Кристофер Голден - The Predator - The Official Movie Novelization

She saw her moment, and she took it. With the Predator turning to focus on the guards, she lunged across the room and jumped over the fallen Church, careening into the decon chamber just as the hatch shushed closed again. Sweating, all the air inside her wanting to burst out in a scream—and yet with a tiny voice of awe muttering in the back of her head—she pounded on the outer hatch. She had to get out of not just the lab, but the entire complex. Project: Stargazer was just about as compromised as it could be.

“ Chamber secure ,” said the pre-recorded voice. “ Remove garments .”

“Fuck!” Casey snapped. She put down the tranquilizer rifle and fumbled at the catches of her hazmat suit with her heart thundering in her ears. She stared at the sign on the wall— STERILE IN, STERILE OUT.

Inside the main lab, security guards rushed the Predator. It ducked and parried. Snapped a guard’s arm. Hurled a screaming man aside and then tossed another across the lab to crash against a wall full of shelved samples and instruments. Things clattered down, and the guards flew like rag dolls.

“Come on, come on!” she muttered as she kept glancing into the lab.

Terror rose within her, like her courage had sprung a leak and fear had come rushing in, flooding her insides. The Predator moved with mind-numbing speed and agility, dispensing violence and death with an efficiency and ruthlessness that was almost obscene, and suddenly all Casey wanted was to get the fuck out of there, to be anywhere but here , to forget she had ever met Agent Church—who lay dead just outside the decon chamber, glassy eyes wide and accusatory.

Breath coming in short gasps, pulse throbbing at her temples, she struggled to tear off the hazmat suit. A spray of blood arced across the examination room and splattered the glass window of the decontamination chamber, making Casey jump. She glanced past the dripping stain and saw the Predator’s swift handiwork. Corpses littered the floor. It had to know she was there—had to be perfectly aware of her presence—but it ignored her and marched across the lab to the table where its gear had been laid out. Chest armor, gauntlet, a kind of chainmail.

The Predator dressed quickly, even as Casey tore off her own clothes. She saw the way it paused and tilted its head very slightly, hand freezing over the array of gear as if noticing that something was missing.

Then the decon chamber muttered something overhead and the spray came down. Casey stood and let it burn off yet another layer of her skin. It had barely finished when she kicked aside the hazmat suit and snatched up her street clothes, bundling them against her chest. With the other hand, she grabbed the tranquilizer gun.

In her peripheral vision she saw the Predator stalking across the examination room toward a man cowering behind an upturned bench, his knees drawn up to his chest, his back pressed against the wall as if he wished he could melt into it, pass right through. It was only when the man, sensing the Predator looming over him, glanced up and let out a yelp of terror that she realized it was Keyes. As the Predator leaned over, grabbed him by the hair and lifted him into the air as if he weighed nothing, Casey thought of how the son had continued the father’s work, of how the family obsession had had such disastrous consequences for them both. Waiting helplessly for the outer door of the decon chamber to open, she could only watch with sick horror as the Predator scooped up another scalpel and used it, with one swift and devastating sweep of its massive arm, to cut off Keyes’ screaming head. As the body fell like a sack of wet cement, the alien stooped and unhesitatingly sliced off the scientist’s right hand. Now carrying its spoils, Keyes’ head in one taloned hand, his severed hand in the other, the Predator crossed to the door of the decon unit and pressed Keyes’ body parts to the retinal and fingerprint scanners.

Hideous though this was, even more grotesque in a way was when the Predator opened its mouth and spoke in a voice that was a perfect imitation of the dead scientist’s.

“Keyes. Shawn H.”

It’s a fucking mockingjay , Casey thought, as a green light beeped. At the same moment, the outer door finally opened behind her. But now it was too late to run, because the door at the other side of the decon chamber was also opening, and the Predator, making a horrible Geiger-counter-like clicking sound, was ducking forward to step through it. All but naked, Casey spun to face it, clutching the tranq rifle.

Trying to control her trembling hands, Casey leveled the rifle at the alien hunter. She pulled the trigger and the weapon did nothing more than utter a dry click . Whether it was jammed, or empty, she had no idea, but either way she knew she was about to die. Desperate, she lifted her gaze to stare at the Predator.

It cocked its head, regarding her. Its mouth—the mandibles, the razor teeth inside—if the thing could smile, it seemed to smile at her, almost indulgently. Then it swept past her, sparing her, as if it had already forgotten she had been there at all.

Casey stared at the weird ‘dreadlocks’ on the back of its head as it strode away. Her breath thawed, and she inhaled ragged, short, terrified breaths. She set down the tranq gun and started to dress in a panic, even as she saw the Predator fitting its one wrist gauntlet onto its arm.

A guard came around the corner at a run. His eyes widened in terror as he raised his machine gun. Had he seen what Casey had seen, he wouldn’t have bothered even trying to take aim. The Predator smashed the gun barrel aside and picked him up, then slammed his skull against the wall with a wet, horrifying crunch.

Two more of Stargazer’s mercenary goons rounded the corner, their rifles up. Weaponless, the Predator seemed to shrug as it stomped on the stock of the machine gun that had spilled from the dead guy’s hand. The weapon flipped upward like a yard rake and the Predator snatched it in its talons, lifted the gun, and opened fire. The guards fired as well, but too late, and inaccurately. Bullets raked their flesh, driving them backward to topple in a bloody pile in the hall.

Casey tugged her shirt on, darted her gaze around for her left shoe—the last piece of her wardrobe—and slipped into it. Only then did she hear the shushing thunk behind her. She glanced back and saw that the inner hatch door hadn’t closed all the way. It opened slightly and then slid again, trying to shut—blocked by Dr. Keyes’ severed head. The Predator must have simply dropped the head when it was no longer any use, and now the door was jerking open and closed, pummeling the severed head each time it did so. Casey felt bile burn up the back of her throat, but she forced her gorge back down. Her life depended on self-control now.

She nearly bolted then, but her gaze paused on the centrifuge inside the lab, and the vial of clear liquid that remained perhaps miraculously unbroken, dangling above it.

Now that the Predator had left her behind, her thoughts had begun to slow, to seek order, and, more particularly, answers. Staring at the vial, she found herself wondering how many answers the liquid inside it might contain.

The Predator strides along the corridor with purpose, disposing of irritations and intrusions as they present themselves. The guards are neither a concern nor a challenge. Only when he passes the display case near the front of the complex does his inexorable march toward freedom halt. With a click of satisfaction, he turns to look at the wide plexiglass window of the case and to admire what is displayed there.

He shatters the glass and reaches inside.

The bio-helmet does not belong to him. It was collected by these humans from some historic hunt years before. He can only assume the hunter who’d worn it had met an honorable death. The facemask is scarred and pitted from battle and the Predator tells himself it is an honor to acquire this mask, though he did not earn that damage himself.