Return to Skull Island (14 page)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“It looks like it’s going to be war,” I said.

“Looks like it,” agreed Pat.

“What’s ‘war’?” asked the Rexes.

We tried to explain but only succeeded in both confusing and horrifying the dinosaurs. We did make it clear, however, that if something weren’t done, the Japs would overrun the island, killing everything in sight. Rex didn’t have much concept of modern weapons, his only experience being the rifles we used on our last visit, which naturally didn’t impress him much. But when I explained that the artillery at Ito’s command was similar but ten or a hundred times more powerful, he got the idea. He’d also heard of the devastation caused by the tank crew’s practice, so he knew he had his tiny hands full.

“Look,” I said, “here’s the way I see it. Ito has no idea what sort of creatures inhabit this island. So far as he knows, he’s exterminating a population of vermin. Big vermin, maybe, but vermin nevertheless. He figures it’s all a matter of firepower. He hasn’t a clue that you, ah, folk are smart and organized. Instead of wild animals, he could meet a real army if we played our cards right.”

“Goodness,” said Rex, “I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do. None of us would.”

“It doesn’t matter. Everything is really in your favor. This is going to be a home game. You know this island like the back of your, uh, hand—Ito doesn’t. He hasn’t even ventured a hundred yards past the wall yet.”

“It’s true,” Pat said. “You have all the advantage and Ito doesn’t know it.”

There was a low thundering rumble and the ground vibrated under our feet. Pat and I looked at one another in alarm. Had Ito begun his attack already? But as the rumble subsided, Pat said. “It was just an earthquake.”

“We have them all the time,” Rex said.

“I have an idea. There are pterodactyls on the island, right?”

“Sure. They have nests all over the mountain.”

“If Ito had thought of bringing along a couple of planes and pilots we’d probably not stand a chance. But the shoe’s on the other foot. We’ve got our own air force.”

I thought I saw what she was driving at and asked Rex if he could get a representative of the pterodactyl family down for a conference. He said that would be no problem and sent a runner right off.

“I think we also need to be preemptive. There’s no need to wait for Ito to attack. I think it’d give us a big psychological advantage to attack first. It’s the last thing in the world he’d expect.”

“If we wait until he’s got all his men on this side of the wall,” Pat said, “we could trap him between it and us. If there were some way of closing the gateway, he wouldn’t have a chance.”

“Let’s get a message to Andrews. See if he can’t come up with something.”

While we waited to hear from Andrews, the representative of the pterodactyl clan arrived. The thing came swooping in like a black bat the size of an airplane. It had a head like a pickaxe and a tail like a flexible harpoon.

“It’s been a long time!” gushed Rex.

“I’m afraid so,” said the pterodactyl. “We really must have you and missus up for dinner soon. How are the eggs coming? We don’t have any little godchildren yet do we?”

“No, but she’s expecting the first hatchlings any day now. She’s promised to name the first one after you.”

“You guys are too swell! Wait until I tell the fellows back home.”

After a little more chit-chat along those lines, Rex introduced Pat and me. Like Rex, the pterodactyl was surprised to learn who I was.

“I wish my cousin were here,” he said. “He would have been thrilled to meet you. But that dreadful monster Kong got him. He died, you know, trying to rescue that female human from the big ape, up there on the mountain. She did finally get away, I hope?”

I assured him that Ann was alive and well. He asked if I would convey his best wishes to her and I told him it would be my pleasure.

Pat and I explained the situation. The pterodactyl said he’d been aware of something going on in the old village, but had been reluctant to fly any lower to see. I told him that’d probably been the smart thing to do.

A half a dozen or so other dinosaurs lumbered in around then, the word evidently having gotten round that something was up. Rex advised me to wait until all the representatives had arrived, so I would only have to make my spiel once. This took a couple of hours. Once the glade was filled with monsters, packed shoulder to shoulder, I climbed up on a rock that brought me eye-to-eye with Rex. He called for order and everyone got quiet. Evidently, he commanded a considerable degree of respect in the community. He thanked everyone for showing up on such short notice and then introduced Pat and me. There was a little grumbling among those who remembered a little too clearly the circumstances surrounding my last visit, but Rex called for order and they settled down—a little morosely perhaps but it was clear they were curious and were willing to give me a chance. Especially once Rex reminded them that I was the one who’d rid the island of Kong. After that everyone else seemed eager to hear what I had to say.

It’d become common knowledge that something was up on the peninsula, so I didn’t have to do a lot of explaining about that. Everyone believed me when I told them the danger. I don’t think it’s because I was particularly convincing, I think it was more due to the fact that the dinosaurs were literal creatures who took at face value whatever they were told. It would never have occurred to them that someone might be lying. Whatever the reason, it saved me a lot of talk.

I told them that Pat and I had cooked up a plan. It was a long shot, but it was all we could think of given the time and resources at hand. While the Japs had us trumped on firepower, there was no question we had them outmanned—if manned is the word I want. Not only did we have sheer numbers—thousands of dinosaurs versus four dozen Japs—we outweighed them, too. Even the smallest of the brontosaurs or triceratopses was equal to the tank, at least in mass.

“And don’t forget that the Japs think dinosaurs are stupid. They all of them think you have brains the size of peanuts and are just barely smart enough to remember to breathe.” This got a lot of chuckles and helped to relieve some of the tension and anxiety.

We also had surprise on our side. Ito wouldn’t be expecting resistance—let alone organized resistance. If anything, probably figured on driving all the animals ahead of his little army until they were either forced over the cliffs or slaughtered wholesale. Something like the Indians used to do with buffalo.

But the Japs did have an advantage and it was a big one. Even half their number with the weapons they had at their disposal could have wiped every monster off the island. I made sure the dinosaurs understood this and there was a lot of head shaking and murmuring as the idea sunk in. There were going to be casualties, I told them, there was no question about that. The idea was to keep these as few as possible. We could do this through the element of surprise.

The Japs, I repeated, hadn’t a clue as to the real nature of life on the island. So far as Ito was concerned, he was simply performing the job of an exterminator. His real goal, I said, was to obtain the island’s natural resources for his country. To achieve that end he was, I was convinced, willing to denude the island of every living plant and animal.

There were gasps of horror and murmurs of outrage.

“There’s not a moment to waste,” I said. “Ito is on this side of the wall as I speak. He will be starting his attack on the island at any moment.”

“What can we do?” asked a ceolophysis, wringing its hands.

I told them.

*****

From our vantage point on top of the wall, Pat and I could see that Ito was prepared to march. His men were arrayed in ranks, their backs to the great wall, facing the jungle on the other side of the clearing. The tank was at the front. To either side of the men was the artillery and what looked like mortars. I asked Pat what she thought.

“They’re mortars all right. And those four big guns are Model 90s. They’re pretty new. They can fire a 75-mm shell nearly ten miles. At ten rounds a minute, those babies could do a lot of damage.”

Ito raised his sword, took one final appraising look at his men and shouted, “Susumu!”

At that same moment there was a deafening explosion. But it didn’t come from the tank. It came from the wall behind it. The massive lintel that spanned the gateway was collapsing in a shower of flame, smoke and shattered stone. The pile of masonry it had supported was right behind and an avalanche of boulders the size of automobiles roared into the open gate, filling it with rubble and sending Ito’s men running for their lives. A cloud of dust billowed into the clearing between the doorway and the altar, momentarily blinding everyone.

“Andrews came through,” Pat said, raising her rifle to her shoulder. She picked off one of Ito’s men as she spoke.

At that same moment a dozen huge shadows swept over the clearing. I glanced up to see what looked like a squadron of planes flying in formation. They were pterodactyls and each held something massive in their powerful claws. Huge rocks and logs the size of small men. As they passed overhead they dropped their burdens on the slack-jawed Japs.

Meanwhile, a symphony of deafening screams and roars came from the east and west. Dinosaurs of every size and description were pouring out of the jungle. Not from directly ahead, but into the narrow clearing between the forest and wall, flanking Ito’s little army. A literal stampede of prehistoric monsters thundered into the milling platoon. I could hear Ito shouting in an effort to get some order back, but the sight of dozens of brontosauruses, triceratopses, tyrannosauruses and God knows what all descending on them in a screaming mass of claws and teeth unnerved the men completely. At least half a dozen Japs were simply mashed flat under the elephant-like feet of the brontosauruses before they even knew what was happening.

Rex and his gang were putting on a great show. But it was more than just that, I knew. They were fully aware that they were fighting for their very existence.

Ito got most of his men to rally after the initial sortie by the dinosaurs and they began to fight back. Rifle fire was pretty much little more than an annoyance to the tough-hided beasts. The stinging bullets only seemed to make them angrier and steel their resolve even further.

Pat continued to pick men off with an almost mechanical regularity. She lay on her stomach, with only the top of her head and the muzzle of her rifle visible from the ground. I finally got over my fascination with the spectacle taking place in the clearing and settled down to see what I could do to match her score. I’m not a tenth the marksman she is, I’m the first to admit that, but I did all right.

We were both of us trying to get a bead on Ito, but he never presented himself as a target. He realized there was a danger other than the dinosaurs. I could see him looking around, trying to pinpoint where the rifle fire was coming from. He spotted us almost right away. He ordered one of the big guns turned around, but it would have been a nearly point-blank shot and there was no way he could get the elevation he needed to do us any harm.

Meanwhile, the big dinosaurs had done their work and the smaller ones were swarming onto the field. Most of them were hardly any bigger than the Japs themselves, but they were just as fearfully armed. They laid about them with razor-sharp talons like samurai gone berserk. Others leaped like kangaroos on their powerful hind legs, knocking their victims flat and going straight for their throats. I saw at least two soldiers get their heads bitten off in a single bite.

Meanwhile, several shots from below me had me risk looking over the parapet. There, stretched on top of the mountainous pile of rubble from the collapsed lintel, was Andrews, picking off Japs as calmly and methodically as Pat was doing. The two of them made me feel redundant.

I was so distracted by the carnage that I wasn’t aware of the tank until I realized it was already well on its way toward the forest. Ito was nowhere in sight, so I assumed he was on board.

“Pat!—” I began, but was interrupted by a rumble. I felt the wall shake under my feet. At first I thought some idiot had tried one of the guns after all, but I was wrong. It was another earthquake. Stronger than the last one, too, if I wasn’t mistaken.

“Pat! Ito’s taking off in the tank. He’ll be headed for the mountain. We need to stop him if we can.”

“Fine by me. That last quake made me feel pretty nervous being up here.”

I had a whistle that’d come with our survival equipment. I blew it. It was a prearranged signal and the brontosaurus we’d first been introduced to swung its head in our direction. I blew it again and the monster lumbered over, wading through Japs like an elephant through grass. Its head came even with the top of the wall.

“You rang?” it said.

“Yes. Ito, the man in charge of these soldiers, is making his escape. He must be stopped before all this can be over. Can you get us down from here?”

“Well, of course.”

As Pat and I climbed onto the broad, flat head, the brontosaurus asked, “I saw that strange thing but didn’t know what it was. It looked something like one of the armored plant-eaters, but I suspect it wasn’t.”

“It’s another weapon,” I said as the dinosaur turned and began its slow pace into the clearing, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around it. “A very powerful one. But the worst thing is what it has inside. Ito is bound and determined to destroy this island. He won’t stop unless we stop him first.”

“I suspect his goal,” Pat said, “is to reach high ground. When Buck highjacked the
Venture,
he also got away with Ito’s high-powered radio. He’s had no way of reaching his superiors. But if he has a radio in that thing—and I’m willing to bet he does—and can reach high enough ground to get a signal out far enough he can have reinforcements here in a matter of days. So long as he has a radio all he needs is sufficient power and a long enough antenna. A hundred feet of wire would do the trick.”

“I’m willing to bet we’d made a mistake thinking he had to transfer the radio equipment from the ship to his camp here. He probably had duplicate equipment. That’d make more sense.”