Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) (35 page)

Kong was coming. All of them understood that the great beast-god of Skull Island owned nostrils that could sniff them out from the routine odors of the jungle.

Their best chance was to mingle with the confusion of smells created by the retreating Dyaks, even if that meant encountering those vicious warriors anew.

There was no other way. Kong was coming!

Chapter XLV

HEARING THE SHOUTS of a skirmish, interspersed with cries and calls in the Iban tongue, Monyet urged his men toward the darkling river that rolled down from Skull Mountain.

Something else was coming down from its grim summit, they knew.

His footfalls shook the ferns, made the frond-headed palm trees tremble excitedly. The very air seemed to shake. The ground quivered warningly.

“Kong!” cried Monyet, smiling darkly in anticipation.

The Dyak prince rushed ahead. His men, bearing the head of the young female kong jittering on its bamboo-pole litter, picked up their pace, struggling to keep up with their battle-eager leader.

The sounds brought other Dyaks running from where they had been creeping through the jungle, seeking the white men with the eyes of gold.

Soon, Monyet was generaling a growing column of barbaric hunters, bristling with swords, spears and blowpipes.

Slashing and hacking his way with a
duku
knife, Monyet lead them toward the juicy sound of rushing water.

When he broke out into a clearing of bamboo grass, Monyet’s eyes raked his surroundings, seeking quick understanding of the situation.

He spied Dyaks lying about, groaning, dying, utterly vanquished.

Monyet’s tattooed faced gathered into a savage frown.

“Where are the
musuh?”
he shrieked out.

The dead heard him not. The dying attempted to reply. But their agonized voices were drowned out by a greater noise.

A roar like a volcano blowing fury sounded close at hand. A stink like the breath of a dragon rolled down upon the Dyak prince.

Skidding to a stop, craning his head about, Monyet sought its source.

A shadow seemed to loom overhead. It was no shadow, but an awesome thing of dark substance. A black, hairy monster. Taller than any tree. Rivaling any mountain. More powerful than the most awesome volcano.

Immense golden eyes looked down at Monyet like a pair of strange full moons. For a moment, a terrible fear overtook the Dyak.

Kong!

Just then, the two warriors bearing the bouncing head charged out of the bush.

The amber eyes of Kong flicked from their stunned, upward-turning faces to the bouncing trophy hanging between them. Focusing on the familiar black skull, they congealed like ice.

From his fanged mouth issued a terrible, tree-shaking roar greater than any heard before!

Chapter XLVI

KONG’S FIERCE CRY of reverberant rage froze the blood of everyone within the sound of his voice. Myriad living things on Skull Island, from the rummaging rodents to the towering Tyrannosaurs, took notice.

Upright Hadrosaurs popped their snuffling duck-billed heads up. Long-necked sauropods broke off their laborious snoring, and opened their limpid, slumbering orbs.

Pterosaurs of all colorful configurations took flight from their rocky aeries, beating toward open water.

All of Skull Island awoke to the fury of the beast-god given voice.

A hand as large as a boulder lifted, formed a ball of bristles, bone and muscles, then came crashing down.

The Dyak who had taken the lead of the trophy-carrying pole was lucky. Ukung was simply smashed into a blob of flesh by Kong’s avenging fist.

His fellow warrior at the rear was not so fortunate.

The fist sprang open and muscular fingers like black pythons wrapped around Maban. Kong lifted him high, holding the screaming Dyak to his face. Eyes met.

Maban’s howls impinged themselves on Kong’s small ears.

Kong quenched them by taking the man’s howling head between his teeth and biting down. He pulled the headless body free, spat out the suddenly fleshless skull and crushed the limp body into a fleshy sack of broken bones.

Abruptly, Kong dropped the remains and looked around for fresh victims, black lips snarling.

Below, Monyet was screaming orders.

“Darts! Darts! Feather him with darts!”

Dropping their useless swords and spears, a dozen Dyaks began loading their blowpipes with the lethal darts that were long needles of bamboo.

The first volley shot up, peppering Kong’s massive lower legs. It was as if the hairy calves had suddenly sprouted quills.

Swiping down, Kong brushed at the source of the scorpion-like stings. Knocking some loose caused momentary pain.

Plucking a splinter out between two fingers, Kong looked at the pathetic feathered thing. If he expected the feathers to twitch or flutter with life, he was mistaken.

Dropping the dart, Kong rotated his brutish head toward the source of the stinging wave.

Another wave whispered upward. More pinpricks stabbed his legs—in the back this time.

Kong roared. The throaty howl was one of annoyance.

Dyaks were sneaking up from behind, blowpipes balanced in cupped hands, mouthpieces pressed to their lips. They let fly. Quills sprouted amid bristling fur. Turning at the waist, Kong gave out a sharp bark of surprise.

More Dyaks began climbing trees, endeavoring to obtain the advantage of height.

Once up in the sheltering boughs, they began raining darts upon his hair-tangled chest. Others aimed at his broad face.

A giant hand groped out, found a blowpipe tube, and pulled it out of the owner’s hands. The latter toppled from the trees, breaking his spine on the gnarled roots of its base.

Bending, Kong brought his furry fist down upon the tiny helpless human. Bones crunched. The fist lifted. Kong noticed something sticking to his hand. He peeled off the flat thing that had been a man, flung it away disdainfully.

More darts came. Dozens of them. Snarling, Kong batted at the climbing waves, like a man beset by a cloud of stinging hornets.

His forearm became quivered with the tiny things. Kong smacked at forearms, breaking the splinters, inadvertently driving the dart-points deeper into his flesh.

Their poison, although invariably fatal, was insufficiently powerful to fell the black behemoth.

But as wave after wave arrived to replace the plucked thorns, the accumulation of poisoned points began to seep into his raging system.

THROWING back his head, beating his massive chest with bristling fists, Kong howled his unholy wrath. The stars in the sky seemed to shake in sympathy. The moon actually quaked, but that was a freak effect of the hot atmosphere.

“More! More!” commanded Monyet, bringing his own blowpipe to bear.

He blew a single dart into the lower spine of the monster.

A hairy hand reached back and swatted at the spot in vain.

Monyet sent a second dart into that paw. It flinched. Puzzled, Kong began sucking at the wound. A third missile struck a spot behind the beast’s right knee.

Dart after dart flew out. Men were growing winded. They scattered before the stamping feet. They cowered in trees to escape the clutching monster hands.

Still they puffed whispering death from their ironwood tubes in unremitting streams.

Three warriors, after exhausting their darts, picked up the trio of severed Triceratops horns, which they had carried with them for just this opportunity.

They rushed up behind the monster ape, began worrying its heels with the sharp javelins, which had been slathered with fresh poison.

Kong howled, turned. The men rushed around, trying to evade those awful crushing feet.

Kong found one with a hand, flung the warrior screaming into the trees—and certain doom.

The second perished when Kong’s hairy right heel happened to lurch back and inadvertently crushed him. Kong never noticed.

The third ran away, dropping his clumsy tool of death.

Crouching amid the ferns, Monyet’s hoarse voice rolled out.

“Pick up those horns! Strike him again!”

And when only one brave man rushed in, Monyet burst out of concealment and picked up one of the clumsy Triceratops horns.

The sharp thing, going into the beast-god’s right ankle, lodged there.

Monyet kicked it in harder, then fled as Kong stormed about, seeking the source of this new insult to his lordship.

Kong found the base of the stinging annoyance, wrenched it out.

No sooner had he brought it up to his face to examine the thing than another Dyak slashed his other ankle with the remaining horn.

New sounds began issuing from Kong’s mouth. Odd grunts and grimaces. His amber eyes grew strange.

Sensing his vulnerability, but not understanding it, Kong turned toward Skull Mountain, then began to stamp in its direction, his immense shoulders rocking with his rolling gait.

Along the way, he encountered the three Savages.

They had witnessed the brief battle and were running toward the sound.

Seeing the approach of Kong, they dived into the river. With one intent, they started swimming with the current that ran toward the Plain of the Altar far downstream.

Kong’s agonized eyes, fixed on the peak of Skull Mountain, had not noticed them before this.

Now those golden-colored orbs dropped. They came to rest on the bobbing heads.

Two of the human heads Kong recognized. Both possessed the amber eyes of his forebears.

But the one that brought a grunt of surprise to his fanged lips was the one with the bushy white beard.

Veering, Kong lunged for that flailing form. Down swept a hairy hand, down and then up again.

Coming back with it was Captain Stormalong Savage.

The beast-god lifted the man to his quivering nose, sniffed the waterlogged figure carefully. A simian grimace crossed his face. Amber orbs seemed to light up when they recognized the yellow eyes of the tiny human in his paw.

Kong tucked Old Stormy to his heaving chest, and knuckle-walked on his free fist toward Skull Mountain, oblivious to the cries and shouts of protest that echoed below.

Chapter XLVII

MOVING WITH SUPERHUMAN speed, Doc Savage reached out for the hairy arm that had scooped up his grandfather, clamped fistfuls of thick black hair and attempted to ride up with him.

The speed of the great ape’s reflexes proved too much. Doc was thrown off, to land back in the raging river.

Sinking, he kicked back to the surface. Looking around, Doc spied his father’s transfixed face. The bronze man knifed toward his father’s floating form, joined him. Almost immediately, his helmet of bronze hair began drying, a peculiar property it possessed.

“I tried,” Doc said, voice twisting.

“No mortal man could have succeeded,” his father assured him.

They turned to watch Kong march toward his lofty lair, like a mountain moving toward another mountain.

“His fur is quilled by Dyak darts,” observed Doc.

Captain Savage nodded. “No doubt the brute is rapidly succumbing to the poison. It may or may not kill him, but the poor devil understands that his peril is great.”

“We have no choice but to follow him to his aerie,” said Doc grimly.

Captain Savage squared his shoulders. “As I said before, and as they used to say in my youth, I have seen the elephant. But I am not afraid of it, fearsome as the beast may be.”

They climbed out of the water, which was rapidly carrying them away from Skull Mountain.

Chicahua began speaking rapidly. He pointed south.

“Dyaks coming this way,” snapped Captain Savage. “To fight them now would be pointless. Let us melt into the bush.”

They slipped into the jungle, began working their way toward Skull Mountain, looking in the creeping dawn like a dormant volcano holding its awful potential in reserve.

Along the way, they came upon a herd of horny-backed Ankylosaurs stampeding away from the retreating Kong, their club-headed tails beating a mad tattoo.

Scampering up a handy tree, the three men roosted there until the armored monsters had passed, like a rolling wave of thunder on blunt, pounding feet.

The entire jungle was alive now. Alive with panic. Shadows moved everywhere.

Things crawled and flashed through the ferns, dimly seen.

“We will stick to the trees,” said Doc.

They did so, moving along branches, leaping the intervening spaces where they must.

Reaching a point where they needed to rest, they paused. Doc poked his head out above the jungle canopy, allowing his vision to adjust to the early light conditions.

A darksome shadow silhouetted against the low-rising sun, Kong was scaling the side of Skull Mountain. He did so one-handed, with evident difficulty.

Doc could not make out whether Stormalong Savage was still clutched in the fearful hand that hung limply, but he hoped he was. For if he was not, his grandfather’s fate would be unthinkable.

Captain Savage joined him. Roosting on a lower branch, Chicahua stood guard against prowlers. They watched in silence, their faces drained of color, expressions gone flat with shock.

Soon, Kong vanished into his rocky lair via the rugged cliff that gave access to one intensely black eye socket.

“We will have to assault the brute where he dwells,” said Captain Savage firmly. “With luck, he will survive his wounds before he can harm brave Stormalong.”

Doc Savage said quietly, “I do not know if anything mortal could kill Kong.”

“In that case,” thundered the Captain of the
Orion,
“we will take our illustrious forebear from his hairy hand by force of arms, if need be!”

That, too, struck Doc Savage as an unlikely prospect. But he kept his opinion to himself.

REACHING the base of Skull Mountain took the best portion of the morning.

As they neared the grim-visaged summit, they were forced to travel on foot. They did so with as much stealth as the terrain permitted.

With the rising sun, the air became busy with pterosaurs and other flying things. A few wriggled out of the triangular nose cavity in the mountain’s face, and took wing.