Thankful that his sidearm hadn’t been shaken loose by his plunge through the trees, he drew it and shot the Upgrade twice in the chest.
Caught off guard, it bellowed as it staggered backward and collided with its own ship. Shooting out a hand, it clutched at the ship, steadying itself.
Which turned out to be a mistake.
* * *
Bruised and aching, more than a little disoriented, Rory saw it all unfold on the ship’s monitors. When the bullets hit the Upgrade and it staggered back against its own spacecraft, he leaped for the control console and pounded it with his fist.
Just like that, the force shield flickered on.
* * *
McKenna bared his teeth as he saw the air sizzle and the force field zap into place. The Predator bellowed in rage and pain, then jerked away from the ship as if stung. McKenna watched it slowly raise its arm in front of its face, then stare down with what could only be interpreted as astonishment at the neatly cauterized stump where its hand and forearm had been only a moment before. He knew he wasn’t safe yet, and neither was Rory, but that didn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face.
Although his body was a throbbing mass of pain, he somehow managed to untangle himself from the branches and the metal cable wrapped around his leg and let himself drop. He hit a small hillock at the edge of the swamp, rolled down it a little way, then clambered to his feet. Denying his blazing ribs, his throbbing back, and his aching legs, he started running toward the Upgrade, which had forged its way to the edge of the swamp now, over to his left. As it used an overhanging tree to haul itself from the bog, he leveled his weapon and fired several more shots, then dove behind a tree before it could retaliate. He breathed through his teeth as the pain flared, head swimming.
Then he blinked, wondering if he had started hallucinating. Because right in front of him, incongruous as hell, just lying there as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world, was a motorcycle.
Overhead, something shifted in the trees. He snapped his head back, stared up into the branches, taking aim at nothing—and then the nothing shimmered and materialized into Dr. Casey Brackett. She was wearing the wrist gauntlet from the original Predator, the one she must have appropriated from Traeger’s duffel bag. Sweating, strands of hair sticking to her face, she looked like a savage up there in the trees.
But Casey’s unexpected appearance had distracted him from the Upgrade. Suddenly, it unleashed a war cry as it splashed into view, moving around the tree to get to McKenna.
Snarling, unleashing a war cry of her own, Casey launched herself from the branches onto the Upgrade’s shoulders. She grabbed a fistful of its dreadlocks, whipped back her gauntleted hand, and used the blades attached to the gauntlet to slice the dreadlocks clean off.
Roaring, the Upgrade staggered and weaved, clawing blindly at the air.
Once again sublimating his pain, McKenna rushed forward, and took aim at the Upgrade’s chest. Point blank. The huge Predator twisted, putting Casey in McKenna’s sights, and he hesitated. In the same moment, the monster whipped her off his back and sent her spinning away through the air, to splash down in the swamp. McKenna got off a single shot before the Upgrade twisted back around, impossibly fast, and knocked him sprawling.
He hit the sodden ground, barely holding onto his gun. Mossy trees stood before him and he knew he had to get to cover, knew he needed a few seconds to breathe, and knew too that if the Upgrade had anything to do with it, he wouldn’t get those seconds.
* * *
Casey had a mouthful of stinking mud. She choked it up, vomited a pint of filthy water, and dragged herself to her hands and knees. Her head spun and she knew she must have a concussion, but she didn’t worry too much about the injury. Dead women didn’t need to have their wits about them.
She managed to pull herself onto firmer ground and take cover behind a tree, thinking that if she could just have a minute or so to recover she’d be fit enough to rejoin the fray. But almost immediately she heard a heavy panting above her and she squinted, painfully raising her head.
She was stunned by what she saw. It was the Predator dog, the stupid mutt who’d had a bolt shot through his head and become their faithful hound. They’d been bred to track any prey, so it wasn’t that he’d tracked her that seemed a miracle, but the fact he’d wanted to. The dog had been bred to kill what it tracked, but this adorably ugly son of a bitch gazed at her with loving eyes.
He had something in his mandibles, and as she rose to her feet he dropped it with a plop.
The bomb cuff from Traeger’s bag. The one she’d tossed away earlier, back at the crash site. The crazy mutt had fetched it back and found her, just so it could continue the game.
Casey picked it up, staggered out from behind the tree, and spotted the Upgrade. It was wading through the swamp in pursuit of McKenna. He was running toward the ship, presumably to find cover or rescue Rory. But she could see he’d never make it. The Upgrade would catch him and kill him. And then it would kill her, then Rory.
* * *
McKenna heard his name shouted, and glanced round to see Casey holding something in her raised hand. It took him less than a second to recognize the bomb cuff. Still running, he shouted, “Toss it!”
Casey slung the bomb cuff across the swamp and McKenna caught it on the run, snatched it from the air and then dove. An ion blast seared the air over his head and tore through the swamp, incinerating trees and rocks and moss.
McKenna rolled, reached into the shallow muck beneath the ship, and came up with the Upgrade’s severed arm.
The gauntlet on the arm had double-pronged projectiles, like hellish crossbow bolts. He looped the destruct collar over the prongs, pivoted, and took aim. He shouted Casey’s name, hoping she could see him, hoping she understood exactly what he needed her to do. She still wore the original Predator’s wrist gauntlet, and she knew the arming code. Would she—?
The light on the destruct collar started blinking red, quickening.
The Upgrade thundered toward him. It unleashed another war cry. McKenna nearly stumbled as he pulled the trigger, but his aim was good enough. The bolt took the alien in the leg, imbedding itself in the flesh and bone—
McKenna shouted for Casey to get down, even as he dove for cover. The explosion ripped his words from the air, shook the earth beneath them as flames erupted. A fireball swept over their heads and buffeted the ship, and it felt like the world had cracked in half.
It took long seconds this time before McKenna managed to stagger to his feet. When he did, he spotted Casey on one knee. She hoisted herself up by holding onto a tree. The flames were subsiding, the thick air holding onto the smoke, cloaking the swamp in it, but they pushed themselves toward the edge of a massive, scorched crater, swamp muck and other debris spilling down over its edges…
Down inside it lay the bloodied green mess of the Upgrade. It writhed in pain, burnt and broken, barely alive.
McKenna looked at Casey and felt as if they mirrored one another. He saw a grim determination in her face that he knew reflected his own.
“Dad!”
McKenna watched as Rory stepped tentatively out of the open hatch of the ship. He rushed across the boggy ground and McKenna opened his arms and embraced his son—but his eyes never left the Predator, down in that smoking crater.
The Upgrade, its chest rising and falling rapidly, stared right back at him.
“Who are you?” McKenna asked it. “What are you?”
He didn’t really expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. Instead, as the swamp muck continued to pour down into the crater, the wounded alien’s one good eye flickered to regard Rory. For a moment, it almost seemed to McKenna that the dying Predator was favoring the boy with a look approaching fondness or admiration, or both.
Then it lurched and hurled itself out of the crater, talons bared, lashing out for Rory.
McKenna spun Rory out of its reach, and in the same moment raised his gun and put two bullets th
rough its left eye.
The Predator slumped, sliding back down into the muck, its last breath wheezing out of it as it finally died.
McKenna turned to study Rory, both of them spattered in the creature’s green blood.
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Rory replied. “You can shoot him again if you want.”
McKenna shook his head and grinned. “I’m good.”
26
Trudging back through the clump of jungle that was sandwiched by the swampland on one side and the quarry on the other, Rory came to a sudden halt. McKenna halted too and looked at his son. All three of them were exhausted, filthy, and pretty banged up, and he wondered whether Rory had finally reached his limit, whether he was about to break down and crumple into tears.
He didn’t, though. Instead, he took something from his pocket and placed it almost reverently on the ground beside him. And then he started to dig a hole in the soft earth with his hands.
McKenna knelt on one side of his son, and Casey knelt on the other.
“Whatcha got there?” he asked softly.
“Stuff from the guys,” Rory replied.
McKenna and Casey exchanged a look. McKenna’s raised eyebrows said it all: He’s been collecting mementoes? All this time? And I didn’t know?
He looked more closely at what Rory had spread out on the ground beside him—a bandana, which he guessed must have belonged to one of the guys, its corners turned up to create a little parcel. He glanced a question at his son—May I?— and Rory nodded. McKenna reached out and carefully peeled back the four corners of material.
Inside was a crumpled cigarette packet, which had belonged to Nebraska, an equally crumpled Tootsie Roll, fortunately still in its wrapper, which Coyle must have given to Rory from the stock he’d acquired back at the Iron Horse Motel, and one of Lynch’s pornographic playing cards.
McKenna swallowed hard. He looked again at Casey, and saw her eyes shimmer with tears. Gently, he wrapped the items up again and said, “Son, these are the forgotten ones. The ones no one’s gonna remember.” He gestured at the three of them. “Just us.”
Rory finished digging his hole. His hands were caked with dirt.
As if handling some ancient and invaluable artifact, McKenna pinched the four corners of the bandana together with his fingers and lifted it. “What say we lay ’em to rest, huh?”
Rory nodded, and McKenna gently lowered the bandana into the hole. Rory was about to start scooping dirt over the little package of treasures when Casey told him to hang on, and unslung her backpack from her shoulders. She opened it, rooted inside, and with trembling fingers withdrew the small foil unicorn that Nettles had left at her bedside back at the motel—it seemed a thousand years ago now. She sighed, and placed the unicorn on top of the bandana, then nodded to Rory to cover everything up.
When he had done so, they all rose wearily, McKenna groaning as he stretched his stiff limbs.
Looking up at the dawn sky, a swirl of pink and purple streaked with yellow, stars still flecking it like diamonds, Casey said, “So… what’s next?”
McKenna and Rory looked up too. After a moment McKenna said, “Hey, you on the left…” He pointed. “I see you. We’re still here. Come and get us, motherfuckers.”
Rory gave him an admonishing look. “Language, Dad.”
They all laughed.
Then Casey hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders once again, and they trudged wearily away.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Predator toybox is such a fun one to play in, and we’d like to thank everyone at Fox for allowing us to do so – and, in particular, Nicole Spiegel for sending us reams of cool reference material. We’d also like to thank our agent Howard Morhaim, and our editors at Titan, Steve Saffel and Gary Budden, for smoothing the process. And in a more general vein, we’d like to thank our fabulous wives, Connie and Nel, and our equally fabulous children, Nicholas, Daniel, Lily Grace, David, and Polly.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind, Ararat, Of Saints and Shadows, and many other novels. As editor, his anthologies include Seize the Night, Dark Cities, and The New Dead, among others. Golden has also written screenplays, radio plays, an animated web series, short stories, non-fiction, and video games. He is one-third of the popular pop culture podcast Three Guys with Beards.
Mark Morris has written over twenty-five novels, including the Obsidian Heart trilogy and four books in the popular Doctor Who range. He is also the author of two short story collections and several novellas. His short fiction, articles, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of Cinema Macabre, a book of horror movie essays for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award.
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