If the Upgrade’s ship had continued to increase speed, McKenna would almost certainly have been ripped to shreds before the craft reached the ground. However, to avoid crashing, the alien must have employed the forward thrusters, because almost as soon as McKenna’s body dipped beneath the tree line he felt his forward momentum slowing down. Instead of punctured flesh and broken bones, therefore, he received only superficial injuries—scratches and bruises. Now that he’d avoided being shredded, though, his main problem was how he’d avoid hitting the ground first, and then the ship landing on top of him—but at that moment Fate intervened.
The wall panel stuck in the escape pod hatchway snapped in half, and suddenly McKenna was tumbling straight down between the trees. It was still a long way to the ground, but luckily the chunk of panel, which tumbled after him, was big enough to slow his progress. He dropped in increments, oofing and ouching as his body thumped against branches and was slashed by twigs. He was still four or five meters from the ground when the panel stuck in the crook of a branch and jammed tight, leaving him dangling, groaning, bleeding, bruised, and fighting desperately to stay conscious.
Although it was slowing all the while, the ship still hit the tops of the trees with a mighty WHUMPH! and ricocheted upward like a flat stone bouncing off the surface of a lake. Beyond the quarry and the trees was a huge area of swampland, and it was into this that the ship eventually crashed, skimming across an oily expanse of brackish water before hurtling headfirst into a tangle of fallen, moss-covered trees.
The impact caused the viewing port at the front of the ship to explode inward, and the Upgrade, which had been standing at the main control panel, to be ejected like a cork from a pop gun. It flew through the air, limbs pinwheeling, splashed down into the boggy water and was instantly submerged.
The crumpled, battered ship subsided, sinking a little further into the primordial ooze before coming to rest.
For several seconds the echoes of the bellowing chaos that for the last few minutes had disturbed this ancient stretch of land seemed to thrum in the twisted trees, to ripple across the water.
Then the echoes subsided, and all was silent once more.
McKenna came to, upside down, his side thudding with pain, his arms and legs scraped and bloody, and his clothing torn in too many places to count. Taking stock, he looked ahead of him, and through a thin layer of trees saw a green and brown spread of swamp below. The Upgrade’s ship sat half-submerged, canted at an angle, shattered trees downed around it. Something shifted beneath the mossy surface of the water, cutting a V-line toward him, and McKenna thought his luck had gone from astonishingly bad to astonishingly good and then to eaten-by-an-alligator.
But it wasn’t an alligator at all.
What rose from the swamp, huge and hunched over, was the Upgrade. Somehow, the gigantic Predator had been thrown from its ship. Where Rory might be, McKenna had no idea, but he knew that if this monster still lived, he needed to take every advantage he could find to try to kill it.
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.