Kong: King of Skull Island

by Strickland, Brad

  Again, as before, the images slowly moved across the great plane of the cave wall. How in blazes had the ancient people of the island accomplished this? The walls were covered with mosaics of minute glowing dots, forming patterns that seemed to move, or flow, across them. There was nothing electronic involved that he could see—not that there could have been—and the cave wall was solid rock. Everything seemed to respond to light alone. Driscoll marveled at the ingenuity. How could savages have built such a civilization—or had he misjudged the people of the island?

  A passage turned northward, toward the heart of the island, so he retreated. The central tunnel seemed to lead more or less toward the native village. There the wall illustrations were different. There was no hint of a peninsula, let alone one with a wall across it. These portrayed some sort of structures in what looked like a city, if you could call it that. It was unlike anything he had ever seen, and in his day he had seen a lot.

  “This place may be even bigger than Angkor,” he thought, recalling the massive Cambodian temple complex, and instantly he remembered something he said to Ann all those years ago when describing the Wall on the peninsula for the first time: “I went up to Angkor once. That’s bigger than this. . .”

  Could the same people who built the Wall have built this city? Or did some super race live separately from the primitive tribe behind the wall?

  He followed the tunnel until he arrived at a low opening. He wormed through it to discover he had gone in a circle. He was again in the vast amphitheater. Looking at it more closely, Driscoll realized that the architecture required to build such a structure was far more advanced than he had thought, and he realized, too, how truly extensive the network of tunnels had to be.

  Looking again at the bas-relief on the north wall of the enclosure, he could tell that it represented a war—but what men were fighting, and who, or what, had they fought?

  Gigantic ape-like creatures were involved. Kongs? His mind reeled: what would this island be like with more than one of those brutes running amok? The smaller images were vague and eroded—were they people or some sort of bizarre saurian the size of a human? And then he wondered, were even the kongs at risk from something on this island—was there no end to the dangers here? Driscoll imagined that the battles had taken place a thousand years ago, perhaps more. He could not tell from what was exposed and he was not about to dig around and find out more. Leave that to the archaeologists, he told himself—or the art critics.

  Driscoll walked a few hundred yards before he came to more, but badly decayed images of something burning in huge pots of some sort. In the foreground were figures—people, he saw—doing whatever they did with gigantic dinosaurs grazing only yards away. Were they pets, or had the humans tamed them or controlled them somehow?

  The passage ended in collapsed rubble. Driscoll retraced his steps. The last of the three passages seemed to parallel the one he had left. Its pictures were much cruder, though the colors and lines were brighter, sharper. Hunters brandished spearlike weapons, but more lethal looking, enhanced in some way that he could not clearly define. With these, the hunters felled gigantic saurians. Groups of others turned their backs on the hunters (or soldiers?), while many of the armed figures were pointing their weapons. Following the glowing mosaic, Jack saw that the figures all moved toward a huge wall at the jungle’s edge, a wall Driscoll recognized. The stream of humans looked desperate, the unarmed ones carrying jars that looked heavy, filled with something that did not show in the pictures. And the expressions on the faces were anguished, like those on the faces of refugees Driscoll had seen during the world war.

  “Okay,” grunted Driscoll, trying to make sense of it all. Something caused a war, he thought, and the losers got kicked out. Behind the wall must’ve been the only safe place, but who went there? Criminals? Made sense, he decided—the city-dwellers had the higher civilization. Maybe they sent all the scum to live behind the barrier. The walled-off peninsula might have been a prison.

  Jack remembered how those creeps captured Ann and offered her as a human sacrifice to Kong. Staring at the procession pictured on the wall, Jack found himself hoping that half of them had been eaten before making it to the wall. The island was no different from anywhere else: every society had its bad apples. While most people went about their lives working and minding their own business, some few thirsted for power or revenge, and they led everyone into war. Driscoll grunted in puzzlement. Maybe the city-dwellers had been too tender-hearted to kill the ones they drove out, but what happened then?

  Why would those savages behind the wall still be around while the powerful and advanced civilization that built the city was destroyed? Had it been some kind of plague? The city was in the middle of nowhere—how did it get built? Something went wrong and the dinosaurs ate all the civilized humans? There was no way of knowing.

  Driscoll had always held a sneaking fascination with the mysterious cultures he had encountered on his travels. Something in him mourned the loss of those who had built and lived in this now-dead city. And he shivered at the thought that Vincent was now in the hands of the outcasts who survived. God only knew what they could be doing to him. Jack set his jaw. All he could do was try to reach the Wall as fast as possible.

  “The keepers of the old ways were the Tagu,” the Storyteller said to Vincent. “My people, my ancestors.”

  “I don’t understand,” Vincent complained. “Were there always two clans?”

  “That is difficult to answer. In the remote days, when our first ancestors sailed here across the ocean in great ships, we were all one people, and all followed the Rules that bound us together. However, even before that they occupied a corner of the world that no longer exists. They may have been of two minds in their own ancient history before they came here. Our oldest stories tell of a great war won by the Tagu that forced them both to become one, the Tagatu. From that war came the Rules, which were to be observed by all equally under the guidance of the Storytellers, whose ancient line was finally acknowledged by all.

  “It was as a united people, the Tagatu, that they came to the islands. They brought the ancestors of King Kong with them. They left a dying land torn with fiery mountains and cracking earth to seek a refuge. They found this island, and they found another terrible war, but not among themselves.”

  Vincent frowned. “With whom? Were others already living on the island?”

  The Storyteller’s expression was grim. “Others. Yes, that is a good name for them! Tagatu search parties landed here many times before they felt it was safe for all to follow. They spent years developing the scents which could control the great creatures that dwelt here and make their landing safe. It never occurred to them that there were others on this island that did not want to be found!”

  Vincent shifted on the side of the bed and felt a shudder shoot through his spine. “The others were not—people, were they?”

  “Not people, no.” The Storyteller continued: “I call them others because even though they were not human, they were more than animal. They came to be called ‘deathrunners.’ My ancestors had been on the island for months before the deathrunners began to strike. The provisions from the long journey had long been exhausted, and the ships had been scavenged for building materials and were no longer seaworthy. There was no escape. They destroyed their great ships, using the timbers to build a barrier to protect their settlement.”

  “The Wall.”

  “It became the Wall. This was only possible under the protection of the kongs, huge creatures of great strength and great intelligence, trained by a select few of the Tagu. They were indomitable even in the face of death. In time the Tagatu refined their sciences to a point where they were able to better control the island’s creatures. Eventually they became the absolute masters of all things that lived here.”

  “But this was before Ishara’s time,” Vincent said, trying to work out the history of the island in his own mind.

  “Many, many generations before.”
The Storyteller sat watching Vincent. He was well enough to sit on the edge of the bed now, though he felt miserably weak. The old woman said, “And after that, the Tagu and the Atu together built the Old City, the ruins of which Ishara discovered, as I have told you. For a long time, for many lives of men, the two sides prospered, though their disagreements became more and more heated.”

  “The Tagatu somehow kept the dinosaurs from destroying the city they built as well,” Vincent said slowly. “But how?”

  “With the secrets of the plants. Even so, they were never able to completely control the deathrunners, whose minds, being far more advanced than other beasts, were less susceptible to their compounds. Deathrunners adjusted to them quickly, and the mixtures had to be changed constantly. The Tagatu scientists in that area were mostly of Tagu heritage. They had knowledge that they did not always share with the Atu, partly because Atu scientists thought it beneath them, partly because the Atu were not trusted. They held themselves apart, developed their own traditions. The Atu in time became the chief warriors, and they were necessary. No one knew when the deathrunners would strike, and only the Atu could hold them off. The Atu became arrogant in time, too trusting of their own strength.”

  The Storyteller spoke of how this arrogance led to trouble. The Tagatu as a whole had gained a hard-won but gratifying stalemate with the island’s saurian inhabitants. Over time the Tagatu built incredibly intricate subterranean passageways and studied their world and its inhabitants in great detail. They began, over many years, to gain a sense and balance of their new world that rivaled their understanding of their old world. But certain Atu, descendants of the leaders of that warrior clan, eventually convinced all the Atu to pull more and more apart from the rest.

  Throughout it all, the Tagu maintained their observance of the Rules. They revered the Storytellers and their traditions, whose collective wisdom was proven through generations and believed to be a reflection of God. Descendants of the Atu questioned the need to worship anything, feeling they were supreme. Theirs was a philosophy of self. Many extraordinary thinkers rose in their line, but almost without fail they ridiculed the Storytellers for their supposed superstition and sentimentality. The Storyteller sighed and said, “The Atu thought they ruled their world, but instead, their passions ruled them—and their pride ruled their passions. This proved their undoing.”

  Vincent was leaning forward, trying to follow the thread of this ancient history. “How?”

  “My Storyteller ancestors were ridiculed for not focusing what they taught on the natural world. But Storytellers were not as concerned with the secrets of nature as they were with the nature of people. Theirs was the science of the unseen, the study of the movement of the soul. This they knew better than the Atu knew the island. They predicted the result of Atu ways as surely as knowing that a spear, even when thrown by the strongest warrior, will eventually fall to the ground.”

  Vincent took a deep breath, wondering whether his own philosophy, his own study, was that different from what the Atu had followed. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  The Storyteller patted his hand. “Be at peace, Vincent. Let me continue with my story and you will find out more.

  “It was said by some that fanatical Atus still bitterly resented their defeat at the hands of the Tagu centuries before they came to the island. These Atu, no longer believing in the need for Tagu sciences, sabotaged the carefully prepared Tagu seed mixtures. They deliberately opened the way for hordes of deathrunners to attack to show the Atu’s strength by fending off the attacks with their own weapons when the Tagu ways seemed to have failed. As time would tell, they were overconfident in their ability to control the chaos that ensued.”

  The Atu, the Storyteller explained, emerged with power.

  They abandoned the Rules and sought to split the people into the two original clans, the Tagu and the Atu. Then the Atu warriors started a campaign to hunt the deathrunners to extinction.

  Sadly, many Tagu no longer believed in their leaders and, fearing for their safety, were won over by the Atu lies. The remaining Tagu, their numbers diminished, were in the end too few to fight back. Sensing the inevitable and fearing for their lives, Storytellers led the faithful Tagu on an exodus back to the Wall.

  “But Atu dominance didn’t last,” Vincent said. “You say that by Ishara’s time, all the Tagu people were on the safe side of the Wall.”

  The Storyteller inclined her head. “Yes. In time, the Atu who lived beyond the Wall gradually became arrogant and self-indulgent. This led to a neglect of correct planting of the seeds and an ignorance of the correct formulas and to improper use of other resources as well. The kongs became wild beasts, not servants. The Tagu fell into decadence and fought amongst themselves whenever their comforts were disturbed.”

  Vincent shook his head. “How could such an advanced people make so many mistakes? Couldn’t they see what they were doing?”

  The Storyteller’s smile was knowing. “You consider yourself an ‘educated’ man, Vincent, do you not? But would you not agree that the most important learning is not in the head but in the heart?”

  Before Vincent could respond, the Storyteller raised her hand, silencing him. “My story is not finished.

  “The Tagatu had become a great tree whose branches spread high and wide above the ground. High up in those branches the Atu culture flowered. The multitude of their achievements blocked the view beneath them, and their pride deceived them into thinking their flower needed no support from the tree below. When they banished the Tagu, they were cutting into the trunk of that tree. The Atu refused to acknowledge that their survival depended on combining their abilities with the Tagu. In turning on them, the Atu destroyed much of their own strength. Before another full generation had passed, the Atu found that they were no match for the animals of the island.”

  The kongs had long since been set free on the far mountain and had become completely wild. They were no longer there to shield the people from the giant saurians, which did serious damage. But on occasion the giants could be controlled or killed and their carcasses used for food and other materials. A far worse problem were the death-runners. They were cunning, able to solve problems. And they favored the taste of human flesh. They could communicate, and they learned how to set traps. When the Tagatu first landed, the deathrunners decimated the populace one, ten, fifty at a time. For mysterious reasons, at certain times some of the strongest never stopped growing. Eventually one would prove smartest and strongest by killing its rivals and become leader of all. It was believed this super-deathrunner was their queen, necessary for the continuation of their species.

  Gaw was the worst of these malevolent monsters. She could direct the others in attacks, and men were no match for their teeth and their claws. After many long years of battle, the Atu dwindled in numbers and power. In one final overwhelming attack, the death-runners obliterated any final pretense of civilization the Atu had. The lucky survivors who made it back to the Wall, Bar-Atu’s ancestors among them, had to beg the Tagu for shelter. The Storyteller’s gaze had become distant, as if she were looking into the past. She said softly, “This final humiliation was never forgotten by the Atu.”

  “What happened to Ishara?” Vincent asked.

  “She fell into darkness,” replied the Storyteller, her old eyes focused on something far away.

  Skull Island

  The Past

  Ishara came back to consciousness slowly. Her body ached with a deep, burning pain. She rolled to her side and retched, dizzy and sick. A dim shaft of light, dancing with dust motes, slanted down from overhead. When at last she felt able, Ishara rose to her feet, trembling and dazed. She listened, but heard no sound from above.

  Why had Kublai led Magwich and his men to the Old City? Why was Kublai letting them destroy the gifts that her ancestors had left for her and her people? Once again Ishara’s resentment flared. She had to remind herself that Kublai did not have her gifts, nor did he know what the Storyteller
had told her. She forced herself to be patient. Her mind raced as she considered what to do next.

  She now knew where the seeds were, but that was not enough. Where were the formulas? She froze. What seemed like a far-off flutter suddenly grew louder as dust and debris fell all around her. She shielded her eyes as she ducked into a shadow just as she heard a familiar voice: “Ishara!”

  Ishara winced. “Oji! Here. Not so loud!”

  The creature hopped across the dusty leaf-strewn floor to Ishara. Around its neck still hung the small pouch containing the seeds and extracts the Storyteller had put there before sending him after Ishara. Ishara was so relieved she picked up her feathered friend and kissed him.

  “I found a store of seeds,” Ishara murmured to Oji. But, she wondered, did they hold the spark of life after so many years? If they were planted, would they grow? And then how were they to be combined? There was so much to know, and so little hope.

  Taking deep breaths, Ishara peered upward. The walls were sheer, the opening through which she had fallen far above her head. There was no way to climb. With her muscles clenching in pain, she limped into the darkness, her right hand on the stone wall. Beneath her feet was a cool stone floor, dry and covered with a deep drift of soft, yielding dust. She could only hope that the passage would find its way back to the surface. At worst, she could turn around, put her other hand on the wall, and trace her way back here. Oji pranced, hopped, glided, and sometimes hitched a ride as the two proceeded on together into the darkness.