Predator - Big Game

by Sandy Schofield - (ebook by Undead)

  The stink of burning flesh filled the air.

  Bogle had his gun in his hands and was spinning around, looking for who or what had attacked his friend. His heart was pounding. Who’d’ve thought the killer would still be here? After all, the wife and kid were still alive. Didn’t it know they were there? Or was it guarding the sheep pen?

  He kept turning. There didn’t seem to be anything, or anyone, around. Only the shimmering of the air between him and the house, like heat coming off the ground. But at that moment Bogle didn’t feel much like waiting for a clear shot. It wasn’t hot enough for the ground to be radiating heat waves, and in Bogle’s mind, that meant that whatever had killed Pro had something to do with the shimmer.

  He opened fire, spraying the area with shot after shot from his .357 Magnum.

  And he hit nothing.

  Or at least it seemed like nothing, until a hideous roar filled the air. Green liquid was spraying out in all directions. Bogle had hit something after all. Only he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A monster shimmered into view, holding its arm. A creature with long beaded hair and strange armor now faced him, holding one arm. It was big—bigger than anything he’d ever seen that stood on two legs.

  Suddenly three red lights focused on Bogle’s chest. He tried to move away, but before he could, a blue bolt of energy surged from a device beside the monster’s ear. It hit Bogle instantly and sent him flying backward, his entire chest and stomach spraying out over the nearby brush and sheep, mixing with the blood of Nadire, Dan Bonney, and Dr. Ellison.

  Bogle would never know exactly how much he had hurt the alien. But three of his shots had been lucky, destroying part of the alien’s armor, and ripping through his skin and arm. It would slow the alien down for just long enough to save a few lives.

  The alien moved over to Bogle’s body, reached down, and with a quick swipe of the wristblade severed the man’s head from his body. Then, hanging the sheriff’s head on his belt, he turned and moved off into the desert, green blood dripping from his wounds.

  13

  My brother is Nayenezgani, the monster slayer. He is the chosen one, although he does not know it. He cannot know it, for to know it is to negate tradition. He must slay the monster for his own reasons, not because he is the chosen. And his reason is his family. Not his mother, his grandfather, or me. We have all gone to the next world. We visit him only in his dreams. We are his past. It is only for his future family that he must fight the monster.

  Nakai pulled Alda’s red-and-white Ford convertible over at the roadblock and shut off the engine. The heat of the day was now surrounding him, smothering him. The quiet of the desert filled the air almost as much as the heat, interrupted only by the sounds of a few engines and the police scanner echoing from one of the four cars forming the blockade. Two state police officers were in the process of helping a bus driver get his bus turned around on the narrow, two-lane highway. Nakai could see pale faces, like ghosts, staring out at the world behind the tinted bus windows. The bright sunshine and tinted windows made their faces look hollow, their eyes empty, as if the bus was full of the dead, just passing through the world of the living.

  Nakai shook the image from his mind and headed for the state police sergeant standing near one of the cars. The sergeant was a burly man, with large arms and an even larger gut. Clearly he spent far more time behind the wheel of his cruiser than he spent walking or working out. He wore wraparound sunglasses, but Nakai was sure that if he could see the sergeant’s eyes, they would be small and black.

  “Corporal Nakai, sir,” he said without saluting. “I was stationed at Cole.”

  “Then you’re a lucky one,” the sergeant said without introducing himself or even pushing away from the patrol car he was leaning against. “Seems Cole no longer exists.”

  “I know,” Nakai said. “That’s why I need to get through. I can help the army’s investigation into what happened.”

  “Sorry, son,” the sergeant said. “No one gets past here.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Nakai said. “I’m stationed at Cole. I need to return.”

  “Like I said. Cole’s not there anymore. So you got nothing to report back to now, do you?”

  The cruelty in that statement made Nakai draw in a sharp breath. He had lost friends at Cole. Didn’t the man understand that?

  And then the sergeant leaned forward and Nakai got an inkling of what the other man was trying to do.

  “I understand one thing, Chief.” The sergeant’s last word was not a title. It was a slur. “I’m not in the army, and if I was, those hash marks make you a corporal, whereas I’m a sergeant.”

  Nakai started to interrupt the officer, but the big man held up his hand and pushed away from the patrol car with the other. “So you understand this,” he said, moving up directly into Nakai’s face. “As long as Uncle Sam says no one gets through, nobody gets through. So march your red butt back to your vehicle and move out. And that’s an order!”

  The last word he almost spit in Nakai’s face. For an instant Nakai thought of taking the fat man to his knees, but this didn’t seem to be the fight he should be picking at the moment. Without a word he spun and walked away.

  Fat racist pig. The sergeant didn’t have a shred of human dignity and he was making sure Nakai knew it. Alda had been right. He didn’t owe the army anything. In a day or so he’d make a few calls to let them know he was alive. And if they wanted to talk to him, he would talk. But chances were that it wouldn’t make any difference. By then they would either know what had blown up the base, or they would think they knew.

  He spun the car around and headed back down the road. At the intersection with Highway 36 he pulled into the dusty parking lot of Rosalita’s Diner. Rosalita’s slogan was “Rib-Stickin’ Food for Hardworking People,” and she did offer some of the best meals in the area. The diner itself was nothing to look at—a squat, dusty building in the middle of the scrub. People who were used to city food wouldn’t even stop, but as a result they missed one of the better truck stops in New Mexico.

  Usually a dozen or so trucks filled the huge gravel parking lot behind the diner. Today, there were only two cars in front. It must have been too close to Cole for most people’s comfort. Besides, the truckers were probably worked up about the police barricades. And the way the media was reporting things, the entire area sounded like it was going to disappear at a moment’s notice.

  Nakai pulled himself out of the convertible without opening the door. He crossed the gravel lot and climbed the steps, thankful that Rosalita’s pay phone was outside. He didn’t want to face her today.

  The pay phone’s receiver was hot to the touch. Nakai held it in two fingers as he punched Alda’s number with his other hand. Twenty seconds later Alda answered the phone, and her pleasure and relief at hearing his voice made him smile.

  It took him just a minute to tell her about the scene on the highway with the police. “So I don’t have a choice, really,” he finished saying. “I’ll be back in a half an hour or so.”

  “The sooner the better,” Alda said. “This entire town is spooked.”

  “I am too,” Nakai told her. “a situation like this would spook anyone.”

  “There’s more,” Alda said, and Nakai glanced around at the empty parking lot as the dread filled his stomach. How could there be more?

  “Sheriff Bogle and Dr. Ellison were killed this morning out by the old highway. A sheep herder’s wife drove into town with the news, telling everyone to lock their doors. She was taking her children and getting out of Agate for good.”

  “Killed?” Nakai said, more to himself than to Alda. Then he added. “Do you know how?”

  “I was at work when she came into town,” Alda said. “She didn’t say how they were killed, just that they were lucky to get out, but her son kept repeating ‘blue fire, blue fire,’ over and over.”

  Even with the heat of the parking lot, Nakai shuddered. The thing that had killed Dietl was still a
live, and moving. The blue fire was still killing.

  “Honey,” he said, his voice as cold and harsh as he could make it. “Listen to me. Get the hell out of that town. Now!”

  “What are you talking about?” Alda said. “I can’t go anywhere. You’ve got the car.”

  Nakai glanced around at the convertible behind him, then quickly came up with a plan. “Just catch a ride with someone down Highway 36 until you get to Rosalita’s. The car will be here. You still have the spare set of keys, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Alda said, “but I—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “Now, just listen to me. Take the car across the border into Arizona as fast as you can and don’t stop for anything. You’ve been wanting to visit your sister in Phoenix. Go there and I’ll call you when things are safe here.”

  “But why?” Alda asked.

  For a moment Nakai thought he couldn’t tell her. Then he realized that everyone who had sworn him to secrecy was dead. “Because that same blue fire was near the army base, and it killed people there, too.”

  “And then the base exploded,” Alda whispered.

  “That’s right,” Nakai said.

  “But all the people here—”

  “Will be fine if I do what I plan.”

  “Then I can stay.”

  “No!” The two diners in Rosalita’s looked through the window at the sound of Nakai’s voice. He turned his back and faced the parking lot. “I can’t do what I have to do if I’m worried about you. Please, trust me on this. I love you. Do this for me.”

  There was a moment of silence on the phone, then Alda asked, “Where will you be?”

  Nakai glanced at the open desert across the highway, back in the direction of the roadblock and the base. “I’m going to head down to what’s left of Cole.”

  “But why?” Alda said. “Why not come to Phoenix with me?”

  “There will be an army team there to investigate the explosion. I know more about the situation than they do. They need me. With my help, the army can stop whatever is doing the killing.”

  Again there was a moment of silence on the phone. Finally Alda said softly, “Be careful.”

  “I will,” Nakai said. “But I want you out of the area first. Okay? Promise me I’ll find you at your sister’s in Phoenix.”

  He held his breath for a moment. Alda took promises very seriously. If she promised, she would do what he asked.

  “I promise,” Alda said.

  “Good,” Nakai said. “Now get going. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  With that he hung up the phone and glanced around the hot, dusty parking lot. Cars were already starting to stream past, families fleeing Agate and the death that hung over this area.

  He turned and headed into Rosalita’s. He needed a meal and a lot of water, and then he would be ready.

  The diners looked at him warily as he came in, but Rosalita greeted him as if he were an old friend. He ordered a blue-plate special and four bottles of water. Rosalita looked at him as if he were crazy, but he explained that they were for later. She brought them to his place at the counter, ice-cold plastic bottles with a bit of condensation on the sides, and he knew he had to ration them. They would be all he had to get him through the desert.

  He ate the blue-plate special so fast he barely tasted it. When he was done, he placed enough cash to cover the meal and the tip on top of the order ticket, grabbed his water, and left.

  He walked past Alda’s car, hoping it wouldn’t be there when he returned. If he came back this way. Then he crossed the highway and headed out into the desert, angling away from the road. He would give the police roadblocks plenty of room.

  He moved through the brush and cactus just as he had done his entire life. Out there, under the hot sun of the high desert, he felt more at home than in any other place on earth. This was his land and he knew it. Somewhere out on this desert was a monster that killed his friends. He would find the monster and kill it.

  Or he would die trying.

  14

  In any hunt, the hunter and the prey are drawn together by forces beyond their understanding. It is the way of the world. Often, the time is not yet right for the hunter to hunt. Or for the prey to die. That too is the way of things.

  The sun had set over an hour before, but the heat of the day still filled the desert air. For Nakai, the afternoon had been a long one. He had managed no more than eight miles through the rough terrain, swinging at least three miles wide of the roadblock that had stopped him earlier in the day. The water had helped. He rationed it. He still had two full bottles tucked in the waistband of his pants. He had kept the other two empty bottles as well; the admonition he had learned as a boy not to leave anything in the desert was ingrained too deep to change. He’d had long stretches where he could think about things like that—the lessons he had learned growing up in the high desert—but those long stretches were punctuated by moments of terror. Planes and helicopters flew overhead in an obvious search pattern. Several times he had been forced into hiding under brush and in rock piles. One helicopter had passed within fifty feet, the wash from the props kicking up dirt and dust, covering him where he hid under a rock outcropping. The federal government wanted all access to Cole Army Base closed off, that was for sure. And not only were they blocking the roads, but they were flying close patrols of the perimeter of the base.

  Normally, the patrols would have spotted anyone trying to do what he was doing. But he was Navajo, born and raised in this high desert. The open space wasn’t open to the eyes of someone who knew what he was looking at. And Nakai knew it all. He could blend into a brush pile or melt into the rocks faster than any plane could catch him. And he moved through the brush without a sound, his steps silent on the sand and dirt.

  Ahead a few miles he could see the lights of the temporary army base set up outside of where Cole had been. That proved that the explosion hadn’t been nuclear. They would never have set up this close if it had been. The army might have risked the enlisted men forty years ago, but not now.

  It was no more than ten o’clock in the evening and the white-and-orange lights filled the night sky, pushing back the stars. Nakai figured he would be in the base within the hour, taking his time to make sure he didn’t get stopped by any sentries.

  He stopped to take a sip from one of his precious warm bottles. The bottled water was his only concession to modern times. His grandfather would have laughed at Nakai’s need for water. His grandfather would have argued that Nakai should have prepared for such an emergency long before. But Nakai hadn’t. And he had been drunk the night before; and alcohol dehydrates the body. His need for water, if anything, was much greater than it had been.

  The water was hot, but tasted good. He made sure that his sip was a small one. He still wasn’t certain of his reception at the base.

  Strange that they put the new camp so close to the old one. The lights almost made it look as if the old camp remained.

  It was as he was looking at the lights ahead that out of the corner of his eye he caught a slight yellow flicker of another light, this one much, much closer.

  Crouching and moving silently through the night, he headed toward the flicker, moving silently up the slope. About halfway up the slope he caught the familiar odor of a campfire. Yet mixed with the fire was no smell of cooking food. And on such a warm evening, the camper didn’t need a fire for heat. Very curious.

  Nakai moved slowly, making sure to keep the hill between himself and the fire, making sure he remained downwind, never making a noise. It took him almost twenty minutes before he managed to crawl silently over the slight rise into a position where he could see the fire.

  It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. The blaze itself was small, contained between a few rocks. Sheriff Bogle’s head—hat, sunglasses, and all—sat on a rock, staring at the fire. Next to Bogle was the head of Dr. Ellison. His eyes and jaw were gone, but his usual golf hat remained firmly in place. Three other hea
ds were beside the two, including Private Dietl’s.

  Nakai wanted to gag, but didn’t.

  Sitting on the far side of the fire was a monster like none that he had ever seen or imagined in his worst, drunken nightmares. The monster was covered in armor and thick, hidelike skin, with what looked like a helmet sitting on the rock beside him. The monster had an antlike face, with large mandibles that angled inward. At the corners of his mouth were large fangs. This mouth was powerful, and terrifying. It was made all the worse by the creature’s nearly human eyes. Thick strands of ropelike hair flowed around his head, seemingly decorated with strangely fashioned beads.

  Nakai held his breath. This was the source of the blue fire. Something that preyed on man. Nakai squinted, and frowned as he did so. This creature had the ability to camouflage itself, to so blend in with its surroundings that not even Nakai could see it. But it wasn’t trying to hide itself now.

  Nakai’s mouth was dry despite the water he had just sipped. He wondered if this was how a deer felt when it stumbled on a hunter’s camp. The thought made him shudder. Those heads—the remains of people he had known—were placed around that campfire like trophies.

  With clawed fingers, the monster seemed to be working on an instrument panel strapped to his arm. Even in the faint light Nakai could gather that the monster’s arm had been wounded and the panel damaged.

  Nakai took all this in with a glance and his first impulse was to run, as fast and as far as he could. But he knew from experience that this monster was fast. If he ran, the monster would see and hear him and more than likely cut him down before he reached a safe distance.

  Using his grandfather’s training, Nakai took a slow, shallow breath, his muscles taut and ready to move instantly. He had managed to get this close without being seen; he could manage to move away. It would be his only hope.