Kong: Skull Island - The Official Movie Novelization

TEN

As the Landsat Huey settled in a small clearing beside the river, Randa filmed their arrival from his hovering bird. This was a momentous moment, the culmination of years of dreams and hope, but he was also aware that they had work to do. Below, Brooks and San jumped from the landed Huey, and the Landsat crews started unloading monitors and other equipment. It was a slick, much-rehearsed process, and soon Randa waved as they lifted away.

He held on as the chopper rose and headed further upriver. The valley grew wider and deeper, and soon they broke left towards the first of the target zones.

“Ready for the seismic sources,” Nieves said over the radio.

Randa ensured his straps were secure and leaned closer to the open door. He knew they had to keep a safe distance, but he was eager to film what came next. It was a purely scientific endeavour, but it was also going to look spectacular.

Ahead of them he saw a Huey circling a pre-designated drop zone. Inside, the soldiers would be readying the first of the seismic charges. Sure enough, a few moments later he saw a cylindrical object drop from the door, small parachute fluttering open behind it, and heard the static-filled voice of a soldier saying, “Welcome to the world of man.”

Filming, Randa frowned at that. A curious choice of words. Revealing. We’re not typical men, he thought. We’re here to discover, not destroy. But these were soldiers, not scientists.

He followed the floating object as it disappeared into the jungle canopy below. His heart beat faster in anticipation. Moments later, the first charge exploded.

Trees bent with the force of the blast. Smashed trunks and branches were thrown aloft on a boiling mass of flame and smoke. A shockwave passed through the jungle canopy like ripples in water, startling birds into flight and shimmering far across the jungle.

Randa continued filming, his dawning sense of wonder giving way to a strange, niggling foreboding. Whatever they called these things—seismic charges, scientific instruments—in reality they were bombs.

Their helicopter circled the explosion site, and he continued filming the resultant smoke cloud. The blast zone soon settled back into jungle, and it appeared almost undamaged. It was as if the trees had swallowed the explosion and hidden it away. His low dread was fed by this sense that the jungle could shrug them off so easily. He had no wish to destroy, but he had come here to make his mark.

What came next brought that feeling of triumph he’d been craving since breaking through the storm front.

“Randa, the bedrock!” Brooks shouted into his ear. “You gotta see this. It’s practically hollow!”

Randa smiled, still filming the smoking site of the first explosion. “So how does that feel, Brooks?” he asked.

“Commencing second pass to drop charge number two,” a voice said from one of the choppers circling lower down.

Brooks had not replied. He was probably eager to absorb as much data as he could, he and San watching the monitors and ensuring that all recording devices were accurate and fully operational. But Randa could imagine the man’s mixed emotions. He was glad. Brooks should never have doubted him.

Cautioning himself, more than aware that they had only taken readings from one blast zone, nevertheless Randa felt a growing sense of excitement. He made himself more comfortable as he watched history being made through his film camera.

Weaver wished she was piloting this thing. With three more blasts shredding the canopy and throwing flaming, then smoking fingers skyward, there were far better angles she could be getting on this. Still, she did her best. A series of shots through the cockpit with the pilots framing one huge explosion. Another of the impassive-faced pilot with an explosion reflected in his aviator glasses. More snaps through the open doorway, catching some of the shockwaves tearing through trees, up slopes, and losing themselves down in shadowy ravines. She couldn’t help thinking it was like throwing rocks into a lake—the initial eruption, then ripples spreading, and finally a gentle lessening of the repercussions, until there was little evidence at all. It was as if the island was swallowing the explosions, and she hoped her series of photographs would illustrate this strange effect.

She felt excited, not scared. For her, lately, that was an unusual experience on a photograph assignment. There was something very liberating and freeing about taking pictures of explosions not designed to kill, but to discover.

She glanced back at Conrad, still sat in the doorway and staring down at the blasts. He looked worried. Maybe his fear of flying went deeper than she thought. He sensed her watching and looked at her.

“Gonna make a nice brochure,” she said, lifting her camera and taking a shot of him.

Another explosion erupted outside, but this one was different. It started low and grew, rather than fading from an initial loud blast to mere echoes. She saw in Conrad’s reaction that he sensed the same difference, and both of them leaned closer to the doorway, Weaver hanging onto one of the straps swinging from the ceiling.

“What the hell…?” he said, but if anyone heard him they did not respond.

The roar continued, swamping echoes from the seismic charges, growing, loud and primal like the island shaking itself awake and angry at their intrusion.

Looking down towards the drop zones, and at the three Hueys circling the smoking remains of the initial explosions, they both saw the shape flung from deep down in the jungle canopy.

Conrad tensed beside her, and Weaver heard a pilot’s panicked shout: “Incoming!”

The massive splintered tree trunk struck a Huey head-on, shattering the cabin, spearing the chopper and making minced meat of the pilot, sending the aircraft into a spiralling, deathly spin.

“Delayed explosion?” Weaver asked.

“That was no explosion,” Conrad said, and that made no sense, she couldn’t comprehend what he meant. No explosion? Then how?

Frightened voices merged over the radio, a chaos of confusion that sang the chopper down to its fiery, terrible end.

“Fox One is hit and down!” someone shouted.

Weaver felt Conrad grasping her arm as if keen to hold onto reality. She held onto her camera.

The thing she saw rise from the jungle canopy and smash down a second Huey looked like a giant black hand.

The chopper span from the impact, one rotor spinning off into the air. Weaver saw a shape fall from the open doorway and plummet, limbs waving as it disappeared into the suddenly deadly jungle. The out-of-control Huey ploughed its way down towards the canopy. The pilot struggled to retain altitude, but it was a lost cause.

“Mayday, mayday, we’re going down!” he shouted over the radio.

Conrad clasped her harder, half-standing and pulling himself closer.

“You seeing this?”

“Yeah, but not believing.”

The Huey jarred to a halt, as if held upright above the canopy by heavy tree limbs. Watching from their own circling chopper, Weaver dared to hope that the survivors on board might be saved. One man clung to a landing strut, arms and legs wrapped tightly around the support, probably trying to make sense of his miraculous escape.

The jungle beneath the halted helicopter burst apart as a huge, dark shape rose up from below the trees, standing from a deep crevasse and thrusting the crippled aircraft aloft in one giant hand. Smashed trees and a million shed leaves floated around it as Weaver tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Some sort of sense that might pin her to the world, the reality she knew.

But she could find none.

The shape was a massive, impossible gorilla, perhaps a hundred feet tall. It shook the stricken Huey it held in one mighty hand, and as she saw the man tumble from the landing gear and drop into the beast’s open, roaring mouth, she felt a cool flush of utter terror go through her, chilling her heart and flooding her stomach with ice.

She sat down heavily next to Conrad, camera forgotten, everything forgotten other than what she was witnessing at that moment. She had no history and no future, only this dreadful, impossible present.

Weaver struggled to remember her name.

Conrad knew what would happen next. A year ago he’d have done the same. But this was not a war, and this was not an enemy. At least, nothing like any enemy man had faced before. He didn’t know what this was. But he had to put the fear and confusion in the background if they were going to get past this moment in one piece.

Packard and the rest of his Sky Devils went into combat mode.

The colonel shouted from his Huey, “Fox Six on guard! Fox Five is down, Fox Four is down! Respond, Fox Three!”

Conrad saw several Hueys scatter and twist like panicked birds, their pilots taking classic evasive manoeuvres. Trouble was, no one knew exactly what they were trying to evade, or what that giant thing was going to do next.

As Cole dropped into formation with the other Sky Devils and flew towards the towering beast, the creature seemed to rise and rise, so high that it eventually blocked out the sun.

“What the hell is that?” Mills asked, saying what everyone else was thinking. None of them knew. None of them could know.

It’s a gorilla, Conrad thought, but to say those words would be to admit a staggering, impossible truth.

They were closer to the behemoth now, and Conrad began to appreciate its true size and power. It was a mass of muscle and anger, fury emanating from it in waves, and why not? They had been bombing its territory, after all. As they approached, it threw the wrecked helicopter aside like a child discarding a broken toy.

Then it turned to face them.

“Shut up and fire!” Packard ordered. Even through the radio, Conrad could hear the sounds of door machine-guns being cocked and readied for the attack.

He pushed past Weaver, feeling able to take action at last, shoving aside the disbelief and letting his survival instinct engage. It had brought him through many situations, mostly whole. He had to trust it now.

At the cockpit he started to shout, “Don’t engage! Pull out! Tell everyone to pull out!”

“Ignore that man!” Packard shouted. “We’re going in to rescue our downed men, and we need cover.”

Conrad leaned between the pilot and co-pilot and searched down towards the crash site. A Huey hovered, a man lowered down on a rope. He dropped the last few feet and raced towards the crashed chopper.

“Move fast!” Packard called. “Hurry.”

“Yeah, hurry,” Conrad said quietly, because he’d already seen what was about to happen.

The giant beast seemed to crumble like a falling cliff as it bent down low and brought its fisted right hand down onto the crashed copter, the survivors, and the man who’d gone to rescue them.

He’d seen many men killed before, but never wiped from existence like that. Crushed to a smear. Swept away with a flick of a hand.

“Fox Leader to Group,” Packard’s voice came, low and steady. “Cleared hot. Fire at will. I say again… fire at will!” A pause, and then behind his own firing weapons they heard Packard mutter, “You son of a bitch.”

The open radio channels were suddenly filled with the rat-rat-rat of heavy machine-gun fire as the .50s opened up. Hueys swung into attack, and Conrad had to grip the seat backs as his own aircraft swung down and around, door gunner opening up.

He looked back at Weaver. She had her left hand wrapped in a ceiling strap, right hand nursing the camera as she clicked off photos. She caught his eye and stared, wide-eyed. Neither of them knew what to say, even if they could hear each other above the cacophony.

Conrad turned around again, just in time to see the beast leap aside from the gunfire, agile and fast considering its unbelievable size.

“Colonel, pull left, we’re going to—” someone shouted, and then two Hueys attacking from different directions struck each other a glancing blow. These were experienced, battle-hardened pilots, but the situation had stolen their caution and concentration.

“The colonel’s going down!” Slivko shouted.

Conrad could only watch in horror as Packard’s Huey span lazily groundwards. It smashed through a copse of trees and hit the ground, rolling and bursting into flames. He wasn’t sure anyone could have survived that. He wasn’t sure it mattered.

The huge beast was running, several survivors from the first crash site sprinting ahead of it. It leapt onto the first chopper brought down and stamped, moved back, smashed its fisted hands down. The Huey exploded, scattering burning debris. If the giant did feel any pain, it only served it enrage it even more.

It roared at the sky, and it might have been thunder splitting the air asunder.

“Give it all you’ve got!” Slivko shouted. Theirs and another Huey closed formation and unleashed all their firepower, bullets and tracers tracking across the monster’s furry hide. The gunners shifted their aims across its chest and neck and up towards its face, blooms of blood opening all across its body.

Drawing its attention.

The beast swung both hands at the ground, fingers splayed now, and Conrad saw what was about to happen.

“Slivko, pull back!” he shouted, but too late.

A hail of rocks, soil, and broken trees were flung skyward at the two attacking choppers, rising in a spreading cloud that quickly enveloped the helicopters. They struck the fuselage, rattling like bullets, and exploded into shards as they entered the rotor space. Ricochets cracked the windshield and zinged through the open door, scoring a bloody line across the back of Conrad’s hand.

Something else hit the rotors.

None of them could know who it was. The body was diced in a second, bloody innards, bones, and flesh scraps splattering across the cracked windshield. A spray of blood splashed through the broken glass and spattered across the instrument panel and Slivko’s chest.

Their chopper banked away, warning sounds chiming as their rotors started to fail and power dropped.

“Brace!” Slivko shouted. He looked back over his shoulder at Weaver and Conrad. “We’re going down.”

Conrad dropped back into his seat and struggled with his belt. He was breathing hard, and with every blink he remembered that other chopper crash. This would be different. If even one of them survived the crash, the thing they’d made furious would ensure that their survival did not last for long.

Weaver clasped his hand, and he was grateful. Whether it was her need or his, they gave each other comfort.

“Fox Three going down!” Slivko shouted into his headpiece. “Getting as far away as I can,” he said quieter.

The engines were sputtering, and through the blood-smeared windshield Conrad saw a tree-covered hillside approaching. The pilot somehow nursed the stricken aircraft over the ridge, landing gear slicing through the canopy. He could smell the fresh tang of torn leaves.

“LZ ahead,” Slivko said. “If we can just…”

Tree limbs smacked at the Huey, as determined to bring it down as a giant’s hand. A branch slapped through the open door and scored Conrad’s thigh. He and Weaver leaned forward, heads down and hands wrapped around their head, and he tried to remain loose as he braced for impact.

It was like flying into a wall. Breath was knocked from him, his insides mixed and stirred, straps tugging so hard against his stomach that he vomited, once and hard. The world exploded around him, and Conrad had the very definite sense of everything coming apart. In that moment he thought of Jenny, the little dead girl, and was glad that her death had been instant. At least she had been spared the sense of unravelling he was feeling at that moment.

Blood splashed across his face, warm, sticky, rank. And not his own.