The Predator: The Official Movie Novelization

23

The group had death at their heels, and they needed no further encouragement than that. They moved swiftly through the jungle, ducking and dodging around trees and plants. Under the weight of their heavy clothing, backpacks, and weapons, the men grunted with exertion, sweat streaming down their faces, but not for a moment did they think of stopping for a rest, or even slowing down.

Rory could keep up with the group purely because he was smaller and lighter, and because he wasn’t carrying anything except for the invisibility ball in his pocket, which his dad had given to him. Holding Casey’s hand, he was able to negotiate the thick foliage far more easily than the bulkier soldiers in front of him.

Except for his mom, Rory was usually nervous around girls and women, and he didn’t like people touching him at the best of times, but he found comfort in the warmth of Casey’s hand in his, and he liked the way she kept glancing at him and smiling. She was looking out for him, and not in a patronizing way. It was like she knew the two of them were kindred spirits—both science-minded, both clever, both introverted—and that therefore they had to stick together.

Just ahead of them, Traeger was fumbling in his duffel bag as he ran along. Rory wondered whether the CIA agent was looking for a weapon—but what he eventually pulled out of the bag shocked Rory far more than a Predator weapon would have. Shocked him and filled his head with bad memories.

It was the Predator mask. The one that Rory had worn while trick-or-treating. The one he’d been wearing when he—it—had killed that man on his porch.

He’d thrown it into the bushes close to the man’s house, but he guessed it must have been recovered, and that it had found its way back into Traeger’s hands, as all such Predator tech seemed to do.

Dropping back a little, Traeger pointed the mask in Rory’s direction and waved it like a threat. Panting, he said, “On Halloween, this thing blew up a whole house. How do you fire it?”

Despite its bad associations, Rory guessed he was kind of glad the mask was back in their possession—it might prove useful against their pursuer—but he wished it was in the hands of pretty much anyone except Traeger.

“Um, you don’t,” he said. “It just… fires by itself. When it’s attacked.”

Traeger’s lips curled into a snarl, and for a moment Rory thought the agent was going to call him a liar. But it turned out he was just frustrated. “Really?” he said. “Fuck!” And he glared at the mask, as if demanding it give up its secrets.

Up ahead, Rory saw his dad glance back, and realized he must have heard the exchange. Allowing Coyle to take the lead, he dropped back with Nebraska to speak to them. Rory felt a sense of satisfaction at the fact that neither his dad nor Nebraska was panting and sweating half as much as Traeger was. His dad did look anxious, though, as if, having been name-checked by the alien, he felt a special responsibility to keep them all alive.

Barely giving Traeger and the mask a second look, his dad addressed Casey. “Okay, so what do we know?” He waggled the fingers of his free hand at the side of his head in an imitation of the alien’s “dreadlocks.” “Casey, the… uh… Marley shit?”

“I’m thinking sensory receptors,” Casey said, glancing at Rory as if for affirmation. He liked that. He nodded. “Like cat whiskers. Weak spot, maybe?”

“You said it left you alone back at Stargazer,” Nebraska reminded her. “How come?”

Casey shrugged. “I was unarmed and naked. Didn’t pose a threat.”

“No one’s getting naked,” Baxley shouted from up ahead.

“Speak for yourself,” Nettles retorted.

Despite the situation, everyone snorted laughter, even Traeger and the mercs—it was a brief release of tension they all needed. The only people who didn’t laugh were Rory, who sometimes didn’t get jokes as quickly as others did, and his dad, who not only continued to look grim, but who looked a little irritated now too.

Seeing this, Nettles veered over to him. “Fuck your guilt,” he said.

Now his dad looked surprised. No, more than surprised—startled. “Excuse me?”

Nettles’ voice was low, but Rory still heard what he said.

“You lost men. I get it. You’ll lose some today.” He paused, and Rory saw his expression change, become determined, earnest, like an unspoken promise. “But you’re not gonna lose your son.”

The Upgrade stands on the far side of the crater, facing the ship. All is ready. It has ensured that there will be nothing left for the humans to use, nothing they can turn to their advantage. It glances at the screen, and sees the numbers ticking down—0:09… 0:08… 0:07…

At 0:05, it presses a button on its wrist gauntlet and the ship is annihilated in a flash of intense white light, a contained but devastating explosion that causes the trees nearby to sway and thrash, and that sends an echoing boom rolling through the jungle like a war cry.

As the echoes die away, the Upgrade looks again at the screen.

0:02… 0:01… 0:00…

Time to hunt.

Somewhere behind them came the sound of an explosion, and a brief column of light, which lit up the sky. Traeger wondered what the oversized crab-faced bastard was up to, and then it came to him with a pang of despair. The fucker must have blown up the ship to stop it from falling into enemy hands. Shit, shit, shit!

Boiling with anger, he rooted around once again in his duffel bag, thinking that if he couldn’t have the ship, then he would have the son of a bitch himself. He knew there must be something in here he could use against it—something with easy-to-follow instructions, that didn’t involve him engaging in hand-to-hand combat.

He plucked out a couple of things—a nunchucks-type device, followed by an alien throwing star, like a Japanese shuriken, that required a wrist gauntlet (and, no doubt, years of practice) to operate it effectively—but almost immediately rejected them, dropping them back into the bag. The third item he pulled out, however, was ideal. A compact shoulder cannon, connected to a tiny pad-like sensor, which you attached to the side of your head, and which responded directly to what your brain told it to do.

Although Traeger hadn’t risked trying out the cannon himself, he’d been present at some of the tests, and it had proved an effective weapon. Still running, he affixed the cannon to his shoulder and pressed the sensor against his skull just below his ear. He gritted his teeth, expecting to feel a little pain as it clamped itself to his flesh, but it adhered painlessly. He swiveled his head and the barrel responded, completely in sync with his movements. Bingo!

Feeling some of his old confidence flowing back, he tossed the duffel bag to the nearest merc—it was the one with the yellow goatee and the worried eyes.

“Carry this,” he ordered.

Somewhere to their left—in the darkness of the jungle it was impossible to tell how far away—a branch snapped loudly, a sound that could clearly be heard even over the tramp of their footsteps and the constant rustle-swish of the undergrowth they were running through. Flashlights turned in that direction, but there was nothing to be seen except overlapping leaves and black shadows.

Most of the group simply faced front again and picked up their pace, but Traeger saw the merc with the yellow goatee suddenly stop dead, his eyes going wide and his mouth dropping wetly open. His body shaking as he succumbed to a full-blown panic attack, he delved into the duffel bag and pulled out the shuriken that Traeger had previously rejected.

“Whoa, easy,” Traeger said, but panic had the merc in a vice-like grip now, and he was too far gone to listen. As the soldier turned to face the direction that the branch-snap had come from and drew back his arm, Traeger raised his hands and his voice.

“No, no, no,” he warned. “You need the wrist thing—”

Too late. The merc pistoned his arm forward and the shuriken flew from his hand and disappeared into the blackness of the jungle. Traeger looked at him, aghast, and began to back away.

By this time everyone else had not only slowed, but stopped, and they were looking back to see what was happening, some of them raising their guns, as if fearing an attack. As a couple of the mercs moved toward their goateed colleague, Traeger waved them back, as if the man was infected and should not be approached.

The merc, meanwhile, simply stood where he was, as if rooted to the spot, staring in fear at the black wall of jungle in front of him. All of them could hear the swift metallic whickering of the blade he had thrown, as it sliced its way with apparent ease through whatever was standing in its way. The sound, loud at first, grew fainter, and eventually dwindled to silence; a couple of the men started to relax. But Traeger knew it was not over, and sure enough, after three seconds’ grace, they all heard it again. But this time the whickering sound, faint at first, began to grow louder. The goateed merc’s eyes stretched yet wider with horror as he realized what was happening. The shuriken was coming back!

“No,” he gibbered, “no, no, go away!”

He backed off, instinctively throwing up his hand to shield himself.

Traeger saw a flash of metal, and next second the merc was writhing on the ground and squealing like a stuck pig, blood spurting from the stump of his wrist. His severed hand lay a few feet away from the rest of his body, fingers curled in toward the palm. The shuriken, having effortlessly lopped off the man’s hand instead of clipping back into the wrist gauntlet as it was designed to do, now rapidly lost momentum and embedded itself in a tree.

The merc continued to squeal. Traeger stomped over to him, furious.

“Shut the fuck up!”

He contemplated using the shoulder cannon on the man, silencing him for good—if McKenna and his crew hadn’t been watching, he might even have done so. Instead, he bent down and slapped the man hard across the face, once, twice.

Shocked, the man swallowed his scream.

But then, as though in imitation, another merc, standing on the periphery of the group, gave a sudden startled yelp.

They all turned as one to see him rising rapidly into the trees, as though yanked upward on an elasticated rope.

When he was around ten meters from the ground, legs kicking wildly, there was a shifting in the shadows somewhere in the canopy of leaves and branches above his head, and then something detached itself from the darkness and slid down the trunk like a vast snake. The group on the ground could only watch in horror as the Upgrade descended the tree headfirst. It paused to regard them, eyes glinting, mandibles stretching to reveal pink flesh inset with jagged shark-like teeth. Then it reached out with its long arms, grabbed its prey by the shoulders, and hauled him upward.

Seconds later the real screaming began, and blood began to patter down from the tree like rain.

McKenna was the first to start shooting, blazing away at the darkness above their heads into which the Upgrade and its victim had vanished. The man immediately stopped screaming—either put out of his misery by McKenna’s bullets or killed by the Upgrade—but nothing fell from above. Nebraska, Nettles, Coyle, and Baxley were all firing too, but the remaining three mercs had already turned tail and fled. The noise was tremendous, bullets causing sparks to flare in the trees like a multitude of angry sprites. After a few seconds, McKenna waved an arm to call a halt to the shooting—if the Upgrade hadn’t crashed dead to the ground by now, that meant it was no longer there—and indicated that they should beat a hasty retreat.

As they lowered their weapons and began to hightail it out of there, Casey grabbed McKenna’s sleeve and indicated the merc with the severed hand, who was still lying on the ground, sweating and groaning. McKenna looked anguished, but shook his head. If they were going to have any chance of surviving this, they couldn’t allow themselves to be lumbered by anything that might slow them down. He half-expected Casey to protest, but she simply nodded, and mouthed “Sorry” at the man.

Then they cleared out, leaving him alone.

The merc’s name was Bruce Willis, a handle that had proved both a blessing and a curse throughout his thirty-six years on this earth. Partly because of his namesake’s reputation, he had become a tough guy almost by default, developing from an amiable fat kid from a middle-class family (his dad was a pharmacy manager, his mom a school secretary) into one who did weights, and boxed, and eventually dropped out of high school to take a job first as a nightclub doorman, and then as a prison guard. He had become a merc because a friend of his told him the money was good, but he had always felt like a phony. He felt like he was never quite as committed, or ruthless, or downright batshit-crazy as the guys around him, that one day he would be found out, and when that day came he would find himself in deep shit.

And now that day had come. Because here he was, in a jungle clearing, at night, on his own, being hunted by a monster. He had lost a hand, and a fuck of a lot of blood, and was in indescribable pain, and probably dying. There was a part of him that wished he could just pass out, slip into oblivion, but he couldn’t, because he had so much adrenaline racing through his system right now that it felt like his whole body was screaming. On the other hand (ha-ha), maybe now that everyone had gone away and left him, he would be left alone too. The monster would chase after the others, and he would be free to live or die at his own leisure, depending on what God (because he did believe in God, despite his mom’s insistence that, by choosing the path he had chosen in life, he had forsaken his faith) had in mind for him.

He was still thinking these vaguely comforting thoughts when he heard a heavy thump to his right. Although it hurt to move—funny how losing a hand could make every other part of your body bellow out in pain too—he turned his head. What he saw chased all thoughts of God’s mercy from his mind. The monster was standing right beside him, its colossal legs stretching up to its equally colossal torso, and from there to its hideously ugly head.

Bruce began to whimper, to plead. With great effort, he held up his remaining hand, palm out.

“I’m unarmed…” he said. “I’m not a threat… I’m not a threat…”

The monster leaned over him. It tilted its head to one side, its weird, dreadlock-like appendages slithering across its shoulders.

His voice became a whisper. “I don’t pose a threat… I don’t…”

He only stopped pleading when the monster rammed a taloned hand between his lips and ripped his spine out through his mouth.

The triumphal, ululating screech of the Upgrade echoed through the woods, chilling them all even though they were sweating and panting with exertion.

“Sounds like we lost another red shirt,” Coyle gasped, his pack bouncing on his back as he ran. Then he gestured to his left and shouted, “Glimmer, on your nine!”

They turned to look, saw shadowy movement in the trees. Several flashlight beams picked out a hulking, dark shape, moving at panther-like speed through the jungle. Then it vanished.

Everyone thumped to a stop. Casey looked around and knew that they were all thinking the same as she was: running was pointless; their enemy was so much faster than they were; all they were doing was expending needless energy. Yet what else could they do?

They were looking to McKenna, but for once he looked as clueless as the rest of them.

“Up ahead,” Casey said, pointing. “This way.” When McKenna gave her a questioning look, she explained, “Lynch. He set some pyro to cover our back trail.”

She hoped she was right—not only that Lynch had had time to set the pyro before the alien had got him, but also that they were where she thought they were (she had a good sense of direction, but in the darkness of the jungle it was easy to get turned around and not know it). It was a long shot—but the comfort was, she knew that McKenna also knew it was a long shot, yet he was nodding regardless.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s trap the motherfucker.”

He led the way along the path she had indicated. It was narrow, hemmed in by trees and brush. A choke point. Nettles passed him a detonator. Baxley squeezed past Nettles and tapped McKenna on the shoulder, and when McKenna turned he said, “Set it,” then jerked his head at Coyle. “We’ll draw him in.”

Coyle raised his eyebrows. “What is this ‘we,’ kemosabe?”

But the way he said it, McKenna knew he was committed one hundred percent. Knew that Coyle—like Baxley, like all of them—would do whatever it took to protect his buddies, and most especially Rory, even if it meant risking his own life. McKenna locked eyes with both of them for a long moment, his face solemn. He didn’t have the words to express the depth of his gratitude, his admiration, his love, for these two crazy men. In the end he nodded tersely, and they nodded back. It was enough.

Then he turned and hurried after the others, leaving Coyle and Baxley behind.

Alone, Coyle and Baxley looked at each other. Both were relaxed, both breathing deeply and evenly.

Then a faint rustle in the bushes nearby caused them both to jerk up their guns and spin round.

After a moment, Baxley frowned and lowered his gun. “Calm down,” he said to Coyle.

Coyle looked indignant. “ Me calm down? Sure, thanks… twitchy.”

“Just don’t shoot me, fucker,” Baxley muttered.

They began to walk back along the trail. As soon as it widened out, Coyle raised his weapon and let loose a burst of gunfire, strafing the foliage in front of them, shredding leaves and branches.

“Hey, asshole!” he hollered into the darkness. “What’s the difference between a golf ball and a G-spot?”

Baxley shot him an incredulous look. “You’re telling it a joke?”

Coyle shrugged. “If he laughs it’ll give away his position.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the tree closest to him exploded. There was a blast of heat and light, and the thing simply shattered into pieces as though struck by lightning.

The two of them ducked, Baxley letting out an involuntary yelp as splinters showered over him. The echoes of the blast were still fading when another sound replaced it—a deep, booming, otherworldly laugh that reverberated through the jungle.

Baxley and Coyle looked at each other. They both recognized that laugh. Distorted though it was, it was Traeger’s laugh, mocking and without humor.

And I didn’t even get to the punchline, Coyle thought.

Then, yelling in defiance, both men raised their guns and let fly, blitzing the jungle with bullets. After five seconds they stopped, and then, in silent agreement, they turned and ran as fast as they could, back along the trail, toward the choke point, jumping over logs and crashing through bushes.

“Come and get us, motherfucker! This way!” Baxley yelled gleefully.

Just ahead of him he heard Coyle shrieking with laughter.

After maybe seventy meters, the choke hole widened out into a clearing. It was here that the hunted were hoping to become the hunters. With their trap hastily set, they scrambled for cover, diving behind trees and bushes, hoping against hope that their desperate counter-attack against a creature that was faster, stronger, technologically superior, and infinitely more vicious than they were would end this nightmare once and for all.

Typically, McKenna and Nebraska were the last to seek shelter. As the whoops of Coyle and Baxley grew louder, McKenna hurried across the clearing, and Nebraska followed, though not before kicking a little more dirt over the string of claymore mines they were all hoping would turn the Upgrade into dog food. Nebraska jumped over a boulder directly opposite the arch of tree branches that formed the clearing’s entrance, and crouched behind it, his shoulder pressed up against its rough stone surface. Peering over the top of the boulder, he took a last look around, like a party organizer checking the final details before the arrival of the special guest. In the darkness and the drifting jungle mist he caught glimpses of mercs and Loonies, what little light there was flashing on the barrels of their guns, and glinting in their eyes. Over to his left, he could just about make out Casey crouched next to Traeger, who seemed to be fiddling with that weird alien cannon he was wearing on his shoulder. Sensing Nebraska’s gaze, Casey glanced across at him and gave him a hopeful thumbs-up. He nodded back at her.

Then he faced front again. From the sounds of it, Coyle and Baxley were almost here. The party was about to begin.

Still whooping and yelling—not only a lure for the Upgrade, but also a release of tension and a sheer primal expression of joy at still being alive—Coyle and Baxley burst into the clearing.

“Contaaaaccct!” Baxley yelled, then he and Coyle were leaping through the air like a pair of Olympic long jumpers, clearing the strings of explosives that had been set up across the ground in front of them and threaded into the tree branches above their heads. They hit the ground, rolled like experts, and within a split second were up on their feet again, heading for cover, arms swinging, legs pumping. They ran either side of a big tree and met up again behind it, panting and sweating.

Suddenly, Baxley started grinning, then chuckling to himself. Coyle raised his eyebrows.

“Shit, man… your joke,” Baxley explained. “I just got it. A guy might actually look for a golf ball.”

“Come on,” Casey murmured, “come on.”

It had only been twenty seconds, maybe less, since Baxley and Coyle had entered the arena, but in this situation twenty seconds seemed like a loooong time. The jungle was full of night sounds—rustles and birdcalls and the ripple of leaves in the wind. Casey could feel her heart thumping at the base of her throat, could smell Traeger’s sweat, and feel the sharp edge of something in the CIA agent’s duffel bag—possibly the Predator mask—pressing against her leg. She glanced up, hoping the Upgrade hadn’t outmaneuvered them, that it wasn’t even now up there in the blackness of the trees above their heads, lowering itself down to snatch its prey, silent as a spider on a thread of silk…

She heard someone gasp, and her eyes immediately seemed to refocus, to sharpen. There. A suggestion of movement at the entrance to the clearing. A shimmer. She held her breath, sensed Traeger tense beside her.

And then, just like that, the Upgrade stepped into the clearing, ducking under the archway of branches, rising to its full height.

Even now, its cloaked form a rippling, shimmering mass of forest come alive, Casey found the alien both impressively beautiful and utterly terrifying. It was like something from folklore. A demon warrior. A perfect killing machine. Relentless and unstoppable. When it moved into the kill zone and got itself blown into chunks of unrecognizable meat, she knew she’d feel a pang of genuine sorrow and regret. And yet right now she wanted that to happen more than anything else in the world.

Two more steps, she thought. Two more steps and all this will be over. But the Upgrade wasn’t moving. Shit. Clearly it could sense something. Suspected a trap. Although it was cloaked, she could discern its movements—its head jerking bird-like as it surveyed its surroundings. Could it see the string of claymore mines in the dirt? The pack of explosives attached to tree branches above its head, wired to blow the instant it walked underneath? It was dark, but what if the alien had night vision? What if—

Abruptly, the Upgrade decloaked.

Now it stood there at the entrance to the clearing in all its glory. A defiant gesture. A mocking gesture. It cocked its head at them, and although its expression was impossible to read, Casey guessed it was chiding them, expressing a kind of mock-disappointment at how pathetic they were, how unworthy they were as opponents.

“No… no… no…” murmured Traeger beside her, weariness and despair in his voice.

She glanced at Nebraska. He was clutching his gun in both hands, half-raising it, and she wondered how much longer it would be before this turned into a straight-out firefight. Maybe if Traeger took the initiative, fired his shoulder cannon, caught the Upgrade by surprise—

But it was the Upgrade who took the initiative. Almost before she realized that the alien had moved, it raised a hand, fired something from its wrist gauntlet, something that flashed in the meager light. A blade.

She didn’t realize what had happened until she heard a grisly sound, followed by an almost regretful sigh to her right. Turning, she saw another of Traeger’s mercs fold and crumple to the ground, blood pouring from a hole in his chest. Immediately, she guessed that the Upgrade’s blade had passed clean through the tree and then through the soldier, like a bullet through soft putty. The Upgrade was showing them their defenses were worthless, that there was nowhere to hide.

“He didn’t buy it!” McKenna yelled. “Open fire!”

Weapons blazed from all around the clearing, and suddenly the darkness was lit up by staccato flashes of gunfire. Bullets tore up trees and bushes, the air filling with the confetti of splinters and shredded foliage. Through it all, Casey tried to keep track of the Upgrade, which had moved even before McKenna had finished giving his order. She saw it dart to its left, weave in and out between the tree trunks so swiftly she couldn’t even tell whether it had reengaged its cloaking mechanism or not. Big as it was, the alien was a fleeting shadow, gone before the bullets could reach it.

Although she wasn’t a soldier, it was obvious to Casey what McKenna and his guys were doing wrong. They were all concentrating their gunfire on one place, which invariably was always the place the Upgrade had just vacated, instead of strafing the entire area, which would effectively have created a barrier of bullets in front of them and given the Upgrade nowhere to hide. She moved out of hiding and waved her arms, trying to snag either Nebraska’s or McKenna’s attention. But they were in the zone, fully focused, and so instead she simply tried yelling at the men to spread the barrage over a wider area, but she couldn’t make herself heard above the noise. She glanced back at Traeger, hoping for some help, but despite toting the only weapon that might prove useful against their enemy, he was cowering behind his tree, keeping his head down. She wondered briefly whether to risk breaking cover entirely and rush across the short stretch of open ground between her and Nebraska—but then the decision was taken out of her hands.

She was vaguely aware of something flashing past on her left-hand side and instinctively ducked, whilst at the same time following its trajectory with her eyes. She only realized it was the Upgrade’s throwing blade returning when she saw the Upgrade’s arm snake out from behind a tree and the blade snap neatly back into place on its wrist gauntlet. She was surprised to see the Upgrade way over to her left. Last time she’d been aware of it, it had been darting between the trees to the right of the entrance to the clearing—and indeed, that was where McKenna and his men were still concentrating their fire.

“Over there!” she yelled, pointing at the Upgrade as it moved forward, keeping to the shadows, striding with one massive step over the string of claymore mines—but no one saw her or heard her.

No one, that is, except the Upgrade itself.

Casey felt herself go cold all over as the Upgrade’s head suddenly snapped round, its eyes boring into her. She saw it reach for its throwing blade again, and dived back behind her tree, but having already witnessed how easily the blade could slice through thick bark she knew she might as well have been standing out in the open. Desperately, she lunged for Traeger’s duffel bag and grabbed the first thing that came to hand—the Predator mask. As the Upgrade flung out its arm, releasing the blade, she dived to one side and swung the mask out wildly in front of her, using it as a tiny makeshift shield.

She was only aware the blade had hit the mask and deflected away when she felt the mask jerked from her hand. She yelped, her fingers stinging, the force of the blow causing the mask to fly one way and she the other. She came down in a heap, which knocked the breath from her, and heard the mask land several meters away with a clanging thump. What happened next happened suddenly and without warning.

The mask came alive.

Casey heard a whirr and a click, and sitting up she saw something extending from an aperture at the side of the mask that was parallel to the eye sockets—a tube of some kind. All at once she remembered Rory telling them how the mask had instinctively responded when it or its wearer had been under attack—how it had reduced one of his neighbors to ash and obliterated the front porch of the guy’s house.

Locking onto its target, the mask now fired a bolt of pure concentrated energy at its attacker. So swift and accurate was the streak of light that not even the Upgrade was quick enough to dodge out of its way. The energy bolt hit it in the center of its chest, knocking it off its feet. The creature flew backward, smoke coiling up from its body, and crashed down right in the middle of the makeshift minefield they had created.

The shooting stopped and an almost stunned silence filled the clearing. Casey rose shakily to her feet, hardly daring to hope.

Was this it? Was the thing dead?

As the alien lay there motionless, some of the men began to emerge cautiously from hiding.

Then the Upgrade stirred, flexing one of its huge hands.

Seizing his chance, McKenna yelled, “Light him up!”

Whoever was closest to the remote—Casey thought it might have been Nettles—grabbed it and pressed the button. They all flinched back, shielding their eyes and ears as best they could from the colossal BOOM! that shook the clearing. The Upgrade’s body lifted into the air and slammed back down again, orange powder—phosphorous—settling over it. If it had been a man, Casey thought, it would have been blown to smithereens twice over. But the creature, though barely conscious, still seemed to be intact.

Like piranhas around a much larger but ailing enemy, Loonies and mercs alike closed in for the kill. They opened fire from all directions, the Upgrade’s body jerking as a multitude of bullets spanged off its armor, and maybe even off its alien hide.

Casey turned to her right to see Nebraska leap up onto the boulder he’d been hiding behind, a flare gun in his hand. Shouting at the men to stand clear, he pointed it at the prone body of the Upgrade and pulled the trigger. The projectile arced across the clearing, a mini blazing comet. Nebraska’s aim was perfect. The flare hit the Upgrade dead center, the phosphorous on its body ignited, and suddenly the alien was engulfed from head to toe in flames.

That’s it, Casey thought with a kind of wonder. It’s dead. We’ve killed it. But as though it could read her mind, and wanted to prove her wrong, the Upgrade suddenly leaped to its feet, roaring and flailing, causing men to fall back before it. As it beat at the flames that had transformed it into a fire demon, McKenna kept circling it, kept firing at it—until suddenly his gun clicked empty.

“Mag,” he shouted, and Rory tossed one across to him. He caught it cleanly, but even before he could load it and resume firing, Traeger was emerging from hiding, shouting across at him to stand back.

McKenna had barely done so when Trager faced the Upgrade and let loose with the shoulder cannon. Oh, so now he wants to be a hero, Casey thought cynically. He fired once, then again, each shot a direct hit, each shot rocking the Upgrade back on its heels.

How much more punishment can it take? Casey wondered. One thing was for sure. The Upgrade was an incredibly tough motherfucker. But it wasn’t indestructible. Because nothing was indestruct—

All at once, glancing at Traeger, Casey noticed that the left leg of his pants had caught fire. The Upgrade’s flailing had caused little fires to break out everywhere, clumps of blazing foliage flying around the clearing like dying fireworks. Most fizzled out as they landed, but one must have drifted down onto the back of Traeger’s leg and set the fabric of his pants alight. Even now, flames were licking up his calf toward his knee—and he was so caught up in the assault on the Upgrade that he hadn’t even noticed.

“Hey! Traeger!” she yelled, gesturing at his burning pants.

Distracted, he jerked his head around, saw the flames, and panicked.

Big mistake.

As his head swiveled round, so did the shoulder cannon, in sync with his movements. Only now it was pointing at the back of his skull, and the sudden surge of adrenaline in his brain was enough to trigger it. There was a whoosh! as the cannon fired, and suddenly Traeger’s head was nothing but flying offal. As the merc standing closest to him was splattered with blood and shards of bone and porridgey lumps of brain matter, Traeger’s headless body staggered sideways a couple of paces, and then tumbled forward, hitting the ground with a graceless thump.

“Fuck me!” Casey blurted, and clapped a hand to her mouth. Traeger had been a ruthless fucker with a rotten black soul, but she still felt guiltily responsible for his death. If she hadn’t pointed out that his pants were on fire…

If she hadn’t pointed it out, he’d have burned to death anyway, she told herself firmly.

She still felt bad—though it was perhaps a good thing that she didn’t have the luxury of wallowing in remorse for long. With a bellow of rage, the Upgrade, still burning, rallied again, surging to its feet like a boxer on the ropes who refuses to go down, and swinging one vast, burning arm in the direction of a merc who had ventured too close to it. The merc leaped back with a yell, the Upgrade’s clawed hand missing his face by mere inches and smashing into a tree. Sturdy as it was, the tree splintered in a shower of sparks, several of its branches shaking loose and crashing to the ground. One of them embedded itself into the soft earth and toppled sideways, its torn end coming to rest against the thicker branch of another tree that jutted out from the trunk at an almost perfect right angle. Now the fallen branch, canted sideways, resembled a ladder leaning against the side of a house. And suddenly Casey saw Baxley leaping onto that ladder and scaling it like a monkey, his face twisted demonically, nothing in his eyes but the raging desire to bring their enemy down.

No! she thought as Baxley reached the top of the leaning branch and launched himself, screaming, through the air. He looked just like Bruce Lee, or Charlie Chan, arms and legs pinwheeling as he hurtled toward the still-burning Upgrade.

She cried out as he landed on its back and scrabbled for purchase, throwing an arm around its neck. In his other hand, Casey saw, he was holding a knife, which he used to stab the Upgrade savagely in the face, burying the blade deep into its right eye.

The Upgrade howled, and thrashed from side to side, but Baxley, his own clothes and hair burning now, held on. Then the Upgrade reached round with its left arm and plucked him from its shoulder. It held him in the air for a moment, dangling and kicking, and then it hurled him away from itself as hard as it could. Baxley flew through the air, only to hit the jutting javelin of a tree branch, which went clean through his body. It entered his back and burst out through his chest, like a metal skewer through a piece of barbecued meat.

As he hung there, pinned like a burning butterfly, twenty feet up in the air, Casey let out a gasp, too horrified even to scream. She’d known Baxley only a very short time, but due to the sheer intensity of what they’d shared, and the fact they’d put their lives on the line for each other time and again, she’d grown to think of him—as she thought of all the Loonies—as a brother. They’d been under sentence of death pretty much since they met, but it was still impossible to believe that, suddenly and violently, he was gone.

McKenna was far more used to death than Casey was, but even he stared up at Baxley with horror. Then he became aware of movement to his left, and turned to see Coyle stumbling forward, eyes wide, staring up at his friend in disbelief. “Help him!” Coyle screamed. “Someone help him!”

The Upgrade took advantage of the distraction to show that, despite being consumed by fire and half-blinded, it was not yet beyond fighting back. It flicked out its wrist once again, and a split second later its lethal throwing blade was whistling across the clearing. Before McKenna, or anyone else, knew what was happening, the blade had sliced through Coyle’s left leg like a laser beam, severing it cleanly from his body. With a spray of blood, the leg toppled one way and Coyle the other. McKenna heard Casey scream, and then Rory.

Spinning round, he saw the Upgrade turn and stumble away into the jungle. Despite its injuries, it moved fast, its burning shape flickering in and out between the blackness of the trees. Accompanied by Nebraska and Nettles, he gave chase. The thing was probably three-quarters dead already, but he wanted to finish the job if he could.

Lying on the ground, feeling the life drain out of him, Coyle looked up at his friend. Baxley was still burning, his body still twitching. Could he still feel pain? Coyle didn’t know, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He groped for his gun, which lay on the ground next to his right hand. His arm felt like lead, and the gun was ridiculously heavy, but through sheer force of will he gripped it, lifted it, leveled it, pulled the trigger.

His aim was true. He saw Baxley’s head snap back and his body slump forward, relaxed now. No more pain.

Don’t say I never do nothing for you, he thought fuzzily. Goodbye, old friend.

Then he died.

Casey might have been with Coyle at the moment of his death if she hadn’t been trying to save her own hide. As she was moving across the clearing toward him, and saw him groping for his gun, she heard a whistling sound from the far side of the clearing, faint at first but getting rapidly louder.

She knew what it was immediately. The Upgrade’s throwing blade, having taken off Coyle’s leg and kept on going, had now reached the end of its piece of invisible elastic and was heading back home. It was only the shock of seeing Baxley and Coyle die so horrifically, one after the other, that had made her forget all about it. Now she shouted a warning and threw herself to the ground.

She only just made it. Another second, and the blade would have gone through her without pause, smashing ribs and vertebrae and punching through her internal organs as if they weren’t even there.

Lying on the ground, she saw it flash above her head and fly into the blackness of the jungle, following the route taken not only by the fleeing Upgrade, but also by his pursuers.

McKenna and Nebraska.

Crashing through the undergrowth, rifles held diagonally across their chests, McKenna and Nebraska pursued their quarry with grim determination. The Upgrade was a constant flicker of flame through the trees ahead, and although it was still moving fast, it was clearly hampered by its injuries, which meant that both men could keep up with it easily.

McKenna wondered what would happen once the Upgrade was dead. With Traeger gone too, would the trumped-up charges against him melt away? And what about Casey and Nebraska and Nettles? Would they be free to resume whatever life they’d been living before they’d found themselves in a fight between a maverick offshoot of the US government and a couple of alien hunters? They were heroes now, after all. Heroes who may have helped save the world from—

Then the still-burning body of the Upgrade abruptly disappeared, interrupting his thoughts.

What had happened? Had the flames on the alien’s body finally petered out? Had it collapsed? He and Nebraska halted, a questioning look passing between them. After a moment, Nebraska gave a single nod, whose meaning McKenna understood without a word needing to be exchanged: Proceed with caution.

They resumed their pursuit, but slowly now, McKenna thinking that if he could wish for anything at that moment it would be a pair of night goggles. He kept his senses attuned, but there was no sound, aside from the usual rustle of leaves and foliage stirred by the warm night breeze, and no sign of a flame ahead or even above them.

They had been moving for maybe a couple of minutes when Nebraska suddenly drew in a sharp breath and grabbed McKenna’s arm. McKenna looked at him, thinking he must have spotted a movement or a flicker of flame, but instead he pointed at the ground directly ahead.

McKenna looked at where he was pointing—and as his eyes adjusted, a vertiginous dizziness swept over him. The blackness in front of him was not the jungle floor, as he’d thought, but the edge of a steep ravine. Another couple of seconds and he’d have stepped right off it and plunged into the depths below.

Unslinging his pack, he extracted a flashlight. He hadn’t wanted to draw attention to their position by using it before, but now he switched it on and shone the beam over the edge of the precipice.

Some thirty or forty meters below them was a creek bed, the water glistening blackly in the torchlight. And rising from the creek bed, though dispersing before it reached the lip of the ravine on which they were standing, was a pall of thick, gray smoke—as though something large, something that had been on fire, had crashed down into the water.

McKenna and Nebraska looked at each other again. This was it, then. The end of the road. The Upgrade had fallen over the precipice, and into the creek, and was almost certainly dead. But there was no way of checking, no way of clambering down the side of the ravine to make sure, especially in the dark.

McKenna opened his mouth to say they might as well head back, when Nebraska suddenly reached out a hand and shoved him to one side. As he fell to his right and Nebraska dived to his left, McKenna heard a high-pitched whistling sound, and then something flashed between them and arced down into the ravine.

What the hell, McKenna thought, then all at once he realized. It was the Upgrade’s throwing star, the one that had taken Coyle’s leg, and almost certainly his life. It was returning to its point of origin, the alien’s wrist gauntlet, which was hopefully, at this moment, being washed downstream, strapped to the charred corpse of an alien killer.

Reacting to a powerful electronic homing signal, the throwing star plunged over the side of the ravine and hurtled down toward the black thread of water below. Suddenly, as though in response, a huge arm, blackened and steaming but intact, thrust up through the surface of the water, taloned fingers clawing at the air.

The throwing star attached itself to the metal gauntlet encasing the wrist with a metallic snap. The hand flexed again, and then the water beside it surged and boiled as the rest of the body broke the surface.