s leg. Knifelike teeth effortlessly sliced through skin and hooked on bone. Ishara saw him dragged out, his frantic hands clutching at the earth, clinging for a moment to the Gate, then jerked through. This time the feasting was over in a second, and the beasts hit the gate with such force that the ground shook.

  “Hold them!” screamed Kublai.

  Three of the creatures had pushed in. Ishara saw a group of men running toward the breach in the wall with a patch, a lashed-together grating of timbers. Warriors at the hole were holding the rest of the slasher pack out by thrusting torches at them. The beasts feared fire, but fire was an uncertain defense in the wind and the rain.

  Kublai led a furious charge against one of the creatures, cornered it against the wall, thrust one of a dozen spears at it. Its death-screech pierced the chaos as its rasping body fell, rose, and collapsed again. Another of the beasts had ripped open a warrior, but now it lay dead, too. The third had dashed toward the village, and Ishara heard sounds of the pursuit as a party of warriors harassed it. From beyond the gate came the shrieking voice of a deathrunner! With evil intelligence it was urging the slashers to assault the opening, to press through—

  “Close the gap!” Kublai yelled as the work party moved their lattice into position. “If they—”

  Splinters flew. Ishara cried out in alarm. A creature, larger than the others, had wedged its feather-covered body into the gap. It could not push through, but it kicked furiously, its talons slashing the air. It caught a defender, not with its clawed foot, but with something it held in its hand, and sent him tumbling, blood erupting from his body like a fountain. The wood groaned and the monster roared as its sinewy, human-like arms groped for better leverage. Horrified, Ishara hesitated a split second—had the creature actually used a weapon? She screamed and charged with all her strength, aiming her spear to catch the thing in the throat—

  The beast saw her, kicked, splintered the shaft of her spear. She fell forward, just as she heard the wood give way. Three clawed fingers of a powerful, scaled hand strained to grasp her arm. The deathrunner’s eyes glinted in murderous rage as they locked their knowing gaze onto Ishara’s.

  Kublai yanked her backward, jerked her to her feet. The monster screeched in fury as its plumed head wildly strained from side to side in an effort to get to them. “Up!” he yelled. “Here! Up! The Storyteller!”

  Ishara grabbed the rope he handed her—part of a ladder, she realized, that led to the prayer hut atop the Wall, the hut where the Storyteller meditated.

  “Come on!” she screamed, pulling herself up the ladder hand over hand. She knew beyond certainty that the monster was a deathrunner, the pack leader, that it would burst through. With it and a dozen of the slashers loose in the village, there would be no safety—

  The dinosaur roared again from somewhere far beneath her. Ishara looked down. “Kublai!”

  She heard a scream, a human scream. Wind tore at her.

  “Kublai!”

  A hand closed on her arm, and Ishara tried to jerk away. Too late; it hauled her up, away from the blood, away from the red death below.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BEFORE THE STORYTELLER’S HUT

  After The Storm

  “It is over.” The ancient woman turned from the edge of the Wall and leaned on a gnarled staff, its knotted head taller than she was. She beckoned with a hand twisted by time into a talon. “Come, child. You can look.”

  Ishara had never looked down on the village from such a height. Though she had climbed trees often enough, she had never been atop the Wall. She felt dizzy, as though the world were reeling, though her senses told her the Wall was as solid and firm beneath her as the earth itself.

  Although she had grown up with it, she had never realized how thick the Wall really was. Here, above the great gate, it was as broad as a moderate hut at the top. In fact, it was even broader, for the old woman’s prayer hut was in fact built into the top of the Wall, with space enough on the village side to pass by. Ishara swallowed hard and forced herself to stand beside the old woman, looking down.

  Bar-Atu’s hut, apart from the others, was guarded by two of his followers. She saw the fierce priest enter and the two guards step closer together. “He is going to have visions,” the Storyteller said acidly. “Bar-Atu has learned enough to know that some of the island plants can make him dream even while he is still awake. He calls his dreams visions and claims they come from his god.”

  Ishara did not reply, but stood looking at the village. It seemed so different from this point of view. Far below them the work party was repairing the gate. Scattered before it were bodies of dinosaurs and of men. Butchers were already at work on the dinosaurs, stripping meat from the carcasses, meat that Bar-Atu would distribute at the Feast of Victory that he was sure to declare. To her relief, Ishara saw Kublai directing the repairs. He glanced her way, lifted his shield in brief salute, and then turned back to his task.

  “He knows you’re safe,” the Storyteller said.

  Ishara hugged herself. “Thank you. I’m just glad to see him alive.” She backed a few steps from the Wall’s edge and studied the seamed, ancient face of the Storyteller. The old woman’s eyes sparkled from deep nests of wrinkles. Ishara felt herself smiling back at the old woman. “I
thought you came here to meditate and pray. I never knew you lived here.”

  “Where did you think I lived?”

  Ishara said, “I always wondered. You’re in the village on feast days, never any other time. I never knew where you went.”

  For a moment, the Storyteller gazed into Ishara’s face. Then she turned away, leaning on her staff as she walked toward her hut. “Come inside.”

  The surface underfoot was wood, though to Ishara’s feet it felt as hard as stone. The Storyteller went straight into her hut. Ishara had to stoop to go through the low door. The hut was like a miniature long house: the room they entered held a sleeping pallet along one wall, leather cushions stuffed with soft dried grasses against the other. A curtained doorway led back into another room. On a perch hanging from the ceiling, something stirred in the dimness, grumbling in hoarse caws and croaks. “An Oji!” Ishara exclaimed. “Is he yours?”

  “He is his own,” the Storyteller replied in a dry voice. “Sit, child.”

  The Storyteller sat on her bed, Ishara on the cushions opposite her. In the narrow hut, their knees almost touched. Gray light spilled through the doorway and through the high, small windows under the eaves. “You’re the King’s daughter,” the Storyteller said. “How is it with him?”

  Ishara’s voice was unsteady: “He is very ill.”

  “And the boy? The one who helped you climb? You are to marry him?”

  Ishara returned the Storyteller’s gaze. “I hope to.”