Кристофер Голден - The Predator - The Official Movie Novelization

The red blinking expanded into the outline of a specific image. He knew from the owner’s manual what it had to be, what its silhouette indicated it must be.

Another spacecraft.

Taking care with the doohickey, Rory got up and moved to the worktable, studying the hologram even more closely. He nodded in quiet understanding.

There was something wrong with this ship. Its outline looked wrong—buckled.

Instinctively he knew the reason why. This ship had not landed.

It had crashed.

The Iron Horse Motel had laid out the red carpet. Motorcycles crammed the parking lot. Music played loudly. Dozens of bikers were milling about, swigging from bottles of beer and spirits, reacquainting themselves with old friends, bitching about old enemies. An air of festive camaraderie suffused the night, so much so that the handful of people staying at the Iron Horse who hadn’t come to town for the bike festival managed to find themselves mostly charmed by the crowds of bearded, tattooed men and leather-clad, tattooed women, instead of terrified.

The motel’s marquee had been arranged to read: WELCOME RIDERS! CORPUS CHRISTI OR BUST! The M in WELCOME tilted slightly, but not so much that anyone bothered to fix it.

Among the other motorcycles in the lot, the stolen Scouts did not go unnoticed, but those who did take note of their presence only admired them, perhaps envied their owners.

In room 112, the television glowed brightly, the volume just loud enough to be heard over the commotion out in the motel’s parking lot. On the TV screen, a nervous-looking man was entering a suburban house, while a voiceover was saying, “…the forty-one-year-old came to this Texan home to meet our decoy, whom he believes to be an underage girl.”

Cut back to the nervous-looking man, who is clearly surprised and alarmed to be encountered by Dateline journalist Chris Hansen.

“And what are you up to today?” Hansen asked pointedly.

The child predator tried desperately to look casual. “Nothin’. Just came by to hang out.”

“I see you brought some condoms and some Mike’s Hard Lemonade,” Hansen said, his voice casual but his words damning as hell.

Coyle and Baxley were sitting on the edge of the room’s only bed, their eyes fixed on the screen. However, the third occupant of the room, Dr. Casey Brackett, missed the pervert’s response, and indeed the entire encounter. Despite her attempt to fight it, the tranquilizer had done its work very effectively, and even now she was still snoring lightly, a candle of drool at the edge of her lips.

Out in the lot, Nettles stood guard over the stolen Scouts, but his focus had drifted to the nearby Winnebago Super Chief and the bearded redneck who had set up a table in front of it to sell guns and ammo, like he was running a kid’s lemonade stand. Some of the ordnance laid out on the table was state of the art, and it had Nettles thinking. Lynch might be good when it came to card tricks, but he himself was the true hustler of the group.

The gun seller’s business had thinned out enough that the man wandered over toward Nettles and cast an appreciative glance at the motorcycles behind him. He actually licked his lips.

“Those Custom Scouts ? How much you want for ’em?” he asked.

Nettles merely snickered, and the guy shrugged as if to say: Ah, well. Worth a try. Clearly, though, his curiosity wasn’t yet sated. “Where you boys headed, anyway?”

“Bikefest,” Nettles replied. “You?”

“Gainesville Gun Show.” He nodded to his guns, then jerked a thumb at the RV. “Anything you need, I got in the Super Chief. I’m not kidding. Anything .”

Nettles’ ears perked up.

McKenna didn’t think he could have slept even if someone had hit him over the head with a sledgehammer. His whole body felt lit up, crackling with the electric need to move, to fight, to extricate himself from the most colossally fucked up scenario he’d ever encountered. If the woman hadn’t been tranquilized, there would have been no way he would have stopped here. Yes, they needed a plan, but he wanted to be far away from the base and the alien and the fucking spaceship that had shot down those F-22s before vanishing. Instead, here they were.

The only upside of the Iron Horse Motel was the damn bikefest, which enabled them to hide in plain sight. Without all these motorcycles, they’d have had to ditch the Scouts—too recognizable—and steal a minivan or something. Still, he didn’t like this environment, not with the Loonies who had suddenly become his new platoon—temporarily, at least. Any one of these guys might be volatile enough to start trouble in a church on Christmas, but surrounded by a couple hundred bikers, all of whom perceived themselves as alpha males… it was guaranteed not to end well.

McKenna exhaled and sidled over to where Nebraska sat on a brick wall, smoking a cigarette. “You, uh… think she’s safe in there with them?”

Nebraska blew out a plume of smoke and gave him a disapproving look. “They’re soldiers. They’d fuck a woodpile on the off chance there’s a snake inside. But sleepy ladies? Nah.”

Motion off to his left caught McKenna’s attention and he glanced over to see Nettles emerging from behind the motel sign, zipping up his pants.

“Hey, Nettles,” Nebraska called, “there’s a toilet in the room, y’know.”

Nettles widened his eyes in shock as if he’d just seen God. McKenna allowed himself a moment of amusement and then sat heavily on the brick wall beside Nebraska. A moment or two of quiet contemplation elapsed, but his anxiousness returned. He wanted to be elsewhere.

To allay the jitters, he tried to divert himself with conversation. “Where’d you serve?” he asked Nebraska.

Nebraska wasn’t overly chatty, but he had a laid-back attitude, and seemed happy to talk, which made him the most relaxing of the Loonies to be around.

The big man took another pull on his cigarette, and said, “Operation Enduring Freedom, ’03. Went for the Taliban, stayed for the opium.” He blew smoke, smiling slightly. “Came back, tried for contract work. They wouldn’t take me. Tried to drive a bus…”

“Lemme guess,” said McKenna. “They wouldn’t take you?”

Nebraska slid him a look, still smiling. You got it , his expression said.

For a moment they sat in companionable silence. Nebraska might have been laid-back, but he had a keen intelligence. There was a weariness about him too, as if he had been pushing at life too hard for too long.

Weighing up the question in his mind, wondering whether he should ask it, McKenna decided to take the plunge. “So… the officer. Did he live?”

“Excuse me?” Nebraska replied.

“The CO—the asshole you shot. Did he live?”

“Funny.” A small nod. “He did.”

“Where is he now?” McKenna asked.

Nebraska’s expression turned into something halfway between sadness and amusement. He studied McKenna’s face and cocked his head slightly, like a hopeful comedian waiting for a tiny audience to get his punchline. McKenna frowned, not understanding, and then he got it and his face went slack.

“You’re shitting me.”

Nebraska sighed and lifted up his hair to reveal a puckered pale scar on the dark skin beneath his hairline.

He shrugged. “I missed.”

McKenna blinked at him. “Why… why did you do that?”

“Miss?”

“Shoot yourself.”

“The doctors keep asking me that.” Nebraska took another drag on his cigarette. “I walked to the hospital with a bullet in my head. It’s why I’m… y’know…” He waffled his hand in the air. “Fuzzy sometimes.”