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Chapter Text

Saigon, Wednesday 17th January 1973

As soon as Randa and Brooks left, John came over to complain about the broken pool cue. The Saigon service industry had a fluent grasp of English - the girls they churned through less so - but John mostly stayed in his back room, letting the girls and the bouncers run the show. His English was still impressive.

That didn’t mean Conrad was impressed with his argument. “Hey, two guys tried to rob me, pulled a knife. In your bar, John. What do you expect me to do?”

“Pool ’quipmen’, ver’ hard to get. Import from Europe, from America. No one makes it here.”

“Quán bar của bạn, John. Your bar. Your bouncers need to do their jobs.”

“Hmm.” They glared at each other a moment, then John turned his gaze to Randa’s cash, a thick wad in Conrad’s hand.

Conrad rolled his eyes and peeled off a few bills, but held them out of reach. “And no more White Rabbit, seriously. I know you have other records. It’s 1973, for god’s sake.”

John’s expression shifted completely, becoming earnest. “No, man, that song, it important. It make Americans think about drugs. It tell man on street, come in here get your drugs. It says to guys in bar, hey, you got your drugs yet? Got to play it, keep my guys in business. You man of business, Conrad, you do your business in my bar, you understand that.”

Conrad was intrigued and horrified. “I apologise for my ignorance, John. I will hear that song with new ears.” Now, instead of annoying him, it would give him chills.

God, these American servicemen had been getting fucked from every direction. He’d been treating the drug deals going on around him as part of the wallpaper, part of the fabric of Saigon life. The US had crashed in on these people, and of course some of them were making the best of it in an ugly way. But awareness of this element of calculation would make it harder to ignore.

He’d known men who took their escape that way; some came out the other side just fine, but the ones who didn’t...didn’t. Conrad had considered it, of course; been offered. Had smoked some pot, who hadn’t; had taken a bad trip once, never again. But he knew himself to be a man who didn’t do things by halves, and instinct told him that to push it further was a risk he shouldn’t take. It was enough of a challenge keeping a rein on his drinking.

Being disturbed by his base of operations was another vote in favour of shipping out with Randa, but it didn’t tip the balance. It was a bad idea, and Conrad shouldn’t have said yes.

Having said that, all jobs were bad ideas: if it was a good one, the client didn’t need someone with James Conrad’s skillset. And if accepting a job in a Saigon dive bar screamed hinky, there were at least three others he’d been offered in smart Bangkok offices, sharp Kuala Lumpur hotels, that had gone sideways because he hadn’t been given the full story.

The determining factor was that he needed to get out of Saigon. He had been stewing too long over his latest failure, a lost family that had left no trace that even he could find - and if he was honest, also over his old hurt, the betrayal that had seen his departure from the SAS. Giving him something else to focus on was the only real reason to take the job.

Throwing money at him had helped, but the fading of his interest in seeing forty had helped more. He’d been living week-to-week at best since parting ways with the British Army, and it had been a long three years.

So. A Landsat survey, with these scientists riding along, and an oblique reference to choppers that could indicate a military escort, despite Randa’s “scholars and scientists” assertion. And yet they needed him.

Just because it was an uncharted island? The Americans were hardly inexperienced with jungle at this point in the game, and NASA’s Landsat wasn’t a small operation. They would have resources of their own. Worst case scenario, what could they be up to?

The men had been endearingly sincere, he’d give them that. Open-faced Brooks was lying by omission, that was plain enough, but he did seem to believe in whatever they were doing.

Randa was more worldly-wise, might be keeping things from Brooks, was certainly holding out on Conrad. But Brooks’ genuine enthusiasm had been appealing. It was a long time since Conrad had been that young.

Conrad knew men who’d not touch this with a barge pole purely because it was being presented by eggheads. Scientists made ruthless bosses: insulated from real life and hyper-focused on their goals, they could be cheerfully indifferent to collateral damage.

These might not be the military scientists of the war stories he’d heard, but US government funding was threaded through everything, Eisenhower hadn’t been kidding about the military-industrial complex running things, and Conrad doubted Landsat would be taking Randa along if he weren’t also connected to the government.

Plus, the way they’d mentioned the choppers implied they were a separate entity, which given their current location might well mean air cavalry. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a jaunt into the jungle to collect plants for pharmaceutical research. And to be fair, they hadn’t claimed it was.

So. Start from the key facts.

An uncharted island, and a Landsat survey. Those two pieces of information struck him as reliable: they fit together. Landsat’s involvement could be a lie to reassure him, but if so the truth would become evident the moment he reached the dockside and they weren’t there. Such a deception wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

It followed that no one from the so-called civilised world had ever been to this place, and so satellite images would be giving them little more than the lie of the land - no buildings, no targets. Which meant that, regardless of military involvement, it wasn’t likely they were planning military action.

Corroboration: the light in Brooks’ eyes said he was a believer in something worthwhile. If this really was for science, Conrad had no objection to being a part of it.

An uncharted island. There was something alluring about it, even if he’d have to see that they brought multiple med packs of the most comprehensive kind. At least the currently ending shit-show meant the Americans would know how to put together what they’d need.

He hadn’t been exaggerating the dangers. An island with a unique ecosystem meant unique threats that no man’s body had learned to defend against, never mind those of folks used to sitting cosy at a desk in a temperate country. They’d encounter six different ways to die within five minutes of making landfall.

So there it was. He’d said yes, and while he was suffering a little from buyer’s remorse, he wasn’t really regretting it. He’d learned enough over the years to make it this far; he was willing to face whatever challenges this contract presented, and maybe he could help these scientists get through it as well.

Randa’s words were niggling more than they should, lingering in his head. “Men go to war in search of something, Mr. Conrad. If you’d found it, you’d be home by now.”

He downed the last of the watered-down whisky John had poured him. Bullshit, you went to war because...god knows why, but it wasn’t to find anything, unless possibly yourself.

And if you joined up to lose yourself, to become a whole new self that you hadn’t known existed, then ding-ding-ding you were a winner. The trick was in whether or not you could live with being the person you found. And whether the people back home had any shot picking you out of a line-up by the time you returned.

Fuck it, he really needed to get out of Saigon.

Chapter Text

Bangkok, Friday 19th January 1973

Pier 14... Yes, there she was, the Athena. A civilian vessel, but a large one, big enough to hold vast fuel tanks. They’d need them for a long-distance journey of this kind, though they’d be able to refuel in the Philippines and Guam on the way. After that they’d be on their own.

Normally he’d have made a point of arriving sooner: you never knew what you’d learn by turning up early. But buyers of last-minute plane tickets couldn’t be choosers.

The market stretched to the quayside, reluctantly giving way to allow a narrow work area for the stevedores. It wasn’t only his arrival that was just-in-time: they were still winching on board barrels and pallets of crates that didn’t look like they held the perishables that would normally be loaded last.

The fuel barrels would be for the UH-1s that he could see being secured to the deck - he’d guessed right, then, about the military escort. Much of the rest looked like ordnance.

It stretched a long way along the dockside: a surprising amount, considering it looked like they were going to be finishing their journey by chopper. “Fuck-ton” was the term that sprang to mind, though not one he’d use out loud. Just how much could they carry? And why would they need it?

But what did he know? The Athena might have another destination after their delivery to the island. There was any number of possibilities. It would bear watching.

Speaking of, he was himself being watched. An army colonel, complete with beret, at the foot of the gangplank; he’d be in charge of the Huey company. Conrad checked in with one of the baby blue-uniformed Landsat guys, then turned to face the colonel. He knew the drill: he stepped forward and presented himself formally in the at-ease stance, no handshake but also no salute.

The colonel looked at him appraisingly, his disdain evident. Hard to fault him for that, Conrad didn’t think much of mercenaries either, never mind that he was one.

The man waved off Conrad’s introduction. “Yeah, Randa told me about you. SAS tracker, right? I heard about that rescue you pulled last year.”

All 12 pilots brought back alive, too. You’d have thought that merited cracking a smile, but apparently not. “Sir.”

“Lt. Col. Preston Packard. 3rd Assault Helicopter Company of the 1st Aviation Brigade, the Sky Devils. Griffins to our friends.” That wasn’t an invitation. “You answer to me, Conrad, you understand? Randa may be paying you, but out there he and his team are passengers, nothing more.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Well this was going to be fun. You wanted out of Saigon, remember?

Fuck. Here we go.

***

Conrad was starting to get a handle on who the expedition members would be. The Landsat component would be Victor Nieves and Steve-from-the-gang-plank Woodward (who, it turned out, was Steve-the-data-wrangler), plus another three whose names he hadn’t caught.

It was surprisingly few given that this was their trip, but apparently Nieves was being cautious and viewing this as a preliminary pass. It was nice to hear that someone was taking seriously the risks involved.

He knew Randa and Brooks, of course; plus there was an additional Randa subordinate, San Lin (not Westernised, so Miss San). She looked about Brooks’ age, and her outfit was equally preppy. At a guess, she’d attended a US university.

Then there was a photographer, ludicrously young to have spent two years embedded, but that’s what he’d been told by chatty Steve when he’d wandered back down onto the dock to see what he could find out about the expedition.

With MACV-SOG no less, who were into serious special ops shit: weird that they’d allowed a photojournalist anywhere near that outfit. Similarly weird that someone with a journalism background had been chosen for this mission, given the military involvement.

Her name was Mason Weaver. What were the odds that Randa (or Landsat) had assumed her to be male? Steve had, from what he said. And maybe whoever had approved her for the embedded assignment, too. Perhaps the ambiguity worked in her favour, then, though it’d be no help once she appeared in person.

She might have been young, but she wasn’t playing harmless, wasn’t playing up her femininity in any way, which would have been a cheap method of keeping the men off-guard. There was nothing uncertain in her bearing, unlike Brooks or San, who looked like children on an adventure, clustered at Randa’s side. But then, she was here as a photographer, not as a journalist, didn’t need to play an angle. The war was over; perhaps she was glad of the work.

The remainder of the party would be made up of Colonel Packard’s Sky Devils, an unruly mob who, he’d just learned, had been at the very point of shipping home when the call had come in. Brutal.

Had Packard fought the order? Conrad’s gut said no, increasing his suspicion of the man. Fuck. That was the one thing his new line of work had going for it, he was his own man. A man regularly being screwed around by clients who didn’t know what was good for them, admittedly, but at least no one had been giving him orders. It made the skin between his shoulder blades itch to be back under the thumb of someone he had no reason to trust.

They were all in the ship’s mess, a projector screen drawn down against a bulkhead. What Randa and Brooks had told him in the bar was sketchy at best, but now he was committed and, with the Athena underway, captive. This briefing ought to reveal any alarming details that would have caused him to turn the mission down flat, back when he’d had the choice. So, now he’d find out the full horror, and then he’d start planning how he’d deal with it.

Nieves was all smiles, clicking cheerfully through his slide deck, unfazed by the creepiness of the skull shape the island presented. Not ominous at all, that. “Our expedition takes us to a place every nautical trade route known to man has avoided for centuries. As our satellites show, the island is surrounded by a perpetual storm system, allowing it to remain hidden from the outside world.”

Ah, so that explained the air cavalry. A single chopper would have sufficed with the Athena anchored close off shore.

Hmm. Wouldn’t the storm and the distance also make communication with the Athena tricky?

“But with Colonel Packard’s helicopter transport we will be the first to break through to the other side. We’re also pleased to be joined, for the first time, by the resource exploration team led by Mr. Randa and accompanied by biologist Miss San, and geologist Mr. Brooks. Our focus will be on the island’s surface; theirs, what lies beneath.”

Curious: a biologist for under the ground? Just what was Randa’s deal? “Resource exploration” could cover a multitude of sins. At least Landsat’s mission and its interest in the island were self-evident.

Brooks took over, confident at the front of a room. “Simple, really. We’ll use explosives to shake the earth and create vibrations, helping us to map the subsurface of the island. We’ll fly in over the south shore, and then strategically drop seismic charges to better help us understand the density of the earth.”

What? He didn’t make a habit of speaking up in briefings, but this was a shock; still, he kept his tone casual. “You’re dropping bombs?”

“Scientific instruments,” Brooks corrected him.

The Sky Devils took that with hilarity. “You hear that, boys? We’re scientists now!” one of them whooped.

“You guys are not scientists,” Steve-the-actual-scientist retorted. Was data wrangling science? Steve clearly thought so.

Nieves waited for them to settle down, then continued. “We’ll then land and make base camp for ground excursions led by Mr. Conrad.” And? What would the purpose of these excursions be? Would they have to retrieve the “scientific instruments”? Surely the readings would be taken from a seismograph, not from the charges, no, that would make no sense. What would they be looking for, then? Why did they need him?

Nieves had handed off to one of the Griffins, a tall southerner who introduced himself as Maj. Jack Chapman. “All right. Once on the island, the storm’s interference will block all radio contact with the ship. That means we’ll be by ourselves.”

And there it was. He winced.

“Three days later, the refuel team will meet us here, on the north end of the island. That may be our only safe departure window for an unknown period of time.” Well, fuck. “So, tip for everybody... Don’t miss it, please.”

Okay then. Getting from one end to the other of an uncharted island, to a tight deadline. Maybe their need for him was as simple as that.

Simple. Ha. No; but doable? Surely so, with choppers. Well, they’d find out.

***

Released for the night, Conrad took what he would describe, if challenged, as a post-prandial stroll, mostly because he took quiet pleasure in fucking with people. In fact it was, of course, a recce, because long experience had taught him that what he didn’t know could most definitely hurt him.

The first thing he learned was where the griffin nickname came in: it was the Sky Devils’ logo, their mascot maybe, painted on the side of all their choppers. Good to know, but not useful.

The second, more pertinent fact was that they were battle-ready warships: Gatling guns underneath, Brownings at the doorways, doors removed. Given what he’d already seen on the dock, that was less a surprise than an additional data point.

The third was that the Hueys amidships weren’t the only transport choppers on board. There was a Sea Stallion astern and a Chinook on the bow. That would allow for transporting all that ordnance.

The question remained, why? Perhaps the seismic charges were taking up much more space than he estimated, but surely they would be on the small side (the slide showing them hadn’t included a scale). Unless the plan was to test the island to destruction - which, no. If they were blowing the place up entirely, they wouldn’t need him as a guide.

Having seen what there was to see on the main deck, he continued his constitutional down a ladder and around the accommodation. Aside from sick bay and the mess, many cabins were taken over with scientific instrumentation, computers the like of which he’d never seen. Landsat had been established on this vessel for some time.

Next level down: primarily quarters, including his own, bunking with a disgruntled Landsat guy who had been enjoying the luxury of not having to share. But also access to the engine room and the hold.

It was poorly lit down here, but he had his lighter. Now then, what did we have here? These would be Brooks’ seismic charges, under the Landsat stamp; that was a boxed-up .50 mounted machine gun like the one he’d seen on deck, and possibly two or three more stacked behind it. A good deal of ammunition, grenades, normal stuff for the Sky Devils perhaps but this was nothing a survey mission would routinely carry.

But he wasn’t alone. The photographer seemed as surprised to see him.

“What are you doing down here?” he demanded sternly. It was ridiculous how often you could cover being somewhere you shouldn’t be by going on the attack.

To her credit, Weaver didn’t fall for it, just held her camera at the ready. “I could ask you the same thing.” Mutual destruction established, he relaxed a little.

“Why does a geological mapping mission need explosives?” she wondered.

“You weren’t listening in class. Seismic charges for the geological survey.”

“You believe that?”

This woman was direct. After all the military need-to-know bull he’d spent his adult life with, he could appreciate someone asking questions like she had a right to the answers - equally, he could see it getting old fast. He hedged casually, “I didn't say that.”

“Have you met Colonel Packard yet?”

An easier one. “Yeah.”

“The guy’s wound pretty tight.”

She wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t about to share his intuition about Packard with a stranger. “Well, the man’s a decorated war hero. That’s the package they come in.” He could ask questions too. “And you? Isn’t shooting a mapping mission a step down for a photojournalist?”

“The right photo can help shape opinions.”

“And win you a Pulitzer,” he speculated. If something unusual was going on here - and signs pointed to yes - it could be the scoop of the year.

Either that was too close to a truth she wasn’t proud of, or she didn’t like him prodding. “Okay, Captain Conrad. What about you? How did British special forces get dragged into this?”

“Just ‘Conrad.’ I’m decommissioned.” He shrugged, disliking how it would sound, also knowing it wouldn’t invite scrutiny: “They offered me money.”

“You don’t strike me as a mercenary.”

A compliment? “You don’t strike me as a war photographer.”

“Anti-war photographer,” she corrected.

He was a little surprised she was so open about it, given that all she knew about him was his military background. There was history there, he’d lay money on it. A brother, a fiancé, maybe even a husband if she was older than she had at first appeared. With her determined face on, in the shadows, her age was harder to place.

Her belief in the importance of her work wasn’t misplaced. People like her had helped turn the tide, people like her had had a big impact on the decision, finally, to pull out of Vietnam. She was doing God’s work - not that it had occurred to Conrad in years that there might actually be anyone up there, given the ample evidence to the contrary.

And now she was doing that job here. She had smelled something off about this mission right from the jump, which made her intimidatingly sharp. It was also a hell of a red flag to add to the heap.

Once again, fuck.

Chapter Text

South China Sea, 20th January 1973

The next day was gloriously sunny and breezy on deck, and with nothing to do, many of the Sea Devils killed time up there, writing letters (Chapman, who had a kid at home), giving each other hair cuts, ragging on each other, and posing for pictures, delighted by attention from the pretty photographer.

Having eyes, he’d already noticed she was pretty, and that with no make-up on (a flicker of a thought of his mother, insisting on red lipstick to her dying day - not that he’d been there). But now the sun shone in the waves of Weaver’s dark-blonde hair, and her smile as she buttered up the lads was striking.

Her comfort with soldiers was clear: she knew just how to flatter and tease them into posing while keeping them at arm’s length, the camera interposed between her and her subjects like a wall. Was that just a strategy for avoiding unwanted come-ons, or was it how she managed life?

The way she was dressed today, he could see that there was a battered ring on a chain at her throat and a man’s military watch on her wrist: his theory about a lost partner might have substance. Then again, the watch was a practical choice, and she did seem a practical woman. But not only. On her other wrist were prayer beads, and a turquoise-eyed snake ring wound around her forefinger.

He’d observe her, make an assessment: wasn’t much else he could do for the next two weeks and 6,000-odd miles. It was the civilians who most needed watching, as they were the ones likely to prove liabilities.

Regardless of how Randa had spent World War II - USN, aboard ship, he said, though apparently he wasn’t one of those people who liked to chat about it - he was late in his middle years. He wouldn’t last long if he had to run for his life or traverse hard terrain. How he would manage on the ground was an open question.

San was an unknown quantity, but looked soft. Brooks was fit enough - he’d joined Conrad in borrowing the Griffins’ weights that morning, had put in a decent showing - but was cripplingly naive. All three were inexperienced, or had experience thirty years in the rear view. The Landsat guys were at least used to fieldwork. Weaver: he didn’t know. He’d have to see.

He watched the Sky Devils, too, getting a sense of which were the jokers, which were more thoughtful, who was more respected. It wouldn’t tell him much in the way of who could be relied upon out there, and with Packard in charge, it might not make much difference. They all looked up to him like he was their saviour, an angel and a devil rolled into one. He probably had been. That didn’t mean Conrad had to like him.

***

It was a lot of time to kill. The Sky Devils ran out of what little alcohol they’d brought along after two nights, and realised they’d failed to cosy up to the Landsat contingent sufficiently to get access to theirs.

Conrad had seen that coming a mile off, and had considered the benefits of befriending their hosts via his roommate. But something about Karl rubbed him up the wrong way - or maybe it was just that Conrad was turning into a misanthrope - and he’d instead elected to keep his distance. There was nothing he wanted from Karl, or any of them, he’d decided - certainly not alcohol. A break from that would do him good.

No, all he needed was access to the Sky Devils’ dumbbells, permission to take a daily run around the ship, three square meals a day, and what he’d found on a table in the corner of the rec. room, a small stash of books.

Most of them were tattered paperbacks, the usual book-swap junk. Three copies of Love Story, inevitably, all with movie stills on the front; something ominously titled All Night Stand, though the cover was innocuous enough; hmm, a dog-eared Catch-22, maybe he’d circle back to that, though he’d carried it around and read it to death five years before. And hiding at the back, against the wall, an untouched cloth-bound set of American classics: Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick (read them), The Red Badge of Courage (hadn’t, but war stories didn’t appeal), and The Scarlet Letter. A-ha.

He settled in.

***

Philippine Sea, 27th January 1973

Mid-afternoon was a good time for hanging out in the mess, nice and quiet. The rec. room was too small, it invited conversation when someone found you there. Here, he was only disturbed by people wandering in for coffee, and by sitting as far as possible from the coffee machine he could make his desire to be ignored apparent.

Nevertheless, reading Catch-22 seemed to draw people’s attention - Steve-from-Landsat sat down to talk about it for a whole ghastly half hour, then came back ten minutes later with a copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, insisting Conrad accept the lend.

Reading the green hardbacks, however, repelled most visitors. But not all.

“Good book?”

He held it up so Weaver to read the gold-stamped title. “You’ve not read it?”

She shrugged. “In high school. Don’t remember much.”

“It’s not bad. Takes a while to get going.”

“You’ve been reading it for days.”

“I like to read once through fast, then a second time slowly. I’ve been overseas most of my adult life, you learn to make the most of what you’ve got.”

“Makes sense.”

“Besides, you’re mistaken. They have several books with the same binding. This is my third.”

“From the rec. room?”

“Yeah. There’s a copy of Catch-22 too if you’ve not read it.”

“Thanks.” He’d have liked to know if she had or not, but she wasn’t giving.

“Or Valley of the Dolls, if that’s more your scene.” As if.

She caught that he was teasing, chuckled. It felt good to have made her laugh.

Huh, he cared what she thought of him. He didn’t think he could say that about anyone else on this ship; well, apart from Randa, but that was just work. Chapman, maybe. He seemed to have his head screwed on.

Weaver shook her head. “What are you doing here?” She sounded too baffled to be just talking about his presence in the mess.

He glanced around; the room was empty. Even the kitchen, beyond the closed hatch, seemed quiet. “Honestly? If I had been less bored, I wouldn’t be. It was obviously a bad idea.”

“If you were suspicious, why did you say yes?” Her eyes on him were intent; it was slightly uncomfortable.

“I wasn’t, exactly. I doubt I was given any more information than you were up front.”

“You didn’t smell a rat?”

“Presumably you did.”

“Or I wouldn’t be here,” she agreed. “But you didn’t do any research? You took what they told you at face value?”

“It was barely a 48-hour turnaround, and my resources in Saigon are limited,” he returned mildly. “I guessed the military participation, but you’ll have gathered I’m surprised at its extent.”

“So you didn’t think it was fishy, but you’d have turned it down anyway? What am I missing?”

Weaver’s shifting expressions as she puzzled him over were a delight, and he was starting to enjoy being the focus of her attention. It was almost a shame to answer and lose her interest.

But if she didn’t know, it was important to pass the information on.

“Unknown biomes can be lethal,” he told her seriously. “We have no idea what we’ll find on this island: it might be fine, but then again we might encounter a bacterium that evolved there and die of dysentery before the pick-up. Or meet another of a thousand equally nasty ends.”

He’d managed to surprise her. “Huh.”

“We’ll bring all the antibiotics we can carry, anti-toxins, anti-venoms, all the latest and greatest. We aren’t completely helpless. But you need to understand the risk you’ll be taking.”

She stood, tapping a finger absently on the side of her Leica. “I should go think.”

“You do that.”

“But you’re still coming?”

“I am.”

“Okay.” Biting her lip thoughtfully, she drifted out of the room.

Chapter Text

South Pacific, Friday 2nd February 1973

Early on the thirteenth day, they sighted the storm. It was dense and strangely isolated, like a castle coming into view as you crossed a desert, the way it broke the curved line of the horizon.

From his position on the upper deck, Conrad could see into the bridge, could see that Randa, Nieves, Packard and Chapman had appeared via an internal stair. He drifted casually closer, and quietly slipped through the door to listen in as their leaders consulted together.

“How far away is this island?” Packard was asking.

“50 miles, maybe more,” returned the Athena’s captain.

“Take us closer,” Randa ordered.

The captain wasn’t having it. “You wanna launch, you do it from here.”

“Can you punch through that, Colonel?” Randa asked. “Our opening is now.”

Packard hunched over a photo, Chapman at his elbow. “Through this hole right here?”

“Yeah, it’s a rare low-pressure pocket.”

“I appreciate your passion, Randa, but as Field Supervisor of the controlling agency, I say we abort,” Nieves stated. He turned to the captain. “That’s it, we're gonna abort.” Was Randa going to accept that?

Conrad saw Weaver approach the door, and refused to be impressed; a journalist without spidey sense wouldn’t get far. He considered waving her off: he wasn’t sure if they’d noticed him, but if they saw her they’d definitely get kicked out.

Instead he eased it open silently to let her through, and she flicked a small smile, as if they were co-conspirators on a fact-finding mission. With a flash of surprise, he realised he had more in common with her than with anyone else here.

“Wise call,” Randa was saying to Nieves, sardonic. “I'm sure the Landsat inspector will be inspired by your courage.”

“No, he’ll be inspired by my common sense. This is only a map survey.”

“To one of the last uncharted areas on the face of the Earth. And you wanna call it on account of rain? Stay on the boat if you want to. It could be years before we get another shot at this.”

Randa turned to Packard. “I’m told your unit is capable of handling inclement weather, Colonel. Why don’t we leave it to Colonel Packard to break the tie?”

“There is no way I’m getting on that helicopter,” Nieves insisted.

***

And yet, an hour later, Nieves was among those boarding the Hueys.

Over the PA: “Two mikes till launch. Troops and civilians, board assigned aircraft. Two mikes till launch.”

There was anticipation in the air; Conrad detected some nerves too. Entirely reasonable, given that the storm looked - implausible? Unnatural? Supernatural, even. He heard older Griffins reassuring younger ones, based on their faith in Packard. If only he shared it: Randa had basically double-dared a man with a - yeah, he was starting to think Packard might have a death wish.

The Sky Devils who were remaining on board as the refuel team looked frankly smug as they watched their buddies prepare for take off. Staying behind was looking pretty damn fine right now.

Weaver, at his heels, took a few last snaps then followed him into the UH-1, obnoxiously making him unbuckle his lap belt to scoot along to the far seat, knowing he was too polite to refuse.

“No hesitation,” she noted, referring to his entry into the helicopter.

Conrad didn’t hesitate ever, as a matter of principle - not on a mission, not on the job. He hoped she wasn’t taking it as a sign that he liked their odds. “You could still drop out,” he reminded her. “I don’t think there’s any way they could make you come.”

“But you’re not going to.”

“If they’re doing this, they need me. If someone takes pictures badly in your stead, no one will die for it.”

“Duty of care.”

He shrugged. “I signed up.”

The co-pilot, a kid with an Eastern European name - Slivko - handed them back a couple of headsets, and then Packard was in his ears.

“This is Fox Leader to Fox Group. It is time, once again, for the griffin and ant show.” The colonel was relishing every moment of this unexpected final mission.

As they launched, Packard pulled the Griffins into formation, giving instructions with the relaxed air of a man who trusted his men to know what to do. The storm, flickering with lightning flashes, towered ahead of them, looming ever more imposingly - until they disappeared into it.

Visibility was nil; turbulence was intense, making Conrad wish there were doors. He was relieved when, after attempting some shots, Weaver gave up on her camera to hold on tightly. Good to know she had some sense of self-preservation.

Unexpectedly soothing in his ears was Packard’s baritone, spouting some fairy story of his own devising about Icarus and Pennsylvania steel. The lurching and dropping started to make him queasy.

Even from behind he could see that the pilot, Bates, was scowling intently as he tried to keep them steady with only instruments to guide him. This wasn’t an airliner, and they were flying formation - Conrad tried not to think too hard about it. Flying the damn chopper was most definitely on the Not His Problem list.

And then they were through, cloud abruptly turning to sunshine. Numerous tall rocky islets set in blue-green sea; beyond, a main island with a classic volcanic cone at the centre. They were of course not at a high enough vantage to see the eerie skull shape that Nieves’ satellite images had presented.

The sky was blue and peach, tinted by the storm; the flora looked to be jungle, as expected. Slivko turned back to grin at them, laughing with relief, then turned ahead to clap Bates on the shoulder.

As they approached the island, the islets spiked more densely, covered with low vegetation. The water below was barely even choppy, undisturbed by the encircling storm. It was breath-taking.

“Let’s take them down, low and level,” ordered Packard.

Now that they were flying smoothly, filing between islets and then along a ravine, Weaver had her camera out again. Flocks of birds flew; she grinned, whooping as they swooped onward.

From up here, yes, it was beautiful. You had to enjoy these moments, they were the gifts that kept you going. Moments of wonder. Once they landed... Well, that would keep for another half hour. Sunlight golden on her face, Weaver whooped again as they dipped low over a lake, and he chuckled, the feeling contagious.

One of the Hueys was fitted with a PA system, and they must have had a tape deck of some kind because Black Sabbath started playing - no record player could have kept its needle in the groove amid the rotors’ vibrations.

To be audible over the helicopters’ racket the volume must have been insane, but Weaver didn’t blink, so this was SOP. Conrad hadn’t had anything to do with regular US Army operations, but he should’ve known the Americans wouldn’t do anything with subtlety. Couldn’t fault their choice of music, though.

The two choppers carrying Landsat, Randa’s team, and a large amount of equipment set down and started setting up. The rest proceeded north over the island, waiting for their nod. Randa was with them, taking video footage from the air. Conrad was curious as to what the man was hoping to see, beyond general visual reference of the treetops and terrain.

While they waited, the ten remaining choppers skimmed over jungle and through valleys, enjoying the view. Passing over open ground, Conrad saw animals startle ahead of them. The music was incongruous, but it wasn’t as though they could travel quietly, and the deer wouldn’t know the difference between heavy metal and engine noise.

It only took 20 minutes for word to come through that the science team was ready for the seismic charges. The Sky Devils were delighted to comply.

The charges made quite a show, flames leaping up past the tree canopy. Seen in action, no sophistry could obscure the truth: these were bombs.

With a sour feeling in his stomach, Conrad wished Brooks were here to see the impact of his “scientific equipment”. It was ugly, and felt excessive. This wild place didn’t deserve such treatment; for all they knew, it had people in it, certainly all kinds of animals.

They could have set down, placed smaller devices with more precision. It would have taken longer, but they had the manpower to do it. He glanced over at Weaver, and found her face troubled.

It seemed they were the only ones.

“Hey, Randa, you’re not gonna believe this,” Brooks came through excitedly over the comm. “The bedrock...it’s practically hollow.”

That was something they’d been hoping for? What did it mean?

And then it went to hell.

“On guard, Fox Five!” warned Packard, sounding alarmed. “Fox Eight is down! Fox Four is down! Respond, Fox Three!”

Ahead of them, silhouetted against the storm’s false sunset, was a hundred-foot...gorilla?

It...

...it...

It stood upright, not hunched forward like a gorilla in a zoo.

Which made sense: gorillas were tree climbers, strength centred in their upper bodies. The only tree this thing would be climbing would be - Jack’s beanstalk? The Magic Faraway Tree? A giant redwood would be a leaning post.

They were heading right for it.

He looked to Weaver, who was spellbound, and then around, to see if anyone was preparing for any kind of action. The Devils were just sitting there with their jaws hanging. He looked forward, and felt his own jaw drop, stunned all over again.

The choppers peeled to either side of the beast. Amid their exclamations of alarm and confusion, Packard was giving orders to form a perimeter and fire, quite the opposite of what Conrad would have done in his place.

He snapped out of his daze as that sank in. No, no, no you did not antagonise something that big! Jesus Christ, had the man no sense?

But the Sky Devils had come straight here from a war, no time out of uniform, no peace-time duty to reset their brains. Of course Packard’s first instinct was to open fire.

And these were Packard’s men. Obediently they circled, the creature snarling at them, and the door gunner behind Conrad opened fire.

The creature put up its arms to protect its face, roaring with annoyance, but showed no sign of retreating. It punched a Huey out of the air, and beat its chest to mark the victory, still watching the remaining choppers, deciding what to do.

Fuck, they were going to die here. Conrad reached forward to tug Slivko’s sleeve. “Pull out now! Pull out!”

“I don’t take orders from you.” He might have been young, but the kid was well trained. Unfortunately.

The monster caught the Sea Stallion by the tail, yanking it backwards then letting it go to spin down into the jungle. Shit, that was Chapman. Packard was ordering out a rescue, but he didn’t think it was the Stallion they were going after, the callsign sounded wrong.

They’d lost easily half their forces at this point; Conrad could swear he’d seen a head-on collision of two Hueys as the creature leapt out of the way. They were being swatted like flies, these men who’d made it through Vietnam, Christ, and Bates and Slivko needed to set down right now now now, or they’d be dead too.

Slivko called back, “Hang on!”, turning at just the wrong moment. But there was nothing they could have done to avoid the falling man who impacted on the windscreen. They all watched in horror as the glass spider-webbed and the bloodied form slid out of view over their heads, to tangle in the rotor.

There was no question as to what would happen next, but Slivko gave the warning just the same.

“Prepare to crash!”

Chapter Text

“Brace!” Conrad yelled to Weaver over the racket, and tried to protect his head while keeping a hand clamped to the handrail. There was nothing more he could do for her. She’d have more experience with Hueys than him, anyway, and while she probably had no training, his training for such a descent had boiled down to an unedifying “strap in and hang on”.

The plunge through the trees was terrifying, with the tortured engine screaming horror in their ears. He’d never been in a crash, not from the air, and the sickening drop made his every nerve shriek in protest, even with the branches to slow them down. The halt was painful as all his bodyweight was thrown into the lap belt.

As they settled nose-down into the lower boughs, the motor gave up the ghost to leave a deafening silence. Either the radio or the internal comms had cut out, so he shook off his headset, letting it fall past him to dangle from its cable.

The sound of the other choppers was eerily distant. There was an explosion far off somewhere, and then maybe another. Then nothing at all.

They hung there in the quiet for a minute, catching their breath. The jungle, which had been holding its breath along with them, started to make noise again.

God, he was going to have move, wasn’t he.

Fuck, he could see blood pooling in what was left of the windscreen. And while he could hear Slivko panting, blocked from Conrad’s view by the seat immediately in front of (below) him, no sound was coming from Bates, and no movement, either.

He looked across at Weaver - had already checked on her, physically she looked fine - but now looked to see how she was doing mentally. “Hey,” he croaked. His throat was rough with the acrid smoke the dying engine had put out.

She was staring at the pool of blood on the glass. She wouldn’t be able to see Bates himself at all from there; that was something.

“Weaver.” She turned her wide, appalled eyes on him. “You’re alive. Unhurt?”

She blinked a few times, then nodded.

“That’s good,” he reminded her, and turned his attention forward. “Slivko?”

“I, I, I don’t think Bates is, is...”

“I know. How about you?”

“I’m fine. C-completely fine.”

Biting his lip, knowing their silence meant nothing good, he did his best to twist around to see the space behind, where the two gunners should be. Their names floated somewhere off outside his immediate recollection; he chose not to reach for them.

And yeah. The space was just...empty. Simple as that. Fuck.

Well, that was that.

There was a crashing of undergrowth below and a flicker of movement, though there was little Conrad could see from the middle of the Huey. Christ, whatever it was, hopefully they’d be safe from it up here.

“Hello?”

Seriously? “Brooks?”

“And San and Nieves. Can we, ah, help you down or something?”

Gingerly unbelting, he eased himself over to the doorway. They were only ten feet up, maybe twelve. He checked to see if anything could be recovered, saw nothing useful but his own bag and Weaver’s, and carefully made his way to the lowest edge of the doorframe, then out onto a landing skid. “It’s fine.”

“Fine?” Brooks wasn’t convinced, but hanging at arms’ length reduced the fall by more than half, and to drop the rest of the way was nothing he hadn’t done before. Slivko threw a few things down to him, including the radio, and followed suit, landing in a practiced crouch.

Weaver looked dubious, but dutifully copied them, dangling herself then hesitating. To be fair, while she wasn’t short, it’d be an extra foot down for her. She didn’t look like she weighed much.

“I’ll catch you.”

“You sure?”

“Try not to kick me in the face. Point your toes. Count of three?”

“Two, one.” A beat. “W-whoa!”

Oof. A faceful of clothing, a breathless slide, and onto her feet. “There we go.”

She straightened her shirt. “Thanks.”

Nieves handed over his binoculars at Conrad’s silent request - his team had successfully landed, so they would have all manner of gear. He’d have to go through it, see what was worth bringing. Food, meds, water, ammo; they couldn’t carry more.

Though if Nieves’ group’s situation were that good, there would be more of them than just the three: perhaps their equipment had gone the same way as the rest of their people. He briefly wondered about Steve-the-avid-reader.

First, though, reconnaissance. Taking the chance of leaving the others to look after themselves, he made for higher ground. It took ten minutes to reach a break in the tree line.

A quick survey showed nothing in the air but birds. The beast was striding away through a gap in the hills, with an unmistakable air of job done. That was an answer in itself. Christ.

He cut off that avenue of thought: not constructive. Okay, then. He made a mental note of where the river lay. Just in case, he made another wide scan for any sign of the Griffins. Apart from a drift of smoke here and there, there was nothing but untouched jungle. They were on their own.

This was what he was here for. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the responsibility settle, and headed back down.

Slivko hadn’t given up hope. “Calling all units. Is anybody airborne? I repeat, is anybody airborne?”

“They’re all down. Every one of them.” He found himself talking directly to Weaver, without really meaning to. “We’re on the south side of the island. There’s a river a couple of klicks from here. If we stick to its banks, we’ll make it to the exfil site on the north shore.”

“And then what?” asked Nieves. “All our choppers are down.”

“We’ll find a way to signal the ship. They’ll send a search party. We just have to make it by the exit window.”

“I should be sitting at a desk,” muttered Nieves. Conrad couldn’t disagree.

“So, wait, are we just not gonna talk about this?” protested Slivko. The rest ignored him.

“My best guess is we’re scattered over a four- to five-mile radius,” Conrad told Weaver. “We should head north and join anyone we find.” She looked shell-shocked. “Are you all right?” he checked.

“I don’t know how to answer that question right now.”

At least she was talking. And yeah, it was a lot to process - which was why he wasn’t even trying. “I don’t know what that was either,” he admitted.

She tilted her head. “All that money that they paid you? I hope you’re worth it.”

Ouch. That shouldn’t have felt like a gut punch. She’d never been in the field with him, and she was too smart for blind faith.

The fact was that he didn’t know of anyone better working in South-East Asia - and it was his business to know.

But he wasn’t infallible, and he didn’t have superpowers. He considered replying, but words would be empty: the proof of his worth would be measured over the next three days. They’d both find out her answer, for better or worse.

***

They made their way down through the jungle towards the river, through clouds of insects and billowing ferns, every species a little unfamiliar. Conrad eyed it all with suspicion, while keeping his ears open and watching out for signs of predators. There were plenty of those, old scratches in bark, scat in the forest litter, but nothing to make him call a halt to their march.

As they went, Brooks did his best to answer Slivko’s questions, outlining what everyone should’ve been told at the outset.

His organisation, Monarch, sought MUTOs, massive prehistoric creatures - and this was the first time they’d found one. “It’s called the Hollow Earth theory. Randa hired me because I wrote a paper substantiating what most people think is a crackpot idea. That there are these massive underground spaces isolated from the surface world.”

“Passageways,” elaborated San. “Randa believed this island may be one of those.”

“An emergence point for whatever lives below. Ancient species like what we just saw. I thought he was out of his mind,” Brooks admitted.

Conrad expected Weaver to have follow-up questions, but she just kept walking, halting here and there to bring her camera up to her face. Her journalistic instincts weren’t verbal.

He wasn’t inclined to press for details, either. Nothing Brooks had to offer would keep them alive now they were here. Its usefulness had passed.

He confined himself to thinking about the moment, and strategising for contingencies. It wasn’t very productive: most of them amounted to If X happens, we’re fucked. If someone twists an ankle. If someone’s bitten by one of those alarmingly large not-mosquitoes. If we don’t find fresh water within 24 hours. If something happens and we’re split up.

He’d brought a med pack, as had San and Brooks, but they were slimline first aid kits with extras jammed into them, rather than any of the four med chests the expedition had brought. It made him twitchy, but travelling on foot they’d had no choice.

Nonetheless, for right now, they were doing fine. They weren’t going as fast as he would have liked, but Nieves, the least fit, was moving forward steadily, setting a reasonable pace from his spot at the back of the group. Conrad carefully matched it at the front, checking back frequently to make sure his instinct to accelerate wasn’t kicking in. Speed might lead to stumbling, which could lead to twisted ankles, at which point, see above.

***

The kid hadn’t given up. As they reached a grassy stretch at the river’s edge, he was back on the radio, hoping the open landscape would let the signal travel further. “This is Slivko. Do you read? Anybody out there? We're headed north to the exfil location. Everyone here seems way too calm right now. Do you copy? Anybody?”

“We're out of range, Slivko.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Save it for when we get closer to the group.”

And then some branches, sticking out of the water a few feet away, rose up, revealing an absolutely enormous water buffalo thing. Not on the same scale as the gorilla, but he and Slivko automatically trained their rifles on it.

It looked at them curiously, flies buzzing around its eyes, and moved closer, splashing through the shallows.

“Nobody move,” Conrad ordered quietly. “Easy.” Perhaps its eyesight wasn’t good. Perhaps it wasn’t a threat anyway, it looked like it was chewing on waterweed - though herbivores could be territorial. No, it seemed perfectly calm, unthreatened by their presence.

But was Slivko making the same assessment? He found himself shushing soothingly, as much for the kid as for the creature. Very slowly he inched towards the pilot, careful to let the lad know he was coming. “Slivko.”

“What?” The boy sounded ragged, terrified.

Close enough now, he reached out and lowered the muzzle of Slivko’s M-16. “Put it down.”

The 30-foot-high buffalo lost interest in them, and wandered back off into the river.

Well, that was a hell of a thing.

Chapter Text

There were human beings on the island. A wall, tumbledown but built of dressed stone, implied quite a high level of advancement, if not now then in the past. And jungle wasn’t kind to human endeavour. If it wasn’t maintained, a wall wouldn’t last long here.

“Stay tight,” he warned the group, leading them through a gap.

“What the hell is this?” Nieves wondered.

A clearing; an archway, perhaps the opposite wall of what had once been a building? All overgrown under the trees. Many small yellow vertical markings on the stone, paint perhaps. Fresh paint.

Weaver saw them first, magnified by her camera lens, and shrieked. The natives were right there, mud and paint camouflaging them against the walls: they stepped out like a portrait stepping down from its frame - but with lethal-looking spears, raised and aimed at eye-level.

There was general chaos which he failed to calm as the group was encircled, pressed back into an outward-facing huddle. “Nobody shoot,” he ordered, and thank god they didn’t, because he couldn’t think of a faster way of getting them all killed.

Of course, they might be eaten later. But later was later; later meant you had options, chances, moments to take action when maybe there weren’t ten spears pointed at your face.

The ones aiming their spears were thickly daubed in camouflage; once the strangers were contained, some others, less densely painted, stepped through the arch to join them. None made a sound, though their glares communicated well enough.

There was a moment of stand-off. They might not be able to recognise a rifle, but could surely read body language well enough to know that what everyone but Weaver was pointing was a weapon. Regardless, the locals were impassive, unyielding, confident that they had the strangers pinned. Which they did. There was nothing to do but wait to see what happened next.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” A big teddy bear of a man came through the archway, in ill-fitting Western dress - more, in US Air Force uniform. World War II era, if Conrad wasn’t mistaken. Not so much tattered as water-damaged and grown out of.

“No, no, no. No need for that!” the man was urging - not ordering, but also not begging. He wasn’t in charge here, but he expected the tribesmen to listen. “Come on now. Everybody, keep your wigs on now!”

In his early fifties, maybe? A lot of grey in his full beard, his round cheeks tanned nut-brown. He looked healthy, and moved through the space like he belonged, unafraid of the locals as he pushed through to reach the newcomers.

That spoke volumes, it opened up wide vistas of possibility - but it offered no guarantee of how the tribe would receive them. Conrad lowered his rifle a little, just a gesture - it wouldn’t take half a second to raise it again.

“I didn’t believe it when they said you were coming,” the garrulous stranger continued, their own disbelief mirrored on his amiable face. “I was up all night just thinking about how me and Gunpei dreamed of this moment. And now here it is. 28 years, 11 months...and eight failed attempts to get back to the world...and instead the world comes to me? Ain’t that a crack?”

He glanced around at the painted people as if he expected them to laugh with him. The natives were unmoved. “They never smile,” he explained.

“Did you crash here?” asked Weaver.

“Sorry, miss.” The man saluted. “Lt. Hank Marlow of the 45th. Put the old flight suit on for you,” he told the group. “You are more beautiful than a hotdog and a beer at Wrigley Field on opening day.” One hand was up, cupped, as if the hotdog were in it, the other turned sideways to hold the invisible beer; he stared hard at them, then up at Conrad and the rest.

“But you’re real.” He hesitated. “Right?” Still stunned, no one thought to nod. He turned to the tribesmen. “I told you. Didn’t I tell you? I said, ‘It’s fine.’” They lowered their spears; Conrad lowered his rifle then checked absolutely everyone else had, too. They couldn’t afford any mistakes.

“There we go,” Marlow soothed.

“There's something out there, man,” Slivko warned him, as if it would be news.

Marlow chuckled, shaking his head. “There’s a lot out there. Now, come on. We gotta get home. You don’t wanna be out here at night.” It wasn’t a casual statement.

Conrad let himself relax the tiniest amount, deeply relieved. Oh thank god, the man was going to be useful, not (just) deranged. It would’ve been forgivable to lose his marbles under the circumstances, Christ, 28 years, but instead this looked like the break they needed. Did this man know enough to keep them alive? Could he get them across the island?

***

Marlow led them back down to the river, which was still close by; boats, little more than canoes, were taken from their hiding place in the bushes, and pushed into the water. While the natives were still unwilling to interact with the group, they allowed Marlow to direct the foreigners into various boats, and paddled them downstream.

Conrad knew better than to offer to help paddle. He’d ended up with Weaver, semi-intentionally, which he justified on the basis that she was unarmed - though he should probably have gone in with Nieves, the member of the party most likely to put his foot in it.

But it was done now, so he contented himself with watching the passing banks for movement, looking to the river ahead, and periodically checking that none of the boats had taken a side trip with any of his people.

Weaver was taking pictures, of course; of the woman paddling them, of the boats ahead and behind. Maybe of him, too; he felt an itch of awareness at the nape of his neck, which he refused to react to.

Birds flew across, disturbed by their mass passing. Under other circumstances he’d have appreciated the view, the dart of fish, the brightness of flowers as they went by. Instead, he was assuming that red meant poison, was wondering if the fish had teeth. There were more of those not-mosquitoes, too.

After half an hour, the river took a big curve, and far to the right there was something dark filling the space between two hills. As they drew closer, it revealed itself as a wooden structure, not unlike a dam as seen from below, towering. The approach took a little time, the loom of the wall increasing minute by minute.

It was manned, and someone opened a way through at the base, 12 feet high maybe, for the canoes, allowing them to slip through to the other side. Beyond, there was more water, and then on a thrust of land they could see a collection of round straw huts and some larger wooden buildings, darkened by the humidity.

From the inner side, it was easier to see how the wall had been built. It might not have been made of the dressed stone they’d seen earlier, but it looked robust, thoughtfully designed. It was hung with long, narrow banners, wine-red with yellow embroidery; the banners appeared everywhere around the Iwi village, too.

“You probably noticed a lot of weird things on this island,” Marlow understated outrageously. “As long as we stay in here where the people live, we’ll be all right.”

Chapter Text

“That wall, is that supposed to keep out that thing?” Weaver was asking, looking to the river-wall. Beyond the village, Conrad could see a similar structure mirroring it, at the other end of the valley.

“Nah, he’s not the one they’re trying to keep out.”

“What?” asked Brooks, suitably alarmed.

Marvellous. It figured that there’d be more predator-monsters out there, they couldn’t all be slow-moving herbivores. Conrad knew all about good luck, and how there wasn’t any, ever.

“These people live up on top of the trees while we’re down on the roots.” So perhaps these huts weren’t so much a village as a town centre, the communal buildings. Or did Marlow mean that metaphorically?

Everyone was dressed in the same wine-red fabric the banners were made of, silently carrying out various tasks. Some stopped to gaze curiously at the strangers, but no exclamation passed their lips, not even an audible inhalation.

Could they all be deaf, some genetic condition? If so, though, wouldn’t they be inadvertently making noise?

Their silence was like a blanket, not oppressive but certainly suppressive. He looked to Marlow, wondering how long it had taken to come to terms with it. The man must talk to himself a lot, or he would have lost the ability to chat in English so readily. Marlow had briefly explained about Gunpei, the Japanese pilot who had crashed with him, but just how fluent could they have become in each other’s languages?

The Iwi silence was dignified. There were no children running around, there must be strict rules about where they were allowed to go, and without the staccato movements of youth the pace of the village was unhurried, serene, composed.

Some had baskets of red fibres that they were teasing apart, presumably the source of their fabric. Some stirred cooking pots over fires. Others were tending small patches of crops.

Conrad had an unexpected flashback to lending a hand on his grandfather’s allotment, the old man smoking a pipe in his deck chair, barking orders as if he were still with the Iron Division, knee deep in mud on the Western Front. He shook his head to clear it; not the time.

“Some of them don’t even seem to age,” Marlow continued. “There’s no crime, no personal property. They’re past all that.” Or hadn’t advanced enough to reach it, Conrad mentally filled in.

But there was something very moving about Marlow’s profound respect for these people, these people who’d saved his life and allowed him to live among them for all these years. Weaver’s face said that she felt it too; he didn’t realise he’d smiled at her until she returned it.

They came to a halt in front of a man and woman, marked out as different by their blue paint and blue and green clothes. The pair stood side by side as Marlow spread his hands in a voiceless entreaty. After a pause of consideration, though with no sign of consulting each other, the elders simultaneously gave a slow bow, both stately and respectful. As Marlow returned it, he murmured, “Thank you, thank you,” before turning back to the group.

“So, good news. They say you can shack up here.”

“I didn’t hear them say anything,” Conrad noted. If they were going to impose on these people’s hospitality, effectively putting themselves at their mercy, he’d have preferred a more explicit indication of consent.

“They don’t speak too much,” Marlow explained. “When you’ve been here as long as I have, you start to understand. You’ll see.”

Conrad wasn’t an anthropologist, so he just watched the Iwi for any sign of threat, Marlow’s words notwithstanding. He kept an eye on his own party, too. This encounter might save their lives, but it could also go wrong with a quickness - a minute misunderstanding, with no shared culture to avert it, with no shared language to clear it up, could blow this whole thing up.

For all they knew, a sneeze or a scratch of the nose would be seen as a mortal insult. After so many years’ immersion, Marlow might not think to warn them.

They hurried after him across the village, and Nieves had to break into a run to get ahead and halt their progress. “Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. We can’t stay here. We have to get off the island. We have lives. I have a life.”

The man was a fool, what more did he think Marlow could do? They couldn’t spend the night walking through the jungle in the dark, and they sure as hell didn’t want to lose this help by throwing it back in Marlow’s face.

“Nieves, now is not the time,” he warned. “All right?” Nieves reluctantly conceded, dropping to the back of the group as they set off again, but careful to keep up.

As if they hadn’t seen enough wonders, a rusted-out ship was soon towering over them, bushes grown up around her, name still legible on the side: Wanderer. Apt, considering how far she’d come; no longer so, given her grounded state.

“What lands here tends to stay here,” noted Marlow. “As far as I can tell, this ship
washed up about 10 years before I did.”

“You’ve been here since ’44?” Weaver sounded incredulous; maybe she’d been too shocked to absorb Marlow’s first words until now.

“Yeah. Hey, what happened with the war? Did we win?”

“Which one?” quipped the kid.

“That makes sense,” returned Marlow agreeably. He seemed willing to take any kind of response from them, probably still giddy with hearing English talked back to him after so long.

They ducked through holes in the ship’s hull and filed along inside, passing more natives, all with the same yellow markings. “This is all hallowed ground to them,” their guide warned. “So if you like your hands, don’t touch anything.” He stopped and reverently removed his hat.

As they followed him through the doorway into a wider space Weaver, just in front, caught her breath. “Look at that.”

The metal ribs of the boat arched over them, studded with rivets and still fully clad, though light was filtering in where the metal had rusted through.

There was a lot of people in here, the nearest all in blue paint, blue clothes. Priests, acolytes? Perhaps the woman earlier had been their religious representative or leader, making the man in green the secular one.

Posts were set into the floor, dark and worn, clustered together. It looked oddly like an estuary at low tide. Conrad drifted forward, trying to make sense of the painted markings on them, white and yellow, red and blue.

“The way they tell it, for thousands of years the people on this island lived in fear. That’s a hell of a long time to be scared.”

There were rudimentary white figures of people, holding spears. And as Conrad moved to the right spot, the other markings resolved into the large shapes of monsters, with empty eyeholes and sharp teeth.

“And then, one day, the damnedest thing happened. Some of the things they were afraid of started protecting them against the things that were eating them.”

Now correctly positioned, Conrad slowly spun to take it all in. There. A great gorilla, with figures kneeling before it.

“But nothing lasts forever, I guess.” Marlow led them to the far end of the space.

“And this is where they honour the last of their saviours. Yeah.” This image was much bigger, the creature’s upper body dwarfing a large group of kneeling figures.

“That’s Kong. He’s king around here. He’s god to these people. Kong’s a pretty good king. Keeps to himself mostly. This is his home. We’re just guests here.”

He turned to the group. “But you don’t go into someone’s house and start dropping bombs unless you’re picking a fight.”

Randa had had at least some inkling, and he hadn’t seemed an impetuous man. But driven, certainly. What had driven him to do something so aggressive?

“Wasn’t Kong the one who killed your friend?” asked Weaver.

“No. One of them did.” Across the way, a different creature: two legs and a tail, with a long narrow head tapering to a pointed muzzle. “Kong’s god on the island, but the devils live below us.”

“And what are they called?” Conrad wondered. In the corner of his eye he saw Brooks twitch at the word “below”. Yes, that would chime with his hollow-earth theory.

“The Iwis won’t speak their name. But I call them skull-crawlers.”

That sounded appalling. “Why?” Conrad asked warily.

“’Cause it sounds neat.”

He and Weaver swapped a look. “Okay.”

“Look, I just made that name up. I’m trying to scare you.”

“I’m fine calling them that,” Weaver covered, sensing Marlow’s embarrassment. “Are you cool with that? I like the name...”

“Yeah, that seems like a great name,” Conrad agreed.

“I’ve never said that name out loud before,” admitted Marlow. “It sounds stupid now that I say it. Just... You call them whatever you want. They’re big lizard things. Nasty. They come from the vents deep down.

“That’s why Kong got so mad. Those bombs woke up a bunch of them.”

Oh Jesus Christ. Fucking Randa. So many dead, and entirely justified.

“I tell you what,” Marlow added, “You’re lucky he’s out there, too, or you wouldn’t have made it this far. They’re crafty bastards. Mean as hell. Now, he can handle them as long as he gets to them when they’re still small.

“You don’t wanna wake up the big one.”

“How big is it?” asked San.

“It’s bigger. It wiped out his whole family. Kong’s the last of his kind, but he’s still growing. And you better hope he does. Because the Iwis say once Kong goes, then the big one comes up.

“Then it’s, ‘Goodnight, Irene’.”

It suddenly occurred to Conrad that they hadn’t given him the good news. “Listen, there’s a refueling team coming to the north end of the island in three days.”

“You should come with us,” finished Weaver.

Marlow smiled. “To the north end of the island?”

Conrad grinned back. “We’re gonna get out of here.”

“In three days?” Marlow was laughing now, patting him on the cheek affectionately.

“Yes.” Okay, something was wrong.

Marlow still had a smile on his face as he dropped the bomb. “You can’t get to the north end in three days. It’s impossible. That’s it. No way.”

Before Conrad had time to do more than watch Weaver’s smile fade to nothing, though, Marlow seemed to have a thought. “At least not on foot.”

“You have an alternative?” Conrad really really fucking hoped so.

“Well, I kinda got a boat.”

“A boat!” exclaimed Slivko, excited - then less so. “Oh, you mean like we came in?”

“No, a... Come see. It needs some work, don’t get too excited.” He started back out the way they’d come in.

“Don’t think I’ll be much help working on a boat,” Weaver stated.

“Mmmm,” agreed Brooks. “Could we stay in the village? I wanna take some notes.”

Conrad sighed internally: he’d told them not to bring anything that couldn’t save their life. He had doubts about what Nieves was carrying in that stupid briefcase, too. “Would the Iwis mind us wandering about unsupervised?”

“It’ll be fine,” Marlow shrugged. “Just don’t interfere in whatever they’re doing. Come on.”

Chapter Text

Marlow led them out of the temple, back to the edge of the water. “We were this close to getting it working,” he explained. “Me and Gunpei were gonna take off for the open sea, try to get home. That’s when one of them things got him.” Yeah, a trip like that would’ve been chancy enough with two - a suicide mission with one.

“There she is.”

Moored beside a rickety jetty, was... Well, it was floating, you had to give it that. Probably. Who knew what was going on below the water line.

It looked more like a plane than a boat, evidently built from and around a fighter’s fuselage - the USAAF insignia was still visible on the side. Marlow really had been a pilot, a missing pilot. For some reason the parallel with his missing father hadn’t occurred to Conrad till now. But this boat...

All he could think of to say was, “Well, that’s lovely,” with a whisper of sarcasm he hadn’t intended to voice. The fact that they were fucked after all made it difficult to feign enthusiasm.

“You’re damn right,” agreed Marlow, perhaps choosing not to notice.

They clambered on board, looking it over. “Does this thing even float?” demanded Slivko. No tact, that kid.

“Me and Gunpei spent six years of our lives building this thing.” Marlow was resolute. “She’s called the Grey Fox. And she floats.”

If she did, she truly was a wonder. Conrad eyed the hodgepodge of controls in the cabin, some of which looked too big to be from any fighter he’d ever seen, mixed with random parts put to random uses. The full length of a wing, tip to tip, was attached to the outside, forming part of the hull. At one end was an engine, the propellers removed. At the other a machine gun was mounted.

“Pulled the engine parts from my P-51 and his old Zero. Found a B-29 on the beach one day. That was something.”

“You gotta be kidding me,” scoffed Nieves. “That thing looks like it’s made out of pure tetanus.”

“I know she ain’t pretty to look at, but it’s nothing a couple of extra hands can’t fix. Unless you got a better idea, I suggest we get cracking.”

Fair point. “All right,” Conrad agreed, and made his way down into the cabin. He wasn’t much of a mechanic, but he had some basics, and a glint in Slivko’s eye suggested he might know rather more. And Nieves, well, he could pass them a spanner. If Marlow had one, which was doubtful.

“Okay,” he summarised: “So, we’ve got 48 hours to make it to the north shore. Slivko, do you know what you’re doing back there?”

“Yeah. My pop’s a mechanic. If I can’t fix this, he’ll disown me... If he ever sees me again.”

“Then Marlow, where do we start?”

***

In the midst of all the chaos and tension, their afternoon in the boat was an oasis of satisfyingly constructive activity. Conrad had considered stopping Slivko from lugging the record player through the jungle, but concluded that the pilot would have the sense to ditch it if they needed to run for their lives (the same did not go for whatever notebooks Brooks was hauling around). It paid off now, as the kid brought it down to the boat and got some music playing - but as it turned out, there wasn’t a silence to fill.

Marlow was good company, but had the attention span of a gadfly, and it was a trip trying to bring him up to date on the modern world.

“Hold the phone there, Churchill,” he protested, “Russia was our ally. Now, you’re saying we’re at war with them?”

“It’s more of a Cold War,” Conrad explained inadequately.

“Cold war like...like they take the summers off?”

Before Conrad could formulate a response, Marlow was off on another tangent, asking about sports. And then Nieves mentioned the moon landing, but failed to follow up with any detail, leaving the castaway with some strange misinformation that really wasn’t going to help his reintegration into society should he ever be so lucky.

“Come on, we’re losing daylight,” Conrad reminded them. It was starting to make him edgy, their party being split up for this long without a check-in. He hoped Weaver wasn’t getting herself into trouble. Or Brooks and San, of course.

By evening, Conrad’s fingers were bruised with trying to twist things tight that were meant to be tightened by tools designed for the job, Slivko was complaining about his shoulders, and even Nieves had managed to drop a camshaft on his toe. But they were very close to done. “Did you get her running before?” he asked.

“Not with all the parts connected. Just enough to know that she would work. We were gathering supplies when he met the...thing that killed him.” He was still sensitive about the name.

“Skull-crawler,” Conrad supplied.

“Right.”

“So you don’t know what speed she can do.”

“It’ll be a lot faster than paddling, I can tell you that much. We should be fine, so long as she keeps ticking over. If she stops, well...” He looked over at Slivko. “It’ll be on you, kid.” Slivko didn’t look in the least troubled, which was reassuring.

Marlow glanced up and noted the position of the sun. “Oh, we need to get back. Sun’s going down, and we’re coming up on dinner hour.”

“Dinner?” Slivko perked up.

Conrad imagined him visualising a burger and fries. It had been very strange, on the Athena, eating Western food again. “Marlow, what can we expect?”

“The food? Some kind of vegetable stew, usually, with a bit of fish or meat in it. The spices take some getting used to, but who knows what people eat nowadays, maybe they won’t be so strange to you. You’ll want more salt. There isn’t any.”

That sounded manageable. “Okay, I need you to listen closely,” he told Slivko and Nieves as they clambered out of the Gray Fox and back onto the jetty. “The Iwi are our hosts. They can’t conceive of the foods we normally eat, not in their wildest dreams. Their food is the only food that exists in all the world, and if it tastes good to them it must taste good to everyone. Not to mention that they work hard to produce it.”

He scanned their faces, hoping they were taking in his words. “You do not spit it out. You do not pick bits out and peer at them. You do not refuse seconds, if they are so gracious as to offer them. I don’t care if you think you’ve bitten down on a cockroach, you swallow and you smile and you say thank you. Bowing seems to be the done thing around here.”

“Yes, sir,” acknowledged Slivko, a little wide-eyed. Nieves nodded, but with a distance that suggested he’d be doing what he saw fit, thank you very much.

“Nieves, I’m not kidding. The shortest way to big trouble is to insult your host.”

“It’ll be fine,” shrugged Marlow, already walking back towards the village. “We can take it back to mine and eat by ourselves, it won’t offend anyone.”

***

It turned out Marlow lived in a full-on house, or perhaps cabin, built into the side of the steep incline by the temple-ship. Conrad wasn’t sure how he’d missed it earlier, other than that the humidity had darkened the wood enough to blend it into the hillside.

“We get to sleep in beds?” wondered Slivko, awed, as he looked up the hill.

“Ah, no,” apologised Marlow. “Well, one of you can, and there’s Gunpei’s futon, and a couple of armchairs.”

“Frankly, I take ‘not on the jungle floor’ as a win,” Conrad told him. “We’ll actually sleep. You’re a miracle, Marlow, and every time I think I can’t be more grateful, you come up with something new.” Marlow blushed under his deep tan, and deflected with stories of meals with Gunpei in the early days.

They’d gathered up Brooks, San and Weaver in the village, and were now walking up to the house with an earthen pot, heavy with stew, supported by two thick bamboo poles that they were taking turns to carry in pairs. The poles weren’t so much for its weight as because it would be too hot to hold, Marlow had explained when it was offered to them.

Conrad had bowed thanks along with Marlow, and observant Weaver had followed suit, prompting awkward bobs and nods from the rest of the group. The two yellow-painted Iwi, inscrutable as ever, had nodded in return.

Brooks and San were chatting away as they toiled up the steep slope, voluble now they felt safe - at least, Brooks was doing most of the talking, but San was clearly listening and interested. There was the beginning of something in the air between them, Conrad would lay money on it.

Weaver, on the other hand, was silent.

“Penny for them?” he asked, but she shook her head.

“Later.”

Was that a promise?

The hell, Conrad? Get a grip.

As they approached the cabin, its expert construction became more evident. Either Marlow had arrived on the island with some serious carpentry skills, or had learned them from someone, because there was even proper furniture - tables with turned legs, for heaven’s sake - and homemade art on the walls. God knew what the Iwi made of it all.

There was a sense of euphoria as they settled down to eat what tasted like an oddly spiced sweet-potato stew. It did indeed want salt, but it was filling, and it was hot, and that was intensely comforting.

Marlow was delighted to be playing host - he wouldn’t have had dinner conversation since he’d lost Gunpei. It was becoming clearer just how lonely he had been since his friend’s death.

Conrad wondered what Gunpei had been like. Marlow was an effusive personality, but he was careful to leave space for others. James had been thinking of that as a result of his long coexistence with the Iwi, with their intense culture of respect and self-containment, but it might also be about Marlow’s brother pilot and best friend. If they came through this he might ask, but for now, he didn’t want to upset the man while he looked so happy.

Chapter Text

It was always wise to do a perimeter check before bed, and he wasn’t going to break the habit because they were somewhere ostensibly safe. He knew the Iwi kept watch through the night, but it would be good to see evidence of that.

It didn’t take much: even in the dimness, he could make out figures holding spears standing guard at elevated positions, outlined against the sky; possibly even make out a couple standing watch on the wall across the water, though his eyes might have been tricking him.

He didn’t stray far, not having brought his torch; just did a circuit of the cabin, making sure he would be able to find the path down the hill in the dark, if they had to run. And that he had an alternate route planned out, too, in case the first was blocked.

His way was lit by an astounding light show in the sky, a tropical aurora display, all dancing blues and greens. He hadn’t thought such a thing possible away from the poles. At an uneducated guess, it would be connected to the storm somehow.

He took a few minutes to gaze up at it, and to listen to the night sounds - and okay, that was habit too: you needed a baseline if you were to identify unusual sounds that might mean trouble.

On the breeze, small noises drifted up from the village - naturally no voices, but the occasional clink of utensils or clonk of earthenware as chores were completed before the Iwi settled for the night.

Coming back in, the cabin was cozy with lantern light. Bowie was playing on the record player, a song Conrad loved - that kind of gave him chills, that whole Ziggy album.

It was amazing how music could make a foreign setting feel like home: Slivko’s illogical decision to bring the player along was starting to make more sense. It went against Conrad’s training, which was all about keeping a low profile, but he had a moment of regret that they’d not been able to do something similar in the SAS. It would have eased many a miserable night.

Headcount: in the corridor he’d passed Brooks telling San about how Randa was the only person who’d believed in him, and how he’d repaid that by not believing Randa.

In the main room, Slivko was testing out a spear: if asked, the boy would probably call it goofing around, but it was a smart move to get a feel for available weapons.

Marlow was talking to Nieves as he used a knife to trim off the lengths of his beard. Nieves was looking at the pilot like he was a crazy man with a knife, but Conrad trusted Marlow more than he did Nieves so didn’t much care.

And Weaver was over on the verandah, her camera set up on a tripod, the only person looking at the astounding aurora tropicalis. That figured.

He went to join her, but leaned in the doorway, not crowding her, eyes on the sky. “Isn’t it odd, the most dangerous places are always the most beautiful?” he mused.

“I’m trying to take a long-exposure photograph, but my flashlight broke,” she explained.

“Oh, try this,” he suggested, pulling out his lighter and flicking the flame alight.

“Thank you.”

She’d ditched her shirt, and the tank top was a good look on her. It was tempting, but past the initial impression he didn’t stare. He wasn’t a schoolboy.

She used the lighter to illuminate the settings on her camera, clicked the dial around to where she wanted it, then turned the lighter in her hand. “Royal Air Force?”

“It was my father’s. He threw it to me from the train as he rolled off to fight the Nazis. He was like John Wayne to me. Some kind of mythic hero.” Why was he telling her this?

“Did he come back?” Trust Weaver to cut to the most pertinent question.

“His plane went down near Hamburg. They searched for him for months but...” There was moment’s silence. “I suppose no man comes home from war. Not really.”

Which was why Randa had been wrong. Conrad would have gone home years ago if he thought it was anywhere he’d recognise, or that would recognise him.

The thought of his son skipped through his head, a microsecond, all he ever permitted himself.

Yeah. No. He was never going back.

Weaver was looking up at him, curious. He turned away, back to the room; it was time everyone got some sleep. This night was a gift that might help them survive tomorrow, and they should use it to its fullest.

But this wasn’t his home. “Marlow,” he said. The pilot had finished his rough barbering, and looked over. “We need to call it a night. Where do you want to put us?”

***

Skull Island, Saturday 3rd February 1973

In the morning, after a breakfast of cold stew, Marlow went down to the temple. Conrad was itching to be away, and wasn’t alone in this, but Marlow had been here for thirty years, had come to believe he would die here. There were things he needed to do before they could go.

To keep things moving (and to stop anyone saying something tactless), Conrad sent the others down to the boat. Slivko could get on with the work they’d been doing yesterday, and the others would at least be in the right place to leave at the earliest opportunity.

He, however, elected to show respect to their host by going with him, and Weaver came too. In a corner of the temple was Gunpei’s grave. Marlow rested on top of it Gunpei’s wallet of personal belongings, which he’d brought down from the house, with the cherished photo of a woman - wife? mother? - visible in an outside pocket. By the way the mound still sat well above ground level, the man hadn’t been dead many years. His katana was impaled in the ground tip-down, like a headstone.

After saying a few moving words - the men had sworn they wouldn’t leave each other behind - Marlow took the sword and sheathed it in the scabbard belted at his waist. It was the best he could do to honour the vow. Conrad silently made his own promise, that he’d do everything in his power to give the pilot the chance to return it to Gunpei’s family.

They all worked together to get the boat started, only Brooks and San holding back for fear of breaking something by looking at it wrong. It took some doing, some of the levers had seized in the years since Gunpei’s death, but third try was the charm, and Weaver at the hand crank finally kicked the engine spinning into life.

As the boat ticked over to a chorus of whoops and cheers from her crew, Conrad saw the excitement in Weaver’s face shift to something else, and turned to the bank. The Iwi - every last one of them, by the look of it - were lined up there, silently saying goodbye. The two elders had come all the way onto the jetty.

Marlow clearly didn’t know what to say - what could he? - but as ever, found some words. “I guess this is goodbye. Thank you. If you're ever in Chicago, look me up, I guess.” As the boat pulled away, Marlow spread his hands, not once turning from the tribe.

The gatekeepers fanned open the entryway, and they made their way out onto the river, Slivko at the wheel.

Conrad briefly clasped Marlow’s shoulder in sympathy. As he moved down the boat he saw that San had gone to stand at the pilot’s elbow, casually leaning in so that her arm brushed up against his sleeve. The man stood there a long while, watching as the wall passed out of sight.

This was it, then. They could have chosen to stay (maybe), but they’d elected to leave safety behind. Now it was, what, do or die? Escape or die trying?

“Escape” had a much nicer ring.

Chapter Text

They made good progress, the engine chugged smoothly, and Marlow, who’d taken over from Slivko, looked comfortable at the wheel. Brooks was flirting awkwardly with San, and it occurred to Conrad that it was always Brooks instigating. But while San’s body language was reserved, she wasn’t turned away from her colleague, and her face showed no sign of disquiet. It was probably fine. Besides, Conrad was their guide, not their CO; if they lived so long, Randa could handle it.

Something Brooks said made San laugh, light and genuine. Yeah, it was fine. Fuck, he really needed to get them off this island alive.

He moved to the front of the boat, studying the country ahead. The river flowed broad and untroubled - probably Marlow would have mentioned it if there were sections that would be tricky to traverse. Birds were flying overhead, following the same course as the boat. Well, not so much birds as pterodactyls, but it felt good to have their company all the same.

Mason came to stand behind him, lightly steadying herself with a hand on his shoulder. A small sign of trust, of casual faith that he was to be relied on. It meant a lot, coming from a woman so resolutely independent. Had he somehow answered her question about his worth? He found himself unwilling to move and break the moment, as though he’d coaxed a wild animal into eating from his hand.

An hour or two passed; Conrad took his turn steering. He and Weaver were listening to Marlow as he talked himself down from the distress of leaving the Iwi behind and started to look to the future.

“I got a wife,” he told them, then corrected, “Had a wife. Have a wife? Guess I don't know anymore.” He had a photo in his wallet, a battered sepia shot of a woman smiling broadly with a breeze in her hair. “We got hitched right before I deployed. Got a telegram from her the day before I got shot down. She said we just had our baby boy. I got a son out there. Grown man I’ve never met.” Conrad smiled at the bittersweet thought.

“Yeah, she definitely thinks you’re dead, man,” Slivko called down from the roof, with the callousness of youth. Clearly he’d never had his heart broken. Conrad tried to shut him up. “I’m just saying,” the kid protested.

“You don’t know that,” Conrad told Marlow firmly. “You’d be surprised how long people wait.” His mother had waited all her life. If she’d looked twice at another man, James had never noticed it. Though so many men hadn’t come home from the war that the romantic opportunities for single mothers must not have been many.

“Truth is, I don't expect them to be waiting,” shrugged Marlow, ever easy-going. “I'd be fine either way. I just want one last chance to see them. That'd be good enough for me.”

“We're gonna get you home,” Weaver promised, showing an optimism she’d refrained from up to now. God, then she did believe in him. She wasn’t one for empty words.

But even as pride swelled in his chest, the weight of her words tugged at him uneasily. He’d learned the hard way not to reassure with promises in situations beyond his control. Christ, he hoped he could follow through on it.

Which was when it went to hell, though they didn’t know it quite yet: the radio that Slivko was cradling burst into life as they rounded a bend in the river. Packard had a band of survivors two clicks north, maybe an hour ahead.

And then Nieves was snatched from the deck by a pterodactyl and torn apart. He was too far away too fast for Conrad to put a bullet in him to save him from a worse death, never mind save him. Instead, they all watched helpless as the worse death happened right in front of their eyes.

Even after the arm holding it was ripped off, he was still clutching that fucking briefcase.

Headcount minus one. Yeah, they weren’t in the village now. Ignoring the sour twist of failure in the pit of his stomach, he led the group ashore to meet up with Packard.

***

Though the reunion was too small, it was happy. Conrad found himself relieved to be reporting only one casualty, even though Nieves’ loss itched at him, and the introduction of Marlow was a pleasure. “We’re gonna get him home, sir. If we follow this river we’ll make it to the boat, and we’ll make it to the north shore in time.”

“That sounds good,” muttered Packard, not meeting his eyes. “But we’re not leaving yet. Still got a man out there, Conrad.”

“Wait a second. You got someone out there?”

“Chapman. He’s with the downed Sea Stallion just west of here.”

“West?” burst out Marlow in alarm. “We can’t go west! That’s where the skull things live. We have an old saying here. ‘East is best, west is worst!’ That’s why we say it!” Watching him, Conrad could see that Packard wasn’t listening.

It was a tough call, he didn’t disagree: keeping everyone alive was his job after all, he understood that need. He liked Chapman, personally. But it was also about balancing risk, and there were civilians with them.

Marlow was still talking. There was nothing equivocal about his advice. “You know, southwest...we could talk about that. But you’re gonna need a lot more guns if you’re gonna go west.”

Conrad couldn’t count the number of failed missions that, when you read the report, boiled down to not heeding local guides. He’d drummed it into his own men: you listen, you ask follow-up questions, you talk it over, and if necessary you come up with a new plan. And if you have no choice but to proceed, you prepare for the worst and accept that you might not meet your objective or come back alive.

But this was his CO, not his unit. Conrad would have to do as he was ordered. God, it had been good to be in charge, and fuck, he missed it already.

Thankfully Weaver said what Conrad wasn’t in a position to. “Guys,” she warned, “I think that we should listen to Marlow. This is crazy.”

Conrad’s heart sank when Packard turned to him. “Hey. Your job is finding lost men, right?”

The best he could hope for was a negotiation, and frankly that would be pushing it. “Okay, sir. But if we reach that position and he’s not there, we don’t send out a search party. We’re back here by nightfall, understood? In 24 hours, we have to be on the other side of this island.”

“Roger that,” grinned Packard, “hear you loud and clear.” The fucking bastard hadn’t listened to a fucking word past “okay sir”. Shit. Shit fuck and bollocks.

“All right,” Packard continued, “you heard the man. Moving out in ten.” Fucking saying it like it was Conrad’s idea, how dare he.

Out of the corner of his eye he’d seen Weaver sag in frustration. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t argue back, couldn’t conceive of what it truly meant to be a soldier, bound by orders, despite her years embedded.

No. She was smarter than that, more perceptive. It would be that she’d seen men die following fucked up orders, over and over and over again, and been helpless to prevent it. And now it looked like it was going to happen again, only this time she’d be dying with them.

Not if he had anything to do with it. How the hell was he going to get them through this?

Marlow was joking hysterically with the Sky Devils, giggling about how they were all going to die. As was his way, now that their course was determined he accepted it, though he plainly thought it meant certain death. God, he’d been safe with the Iwi. Conrad had promised him a way home.

“Don’t forget to tell me this is a bad idea,” Conrad muttered to Weaver, the closest he could get to an apology with Packard in earshot.

She didn’t bother turning. “This is a bad idea.” She mostly sounded sad.

He should have thrown that fucking radio in the river.

***

When he realised that Randa was, with some labour, trying to catch up with him, Conrad slowed down. Weaver, close by, slowed with him. They quietly distanced themselves from the Sky Devils, though there was little chance that Packard wouldn’t notice.

“Nothing you can do?” Randa cut to the chase.

“Not with so many of his men in the group,” Conrad told him. “You’ll have noticed they’re loyal to the death.”

“That’s what it’ll come to.”

“I’m aware.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea, never met him before the Athena.”

“We can have a discussion about all the things you’re sorry for if we get back alive. This may not even make the list.”

Randa accepted the chastisement in silence.

“For now, I’ll do what I can.”

“Get the impression you always do,” Randa returned quietly.

There was nothing to say to that. Conrad moved back towards the front of the file, the better to see what was next, and Weaver again hung close. At least she didn’t seem to be holding the situation against him. For what little good that would do.

Chapter Text

They reached the brink of an escarpment punctuated with vast old bones half-buried in the grass, curving high above their heads. It led down into a valley. The green fumes were visible even before they reached the edge, and looking down, they were so thick as to almost obscure the enormous rotted carcasses below.

“Yeah, you smell that? That’s death.” Marlow’s mild hysteria didn’t seem to be wearing off. “This is what’s left of Kong’s parents.”

“I’ve taken enough photos of mass graves to recognise one,” observed Weaver, breaking her silence for the first time in an hour.

“The crash site’s just on the other side of this valley,” Packard told them. Of course it fucking was. “We’ll cross through and make it to the highest point west.”

Marlow had another go at warning him. “Uh-uh. This place is a real no-no, sir.”

Surprisingly Steve-the-surviving-Landsat-guy, who’d not struck Conrad as the type to make waves, spoke up firmly: “We need to be going to the north side right now.”

But Packard wasn’t having it. “And you’re welcome to do that, my man. By yourself. I’m not leaving Jack out there. Now, who’s with me?”

And there was only one answer the colonel would accept. If anyone said no, there was a long list of bad things that could happen next. They might get left behind while everyone else carried on, and Conrad couldn’t be in two places to protect them. If Conrad himself spoke out, he might even get shot as a liability, Packard was far enough off the reservation and his men were loyal enough to accept it.

At least if everyone stayed together there would be safety in numbers - an old saw but experience had proved it an accurate one - and if he played along, he might be able to mitigate how badly things went. Because there was no question but that the group was about to cross this valley.

Besides, there was a man out there, waiting for them.

“We can make it,” he said, knowing no such thing.

“You’re mighty right, we can make it. Now, stay sharp. Keep an eye out.”

“I've only been here 28 years,” muttered Marlow. “What do I know?”

***

Weaver, of course, was right. He’d thought she was talking about the giant apes and other monster remains, but she had seen through the mist to the hundreds of human skeletons also littering the valley floor. A mass grave indeed. A lot of Iwi had died here.

The bones were long since stripped, but the smell of rot lingered. When he’d encountered such places, they’d generally been of more recent vintage. But no good to think like that: he needed his eyes open, his rifle up, and god but the noise of cracking bones underfoot made it hard to use his ears to identify anything out there in the fog.

Something with three long toes had been here recently, its feet leaving great imprints in the soil.

It was much as Conrad imagined No Man’s Land would have been after a gas bomb had gone off, only with less mud and the addition of towering jawbones.

Any hope of passing through undetected ended when somehow - it was one of the Sky Devils, but he missed who - managed to set off a small explosion. Apparently the fumes were flammable. It didn’t amount to anything, and Packard hurried them on, but moments later a ghastly chattering growl, a dry crackling croak, announced the arrival of something out there unseen.

“Run!” yelled Marlow, so they did, scattering to take shelter among the bones. “I told you this damn place was a no-no,” grumbled the old man from where he hid with Slivko, pressed to a giant ribcage. Conrad and Weaver huddled against the same creature’s pelvis, listening to the noises get closer.

And closer.

The skull-crawler made a hacking noise, then vomited out a human skull - with dog tags tangled in it. The stench was intense, the skull still mottled with blood. Weaver gagged at his side. Was this someone Packard had lost earlier? Or - it couldn’t be Chapman, could it?

The monster stalked away, and Conrad watched it go, sighting down his rifle. It was easily twice as tall as a man at its powerful shoulders, with no hind legs, just a tail long enough to counterbalance its fore-half. The skull was the exact tapering shape shown in the Iwi temple paintings.

He grabbed the dog tags, ignoring by force of will the slime and burn of stomach acid. They were Chapman’s. But priority right now was getting out of this valley, he could hear Packard rallying his men. He pocketed the tags.

This time it was a civilian error that called the monster: Randa, to the rear of the group, with his camera’s flash lighting the fog like a beacon. He was gone, swallowed whole; Conrad turned in time to see his hat tumble to the ground. Though they fired, it had no effect and the creature paced off into the mist.

Instead of running, Packard’s response was to have his men set up a .50 mounted machine gun to see if that would take it down. They waited.

Their only clue was the flash still going off in the skull-crawler’s gullet, the whine and pop of its action, bright blinks of light bouncing off the cloud surrounding them. It was circling them; Conrad glimpsed a sweeping tail. Weaver held her camera at the ready, as if it could protect her.

Then it attacked. First Marlow, who sliced into its leg with the katana; then the .50, which couldn’t save its operator from what looked like a quick death in the creature’s guts; and then it was after Weaver.

She ran like the wind and skidded under a collapsed ribcage, which was a good move but left her trapped, the creature snapping at her. It didn’t look like her protection would last long. Conrad had no idea how to help, as firing on it was having no impact.

One of Packard’s men had a flame thrower, however. He distracted it for long enough that she was able to flee - god, that girl could run - and the onslaught of flame and bullets started to get a reaction from the monster.

Another sweep of its tail and the man with the flame thrower was flung maybe 30 feet, slamming into a skull in a decidedly terminal fashion. The resulting explosion threw Slivko to the ground, and Conrad was close enough to see the gas canisters from his bag fall into flames.

Now they were under attack from more pterodactyls, flushed out by the explosion - their blood was a mind-bending shade of blue - but there was no time for that. Marlow threw him the sword, he snatched up a gas mask that was hung from the outside of one of the Griffins’ rucksacks, and went after the kid.

The pterodactyls were everywhere, but the Japanese blade was surgical-sharp, slicing through them readily with the weight he could put behind it. The problem was seeing through the gas mask. But as he reached Slivko’s side, the gas was already dissipating enough that he could risk ripping it from his face and dropping it.

Slivko was conscious, maybe only bruised, so Conrad got him to his feet and inserted himself as a crutch under the boy’s shoulder. But even as he did so, the skull-crawler loomed out of the fog. With Slivko draped over him, Conrad was helpless and out of options.

Weaver, appearing like a miracle, made a familiar clicking sound and flung something at the monster, something that glinted in what little light filtered through the thick air. Dad’s lighter.

The explosion knocked them to the ground, hard, and it wasn’t until they struggled to their feet that they knew for sure that it was dead. Weaver had killed it, glorious woman that she was.

Having checked on the creature, he retrieved the katana. Slivko was still sitting, not equal to getting to his feet unaided.

As Conrad helped him up for a second time, Weaver offered back the lighter. “Here,” she said, a flicker of a smile crossing her drawn face.

“I feel like you should keep it after that,” he objected. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, man, that was amazing,” Slivko echoed.

She did grin then. “Nah, it means more to you.” She took the katana from his non-Slivko hand, and pressed the lighter into his palm. “I’ll get this to Marlow.”

***

They were a sorry sight, limping out of the valley into the trees. Conrad’s eyes were swollen and stinging from the gas, and if his hands hadn’t been busy propping up Slivko he would have had trouble stopping himself rubbing them. If they got back to the river he could wash them. And since there was now no reason to head upland, perhaps he’d get the chance.

Marlow spoke up once more. “Now, look, Colonel. You may outrank me, but I’ve been here a hell of a lot longer. And I’m telling you that thing that just shredded us was only the first of them. Now we're on their turf, and we need to turn back toot sweet!”

“Not as long as Chapman’s still out there.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel Packard.” Conrad held up the dog tags, bright as new from their acid bath. “Chapman is dead.”

He was only half surprised when Packard huffed and returned, “Doesn’t change a thing! We’re still going to that crash site.”

“What’s at that crash site that you want so badly?”

“Weapons! Enough to kill it.”

Kong? “Kong didn’t kill Chapman.”

“But he did kill these men! My men!” He had a fistful of dog tags. It was a lot, but that wasn’t the point.

“You can’t kill Kong, Colonel,” objected Marlow. “Kong is god on this island. He’s the only thing keeping them lizard things in the ground.”

Brooks seconded. “He’s right, Colonel, we can’t kill Kong. Now that other creature? That’s the threat. And there are more of them down there. If you take away a species’ natural competition, they’ll proliferate out of control.”

“Then we’ll end them, too! After we bring this thing down.”

Marlow had had enough. He was a loyal man, he knew what was right, and he was braver than any of them. He drew the katana. “I can’t let you do that, Colonel.”

In a heartbeat, the Sky Devils’ rifles were trained on him.

“Wait! Hold your fire!” yelled Packard, and it took him only a moment to knock the sword from the pilot’s hand and send him to the ground with a shove to the gut. “This is one war we are not gonna lose!” he insisted.

Good god, was that what this was about?

“Nuts! You hear me? This is nuts!” Marlow appealed from the ground.

San cried, “Please! You need to listen to us!”

Brooks joined her. “We’re not at war. You’re making a mistake.”

“Your lies got my men killed!” returned Packard - accurate, you had to give him that.

“And you’re gonna get us all killed!” Weaver threw back, with some heat.

Escalation wasn’t the way to get what they wanted. “Not our fight,” Conrad told her, pushing her sharply back out of Packard’s reach, replacing her in the colonel’s sights.

“Whose side are you on, Captain?” Packard demanded.

Conrad spread his hands, once again in don’t-poke-the-bear mode. There was nothing he could do for Slivko and his friends, and he hated that, but he could see a way out for the people who most needed his protection.

“Okay, Colonel. You’ll find your Sea Stallion three klicks up that ridge. Now, I’m gonna take these civilians back to the boat, and we’ll wait for you there. All right?”

If the colonel minded being talked to like he was a mad dog who couldn’t be trusted not to bite, he didn’t show it. “Saddle up! Let’s go kill this thing! Steve, you running with the big dogs or staying on the porch?”

Steve-the-last-Landsat-guy seemed to have been sucked into Packard’s cult of personality, and blown through his one shot of independence too soon. “I don’t wanna be on the porch,” he muttered.

Conrad’s priority was the people willing to be helped, and fast, before Packard changed his mind. “Marlow, you okay?”

“We need to stop him,” worried Marlow, still fearing for Kong.

“You wanna talk with him about it again?” asked Weaver with flat sarcasm, though not unkindly. “He seemed to really go for it the first time.”

“He’s losing his grip.” Conrad heard himself stating the obvious; he shook his head and started back into the forest. Finally, he was back in control, and he’d best make use of it. “Now, follow me, and we’ll get off this rock alive.”

Chapter Text

Their relief at leaving Packard behind (even while worrying about Slivko) had them marching briskly through the woods. But the ground was relentlessly flat, or undulated without intent, giving no hint as to which way was down. Evidence of water was present but inconclusive.

“Are you lost?” demanded Brooks. “Which way?”

“Hang on.” He glanced around. There was a hill off to the right, which might offer an opportunity for a recce, but he didn’t want to tire them out with a detour.

Something big roared, some way off, but not that far. It sounded like Kong, though he couldn’t be sure. It didn’t make any difference to the mission. They still needed to get back to the boat.

Looking towards the sound, he saw again how the ground rose in that direction. This wasn’t working, they were getting nowhere. He needed to do this the hard way.

“Wait here. I’ve got to get to higher ground to find the river.”

“Hey! I'm coming, too,” said Weaver. Fitter than the scientists, she did always prefer to be moving.

He thought of her hand on his shoulder, on the boat.

He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t glad she was coming.

“I'll be right here,” agreed Marlow. That was, indeed, reassuring. The old pilot hadn’t steered them wrong so far, Brooks and San would be safe with him.

In the forest, they hadn’t been able to mark the sun’s position, and darkness fell fast this close to the equator. The ascent only took an hour, but it was full dark by the time they climbed up the final rocky scarp to a high point that offered a view down into the valley. The river snaked below them.

“The boat must be around that bend,” he judged.

They paused for a moment, still catching their breath from the climb. It wasn’t wasted time. He mentally mapped the terrain, where Marlow would be, roughly which way would take them down to the water. She took a couple of photos, though what she could capture in this light he wasn’t sure.

And then the gentle swirl of the mist became more defined, and they could hear something - someone - approaching. The crunch of vegetation, the rumbling of great lungs. Kong.

Their high vantage meant that, with his feet far below in the valley, his head was on a level with them. His face was...vast. Far taller than they were. He drew closer; they could smell his breath on the air. Weaver grabbed Conrad’s wrist, but he’d no intention of reaching for his rifle.

Kong seemed to study them - no, Weaver. It was Weaver he was interested in. And, god, it made sense.

Everything that Conrad had been trying to ignore, all the nebulous emotions that had no place in the field, fell into place. Weaver was special. Weaver was...more.

She reached out and touched the gargantuan ape’s face, her hand tiny in his fur.

There was such beauty and sadness in Kong’s copper-brown eyes. Such loss. He was so alone, last of his kind, bound to his solitary duty. The last centurion at an abandoned outpost, facing down barbarians at the gate.

Conrad could have wept, but Weaver was laughing wonderingly through her tears.

After a long moment, she stepped back, and Kong moved back into the mist. Explosions in the valley broke the mood, pools of fire lighting below, and Kong was gone with a roar.

Fucking kidding, napalm? He hadn’t spotted that back on the Athena, it must have been stored alongside the fuel. Packard was luring Kong in.

He caught Weaver’s arm, pulled her briefly towards the way back before letting go. “We have to go. Now.” She didn’t need telling twice.

“What are we going to do?” Weaver asked as they scrambled down the steep slope.

“Whatever we can,” he answered. He had no specifics in mind.

She didn’t baulk at that. “Okay.”

***

Heading downhill was faster, even in the dark. It was no trouble to find the rest of the group. “Don’t shoot!” he called as they startled up and raised their weapons.

“Conrad, which way are we going?” asked Brooks, relieved.

“You three need to go back to the boat,” he told the geologist. “It’s that way. Wait for us till dawn. If we’re not back by then...just go.”

He didn’t want to live out his days on this island any more than he wanted to die here, but this was bigger than him - pun not intended. He didn’t need to consult with Weaver to know that she felt the same.

“You ain’t gotta twist my arm,” the man agreed.

“Where are you two going?” asked Marlow.

He hesitated for an instant, giving her a last chance to back out, but from the corner of his eye saw Weaver give a firm nod. “We’re going to save Kong.”

It sounded presumptuous when set against the sheer scale of the beast, but Packard was experienced, determined and heavily armed. They might be able to put enough of a spanner in whatever works he’d prepared to prevent a disaster.

“Not without me, pal,” grinned Marlow, sheathing the katana.

***

Skull Island, Sunday 4th February 1973

By the time they reached Packard, Kong had been felled and charges laid around him. After seeing the creature in his full dignity earlier, to see him like this was profoundly wrong. But even laid out, he was impressive, a huge mound of fur stretching off into the darkness.

“Packard!” Conrad positioned himself between the colonel and Kong, and aimed his rifle right at the man, trusting that the Sky Devils knew him too well to shoot before hearing him out. “Don’t do it.”

Marlow had no hesitation about putting a gun on Slivko, and resting his sword tip on Reles’ neck. “I asked you fellas nice the first time,” he reminded them.

Conrad kept his eyes on the colonel, but noted their numbers. A couple fewer of Griffin Company, and no Steve-the-dead-Landsat-guy. Poor fucker had made the wrong call.

“We don’t want a fight here, Packard.” Set out the reasoning plainly, make sure everyone hears. It wasn’t likely that logic alone was going to sway the rogue colonel, but he wasn’t the only man here.

“This thing brought us down! It killed my men!”

“Kong was just defending his territory.”

“We are soldiers! We do the dirty work so our families and our countrymen don’t have to be afraid! They shouldn't even know a thing like this exists!”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Conrad stated for the benefit of the peanut gallery. “Put that detonator down.”

Packard glared at him, daring him to fire as he moved a few deliberate paces closer and flipped the switch. The light went red, and the detonator whined. His eyes didn’t move from Conrad’s face. If he hit the button at this proximity, Conrad and Weaver would be blown up with Kong, and likely Packard would go too.

“Stop!” appealed Weaver. “The world is bigger than this.”

“Bitch, please! Slivko, get her out of there!” Even knowing she’d hate it, even knowing she was all that was keeping Packard from pressing the button, Conrad half wished the boy would. He honestly didn’t know how this would end. If it was going south anyway, he’d far rather she lived.

But Slivko, already unhappy about having to train his gun on Marlow, looked even unhappier, and hesitated.

“You know it’s the wrong thing to do, son,” said Marlow, as if it were that simple for a soldier to resist an order while surrounded by his unit.

Perhaps it could be. Conrad thought about Marlow’s thirty-year tutelage under the silent Iwi, in deferring to the common good but with generosity and respect, in recognising the truth in a situation without obscuring it with words.

And Slivko might be a good soldier, but he also had the makings of a good man. After a moment of agonised consideration the boy turned, redirecting his M-16 at his CO. “Put it down, sir.”

The colonel started to reach for his gun, so Conrad pulled his attention away from the kid. “Packard!” A reminder that he might not live to complete the action, but also a diversion. Better that the man’s attention stay on Conrad.

The other Griffins looked at one another, uncertain, but with an awareness that something had not been right here, that maybe this was a resolution they could live with. Marlow dropped the katana from Reles, and there was a general dipping of rifle muzzles.

“Come on,” Conrad coaxed. “It's over.”

But it wasn’t. Out in the water, there was churning, some big splashes, and then an unthinkably huge skull-crawler dropped into sight, its eyeholes black in the firelight.

“That’s the big one,” Marlow informed them unnecessarily.

De facto in charge, Conrad ordered, “Fall back. Go!” He held his position to cover them — plus, Packard wasn’t moving. “Colonel. Sir!” The rest had gone, that was good, but Conrad was unwilling to leave anyone behind. Especially if Packard’s mind was too clouded to make logical decisions.

Then again, the skull-crawler was looking their way, and Conrad did not want to die today. He waited a beat longer, but the colonel still didn’t turn. So he ran.

After a moment he realised Weaver was no longer at his heels. Turning, he found she’d stopped to watch whatever was going on behind them through her camera lens. Good god, woman, this wasn’t the time: he scooped her up bodily and dumped her back down pointed in the opposite direction. “Kong’s down. Let’s go!”

Chapter Text

By the time they reached the river, it was almost full light and the boat was gone. At least someone was doing what they were told, but that wasn’t going to help the rest of them. He thought for a moment.

“This is the edge of the island. Weaver, get up on those rocks and fire a flare. With any luck, Brooks will see it.” It would be a steep climb, but he knew she could do it.

There was crashing in the woods: the pursuing skull-crawler wasn’t far behind. “We’ll buy you time.” She nodded and ran the way he’d pointed.

He wondered if she realised he was positioning her to survive even if the rest of them didn’t. He briefly considered sending Marlow to safety too, and Reles, who was injured, but neither would be equal to the climb, and just staying on the beach would mean meeting the monster all the sooner. Besides, Conrad wasn’t planning a suicide mission - if Brooks and San weren’t far, they were in with a chance, however slight.

For his best case scenario to happen, though, they needed to lead the skull-crawler away from Weaver, or no one would be going anywhere. “This way. Come on. Every second counts.”

But as they rounded a corner and started wading out into the marshy water, the oldest of the remaining Sky Devils, Cole, stayed on the bank.

“Cole! Come on, man, we gotta fall back.” Mills was his co-pilot, Conrad knew they were close.

“Go live your life,” the older pilot told Mills gently. He looked tired, and kind, and maybe a bit like the father Conrad only half-remembered. “Get out of here.”

Already they were too far ahead to readily go back for him, though they tried. They shouted and pleaded, begged him to come, but Cole had decided. With the crawler coming into view around the corner there was nothing more they could do.

Conrad grabbed for Mills to stop him running to his friend, and he did his best to get them moving, to at least use whatever fucked up diversion Cole had planned so the man didn’t die for nothing.

And then they watched as the man died for nothing, swatted away by the monster’s tail to explode uselessly against a cliff face. “Come on,” Conrad bellowed at the remaining men. God, they were down to three Griffins. “And no more heroics.” He fucking hated heroics.

As he ran, he hoped Mason reached Brooks.

The skull-crawler’s legs were long, it was closing fast: this was going to be over with a quickness.

He hoped the three of them made it off the island, that they would get to have decent lives.

Marlow was starting to lag, but it wasn’t going to make a difference. Running wouldn’t save them now.

As the skull-crawler towered over them, and he came to a halt, turning to look up into its spike-toothed maw, he hoped for a swift death.

That moment stretched long, as if his brain were making the most of the instant of life it had left.

And then:

His third miracle in as many days - Marlow, Mason, and now Kong. He didn’t even believe in miracles, but here Kong was, leaping into view, a boulder grasped in two hands to bring down on the skull-crawler’s head.

They started running again, desperate to get clear. The fight was sprawling, it would have been easy to end up collateral damage.

Occasional backward glances alternated between showing Kong or the crawler with the upper hand. Kong’s size was no advantage now, the crawler might even have been bigger, and its snapping jaws seemed made to fit around his throat.

A flare overhead: Mason had made her climb. Good, that was something. But if the crawler won the fight, all she was doing was calling Brooks and San back here to die.

The battle went on. Kong stripped a tree to use as a weapon, broke it on the skull-crawler’s head, but it seemed impervious to damage. Its tail whipped around his waist, strong enough to throw him off his feet. He fell backwards into a shipwreck, became tangled in the anchor chain.

As the crawler got on top of him, the boat roared up. Somehow Brooks had got the B-29’s machine gun going and was firing on the monster, as San steered. Good god, he hadn’t known they had it in them. But they were going to get themselves killed.

It didn’t take much to get everyone moving towards the boat, even as the crawler turned towards them. The machine gun jammed, and as they piled in Marlow and Mills went straight to work getting it going again.

Kong roared in the distance, but the sound grew no louder, offering no hope of immediate intervention.

Okay, so Conrad was going to have to draw it off. It wasn’t likely to end well, but at this point it was a numbers game, and with everyone but Mason on the boat, they could make the rendezvous without his help. His job now was to buy them the chance to do that.

He jumped back into the water and started away from the boat, ignoring Slivko shouting desperately after him. Yes, yes, he’d just said no heroics; well, tough.

Then a red explosion happened in the side of the skull-crawler’s head, a familiar shade of red - a flare. Mason. Mason! Good girl! It worked, the skull-crawler turning from its attack to deal with the pain in its head.

It bought them enough time to get the gun back in action, but that would just cement them as a target. He started running through the marsh. “Come on, you bastard!” The lure of movement worked, drawing the monster after him.

He normally planned ahead, but now he had nothing, just pelted through the water, trying really hard to stay on his feet. If he fell, he was dead. If Kong didn’t get back in the fight within, hmm, three seconds, he would be dead anyway.

A roar, closer than before, heralded Kong’s timely arrival. The fight was back on, Kong armed now with the wreck’s propeller. But as Kong threw the skull-crawler into a ridge, Conrad heard a cry and saw a distant figure fall. Into the water, please, into the water? The ridge obscured his view, he couldn’t know.

“Weaver!” he yelled, and plunged towards where she’d fallen, knowing he couldn’t get there in time even if she hadn’t hit rock.

The roaring and vibrations carried on behind him, knocking him from his feet a couple of times, but he pressed on.

A sudden quiet, and Kong strode past him, dipped a hand down where Weaver had fallen and stood back up, studying his palm. Frantic, Conrad headed for them, and horrified he saw the skull-crawler skitter in to attack once more. Now, not only did Kong not have the propeller for a weapon, but he couldn’t use his right hand. Appallingly, as they struggled the monster swallowed down Kong’s entire arm, Weaver and all. The crawler’s tongue wound itself around and around his arm, pulling him in further.

Which meant that when Kong suddenly, powerfully jerked his arm back out, he also ripped free the skull-crawler’s tongue and a trail of innards attached to it. Its insides were now out. Could it? Had he?

Kong tossed the creature aside into the water. It was dead at long last.

But Mason. But Mason?

As Conrad finally approached them, snagging her camera as he went, Kong was gently laying Weaver down at the water’s edge. By the time he reached her, Kong was already walking away across the lake.

He shook her, wondering if he’d need to flip her and do compressions to clear her lungs, but thank god she started coughing and he pulled her upright so she could breathe more easily.

He muttered reassuring words, to her but also to himself, and they watched Kong turn to look at them in a silent farewell, before moving out of sight.

Mason was crying, and he felt much the same, wrung out and awed and broken and home all at once. They hugged for a minute or two, exhausted, a necessary moment of respite.

But he was starting to wonder if his legs would hold him up when he tried them. If Mason couldn’t walk, had he the strength left to carry her? They had to get moving, they couldn’t rest here.

They staggered together along the water’s edge, stumbling back in the direction of the boat. As soon as they rounded the corner they saw that Slivko and Mills were already coming for them.

Slivko grinned at him as he nudged Conrad out of the way to take as much of Weaver’s weight as she’d allow. “My momma always says, best way to thank someone is to pass on the good turn.” God yes, he’d bounced back nicely from yesterday. Oh, to be 20 again.

***

All was quiet in the boat as they headed out into the northernmost bay. Leaving the main island would mean the refuelling team couldn’t land, would have to airlift them off the boat - but the further out they got, the less likely Kong was to react to the fresh incursion of Hueys.

The boys were exchanging a few words, inarticulate in the face of everything that had happened. San was leaning against Brooks’ shoulder, lost in thought, while he smiled to himself, happy to have her close.

What they’d witnessed here... Well, Conrad knew he’d been changed forever. That sounded grandiose, but it was the plain truth. He’d thought he knew about sacrifice. About loneliness. He’d thought he’d seen wonders before. He’d thought he’d seen madness.

“This place will change,” he warned Weaver. “Word will get out. It always does.”

“Well, it’s not coming from us.” She said it resolutely, then softened it with a smile.

He’d thought he’d seen strength. But Mason had a whole different kind.

He’d thought...

Let’s just say, he was going to have some thinking to do.

Marlow started softly singing Vera Lynn.

The island lay behind them, wreathed in mist.

Chapter Text

Previously a preview of the next story. Retained so I don’t lose the comments. Please see the next work in the series…