The Predator

by Christopher Golden

  It was a lot different to the ships he had seen on TV and in movies—darker, and full of weird angles, and more functional somehow, and yet at the same time more real and more… well, alien. There was a command deck of sorts, but it contained machinery whose function he couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess at. And there were bewildering displays of jagged, ever-changing alien symbols flickering across seemingly every surface. There were organic-looking pods set into alcoves along one wall too, like giant moth cocoons made from dark crystalline material, similar to the ones in the craft that the smaller Predator had arrived in.

  Rory was peering at the pods, trying to work out their function, when the Upgrade tossed him into one of them, as carelessly as he himself might toss a ball of crumpled paper into a wastepaper basket. He cowered in there, not daring to move, as the Upgrade moved across to the command deck and busied itself with various controls. Moments later there was a whooshing hiss, followed by a deep rumble, which could only mean one thing. The Upgrade was firing up the engines.

  Rory’s heart started to beat very fast indeed. Was this it? Were these his last minutes on Earth? Would he see his mom and dad ever again? Would he ever see another human being?

  Where would he be this time tomorrow? In space? On another planet?

  As the rumbling of the engines rose in pitch and power, becoming a screech as savage as the war cry of the Upgrade itself, he clung to the sides of the pod and tried not to cry.

  “Dad,” he whispered

  25

  McKenna, Casey, Nebraska, and Nettles watched, aghast, as the Predator ship, its engines screaming, slowly began to rise. Dust blew up from the quarry and blasted over them, stinging their skin, making them screw up their eyes.

  Casey pointed at a rising outcrop of rock a little further along the rim, which jutted out over the quarry like a natural viewing platform.

  “I’ll go low, you go high!” she yelled above the din of the engines.

  McKenna nodded, then he, Nebraska, and Nettles turned and sprinted up the hill toward the outcrop, attempting to get above the ship, which was now rising from the ground, plasma exhaust spewing beneath it.

  McKenna reached the outcrop first, his concern for Rory causing adrenaline to pump through his system, overcoming his tiredness. The ship kept rising; it was fifteen feet below the outcrop now. As McKenna bolted up the hill, it continued to rise, blowing exhaust, preparing for departure.

  McKenna reached the top of the outcrop. Without hesitation, he jumped…

  …and landed on top of the ship, yelping in pain as his ankle twisted and he went sprawling across the smooth, alien metal surface. He scrambled to his feet, aware of the pain in his ankle but sublimating it. He turned to see that Nebraska and Nettles had waited for the ship to rise until it was exactly level with the outcrop. Now they stepped onto its surface as if they were getting onto an elevator.

  McKenna shot them a withering glare.

  “Shoot it down!” he called over the wind that began to whip around them as the ship took on speed. “Aim for the engines!”

  Nebraska and Nettles traded shrugs, then all three of them opened fire. Bullets spat from their weapons, raking the ship’s roof, then ricocheted off with nary a dent. Even so, McKenna kept pulling his trigger with grim determination, trying to quell the thought of just how fucked they would be, standing on top of a rising spacecraft, if they couldn’t force it to land.

  And then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, the ship abruptly turned, tilted, and all three of them fell. McKenna hit the hull, sliding, scrambling to find a handhold, seconds away from having nothing but open sky beneath him.

  * * *

  Casey had managed to find a place with a gentle gradient where she could scramble down into the quarry without mishap. Unslinging the M4 from her shoulder, which she had picked up in the clearing after the firefight with the Upgrade, she ran across the dusty surface of the quarry floor until she was standing directly beneath the rising ship.

  From below, she couldn’t see any part of the ship that looked particularly vulnerable. Everything looked shielded, armored, the outer skin of the craft—knowing the Predators as she now did—seemingly as tough and uncompromising as everything else about them. She knew that for several reasons it was probably a very bad idea to stand beneath the ship and fire up at it—but she did it anyway. Gritting her teeth, she fired a full clip at the ship’s underbelly, hearing her bullets whine and clatter as they ricocheted.

  When the ship tilted to one side, she was astonished, then elated, then alarmed. She’d done it! Or at least one of them had. But she quickly realized that wasn’t the case, that the ship’s pilot was simply either taking evasive action or adjusting the ship’s trajectory as part of its normal take-off routine. Next moment, as if to confirm this, the roar of the engines abruptly increased, and the jet-wash knocked Casey off her feet.

  * * *

  “…ohshitohshitohshit…” Nettles chanted like it was a prayer to God. Maybe it was, McKenna thought, as in, oh-shit-please-God-don’t-let-me-die.

  McKenna knew how he felt. He clung to the roof of the ship, the wind whipping around him. He could see Nettles and Nebraska in his peripheral vision, but he dared not look at them. It required all his focus just to hang on. The ship kept ascending. Their perch was precarious. At any second, he figured the ship would zip further skyward, moving faster, tilting backward, breaking through the atmosphere. All three of them would take a long, long fall to their deaths… and Rory would still be aboard the alien craft, where he’d suffer at the hands of the Upgrade Predator. It would tap his spine for his DNA, tear him apart. He’d scream in pain.

  His boy.

  McKenna needed to focus. He had to hold on. But if he, Nettles, and Nebraska had any chance to survive— and to save Rory—then he couldn’t wait another second. It was all or nothing, now.

  Back in the clearing he’d given Rory one of the earwig comms units he’d brought with him from the RV, so that, if for any reason they got separated, they could still communicate with each other. Now he cupped one hand to his ear, and, hoping the comms unit was still working, shouted over the rushing wind.

  “Rory, I’m on top of the ship! Are you okay?”

  For a few seconds, he heard no reply. But then there came muffled static, and Rory’s shocked reply.

  “Mom was right. You are crazy.”

  * * *

  Rory knew there were two things keeping him alive. The first was that the Predator wanted something from him. The second was that the monstrosity didn’t consider him a physical threat. He peered from the open pod, or hibernation chamber, or whatever this thing was, watching, waiting for an opportunity to do something that would save him, or his father, or by some miracle both of them.

  He’d just told his dad he was crazy when he saw the Upgrade press a series of buttons, and next second something started happening on one of the monitors. The screen showed an outline, like a blueprint, of the ship and all its systems… and then a blinking dotted line began to form, surrounding the ship. Rory’s eyes widened as he realized what it meant, and tucking himself back into the pod, he frantically tapped the comms unit his father had given him.

  “Dad? There’s a force field going online—automatic!”

  Static. Then: “Uh… say again?”

  “Look out!” Rory hissed.

  * * *

  McKenna saw the air shimmer around him. He felt a prickle of static around his legs. Whipping around, the import of what Rory had reported hit him, and he had time to shout only a single word. He screamed at his men to jump, even as he did so himself… or tried. The instant he attempted to launch himself upward, the pain from his injured ankle flared up again and his leg buckled. He stumbled to one side like a drunk, then fell flat on his back on top of the ship.

  Nebraska must have felt the tingling too—either that, or he trusted McKenna implicitly—because he jumped without hesitation.

  Nettles, on the other hand… hesitated. M
aybe, McKenna thought, his mind was racing and he just needed a moment to process. Unfortunately, he didn’t get that moment. He was still standing on the surface of the ship when the force field blasted on with an ionized sizzling noise—a force field that, although invisible, still sheared neatly through Nettles’ legs at knee-level.

  McKenna lay beneath the field, which was just above him, and watched a lock of his hair feathering down, clipped, to rest on the invisible barrier before being carried away by the wind. He also saw Nettles’ foreshortened body falling away, his blood running in a dozen trickling lines across the outer surface of the force field.

  Nebraska, meanwhile, came down boots first on top of the force shield. It looked surreal, as if he was standing in midair. He threw himself onto his belly, legs splayed, palms flat, eyes wide with terror as he held on, separated from McKenna only by a meter or so of invisible energy.

  Breathless but protected, McKenna lay beneath the shield, and looked helplessly up at his friend. They locked eyes through the barrier, inches apart—then, as the ship rose higher, increasing speed, Nebraska’s hands began to slip. For a second he looked anguished, desperate, and then all at once he seemed to accept his fate and his face relaxed. He looked again at McKenna through the invisible shield, gave him a wry smile and shrugged his shoulders. He mouthed something—McKenna couldn’t quite make it out, but what he thought Nebraska said was: It’s been fun.

  Then Nebraska’s body slid away, over the curve of the ship’s surface, and he was gone.

  McKenna wanted to mourn him, knew that the memory of Nebraska’s last moments would be seared into his mind forever. But he didn’t have the luxury to grieve now. Nebraska and Nettles had just died trying to help him save his son, and his best tribute to them would be to try to complete the mission.

  But how? Desperation mounting, McKenna drew the pistol he still carried. He gripped it tight, steeled himself, and then rolled toward the edge of the ship. Every survival instinct told him to stop, screamed at him that this was lunacy, that it was suicide.

  But he kept going.

  He rolled right over the curving edge of the ship, and fell.

  But not very far.

  He hit the inside of the force field and tumbled down an invisible slide, slewing and twisting in what seemed to be midair until he came to a stop, underneath the alien craft. Where his hands touched, where his knees touched, there appeared to be only air. The utter wrongness of that made his brain reject what he saw and caused his guts to churn, so he flopped over and focused on what was above him.

  The ship’s underbelly.

  He looked around, and a spark of hope ignited in him. Only feet away, he saw the yawning shadow of an empty port, where an escape pod had once nestled. Taking a breath, he rolled again, then crawled on elbows and knees until he reached the opening, before clambering inside. Clinging to a strut inside the opening, he glanced around and spotted a keypad.

  “Rory!” he shouted over their commlink. “What’s the sequence? I watched you put it in. Tell me!”

  Static, and then: “To the pod? I… I can’t remember!”

  McKenna took a deep breath. “Okay, do this. Try.”

  “I can’t think! It’s all mixed up in my head!”

  “Damn it, son! I watched you! It was one, two, then over three, up two…”

  McKenna’s words trailed off. He blinked, staring at the keypad, and realized he didn’t need Rory to remember. “Holy shit,” he murmured. “I fucking know it!” Frantically, he stabbed a finger at the pad, tapping buttons.

  “Rory?” he continued. “You know how I always said be a big boy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Screw it. Make yourself small, kid.” He tapped the last digits of the sequence into the keypad. “Down! Now!”

  The hatch slid open. McKenna lunged inside, gun comfortable in his hand. He unloaded all the grief and fear that he had felt for his men, and for his son. Teeth bared, he targeted every blinking light he saw, blazing away with shot after shot.

  Sparks flew from consoles, and the whole ship shuddered. Whatever McKenna had hit, the alien craft was taking it personally.

  Shrouded in the gray gloom of the command deck, the massive Predator whipped around, faux-dreadlocks flying. It spotted McKenna, saw the open hatch where the escape pod should have been, and a trilling series of clicks issued from its mandibles as it lifted an arm and fired.

  It wasn’t an energy beam that erupted from its wrist gauntlet this time, though. It was a metal cable, which spat through the air like a whirling bolo. One end of the cable embedded itself in a wall panel, while the bolo part wrapped itself around McKenna’s left leg, below the knee, and cinched tight. Jerked off his feet by the Upgrade, he yelled out in pain as the ship dipped and veered, plummeting toward the tree line. He smelled smoke and glanced at Rory, who was clinging for dear life to the walls of the pod he was crouched in. He had disabled the ship, as planned, but at what cost? Had he saved Rory from torture and death at the hands of an alien hunter, only for them both to now die in a devastating explosion when the spaceship crashed?

  Alarms wailed as the tops of trees started to rush up fast in the forward view screen. Under other circumstances, the Upgrade might have moved in for the kill, but right now it clearly had other things on its mind. It detached the other end of the metal rope from its wrist gauntlet with the stab of a button and turned back toward the main control panel. As it busied itself at the controls, trying to correct the damage that McKenna had done, McKenna himself picked at the wire wrapped around his leg, trying to work himself loose. Unable to do so, he scooped up his dropped gun and fired at the wall panel that the other end of the cable was attached to. The panel buckled, part of it tearing loose from the wall. McKenna raised his gun again, thinking one more shot might do it, when the ship impacted with something—the top of a tree, maybe—and tilted vertiginously to one side.

  Rory yelled out as McKenna started to slide toward the still-open hatchway. The metal cable between his leg and the wall panel went taut, held for a moment… and then the damaged wall panel tore itself loose from the wall!

  Now McKenna was yelling too, and clawing at the smooth floor, but he couldn’t halt his slide toward oblivion. He thought of Nebraska sliding off the edge of the ship. Was he going to go the same way? Then he was out of the hatch and falling through space, wind buffeting him as he plunged toward certain death.

  The wall panel with the clawed end of the metal cable still firmly embedded in it clattered after McKenna’s falling body—and became jammed in the narrow hatchway. McKenna slammed to a stop, the loops of cable tightening yet further, cutting into his leg, drawing blood. Now he was dangling upside down beneath the ship like the weirdest car ornament imaginable. He swung to and fro, and then to his horror saw the tree line rising to meet him. Next moment he had covered his head with his arms and was trying to protect himself as best he could, as his body was dragged through a mass of branches and leaves.

  If the Upgrade’s ship had continued to increase speed, McKenna would almost certainly have been ripped to shreds before the craft reached the ground. However, to avoid crashing, the alien must have employed the forward thrusters, because almost as soon as McKenna’s body dipped beneath the tree line he felt his forward momentum slowing down. Instead of punctured flesh and broken bones, therefore, he received only superficial injuries—scratches and bruises. Now that he’d avoided being shredded, though, his main problem was how he’d avoid hitting the ground first, and then the ship landing on top of him—but at that moment Fate intervened.

  The wall panel stuck in the escape pod hatchway snapped in half, and suddenly McKenna was tumbling straight down between the trees. It was still a long way to the ground, but luckily the chunk of panel, which tumbled after him, was big enough to slow his progress. He dropped in increments, oofing and ouching as his body thumped against branches and was slashed by twigs. He was still four or five meters from the ground when the panel stuck in the crook of a
branch and jammed tight, leaving him dangling, groaning, bleeding, bruised, and fighting desperately to stay conscious.

  * * *

  Although it was slowing all the while, the ship still hit the tops of the trees with a mighty WHUMPH! and ricocheted upward like a flat stone bouncing off the surface of a lake. Beyond the quarry and the trees was a huge area of swampland, and it was into this that the ship eventually crashed, skimming across an oily expanse of brackish water before hurtling headfirst into a tangle of fallen, moss-covered trees.

  The impact caused the viewing port at the front of the ship to explode inward, and the Upgrade, which had been standing at the main control panel, to be ejected like a cork from a pop gun. It flew through the air, limbs pinwheeling, splashed down into the boggy water and was instantly submerged.

  The crumpled, battered ship subsided, sinking a little further into the primordial ooze before coming to rest.

  For several seconds the echoes of the bellowing chaos that for the last few minutes had disturbed this ancient stretch of land seemed to thrum in the twisted trees, to ripple across the water.

  Then the echoes subsided, and all was silent once more.

  * * *

  McKenna came to, upside down, his side thudding with pain, his arms and legs scraped and bloody, and his clothing torn in too many places to count. Taking stock, he looked ahead of him, and through a thin layer of trees saw a green and brown spread of swamp below. The Upgrade’s ship sat half-submerged, canted at an angle, shattered trees downed around it. Something shifted beneath the mossy surface of the water, cutting a V-line toward him, and McKenna thought his luck had gone from astonishingly bad to astonishingly good and then to eaten-by-an-alligator.

  But it wasn’t an alligator at all.

  What rose from the swamp, huge and hunched over, was the Upgrade. Somehow, the gigantic Predator had been thrown from its ship. Where Rory might be, McKenna had no idea, but he knew that if this monster still lived, he needed to take every advantage he could find to try to kill it.