Tim Lebbon - Kong - Skull Island

“It’s not a war at all,” Conrad said, aim never wavering. “Kong was just defending his territory. Your job, Packard, is to bring these men back home.”

“Not without its head,” he whispered, his words carrying to everyone.

“You’re not thinking clearly,” Conrad said. He took a step closer and the tension built, weapon barrels fixed on targets, Marlow’s sword twitching and eliciting a sharp intake of breath from Reles.

We’re one eye-blink away from violence , Packard realised, and that was always the time when he felt most alive.

“We’re soldiers,” he said. “We do the dirty work so that our wives and children don’t have to cower scared. They shouldn’t even have to know that a thing like this exists.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Conrad said.

Packard glared at him for a moment, then continued wiring the detonator.

“Put it down!” Conrad snapped.

“You’re gonna have to shoot me, Captain.”

“Stop!” The voice came from behind him and Packard rolled his eyes. He should have known that where Conrad was, Weaver would be close behind.

But it was not the group of men she approached. She sprinted past them towards the fallen ape, standing less than ten feet from his face and the explosive that would soon blow it off. His eyes fluttered open and a heavy, low rumble came from somewhere deep in his chest.

While everyone else watched the woman, Packard pressed the last wire between his thumb and the point on the detonator. One twist of his hand and it would go off.

“If you kill him, you kill me,” Weaver said.

“Get her out of there,” Packard said to Reles. Eyes wide, Reles glanced across at Weaver, while Marlow still pressed the sword against his back. One move and he could be gutted, if Marlow had it in him to do so. None of them could predict. He’d been marooned here for so long, the sun might have fried his brain.

“Packard, last warning,” Conrad said. “Put it down!”

“Soldier, I am ordering you,” Packard said to Reles. He looked at Weaver. “Move. I don’t want to kill you, but—”

“I’ve shot nothing but destruction and dead bodies for the last six years,” Weaver said, backing even close to the ape’s head. “I know you’ve lived in it, Packard. But there’s more. It existed before us and it’ll be here long after we’re gone. Don’t do something that accomplished nothing. Don’t kill just because you can.”

“Put it down, sir.” That was Slivko. And even before Packard turned his way, he knew what the soldier was doing.

Aiming his rifle as his commanding officer.

“Son,” he said, but then he looked around at his other men and saw uncertainty working beneath their expressions, too. Reles was the first to lower his gun. Cole followed. Then Mills, his face showing vague disgust.

“Come on, Colonel,” Conrad said. “It’s over.”

Every sinew of Packard’s body, every instinct he had, urged him to fight against his men’s betrayal and strive to achieve his aim. One twitch of his hand and the beast would die, the woman would die. And so would he.

He knew that a moment’s hesitation could change his world, and so it did. His soldier’s mind was convinced, but his natural fear of the void held his hand still.

The surface of the lake rippled and the ground began to shake as something broke the water’s surface far out. A screech ripped the sky. A chill went through Packard as deep as his soul, like something unseen drawing a claw down his back and parting the skin.

“The big one,” Marlow said. “The Skull Devil. It knows he’s down!”

“Fall back!” Conrad shouted. “Go. Go!”

The fearful men and the woman ran, but Packard stood his ground. He hadn’t come this far to run. He hadn’t gone through everything to simply fail. He stared out over the lake, detonator still clasped in his right hand.

“Colonel! Sir!” Conrad shouted, but he ignored him. Let them run , Packard thought. They don’t deserve to die here with me .

A geyser of water erupted from the lake and powered into the sky, burning napalm splashing up with it and lighting the heavens. Rising beneath the geyser, as if pushing it up into the sky, rose the glistening mass of a creature the likes of which Packard could have never imagined. It was huge, its mass even greater than Kong’s. Snake-like, reptilian, its head was the size of a small house, body long and supported on several strange, flexible limbs. The Skull Devil’s eyes burned, perhaps reflecting the fires, perhaps bearing some diabolical light of their own. Its mouth was surely the gateway to hell.

Sensing movement to his right, Packard turned towards Kong. The ape was lifting his head, glaring at Packard and then past him at the monster rising at the centre of the lake.

Packard lifted the detonator as if to show it to Kong. My last act is to take you to hell .

“You mother—”

Before Packard could react, Kong’s fist fell, shutting out the sky and the stars, the lake and the fires, and then finally ending everything.

“Packard,” Weaver said, but there was nothing of the man left. She could not mourn his loss. He was an obsessive driven by blood and conflict. Like many such men he’d died ingloriously, ground into the soil beneath Kong’s fist.

What she could do was wonder at Kong’s strength and resilience. Here was pure power in physical form, machine-gunned and set aflame, now rising again to combat his one true enemy. He pushed down, levering himself upright and turning at the same time towards the looming Skull Devil. They faced each other, Kong on the shore, the monster in the lake surrounded by floating fire, like two mountains drawing each other with a terrible gravity.

Weaver lifted her camera and framed the shot just as the beasts rushed each other, collided, and crashed together with a ground-shaking impact.

Conrad grabbed her arm and tugged her back into the tree line, and for a while Weaver staggered back and tried to bring her camera to bear.

“We have got to go!” he shouted into her ear, even his raised voice sounding small beneath the sounds being made by the fighting beasts.

Weaver turned, nodded, and ran into the trees. With every step she could feel the ground vibrating, and she remembered the steady thud, thud of Kong’s heartbeat as he’d been lying on the lake shore. She’d believed him close to death. How wrong she had been.

Rushing through the trees, she hoped with every part of herself that he would survive.

In the west, across the heart of the island, the sky was growing light. It was a beautiful sunrise, smearing the rugged horizon and piercing the trees that smothered distant ridge lines and mountaintops. At any other time Brooks might have spent time taking it all in, but he didn’t believe he had any time. It could be that they were already too late.

“What’s taking so long?” he asked for the tenth time.

“The window’s going to close,” San said. “We’re running out of time.” That sentiment had been repeated several times, too. They were both struggling to hold onto reasons to remain where they were. But as the sun rose and a new day began, the reasons were harder to find.

We can’t just leave them! Brooks thought. Neither of them were saying that anymore. Speaking the words shamed him, and guilt was already building, even though everyone else might already be dead. We can’t! He could feel himself wavering. A decision loomed.

San held up her hand, head tilted to one side. Brooks frowned, listening.

He heard a sound like thunder in the distance, even though the sky was clear and cloudless. Then a roar.