THE PREDATOR HUNTERS AND HUNTED

by James A. Moore

  If he could see it, he could kill it.

  He didn’t try for subtle. Instead he pulled his HK45C and fired four rounds into the distortion standing above his friend’s corpse. The bullets were black talons. The shells were designed to open up like a flower when they hit a target. Four pieces of metal blossomed outward, each curving and pointed, and tore a target open. Just to add to the fun several small pellets were waiting inside that bloom, suspended in gel. Once fired the bullet spun through a target and then released the pellets into the open wound. Some people called them “sure-kill” rounds. Hyde preferred the term “overkill.” Hit a bastard with one of those, and even if it only caught him in the wrist, most of his arm was going away.

  Problem was, the bastard he was shooting had protective armor. He saw the ricochet from the first bullet as it hit metal. The second round did the same thing. The third round was higher in the air, and it hit metal, too, but this time the result was different.

  The first two rounds staggered the thing. They were .45s and they had a damned fine kick. So bullet one, and the thing splashed in the mud. He imagined it stepping to the side to compensate. Round two and the sound of metal on metal was louder and the thing must have fallen, because there was a bigger splash of mud this time.

  Round three, and the shot must have gotten lucky.

  The thing’s war mask must have taken the brunt. Bang! He heard the metal on metal sound again, only this time the alien freak was suddenly visible. He saw the faceplate go sailing sideways as the ugly fucker phased into view in a wash of electrical discharge. The thing’s head slapped hard to the left.

  The war mask slipped and rolled and then stuck in the mud maybe fifteen feet from where the thing showed up. When the bastard looked his way, the anger in its alien features was impossible to miss.

  When it charged him, Hyde felt a tight grin mar his features.

  This thing was a killer. This thing was a hunter.

  Hyde wanted to prove he was better at both, and now he had his chance.

  26

  His face throbbed. The attacks had been unexpected and he had become too confident. He was hard to see, not impossible to see, and he let his anger get the better of him. The one that had disoriented him had made him angry and he got his revenge, but now he was paying the price for that anger.

  He still had both of his eyes. They had broken the lens over one eye, but it had not fragmented the way it could have. Luck was with him on that.

  The mask controlled his plasma cannon. He could fire without it, but it would require more work—he would have to manually aim and fire. The targeting lasers were on the mask as well.

  He needed to kill these things as quickly as possible.

  The one that had knocked aside his war mask aimed at him and fired. As the native fired, he turned his body and covered as much as he could. The weapon was primitive, but powerful. He wore some armor, but not enough to cover all of his body, and he could not assume he would get lucky again.

  He was right. A projectile hit the back of his arm where the armor did not protect him and grazed flesh. Had the hit been clean he knew he would have lost his arm. Instead a divot of flesh and muscle was blown away. The pain was immediate and intense.

  He roared and threw a disc blade. As the thing did its best to avoid the weapon, he opened the control panel on his gauntlet and tried to re-engage the cloak. This gauntlet was old, but it worked. He saw the shimmer of energies that meant he was once again camouflaged.

  By the time he looked up, the one that had fired at him was gone. It had fled, or hidden itself away while he was momentarily occupied.

  There were three of them. He needed to eliminate them as quickly as possible.

  Two of them were still in his sight.

  * * *

  Hill shook his head and told himself to stop seeing double.

  Concussion. He knew that was the problem as sure as he knew how to count to ten on his fingers and thumbs. The damn medic working on him earlier had said it was possible, and he’d been right.

  That didn’t mean a thing. There was a mission and he would see it through.

  Pulling himself out of the ruins of a carnival game, he was looking right at the monster when it vanished. For half a heartbeat he thought it was his eyes, and then he remembered the thing was good at disappearing. Rather than wait for another chance he aimed and fired where it had been. He didn’t hit and cursed his faulty vision.

  The thing wasn’t gone, though. It was just hiding.

  That was a problem because he didn’t have that luxury.

  Tomlin moved out from behind one of the stands and fired two rounds at the air. The air didn’t respond.

  “You want to tell me where the hell that thing is hiding?” Tomlin called out loud and clear, and Hill wondered when he’d lost his mind. He was about to respond when he saw motion off to his left.

  The mask.

  The thing that the alien had been wearing was sitting in the mud, and then it wasn’t. It rose from its spot and floated to a height of about four feet.

  There was no part of Devon Hill that believed in ghosts. If he had, he’d have quit his line of work a long time ago. He closed one eye and sighted down the barrel of his pistol, and then he fired—and he got lucky. The mask stayed in the air but it moved about a foot to the left and green blood blew across the air and spilled down into the water flowing across the muddy ground.

  He fired again, and a third time, aiming at the bloody patch.

  The mask rose up again and then it vanished. He could almost imagine that ugly bastard putting the steel face back over that disgusting visage. In his mind’s eye, he could see where the mask had faded behind whatever cloaking tech it was using.

  Hill tried aiming again, and only hit the mud.

  Then he moved, because at that moment he was probably the best target the thing had, and he didn’t particularly want to die.

  It was a wise choice. One of those damned throwing discs glimmered into sight at high speed and came right for him. If he hadn’t been in motion it probably would have caught him in the chest. Instead it only jammed into his left hand and sank through bone and flesh alike.

  Hill hissed and stared down at the blades piercing his flesh. His vision swam a bit as he moved around the side of the House of Mirrors and leaned against the wall. The blades were deep and there was no way in hell he was leaving them in place. He gritted his teeth and pulled. The advantage to sharp blades was they came out easily, especially when there were no barbs involved. The blood spilled out easily, too, until he pulled the kerchief from the back left pocket of his pants and wrapped it tightly around his hand.

  Automatic fire chattered through the rain. That’d be Tomlin.

  He hoped the man found his target.

  Rather than waiting on the sidelines to find out, Hill moved back onto the fairground and looked for himself. He closed an eye again to make sure he only saw one of everything. Tomlin was crouching and taking careful aim. He squeezed the trigger and a dozen bullets cut the air apart before at least one or two of them hit a target.

  The alien let out another scream, and an instant later Tomlin echoed the sound. He rose into the air even as his M-16 sailed out of his hands. Tomlin kicked out and his foot hit something solid, but it barely seemed to have any impact. A second kick had the same result.

  But seeing him hit something meant that Hill had a target.

  Two rounds. Both of them hit something.

  Tomlin dropped into the mud and rolled, coughing, his face dark.

  Hill fired two more rounds. His clip was almost empty and he’d need to change it out soon, but in the meantime he was fairly certain he’d hit something again. Then a trio of pinpoints of light squared themselves on his chest. He knew he was fucked, then the flare of blue light came at him.

  Hill did the only thing he could think of.

  He dropped straight down.

  The wall behind him was vaporized. Flinders of wood flew in every d
irection, peppered him with splinters, and sent something hot and burning into his eye. The pain in his hand was nothing in comparison.

  Hill let out a whimper and closed the eye, resisting the urge to press his palm into the wound. Hot fluids ran down his cheek and mingled with the rain and he didn’t dare touch it, not if he hoped to keep his eye when it was all said and done.

  The alien fired at him again and he crawled on his hands and knees, and then rolled to try to avoid being shot. The second round was wild, maybe meant to flush him out. The House of Mirrors collapsed in on itself and he was up and running, his feet doing their best to slide in the mud despite his wishes.

  “Motherfucker’s going down.” He meant it, too. He was in pain and he was angry, and he still wanted payback for Pappy and the rest.

  Shuffling around the side of a series of porta-potties he ran the distance behind them, cursing and scowling and wishing he could get a clean shot at the damn thing that was hiding away instead of actually fighting.

  * * *

  Tomlin coughed and sucked in air. His throat felt like he’d been caught in a noose—which really was about what had happened. The damned thing had picked him up by the neck and shaken him like a rag doll and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

  He’d tried finding the elbow of the massive arm and failed. He’d tried kicking the thing and he definitely hit something, but it was like kicking a stone wall. Nothing he did had any effect on the alien bastard. His rifle was gone and his pistol was missing—he had no idea where the hell it had sailed off to. He wasn’t weaponless exactly, but he was down to a KA-BAR knife. A damned fine weapon, but it surely felt too small when he slipped it into his hand.

  An explosion of light flashed through the air from ten feet to his left, and Tomlin watched one of the structures blow into shreds. Another burst, and while he was watching he duckwalked through the mud and drove the blade of his knife up into flesh that he only saw as a slight distortion in the air. The blade went in deep and he took advantage of that, pulling the weapon through the trapped flesh and sawing as hard as he could.

  Maybe he’d get lucky and cripple the bastard.

  The flesh he was cutting moved, and an instant later something slammed into his face with enough force to send him sliding through the mud, still gripping the knife and trying to remember his name. Looking where his enemy had been, he saw the footprints coming for him as they slapped mud out of the way.

  Tomlin measured the distance and calculated the center mass of the thing headed his way, doing complex mathematics without even being aware of it. Then he reversed the blade in his hand and hurled it toward what he suspected was the stomach of his enemy.

  The blade slammed hard into something and quivered in the air.

  He stood up and followed it, not giving himself time to think. He’d wounded it, and he needed this thing down. He could see the trail of luminescent green that spilled into the muck behind those eerie empty footsteps.

  Searing pain scraped across his ribs as he smashed into a wall of hidden flesh. Two separate lines of fire crawled along his side and stole his breath away. His body came to a complete stop and he grunted. An inch in the wrong direction and he had no doubt those blades would have punched through his armor and his ribs with the same ease. The Kevlar never had a chance against them.

  The knife was still there. Whatever sort of energies the creature used to cloak itself, the blade had fallen victim to them and he could see the shape, but not see the weapon.

  He didn’t care. His hand grabbed the hilt, felt the familiar grip, and he sawed again as he tore the blade free.

  The second time around the nightmare’s blades caught on his vest, and Tomlin was flung through the air as it tried to shake its weapons free of the obstruction. He flipped half a circle and then crashed down, sliding through the heavy running water and crashing into one of the massive oil drums that had been set up as a trash bin. His head rang, and his vision went white for an instant.

  It was coming for him again, and it was moving quickly. The splashes that disrupted the mud were strong enough to rise almost a yard into the air, giving him a clear picture of where the thing was, despite its ability to hide in plain sight.

  Tomlin dropped into a combat stance and readied himself. If the thing decided to fight him instead of just blowing him into dust, he still had a chance, and so far it seemed determined to give him that opportunity.

  Five strides away and he could just make out the basic shape through the pouring rain. Four strides and it was clearer, but still distorted air, no details to be seen. Three steps and he could make out the shape of the legs, the arms, could almost count the fingers. There were two long lines of distortion that looked like they might be the blades that had chopped his armor into shreds.

  Two strides and he was moving, driving forward with all of his strength, pushing the blade at the center of the mass coming for him.

  One stride and the damned thing hit him like a hurricane. Tomlin was lifted off his feet and sent rolling through the air. He’d been hit damned good, too, because as much as he wished otherwise he could feel where the blades on the thing’s right arm had cut into his abdomen.

  His blade stayed where it was, yanked from his hand by the force of impact. There was a very real chance that his wrist was broken but he couldn’t concentrate past the hammering pain in his guts and the spill of hot liquids across his belly. He was likely as good as dead. His body just hadn’t caught that clue yet.

  The alien didn’t seem to care. Tomlin fell to his knees and tried to convince his body to move. His eyes looked where the thing had been just a moment before and he saw it well enough in the torrential rain—a ghost that was exactly solid enough to have water splash off of its body.

  The ghost came for him again.

  27

  The knife had cut deep into muscle, not once, but twice. It was long enough to leave him worried about whether or not his internal organs had been cut, but there was no time to consider that. There were still two more of the creatures hunting him—that he knew of—and they were better armed than this one.

  Quickly he scanned the area, looking for traces of the two, but if they were near they were hiding behind the various obstacles. They had chosen well, limiting his advantage, and he didn’t trust climbing again on the chance that more of their explosive devices were within easy reach.

  With only one target in sight, he charged the creature he had just wounded. It held one arm over its abdomen and he could see the blood flowing from it into the muddy waters. If he were a cruel hunter he might have left it alone to suffer and die, but he could be merciful when the need arose. He was not a sadist. He was a hunter. There was a difference.

  While he was contemplating the death of his prey, one of the others shot him again. The impact was tremendous. He staggered back and then hit the ground, rolling in the warm muck. His left calf had been hit, and his armor kept the limb intact, but the pain was bone-numbing and he suspected the guard he wore had been dented.

  He looked around and saw his assailant. It tried to dodge behind a structure before he could see it, but was too slow.

  He did not rise, but instead stayed low to the ground and crawled. They could see him in the rain and he knew that, but if they were looking higher up they might miss seeing him as he moved.

  His wounds were bad enough that he was concerned. Still, he could not leave behind the objects these creatures had taken from him, could not let them have the technology. It went against the directives of his people. So he continued the hunt, and he hunted more carefully than before. If he failed to rectify the situation the penalty would be grim.

  He crawled around the side of the obstacle, expecting to find his prey, but when he arrived the one that had shot him was no longer where he anticipated.

  * * *

  Hyde looked down from his position on the Ferris wheel and frowned. Maybe the damned thing was coming toward where he’d been, and maybe it wasn’t
. Hard to say. There was a spread of the green blood in the muck, but only a small amount. Could have been bled off from somewhere else, and he didn’t know if he wanted to waste a bullet on maybe.

  He had four bullets left and one spare clip. That sounded like a lot, but it wasn’t—not when the fucking thing refused to die.

  So he waited.

  Just to let him know how stupid that idea was, a volley of electrical blasts ripped across the horizon and lit him up where he was standing. If anyone or anything was looking up, they’d spot him in an instant. He was a good target for the lightning, too.

  “Screw it.” He squeezed off a round and saw the mud explode. If there was something there, he’d missed it. So Hyde started back down from the Ferris wheel. Wherever the thing was hiding, he’d have to shoot it from ground level.

  The climb up to his perch had been treacherous in the tempest, and the path down was just as risky. The winds were bad enough that the ride rocked on its foundation, and they were picking up. Did he think it was going to fall over? No.

  But he still felt more comfortable when he was back on the muddy ground.

  Hyde moved quickly toward where he’d seen the green trail of blood, but the waters had washed it away, leaving no trace or any sort of trail. He was extra alert as he moved away from the spot—he’d let himself be seen, and now he had to wait for a response.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  The catch was not to look for anything at all. He left his eyes unfocused and moved slowly to alter his field of vision. Off to his left Devon Hill was moving carefully along the side of “Madam Marissa’s Fortunes.” The tent was leaning perilously, and he guessed it would be a goner before the hunt was over.

  Tomlin was in the same spot as where he’d fallen. Not dead, but hurt bad. He was shaking hard. Looked like Hill was heading in his direction. Part of him wanted to do the same thing. Tomlin was his commanding officer. He was also a friend, but Hyde knew if he took time away from the hunt, Tomlin would be pissed off. They had a mission, and he needed to finish it.