Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 71

2001, New York

He felt his face smack against a hard concrete floor, the dead weight of Becks landing heavily on the top of his back, knocking the air out of his lungs.

‘Good God!’ he heard from somewhere nearby — a male voice he didn’t recognize.

While his eyes were still seeing stars, he could feel Becks struggling to lift herself off his back. He heard the pounding rasp of laboured breath nearby, presumably, hopefully, Edward and the other two. He could hear the faint muted chug of the generator in the back room. And through the still-open portal hovering a couple of feet above the tangled pile of himself and Becks, the far-off sounds of a jungle night stirring to life… and the click-clacking and mewling of those things getting louder, closer.

‘Ummpph… closhhhh the ’ortal!’ he mumbled into the floor, his bloodied lips still mushed against the hard concrete as Becks struggled to lift her dead weight off him.

‘Liam? Is that you under there?’ Maddy’s voice.

‘Umpph. U’mm… yeshhh,’ he mumbled. ‘Closhhh the ’leedin’ ’ortal!’

Then all of a sudden he felt another heavy load land on his back, and the excruciating pain of three sharp blades digging deep into his left shoulder-blade.

‘What on earth is THAT?’ Another unfamiliar voice, another man’s voice.

The weight was gone as quickly as it had arrived and he heard the skittering of claws across the concrete floor and the startled bark of one or two of those creatures echoing off the arched brick ceiling.

‘My God, Forby! Shoot it! SHOOT IT!’

The piercing scream of a girl, he couldn’t be sure who. Then, with a rattling sigh, Becks finally flopped off the side of his back, her pale face spattered with dark dots of drying blood, thudding to the floor beside his. Her grey eyes stared lifelessly back at him, as if looking at something far, far away. He managed to lift himself up on to his elbows, grimacing at the sharp pain in his shoulder and his head still spinning from the impact of the heavy landing. He attempted to get his first glance at what was going on around him.

Two of the creatures had managed to follow them through and were now darting in confusion and panic one way and then the other across the archway floor. He spotted two men he didn’t recognize: one old, in a rumpled suit with a loosened tie dangling round his throat like a hangman’s noose. The other man was younger with buzz-cut sandy hair and an army-fit physique beneath what looked like a baggy light-green boiler suit. He raised a gun.

‘Where did they go?’ snapped Maddy.

They heard something fall off a shelf in a dark corner of the archway and roll noisily across the floor.

‘Over there!’

With trained, quick precision, Forby squinted down the weapon’s barrel and flipped the night-sight of his scope on. A soft green glow poured across his face as he slowly panned the weapon around the archway, then up towards the curved brick ceiling.

‘Ahh… I see one.’

Liam followed the direction of his gaze and thought he could just about make out some dark shape moving among a criss-cross of old rusting pipes and loops of electrical flex. Age-old dust and the grit from crumbling bricks and mortar trickled down past the softly fizzing glow of the ceiling light, giving the hapless creature’s position away.

The man fired two aimed shots in quick succession. The creature screamed, then plummeted to the floor, bringing down a small flurry of dust and grit with it. It squirmed and screamed and drummed arms and legs against the floor, until the young man put a third shot into its long skull.

As the echo of the last shot rattled around the brick walls, Liam looked around him. He could see Edward and Laura huddled together by the displacement machine’s perspex tube, and Sal and Maddy beside the computer desk. All of them looking from one dark recess to another, listening intently for the sounds of movement.

‘Where’s the other one?’ whispered Sal.

The man with the gun placed a finger to his lips to hush her. ‘Hiding,’ he whispered.

‘Well, for Christ’s sake find him, Forby!’ hissed the older man.

Liam watched as Forby stepped across the floor into the middle of the archway, continuing to slowly pan his gun, studying every nook and cranny around until finally he came to a halt, aiming at the arched recess where their bunk beds were.

‘Uh-huh… I think he’s skulking under there.’

He squatted down low and pumped his finger. A single shot danced and ricocheted under Liam’s cot, sparking against the metal frame.

It was then that something dropped down from above, past the ceiling light on to Forby’s back — a blur of movement and flashing of claws and teeth, a bright arc of crimson.

‘HEELLP M-!’ His voice was cut off as the creature’s claws flailed at his neck. He dropped the gun as he staggered and struggled to wrestle the thing off his back.

Liam picked himself up and scrambled across the floor, reaching out for the heavy assault rifle as Forby’s legs buckled and he dropped to his knees, blood spraying from the multiple ragged wounds across his face and head. The creature leaped off his shoulders and darted towards the shutter door as Forby flopped the rest of the way to the ground. Quite dead.

Liam raised the gun and pulled the trigger. The gun kicked his shoulder as he emptied the clip with a protracted and unaimed volley that produced a dozen showers of sparks and brick-red plumes of dust.

With the gun angrily clicking in his hands, he finally eased his finger off the trigger and peered through the gunsmoke at the inert body of the other creature. Now a shredded mess.

‘Jesus,’ whispered the old man, his croaky voice shaking.