Tim Lebbon - Kong - Skull Island

“Nova, I got you,” he said, reaching in and taking the co-pilot’s hand. He was still alive, but badly hurt. If he could only get him out, maybe he’d be able to administer some first aid.

He squeezed his hand.

Then he was ripped away as the Huey was hauled skyward by the giant beast, debris raining down on and around Packard. He shielded his face then looked up again, just in time to see the mountainous monster flinging the stricken Huey into the air, watching it spin, then punching it hard with one closed fist. It disappeared from view, and moments later landed some distance away and exploded.

Packard drew his pistol and started firing. It was like shooting into a black hole.

The thing looked down at him and caught his eye. Packard’s finger froze on the trigger.

Machine-gun fire rattled across the monster’s face, flicking thick fur and spattering blood into the air. The operation’s single Chinook was roaring in, its familiar wacka-wacka sound a strange comfort. It was a heavy, slow-moving bird, carrying two jeeps and other equipment. Surely too large for the monster to take down.

Packard felt a sense of doom closing around him. Unreality bit in, and he looked around at the strange jungle, trees cracked and shattered by the crashed Huey he could no longer see. It was as if he’d been dropped here into a nightmare, and the glimpses he caught of surviving helicopters, the sounds of machine-gun fire, the roar of the beast, were all snippets of his damaged mind.

He shook his head and slapped himself across the face. Blood smeared his hand. That was real, and the lives of his men were real, too. Those that the animal had not yet killed.

That thing’s no animal , he thought. That beast is something else .

With one giant leap the monster closed the distance between it and the attacking Chinook. The ground shook as it landed, and it clapped its huge hands together, fingers splayed and palms closing on the Chinook’s top and bottom. Rotors sliced into its arms and hands and it roared, the sound echoing in the Chinook’s destruction. The big aircraft’s back was broken, and the beast clasped the two halves and smashed them together, threw them to the ground, trampled them underfoot.

Packard watched aghast. If he remembers me… he thought. If he comes back…

Packard did something he had never done before in his life. He started running from the enemy. Not because he was scared, but because he wanted so much to live.

To fight another day.

Conrad surfaced. Maybe he’d been knocked unconscious, or more likely he’d just blanked at the moment of impact, his body and mind protecting him from the trauma. He needed to be back. He had to be fully functional, all there, and ready for anything. For a brief, ridiculous moment, he wondered whether it had all been a terrible dream.

Then he smelled smoke and someone started coughing.

“You okay?” he croaked. He tried to look at Weaver but his eyes stung from the smoke. He wanted her to answer. He tasted blood, instinct told him it wasn’t his, and he wanted her to answer!

“Weaver!” he said, louder. He reached for her, hand closing on her thigh. She was still seated beside him, still strapped in.

“I’m okay. I think.”

Conrad rubbed blood and smoke from his eyes and released his straps. He looked across at the other door. The door gunner was gone, as was the .50 machine gun. A smear of blood was all that was left behind.

“Slivko, stay where you are,” Conrad said, not knowing if either of the pilots were even still alive. “We’ve come to rest in the trees.”

Weaver was trying her straps but they were stuck fast. Conrad didn’t want to waste any time. He whipped out his combat knife, leaned across her body and cut her safety belt. They edged together towards the door, then started clambering down. They were only ten feet above the jungle floor, the Huey suspended almost level on two trees that had splintered and cracked beneath its weight. They had likely saved it from a harder impact.

As they reached the ground Conrad sniffed. No spilled aviation fuel, at least not yet. He called up to the cockpit.

“Slivko! How’s the pilot?”

“Dead.”

“Can you get free?”

There was no answer.

“Slivko!” Weaver called.

Slivko’s face appeared through the pilot’s-side doorframe. He looked down, both terrified and elated at being alive.

“Down here,” Conrad said. “We’ve got to go.”

Conrad had survived the crash, and with solid ground beneath his feet once more, so came a sense of control. Ridiculous as it seemed—with dozens probably dead, and every aircraft seemingly taken out by the monster—he felt completely at ease once again. In the air, his destiny was in another’s hands. Here and now, he was his own man.

It was time to see just what the hell was going on.

Slivko started shimmying down the broken tree. He was covered in blood.

“Help him down,” Conrad said to Weaver. “I need to get to higher ground.”

“What? Really?”

“I won’t be long.” He took one step, then she grabbed his arm.

“Conrad…” Everything she wanted to say was in her eyes, but there was no time right then. Disbelief, shock, grief could come later.

Terror, too.

“I know,” he said. She nodded and let go, and he stalked off through the trees, dropping down into one of the huge depressions left by the beast’s foot. He paced across it and clambered out the other side, smelling something distinctly animal. Like wet dog, unwashed for some time. A heavy, damp, almost overpowering aroma. Unwashed gorilla feet , he thought, and he had to suppress a giggle.

There was blood, too, spattered across the ground and the leaves of surrounding undergrowth. Lots of blood. No wonder that thing was pissed.

Conrad ran, following rising ground where he could, pushing his way through dense undergrowth. His senses were alert, and he realised without pausing that he did not recognise some of the plant species around him. He’d served in jungles on three continents, but this was like no jungle he’d ever seen before. Creepers and vines hung from large trees. Wide swathes of heavy leaves hampered his movement, the rubbery growths slick to the touch. Parasitic flowers blossomed from low-hanging branches. It was beautiful, but also disconcerting.

He came to a steeper slope and began climbing. He rushed, fearing he didn’t have much time, driving himself hard and fast even though exhaustion already threatened. Adrenalin kept him moving. He was used to the pain of exertion, and he relished it—it made him feel alive.

So many of the soldiers and civilians he’d left Athena with were not.

As he approached a ridge line, he reached a much steeper piece of ground. Too sheer to scramble, the rock surface too obscured by undergrowth to climb, he had to hold onto plants and creepers and haul himself upward. He continued moving quickly, arms burning as he hung on, legs screaming, adrenalin pumping. He might not have much time, and—

A creeper moved beneath his hand, slipping down the rock wall. He paused and held his breath, ready to jump if the plant stem started falling. Then it flexed. Conrad paused, not certain what he’d felt, and then the creeper started moving before him, sliding up the sheer cliff face and pulling him with it. He loosened his hand and slipped, scrabbling for purchase and closing his hands around other clinging plants smothering the cliff ’s surface.

Above him, something curled out from the cliff and dipped down towards him.

The snake’s head was as large as his own, and with jaws open wide it could easily have surrounded his body and swallowed him down. He could not see its tail. It must have been far below him, maybe thirty feet, and with the curl of creature even now dipping down towards him, he feared the monstrous snake was at least sixty feet long.