Right now, he was crouched behind the generator, close to the perimeter fence, cut off from the rest of his unit. Bullets had spattered the ground and spanged off metal all around him for what seemed like minutes. They had stopped now, but Diego knew it was a temporary lull, and that if he moved, if he showed himself, he would be shot down like a dog.
He was torn between staying here to finish the job he’d been hired to do, or opting out, crawling off into the jungle and making his way to safety. If he took the second option, he knew he wouldn’t get paid, and there might well be other consequences if it was discovered he’d cut and run, but at least he’d still be alive. The perimeter fence was maybe three meters away, and the first clumps of blackened foliage at the edge of the jungle maybe another three meters beyond that. Six meters in all. It was nothing. If he crawled on his belly, if he kept to the shadows, he could make it.
He was still plucking up the courage, still wondering what to do, when he heard a sound coming from the jungle. It started off as a rustling, but quickly escalated into a crunching, and then a crashing, as something headed toward him. The something sounded big, maybe an animal, or even a vehicle of some kind. Maybe the guys who had fired on them had a tank, and were attempting to drive it through the jungle, right onto the crash site. He peeked around the edge of the generator, and saw trees and bushes whipping back and forth, as if a twister was working its way through them. He thought he could see something moving back there in the shadows too, something that walked upright like a man. But how could it be a man? Whatever that thing was, it had to be ten, twelve feet tall.
Slowly, he raised his gun as the figure moved closer.
Then the thing stepped out of the darkness of the jungle, into the light.
He had heard some of the other guys talk about the space alien they kept at Project: Stargazer, had heard them say the thing had escaped, but he hadn’t known whether they were bullshitting him. Then he had seen the spaceship and he had thought that maybe there was something to their story, after all. Even so, he had never really expected to see a space alien, and certainly not this close. And even if he did see one, he’d half-expected it to look like the ones on TV: small and gray, with big black eyes. But this bastard was bigger and more terrifying than anything he could ever have imagined—hell, it was almost twice as tall as he was. And it was built like a Roman gladiator on steroids, its muscles huge and powerful, its massive hands tipped with claws that looked as though they could tear a man’s head off with one swipe. But worse than any of that was its face. Oh man, its face…
As the creature turned in his direction, its mean little eyes fixing on him, and its mandibles stretching open, Diego felt his bladder let go. Hot liquid squirted down his leg as a judder of fear started up like a motor in his guts and turned his limbs to trembling Jell-O. Whimpering, but not even aware he was doing it, he raised his gun and took aim at that hideous face. But the creature reacted with lightning speed, and even before his finger could twitch on the trigger, it had ripped aside the perimeter fence as though it was a lace curtain, and was reaching out for him. Within a split second, it had knocked his gun aside, and ripped him open as though he was a wet paper bag. Diego heard a tearing sound and a crack of bone, and realized it was coming from himself. Then, as his steaming innards slid out of the gash in his belly, he felt himself lifted off his feet like a doll. His last sensation, as his life and all he had been swirled away into a black drain, was of the creature using him like a puppet, squeezing his hand so that his finger pulled the trigger on his weapon, spraying the crash site with bullets.
* * *
Perched in a tree on the opposite side of the crater, Casey saw the Upgrade stride into the clearing, tear a man apart, and strafe the area with bullets to discourage retaliation. What she didn’t see were several of the mercs making it across to a parked jeep, but she knew they must have done so when the vehicle’s headlights suddenly blazed, and its engine roared, like a wild animal issuing an attack cry.
She saw the Upgrade straighten up, tossing aside the merc’s eviscerated body like discarded packaging, as the jeep tore across the clearing toward it. At first, she thought the jeep was going to ram the Upgrade, and wondered who’d come off worse. But then the vehicle screeched to a halt and a trio of black-clad mercs spilled from it, each of them loaded with heavy artillery.
Casey had to admire their bravery. They must have concluded either that the previous attack had originated from the Upgrade itself, or that their attackers would see the Upgrade as a common enemy, and would either join forces with them or hold fire. On that last assumption— if that was their assumption—they were kind of correct. The Loonies were holding fire for now—but not out of any sense of commonality or fair play. If things were going as discussed, they’d be moving into position, their single aim being to retrieve McKenna and Rory, and get them out of the kill zone. As for Casey, for now she had a grandstand seat. Up in her tree, she watched events unfold with a horrified fascination.
Even as the mercs were spilling out of the jeep, the Upgrade was on the move. It was frighteningly fast, its movements almost a blur even without its cloaking technology. Although Casey had little sympathy for Traeger’s black-clad soldiers, their massacre was still painful to watch. It was like seeing a tiger pitted against tortoises in a gladiatorial arena. Armed as they were, they appeared cripplingly slow next to the swiftness of their enemy. The Upgrade was on them before they could get their guns up and aimed, though not without the alien first reducing the odds by throwing some sort of whirling blade, which took one of the mercs’ arms clean off at the elbows. As he lay in the grass, screaming, the Upgrade ploughed through the remaining two men, slashing one open with its claws, before picking the other up with both hands and simply ripping him in two.
Now, as the Upgrade strode purposefully toward the original Predator’s craft, more mercs started to emerge from hiding—though whether to avenge their fallen comrades or simply because their orders were to protect the ship at all costs, Casey wasn’t sure.
Even in greater numbers, though, they were no match for the eleven-foot-tall Predator. It simply cut through them like a barracuda through a pool of minnows, dodging their clumsy attempts to take it down, and dispatching them in a variety of ways—ripping some apart with its bare hands, beheading others with its throwing blades. It shot one man who tried to sneak up behind it with his own weapon, and it snapped a wrist cuff onto one merc’s arm as it passed him by, then pressed a detonator on its gauntlet and reduced him to an explosion of chunky red confetti.
Leaving a battleground of dead and dying men behind it, it continued its remorseless progress toward the alien craft.
And toward McKenna and Rory, who were still crouched beneath the ship’s ramp.
22
The armored personnel carrier was the pit bull terrier of the motoring world. Ugly, squat, compact and powerful, it was effectively a dark-gray metal box, which perched on eight wheels—four on each side—and had two narrow, widely spaced headlights at the front, which resembled mean little eyes.
Also known as a GPV, this was the vehicle that had been parked closest to the alien ship when Traeger had made his escape from McKenna. It was the one he had sought refuge behind, and it was the one he was still crouched behind now, hunkered down beside one of the massive muddy wheels with two of his remaining men, out of sight of the battleground, the perimeter fence and the jungle at his back.
Because he had been hiding behind what was, to all intents and purposes, a three-meter-thick metal wall, he had seen little of the massacre of his troops. He had heard the screams, though, and the explosions, and the grisly tearing sounds. And now he could smell the blood, and hear the groans of the injured and dying.
He had shown defiance, and even bravery, in his dealings with McKenna, but he didn’t feel brave now. Cowering in the dirt, his clothes spattered with mud, he trembled, and sweated, and prayed to a God he had never really believed in, as the footsteps of the Upgrade t
humped relentlessly closer to his hiding place.
Please don’t let it know I’m here, he thought, squeezing his eyes closed. Please don’t let it know I’m here.
Was the ground really shaking as the creature approached, or was that merely his imagination? As the footsteps seemed to boom right on top of him, he couldn’t resist it: he opened one eye.
Backlit by arc lamps, he saw the Upgrade looming over the GPV, its shadow spilling across the top of the vehicle and shrouding him and his men like a black blanket. He half-expected the creature to pick up the vehicle in one vast hand and toss it aside, then lean down toward them in a macabre game of peekaboo.
But it didn’t. It simply passed them by, either ignorant of their presence or uninterested in it. Traeger breathed a sigh of relief as its footsteps receded, and risked creeping to the edge of the vehicle and peering around it to see what the Upgrade would do next.
He saw it march up the ramp and enter the Predator ship, the hatch closing after it with a pneumatic whump!
Then there was silence. It was almost an anticlimax. Traeger’s men who had been hiding with him looked at one another in fearful bewilderment, unable to believe they were still alive.
What the fuck now? he thought.
He made a quick decision. He had to get hold of this situation as quickly as possible, had to regain the upper hand.
He made a quick inventory of his men. There were six still standing, albeit scattered around the battleground, hiding behind trees and other vehicles.
“McKenna?” he yelled.
No response. Nothing but drifting smoke and silence.
He tried again. “C’mon, be reasonable. There’s… what? Five of you? Seven of us.”
That was a total guess. He was trying to recall from the intel he’d received how many crazies there’d been in the prison van with McKenna—this was assuming they’d all stuck together. He guessed one was now dead, if that scream from the jungle was anything to go by, and he wasn’t counting Casey Brackett. She was a woman, and a scientist, so if anything, she’d be more of a hindrance than a help to guys like this.
In answer to his question, someone (Traeger thought it might have been Williams, but the movement was too quick for him to really tell for sure) popped up from behind a tree surrounding the area and let off a shot. The head of one of the mercs who’d been cowering behind the GPV with Traeger snapped back, and next moment he was lying in the dirt, his brains leaking out of his skull.
From the tone of his voice as he replied, Traeger sensed McKenna was grinning. “Who taught you math?”
Traeger seethed. The death of the merc was a clear signal that McKenna’s rabble had them surrounded and could pick them off at will. Glaring down at the dead soldier, as though the guy had got himself shot on purpose merely to spite him, he bellowed, “Okay! Okay!”
He struggled inwardly to keep his voice steady. The men in his employ were not loyal to him, they were little more than hired thugs, and it wouldn’t do to show them he was losing control of this situation.
Trying to make it sound as though he was being generous, he said, “Fine. You can walk away, Captain. I just want what’s in that ship.”
* * *
Still huddled beneath the ramp of the Predator ship, Rory touched his dad on the arm. “He’s lying.”
McKenna looked down at Rory looking up at him, his face trusting, open, and he gave him a brief hug. “Yes, he is. Good boy.”
Another voice joined the conversation. “McKenna? McKenna?”
It was Casey. He shuffled to the edge of the ramp, peered out from under it. At first, he couldn’t see her when he looked in what he thought was the direction her voice had come from, but then he saw movement in a tree on the opposite side of the crater and realized she was perched up there, waving at him.
“Why isn’t the ship taking off?” she said.
It was a good question. The Upgrade was in there, so what was to stop it from firing up the engines? If it did, of course, he and Rory would have to get out from under there quick, if they didn’t want to be—
His thoughts were interrupted by an astonishing sound.
It was laughter of a sort, deep and mocking, and interspersed with clicks and chirps—and it was coming from the Predator ship, through a kind of loudspeaker system!
The laughter was followed by a high-pitched warbling screech, like a radio trying to tune in to a frequency. Rory clapped his hands over his ears, his face creasing up with pain, and McKenna did the same. He suspected that Nebraska and Casey and Traeger and everyone else were reacting the same way too.
Someone must have asked a question, because as the sound died down enough for McKenna to remove his hands from his ears, he heard Traeger say, “It’s the translator… It’s using the translator.”
After a further pause, there came the most astonishing sound of all. A voice. But not just any voice. Emily’s voice. Or rather, a weird, almost otherworldly amalgam of Emily’s voice and several others that the Upgrade must have recorded, speaking words that sounded as though they had been filtered through a machine—emotionless and robotic.
“Hell-o,” the voice began incongruously. “I have enjoyed watching you kill each other. Now you are twelve only. Among you, I detect one who is a true warrior. The one called… Mac-Kenna. He will be your leader. He will be my prize.”
McKenna sensed all eyes turning toward his hiding place. The Upgrade’s words sent a chill through him.
Then Baxley’s voice came floating across the clearing. “Hey man, who’d you fuck to get pole position?”
No one laughed. McKenna glanced at Rory and thought, So what happens now?
The alien loudspeaker system crackled again, and the strange, filtered voice boomed once more across the crash site: “All are targets. Targets run. I offer time advantage. Go!”
There was a pause. Then Casey called out uncertainly, “Time advantage? What’s that? Like a head start?”
“We request twenty-four hours!” Nettles yelled from somewhere over to McKenna’s left.
Suddenly, numbers began to appear on the big screen that the techs had been hauling across the mud of the crater before all the shit had gone down, and which was still miraculously undamaged, despite the subsequent gunfire and explosions. The numbers were distorted, jagged, but still recognizable. McKenna realized the Upgrade must be projecting them from the ship.
5:00… 4:59… 4:58…
A countdown. Their “time advantage.” Their head start before the Upgrade started to come after them.
Nettles’ disgusted voice drifted across the clearing again. “This guy’s a dick, yo.”
* * *
Traeger had already weighed up the options and come to a decision. He rose from behind the GPV, stepping out into plain view, his gun still in his hand but dangling from one finger, the barrel pointing at the ground. He stood there for maybe five seconds, waiting, and then McKenna emerged from beneath the ramp of the Predator ship, and stood up too, his weapon likewise pointing at the ground. This was the cue for everyone else to emerge from hiding, like mice after the cat has vacated the house.
Casey climbed down from her tree, and pushed her way through the still incomplete and partially damaged perimeter fence. She walked across the clearing toward McKenna, studiously avoiding looking at the mangled and dismembered bodies strewn everywhere across the ground.
“Can I swear in front of your kid?” she asked, directing a vague smile at Rory, who was peeking out from beneath the ramp.
“No, but I can,” McKenna said. “We’re fucked, aren’t we?”
Casey nodded. “Six ways from Sunday.”
A merc padded across to them, his weapon also pointed at the ground, a makeshift ally now due to the bigger threat they were all facing. Glancing uneasily at the Predator ship, and even more uneasily at the inexorable countdown on the big screen, he said gruffly, “We split up, twelve different directions.” Then, glancing at Traeger, he added, “McKenna’s the one it w
ants.”
McKenna snorted a laugh, but Traeger, ever the strategist, shook his head. “Nix. It’ll take us one by one. That’s the fucker’s MO.”
Though she hated to agree with him, Casey nodded. “He’s right.”
From across the clearing came the sound of an engine wheezing and grinding. They looked across at a jeep that one of the mercs was trying to start. Its headlights came on, flickered, then went out.
Another merc tried another vehicle, with the same result. Unnecessarily, he called out, “Nothing’s starting. Vehicles are fried.”
“Son of a bitch triggered an EMP,” Traeger said.
“Range?” asked McKenna.
Baxley was approaching them now, glaring balefully at the mercs, who glared right back at him.
Rory, who had slid out from under the ramp, and was now standing quietly beside his father, pointed up at the still-blazing arc lamps. “Localized.”
“Chopper should be okay,” Baxley said.
“One way to find out,” McKenna said. Raising his voice, he shouted, “Everyone, mount up!”
Such was the authority in his voice that even Traeger’s men leaped into action. The team mobilized quickly, grabbing and priming extra weapons, stuffing ammo into their backpacks, scouring the grounded vehicles for other equipment they might need.
Casey noticed Traeger watching the scene silently, albeit with a grimly amused smile on his lips, and wondered what was cooking in that devious brain of his. A merc sidled up to him—big guy with a dyed yellow goatee and worried eyes. His voice was a boyish quaver.
“Wait. It’s gonna… hunt us?”
Casey scowled at him. “Grow a dick, will you?”
“Maybe he could borrow yours,” Baxley muttered under his breath.
“Fuck you, Baxley!” But she was laughing.
The group had now been joined by the rest of the Loonies, who had converged on them from a variety of directions. While Nettles gave the mostly nervous-looking mercs the stink eye, Nebraska hoisted his backpack a little higher and sparked up a cigarette.
The Predator Page 19