Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization

TWENTY-FIVE

Weaver had come to her senses and started using her camera again. It might have been the first time in her career that she’d been so shocked by what she was viewing that she forgot to take a photograph. She was rectifying that now.

As they moved across the hostile, alien landscape, she realised that she needed something to give scale to the images she was recording. She tried concentrating on the people around her, as opposed to simply photographing the remains of these creatures almost beyond imagining.

Brooks and San were collecting samples, tucking rocks into their increasingly heavy rucksacks, filling plastic bags with sand and ash. They seemed unsettled but excited, glancing around like nervous children as they saw things more unusual, exciting, terrifying. They barely remained in the same place for more than a few seconds.

She framed Randa against a huge skeleton she could not identify and snapped a photo. As she did so, Randa was using his film camera to record the scene. His mouth hung slightly open. She guessed that he was as shocked as them all about how right he’d been.

Conrad paused beside a pile of bones, the remains scattered and splintered. They contained marks that could only have been made by teeth and claws, and in the ground beside him were more claw marks.

Marlow stood beside him and also stared down, terror in his eyes. Weaver assumed they were Skull Crawler marks, and she felt a shiver as she photographed the old pilot.

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.

Weaver caught her breath. The shape appeared over the top of the smaller of the great Kong skulls, silhouetted against the mist, crawling up and over the skull’s curved dome and down towards Randa with barely a sound.

It was the Skull Crawler, its wide reptilian head tilting sideways as if to get a good look at its prey.

Randa turned around slowly and stared right up at it. “Well look at you,” he said, and then the monster struck.

It moved fast for such a huge creature, flipping itself over the skull, scooping Randa up in its tail, turning onto its back, and dropping the stunned, silent man into its gaping mouth and swallowing him whole.

San screamed.

As Randa fell he must have triggered the camera’s rapid shot function, and he disappeared into the mouth head first, seeing what awaited him. The Skull Crawler’s open mouth was illuminated by a flash, and Weaver’s last sight of Randa was his legs disappearing between long, cruel teeth.

The camera continued shooting, and the poor man’s journey down the creature’s gullet was marked with flashes through its translucent skin.

“Get down!” Conrad shouted, grabbing Weaver and pulling her to the bone-strewn ground just as the whole world erupted into a storm of gunfire. After the relative silence it was a shock, and she pressed her hands to her ears, rolling onto her side so that she could still see what was going on.

Conrad was firing his sidearm, switching aim with each shot as the creature circled them in the mist. Only vaguely visible in the haze, the faint flashes that accompanied its shadowy movements must have come from the camera that Randa had been holding. The idea of him swallowed and whole in the creature’s gullet, perhaps even still alive for a few seconds more, was both grotesque and fascinating.

Wish I could get that film, she thought.

Several heavy blasts thumped at Weaver through the ground as grenades were lobbed at the circling monster.

“Set up that fifty-cal!” Packard shouted. Weaver saw a flurry of movement as one of the soldiers set up a machine gun atop the cracked skull of what might once have been a triceratops. Bullets seared the air and ricocheted from rock and bone. Tracer rounds probed the mist for the elusive beast, but during occasional pauses in gunfire they all heard the unmistakeable growls, scampering of feet, and crushing of old bones indicating that the Skull Crawler was still out there.

Now that it knew they were there, it would not be leaving.

Conrad and Weaver rushed for cover against one of the Kong skulls as the .50 opened up. Its heavy, devastating fire punched holes through the smoke and mist, the gunner pausing and turning slightly when another camera flash came from elsewhere.

Marlow ran across the clearing, katana sword held in both hands, and it was as if the Skull Crawler was drawn to him. The mist parted and it darted towards the airman, mouth open and teeth dripping a bloody saliva.

Marlow slashed and dived, twisting out of the beast’s reach and leaping into an ancient, giant ribcage where San and Brooks were also sheltering. As it turned for him again, a burst of gunfire lashed along its ribcage, wounds bursting open and spraying blood. It writhed and twisted, lashing out with its tail and knocking the .50 cal machine-gunner from his perch. Then it went for Marlow once more, giant mouth snapping open and closed, old rib bones shattering—

—and Marlow leapt forward with the sword held high, slamming it down into the monster’s eye.

For a moment the scene froze. Gunfire ceased and faded into echoes, the creature grew still, and the only noise was the sound of broken bone falling around Brooks and San.

Deeper, into its brain! Weaver thought. Marlow caught her eye and she nodded, urging him on.

Then the Skull Crawler opened its real eyes, two feet back along its head from whatever feature Marlow had impaled, and a steady growl rose deep within its throat.

“Gills,” San shouted. “It has gills!”

“Write the paper later!” Brooks said, shoving her from the shattered ribcage and away from the monster. Marlow tugged the sword free and went with them as the Skull Crawler thrashed in pain, its head shoving Marlow along so that he went sprawling, stood, and ran again. Old broken bones flew, and a haze of bone dust rose like slow smoke.

“Come on,” Conrad said to Weaver. “Stay close!” He skirted around the Kong skulls and she followed, keeping the raging beast to their right as they worked their way around to where the soldiers were gathering. The camera flashes had ceased, and she thought of Randa deep in the belly of the beast. Surely he was dead by now? Suffocated, or chewed in half as he went down? She hoped so. To still be alive in there, feeling its stomach acids already eating at his skin, knowing what was to come, would surely be the greatest form of torture.

At least he’d died knowing that he’d been right all along, even if one of his theories had come to swallow him whole.

From her right she heard Packard yelling, “Engage! Engage!” and a flash of boiling heat seared her right arm and leg as a flamethrower spewed fire at the Skull Crawler. It shrieked and jerked away from the flames, and she saw the brief look of triumph on the soldiers’ faces. But then the monster charged through the flames, whipped its tail around, and the stream of fire flipped and roared at the sky as its bearer was pummelled into one of the Kong skulls. The gas canister on his back ruptured and exploded, shattering the skull and sending bone shards whistling through the air like shrapnel.

Weaver dived for cover, landing beside Conrad on a bed of broken bones. Someone screamed. Someone else’s scream was cut off by a gurgling, strangled cry. As Conrad pulled her to her feet, she grabbed her camera and snapped off a few blind shots.

The scene was one of chaos: soldiers ran and fired, but the Skull Crawler appeared unhurt; fires had broken out across the ground and among the skeletons of dead giants. Brooks and San were nowhere to be seen, but Slivko was writhing on the ground with a shard of bone protruding from his torso.

Packard and his men were so focused on battling the beast that they did not see what was happening behind them. The fire from the flamethrower had spread across the half-rotted carcass of some great beast, and out poured a stream of vulture-like birds. They were all talons and fierce beaks, wings beating at the flames, feathered bodies smoking, furious and vicious.

Instead of fleeing the scene of destruction, the birds turned their rage against the soldiers.

“Marlow, your sword!” Conrad shouted. The old airman lobbed his blade, Conrad caught it, and as he lashed out at the attacking bird creatures, Weaver and Marlow followed close behind.

Weaver edged towards Slivko, realising that the bone shard had actually pinned him to the ground. Shouts and shots continued around them, the Skull Crawler somewhere behind.

“Help me!” she shouted, and Marlow was already by her side, holding Slivko’s arms as she readied herself. Conrad continued slashing out at the birds whenever they came near, and feathers and blood spattered all around.

“I got you,” she said to Slivko, grabbing the bone shard, “but this is gonna hurt.”

“It’s mainly my jacket,” he said. “I think it might have—”

She pulled. Slivko screamed. The heavy splinter of bone she tugged out was smeared with blood, but it looked like a flesh wound across his hip. They’d have to patch it later.

“—just nicked me,” Slivko said.

Conrad lowered the bloodied sword and started shooting over Weaver’s head.

Weaver ducked and turned to see the Skull Crawler charging towards them. Bullets rattled into its heavily scaled body, some of them finding home and spouting gouts of blood, others ricocheting from scales with sparking puffs of dust. It went on, intent on adding to its meal with the four people before it.

“Get down!” Conrad shouted, shoving Weaver on top of Slivko and Marlow, pulling his father’s lighter from his pocket, igniting it and throwing it.

Useless, pointless, Weaver thought, fearing that in his final moment Conrad had resorted to foolish defiance in the face of oncoming death.

Then she saw the lighter spinning towards the small vent in the ground just ahead of the sprinting Skull Crawler, and she understood.

She crouched over Slivko and covered both of their heads with her arms, just as the vent’s gas ignited with a ground-shaking, ear-shattering boom. Heat pulsed across the open ground, singeing the hairs on the back of her neck and legs, and the explosion was accompanied by a high, pained shriek that seemed to split the air in two.

Weaver risked a look and saw the Skull Crawler sprawled across the ground less than thirty feet away. The searing burst of flame had caught it across the side like a blowtorch, blazing into its torso and splitting it open. Superheated insides were spilled across the ground, much of the mess cauterised black. It writhed and groaned, head scraping this way and that, claws scratching messages of pain into the dirt. It was almost pathetic, and Weaver felt a moment of sorrow for this dying beast. It was a hunter and killer, and that was all it knew.

Its movements lessened and she stood and started taking pictures again.

“Nice throw,” Weaver said, as she and Conrad helped Slivko to his feet. “Your dad would have been proud.”

The shooting had ceased and a spooky, uneasy silence hung over the scene. The dead Skull Crawler’s fat spat in the flames. Weaver lifted her camera to take some photos, but then she saw the extent of damage the surge of fire had wrought upon the beast. Its gut was wide open, heavy scaled hide ripped and ruptured ribs scorched to blackened spurs. She had no wish to see what might have been revealed inside its stomach.

The recent meals it had eaten.

Turning away, she closed her eyes and breathed deeply to try and swallow down the puke that threatened. She smelled burning meat and death. It was a smell she had always been at home with, but now it seemed harsher than ever before.

“Rally up, we need to keep moving,” Packard said. His remaining soldiers obeyed his orders, keen to be doing something meaningful rather than simply looking at the results of the recent, shattering battle.

There was no time to dig graves for their comrades. Packard collected the dog tags himself.

Weaver took a moment to look around at the scene of devastation and catch her breath. They were all very lucky to still be alive. Conrad had saved them, and she was pleased to hear a few grateful comments from the Sky Devils. Even Packard gave him a curt nod.

The Skull Crawler would add one more, final skeleton to its own valley of bones.