Predator - Big Game

by Sandy Schofield - (ebook by Undead)

  They were definitely in range now. Nakai and Tilden both dropped to cover behind rocks, leveled their rifles on rocks, and began firing. Both of them chose to pull off single shots. Nakai figured the chance of hitting the creature at this range was much, much better with well-aimed fire. Clearly Tilden had the same thought.

  Most of the other men down the line opened up with full automatic fire.

  The sounds of the weapons echoed and doubled back, loud enough to do damage to any human ear. Nakai hoped that the noise bothered the creature, hoped that it struck some fear into the thing.

  The creature dove for cover into the lava rocks, firing as it went.

  One of the humvees exploded not far from Nakai, sending orange and red debris into the smoke-filled air. Beside it a man screamed and rolled in the dirt, trying to put out the gas fire engulfing him.

  Nakai kept squeezing off shots through the smoke at the spot where the creature had hidden behind rocks. Dozens of other men on both sides of the canyon were firing, some in bursts, others, like Nakai, firing one shot at a time.

  The creature leaped into view, firing rapidly with the blue-flamed weapon. A dozen explosions to Nakai’s right shook the ground as men died, some screaming in pain, some making no more than the thick, wet sound as their insides were blown out.

  The commandos on the rocks closer to the creature were taking even more of a beating. They were being picked off like ducks sitting on the shore of a pond. It seemed the creature never missed.

  But the remaining men were scoring hits. Nakai could tell every time a bullet pounded into the creature, making it jerk backward. Its entire body couldn’t be covered with armor. Some of those bullets had to be getting through, causing damage.

  Nakai and Tilden kept pulling off shots, consistently, both of them finding their mark, but since they were firing singly, and were at a distance, the creature focused its firepower on the closer commandos, and the men down the line who were firing in long bursts.

  Three more shots of blue death shot out.

  Three more men died.

  Then the monster started to move. With a quick bound, it was on top of the lava flow. Quickly, it fired a dozen more blasts, exploding rock and bodies with blue fire.

  The second humvee exploded.

  Six more commandos died.

  Three more men in the valley were cut in half.

  Then the creature was gone, vanished over the ridge into the black lava field.

  The gunfire slowed and stopped. In the sky, small parachutes still held up the flares of white light, flooding the smoke and fire-filled valley with reality.

  Death was everywhere.

  Both Nakai and Tilden were slow to get up. They both kept their rifles aimed on the place where the creature had disappeared, just in case it wanted to come back and finish the job of killing them all. It had come close as it was.

  Finally, Tilden said, “Shit.”

  Nakai pushed himself to his feet and shouldered his rifle. The creature wasn’t coming back. It had won this battle. It didn’t need to return.

  Nakai looked around him. The flares slowly drifted down and went out, leaving only the fires from the wrecked gunship and the two burning humvees to light the valley. Flickering yellow light that revealed broken weapons, and bodies, and blood.

  “Major?” Tilden said, moving to where Major Lee lay, facedown. “Major?”

  Nakai stood over him as Tilden rolled Lee over. His face was gone, blown off when a burst of blue flame had caught the right cheek. Only smoking, stinking, cauterized brains filled the area where Lee’s face had been.

  Tilden quickly stood and took a step back, forcing himself to breathe deeply. It was the image of nightmares.

  Nakai did the same, and together they stood there and surveyed the carnage. Of the thirty-some soldiers and commandos who had gone into battle against one creature, fewer than ten remained. Beside one humvee, the colonel stood, shaking his head in complete disbelief. Nakai. could almost read his thoughts.

  It should have been enough.

  If they had brought this much weaponry in on any human, no matter how well defended, the man would be dead.

  They had wounded this thing, but they hadn’t destroyed it.

  Nakai suspected that they hadn’t even come close.

  The colonel wasn’t moving yet. He looked stunned. Nakai knew how he felt. One creature had defeated this many well-trained troops, in conditions that favored the army, not the creature.

  “What the hell is this thing?” Tilden asked.

  “Adikgashii,” Nakai said.

  Tilden looked at him, his mouth open. “If that thing is Adikgashii," Tilden said. “Who is Nayenezgani?”

  Nakai stared at the ridge where the creature had disappeared, then said softly, “I am.”

  24

  My twin brother finally has admitted his destiny. He has learned the true nature of being Navajo. Grandfather is pleased. From the other side, it is easy to understand the ways of the living. Yet the living have such difficulty. Grandfather says that the process of understanding is the most important part of life. The value is in the learning, not in the result.

  The rest of the night was like a long nightmare for Nakai. It took the remaining men over an hour to check the entire battlefield for wounded. There weren’t any. It seemed that when that a blue ray hit a human, it killed him. Period. Nakai had never seen so many human body parts not attached to full bodies in all his life.

  The stench was the worst part. Bodies in pieces had an odor all their own. Nakai dreaded dawn, and with it, the full power of the sun. Then the stench would be unbearable.

  He had expected problems, but he hadn’t expected this. He hadn’t thought the creature would be this impossible to kill.

  If it had taken this much effort to wound it, how much effort would it take to kill the creature?

  He suspected he was going to find out.

  After they found Major Lee’s body, the colonel appointed Nakai as second in command. Nakai immediately posted guards at all four points on the perimeter of the valley. A single guard wouldn’t be able to hold off the creature, but he might give the rest of them warning.

  The remaining group completed the check of the bodies, and then reported the grim news to the colonel. He must have already suspected it, because he just nodded. The colonel was covered with as much blood and gore as the rest of them. He had been in the midst of that carnage, searching, with the others.

  Nakai respected him for that.

  After the group had made its report, the colonel had visibly gathered himself to give the next orders. All the radios were shot up, so the colonel asked for a volunteer to hike back to Agate to use the radios left there. Tilden raised his hand. Nakai thought him a good choice, since Tilden could move through the desert as well as Nakai. That meant Tilden would get to Agate quickly.

  The colonel gave Tilden the message to send back to base: airlift in more troops. This time the colonel also requested tanks and more gunships. Then he told Tilden to tell the base to stand by for air strikes, another move Nakai knew was a good idea.

  Tilden had been gone just under an hour, not quite long enough for him to reach Agate at full speed, when Nakai decided what he had to do. The day was still just a promise in the eastern sky, the oranges and reds leaching into the sky as though a giant god had spilled oil colors in water.

  The light, thin as it was, fell on the destruction. The humvees were crumpled hunks of metal in the midst of a ruined landscape. Bodies, unmoved except to be checked for life, were sprawled where they fell. Guns sat upright in the dirt, or bent in half by the force of blows.

  Nakai had never seen anything like it in his life.

  He hoped not to see anything like it again.

  Nakai turned his back on the devastation, and went to look for the colonel. The man had disappeared after giving Tilden his orders. Nakai hadn’t seen him since.

  It took Nakai a bit of searching before he spotted the colonel.
He was sitting with two men, his back against a rock, waiting. He had a shocked, empty look in his eyes. The colonel had never been to the Gulf. Nakai remembered hearing that, but he hadn’t realized that this was the man’s first live combat situation, and the first time he had sent other men to their deaths. And it ended so badly. How he handled the next few hours would be a sign of his true value to the army.

  “Sir,” Nakai said, moving up and crouching next to the colonel.

  “Yes, son?” the colonel said. His voice sounded the same. Only his eyes were different. Nakai doubted the colonel’s eyes would ever be the same again.

  “We need to find out where that creature went, sir.”

  The colonel nodded for a moment, then closed his eyes. Nakai could almost feel his reluctance to make another decision, to do anything that could result in such damage again.

  Nakai held his breath, then the colonel looked at him. The strong man Nakai had met two nights before was still there. He was just in shock. “What do you suggest?”

  “Let me see if I can track him in there. I should be able to get a bead on his camp and we can take it out from the air.”

  The colonel frowned. He was clearly beginning to think through the shock. “Can you track him over that rock?”

  “I honestly don’t know, sir,” Nakai answered. “We hit him with enough firepower so that with luck he’s bleeding. I can follow the blood trail, if there is one.”

  “He was bleeding before,” the colonel said. “There should be a trail. That creature is strong, but nothing could have gotten out of there without some damage.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve got two hours before we’re staged and ready to roll. If you’re not back, we’ll go anyway.”

  Nakai nodded. “I’ll be back by then.”

  “No grandstanding, soldier,” the colonel said as Nakai stood. “I want you back here alive. We’ve lost enough good men to this creature.”

  “I don’t intend to die at the hands of that thing,” Nakai said. “I’ll be back.”

  “Good luck,” the colonel said. He stood. Evidently the conversation had helped him regain his focus. He would step past his inner turmoil to do what he needed to in order to prepare for the attack.

  Nakai had no inner turmoil at all to deal with. He was past it. He had seen this creature kill his friend Dietl. And then it had wiped out his entire base. He was far beyond the shock of it all. Now he was just tired and angry.

  Five minutes later, without so much as a goodbye, he patted the northernmost guard on the shoulder and climbed up the lava flow. Nakai was loaded down with ammunition for his M-16. If he did run into the creature, he was going to get off a few shots before he died.

  About halfway up the side of the lava flow was the ledge where the creature had taken cover and waited. The area was scarred almost white from the blast marks of the missile attack. That the creature had survived so much firepower was a miracle. Then, stepping onto the ledge, Nakai saw the reason.

  The creature had chosen a perfect spot for defense. It wasn’t just a ledge, but running back and to the right was a fairly deep cave, now filled with shattered rock, like pebbles of sand on a beach. Clearly the creature, seeing the rockets coming, had ducked back into cover, shielding itself from the brunt of the impact. Then, while the smoke was still thick, it had emerged and shot down the chopper.

  “Smart,” Nakai said. “Real smart.”

  Too smart. Every time he thought he had a bead on this creature, it proved that he had underestimated it. But there was one thing Nakai hadn’t underestimated.

  The creature was wounded.

  Green blood was scattered all over the ledge.

  The sight made Nakai smile. “So, you ugly bastard. We hurt you.”

  He glanced back over the shallow valley. The chopper was still burning slowly below him, sending up black smoke into the early-morning sky. The colonel and a few others were sitting, backs against the rock ledge on the far side. Every detail of the valley could be seen from here, including the burned and ripped bodies of dozens of soldiers. It was no wonder they took so many casualties. They had been like sitting ducks to a creature with the weapons it had.

  Nakai shook his head in disgust and turned away, following the green spots up over the top of the ridge and onto the lava flow. At first sight, the flow was as flat and open as the desert. But on closer inspection, the black surface was scarred with deep ravines and moundlike hills. The black rock under Nakai’s feet was mostly smooth, and in places slick, polished by the wind and rain.

  The creature’s blood trail led north, into the heart of the lava. If the creature was as smart about picking a campsite as he was about finding that ledge, this was going to be harder than Nakai had first imagined.

  Nakai moved at as quick a pace as he could manage, alternately checking ahead and watching the green spots on the ground. Twice, when the creature changed direction, Nakai had to backtrack and pick up the trail. And twice he had to work his way carefully around a deep ravine the creature had obviously just bounded over. The thing could jump, that much was for certain.

  And kill. Killing was its most formidable skill.

  Nakai reached the ridge of one small domelike hill and stopped scanning ahead. Suddenly he heard a faint crackling, then without warning the rock under his feet gave way with a crack louder than a gunshot.

  Where he had been standing on solid rock a moment before, he was now falling.

  Time slowed as the rocks around his feet shattered and he dropped.

  It took an instant even to realize what had happened. It had not been something he had expected. Then it took him another instant to react.

  In those two moments he was chest-high in what had been solid rock. And he was dropping fast.

  Instinctively, he reached out and caught the edge of the hole with both hands as he dropped past, spacing his hands as far apart as he could. The sharp rock cut into his palms and his weight swung under the ledge, banging his knees hard on rock, sending pain streaking through his body.

  His first instinct was to let go, but he didn’t.

  The edge held and he swung in the air and blackness of the hole, his feet touching nothing.

  The strain on his arms was immense. His fingers really didn’t have purchase. He had to climb up, and he had to do so carefully.

  Working slowly, as if crawling out of a hole in the ice, he inched his way back up and over the edge, testing every inch before putting any weight on it.

  Slowly, not even daring to breathe, he pulled himself up, moving on his stomach away from the hole, finally rolling away far enough to sit.

  “Shit!” he said, taking deep shuddering breaths. “Dumb, dumb, dumb.”

  He had forgotten that a lot of these domelike hills were nothing more than just giant air bubbles caught in the lava. He’d been warned about lava tubes his whole life. Once he’d read that some of the tops of these hills were lava rock no more than an inch thick. Obviously he’d found one of those.

  He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, lay back down on his stomach, and eased his head back over the hole, keeping his body flat and spread out so the weight wouldn’t all be in one spot. The light hit jagged rocks at least sixty feet down. If he hadn’t caught himself and the ledge hadn’t held, he’d be dead right now, his body a broken mass of bones and flesh. And no one would ever have found him.

  He eased back on his stomach a good ten feet. He had to treat this whole area as if it were thin ice. And so he had to distribute his weight, at least until he knew he was on firm ground.

  Finally, he let himself stand and move down the hill. His hands were shaking more than they had in the fight with the creature. Dying in battle was one thing. Dying because he was stupid was another matter altogether.

  He checked the scrapes on his legs where they had hit the wall. Luckily, nothing was broken. Next he inspected his rifle to make sure it hadn’t been damaged. It also was fine.

  “Lucky,” he said. “Damn lucky.”


  He cradled his rifle, then took one last deep breath. “Let’s be a little more careful now, Corporal.”

  His voice was whisked away by the early-morning wind into the brightening, blood-red sunrise.

  25

  My twin brother, Nayenezgani, has become the hunter. He has accepted his Navajo blood. Now I must stand ready, even though I only watch from the world of my ancestors. My time of helping my brother is near. I am the brother who distracts Adikgashii so that my twin brother can kill the evil. I do not know how I will do such a task, but Grandfather has told me to believe in the strength of the story. He says that will be enough to bring me the answer I seek.

  Nakai picked up the creature’s blood trail on the other side of the thin dome of lava. The creature’s bleeding was slowing, now down to just a drop of green fluid every few steps. The creature might have some sort of ability to heal itself, or at least stop blood loss.

  For twenty minutes Nakai kept going as the sun broke over the horizon, sending clear warnings of the warmth to come. The black lava rock would act like an oven top in the heat of the day. Of course, Nakai hoped to be off this rock before that happened. He had just over an hour before the colonel started his next attack. He was either going to find the creature and report back before then, or die when the air strike hit. After what happened back in the valley, Nakai had no doubt the colonel was going to level this area.

  Nakai removed the rope from his pack as he scrambled up a shallow slope. He gripped the rope in two hands, testing its thickness.

  It would do.

  It would have to.

  When he reached the top of the slope, he paused. The view ahead was like a scene out of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World. Thousands of years before, the flowing lava had forked like a river. The lava had split on a ridgeline, flowing around a small valley. At the other side of the valley, the two streams of lava had rejoined.

  Nakai stared into the valley. It was like looking at a dream. The area was about ten football fields across and ten long, with plants and small trees growing all through it. In the winter the valley was a swamp, or even a shallow lake, collecting all the water off the lava around it. Now, in the summer, the trees were still fairly green, with the weeds and brush a light brown. Nakai imagined that by the end of the summer the entire valley would be brown and dried out, ready to start the entire cycle over again when the winter rains and snow came.