Return to Skull Island

CHAPTER SIX

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A/N: Sorry about the long wait! I've been busy with school and life (who needs 10th grade, anyway?) I'm not sure if anyone is reading or writing King Kong fanfiction anymore, but here's the next chapter anyway. :)

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With nothing to do while tied to a crag of rock, Jimmy watched the natives. They seemed to come and go quite frequently, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups, often carrying animal carcasses or bundles of plants. The alien noise of their language was constantly in his ears, and every once in a while he imagined that he heard a particular same word or phrase.

He was ignored for the most part, a fact that he was doubly grateful for and slightly annoyed by. While he didn't want too much attention from the creepy people, he felt that if he had to be tied in their camp, there should be a reason.

Maybe, he realized with a twisted humor, he was their new art.

After some more time passed, he began to recognize individual natives. There was the old lady who had fed him. She passed by frequently and didn't seem to leave the main area often. There seemed to be few young men, and while most of them blended into one similar person, a couple of them had identifying marks like scar, tattoos, or excessive piercings. The old men were harder to tell apart, as were the women, because they seemed to disappear most into the surrounding forest, usually returning with a bundle of greens or tubers. Children occasionally broke out into games of running and wrestling, but they were more similar than any other group, and Jimmy gave up on telling them apart.

He had no idea how long he waited. His internal clock had seemed skewed since the storm, and he didn't try to guess at the time. At some point a small child ran into the main area from the forest. Jimmy watched this, as for he hadn't seen any other children leave or enter.

To Jimmy's surprised, the child came to him. Something was crumpled in its tiny fist, and it grinned widely as it opened the wide leaf and shoved it in front of Jimmy's face.

Taken aback, Jimmy jerked his head away and hit it sharply on the rock crag. Cursing, he focused his attention on the leaf. He was almost as jarred by what he saw than the crack on the head.

Though the child held it upside down, English words had been scratched in pencil onto the leaf. Jimmy recognized the messy writing as Captain Englehorn's.

Crew be ready for help --E, the leaf read cryptically.

Jimmy's face broke into a smile. So Captain Englehorn and the others were planning an escape!

The child snatched the leaf away and looked at him quizzically, as if waiting for a payment. Jimmy shook his head. The child's face scrunched into a pout, and Jimmy fumbled to reach his back pocket. Straining against the rope, he managed to pull a coin from his pocket and offered it as best he could to the child.

The child took it, stuffed it into his loincloth, and darted away toward the forest again.

Jimmy sighed, wondering what exactly had just happened.

It took him some time to realize that he was the only one of his crew left in the natives' main area. When it did hit him, he felt sick, and hoped that Englehorn would hurry up the rescue.

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Carl awoke to the ringing of a phone. He grunted, cleared his throat, and rolled out of bed. Grumbling at the chill of his floor he walked grubbily to the phone.

"Hello?" he said listlessly. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "you know it's seven in the morning."

"Hello to you to, Carl," Jack Driscoll's clipped voice said.

"Jack?" Carl asked incredulously. "What do you want?" He walked to a deeply cushioned chair and sat down heavily.

"Carl," Jask sounded concerned, "Did you hear the news? The Venture was wrecked on a mysterious un-chartered island. Does that wring any bells?"

Carl's eyebrows rose. "You're not saying you think the same Venture ended up on the same mysterious un-chartered island, are you?"

On the other end of the phone, Jack sounded hurried and annoyed. "Listen, I didn't believe it either when I saw it. But they mentioned Englehorn in the article—he's gone missing, as have some of the other crew members. I think there's something else going on there. They might need help, or there might be something we should know about. Carl, I'm calling you because you're one of those people who can do the impossible, and I need you to get us the Skull Island within a few days."

Carl was shocked silent. He tried to process the information—the wreck, Englehorn, possibly something else on the island, and finally, a way to get there in a few days.

"Carl?" Jack asked. "You haven't hung up on me, have you"

"No, no," Carl said hurriedly. "I'm thinking. I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No, Jack, I don't know. You just said a lot. I think I need to read this article. Wait—you said Englehorn's missing?" Carl's mind was fuzzy from sleep and the sudden barrage of information he had just received. It reminded him of school.

Think, he commanded himself.

The only possible transportation that could get them to Skull Island in a matter of days was an airplane. But where on earth could they find an airplane?

"Yes," Jack answered.

If he could find someone other than the military that owned a plane, perhaps Jack could rent it for a short time. The man was rich from the success of his last play.

"An airplane," he said.

"An airplane?" Jack repeated.

"Yes," Carl said, and outlined his plan.

"I suppose that could work," Jack said slowly. "But we need someone who owns a plane, and I think we'd need to rent a pilot as well. How much would it cost to rent a plane anyway?"

Carl tried to imagine a number, but renting a plane was so far from ordinary that it was impossible. "I don't know. But I'll look into it."

After he had hung up the phone, Carl shook his head. Was this utterly crazy?

He had to admit, though, that he was drawn to the idea of returning to Skull Island.

No, he decided, there are too many risks. He was down on his luck after the King Kong fiasco, being practically infamous among the bigwigs in New York. He had tried to film another movie, a boring one that he had no real interest in, but it had crashed after two weeks of filming and left him out another couple thousand dollars. He wasn't even sure what to work on now.

He shook his head, sighing dramatically, though no one was in the room. He would look into finding a plane for Jack, but there would be no reason for him to go. Just more money lost. Jack could rescue everyone without Carl's help.

Unless, of course, there was actually something else on the island and The Venture had returned on purpose.

He picked up the phone again, mentally running through a list of people that might know other people that owned planes.

It occurred to him that he should be glad not to go back to Skull Island. His last experience there had been utterly awful. He'd lost friends.

So why did he want to join Jack in returning?

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Englehorn walked through the jungle, trying to picture and remember his exact instructions to the child. Because they shared no language, he had attempted to draw his request in a patch dirt and hope for the best.

He wondered what the child was doing at the moment. Was it telling the elders to look for him? Had it gotten distracted and dropped the leaf? Or had it simply misunderstood the directions of decided not to follow them?

Englehorn rarely allowed himself to worry; after the fact of the matter, it never helped. If his crew had not received the note, then so be it.

Now he headed back to the ship. He knew that rescue would be too difficult alone, injured and exhausted as he was. His shoulder throbbed dully, but through his veil of tiredness it was like background noise. The last night's rescue attempt had been ridiculous, though it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

The adrenaline from the flight from the natives was fading, and he stumbled slightly as he made his way through the thick trees and brush. He thought back to the last time he'd slept. The storm had begun three nights ago, and other than a brief period of unconsciousness, he had been awake the whole time.

It took about an hour to find the edge of the woods, and even longer to travel along the shore to the ship.

The first thing he saw was the mast, sticking up from behind a crag of rock like a lonely bare tree. He breathed a sigh of relief and allowed himself to smile.

He sped up, nearly jogging up the side of the rock that hid the ship from view. He stopped short at the top, staggering as if receiving a blow. His mouth opened wordlessly as he surveyed the damage: The Venture had sunk to the bottom. The mast truly was like a tree, growing from the gently sloshing water.

As he got closer, an eerie silence began to register. The only noise he heard was the sloshing of the water against the shore and the rustling of leaves as a breeze blew through the forest. Nothing moved, either, and Englehorn scanned the area around his ship, willing himself not to panic. Where had his crew gone?

He ran the rest of the distance, fear giving him another shot of energy. His breath was coming in ragged gasps by the time he reached the water's edge. What he saw made him sick.

Bobbing in the swells, some face up and some down, was the remainder of his crew. He stood, staring at the death, completely without a plan for the first time since the wreck.

"Captain!" someone called.

Distraught and startled, he spun around. It was one of his crew, ragged and soggy. The man looked, it if was possible, more distressed than Englehorn felt.

"Captain!" the crewmember said again. As the man neared Englehorn, he recognized him as Miller, the crewmember he had given the wheel to right before they crashed into the wall.

"Yes," Englehorn said vaguely, unable to wrap his mind around the gruesome situation. Maybe he didn't want to. He forced himself to focus and ignore the nausea that had suddenly filled his stomach. "What happened here?" he asked.

"I don't really know," Miller said. "Those… people… that live here came in the middle of the night, and they sunk the ship and attacked us and somehow…well… I don't really know what happened. Only a few of us escaped, and they're injured now. Oh yes, and they butchered anyone that was injured already from the crash. I think the only ones alive are on the island somewhere, from when they went to look for wood and stuff, but I can't imagine they've lasted long."

Englehorn said nothing for a moment. He stared intently at the ground, processing the new, horrifying information. "They were captured," he said finally. "I don't know if they're alive."

Miller's eyes widened, adding to his insane image, but he didn't reply.

"Where are the others?" Englehorn asked.

"In the woods," Miller said. "I can bring you to them."

"Yes, do that," Englehorn said.

As he walked, he tried to push the horror into a far corner of his mind. He needed a new plan.

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Yes, I know it's kind of morbid. But all's fair and love and plot, or some other tampered-with cliché like that.

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