Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (29 page)

Then he seemed to vanish entirely.

A sudden disturbance far to the south made the two surviving Dyaks believe that the bronze man had gone that way. In actuality, Doc had thrown a second rock to trick them into switching their piercing eyes away from his own location, which was much closer.

Stealing up from their blind side, Doc Savage ambushed one by seizing his head in terrible metallic hands and giving the head a sidewise wrench. The grinding of neck bones ended in a distinct snap.

Doc released the dead Dyak and lunged for the other one.

Alerted, the crouching warrior began to flee. It is impossible to aim and employ a blowpipe longer than the one wielding it while fleeing an adversary, so no darts flew in Doc Savage’s direction.

The bronze man was forced to track him, lest the fleeing Dyak catch up to his war party and give alarm.

Moving up into the trees, Doc began following. He had picked up a fallen blowpipe and a long leather pouch of darts from one of the dead men.

Reaching a spot where he had clear aim, Doc brought the weapon to his open mouth.

The fleeing man somehow sensed the approach of death, for he suddenly turned, wide eyes frantic. He endeavored to spot his following foe.

It was the yellowish blowpipe that gave Doc away. It stood out against his gray and brown camouflaged body.

The Dyak was quick. He levered his weapon up and applied it to his lips.

The range was not good, he realized—for either of them. He did not fire, preferring to save his dart until he could creep closer to his intended victim.

That was his mistake.

Doc Savage took in a deep breath, held it, and expelled it down the pipe.

The dart thus released traveled many yards before it found a spot in the exact center of the Dyak’s tattooed throat.

His eyes rolled up almost immediately, and he fell backward. The jittering of his feet started at once, as the poison entered his bloodstream and did its dark work.

After the feet settled down, Doc dropped from the trees and recovered his submachine gun.

He would remember that his superior lungpower gave him an edge that Dyaks could not equal.

Chapter XXXV

THE UNEXPECTED COMES in many forms. It can steal up on a man on cat feet. It can slide out from the underbrush on the scaled belly of a snake. Or it might creep along on bare feet and whisper its arrival, as would a stealthy Dyak assassin.

Doc Savage, moving through the jungled growth of Skull Island, garbed as no warrior before him, unrecognizable as himself, encountered the unexpected in a manner that, as alert as his senses were, surprised even him.

There had been a jarring of the Earth. A tremor. Doc felt it as he crept along, halted, every sense keyed to its highest pitch.

There was no second sound, nor movement of the ground.

Deciding that Skull Island had experienced a minor earth temblor, Doc continued the search for his father and the Mayan warrior, Chicahua.

Once more, the bronze giant experimented by issuing his special sound. As Doc attempted to warn of dangers unseen, the trillation blended with the chirring of insects.

Back came, after an interval, an enticing whistle.

Doc slowed his muscular gait, crouched down. Flake-gold eyes raked the surrounding ferns, skated up into the trees, missing nothing, it seemed.

Switching his attention to the first smells, Doc once more felt overwhelmed by what the jungle had to offer. Ripe odors. Heavy musky scents. It was almost too much to sort out.

There were patches of clearing here and there, and the bronze giant approached each one cautiously, not wishing to be exposed to skulking Dyaks, or predatory dinosaurs, which seemed scarce in this quadrant of Skull Island.

In one muddy patch, he came upon a footprint.

The outline was simian, fringed with striations that suggested that the extremity that made the impression in the mud was extremely hairy, in a coarse way.

The footprint was not new. Rainwater had collected in it. Yet the size of the depression was immense, titanic.

Trilling this time from sheer surprise, Doc Savage approached the thing, walking around it carefully. The crater measured over six feet long and half as wide. The big toe was larger than a grown man’s head.

Mentally, Doc Savage calculated the height of the creature that had left that track and shook his head slowly as if in disbelief. All the while his trilling ranged the scale, all but unnoticed by him.

“It would have to be almost as tall as Alfred Bulltop Stormalong!” Doc whispered to himself.

Doubt tinged his vibrant tone. Kneeling, the bronze man touched the fringes of the track, examined the toe print for whorls or lines, such as would be found on any footprint this human-seeming. It was obvious that Doc doubted the validity of the impression—was searching for clues to suggest that it was man-made, a trick of the Dyaks or other natives.

But every indication showed that here was the footprint of an ape or gorilla that stood no less than twenty feet tall, and probably taller!

“Kong,” breathed Doc, stifling his trilling.

Preoccupation is an amazing thing. When Doc had been pondering his discovery, he failed to notice—as he often did—his own trilling sound.

Now it came again, and once more it did not impinge upon his consciousness. The sound permeated the lush surroundings for a time, like the note of a woodland sprite transmuted into pure music.

When Doc finally noticed it, he clamped his lips shut.

Yet the sound continued uninterrupted!

Whirling, Doc took stock of his surroundings. He was not the author of his unique sound. That meant either his father had learned to imitate it and was signaling, or a deathrunner lurked in the vicinity.

Ears keyed up for the flutter of feathered bodies, Doc waited.

The trilling came from the southwest. Doc listened to it intently, confronting another example of the unnervingly incredible phenomena of Skull Island.

Annihilator submachine gun at the ready, Doc swung about, prepared for anything.

It came!

Out of the brush came a rushing. Screaming. The weird trilling stopped, or was swallowed.

Then Doc Savage stood face to face with a herd of bright-feathered slashers!

There was no escaping them. He opened up with the Annihilator. The weapon yammered and bawled, brass cartridge cases spewing out to splash in the water-filled track beside him.

Death screams and spouting gouts of blood showed the power of the handheld submachine gun. Doc had only to tap the trigger, and punishing lead hurled from the smoking muzzle. To keep the shaking barrel from climbing off target, he had to hold the weapon steady with its forward grip.

One—two—three slashers exploded in a gory paroxysm of plumage and entrails. The surroundings became splashed with red matter.

Shifting his aim, Doc depressed the trigger.

A stream of rounds cut the wild-eyed head off another slasher, sectioning it at the neck.

Howling and headlong, it strained at him, collapsed before his feet, scaly arms flailing madly, claws clutching.

A rustle from another quarter caused Doc to whip about. He took aim at a patch of ferns where the green pattern was mixed with other, brighter hues.

Pulling back on the trigger, Doc made the weapon spurt fire. It quickly ran empty.

Out of ammunition! And the surroundings were alive with hot orange orbs and frantic, inhuman feet!

RECHARGING the drum magazine—a laborious procedure—with the remaining bullets from his pocket, was for the moment impractical. Doc still had the twenty-round clip. But it would not last three seconds. He threw the Annihilator over his back, where it hung from its carrying lanyard.

Pulling his automatic from its holster, the bronze giant began to retreat.

From somewhere came a crashing.

A harsh barking noise, metallic and vehement, also came from that direction.

Down went a slasher, its narrow, lean-jawed skull drilled clean through by lead.

Doc turned. Out of the brush came his father, smoking Colt revolver in one brassy, wind-burned hand.

Captain Savage waved a beckoning arm. “This way! This way!”

Doc started in that direction, made it only a few paces before something huge landed hard, blocking his path.

At first, Doc took it for another slasher. But this creature, while similar in its bird-like structure, was different in many other respects. It was larger, for one. Its eyes were placed further forward, and beneath them powerful jaws yawned, showing a glint of shark-like teeth. This, Doc realized, must be a deathrunner!

A pair of eerie violet orbs, inhumanly cold but innately intelligent, locked with his own. Its plumed throat puffed in and out, like a cobra flexing its hood. The hues of its plumage were an intense black streaked with luminous scarlet, as if permanently stained by the gore of its kills.

Like a serpent attempting to hypnotize a bird, the pack leader kept its cold gaze on Doc Savage. And from its fanged mouth emerged a sound that was equally hypnotic.

The trilling sound of Doc Savage—
issuing from utterly inhuman lips!

Carefully, the bronze giant raised his automatic, took dead aim.

Squeezing the trigger, he fired once.

Amazingly, the horrible head jerked to one side, literally dodging the round with snaky speed. It understood pistols!

Doc fired again. Again, the feathered monster ducked successfully. He attempted to snap off a third shot, but too late. The weapon froze.

Up flashed one of the center claws of the deathrunner’s bird-talon feet. Doc’s eyes shifted to the sickle-like protuberance, recognized that it could eviscerate him in an instant with a ripping up-and-down slash.

There was no choice in the matter. Doc endeavored to retreat.

Plunging back into the jungle, he made for the shelter of the trees.

Behind him, the thing came like a mad ostrich blown up all out of proportion in size. It screeched. It trilled. It seemed to be mocking him as it came.

The spiteful crack of Captain Savage’s revolver echoed several times. But still the mad thing came on.

Wrestling with his own Colt, Doc attempted to unjam it. But the mechanism appeared to be clogged with jungle grit. It couldn’t be fixed on the fly. It was flee or perish.

Punching through a vegetation-choked jungle lane, Doc found himself suddenly in another cleared space—the last thing he wished for!

Doubling back into the trees was impossible. He turned, dropped his useless Colt and took up his Bowie knife, intending to make his stand.

A yellow-green slasher came out from nowhere and landed behind him. It must have been perched in the trees, waiting to pounce. Doc turned just as a three-fingered talon snatched wildly at him. He blocked it with his Bowie knife, then gave a wrench of his metallic muscles.

The weird thing upset, scaled arms flinging outward, swaying madly on one teetering talon.

Rushing in, Doc impaled its plumed throat with his blade, jerked it out ahead of a fountain of cascading blood. Its lizard-orange orbs began closing.

By this time, the deathrunner was out of the jungle and coming on hard, its gem-like eyes utterly without mercy.

Doc reversed the blade, set himself to throw it. He knew that this more intelligent specimen of a slasher dinoavisaur would not be slain as easily as its fellows.

Doc let fly. The blade—not designed for throwing, yet impelled by powerful muscles—turned end over end. The deathrunner ducked, weaving to one side.

The blade landed in the dirt with a distressing plunking sound.

Doc Savage stood unarmed.

Out of the surrounding greenery, more slashers came. Soon, Doc was all but surrounded.

Bending, he picked up a rock, held it ready to chuck. But there were too many slashers and insufficient available stones lying at his feet.

Far away, Doc could hear the frantic voice of his father.

“Clark! Clark!
Doc!”

Doc threw the stone. It smacked a slasher in the neck. Like an ungainly ostrich, it reeled backward. The others screamed.

Then kicking, striking as it came, the deathrunner pack leader began walking calmly and methodically toward Doc Savage, never taking its chilling sapphire gaze from his intended prey’s own golden eyes.

Behind him, Doc heard another crashing of brush, more loud than any before, and understood for the first time that he was almost certainly doomed.

Book Three: Kong!

Chapter XXXVI

FOR THE REMAINDER of his remarkable life, Doc Savage never forgot what happened next.

The deathrunner approached on splay-clawed feet, confident in his powers, certain of its victim’s fate. It never took its eyes off Doc’s metallic face, its scarlet-plumed throat expanding and contracting ominously.

Holding his lowered hands before him as if determined to sell his life dearly, Doc awaited its coming. He could not concern himself with the thrashing and crashing going on behind him. His attention was so fixated on his feathered foe that he ignored all sounds and smells emanating at his back.

The deathrunner danced forward. A shadow fell over it. A very large shadow, as if a great cloud had passed before the sun.

Seeing this, it glanced up. The open mouth opened even more. One might have said that its bony lower jaw dropped.

The look in the eyes of the creature changed abruptly. From a murderous intensity, it became one of fear—or awe.

For a black hand, hairy in the extreme, came out of nowhere and seized it like a human fist preparing to wring the neck of a chicken. But this was no simple chicken, nor was the hand an ordinary one.

It was the hand of an earth-striding colossus. And it seized the deathrunner by its throbbing throat, lifting it from sight.

Pivoting, Doc turned and watched the spectacle taking place over his head.

The hairy hand raised the deathrunner high. Another hand joined it. Together, they pulverized the suddenly screaming predator amid a noisy cracking of bones and dripping of gore.