Tim Lebbon - Kong - Skull Island

Weaver nudged him, turned, and pointed out over the landscape. To their right the setting sun was bleeding across the primeval horizon, and the moon was already out, casting a silver snake across the land perhaps a mile to the south.

“There,” Conrad said. “The river. Not far to go now.”

Weaver started snapping pictures.

Conrad froze. He opened his mouth to breathe out, trying to figure out just what he’d sensed, heard, or smelled on the air.

Weaver raised an eyebrow. He held up one hand. Wait .

A stillness settled around them, a heavy silence, as if all jungle sounds were being absorbed by something close by. Something huge.

Kong’s head rose before them, breath misting the air, his eyes fixed on them both as he pulled himself easily up the other side of the ridge line.

Conrad had never seen anything so magnificent, nor felt so miniscule. Beneath this creature’s gaze he was a whisper of his former self, all memory and experience wiped away as he faced the undisputed king of this island.

Weaver stumbled back and he caught her arm, felt her galloping pulse as he pulled her to his side and they shared comfort in contact. We’re really seeing this , he thought. He could smell the giant ape and feel his heat. He was more real than anything Conrad had ever seen or known before.

Kong moved closer as he stared at them, frowning as if in concentration. Closer, closer, his breath washed over them. Conrad could feel the beast’s warmth, and hear his booming heartbeat. He had a sudden shocking image of the ape’s mouth yawning open and him sucking them in, drawing a breath that would drag them from their feet and down into his monstrous stomach. He remembered Randa slipping down the Skull Crawler’s throat, the flash of his camera marking his progress through the monster’s thin amphibian skin.

Would he and Weaver know the same feeling? Would they survive long enough to be squeezed into Kong’s gut with the remains of his last meal, a stew of acid and diced flesh?

Even as his fears traced cool fingers down his spine, everything changed.

Weaver took a step forward, reached out, and touched Kong. Her fingertips brushed the heavily textured, knotted skin of his nose. She pressed her hand flat against him. Her breath was held and for a while it was just her and Kong, beast and woman, a connection across aeons of evolution. The rest of the world seemed to revolve around them, and Conrad felt very small and far away. Time ceased making sense.

In the distance, a heavy boom thumped through the air. Conrad knew that noise. He’d heard its like far too many times before, and Kong’s reaction only confirmed his fears.

He dropped down and back, moving almost silently for such a massive beast. One moment he was there, the next he was gone, vanishing back and down into the evening mist shrouding the valley.

Weaver was left with her hand out and fingers splayed, still touching the memory of Kong.

Another explosion sounded from far away.

“They’re trying to draw him out,” Conrad said.

“They don’t know what they’re doing,” Weaver said, her voice almost dreamy. She lowered her hand and turned to look at him. “Conrad, they have no idea. We can’t let them. We can’t!”

“We won’t,” he said. “Come on.” He turned and headed back down from the ridge, Weaver following him. They scampered quickly, barely thinking about hand- or footholds, grabbing onto trees and roots, vines and wild shrubs, clambering over rocks and jumping across cracks in the steep valley wall. Conrad felt his heart pounding with wonder and dread at what he had seen, and what he knew was about to happen.

He felt more explosive impacts through the ground, the noise shielded by the mass of the ridge, but the shockwaves travelled across the island, ripples calling Kong to his possible doom. Packard and his soldiers had failed to take him down that first time with the helicopters, but they’d been unprepared, caught off guard.

This time might well be different.

“Conrad,” Weaver said when they were a short way from the camp. She grabbed his arm and held him back, pulling so that he turned to face her. They stood face to face. It felt like they’d known each other for years, not days. “I feel… changed,” she said.

Conrad nodded. He knew what she meant. Going up that hill had been an attempt to find out where they were and navigate a safe way off the island. Coming down again, everything felt different.

“We’ve got to help,” she said. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Help people?”

“I’ve killed a few, too,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he’d spoken so frankly. It felt harsh, but Weaver didn’t seem fazed.

“A few?” she asked.

“More than a few.”

“And that’s why you save people now.”

“I do it because I’m good at it. But… I don’t save everyone. There was this girl, Jenny. We rescued her, and we were bringing her out when she was shot in the head.” He found it difficult to continue. He’d never talked to anyone about Jenny, not the friends he still had in the services, not the women he occasionally spent one night with, talking into the early hours knowing they’d never see each other again.

“You blame yourself,” she said.

“Of course not,” Conrad said, feeling the lie burn on his face. It was such an obvious lie that to admit the truth would have felt more so. “What about you?”

“Me?”

Conrad nodded past her up the hill they’d just descended. Why do you need to save him? he wanted to ask.

“My father,” Weaver said. “He was a good man, but never someone I could impress. I think… he was trying to make me the person he wished he’d been, but I could never live up to that.”

“So you remove yourself from the world so you can’t fail anymore.”

“Partly,” she said. “And I follow all the bad stuff because…”

“It makes you feel like a good person.”

Weaver shrugged. “I don’t think he’d be proud.”

“So stop trying to please him,” Conrad said. “Start to please yourself.”

“We have to help Kong!”

“We will,” Conrad said. Neither of them had a choice.

They moved off to find the others. Conrad eased back as they approached, knowing that they’d be on edge. As they emerged from the shadows, Brooks lowered a big branch he’d been wielding, relief evident on his face.

“Did you see the river?” he asked.

Conrad tried to speak but could not. Everything before him—the people, the place, the fear on their faces, the shadows crowding in—seemed so false set against what they had so recently witnessed.

Out of all of them, Marlow understood. “They saw Kong,” he said.

“What’s he talking about?” Brooks asked. “Which way are we going?”

“You three need to get back to the boat,” Conrad said, pointing up the slope they’d just descended. “That way, over the top and down to the river. It’s getting dark, but you have to keep moving. Use your torches. Treat every shadow as a threat, and take it slow. Wait for us until dawn. If we’re not back by then, you go.”

“You don’t have to twist my arm,” Brooks said.

“Where are you two going?” Marlow asked Conrad and Weaver.

“We’re going to save King Kong,” Conrad said.

Marlow shook his head. “Not without me, pal. Not without me.”

Conrad nodded. Marlow knew what he and Weaver had faced, understood what they were feeling. Besides, he knew this island better than any of them.

In the growing darkness, with distant explosions reverberating like thunder, the three of them set out into the heart of the island.

This is it , Packard thought. This is my moment. This is my time. This is my world .