Tim Lebbon - Kong - Skull Island

“What do you see?” he asked.

“A face tells a story,” she said.

He smiled. “So, did you get the shot? The one that’s going to change the world?”

“One image of Kong and this place would be overrun by government and soldiers. This world, this one here, doesn’t need changing. The one out there is another story.”

“Word will get out,” Conrad said, quieter, looking around at the other survivors. “It always does.”

“Not from me,” Weaver said.

Ahead of them the storm loomed, surrounding the island and all but hiding it from the outside world. They were heading for a break in the storm, and she knew that there were rough seas ahead. She also knew that they would make it through. They had all come too far, and seen too much, for the sea to take them now.

While Marlow braced himself at the helm and prepared to ride the first of the waves, Weaver put her hand in her camera bag and felt the film cartridges. They were all ruined, damaged by sea water despite their packaging. She wasn’t even sure why she was keeping them. At any other time the loss would have devastated her, but not now. Now, she didn’t mind. She’d already decided that the ring of storms they were approaching was there for a purpose.

Skull Island was a wild place set apart from the rest of the world. It and its inhabitants, both human and inhuman, deserved to be left alone.

Weaver would not be the person to break its secret.

Conrad was so exhausted that his eyes felt heavy and his limbs were not his own. All he wanted to do was sleep. The powers that be, however, seemed to have other plans for him.

Even before arriving back at port, he and Weaver had been helicoptered off and whisked to a private facility for debriefing. The others had been taken on different helicopters, and he assumed that they were also here somewhere. Probably in very similar rooms, having answered identical questions. He wasn’t fazed. He understood what was going on because he’d been in similar situations so many times before.

But he was pissed off. They hadn’t even been given clean clothes. Coffee, yes, and food. While his stomach was comfortably heavy, the coffee he kept topping up was the only thing keeping him awake. He stank. Weaver stank, too. They’d gone beyond joking about it.

They both carried wounds that had been tended and dressed. The deeper scars would be kept for themselves. Maybe they’d even help each other tend them. He hoped so, and he thought Weaver hoped so too, but recent events made such considerations seem petty. After what they’d been through together, going out for a drink seemed so… mannered.

“Why are you still keeping us here?” he asked the one-way mirror. He suspected there were at least a couple of guys and a camera behind there, recording every sigh, every nod of the head, and every look he and Weaver shared.

“We’ve told you everything we know,” Weaver said. She didn’t sound as tired as she looked. “We want to go home. We want to…” She sniffed her shirt. “… change .”

“We get the point,” Conrad said. “We really do. We never went to any island.”

“What island?” Brooks asked. He and San had entered the room behind them, and Conrad was angry at himself for not hearing, but only for a second. He was too tired to be really angry, and he’d allowed himself to relax too much to care.

At least Brooks and San had been given the opportunity to get cleaned up. Showered, dressed in civilian clothing, they still carried bruises and abrasions from their expedition. Deeper in their eyes, Conrad saw marks that would not be so easily washed away.

“Sorry for the cloak-and-dagger stuff,” Brooks said. “Bigger budgets mean more fingers in the pie. You know how it is.”

Conrad only shrugged.

“Welcome to Monarch, by the way,” Brooks said.

“Little drab,” Weaver said looking around. “Might need someone to come in and decorate, brighten the place up.”

“So come work here and hire one,” Brooks said.

“You’re doing the hiring now?” Conrad asked.

“Randa might be gone, but we’re continuing his work.”

“We know you’re tired,” San said. “We know you’ve been debriefed. But if Brooks and I can have one last moment of your time?”

Conrad and Weaver exchanged a glance. He saw her concern as well, and he marvelled yet again at how attuned they were. Perhaps that drink wouldn’t be so petty. Maybe it would lead on to greater things.

“Good news never follows that sentence,” Conrad said. “So what have you got?”

San dropped a folder on the table and slid it to them, still closed. It was marked with the Monarch logo—two triangles with their points touching.

Conrad flipped open the cover and saw the first of many pages of text, communication extracts, poor photographs, and other information. He feared that they hadn’t come as far from that island as he’d believed, and he remembered the stink of the marsh, the alien regard of the Skull Devil’s eyes.

“Skull Island is only the beginning,” Brooks said.

“There’s more out there,” San said.

“What do you mean, ‘more’?” Conrad slid the folder across to Weaver, but to begin with she didn’t seem eager to look at it. She realised as well as him that to do so would be to change their lives.

“This world never belonged to us,” San said.

Brooks flicked on a projector. “The only question is, how long until they try to take it back.”

He began to cast images onto the plain painted wall. They were of ancient cave paintings, eroded sculptures, timeworn hieroglyphs showing fantastic and terrifying creatures of all shapes and sizes. Some of them were recognisable—he saw a Kong-like figure battling a giant winged beast. Others were more mysterious. A huge lizard on its hind legs, at war with a giant dragonfly. A hammer-headed beast in combat with a many-tailed, skeletal bird.

More. Much more, all of it terrible.

Conrad gasped. Weaver went to say something, but her voice broke. There really was nothing to say.

All they could do was look, and let the fear settle around them.

Several days passed before they set him free. To some he was a hero, an amazing survivor from a war that was already fading into history. They even talked about arranging for him to meet the president one day soon. To others he was a celebrity. His story had leaked out, and there was talk of book deals, the offer of a movie of his life, and more.

He had only told them a small part of his story. When they probed, he feigned forgetfulness, giving them bizarre and surreal tales that eventually forced them to accept the fact that his time on the island had driven him mad.

He was fine with that. He’d prefer madness to fame and perceived heroism. From the first moment they had emerged from out of the storm and back into the world once again, there was one place he’d wanted to go.

Now he was there, and Marlow had never been more afraid. Sitting in the cab a few doors down from the house, he remembered Gunpei Ikari, his greatest friend.

They hold each other by the throats, knives raised, blood burning in their eyes and murder on their minds, and then Kong rises before them, lessening them with his gaze and making nothing of their reasons for fighting. Like that, their fury fades away.

Seven years later, he and Gunpei are sitting around a camp fire in the wreck of the Wanderer . That day has been a hard one for them all—a Skull Crawler surfaced and took away three village children, and Kong chased it halfway across the island before battering it to death. They are quiet and contemplative, sipping some of the Iwis’ ale and sharing a comfortable silence, as is so often the case.