Well, after all that time and five chapters, here we are at the intense and yes, fairly gruesome finish fight between our favorite playwright and the psycho leopard whose name means assassin. I must be frank here and admit that this particular scene was at least partially inspired by the battle between Tarzan and the leopard Sabor and definitely Kong's jaw-dropping battle with the Vastatosaurus Rex trio. In The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island, which showcases all the gorgeously conceived and illustrated beasts WETA's artists designed to populate the island-many of which, disappointingly, never made it into the film or can only be seen in the Deluxe Extended Edition-we readers are informed that like lions and hyenas, wolves and coyotes, the V. Rexes and Megaprimatus are and always have been ancient enemies.
The same very much goes for humans and leopards, and if I learned anything at all from the research I did for this chapter, it's that a chunk of ground containing a man-eating-or Lord forbid, wounded-leopard basically qualifies as a five-alarm, send-in-a-UN peacekeeping force, federally recognized disaster/conflict area. Anyhow, I thought it would be quite fitting to have Jack replicate that astonishing battle to save Ann on a smaller scale with this spotted feline. I must caution however, there is some strong profanity and heavy gore in here. Also, even though I've been making references to them for like eight chapters, I just wanted to let everyone know the name I've had Jack coin for the raptors in the gorge, Aquliasuchus, means "eagle crocodile" in Latin and then Greek-their technical moniker is Venatosaurus or hunter lizard as Duke Devlin impressively knows, but there's not much chance that Jack Driscoll could've known that. Plus, it sounds cooler and I've always had a deep fondness for crocs and gators.
I can't say it enough times, thanks so much to all my readers and definitely reviewers!
"Sheetah, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured his prey. The ethics of all the others meted a quick and merciful death to their victims." Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1912.
"Eye to eye and head to head/(Keep the measure Nag,")/ This shall end when one is dead/(At thy pleasure, Nag./) Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, The Jungle Book, 1894, Rudyard Kipling.
"Ole bull he comes for me, wi's head down. But I didn't flinch…I went fo 'e. 'Twas him as did th' flinchin'." Lark Rise, 1939, Flora Thompson.
Arms and legs churning, Jack Goralski Driscoll ran. With an anguished Ann at his right, his feet gulped down yards of soil the way they had after he'd miraculously climbed out from the carrion-stinking ravine of horrors and plunged alone into the jungle, his wild burst of speed being used every bit as much to flee from the place as to catch up with the monster ape.
This time however, he had no clue whatsoever which direction their legs should be taking them-except to just keep running to the east, where civilization most likely lay, away from the setting sun and yet another brush with death that had played out between two walls of stone. He should've refused to even go a step further and hurried Ann straight back to Pride Rock when Scar had told them en route exactly where they were headed.
That's it, Jack savagely promised himself. No more even looking at gorges. Ever. Everybody get out of the building, because this ain't the first time it's gone up in flames fellas. I'm never having anything else to do with a big crack in the ground again or ignoring my instincts as long as I live-however short a time that may be.
He was incredulous that Fate could be so callous as to put him through a second nightmare stampede. It was very like having to endure losing your home and possessions in a fire, clawing your way back up from rock bottom after the feelings of shock and helplessness had subsided, fiercely scraping together whatever money and help happened to come your way so that you could finally put another roof over your head-and then seeing that one too, crowned with flames one day.
The stalks of the red oat grass seemed to have an equally firey, bloody hue in the rays of the dying sun. Despite his panic, the writer in Jack wasn't blind by any means to the metaphor being showcased. The sun was bloodily setting on a noble king's life and reign, and a time of security and peace for him and Ann. The dream he'd dared to relish and relax in, an Arcadian day after Skull Island's barely understandable horrors had now shown itself to be just a cruel illusion. He'd thought he and his Venus could rightly, finally, call themselves safe, and now everything had been so savagely shattered.
Oh Holy Mackerel, how it had been shattered! Although the possibility of a royal coup in the making had drifted in and out of the writer's subconscious ever since Ann had voiced her worry about it last night at the waterhole, Jack had never really felt convinced that Scar was capable of doing such a thing-much less committing the same sort of sickening treachery that Cain dealt out to Abel. Or had he simply been practicing a dangerous, fervent breed of self-denial, not even daring-or frankly wanting-to consider that such a thing might be true?
But Scar had just heartlessly proven that it was all too true. And Jack was terrifyingly aware that now he and his dame, having not perished under the hooves of the wildebeest as presumably hoped for, were rather significant dangling loose ends.
Ann herself was utterly grief-stricken, tears streaming from her clenched cobalt blue eyes and constantly looking back over her gracile shoulder, gasping half-sobs pistoning and bursting out of her lungs even as she ran. It felt like getting lemon juice in a knife cut for him, seeing his Venus in such a state of distress. Worst of all though, was whenever she would halt for a second or two, and turn completely around to tearfully face back towards the gorge, smooth jaw rigid and body trembling with a tension generated by the desire to quit racing for the tall timber and go back to protect Simba from his regicidal uncle.
Each time, as much as it destroyed the playwright inside to do it, he forcefully tugged Ann's wrist or purposefully shoved at her shoulder to hurry her along. They literally didn't have the time to cry right now, and now had to look after themselves, get away far and fast while they still could. Running out on Simba like this, especially after they'd fought tooth and nail yesterday to spare him from hyenas, and now leaving him to be killed was something that made Jack Driscoll feel profoundly sick and furious at himself. But you couldn't realistically defeat a male lion that was hellbent on killing you and your angel either! He yearned to somehow be able to have that Thompson in hand again.
The faint possibility that the black-maned lion might allow the two of them to leave as they'd come, content with being so easily rid of the nomadic human pair, did cross a grasping, hopeful part of Jack's mind. But somehow he was all but certain that Scar was the type who preferred the bloodier alternative, as certain as he was that the stars would come out within an hour's time.
Very soon, the front half of this handmade spear would probably have to become well painted with even more blood if he and Ann wanted to hang on to theirs-although he'd taken care not to jab it in much more than skin deep, the tip of the makeshift spear in his left hand was now abundantly smeared with the blood of the many wildebeest he'd frenziedly goaded away. His body was becoming sore and swollen already from the massive bruises sustained during the collisions down in the chasm.
Somewhere from deep in that limitless cloud of beige dust behind and to the left of Jack, a voice abruptly cried out into the still, twilight air. "HHHHHEEEEELLLLLPPP!!!!" Simba yelled out pleadingly. "Somebody!!! Anybody!!!"
It was a protest, an entreaty that resounded with the deepest, most awful kind of incomprehension, sheer despair, agony, futility, desperation and scalding terror. It was the outburst of someone who has, in a searing, eyeball-piercing moment of enlightenment, has suddenly understood just how indifferent, empty, and pitiless the universe can truly be, impassively going and setting off a case of dynamite alongside your heart and soul. It was the outcry of a sentient being's innocent soul as it was split in two.
And it broke Ann Darrow completely.
With a wail of blistering agony, her legs gave out beneath her, and she collapsed hard on her knees in the grass, halfheartedly catching herself with her palms. In one stride, Jack was beside, then kneeling down to his suffering angel, dropping the spear and enveloping her tightly in his arms. He didn't know exactly whether it was merely her dead weight or the gutting agony bludgeoning his own soul that caused his legs to crumple with barely a struggle. The searing image of a devastated Jimmy flashed across his memory, combining with the slicing pain of Simba's horrified lament to make a glowing coal somehow fill his throat.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry this had to happen Ann," he whispered. "Jesus, I'm so sorry."
Through ripping sobs, Ann's only response, muffled against his shoulder, was "Why?" Why did this disaster have to happen? Why did Scar have to do this? Why couldn't we have been left in peace? Why did you fall for it? Why did I go along? Why did we leave Simba like cowards?
A faint tightness lacing his voice, Jack could only say, "I don't know. I just know that you were right, and I was absolutely wrong."
"He's killed Simba just now Jack, I know it. Oh God, he's killed Simba!" Ann screeched in despair. "Why didn't we stay instead of leaving him? Why?" It was every bit as much an indictment as it was a question.
In his peripheral vision, the playwright detected small, banded orange-beige shapes in close-cropped fur scuttling among the herbs and sparse grass from the east, toward him and his mournful dame. Jerking his head up, it was a huge relief for Jack to see that they were on the smaller side, and even more reassuring to see that they were merely meerkats, drawn in by the sound of Ann's heartfelt sobbing. Gathering in a loose group, they frowned and cocked their slim lemur heads in perplexity, noses twitching but saying nothing.
But if Ann's lamenting was acting as a beacon for a meerkat mob, then it was giving them away to a far more malicious beast too. Trying to be both as firm and understanding as he could manage, even while his nerves vibrated with fear, Jack Driscoll advised her, "Ann, come on. If Scar has done away with Simba, then there's nothing more we can do for him. I'll dish out and have a nice big serving of humble pie when we're out of harm's way, but until then we've got to keep moving," he urged as he took up the spear and leapt to his feet.
Ann hesitantly stood erect, and gave one last helpless look back at the gorge, her expression that which a sister gives a little brother whom she is unable to save. "Come on!!" Jack hissed, stress dancing in his voice.
"Hey msichana, is there something wrong?" one meerkat gently asked. Jack didn't bother to tell her that yes, something was horribly wrong indeed.
Even as the tears began to subside and a regretful, defeated determination began to bloom in those immense blue eyes, Ann weakly responded, "But Jack, don't you understand-"
"I understand that I don't want to be anywhere around when Scar comes over to do cleanup," Jack pointedly gabbled back as he made his limbs churn once more, several of the meerkats scattering before them. Other members of the group were gathered at their burrow, peaceably soaking in the remaining sun or calmly digging close by as the harried playwright and actress passed them in their flight. He couldn't help but momentarily envy their security.
Suddenly at that instant, just like how the muscle-gripping tension of a derelict building's impending destruction is jarringly broken by the roar of the explosive charges detonating, the gruff, earnest murruck-murruck of an alarmed meerkat sentry burst into the air like a firecracker. "Everybody haul butt!" the sentry added, even as he dropped to the ground from the hunk of old antelope bone he'd been using as a stepping stool, and promptly rushed off. In a flash, terrified meerkats were racing on all fours from every direction to dive into the burrow entrance, sliding and writhing over and against each other like spawning fish in their haste.
Oh Jesus Christ!! Jack sinkingly thought, his memory flashing back to how the scorpion/ lobster/ pill millipede creatures in the swamp had abruptly scattered and fled seconds before the terrible viperfish-sea lion behemoth had attacked their raft from behind. The breeze, which had been blowing from the east and therefore into their faces, now shifted and came up from the south.
Suddenly, Jack smelt feline in that instant, mingled with the sharp, iron-filing scent of freshly shed blood. And then he knew.
As if he was a tethered dog reaching the end of its rope, Jack stopped immediately in mid-stride and held up a hand to halt Ann before drawing himself bolt upright. The evening air seemed to become more viscous and enclosing somehow as he raked the ground around them with his eyes, piercing every islet of scrub or herbs, delving into each cowlick of long grass.
"What's wrong now?" Ann asked in querulous uncertainty, her own expressive eyes flicking and sweeping back and forth as she seemed to shrink inward, picking up on her partner's fear.
Somehow barely succeeding in mastering the awful cold stone of fear in his gut, Jack Driscoll's sweating hands clenched the spear in an iron grip while he breathed in and smoothly said, "Ann, just walk away with me as calmly as you can. Do not panic or run unless I think we've snaked far enough away from him." There was a sort of dumpy mound nearby, and he wondered if they should use that as a kind of fortress…
From somewhere to the playwright's left came a raspy grunt, faint at first, but becoming steadily louder. Ha-um, ha-um, ha-um, ha-um. Jack immediately seized Ann's right hand in his free one and began to run south, consumed by terror-when the wood-rasping sounds came again, their maker concealed in the grass and herbs before them. Ha-um, ha-um, ha-um, ha-um. Dodging sharply, Jack hurried Ann to the southeast, heading for the mound-only to be blocked and turned another time by the sawing calls.
It was then that Jack Driscoll remembered and realized. No lion born could ever produce these coarse rasping grunts or hide in this paltry cover-but a leopard could and was. This leopard too, was acting as Scar's hitman, eliminating the final two witnesses without the lion having to get his own paws dirty. But first, this fella wanted to play a sick little game of hide-and-seek before taking care of business. Who's there? I'm here! Ready or not, here I come!
For a few helpless seconds of despair, even as he ran in belly-clenching fear, the writer closed his eyes. He had the fleeting sensation that this was actually all just some crackers delusion, that when he opened his peepers again he'd be back in his Manhattan apartment, perched on the sofa while working on the newest crossword puzzle in the Times after a shower and shave, a safe, adoring Ann casually resting in the crook of his elbow.
He hopefully opened them again. Nope. Nada. Still running hither and thither from a leopard that clearly delighted in their terror. The husky voice sawed air a fourth time, now just two yards from his right flank. As he began to turn, grass rustled, and before Jack could even process the idea of thrusting with the spear, the forequarters of an amber and ebony form darted out at him.
A velvet paw almost indifferently batted, cloth tore, and there were four elongated sparks of pain over Jack's ribs. Although the wounds were little more than skin deep, they felt like being swiped with lit matches. At the pain, Jack stumbled, a quick, sharp cry bursting from his lips.
Before he could stand erect again, Ann picked up a stone, ran forward, and chucked it at the leopard's form as it diffused back into the grass, fiercely yelling, "You get away from him!" But her projectile failed to hit their tormentor, already gone from view. For a split second, Jack fancied he saw a choppy, yet stealthy motion of limbs from the corner of his eye in the murdered daylight. Where was he-she now, for God's sake?
He wasn't even able to do much more than look over his shoulder before the leopard lunged from behind and swiped its claws almost delicately across the small of the writer's back. It was as if four syringes of sulfuric acid had been squirted across his skin-except Jack knew quite well that it was a whole different type of fluid that wetted his hand when he instinctively shoved it against the wound in response to the flashing pain.
The pain-fire was replaced in the next moment then by a welling, overpowering anger. Something just snapped inside him slightly. The fear, the nightmare incidents, the struggling to keep from getting killed by creatures and humans who had no place in what he thought of as the world and reality, the constant chasing and attacks by over-aggressive beasts hungering for his flesh and/or trying to harm Ann-it was so Christ-damned tiresome!!!! He'd finally had enough, all he could take of this utter horseshit!!
"All right!" Jack roared in fury. "I don't know who you are, you cowardly son of a bitch, but if you've been sent to kill us, then be frank about it and face me like a man!!!"
From a thick patch of giant star grass in the reddening light, the throaty sawing welled up again in response, its tone now one of smug amusement. "Actually Jack, I'm a leopard, not a man," the feline voice said arrogantly. "And my actual name is Nduli, if you please. But I suppose I might as well concede to your suggestion-now that those jahanum-damned meerkats had to go and fuck up my element of surprise," he growled in irritation. Then, confidently, unhurriedly, the spotted cat virtually materialized, then oozed out of the grass and stood erect before both humans, ears laid back and muscles tensed for battle.
Jack heard grass rustle behind him and pebbles shift as Ann gasped and drew back several steps upon seeing Nduli fully expose his body, mantled in that perversely beautiful spotted cloak. The playwright didn't blame her. Somehow, the consuming anger drained away, and confidence didn't linger all that far behind either.
As blood seeped from his scratches, the sight of the leopard hitman made a nauseous, helpless sensation blossom in the pit of Jack's lean stomach. The fur around his jaws and glinting black lips was horribly sodden with blood, and the writer wondered numbly if this leopard, not Scar, had been the one to murder poor Simba.
Even though Jack judged Nduli to probably weigh around 140 pounds, or namely 1/158 of the monstrous ape titan-hell, the cat weighed less than even he did-his eyes were all too drawn to the massive shoulder, neck, and jaw muscles that rippled and bulged underneath that spangled velvet coat. On top of that, this was definitely a trophy quality tom, and he didn't think that even the late Benjamin Hayes would've realistically been a match for the cat, not with just a wooden spear and bare hands as weapons.
And Jack Driscoll knew with a sickening certainty that he'd probably be joining the first mate in oblivion soon enough.
Perhaps most disturbing of all, as Nduli began to circle in a slinking half-crouch, warily testing for an opening, was that malevolent, gruesome demon grin-blood even coated the inside of the ridged mouth!-and his glaring, abnormally yellow right eye. It made his gaze too much of a cousin to the eyes of the natives, crazed and cruel all at once.
Never ungluing his own green ones from the walleyed tom, a slight choke infused Jack's droning voice as he told the slim angel standing behind him, frightened yet determined, "Run away Ann. Run right now." The message was clear. Get out of here fast, not just so that you survive, but because I know that I'm going to lose this fight, and I can't stand the idea of you witnessing it.
"Like hell I will Jack!" she resolutely snapped back. Frustrated, yet grudgingly pleased by her loyalty, Jack made two infernally foolish mistakes at once. He turned just a few degrees toward Ann-and his eyes were then abruptly dazzled by the setting sun. But worst of all, he took his eyes off Nduli.
By the time his mortal sin registered, there was the sound of padded paws hitting earth-and then claws were raking the small of Jack's back once more, just above the buttocks. Automatically, like a bucking horse, Jack tried to plant a heel hard in Nduli's jaw in response. It only struck air though, and there was another knife slash down his calf, parallel to the shinbone.
He managed to turn, only to receive a red rake across the bottom of his chest from one of Nduli's inward-turned paws, seemingly broad as a saucer. Cringing in pain, Jack wildly tried to stab Nduli with the spear at that moment. But the walleyed tom dodged it with little effort and slashed him again across the ribs.
Unlike most large predators, such as grizzly bears or alligators, a leopard in the heat of battle rarely tries to close with its adversary and clamp down with its fangs. Instead, it uses speed and its claws to deliver lightening-swift wounds. They quite literally "strike like a ninja, cut like a razor blade."
Nduli moved so fast and with such agility that as far as the desperate writer was concerned, it made him look as quick on his two feet as a robot dipped in epoxy. Club against cutlass. As for the huge tom leopard, he might as well have been made of molten steel. His claws were certainly causing as much pain.
Jack tried his best to score a hit with that ridiculous pointed stick, but it was more or less like attempting to spear a fall leaf blowing in the wind. The only surefire way to anchor a leopard that's facing you head-on is with a direct swat to the chest or the head. And considering that the chest of even a big tom is only about as wide as a man's splayed hands touching together, even if the cat is being especially obliging and simply walking or jogging along, it's still a challenging enough target for a person armed with a high-powered rifle to hit-to say nothing of when one is right in your face, shredding you with all the glee and swiftness of an under-the-gun coroner, and you have only a pig-sticker to answer back with. Much of the time, simply holding his weapon crosswise and trying to block the claws was the only thing that Jack could do.
Everything seemed a mass of windmilling, clawing, slapping limbs, some muscular and spotted, some long and tanned, blood, dirt, grass, lashing tail, and excruciating pain. Ann's frail arms and figure showed now and again as she stoned the leopard, kicked at those stocky velvet hind legs, or fiercely yet ludicrously clutched his endless rosette-dappled rope of a tail and tried to pull the cat off her fella.
The most her attempts did was either cause Nduli to snort in contemptuous amusement or grunt in mild irritation as he almost gently kicked her feet out from under her with his powerful hind legs, claws usually sheathed. In addition, the fight took both combatants in all kinds of unpredictable directions. Sometimes Jack found himself wildly gyrating on his feet as he did what he could to fend off his attacker with kicks and slugs, other times rolling and thrashing on the ground like a landed eel. The sinking sun randomly flashed and dazzled, flashed and dazzled again as they dodged and gyrated.
A small pit of Jack realized at some point through his desperate struggling that the walleyed tom wasn't putting his whole heart into this. He was pulling his punches so to speak. Then, with horrified, searing comprehension, the dreadful truth exploded into his panicked mind. The leopard wanted to play with this play-builder before killing him, to have a good time torturing and dealing out pain.
Often Nduli would prove it by allowing Jack to get back to his feet and even allow him, dripping blood, to run a short distance-only to bore in once more and slap a forepaw against his flesh to leave even more scarlet lines of suffering, or sometimes even deliver the odd bite for good measure with those creamy thorns of fangs. Red-hot barbed wire across the left lower flank. A handful of scalpels dragged across the back and top of the right shoulder blade. Top of the left upper arm flossing a shark's front rows of teeth. A quartet of arrowheads hammered all together into the left buttock. Razor wire administered from below the right armpit to slightly west of his right nipple. Railroad spikes in the left thigh. Pike hooks embedded in, then ripped out of, the right buttock. Cat o' nine tails twice across the back in swift succession.
Nduli smugly paused to taunt him, standing still for a moment and mocking, "Come on you fucking pansy! Run me through with your pathetic-ass pointed stick!" Furious, Jack tried to reciprocate, but the thickset cat avoided his weapon with the speed and agility of a lizard, flashed to the side, and bounced up to bite the writer through the ribs.
Jack screamed as he heard his own bones crunch under the cat's teeth in white-hot bursts of agony. Nduli's weight threw him to the grass once more. Even as yet more blood streamed from the penny-sized holes, the playwright swung his fist at the walleyed tom's head as hard as he could.
In spite of his lithe, gangly appearance, Jack Driscoll had certainly never been a weakling. Although a doctor by trade and very much the intellectual himself, Jason Driscoll was also a big believer in the ideal of the Renaissance man, and had therefore worked zealously to install this perfect combination of impressive smarts and strength into his sons. Jack had carried this mindset through high school and into the doors of Columbia University, where he'd somehow found the time to take part in the Columbia Lions wrestling, swimming, and cross-country running teams-and doing a swell job of it, thank you very much.
The long-fingered fist proved that strength as it detonated against the side of the leopard's head, causing Nduli to grunt and draw back in surprise. Then the cat gave a snarl of anger, a horrid, deep, tearing gravelly sound, and his own paw connected with Jack's jaw. No claws this time, just a blow so hard that it made the shocked writer see stars for a few seconds as his head snapped to the side and teeth jumped in their sockets from the whiplash.
Blue eyes glaring like those of a tawny eagle, Ann's thin ivory shape rose over the leopard's broad coal daubed back. Teeth straining pebbles of marble, she brought a stone down hard on the cat's hipbone. The stone and the blow driven by her slender arm weren't forceful enough to actually do real damage, but it still did hurt the cat, and an enraged Nduli began to whip around, that trouser-wetting snarl bursting out of his thick throat as he turned on her.
Desperately, even as blood streamed from his body and reddened his torn clothing, Jack fearlessly sprung to his feet and lunged forward, crashing onto Nduli's back and wrapping his right arm around the leopard's linebacker neck. As if it was a steel bar, Jack Driscoll pressed his upper arm against the side of the leopard's throat and bore down.
The triangle choke, Coach Iacocca had called it so long ago. By clamping your opponent's neck between your upper arm and chest, you squeezed the carotid artery shut and partially compressed the windpipe, preventing oxygen from reaching the brain. It worked wonderfully as a wrestling tactic, and you could seriously weaken or even kill someone with this choke.
That was assuming you executed it correctly. That was assuming your aggressor was human.
Jack didn't. Nduli wasn't.
Leopards are amazingly powerful cats, perhaps the strongest of all felines pound for pound. They are able to overpower and kill 10-foot crocodiles, 14-foot pythons, Cape buffalo and giraffe calves, kudu, lechwe, bushpigs, and even chimpanzees. For a leopard, slaying an animal twice its weight-and then lifting it 12 feet or more up into a tree as a finale-is really no great trial.
Arching his colorful back, Nduli dragged his legs underneath his body and forced himself upward in an arching leap like a rodeo horse, seemingly putting almost as much power into it. As Jack sensed the leopard's muscles beginning to coil underneath, the writer knew what was about to happen, and surged down with his knees in response.
He hung on for dear life as long as he could, hoping against hope that he could somehow manage to choke Nduli into an oxygen deprived stupor and then retrieve the spear to finish him off, similar to what Carl Akeley had done with a knife and a wounded leopardess that had gone for him, except he'd even more audaciously stuck his arm right down her gullet to choke her. But even more importantly, Akeley had had her pinned on her back in soft sand, with his knees in her gut and elbows in her armpits. It didn't work that way with a record-book tom leopard lying prone on grass and gravel.
The writhing, scratching, walleyed cat convulsively bucked, bucked, bucked again. Jack's arm loosened at the second plunging kick, and the third sent him flying backward to land sprawling painfully on a torn back and butt as if he'd taken a whack from a pack mule. It probably would've even done the horned dinosaur that had thrown him in the jungle quite proud. Flattened ears lending a bizarre rounded look to his head, Nduli leapt clear and ran a few feet before whipping around with another horrid, tearing snarl as the playwright wildly rowed backward with his legs, trying to get the space needed to prepare some sort of defense before the leopard tom went for him once more.
"Stop! Leave him alone!" a feminine voice rang out. Ann's pale body darted in sideways between the cat and the man, and to Jack's mutual amazement and terror, fearlessly started to slap and kick Nduli in the head with all the strength her petite form could muster.
"Ann no!!" Jack wildly yelled. "He'll kill you!!"
And indeed, Nduli struck out with a forepaw, furiously snarling "Don't you interfere bitch!!" The blow knocked his Venus to the ground, and the writer saw a stain of red expand into her slip halfway down the left side of her ribcage in the failing light as she gave a piercing scream.
A dark, volcanic rage swallowed Jack Driscoll like magma, and he sprung back to his feet, blood trickling and jaw set as three pounding strides carried him to the hateful beast that had dared to harm and draw blood from his angel! Thanks to the mad yellow coat of paint over his cornea, the walleyed tom was effectively blind on his right side. Then too, his attention was focused, however briefly, on Ann as her slender hands grasped at the bleeding trio of slashes over her ribs.
So Jack was able to take him just a little off guard, hate and adrenaline propelling a right hook into the side of the cat's head, and a knee into that bearded, red-stained white jaw immediately after. Nduli gave a tearing screech of shock, and although clearly impressed, retaliated with a blow across the writer's chest.
Whacked with a two-by-four studded with nails. Yet even as Jack Driscoll gaspingly cried out and did what he could to wrestle away the agony, some hopeful, dryly scientific part of him realized that the leopard's slash had been administered almost halfheartedly, and this time not because the cat was deliberately pulling his punches. Could the choke have actually weakened Nduli, even just a little?
Managing not to concentrate on the ivory spikes of teeth bared within 14 inches of his face, Jack brought up his right knee and booted the leopard's back legs out from under him. The walleyed tom fell backward and onto his left side. Usually, a cat in this position would be back on its feet and back on the attack in the blink of an eye.
But thanks to the triangle choke treatment, Nduli was just a little bit slower to rise this time than usual. One of the leopard's hind feet windmilled through twilight air as he used his forepaws and hulking shoulders to turn himself halfway over, while the other scrabbled clumsily in the sandy gravel. At that moment, Jack saw a risky, but golden opportunity to perhaps actually turn the outcome of this fight around. With all the weight of his body above it, he stomped on the half-erect tom's elongated foot. He stomped it as savagely as Kong had stomped one of the reeking bat-wolves.
Small bones smashed and crunched under the playwright's foot like peanut brittle under a soldier's boot as the leopard huskily screeched in shock and agony. Now the walleyed tom was angered, and Jack Driscoll instantly wheeled, taking flight across the grass. The spear had been flung aside by accident somewhere in the melee, perhaps dropped in response to the pain from one of many arm wounds, but the writer still remembered where it was, and his slashed legs churned in a frantic attempt to reach it.
He knew that although the leopard tom had had some of his advantage taken away with a crushed foot, this time the wounded Nduli's attack wouldn't "merely" be to torture, but to kill. Gloves off. He could hear the leopard's uneven footfalls rapidly closing in on him from behind as the cat made three-legged haste to punish his human foe for laming him. At least with the leopard so utterly focused on making him pay the price, he couldn't hurt Ann any further. Jack reached down and plucked the spear from the grass.
Not too far away, there was a large pyramidal mound rising above the seed heads. It wasn't a termite colony, but instead was a weathered, crumbling outcrop of red sandstone about 10 feet high. A tor, as the Scots called it. If only he could keep ahead and alive long enough to attain the tor, he'd have the all-important high ground or at least be able to keep his back protected!
Somehow, Jack found his broad hands, one half-clutching the spear, shooting out to strike the crumbled stone. A steak knife grated against his crunched ribs, and lava poured into the many wounds streaking his body, but sheer will, adrenaline, and panic compelled him to scrabble upward.
"Jack, behind you!!" Ann shrieked. Head flashing over his shoulder, Jack, now more than halfway up the tor, turned to see Nduli climbing after him. The sight momentarily stupefied the writer with terror, for the infuriated leopard looked for the entire world like a terrible, vengeful demon coming at some poor sinner's soul. Embracing the rock with his massive forelegs, head weirdly rounded by the flattened ears, insane yellow eye burning with anger, the walleyed tom half-clawed, half-lunged in pursuit, corrugated coral palate neatly framed by bared white teeth as a solitary hind leg hurled him up and forward in great jerking motions.
Jack wasn't fully prepared to put the spear through that narrow spangled chest. He made a clumsy jab, but only dug out a strip of amber and pitch hide as hooked claws gouged into his calf and pulled him to their snarling owner like boxers in a clinch. Face down, Jack cried out as new pain was applied to the sides of his chest, and he wildly kicked up and out, sending both him and the crippled leopard tumbling end over end to the bottom as pounding in their direction, Ann despairingly screamed in horror, "No, no, nnnoooooo!!"
Like in baseball games of his youth, Jack found himself sliding through blossoming dirt and dust. The momentum of the sliding impact carried both him and the leopard riding his back several feet away from the tor and spun them around so that they were facing back into the dying sun. They both passed between two jagged, 3-foot spikes of rock protruding out from the plain, and to Jack's powerless horror, his spear struck one of them and was ripped out from his clutching hand to whirl away into the long grass. So close and yet so far!
The pressure of Nduli's heated plush body on his torso and legs was released, and Jack frantically raised his chest off the dirt, an arm reaching out to grab it, hoping against hope that he would somehow succeed. Fresh pain hooked into his upper arms, and he felt something wet and slippery, reeking of decayed meat, begin to encompass the nape of his neck, whiskers perversely ticklish against the sienna skin. "I don't think so, asshole," Nduli snarled in his ear, body now half crouched across his upper back and shoulders.
Jack understood then in that second that just like a domestic cat with a mouse or finch, the hulking tom was about to break his neck with those metal-punch fangs. As they began to pierce the skin and draw more blood, probing for a gap between the cervical vertebrae, the only thought that broke past the writer's terminal panic was abyssal, helpless grief about how he'd broken his promise and failed his angel.
All of a sudden, there was the beauitful sound of something hard forcefully smacking into feline flesh and bone, and then a startled grunt from the leopard as the mounting, grinding pressure on Jack's nape stopped. The writer felt a baseball-sized rock lightly drop onto, then tumble off his grated shoulder.
Then, from somewhere above his scalp, Nduli snarled, "Don't even try it bitch!" Daring to shift his eyes, Jack was immensely heartened, yet rather taken aback to see Ann, eyes narrowed, still racing right for the two of them, her sole intent to snatch up that spear-and use it. The walleyed tom had figured it out as well, and meant to prevent her from taking the weapon in hand any way he could.
The slandering words sparked off a barely concealed rage within Jack, one that made his eyes blaze like gaslights. But he needed to keep it in check, especially since a crazy, hopeful chance for victory was currently sprouting in his resourceful brain. So instead of immediately acting out in response to the leopard's cruel mockery, he allowed it to further fuel a growing fire.
If Nduli hadn't been so preoccupied with neutralizing this new danger, hadn't falsely assumed that the slashed playwright no longer had enough blood or fight left in him to really be a threat any longer, and had actually stopped to think, he almost certainly would've paid the insurance by completing that fatal bite to Driscoll's nape or crunching into the back of his skull. Classic method of whacking primate prey pals. Except for some brief token resistance, there would've been nothing the writer could've done to save himself. Perhaps the cleverest of all large cats, leopards rarely make such rash oversights. But this time, Nduli did.
In the purplish light, Jack saw the big cat's front paws strike the ground several inches in front of him, then felt a backward, raking pain before the hind feet, one rigid and erect, one at an awful angle, touched down at the same spot. Like a furry snake, Nduli's tail finally bisected the playwright's vision.
Lunging up from the dirt, his hands closing around it, Jack simultaneously gathered his body into a rearing squat as he swung the leopard by his own tail. Nduli gave a roaring snarl of startled indignation and half-flashed around, porcelain-white claws eagerly hooking for Jack's angular face.
But the writer had anticipated this. Staying balanced on one foot, he kicked Nduli as hard as he could with the other-directly where it hurts on a guy.
The walleyed tom yowled at the pain as the mass of his own spotted body was used against him and Jack flung the big cat away to his left, a golden yellow and jet sack torquing through space. And when Jack did allow the ropy furred tail to shoot out from his grasp, Nduli's own momentum, as hoped, sent him crashing down onto the nearer spike of sandstone, impaling him through the pit of the right shoulder.
The walleyed tom screeched in hellish torment, his blood flowing darkly down the stone and soaking the lovely pelt in the mauve light, razor claws wildly, uselessly tearing and scrabbling. The point of the rock had punched right through the top of the corded shoulder, the jagged serrations further helping with keeping the transfixed leopard in place. Exhausted, Jack decided that just like with any poor citizen from Abbot's Flatland who ran into a Soldier by mistake or design, this similar-shaped chunk of rock also guaranteed certain death for Nduli.
His breath came in snatched, red gasps as he met Ann partway. Despite the sweat covering his lithe body and the current air temperature, Jack felt chilled all over, and wondered if he was going into shock from the copious blood loss. She reached out, intending to embrace him, but then to his disappointment drew back. It was little wonder. His shirt and trousers were patched, drizzled, saturated with blood, and he was having trouble standing fully erect.
"Oh God Jack, he sliced you to ribbons!" Ann fretfully wailed as she latched on to one of his hands with both of hers. They were shockingly warm, Jack noted even as his distressed eyes gazed at the scarlet blotch marring her slip.
"He sliced into you Ann! Are you all right for Christ's sake? I can't believe that son of-"
"Forget about me Jack! It's just a shallow flesh wound, and I'll live," she assured him. "But you-he's nearly tortured you to death!" she shot back in mounting agitation, almost seeming to marvel over his wounds as she spoke.
"Yeah, he sure did," he panted, eyes clenching in response to the molten agony that had overtaken his whole body. "Now I know how a caught mouse feels-ah!."
"Do you think you'll pull through?" she wildly urged, lips quivering.
His ribs rasped against each other like red-hot woodscrews, and he could feel his strength literally streaming out of him with his blood. How much had he lost to Nduli's claws? How much more would be lost before the bleeding could be stopped? Jack wanted to admit that things could actually go either way, but so as not to distress his already tearful Venus told her, "I survived Skull Island. I can survive this too," weakly grinning through the scorching pain.
"Says you!" Ann exclaimed, not falling for a bit of it. "Oh my goodness, what can we even do out here?She doubtfully regarded him. "Do you think you can still walk as well as stand Jack? We've got to get to some shelter right away, where you can lie down and I can take care of you so you will survive."
Even the act of drawing breath hurt, and Jack nodded in agreement, shoulders slouching and trembling in pain and welling shock. There was a raspy grunt behind him, and it made him aware that there was still one particular scene that had yet to be completed. "Yeah, I think I probably can as long as we stop the bleeding a little. But first I've got to take that spear to make sure a certain big kitty is good and dead," he dryly panted. "Then take my shirt and use it for bandaging, trouser legs too if you have to," he panted.
Ann willingly handed it to him, vapidly jollying, "Looks like you didn't really need this to lick him after all."
"Not half bad as a shield though," Jack added as, dreadfully weary, he began to turn, expecting to see a fading but still dangerous walleyed leopard pinned on a sandstone spike. But Nduli was no longer there, only blood and some fur remaining.
Jack Driscoll's first reaction was dumbstruck astonishment. No man on earth could be impaled in that fashion and still manage to tear himself free, and then produce almost no sound to boot. The next was pure, animal terror, reaching back to the days when hominids had first developed tools that could harm their most fearful enemy.
It was a very wise instinctive fear to have, for with its intelligence, flawless camouflage, and most of all deeply vindictive nature, a leopard running wounded makes even a professional human assassin look like a fluffy bear cub in comparison. It can come exploding out of the grass from any direction like a spring-loaded, guard-off chainsaw, a whirling citron mass of black rosettes, dagger teeth, and samurai sword claws. And Jack knew, gripping the spear with one hand and pointing it outward while fiercely clutching Ann to him with the other, adrenaline smothering the pain as he jerkily looked around in the dusky blue and pinkish light, that it was going to happen all too shortly.
A wounded Cape buffalo snorts and produces enough ruckus to beat the band as he smashes through the underbrush when beginning a charge. A wounded lion usually can't help expressing its wrath with a snarl or deep grunt the second before it rockets out of the brush. A wounded leopard springs out from a minute tussock of grass as silently, implacably, and destructively as a tornado funnels down from the bottom of a sickly black-green anvil cloud.
Only Ann's expansive cobalt blue orbs of eyes, suddenly dilating even wider at something coming from Jack's right and slightly behind, tipped the writer off. There was no time to scream, only to bodily throw Ann out of his arms and to the side as Nduli came rocketing across the grass from only six yards away and launched his body into the air like a dappled javelin, face twisted in hatred, sickle claws eagerly sticking out of inward-turned paws, wild yellow eye like a small sun.
The force of the impact knocked Jack to the grass like the literal ton of bricks, and Nduli thunderously yowled, "Okay fucker! You wanted a war! You just got a fucking war! " Leaping for the playwright's throat, the murderous leopard almost succeeded in seizing it and crushing the windpipe in those terrible jaws. But Nduli's smashed foot miraculously causing him to miss his mark, and Jack therefore had just enough time to put his forearm up in front of it to block the vicious teeth, holding it up vertically.
Four sets of claws raked and shredded, slicing deeply into flesh, the hind ones working especially hard at trying to carve through the playwright's abdominal muscles and hook out his entrails. Live electrical wire studded with Swiss Army knives. Jack felt a slicing, ungodly horrid species of pain boil up, one that almost seemed to be generated from inside his abdomen. No! Somehow, with the crazed power generated by desperation, he booted the walleyed tom's back legs away and spared his guts, for the moment at least.
With his arm held vertically, Nduli's bolt-cutter jaws didn't have anything to crunch down on, the shearing back teeth ineffectually trying to achieve a grip. That translated into no firm purchase on the man he was carving up either, and in one jerking motion, Jack half-kicked, half-shoved the leopard off of him. The unbelievable significance of what he'd just done staggered him as he sat up. He'd thrown a leopard. Thrown a leopard!
But now Nduli was descending on him again, a shredding, dicing, disemboweling mass of razors and railroad spikes. This time, Jack was timely in his defensive response. He aimed for near the bottom of the deceptively slender chest, and let fly. A wooden weapon pierced deep into the flesh of an organic one with a resounding "PUH-uck", and Nduli uttered a penetrating screech as he reared up and savagely clawed at the shaft. From the shade of the cat's blood, Jack was certain that he'd gotten the walleyed tom through the heart and at least one lung.
To his astonished horror however, the writhing leopard arched his back, pushed down-and broke part of the spear clean off with the rest still inside his body!! Nduli's eyes narrowed to slits as he freed himself, and seemed to turn a sort of sickly green with boundless hate. He reared up again for a few moments in a Max Baer posture, and a truly ghastly growling scream, seeming to come from the mouth of a demon instead of a big cat, erupted from the massive tom as he clawed at the jagged section of wood jutting out of his chest. It gurgled through pulmonary blood in his throat and flung a heavy crimson mist into the African air to drizzle over the grass and Jack's face.
Eyes still affixed with Jack's, Nduli came at him again with another demonic snarl of concentrated, brute hatred.
Keeping his legs folded up above his internal organs, Jack frantically chivied the rest of the spear into the leopard with all his diminishing strength, this time getting the cat in the side of the chest as the crazed tom tried to pulverize his left shoulder into bone shrapnel.
This second spear hit made Nduli cut loose with a distinctly weaker, yet still very much infuriated snarl, and the playwright took advantage of his shock to kick him away a second time as best he could. Landing in a heap, the walleyed tom just looked back at Jack Driscoll for several slow-motion seconds, feline gaze seeming to be spiritually burning and stabbing holes through him. The baleful eyes flickered like lights on a theater marquee, and frothy blood was vomited out in a light rain every time the cat defiantly, balefully snarled, each one possessing just a bit less power than the one before it.
It looked like the end of the road for this fella. Then again, all that blood shed by those claws and fangs likely meant it was the end of the road for him too. He was no longer badly bleeding, but hemorrhaging, skin already transformed into that of a corpse. Wasn't it a sad irony though, to escape all those horrid beasts on Skull Island, and ultimately die from injuries sustained by a leopard, Jack reflected. No matter, he'd perfomed a white knight's ultimate duty to his lady.
Then, to Jack's horrified disbelief, even soaked through with his own blood and impaled by two sizable sections of wooden spear, Nduli somehow shudderingly pulled himself up into what counted for a half-erect stance and relentlessly, unstoppably, began to claw his way forward again, back toward the mutilated writer.
"Can't you just quit? Good Christ, can't you just please drop dead and go to hell?!" Jack Driscoll shrieked despairingly.
"Not...before...I send...you there...first," the prostrate tom grimly, shakily burbled through his own lung blood.
There were no more weapons at hand, and as the dying Nduli pulled his gory body over Jack's legs like some grim machine of slaughter, blood gushing down his sides and front, Jack feebly tried to shove his head away with his hands. Almost more like a failing power tool continuing to be driven by it's programming rather than by thought, the fading leopard whacked them down and to the side with a thin growl.
Claws slid out from a headlight-sized paw, and Nduli gave a vapid, take-what-I-can-get sort of victory smile, saying chokingly "Guess we're both going down." Jack understood and saw then that the leopard meant to cut his carotoid artery with a dewclaw, kill him that way.
Desperately twisting his head aside and tucking his square lower jaw down into the hollow of his throat at the same moment, he saw Ann's taut arms shoot in to fearlessly grab the nape of the leopard's neck and pull through his blurring vision. An instant later, the cat's eyes, one khaki, one a crocus yellow, opened so impossibly wide, almost seeming innocent and cute as the spotted body gave a final convulsive heave. No longer driven by the brain of a living creature, the paw went wild and smashed into the side of Jack's skull, tearing loose broad ribbons of scalp as it did so, sending a galaxy of silver fireworks to fill his vision.
Time seemed to halt, then swirl, as Jack briefly fought against the inevitable, like a dog being swept downstream into river rapids. He saw Ann's gorgeous blue eyes and enchantingly soft-featured, shell-pale face lowering down to look into his own. He distantly felt the caress of her hands on his chest and cheek. The writer knew that his body had taken too much punishment, and now would give up the ghost. But his angel and nymph would live on, and that was the only thing that truly mattered.
Jack Driscoll gave his tearful angel a weak crooked grin, and then tried to tell her, " Don't be sad. I love you." But he was only able to barely, silently mouth it before his head lolled to the side and a bottomless pit of tar engulfed him.
This Especially Evil Cliffhanger (TM) has been brought to you by Nate The Ape.