Кристофер Голден: The Predator: The Official Movie Novelization

Or in this case, judging by the evidence, global security.

The blackened vegetation crunched beneath his feet as he moved forward, his senses attuned, his eyes darting every which way, alert for anything. It took him a good five minutes of walking before he reached the thing he’d glimpsed hurtling toward him out of the sky, and when he did he allowed himself a moment—just a moment—to goggle in wonder at a craft that was definitely not of this earth.

Damaged as it was, he could see that the angles were all wrong, and that the materials used were… weird. Swamped in plant matter, it looked more like some amphibious or insectile creature, broken-backed, hissing and spitting and steaming, than it did a vehicle capable of flight ( space flight? ).

He approached cautiously, rifle up, finger on the trigger, scope trained unerringly on the open hatch, which was sticking straight up in the air like a gossamer wing, vast and dislocated. Beyond the opening, for now, he could see only darkness. He moved closer, stalking like a big cat toward its prey, the rain now pelting down around him, the sound like a million scurrying insects.

Closer still. He noticed something glimmering on the ground near his right boot, and glanced down. Frowned.

Liquid of some sort. Thick enough not to have been washed away by the rain. It was fluorescent, glowing bright green. Hell, what was that stuff? Rocket fuel? Radioactive waste? Alien goop?

Before he could decide, his eye was snagged by something else, lying a little closer to the craft, half-concealed by vegetation. It appeared to be a glove of some kind, or perhaps a shackle.

His mind rushed through possibilities. Impressive as the crashed vessel was, it was small, compact. Could it be an escape pod, perhaps something that had been attached to a larger craft? And the shackle—could its owner have been a prisoner? Or an escaping slave?

As he took another cautious step closer, however, McKenna saw that the thing was not a shackle, but a gauntlet, vaguely resembling the kind of thing a knight of old might have worn, but far more sophisticated, far more alien . Maybe it had belonged to a warrior of some sort? But why was it lying here? Had its owner discarded it? Had it been jarred loose?

Then he saw the face.

It was staring up at him from the ground, close to the gauntlet. Heavy browed, eyes slanted and glaring, but otherwise featureless. McKenna’s heart jolted. For a split second he thought he’d stepped into a trap; that the craft’s occupant had dug a pit for itself and was crouched within it, ready to spring out…

But no. Even as he swung his rifle around, McKenna realized that the face was not a face, but a mask, half-buried in ash and pulped vegetation. He glanced around, then stepped closer, probing at the gauntlet and mask with the barrel of his rifle, half-afraid they might have been booby-trapped.

When nothing happened, he knelt down, brushed away the muck from around the mask and picked it up. It was heavy, made of some dense grayish-green metal. He stared at it for a moment, into its eye sockets, empty but somehow malevolent. Stuffing the mask into his pack, he tried his comms again.

“Piggy One, Piggy Two. Do you copy? Over.”

Nothing but the hiss of static. He sighed. “Fuck this.”

He picked up the gauntlet, and was about to add that to his pack too when he paused. For a moment, he hefted it in his hand, and then, curiosity getting the better of him, slipped it onto his forearm. Immediately it attached itself with a sharp snik of meshing attachments, then, to his alarm and fascination, adjusted itself, scale-like plates sliding over one another, until it was encasing his arm snugly but not uncomfortably.

So engrossed was he in his new toy that for a moment he forgot where he was. It was only when he heard a sound behind him—the slither of something heavy on the rain-sodden ground—that he jerked upright and spun round, water droplets flying from his hair, gun leveled, finger already squeezing the trigger.

A figure, combat fatigues dark with rain. A white face wearing a stunned expression, staring not at him but at the smoking wreck of the craft behind him.

“Dupree!” spat McKenna, jerking his finger from the trigger. “Jesus!”

Dupree, on the far side of the impact crater, failed to respond, didn’t even look at him.

“Where’s Haines?” McKenna barked. And then, when Dupree still said nothing, he instilled every ounce of authority that he could muster into his voice. “ Vinnie! Where’s Haines? ”

Only now did Dupree’s slack-jawed gaze drift toward his superior. He blinked. “Dunno. Comm’s not working.”

McKenna hefted his pack and rifle, suddenly businesslike. “We gotta head for the extraction point.”

Dupree nodded, then faltered again. “The fuck is that, Cap?”

McKenna glanced at the pod, shrugged. “Above our pay grade.”

The stunned expression on Dupree’s face was slowly fading, and he was beginning to look more like his old self. Shifting his gaze to McKenna’s arm, he cocked an eyebrow, the question unspoken.

All at once McKenna felt embarrassed. “Evidence,” he said.

Dupree nodded slowly. “Evidence, right. Because…?”

The two compadres grinned at each other, then spoke in unison: “No one’s gonna believe us.”

McKenna chuckled. Dupree grinned, but all at once something seemed to occur to him, and he looked around in puzzlement.

“Er… Cap? I’m… uh…” He raised his hands, palms tilted toward the sky. “I’m not getting rained on.”

McKenna stared. It was true. Rain was falling to either side of Dupree, but not on Dupree himself. He looked up into the tree that was partly sheltering his comrade, but which should still have been allowing some rain to get through—which had , in fact, been allowing rain through until a few moments ago.

Was there something up there? Something dark and large among the leaves and branches?

Calmly he said, “Walk away from the tree, Dupree.”

Dupree half-turned, squinting upward, following his Captain’s gaze. “Why, is there…?”

At which point all hell broke loose.

With a sudden splintering crash of branches, and a shower of leaves, something fell from the tree. McKenna swung his rifle up as Dupree leaped out of the way and spun round to face it. At first the falling object was too swift to focus on, but a couple of meters from the ground it came to an abrupt halt, the vine it was suspended from snapping like a whip. It swung to and fro, arms outstretched, great red wings spread. For a dizzy, disorienting moment, McKenna thought that what he was looking at was a demon, or at least some kind of giant alien bat. Then Dupree made a kind of sobbing sound, a stifled cry of rage and horror and fear all rolled into one, and McKenna’s vision readjusted, the thing coming into sudden sharp focus.

The reality was far, far worse than the fantasy had been.

Dangling from a vine above their heads, swaying like a side of meat, was Haines. He had been gutted, his intestines hanging in gray-purple loops, his chest and stomach slashed open so brutally that the two sides of his mutilated flesh hung in drooling flaps on either side of him. His face was a bulging-eyed rictus of terror and agony, blood running down the sides of it and through his hair, to drip and pool on the ground beneath.

“Jesus Christ,” McKenna muttered. Then he pointed his rifle up into the trees and unloaded, shredding leaves and branches, not stopping until the entire clip had been exhausted.

Even then, even when the trigger clicked empty, he was not done. He switched to his handgun, firing bullets up into the trees, shooting at nothing, Dupree doing the same beside him.