three days // j. conrad

thirteen.

Wren stopped just beyond the edge of the woods with Mason and looked back to see Kong stand painfully and try to take down the Big One, only to be pounced on and have his head slammed into the ground.
Wren put a hand over her mouth.
The skull crawler lifted its head to look for the people that escaped, when it saw the girls.
James grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into a run. "Kong's down, let's go!"
Wren took hold of Mason's hand and pulled her along when the latter didn't move at first, camera held to her face.

Everybody who'd run through the forest broke the tree line when dawn broke across the mountains.
"This is the edge of the island," James said, panting. "Riley, get up on that cliff and fire a flare. With any luck, Brooks will see it."
There were approaching footsteps and snarling in the woods, and they turned to look at each other and locked eyes.
"We'll buy you time," he assured. Wren nodded and took off running towards the rocks.
At the sound of pleading and yelling, Wren turned from her sprint to see James holding Mills back from running to Cole, who had dropped his gun and was now holding two grenades, hoping the skull crawler would eat him and die.
Unfortunately, the Big One smacked Cole to the side and he flew over Wren to hit the cliff wall and explode. She winced and continued on her way.
Wren scaled the wall as fast as she could and looked back to see Kong and the Big One facing off.
She had no time for relief that he was okay—for the time being—and fired a flare into the sly, showing Brooks and San their location.
She watched, breathing heavily, as Kong hit the skull crawler across the face with a tree before it jumped on him and threw him right into a close by shipwreck, trapping him in chains.
The skull crawler was just about to finish the job when a mass of gunfire distracted it.
Brooks and San had arrived with the ploat, weapons blazing.
The soldiers ran for the boat, clambering on, but the guns ran out of ammo.
Wren loaded another flare and shot it straight into one of the skull crawler's eyes, distracting it long enough for Marlow to get the guns reloaded and working again. They hardly affected it though, only angering it, so Conrad ran off in another direction to draw the beast away.
"No," Wren whispered, fearing for his life. Her eyes widened when, with a roar, Kong lifted the monster and swung it around, letting it go so it would fly into another cliff.
Wren's cliff.
The force of the impact caused the majority of the cliff shattered, throwing Wren off with a scream.
Kong seemed to stop, as if realizing what he'd done, and James screamed, "WREN!"
All she could think while she fell was 'oh my god I'm going to die, this is the end'. That quickly morphed into thoughts about how she would never get a chance to continue with whatever she had with James, and what might follow. How she would never get to tell him how impossibly quickly she had fallen for him, and never would get the chance to figure out if he felt the same.
When she hit the water below, rocks falling all around her, everything around her went black.

Kong seemed to attack the skull crawler with even more power, slicing it twice with the propeller before delivering a final uppercut that sliced it's neck as Wren sank deeper into the water.
A giant hand plunged into the water and caught the girl, pulling her out of the water in his palm.
Unfortunately, he wasn't in the clear yet, as the the Big One jumped at him again—somehow still not dead—trying to get at the small human in his hand.
The skull crawler got its tongue wrapped around Kong's wrist and pulled his whole hand into its mouth, biting down near his elbow.
Kong struggled for a moment before giving one sharp yank and pulling out the monster's tongue and internal organs.
Finally, it was dead.

James moved as fast as he could through the water when Kong put Wren's unconscious body on the bank.
His heart had dropped to his toes when he saw her fall from that cliff and into the water.
"Wren, Wren, breathe goddamnit," he called, dropping to his knees next to her. He checked her pulse on her neck quickly, and her eyes fluttered open. "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey."
He helped her sit up and she bent over her knees, coughing up all the water in her lungs. He had a hand on her cheek, fingers in her hair as she took heaving, shaky breaths. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her shoulders were hunched.
Wren leaned back up and turned her head to see Kong turn back to give them one last look.
A smile split her face as she locked eyes with the gargantuan ape and put a hand on James' shoulder as one of his wrapped loosely around her waist.
When Kong lumbered away to rest and recover from the intense battle with the Big One, Wren's gaze moves to James. Leaning forward, she pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek and hugged him tightly, pressing her face into his shoulder.
He tightened his arm around her waist and moved the other to her hair. He let his lips linger as he left a soft kiss on her head. Wren's eyes began to water, her tears mixing with the water dripping from her hair onto her face.

Everyone was relieved when James returned with Wren and they clambered onto the ploat.
No one spoke for a while on the boat as they continued to make their way up north to the rendezvous point. Wren hadn't moved from her spot next to James, and he kept a protective arm around her.
"So what do you think fellas," Mills' voice floated back from the front of the ploat where he was standing with his fellow soldiers. "This was to Key West?"
"I think it is, brother," Slivko responded, a smile making its way onto his face.
"This place will change," James said to Wren and Mason. "Word will get out. It always does."
"Well, it's not coming from us," Mason replied.
"That's for sure," Wren added quietly.
The whirring of helicopter blades graced the ears of everyone aboard.
They were, at last, saved.
From her spot on the boat, Wren caught a glance of Kong standing between two giant rocks in the distance and a soft smile rose to her face.
"Goodbye," she whispered.

Wren Riley; James Conrad; Mason Weaver; Hank Marlow; Houston Brooks; San Lin; and soldiers Mills, Slivko, and Reles. Those were the names of the nine survivors of the expeditions to the dreaded Skull Island.