Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization

NINETEEN

Weaver was a listener as much as a watcher. Viewing the world through a lens was one thing, but hearing it was just as important, more so when the people she listened to forgot she was there.

She was setting up a camera tripod to take some creative shots out through the cracks in the spring hall’s roof. They were camped out on one of the Wanderer’s upper decks, the protective canopy above them split in several places. Through the splits a remarkable display of aurora borealis cast its flickering light, illuminating the night sky above the village and valley.

It was almost peaceful.

San and Brooks sat shoulder to shoulder close by, and Weaver couldn’t help overhearing them.

“When I first wrote that Hollow Earth paper, the whole committee laughed out loud,” Brooks said.

“Not Randa,” San replied.

“Yeah. The one guy in the crowd who took me seriously. Felt good, at the time. Then I thought he was just plain crazy when he said the hollow earth was full of monsters.”

“Right,” San said. “That, I liked much better as a theory.”

Across the deck, Slivko had levelled his portable record player and was lowering a needle into a groove. Crackles, scratches, and then Led Zeppelin strummed into the night.

Marlow was sitting calmly while Nieves helped him shave his extravagant beard. He seemed unimpressed. “What kind of music is this? What happened to swing? Benny Goodman?”

“You’re like a time traveller, man,” Slivko said. “This is the new sound.”

“I hope that thing you call a boat can actually get us upriver and to the north shore in thirty-six hours,” Nieves said. “If we miss that window, we’re literally up a creek.”

“You don’t seem like much of an adventurer,” Marlow said.

Weaver grinned at that. Brave thing for a man to say to someone holding a razor at his throat.

“I’m an administrator,” Nieves said. “And this would be a lot easier with an electric.”

“Electric razor?” Marlow asked.

Nieves rolled his eyes and carried on shaving. San and Brooks lowered their voices even more. Weaver turned her full attention to the tripod, camera setting, and the shot she was aiming to get.

She didn’t see Conrad until he was almost standing beside her.

“The most dangerous places are always the most beautiful,” he said, and she nodded, thinking of her encounter with Kong just hours before.

“Going for a long exposure,” she said. “But my flashlight broke.”

Conrad flicked a lighter open and closed. She flinched back a little, then checked out the lighter he placed in her hand. It bore a Royal Air Force insignia.

“Thanks,” she said. “Royal Air Force?”

“You doing that reporter thing on me?”

“Just curious.” She smiled.

“My father’s,” Conrad said. “He tossed it to me from the train as he rolled off to fight the Nazis.”

“Did he make it home?” she asked, but when she looked up and saw his face, she knew. “Oh. Sorry.”

Conrad looked over to where Marlow was still being shaved and tended by Nieves, chattering all the time, soaking up all the new information he could about the old world he’d left behind for so long.

“Marlow reminds me of him. Could be the jacket. His plane went down outside Hamburg. MIA. I always believed I’d see him again. He was like John Wayne to me, some kind of mythic hero, tall and broad and… In his perfect uniform. Those polished shoes.”

“Lose your dad in one war, so you spend the next one trying to bring people back?”

“So you’re an analyst as well as a photographer?”

“Just telling you what I see through the lens.”

“I guess no one comes home from war,” Conrad said. “Not really.”

“So is this worth it?” she asked. “All that money they paid you?” Conrad frowned at her, as if disappointed. He knew that she knew it was never about that. “Oh, yeah, I forgot,” she said. “You don’t get invested in outcomes.”

“Almost dying does make you feel alive though, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Next you’re going to tell me you want to stay here,” Weaver said. She felt a pang saying that, as if she was revealing something about herself. Did she want to stay? She didn’t think so. But this island was like a drug, and she wanted more and more.

“No,” he said. “Not at all. This island belongs to Kong.”

“It does,” she said, remembering standing in that great ape’s shadow. “We shouldn’t be here. We have no right to be here.”

“We better hope this thing can get us away, then,” Conrad said.

Weaver turned back to her camera and prepared to take the shot.

Randa was exhausted. Packard had led them on a hard hike through the jungle, with danger all around and death threatening at any moment. And Randa was nowhere near as fit as the soldiers he hiked with. He’d always meant to do something about his weight and lack of physical fitness, and he wished more than ever that he’d done so. His muscles ached, he was soaked with sweat, chafed and bruised and cut, and leaning against a tree, he wasn’t sure he could move another step.

Packard was stoking a small fire, readying to prepare some ration packs. Their rest would be brief, he’d said. This was simply refuelling.

“What you’re doing…” Randa gasped. “This mission to the crash site… is folly.”

Packard glanced up at him then back down at the fire. He said nothing.

“I understand going after your man, but the rest of it? I have a feeling this will not end well.” Randa wanted more than anything to be back on mission, gathering evidence and information about the ape and the other incredible creatures on this island, then ensuring that they escaped. That was the absolute priority. Escape, get off the island, and take news of what they had found back to the world.

Back to Monarch.

“You don’t like the way I’m handling things, there’s the door,” Packard said, pointing at the dark jungle around them. He didn’t even look up from the fire.

Randa sighed and closed his eyes. He said no more. He needed every moment they were here to catch his breath.