Kong: King of Skull Island Read online

  “Wait!” Kublai yelped, but too late. The leader arched out of the water with him, its body glistening like a jewel in the setting sun. To Kublai, it seemed they were suspended, weightless, for an age before slipping back below the surface. But as the creature breached a second time, it shook its body, and he fell away, tumbling head over heels to splash back into the lagoon. Oddly, the one Ishara was riding leaped with her, seeming to find joy in the contact. “They like you,” Kublai said accusingly, watching the animals nose forward to touch Ishara. “They don’t care for me.”

  It was true. The creatures barely tolerated Kublai’s touch, but they seemed to revel in a caress from Ishara. Then, suddenly, the mood changed. The sleeks began to press Ishara toward the shore, their squeakings becoming urgent. “What’s wrong?” Kublai asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe some predator’s come into the lagoon. It’s all right! We’re leaving!”

  She and Kublai waded ashore and stood holding hands, watching the pod race toward the reef in a series of high leaps. Nothing dangerous appeared, and the two young people spent a long but watchful time, warming in the late sun. Then Kublai sighed. “Ishara, I think we should go back to the village. We’ve been gone for too long now, and I’ve led us the wrong way. We’ll have to plan more carefully to make it to the old city, and we’ll have to bring more food to get there and back. Besides, I’ve been thinking about Gaw. I want everyone to know that I’ve seen Gaw and that it’s not a god. It’s just another dinosaur. It can be hurt—and if it can be hurt, it can be killed.”

  “But it isn’t just another dinosaur. It’s like the deathrunners, but far worse” Ishara protested.

  “Intelligent or not, it can be killed,” Kublai insisted. Silently, they headed back, with the waning day feeling a little cold.

  They didn’t get far. One of the ridges that led to Skull Mountain cut across their path. It stretched out to sea, forming one side of the crescent beach, but it had a bluff end, a crag of volcanic stone rearing above the surf. Beyond that the land dropped to yet another beach. And in a narrow inlet on the far side was something that neither Ishara nor Kublai had ever seen before.

  It rode on the water, though it leaned to one side. It seemed to be made of wood, and it had—what?—brownish-white wings of a kind. And on the beach were boats, not shaped like the canoes of the islanders, but rather shield-shaped. A man stood over the boats, carrying something like a long black stick. He wore outlandish garments that covered most of his body, and his skin was the palest human flesh that Ishara had ever seen.

  Kublai again led the way, ducking into the underbrush, giving the stranger a wide berth. “What is that?” he asked, pointing at the floating vessel. “A—a boat? It must be the biggest boat in the world! And who are these men? I’ve never seen anyone like them!”

  “Outsiders,” Ishara said. “They might not know about the dangers. We should warn them.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kublai responded. “They may be dangerous themselves.” He found an animal path through a thicket of spiky brush and stooped as he led Ishara along it. It curved away from the sea.

  But soon they emerged from the thicket into a clearing and froze. Opposite them, obviously just having come from the other way, were five men, as pale as the one on the shore. They all carried the long black sticks. The one in front was tall and broad-shouldered. One of the others leveled his stick toward Ishara and Kublai, but the leader struck it down with his hand and said something quick and sharp in a foreign language. Then he gestured, motioning Kublai and Ishara forward.

  Kublai said, “Stay behind me. Be careful.” He took a step forward, spear at the ready.

  The tall, pale man spoke. His language sounded to Ishara like the twittering of the flying reptiles, but in a deep, booming register. When Kublai didn’t react, the tall man said something to one of the others, a shorter, heavier man. The man spoke several times, words that Ishara could not understand. Then a distorted, odd-sounding word: “friends.”

  “Who are you?” Kublai asked. “How did you get here?”

  The man shook his head. Kublai repeated himself slowly. The short man jabbered to the tall one. The tall one shouldered forward and gestured toward the ship. His expression was not threatening, but his demeanor was urgent. Slowly, Ishara began to understand that the vessel had a hole that let water in. These strangers had come to the island seeking aid.

  “Tell him we’ll help him,” Ishara said.

  Kublai gestured for her to be still, but the tall, long-faced man had noticed her. He smiled, a smile like the sun coming up. He tapped his chest and said “Mag-wich.”

  “Mag-wich,” Ishara said, imitating the sound.

  The tall man laughed and nodded. “Cap-tain Mag-wich,” he said slowly. He pointed at Ishara and raised his eyebrows in query.

  “Ishara,” she said, understanding. She touched Kublai’s arm. “Kublai.”

  “Ishara,” Captain Magwich said immediately, soberly. “Kublai.” He came forward, still smiling. He wore strange clothing: soft tubes that covered his legs, leather covers on his feet, and covering his arms and chest a garment so pale that to Ishara it looked like the face of the moon. He reached into the garment and produced something, which he held out, offering it to Ishara. She took it in her cupped hand. It was a ring of gold, glowing in the sun. He nodded, smiled, and closed her fingers on it. And to Kublai he held out a gleaming knife with a jeweled handle. As if moving by its own will, Kublai’s hand took the weapon from him.

  “They’re telling us they will pay,” Ishara told Kublai. “If we help them, they will pay us with gifts.”

  “What should we do?” Kublai asked, his voice worried.

  “They will die here,” Ishara replied. “They are strangers. They don’t know they’re beyond the Wall.”

  Kublai turned the knife, sending flashes of reflected light into Ishara’s eyes. “I’ve never seen anything so fine.”

  Captain Magwich put both of his hands on Kublai’s shoulders. “Kublai,” he said. He gestured toward the ship. “Help.”

  Smiling despite himself at the big man’s beaming face, Kublai nodded. “Kublai . . . help,” he repeated. He pointed to the ship and mimed its moving. “Kublai help.”

  The tall Magwich laughed and nodded. Kublai tried to explain that they had to move to the village. Ishara stepped forward and pointed to herself and to Kublai, then lifted one finger, two fingers: the two of them. She pointed and held up all of her fingers, opening and closing her hand. More people there. Magwich seemed to get the idea, and when Ishara gestured for the strangers to follow, he said something to them and they fell into line.

  The seven of them walked along the ridge, but despite Ishara’s and Kublai’s efforts, they could not get the men to understand the dangers of the island. When they tried to mime an attack by a dangerous animal, he shook his long stick and laughed.

  Their trail had to take them close to the great hollow under the gaze of Skull Mountain, where Gaw’s den lay. Near the ravine feeding into it, Ishara remembered that this was where the body of the young kong must have fallen. If it had attracted scavengers like the king dinosaurs, they would have little chance. Of them all, only Kublai carried a spear.

  They were making their way across a jumble of scree, fallen blocks of stone, when Kublai stopped and shouted a warning. A lanky man that Magwich called Skeets had drawn ahead of the others, and he looked back, not ahead, when Kublai called out.

  He did not see the slasher.

  The man-sized creature leaped from ambush, landed atop a pile of tumbled boulders, and then onto Skeets’s back. Its vicious bite snapped his neck, as its sickle-like toe claw nearly sliced him in two.

  The four other strangers quickly brought their sticks up to their shoulders, and Ishara cried out in alarm as they spat fire and thunder! The slasher reeled back, blood spouting from two wounds, soaking its stiff, sharp feathers. The lifeless body of Skeets fell face-down—

  Behind the slasher, something da
rk reared. It was the adolescent kong coming from the jungle on the other side of the lagoon, Ishara saw, still alive, though torn and bleeding. The slasher, turning to flee from the thunder-sticks, ran straight into it. The kong, its eyes mad with pain and anger, grabbed the dinosaur, lifted it clear off the ground, and broke its back. It flung the body against the rocks, and then turned and faded into the underbrush, not seeing, or not caring about, those who witnessed the confrontation from behind trees and bushes.

  As they slowly emerged from their hiding places the strangers were pointing and gabbling. Magwich strode over to the dying slasher. He reached to his belt, drew a knife that dwarfed the one he had given Kublai, and cut the dinosaur’s throat. As the body twitched, he knelt beside it, his eyes rapt. He rose and said something to the men.

  They took the useful things from Skeets’s corpse, his thunderstick, his knives, items from his clothing and belt. Then, hastily, they piled stones on the body. Ishara looked at Kublai. Didn’t they know that the larger scavengers would have no trouble digging it up again?

  Magwich gestured back toward the path they had followed. The others, clustering close, started back toward the sea. Kublai and Ishara followed, relieved to be leaving the scene of slaughter.

  They reached the shore, and then Magwich pointed at the distant, huge boat. Magwich stooped and drew an irregular circle in the sand with his finger. He tapped it, then poked a finger beside it. He pointed to the hole he had made, then to the boat. “It’s the island. He’s asking us to show him how to get to the village in the boat!” Kublai said with sudden understanding.

  Ishara knelt, touched the hole Magwich had made in the sand, then traced a line a quarter of the way around the map. She tried to indicate the peninsula and bay. Magwich pointed to the two of them, then to the boat. “He wants to know if we will come,” Ishara said.

  Kublai looked at her. “It might be safer than the jungle. These men have no pouches of herbs to protect them. Do you trust them?”

  Ishara looked at Magwich. His big, pale face was solemn, but not threatening. “Yes,” she said slowly.

  The men rowed out to the big boat in their smaller ones. Ishara and Kublai scrambled up the side, marveling at the huge thing, bigger than a long house. Magwich opened a hatchway and showed them water far down, shaking his head. Some men worked a device that brought the water spouting up and over the side, and others raised a weight from the sea. The great wings unfurled, filled with wind, and the craft began to move as Kublai pointed the way.

  Ishara felt a strange mix of elation and fear. The island fell away behind them. A man at the front of the boat threw a weight on a line, calling out something, and the vessel slowly threaded its way through the shallows. Slowly, but faster than they could have walked, they moved toward the peninsula and the village. Already the Wall was there, dark above the jungle.

  Ahead of Ishara, Magwich followed the direction of Kublai’s pointing finger. There. The roofs of the village, still small in the distance, but clear. Ishara realized the stranger was trying to thank Kublai. The big man reached out and patted Kublai’s back. Kublai was visibly pleased at the gesture, but Ishara knew him too well. Kublai was not only taken with the friendship of the strangers, but with the size and power of such a strange vessel and the weapons the men possessed. She knew he was already calculating their effects on the island’s people, and on Bar-Atu. Suddenly, she had a strong desire to warn Kublai to be careful, but it was too late. The mysterious, pale man stood imposingly at the front of the ship, side by side with Kublai, and she could see her people were already gathering at the shore.

  Skull Island

  Date Unknown

  “Too much!” Kara shouted.

  The Storyteller fell silent, her old eyes gleaming. “What do you mean?”

  Vincent watched the two of them. Kara had leaped to her feet, frowning, holding her fists clenched. “He’s an outsider! You tell all our secrets! He wants to be a great man in his world. He wants to bring more like himself here to take, to steal, to kill and call it study!”

  Vincent felt himself flinch from Kara’s accusation. An angry response rose in his throat, but a gesture from the Storyteller silenced him.

  “He must know the story,” the old woman said simply. “And so must you. With-out knowledge, there is no choice. Without choice, there is no hope of freedom. Do you understand?”

  Kara did not answer, but Vincent did. His voice sounded strange even to himself, low and humble, the voice that as a child he had spoken with in the confessional. ”I think I do. If we learn from what you have to teach, if we are wise enough, then we will choose well.”

  A slow smile began to appear on the Storyteller’s lips, but Kara turned on Vincent, crouching in her anger. “You!” she shouted, scorn dripping from the word. “What do you know of right and wrong? You don’t have the gifts I have! You don’t see what I see! You think you will learn all about the island, do you? Take back pieces of it for your people to stare at? Fool! You are weak, and you’ll never live to get off this island! Even in your sleep you cry and moan like a coward. You don’t deserve to live!”

  The Storyteller touched Kara’s face, and the younger woman jerked away from the touch. Firmly, the old woman said, “So you choose who should live and who should die?” Kara remained silent. The old woman’s gaze embraced Kara as she continued, “Such arrogance is born in pride, the bane of the Atu. You have great gifts, Kara, that is true. But you are infinitely less than the Infinite. Are you humble enough to admit that to yourself?”

  Kara panted as if she had been running. “I know only this,” she said in a low, seething voice. “This man is a threat to us and to our people. And if you can’t see that, you’re blind as well as old and stupid!”

  The Storyteller raised herself to her full height. Her stare was imperious, Vincent thought, the stare of an offended queen. Clearly, without anger, she said, “The Atu thought as you do, Kara. They taught that power was all that mattered, but strength is measured in many ways.” Then her voice took on a tone of command: “Now you will be silent! And you will listen—and learn!” The Storyteller’s rebuke had an ageless authority, and Kara stood transfixed. She glanced toward Vincent and in a softer voice she added, “And as for Vincent Denham, I tell you that he will live. And learn. As can anyone with an open heart.”

  But Kara’s expression told Vincent that at the moment, whether his heart were open or closed, she would have liked nothing more than to rip it hot and beating from his chest.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SKULL ISLAND

  June ?, 1957

  Jack Driscoll snatched sleep when he could. His waking time passed in intervals of making his way forward through what had become a maze of tunnels, sometimes in the glow of those strange wall-pictures, sometimes in the ruddy glare of torchlight. Once he had to wade through knee-deep flowing water, surprisingly cold, but drinkable. He constantly paused to consult the map and compass he carried with him, struggling to maintain his progress toward the Wall. Three or four times he realized he was in a blind tunnel, the ends bare rock or tumbled boulders. Then he backtracked, looking for the sooty marks he had left to blaze the trail. Now and again he lost his footing and fell.

  In one of these falls his outthrust hand had clashed hard against a stone, and he had shattered his watch. “Great,” he muttered. “Just great.”

  Sometimes he came to places where the ceiling had fallen in. The jungle overhead had filled in so completely, however, that the little daylight that filtered through was murky and greenish, as though Driscoll were underwater. With what he had, Driscoll could not cut through the maze of lianas, roots, and fallen timber. Still, if he could judge from the slanting tight beams of sunlight, he was still heading roughly toward the Wall.

  And then at some point, hours, days, after he had fallen into the first tunnel, Driscoll caught the moist touch of above-ground air on his face and the constant scent of decaying foliage that he remembered so well from his first visit to the
island. A few moments later, he heard the sound of animals.

  Slowing to a careful shuffle, with one hand thrust out against the rough stone wall, Driscoll edged forward. At first he thought he saw another of those mysterious living paintings. Then he realized that he had come to the brink of an arched opening that looked out onto a moonlit night.

  Driscoll balanced himself, every nerve tingling. He could not at first clearly understand what lay before him. Then a cloud that had been partly obscuring the moon drifted away, and Driscoll felt his eyes widening.

  The tunnel fed into the wall of a great bowl-shaped opening. A rim of stone ran around the top, casting deep shadow beneath it. Across from him, perhaps ten or twelve feet from the basin’s floor, was another arch, leading away into darkness. He could see two more, lower, smaller arches. With some surprise, he realized that the basin had been filled with years of fallen leaves and branches. At least one man-made level, perhaps several, lay buried beneath the detritus of eons. Driscoll carefully lit a torch and leaned far out. Once, ages before, a graceful bow of stone had run up to the tunnel’s end, but most of that had fallen. Nothing stirred on the surface of leaf mould beneath him. With a grunt of resignation, Driscoll doused the torch and dropped it. The thud sounded reassuringly solid.

  “Here we go,” he told himself. He lowered himself from the broken edge of the stone walk, held on for a moment, and then let go. He dropped more than his own height, felt his boots crunch into springy earth, and sat hard. He scrambled up again at once, holding his rifle at ready. His heart thumped hard, and from the sky above he heard the melancholy screech of pterosaurs.