Tim Lebbon - Kong - Skull Island

“Help me!” he shouted. He struck the stern railings and his finger squeezed the trigger, sending a volley of shots across the boat to ricochet from the wheelhouse.

“Hard astern!” Conrad shouted. He slid along the deck towards Slivko. Brooks and San were already there, holding the man’s arms as the thing wrapped around his leg tried to pull him off and down into the river.

“What the hell is it?” Weaver shouted. She was by his side, having grabbed a machete from a storage locker on deck.

It looked like a snake or a suckerless tentacle, wrapped tight around Slivko’s leg and squeezing hard. As the boat slowed its pressure seemed to lessen, but it was still trying to haul Slivko from the deck and down into the water.

Marlow threw the boat into reverse and the engine screamed, smoking as it fought against their forward momentum. The screw bit in and water churned behind them, splashing dark brown and then bright red, and the creature loosened its grip and dropped away. Brooks and San fell back and dragged Slivko with them. He kicked backwards until he was as far from the water as he could get, sat against the wheelhouse, and aimed the M-16 between his feet.

“Marlow?” Conrad called.

“Beats me,” he said. “Lots of stuff in this river. Churned it up nice though, eh?”

“It was trying to eat me!” Slivko shouted.

“Nah, don’t think so,” Marlow said. “Reckon it wanted to pull you in, drown you, then stow your body til it started to rot. Then it’d just pull bits off of you whenever it got hungry. That’s how crocs eat, you know.”

“What? What?”

“That was no crocodile,” Weaver said.

“Sure wasn’t,” Marlow said. “Keep your eyes peeled, we’ll head off any—”

The shapes emerged with barely a splash, several of them leaping up from the river’s surface and landing on deck along the starboard side. At first Conrad thought they were long, thin water snakes, a dozen feet long with fine webbed fins and elongated heads ending with small, suckered mouths. Then he saw that they all trailed back into the river.

They met together at a dark mass just below the water’s surface.

“Squid!” he shouted. “It’s a giant squid!”

That wasn’t quite right. The tentacles were strange, not covered with suckers but heavily ridged with muscle. The ragged stump that had first grabbed Slivko was back, spewing blood across the deck.

“Go!” Weaver said, and Marlow leaned down on the throttle.

The creature had learned. This time its limbs were not caught in the spinning screw, but the good hold it had with a few of its tentacles dragged it along with the accelerating boat. Conrad drew his gun and started firing down into the water, then Slivko screamed again.

“Gimme a break!” he shouted, almost manic as he was dragged once again towards the deck’s edge.

Weaver started hacking at the tentacle with the machete, careful not to strike Slivko in the leg. The blade seemed to skim from the slick skin, striking the deck and throwing sparks. Brooks held his arm and tried to prevent him being taken, and Conrad looked around for Nieves. The Landsat guy was huddled against the wheelhouse, staring wide-eyed. He’d be no help.

“Where’s San?” Conrad asked. “Where the hell is San?” For a second he thought she was gone, and he felt so sad that she’d died without any of them even noticing.

Then she reappeared swinging Marlow’s katana sword. It sliced through the tentacle six inches from Slivko’s foot, rebounding from the deck with a sweet metallic note and sending the other tentacles into an agonised dance.

Conrad was struck across the face, and he ducked and rolled backwards before the tentacle found purchase around his neck.

“Faster!” he shouted at Marlow.

“I’m giving her all she’s got!” Marlow said, and Conrad imagined him screaming it in a Scottish accent. He laughed, almost hysterical, then scrambled to his feet.

Several tentacles were grabbing hold of various parts of the boat, and as they pulled tighter they dragged the body of the beast up out of the water. It broke the surface in a frothing wave, the water churned brown with mud and red with the creature’s leaking blood. Conrad grabbed at the railing and looked down, just as the squid—or whatever the hell it was—reared up even further.

He looked it in the eye. Its barbed beak opened as if to laugh at him, or curse.

He shot it in the eye, and the massive fluid sac burst and spewed into the river like a bloody slick.

San sliced at another tentacle and the thing let go, splashing into the water and quickly falling behind them.

“Shit! Shit!” Slivko kicked the parted tentacle from around his leg and watched it fall over the side, leaving a dark red trail behind.

“He sure had the hots for you,” Weaver said to Slivko. She stood and nodded her thanks to San, who was still standing with the sword held in both hands. She looked surprised at what she had done.

“Nice swordplay,” Conrad said.

“Yeah,” San nodded. She stared wide-eyed at the weapon in her hands.

Marlow eased back on the throttle, but didn’t slow down too much.

“So what the hell was that?” Conrad asked him.

“Beats me,” Marlow said. He shrugged. “Like I said, lots of stuff in this river.”

They headed north. Slivko packed away his record player. Their brief moment of respite was over.

Packard led his men on the hunt for the beast. The fact that not all of them knew that was their mission troubled him a little, but not much. When the time came for him to reveal his intentions, none of his soldiers would object, because they had always followed him into hell, fire and damnation. They always would.

The civilians might not like it. But he was the man in charge, and they had no say. If they didn’t like his plan, they were free to leave and make their own way north.

They were all exhausted. The heat sucked energy out of them, soaking them with sweat, draining them of strength, but they forged on. Even Randa, older than the others and less fit, was quietly determined to keep up.

Packard led them, never for a moment letting them see his tiredness. Fury was his fuel. Revenge was his motivator.

When the ground shook, a tingle of anticipation shook him, but he thought, I’m not ready yet! If they faced the thing now they would lose. He didn’t care whether he lived or died—he was hardly thinking of his own well-being, let alone the others in his command—but he did care that the monster died. That was all that mattered in his life.

The beast appeared.

Packard waved everyone down under the trees and behind undergrowth. The giant ape stepped out before them, standing at the edge of the sweeping descent into a wide valley.

He was the size of a mountain. Packard had not been this close before, and he feared the monster might sense his hatred, turn and see him, trample him and his men down into the dirt. He tried to hold it in but it burned, seething behind his eyes and scorching his muscles, urging him to charge shooting and shouting.

I’ll bide my time , Packard thought. I’ll have you, you bastard. Just not yet.

The ape looked down at his feet, examining something on the ground close to where Packard and his group had taken cover. Then Packard saw what it was.

Tracks on the hillside. Deep clawed marks, scratched into the ground by something almost as huge.

The ape snorted and came closer, bending to sniff at the ground. It stood again and followed the tracks to the edge of the valley, pausing for only a moment before performing one huge leap from the ridge line.

Packard ran, leaping over the tracks in the ground and reaching the valley edge in time to see the ape streaking down the side. It held onto trees, swinging its massive weight left and right with a grace that even Packard could not help admiring. It seemed to defy gravity as it descended further down the cliffside, dislodging a pile of boulders that roared down into the darkness.