The Predator: The Official Movie Novelization

19

The world tilted beneath McKenna. He still had a mouthful of dirt and he was certain there was cowshit mixed in there, too. Groggy, he had just enough of his wits about him to hope this wasn’t a concussion. The two mercs still loomed above him, but they’d held off on the kicking for a minute.

He spat a wad of blood and soil onto the ground. His face was swollen, his jaw stiff. He breathed through his nose with a reedy whistle and the copper stink of his own blood. They’d worked him over good. Internal darkness kept washing over his thoughts, as if unconsciousness was an ocean trying to drown him.

Taking a breath, he glanced up, eyes narrowed as he peered through the slats in the fence around the holding pen. The helicopter sat there, and its rotors had started to turn. The familiar whine of the chopper gearing up forced him to pay attention. He saw several figures climbing aboard and wondered where they were off to. Had they found the Upgrade Predator? Had they found the gizmo Rory had gotten his hands on?

The mercs were talking among themselves. As far as they were concerned, he was done. As good as dead. The only thing remaining would be the bullet that punctuated the end of his personal sentence.

McKenna squeezed his eyes shut. One of the people getting on board the chopper seemed so much smaller than the others. If he hadn’t been kicked in the head, it might have gained him a second, but then he blinked his vision clear and realized the little guy was Rory and that he was being dragged on board. These fuckers working for Traeger weren’t content to question them—these assholes were about to take his son on a chopper ride, take him away from his old man, use him somehow.

The chopper started to lift off. It whorled skyward.

That moment or two had cost McKenna a chance to reach Rory. Rage boiled behind his eyes.

“Golf tomorrow?” one of the mercs asked the other, ever so casual, as he drew his gun to finish Quinn McKenna. Whatever they had needed him for, they clearly didn’t need him anymore.

“Why not?” the other merc replied, so reasonable, so personable. They had a golf date, these two assholes.

McKenna coughed up ropey strands of blood. “You know what burns me up…” he managed. “You never even… read my file. Did you?”

The mercs traded amused glances.

“What makes you think that?” the gunman asked, voice thick with condescension.

“’Cause you’re making plans for tomorrow,” McKenna said.

The mercs laughed, thinking about their tee time.

“Worst part,” McKenna went on, “is you making me lie to my son. I really don’t like to do that.”

The second merc snickered. “What lie did you tell him?”

“That I wouldn’t enjoy this,” McKenna grunted.

His hand darted out, snatched the first guy’s forearm. Using his other hand for leverage, he twisted, put his weight behind it, and snapped the asshole’s forearm with a satisfyingly audible crack that echoed like a gunshot across the holding pen. He liberated the gun from the merc’s flopping hand and pressed it to his eye, then pulled the trigger. Muffled by eyeball and brain and skull and hair as it exited the back of the guy’s head, it didn’t sound much like a gunshot at all.

The dead merc dropped with a thud as McKenna stood and leveled the gun at the second merc, who froze, staring at him, trying to figure out how the hell a guy who’d looked halfway dead could move so fast.

On the other side of the holding pen, Nebraska, his hands tied behind his back, snorted up a mouthful of blood and phlegm and spat it into the straw. His body was throbbing from the beating he’d taken, but it was all just bumps and bruises. He was pretty sure nothing was broken.

He’d heard the helicopter taking off, and not much since. He’d been left unguarded—surely it was too much to hope that Traeger and his goons had lost interest in them and headed off to pastures new? If Nebraska were in Traeger’s position, he certainly wouldn’t be leaving any loose ends behind. The thought had barely formed in his mind when the door of the holding pen opened, framing a black-clad merc.

Me and my big mouth.

Then the man stumbled forward, going down on one knee. Nebraska was about to hit him with a quip—What’s this? A proposal or an execution?—when he saw that behind the merc was McKenna, looking a little worse for wear, but pointing a gun at the guy’s head.

“Untie him,” McKenna said, nudging his prisoner with the gun.

The merc scrambled to his feet and obeyed, making quick work of it despite his trembling hands.

“They have Rory,” McKenna explained, then frowned as Nebraska rose to his feet with a groan. “Shit, they rough you up?”

Nebraska rubbed his wrists, which were chafed and bleeding. “Whatever. Done worse to myself back in the day. I was the kinda drunk who thought the fastest way down a long flight of stairs was to just relax.” He nodded at the remaining merc. “What about him?”

Three seconds later, the merc’s face had left a permanent impression in the barn’s outer wall. Streaking the wall with blood, the merc slid down to thump to the ground like a discarded laundry bag.

Nebraska winced. “That’s what I get for asking dumb questions.”

When the gun barrel prodded the back of Casey’s skull, she closed her eyes tight and waited to die. Her heart beat loud in her ears and she found herself remembering the first time she’d ever looked through a decent telescope. Her pulse had quickened then, too, and her imagination had been set afire. All her hopes and ambitions had been born in that moment, and now she was going to die because of them.

Not only that, she was going to die on her ass, wrists handcuffed to a chair. Somehow that bothered her more than the concept of death itself. If she had to die, she wanted to do it standing up.

She felt the gun barrel twitch against her head. No bullet followed. Her guard had paused at the sound of heavy footfalls in the corridor, clumping noises approaching. They had an intruder.

“Who goes there?” her guard demanded, his voice tight. Maybe he was wondering who to shoot first, or whether he needed her alive, so he could use her for a shield.

The intruder poked his head around the corner, and Casey heard the thin intake of air as the guard started shitting his pants, albeit metaphorically.

Standing there, in the shadows, massive shoulders hunched and mandibles clicking, was the Predator dog with the bolt through its skull. It was a big, dumb, snuffling, drooling brute—it was even wagging its tail, for Christ’s sake! But the guard didn’t know that the creature had been tamed by the cranial trauma that the bolt gun had inflicted.

In fact, the guard was making little squeaking, mewling noises now, clearly unsure whether to shoot at the thing and provoke it or just stay still in the hope it would go away.

Casey saw what the Predator dog was carrying in its mouth before the guard did—the grenade from the clearing, which the dumb monster had leaped into the ditch to fetch and had now finally brought back to continue its game. Still lashing its tail from side to side, the beast trotted happily toward her and dropped the grenade into her lap.

She heard the guard mutter something about Jesus as she snatched up the grenade, lurched from the chair, pulled the pin with her teeth and spun toward him. The guard’s eyes went wide and he tried to take aim with his gun, but she was too close and he was too distracted, both by the grenade and the Predator dog, and he could only fumble with the barrel as she jerked her handcuffed wrist, whipping the thin wooden chair up at him. The impact caused the gun to go off, the report echoing off the walls and making the Predator dog whine. Before he could fire off another shot, Casey put the grenade down the front of the guard’s shirt and turned toward the railing of the loft, dragging the chair behind her. She knew the guard wouldn’t have time to shoot at her if he wanted to live.

As she leaped, the chair smashed against the railing and she had a flicker of a moment to fear she’d be snagged on it. Then she plummeted to the floor of the barn, hit the ground and rolled as the chair shattered on impact beside her.

Overhead, the loft exploded. Her ears buzzed, felt like they were stuffed with cotton. From the corner of her eye she saw another merc rushing at her and she pistoned to her feet, swinging the remains of the broken chair around on the handcuff chain in a single, swift motion. The shattered wood smashed the merc in the skull, nearly taking his face off. Blood sprayed out in an arc and spattered the ground as he fell.

More blood showered down from above, in a cloud of dust and dry wall and straw from the explosion in the loft. Casey staggered away, her ears still ringing. As the smoke cleared, she saw the Predator dog clumping down the steps from the loft, totally unscathed. He had something else in his mandibles this time and he dropped his new toy at her feet, still interested in fetch.

Casey had no desire to pick this new toy up, though. It was the scorched head of the guard who’d just been blown to pieces.

Hot bile burned up the back of Casey’s throat, but she managed not to puke. As she fought the urge, her ringing ears caught the sound of muffled boot steps approaching on the double. She lifted her cuffed wrist, ready to use the remains of the chair on its chain as an improvised weapon a second time. But then she saw McKenna and Nebraska hustle around the corner, both looking like they’d just survived a gang war. They were both armed, both breathing heavily.

“Hey,” McKenna said, almost casually. “Can I interest you in getting the fuck out of here?”

Casey grinned, breathless. “‘Getting the fuck out of here’ is my middle name.”

McKenna shot a sidelong glance at Nebraska. “And I thought ‘Gaylord’ was bad.”

They started to head out, then abruptly McKenna halted, grimaced, clutched his abdomen.

“Oh boy,” he muttered.

Casey looked at him in concern. “What?”

“Must be the coffee,” McKenna said apologetically. “Uh… excuse me.”

He bolted, disappearing around the corner, heading toward the barn’s exit door.

Casey turned to Nebraska, bewildered. “Where’s he going?”

Nebraska smiled and raised an eyebrow. “I think he’s about to give us a tactical advantage.”