Кристофер Голден - The Predator - The Official Movie Novelization

Stay alive, kid, McKenna thought. Whatever just blew up, stay the hell alive .

“Nebraska,” he barked into his radio. “You got wheels?”

Janice Pelham had joined the Neighborhood Watch out of civic duty. She wasn’t a cop, not quite, but as a security officer she had been deputized to perform certain functions in conjunction with the police. She also had a sweet ride and a uniform that her boyfriend Elwin loved her to wear at home, and she didn’t mind at all.

In the three years since she’d started this job, she’d mostly dealt with burglary, vandalism, and illegal parking, plus some domestic disturbances that had required the police to step in. Now she stared at the front of the house whose front door had been vaporized and realized that this job might be dangerous, that even though she wasn’t a real cop, she could still be killed doing it, even in a neighborhood like this one.

The kid had bolted, but she’d radioed it in. The real police could track him down. She wanted to get home to Elwin and take the uniform off—and not in the fun way they both preferred. Janice was thinking about taking it off and never putting it on again.

She turned and started back toward her patrol car—and froze.

“Where’s my fucking car?”

Nebraska Williams held onto the wheel as he blasted the stolen Neighborhood Watch patrol car around a corner. The tires shrieked. He had the flashers turning, strobing red light and pale shadows all over the lawns and houses. Parents and kids had scrambled out of the street when the explosion had erupted, and now they mostly stared from front lawns or had gone indoors, where they peered out of windows. Trick or treat had ended abruptly this year, but the kiddies in McKenna’s neighborhood would never forget it.

When McKenna’s question came through, he snatched up the two-way from the seat and thumbed the button.

“I got wheels,” he said, and grinned. “Something flashy.” Then he dropped the humor, was suddenly all business again. “Kid’s spooked, he’s rabbiting. Talk to me. Where’s he gonna feel safe? Where’s someplace he knows ?”

Huffing, heart thundering in his chest, Rory raced across the middle school baseball field. His thoughts were beginning to return to their orderly nature as he went back through the events of the previous minutes. He had killed a man, but he told himself that he couldn’t be held responsible… that he didn’t hold himself responsible.

Dad , he thought.

But no. He couldn’t be blamed either. Even though his father had sent the helmet and gauntlet, he hadn’t expected the package to fall into his son’s hands. Not even the manufacturer of the technology—whom Rory assumed must be some nation’s military, some corporation that specialized in finding inventive ways to murder people on battlefields—could really be said to be responsible. They had all had a part to play in the death of the stoner and the destruction of his front door—Rory, his dad, the military, the postal worker, E.J., Derek, and the stoner prick who’d thrown a rotten apple at a kid.

But when it came right down to it, when you reached the end of the long rope of cause and effect, only one sure and solid fact remained: a man was dead. And despite everything, Rory still felt like it was his fault, and although he didn’t process emotions the way other people did, he thought he might cry.

He reached the scoreboard and found the niche he had used several times to hide from the bullies. In the darkness there, he cowered and tried to catch his breath. He knew he ought to run home, but the police would be looking for him. They hadn’t seen his face, but if anyone talked to E.J. or Derek, they would figure out pretty quickly that they were looking for Rory McKenna and then the cops would be at his house and his mother would know what he had done… and that was the worst part. The idea that his mother would learn that he had killed someone, even if it really wasn’t his fault, even if it was just the stupid fucking helmet… Rory loved his mother more than anything. She understood him like nobody else ever would and he knew that. If his mom cried or screamed or felt horror or disgust because of him…

In the niche beneath the scoreboard, he kept trying to catch his breath, wondering how all this had happened.

Am I going to jail?

“Dad,” he whispered in the darkness. “Where are you?”

A low growl replied from the shadows. Rory froze, turning slowly to see a flash of canine eyes in the dark. A dog—a big damn dog—ready to bite his face off. Still winded, he knew he should run, but knew he wouldn’t get far before it caught him.

The dog shifted and some of the starlight bled in, letting him see the silhouette of its head. He recognized it immediately—Bugsy, the damn pit bull that menaced him every fucking day on his way home from school. It growled again, low, quieter this time… and moved closer.

Then the pit bull dropped its head and let its tongue loll out. It moved even nearer to him and nudged him with its huge, heavy head. Rory furrowed his brow in confusion. Tentatively, he reached out… and petted the pit bull’s head. To his surprise, the dog didn’t flinch. Instead, it lifted its eyes and looked at him, and a sound came from its chest that was different from a growl. A friendly, contented sound. Rory petted the dog again, smiling in amazement at the sudden sweetness of the dog that had so terrified him.

“Good boy,” he said quietly.

All at once the dog froze. Its lips peeled back in a snarl that grew into a new growl and it backed away from Rory. For a moment, he didn’t notice that the dog wasn’t growling at him, and then he saw its eyes and realized something else had spooked it. Something behind him.

Slowly, Rory turned… to see a very different sort of dog.

Ice filled his gut. For the first time, he understood how someone could piss their pants from fear. He didn’t—but it was a very near thing.

This dog was no pit bull. It wasn’t any kind of dog Rory had ever seen before. In fact, one glance at its massive haunches and the insectoid mandibles that clicked and stretched open across its face, and he knew it wasn’t a dog at all. Rory had been brilliant since birth. He knew more about biology than ninety-nine percent of the adults he’d met, including every science teacher who’d ever tried to teach him. Whatever this monster-dog was, it hadn’t been born on Earth.

Alien , he thought breathlessly. Or genetically engineered. Or both.

The monster-dog snarled, its intent viciously clear. Its mandibles snapped open and shut and it advanced a single step. The pit bull whimpered and backed further away. For a moment Rory hoped, perhaps unkindly, that the monster would chase the ordinary dog. Unfortunately, it seemed only to have eyes for Rory.

He backed away, up the dugout steps and onto the field, keeping the monster-dog in his sights… and then he heard a voice behind him.

“Kid. Walk to me. Slowly.”

Rory turned to see a security guard standing about ten meters away, armed only with a flashlight and a nightstick. The guy, stuffed into his uniform, was overweight and over fifty, but at least he was brave. Nine out of ten guys in his position would most likely have locked themselves in their nice warm office and called the cops.

“Shhh,” the guy said, as if Rory was causing a commotion instead of just standing there. “Come on, now…”

Rory was about to obey—though he wasn’t sure what good it would do—when he noticed something that the security guard hadn’t. Movement in the shadows under the bleachers. The stealthy movement of something big and predatory inching forward, readying itself to spring.