Well, here's the first chapter of the two or three that will finish off this fic's third act. This one was particularly tough to write, not only because it was a long chapter which involved switching back and forth between several different perspectives, but also since I'll freely admit that the scene of Kong's last stand and death is very much one of the few scenes in both the original and remake that I can still hardly stand watching...and I had to watch it multiple times to get the details right. Right in the feels. :(
"And when it's time to face the fight/With just my shadow at my side/I'm an army of one/I'm a soldier/Never give up/Never give up/Never!/Never give up/Never let up!/Ever!/Never give in/You're an army of one!/" Army of One, John Bon Jovi, 2013.
"Ah, you know, lad, that love business is a powerful thing."
"Greater than gravity?"
"Well, yes, boy. In its way, I'd, uh… Yes, I'd say it's the greatest force on earth." The Sword In The Stone, 1963, Walt Disney Pictures.
"Some people worship mountains and live at the foot of such an altar. Somehow, size denotes strength, wisdom, and timelessness. But other people tear down the hills, and men shoot elephants in disrespect and defiance of God." Toni Ringo Helfer, The Gentle Jungle, 1980.
December 20th, 1933.
Mwaguzi's divine magic-or whatever method he'd used to miraculously repair his broken crown-had done a wonderfully effective job, a thankful beyond words and still disbelieving section of Jack Driscoll had to admit.
The same couldn't be said for the formerly literal splitting headache that had been crouching heavily above his ears, like a big cat ready for the ambush, ever since he'd regained awareness in the totaled taxi and gasping, slithered out the driver's door, or the welt among his hair. He felt like he'd just gone several rounds with an elephant bull.
But the freezing air and winds helped to alleviate it somewhat, and the pain was actually good in a way too, for Jack made himself use it as a goad to keep spurring him on as he raced through an alley, wingtips splashing through puddles, trench coat streaming behind like a small sail as he raced to catch up with and stay near the closest military trucks-the direct opposite of what most of his fellow New Yorkers were doing.
It hadn't exactly been difficult to dope out where they were. Between the huge waving searchlight beams against the night sky, the police sirens, the occasional thunderous boom of a shell being fired, and above all, the horrific, incredibly loud and awful sound of Thompson submachine guns spitting bullets, Kong's human pursuers were certainly making both his location and theirs pretty obvious.
It sounded like a damn war out there, and he supposed that it was.
Good glorious grief, all of this firepower and soldiers just to deal with a giant ape on the loose? his baffled mind kept repeating.
But far stronger than his recognition of the absurdity of it all was a frantic, near-helpless terror, not for himself (having been technically been killed twice now, death hardly really terrified him any longer) but for Ann, all too vulnerable to getting killed in the crossfire.
He didn't doubt that the doughboys were doing all they could to minimize the risk of harming her whenever they pulled the triggers on their weapons. But all it would take was one well-placed stray bullet, or being too close to the center of a shell blast.
Silently screaming prayers to any deity that would listen-and what was another miracle at this point now, really?-Jack hurdled several plow mounds, then was right alongside a military truck, long legs churning with desperation as they both tore southeast, right down 6th Avenue.
Already, Jack Driscoll was all but certain he knew where King Kong intended to take Ann and try to make his futile escape from the lead and nickel death that was hounding him.
And by the grace of God, it wasn't more than just a few minutes away. Perhaps he might even get there in time to make a difference.
Ann Darrow had been to the top of the Empire State Building several times since its completion two years ago, patiently enduring the mind-numbing lines and taking the 86story elevator ride to gaze in wonder from the lower observation deck at the sight of her home city, laying sprawled out so impossibly far beneath her. She'd also twice paid the extra fee to go up to the higher deck, a glass-walled cupola forming the 102nd floor.
But she'd never done it during winter, and she certainly could never have imagined in ten lifetimes that she'd be making the journey up this way, held in the warm, massive right hand of perhaps the most extraordinary creature on this earth, one that had reached out to her as a friend and protector as he slowly climbed up the side of this manmade mountain.
She knew exactly why he was doing it, and it just made her heart break all the more. He thought that when he got to the top, they'd both be safe, safe from the things that had been chasing them, hunting them, hurting and scaring him in the streets.
How could he possibly know that climbing to the top of New York's tallest building would be no guarantee of salvation?
With every few floors Kong put between him and the asphalt, it almost seemed to Ann like they were climbing up to heaven, as if the ape somehow already understood where he and his only companion were ultimately headed. She had no idea if the souls of animals lived on after death…but if they did, she knew that the spirit of this amazing, loyal, warm-hearted one certainly deserved to go through The Pearly Gates.
Part of Ann was aware that there were a lot of other things she could be thinking about right now, as Kong climbed the side of the building with her in hand, searchlight beams impaling them from below in a cruel, traitorous mockery of stage lighting. She could be thinking about how utterly terrifying it was, to be so high up in the air, of what her fate would be if the ape ever lost his grip.
She could be guiltily thinking about how this was all her fault, how she shouldn't have screamed when that huge abomination of a spider had jumped the young ostrich dino, how she'd unwillingly betrayed and doomed him just by coming to connect with and even love this incredible beast. Okay, she was feeling that last way just slightly.
She could be repeatedly wishing they were both happily back where they belonged, albeit forever apart, with each living free and unworried on their own respective native islands thousands of miles away. She could be steaming with hatred at that lying maniac Carl, at Captain Englehorn for being heartless and stupid enough to choose to go along with that weasel's plan when he could so easily have done the right thing, the wise thing, and refused.
She could be wishing that Englehorn had killed Kong at the beach with a harpoon to the chest. It would've been so painful to witness for her, but also better for the poor fellow that way. At least he would've died on his home island and not been enslaved, made into a humiliating sideshow.
But mostly, and much to her surprise, she felt more or less resigned and numb as Kong climbed on, occasionally giving gruff, panting grunts of exertion. Part of it was the increasingly vicious cold, howling up the building in updrafts, as it spread into her. But part of it was the reluctant, simple understanding that this majestic ape, who wanted nothing more than to never be alone again and protect her, was almost certainly the living dead now.
Whatever was going to happen to them now was going to happen. All she could do was be calm for him, put on a brave face, cherish and make the most of these last few minutes or hours together, not upset him by crying or carrying on.
They attained the lower observation deck as the thin, distant-seeming winter sun began to rise out of the gray Atlantic, painting the horizon with a stark rainbow of warm colors. And still Kong climbed on, until he stopped and nestled in a place at the base of the great spire that was somewhat out of the arctic winds. His breath puffed out in massive clouds of mist like a fairy tale dragon's as he leaned his great silvered back against the metal and then raised her back up to the level of his tired, soulful and grateful eyes. They were two wildly different intelligent beings, divided by nature and by scale, but now forever united by spirit, regarding each other at what seemed like the very edge of the sky.
She couldn't help but find herself thinly smiling, marveling as her blue eyes met his glowing copper ones and he softly rumbled and lowly belched back at her. It was crazy, ridiculous, to think that she, an average, unemployed low-class Apple Annie, could encounter and in time, befriend, grow to love, a 25-foot tall gorilla like he was her own dog or horse.
But love and loyalty and friendship are also supremely crazy and ridiculous things, forces that that obey no boundaries, which laugh at convention, that even manage to gloriously, astonishingly bridge the gaps between different species and tame the wildest of creatures.
And then he did something which increased her marvel all the more. Eyes turned seaward, she saw him thoughtfully raise his wrinkled free hand and deliberately tap it against his left breast. At first she had no clue what he was doing.
But when she followed his gaze, and saw the sun's disc peeking above the horizon, it all came rushing back to her.
Oh my God, she realized in astonishment. He remembers the gesture, remembers what it means, even after all this time! It beggared belief.
"Beautiful," she whispered in awe as he tilted his eyes back to her and repeated the action. "Yes," she reverently agreed, smiling, even as tears came to the corners of her eyes. "Yes it is."
And then she heard the sound of the biplane engines.
He heard them first, before they came around the side of the strange, slick, cold and unnatural termite mound-mountain that he'd sought refuge on with the beautiful yellow-haired little ape that he held and admired.
The noise reminded him of swarming insects or snarling predators, and he tensed uncertainly.
Then, to his confused wonder, they appeared. There were six of them. They looked to him almost like great, strange, gliding featherless birds, but to his incredulous realization, contained at least two little naked apes inside of them!
Whatever these incredible little ape-controlled flying beasts were, they were obviously upsetting to the yellow haired female, for she immediately shifted her gaze from them to his own face, blue eyes wide and filled with apprehension and concern.
Picking up on her agitation, not entirely sure if the flying naked-ape controlled beasts truly posed a danger to her or if she was more worried about his safety, Kong tucked the slender female closer to his chest and gripped her a little tighter as he watched them move in a wide half circle, giving a suspicious huff, then another one.
Still producing that nonsensical, thin snarl, the four-winged fake beasts swooped about before coming for the spire at about his level again. This time, they split into two groups, three of them buzzing by on his side as he warily tracked them, the other three disappearing to curve around the opposite one.
Whatever the true nature of these bizarre, constantly growling flying things was, whatever their relationship to the little naked apes, Kong could already recognize that they were displaying coordinated behavior. Pack behavior.
And pack behavior by large things that could freely fly was not an idea he liked in the least.
"Wrraaaggghhh!" Kong found himself screaming in agony as the spitting sounds of the little ape weapons tore apart the air and their little stones pierced the muscles of his back as he tried to climb to the top of the spire.
It was terrifying and painful, with each little stone that hit him somehow feeling like a huge boulder had crashed into his back. Then came the pain, a piercing, powerful burning sensation which almost felt like being stung by some vast, terrible insect as the disconcerting sensation of his blood running through his pelt registered seconds later.
But even through the panic and pain, even as he hoarsely screamed a second time and heard parts of the transparent, slick material that covered the great fake mountain's sides be shattered by the deadly little stones and crash down beneath him, so dangerously close to the yellow haired little ape he'd left below, Kong forced himself to hang on, moving sideways frantically to keep the spire between him and the flying little-ape controlled beasts, even as he struggled to keep climbing up, to get to the top and make the bold stand that a silverback should against his enemies.
And then at last, his squat fingers clutching, grasping, arms pulling him sideways and upward, Kong was there.
As Richard Dierschell steered the Helldiver through the icy dawn sky, circling and preparing for another strafing run, both he and his gunner still couldn't take their respective left eyes off the mammoth gorilla as, fighting through the pain and somehow managing to maintain a grip on the cold, slick steel, it made it to the very top of the Empire State Building.
Richard gaped as with a savage crash of crumpling steel, the ape backhanded the combination dirigible mooring mast and RCA's radio transmitter right off of its base like it was just made of sticks, sending it twirling through the air to fall to the street 104 stories below.
Then, standing to his full height, the huge beast cut loose with an incredible, ferocious, sky-shaking roar, just like in the stories of the African explorers, violently beating his chest for several awesome seconds. Even over the deafening, droning buzz of the Helldiver's propellers, Richard could still hear the explosive display, one that you actually felt as much as you heard, the sound of Nature's most primal and wild creation as it boldly defied them and the entire civilized world.
Cowards! What cowards the little pale-skinned naked apes were in the flying beasts they controlled! Kong thought in fury.
After diving at him and riddling his flesh with a barrage of the high-speed, stinging, burning little stones, each of them would then swoop by close to him, taunting him as he swiped at them in passing, not even displaying enough honor to try and ram him.
Bleeding and angered by both the pain of his wounds and the way in which the little naked apes refused to fight fairly, a fiery, grim resolve surged up within Kong as he compressed his lips in ire, every hair erect on his head.
He now understood that he most likely wasn't going to get out of this fight against the little apes and their flying beast partners alive. But it wasn't going to be without bringing at least one of them with him first.
Another snarling four-winged beast flashed down, another rattling and succession of stinging, burning piercings through his flesh as Kong turned his head and raised his arm to protect his face, fighting the urge to let out another hoarse scream of agony. He was going to bear it, make it look like he was weaker now than he felt, let the little apes get a little too complacent.
Their flying beast didn't curve to the side this time, but continued on a direct path, aiming for what seemed like a safe height above his bowed head. Big mistake.
Eager and driven by a desperate fury, he gathered himself and leapt, feeling the unexpected, joyful sensation of his hand crashing against, then through, both of the little ape controlled beast's brittle left wings, sending it tumbling out of control and then plummeting to the unnatural ground between the canyons of little naked ape dwellings far, far below as he caught his own falling weight with a two-handed grab at the edge of the fake mountain's slick dome of a summit.
The attacks, the high speed little stones were taking their toll, sapping his strength and making blood stream through his pelt, and now it was with an effort that Kong pulled himself back onto the flat summit.
What he'd just done was little more than a mere gesture, a hollow victory in what the elderly silverback knew was a losing battle. But it was still a victory, an enemy destroyed, and he defiantly celebrated it the way every victory in battle should be.
Forcing himself back upright, he jubilantly pounded his chest and split the brutally cold air with a roar of triumph, the mist of his breath streaming out into the rushing wind.
He was a silverback, a warrior! Let the rest come!
Far down below, as he plunged into the gathering, hypnotized crowd of pedestrians on 36th Street, Jack Driscoll still clearly heard the blood-chilling, all-too-familiar roar.
Pain continued to crash through his skull and throbbed in his neck as he tilted his aquiline face toward the sky. He could just manage to see the massive black shape, made minute by distance, making his last stand up there, and definitely see the planes that swooped and circled and dove at the ape like mechanical hawks, disgorging bullets into him again and again.
Kong had technically killed him once already during his rampage, and would probably not hesitate to do so if he got another chance. For keeps this time.
But all Jack could think about, the thought making his blood seemingly turn as cold as the winter air around him, was that Ann was up there with the ape. Up there and in mortal danger of either falling or being shot to death.
There was a semicircle of cops and some firemen around the front of the building, and a tighter one near the entrance proper of armed soldiers.
But the playwright didn't even stop to think or trouble to care as once more, he turned into one of the heroes he'd so often put down before on paper and charged in among them.
An officer stuck out a hand to restrain him, firmly commanding "Sir, you can't go in there-" before the desperate writer shoved him to the side.
Other cops, then soldiers, tried to block his path, stop this reckless, foolish maniac in dress pants and a trench coat from getting inside.
But they were merely irritating obstacles, simply yet more wildebeest, yet more brontosaurs, yet more hyenas and savage natives as Jack found himself weaving among them like a quarterback, a hare dodging among bushes.
In almost no time at all he found his shoes were pounding over the marble tile in the lobby, then at the threshold of the nearest elevator with several soldiers in their moss green uniforms right at his back, frantic to stop him.
Plunging inside, he mashed the button for the 86th floor savagely before whipping around and planting his right foot into the chest of the doughboy at his back, knocking him back and away into two comrades as Jack pulled his long leg back in.
Then the steel doors were closing in front of him like the lid of a coffin.
Flinging open the door and trying to ignore the hot, prickling pain in her feet and ankles that all this activity in heels was causing her, Ann heedlessly raced out onto the small ledge that circled the metal dome on the building's 103rd floor, gaze flashing upward desperately to meet Kong's.
What she saw there just utterly broke her heart.
He gave her a long look, both his dark amber eyes and expression steeped with resignation, a defeated, sad acceptance of the fact that this battle was now going to be the one, the fight that would at last end with him dead.
Breaking their silent communion, he stood erect and turned away, eyes penetrating and grim as he gave an authoritative huff, then a second one, while he turned his back on her.
Ann understood all too clearly, and then a memory of a helpless, yet resolute command Jack had once made to her, made in the dying flames of an African sun near a gorge as a maniac leopard with a mad yellow eye coolly menaced them, rang through her mind at that moment.
"Run away Ann. Run away right now," he'd told her.
But now, at this moment, just like it had then, a wild, crazy surge of loyalty and the determination to do something surged up within Ann Darrow, even as she recalled her immediate reply.
Like hell I will Jack!
Kong had saved her life several times, including from falling to her death just now! (Granted, due to the fierce gusts of wind that were even now turning her into a Popsicle, she most likely would've "merely" hit the lower observation deck half a dozen stories below instead of falling the whole hundred stories to the street, but at that point the distance would just be an academic matter.)
She could do no less than try to save his as well, breathing deeply as once more, she felt the blisteringly cold steel of the rungs under her palms and climbed upward to the very top of New York.
It was finished. He was finished, Kong knew, his breath coming in a shaky rattle and blood soaking his hair in great patches as he grimly clung to the top of the fake termite-mound mountain with all his remaining, quickly fading strength.
He'd lost too much blood, suffered too much internal damage from the bursts of the little stones. And now his death was coming within minutes.
But as painful and cold and unexpected a fate as this was, it was a good way for his eighty-two wet seasons of life to come to a close, Kong thought with a dull, fuzzy satisfaction.
His death would be one of honor, sustained while fighting enemies, protecting his life and that of a female-even if she was far tinier and belonged to a radically different species. He hoped that the rest of her kind wouldn't deal with her too harshly, and that she would be able, in time, to get past his impending death.
He would die relatively quickly, and still fit, instead of slowly wasting away from old age or a disease in the jungle, with implacable, hungry bird-lizards greedily waiting nearby for him to breathe his last.
But most importantly of all, Kong knew he could have the satisfaction and relief that came from the certainty that he wasn't going to die alone.
In a forlorn daze, the little yellow-haired female grabbed onto his left wrist and pulled herself slowly into a standing position before stepping forward and tenderly raising her hand towards his face.
He knew what it meant, and slightly lowered his head so that she could stroke it in farewell, smooth skin of her palm sliding over his upper lip and body wreathed in the mist of his breath..
The anger and terror and desperation had seemingly drained out of the old silverback with his blood. Now only tenderness and pleasure remained, making him half-shut his already heavy eyelids and part his lips in a half-grin of bliss at the exquisite, comforting touch.
Slowly, he raised his left hand, intending to stroke her slender back with his squat fingers in response as he throatily purred.
And then, there was a final, cheap cruelty by the little apes in their fake flying beasts, as the spitting sound came one last time and Kong bowed his back in agony, giving an explosive "Wwrrraaaggghhh!" as the yellow haired female dropped to the summit in terror and the stones shredded his flesh one more time.
She was all too familiar with the reeking, overpowering perfume of aggression that Kong produced whenever he was enraged or frantic or fighting.
Now it was gone, replaced by the awful, world-filling fresh copper scent of his blood, which only further pierced a helpless Ann's soul as if she'd taken the bullets herself.
Yet, underneath the scent of Kong's freshly shed blood, came another, better odor.
It was his normal smell, the one she preferred and enjoyed the best. It was the perfume of fresh rhubarb pie, of relaxed horses in a stable, of men who'd just been exercising and of half-decayed plants. And she forced her nose to focus on, to grasp this odor among the metallic invasion of blood as she numbly laid on the cold steel, supporting herself on her left elbow and cheek pressed against his great leathery finger.
Stricken and helpless, filled with a dull, overpowering sense of failure and awareness that she'd just gotten the most amazing and incredible creature on Earth killed, she could do nothing but only stare into those wise, sensitive, knowing and penetrating eyes.
Then, the heart-shattering moment happened, and she silently screamed NO, NO, NO, NO! as the glow, the life-spark, vanished from them, from the monolithic black and gray body of Kong for eternity.
One second they were aware, sparkling soulful amber pools flecked with black. The next, great lifeless marbles, pupils dilating.
It all seemed to happen, as tragedies tend to do, with an unexpected ease and slowness as Ann finally fell apart in anguish, feeling Kong's finger almost casually slide out from under her cheek as her heart seemed to be sliced in two and the boiling tears gushed forth, forming painfully frigid trickles in the harsh winter air as they flowed over her pale face and she partly raised herself up on both hands.
It was all so too damn easy, the way Kong's shaggy tree-trunk arms, then enormous, unexpectedly gentle hands, slid away from her over the metal and his gigantic tilted back, eyes blank and unseeing before vanishing from her sight, now blurred by tears of anguish.
It was doubly devastating, fueled all the more intensely by the still too raw memories of watching essentially the same thing happen to Mufasa in that African gorge. She couldn't believe that it was now happening to her a second time.
An amazing being that she'd come to know and trust, a life that had graced Skull Island and the planet with wild magnificence and vitality and grandeur, fell down towards 36th Street with an astonishing ease as she dully risked a look over the edge.
The polar cold had already embedded itself deep into Ann Darrow's legs and body. She found herself starting to welcome the numbness. There was absolutely nothing to protect her from the vicious winds so high up here, and with every passing second, the chill worked its way deeper into her torso and legs and shoulders. An equally numbing feeling of defeat and failure and resignation and just plain loss was drowning her spirit as she mechanically made herself shakily stand up in her dainty heels on the little steel plateau, dappled and spackled and smeared with royal blood.
As she watched the kingly ape disappear from her sight, a series of unspoken thoughts and defeated wishes dully slipped through her head as her body quaked from the cold.
It just doesn't matter anymore…there's nothing else that I can do…this so-called modern city is so damn cruel…I just want the pain and tragedy to stop and go away.
It had all started when her baby brother, Pascal Darrow, had died of cholera at the age of ten months when Ann was close to three years old. Then her father, blond-haired Phillip Darrow, had callously left his wife and surviving children one day when she was only four and a half years old. When she was eight, her favorite aunt, her mother's sister Celestine, had fallen ill and died of the flu.
Then, soon after she'd turned thirteen, there'd been the hideously excruciating wrench of how her mother had also turned her back on her three daughters, crawling off to die of typhus without even having the decency to tell her own children that she was sick or at least where she'd gone off to. The circumstances and rigors of having to look after themselves in a harsh world so soon had then eventually forced Ann and her sisters to split apart to make their own respective livings, and they just hadn't been able to have much contact since then.
Maybe that was for the best, for the failed relationships and losses had only continued to pile up. Her various attempts at finding romance with a wonderful fella. Her job. Her theater. Manny. Mufasa. Simba. So many of the Venture's crew like Hayes and Choy. Her white author/knight Jack, a real golden opportunity that she'd let slide through her fingers. And now she'd just failed and lost the brave, wise, thoughtful and extraordinary beast named King Kong.
It was too damn much to take anymore, and Ann dimly decided that she didn't want to be a survivor any longer, not in a world and city as harsh and cold and sadistic as this. It was a combination of physiological shock and the cold that dulled her bodily responses, along with a terminal acceptance of her failure, which pushed her to this conclusion.
It wouldn't be suicide, not really. Already it was truly a battle to keep her shuddering legs locked and stable in the winter wind, so cold that it made her temples hurt and drawing breath feel like being choked. All she would have to do was stop delaying what was going to happen regardless, just allow her weakening knees to buckle underneath her. Gravity-and the sudden, uncompromising stop at the end-would do the rest.
Everyone went away. And now she would too.
And then, soft and slightly raspy though the howling winds…
"Ann."
At first she thought it was just a figment of her fading, grief-stricken imagination.
But what was left of her crumbled and shattered emotions knew far better.
There really is nothing better in this often trying and sometimes downright miserable world than to hear the sound of someone that you love, someone that you've given up for gone, saying your name out of the blue, especially when you are at your lowest point. Absolutely nothing.
She forced herself to gingerly turn, uncertainly.
And there Jack was, there in a trench coat and sleek black pants, breathing heavy from exertion and looking back at her as he stood with her at the very top of New York's tallest building in the bone-chilling winter dawn.
She blinked several times as he stood there uncertainly, tensely. Thoughts and reality weren't supposed to be the same.
But she decided to find out for sure, and took a slow step forward, dimly aware of the way his body tensed and his eyes became a little wider in response.
Then she was in his arms, feeling them around her, the scratchy warmth of his coat and the love and concern and deep, deep relief pouring off of him. She was profoundly dazed, numb with loss and the cold, but now also stunned beyond measure.
No one came back, ever. And yet, in the most improbable of scenarios, quite unknowingly in the nick of time, Jack had.
"If there is a just God, then how humanity will cringe when it is asked to justify its behavior towards animals." Isaac Asimov.
As always, reviews are greatly appreciated.
