Кристофер Голден - The Predator - The Official Movie Novelization

“No,” he gibbered, “no, no, go away!”

He backed off, instinctively throwing up his hand to shield himself.

Traeger saw a flash of metal, and next second the merc was writhing on the ground and squealing like a stuck pig, blood spurting from the stump of his wrist. His severed hand lay a few feet away from the rest of his body, fingers curled in toward the palm. The shuriken, having effortlessly lopped off the man’s hand instead of clipping back into the wrist gauntlet as it was designed to do, now rapidly lost momentum and embedded itself in a tree.

The merc continued to squeal. Traeger stomped over to him, furious.

“Shut the fuck up!”

He contemplated using the shoulder cannon on the man, silencing him for good—if McKenna and his crew hadn’t been watching, he might even have done so. Instead, he bent down and slapped the man hard across the face, once, twice.

Shocked, the man swallowed his scream.

But then, as though in imitation, another merc, standing on the periphery of the group, gave a sudden startled yelp.

They all turned as one to see him rising rapidly into the trees, as though yanked upward on an elasticated rope.

When he was around ten meters from the ground, legs kicking wildly, there was a shifting in the shadows somewhere in the canopy of leaves and branches above his head, and then something detached itself from the darkness and slid down the trunk like a vast snake. The group on the ground could only watch in horror as the Upgrade descended the tree headfirst. It paused to regard them, eyes glinting, mandibles stretching to reveal pink flesh inset with jagged shark-like teeth. Then it reached out with its long arms, grabbed its prey by the shoulders, and hauled him upward.

Seconds later the real screaming began, and blood began to patter down from the tree like rain.

McKenna was the first to start shooting, blazing away at the darkness above their heads into which the Upgrade and its victim had vanished. The man immediately stopped screaming—either put out of his misery by McKenna’s bullets or killed by the Upgrade—but nothing fell from above. Nebraska, Nettles, Coyle, and Baxley were all firing too, but the remaining three mercs had already turned tail and fled. The noise was tremendous, bullets causing sparks to flare in the trees like a multitude of angry sprites. After a few seconds, McKenna waved an arm to call a halt to the shooting—if the Upgrade hadn’t crashed dead to the ground by now, that meant it was no longer there—and indicated that they should beat a hasty retreat.

As they lowered their weapons and began to hightail it out of there, Casey grabbed McKenna’s sleeve and indicated the merc with the severed hand, who was still lying on the ground, sweating and groaning. McKenna looked anguished, but shook his head. If they were going to have any chance of surviving this, they couldn’t allow themselves to be lumbered by anything that might slow them down. He half-expected Casey to protest, but she simply nodded, and mouthed “Sorry” at the man.

Then they cleared out, leaving him alone.

The merc’s name was Bruce Willis, a handle that had proved both a blessing and a curse throughout his thirty-six years on this earth. Partly because of his namesake’s reputation, he had become a tough guy almost by default, developing from an amiable fat kid from a middle-class family (his dad was a pharmacy manager, his mom a school secretary) into one who did weights, and boxed, and eventually dropped out of high school to take a job first as a nightclub doorman, and then as a prison guard. He had become a merc because a friend of his told him the money was good, but he had always felt like a phony. He felt like he was never quite as committed, or ruthless, or downright batshit-crazy as the guys around him, that one day he would be found out, and when that day came he would find himself in deep shit.

And now that day had come. Because here he was, in a jungle clearing, at night, on his own, being hunted by a monster. He had lost a hand, and a fuck of a lot of blood, and was in indescribable pain, and probably dying. There was a part of him that wished he could just pass out, slip into oblivion, but he couldn’t, because he had so much adrenaline racing through his system right now that it felt like his whole body was screaming. On the other hand (ha-ha), maybe now that everyone had gone away and left him, he would be left alone too. The monster would chase after the others, and he would be free to live or die at his own leisure, depending on what God (because he did believe in God, despite his mom’s insistence that, by choosing the path he had chosen in life, he had forsaken his faith) had in mind for him.

He was still thinking these vaguely comforting thoughts when he heard a heavy thump to his right. Although it hurt to move—funny how losing a hand could make every other part of your body bellow out in pain too—he turned his head. What he saw chased all thoughts of God’s mercy from his mind. The monster was standing right beside him, its colossal legs stretching up to its equally colossal torso, and from there to its hideously ugly head.

Bruce began to whimper, to plead. With great effort, he held up his remaining hand, palm out.

“I’m unarmed…” he said. “I’m not a threat… I’m not a threat…”

The monster leaned over him. It tilted its head to one side, its weird, dreadlock-like appendages slithering across its shoulders.

His voice became a whisper. “I don’t pose a threat… I don’t…”

He only stopped pleading when the monster rammed a taloned hand between his lips and ripped his spine out through his mouth.

The triumphal, ululating screech of the Upgrade echoed through the woods, chilling them all even though they were sweating and panting with exertion.

“Sounds like we lost another red shirt,” Coyle gasped, his pack bouncing on his back as he ran. Then he gestured to his left and shouted, “Glimmer, on your nine!”

They turned to look, saw shadowy movement in the trees. Several flashlight beams picked out a hulking, dark shape, moving at panther-like speed through the jungle. Then it vanished.

Everyone thumped to a stop. Casey looked around and knew that they were all thinking the same as she was: running was pointless; their enemy was so much faster than they were; all they were doing was expending needless energy. Yet what else could they do?

They were looking to McKenna, but for once he looked as clueless as the rest of them.

“Up ahead,” Casey said, pointing. “This way.” When McKenna gave her a questioning look, she explained, “Lynch. He set some pyro to cover our back trail.”

She hoped she was right—not only that Lynch had had time to set the pyro before the alien had got him, but also that they were where she thought they were (she had a good sense of direction, but in the darkness of the jungle it was easy to get turned around and not know it). It was a long shot—but the comfort was, she knew that McKenna also knew it was a long shot, yet he was nodding regardless.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s trap the motherfucker.”

He led the way along the path she had indicated. It was narrow, hemmed in by trees and brush. A choke point. Nettles passed him a detonator. Baxley squeezed past Nettles and tapped McKenna on the shoulder, and when McKenna turned he said, “Set it,” then jerked his head at Coyle. “We’ll draw him in.”

Coyle raised his eyebrows. “What is this ‘we,’ kemosabe?”

But the way he said it, McKenna knew he was committed one hundred percent. Knew that Coyle—like Baxley, like all of them—would do whatever it took to protect his buddies, and most especially Rory, even if it meant risking his own life. McKenna locked eyes with both of them for a long moment, his face solemn. He didn’t have the words to express the depth of his gratitude, his admiration, his love, for these two crazy men. In the end he nodded tersely, and they nodded back. It was enough.