Tim Lebbon - Kong - Skull Island

Cole lit a cigarette. She snapped him with smoke drifting around his face, while in the background a column of coloured steam rose from a vent in the ground. He looked almost serene.

“Cole, what’re you doing, man?” Mills said. “Put the cigarette out, we don’t have time for that. And what if they smell it?”

Cole stared at his fellow soldier for a moment, then sighed and flicked the butt into a nearby vent.

The explosion was sudden and shocking, a flare of fire blooming from the vent and roaring at the air. Mills stumbled away from the blast and fell onto his back, and Weaver ducked down, catching glimpses of horrific memories—men with burned faces, and children with charred skin.

The fire receded as quickly as it had come, as if sucked back down into the earth.

“Watch those fumes!” Randa shouted. “The whole area’s honeycombed with vents, and who knows what’s wafting up from below.”

Weaver recovered quickly, pleased to see that the soldier was not badly hurt. Shock had thrown him to the ground rather than the force of scouring flames. She snapped a few more shots of Cole helping Mills to his feet, brushing themselves down and checking for any scorched areas. They’d been lucky.

“Listen to the eggheads,” Cole muttered.

Weaver smiled and turned away as Conrad led them further across the valley. In places the entire ground was covered in crumbled bones, so that their boots crushed down, crackling over cracked bones and making them even smaller. Perhaps the sand beneath was also the remains of old bones, a generational process that might have been occurring ever since the world began to spin.

She saw a brood of normal-sized vultures resting on a massive skull, heads hunched down as they watched this mysterious group pass. Her camera flashed in the gloom caused by the increasing clouds of steam.

“Mind if I borrow one of those?” Randa asked. His film camera still hung around his neck, but Weaver handed him her flash camera and took out another from her bag. The more photos of this place, the better.

The soldiers moved cautiously, sweeping their guns left and right just as Weaver and Randa moved their cameras. Fear and fascination, weapons and tools.

They passed a long, huge ribcage, Packard leading his men through the hollow space where some unknown creature’s insides had once existed. Weaver followed Conrad towards a small lip, the dip beyond hidden until they reached its edge. When she stood beside Conrad she gasped.

They’d seen it from a distance, but close up the giant ape’s skull looked even more amazing. It was huge. Much larger than Kong’s, she was sure, and she wondered at what might have killed such a massive beast. Past it was the second skull, smaller and scarred by vicious claw marks that might have been the cause of death.

Weaver panned her camera, looking for an angle that would take in the soldiers with the giant skulls behind them. And there’s the book cover , she thought, clicking off several pictures as the soldiers looked around in wonder and dread.

Something growled. The sound seemed to come from all around, confused by landscape and mist, and Weaver did a quick circle, camera held ready at her chest.

The soldiers scattered, hiding within and around the skulls, gesturing for the civilians to do the same. They aimed their guns into the mist.

Weaver and Conrad ran together, crawling inside the largest skull and peering from a savage wound in its side. The bone was surprisingly smooth and clean, and it smelled of nothing. Whatever might have been left to decay had long since rotted away.

I’m where its brain used to be , she thought, and it was a shattering idea.

Conrad touched her arm and pointed.

A shadow moved against the mist, swirling it into agitated shapes, and then a monster appeared. She had only seen this Skull Crawler before as a wall image, a carved representation with careful colouring in the spring room of the beached wreck. Witnessing it in its full, shocking glory made her skin prickle and her blood run cold.

It was a diabolical merging of newt and Komodo dragon, its scaled skin scarred from ancient conflicts, damp with slime. Spines lined its backbone, several of them snapped off in old battles. Its claws were the length of a human’s forearm.

Weaver prayed that Randa did not try to take a picture. The camera she’d lent him had an automatic flash, and she had no doubt it would attract this thing’s attention. She could not believe that the soldiers could ever fight it off.

Slowly, its massive mouth unhinged. Its tongue flopped out, long, leathery and scarred. Its stomach heaved, sides sucked in one moment, inflated the next. A heavy drumming sound accompanied the movement as it performed it several more times, and then it brought up the skeletal remains of its last meal.

Two human skeletons, bones ripped apart but skulls and spine stems whole. The skulls were stripped clean, the flesh melted from faces by the monster’s stomach acids. A leather belt wrapped some of the bones. A combat boot still contained slick meaty remains.

Weaver slapped her hand across her mouth, biting down on her palm.

The beast shook its head, spattering spit and blood across the ground and the ruins of the more ancient dead. It stalked away, disappearing into the mist with a heavy scampering sound, gone as quickly as it had arrived.

Conrad was already sliding from the skull, knife in his hand and reaching for one of the skulls that had rolled their way.

“What are you doing?” Weaver hissed.

He waved back at her, reached forward, snagged a set of dog tags tangled around the skull’s jawbone. He lifted them, paused, then presented them for Weaver’s attention.

‘Chapman’ they read, along with his military number.

Weaver frowned, trying to work out what this meant.

“Packard?” she asked.

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised,” Conrad said.

Weaver wasn’t sure what she was feeling. Could the colonel be lying to them? His major was already dead, consumed, and digested. Their journey towards the crashed Sea Stallion was a wild goose chase.

“Fall in, fall in,” Packard said quietly as he and his men emerged from cover. They moved with caution, panning their weapons around them and creating a close perimeter. The colonel stood tall, glaring around to ensure that no one had been lost. His eyes settled on Weaver and Conrad and the human skulls at their feet, and Weaver held her breath. She glanced sidelong at Conrad, but his knife was sheathed, the dog tags already stowed somewhere out of sight.

Packard nodded once, then headed off into the mist. Marlow was close behind, Katana sword still drawn.

Weaver and Conrad followed. She tried to catch his eye, but he was staring at Packard’s back, frowning, and giving nothing away.

We’ve got to confront him , Weaver thought. He’s leading us into danger and we need to know why . But perhaps doing so whilst making their way through a monster’s lair was not the time.

Weaver noticed Randa off to the right, standing still and scanning the mist for the vanished beast. He had the flash camera she’d lent him raised, panning it left and right like the soldiers holding their weapons. She felt a momentary kinship with Randa, brusque and single-minded though he was. They were both seeking something, committing themselves fully to their quests, and perhaps shutting out the rest of the world in doing so.

“Randa!” Brooks whispered, but his boss didn’t seem to hear. He was turning a slow circle, camera at the ready.

“Get over here!” Packard said, louder. Weaver winced at the volume of his voice.

Randa raised a hand in acknowledgment, but as he took his first step, something moved behind him.