The Predator: Hunters and Hunted by James A. Moore

Author:James A. Moore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc.

16

Fowler was the one who found it. He remembered that clearly enough. The man was nearly quivering with excitement when they got close.

“Maybe half a click from us. These tracks are as fresh as they come.” By that point Fowler was whispering, because they had no idea what they were up against, only that it was deadly in the extreme.

Suddenly there was a scream behind them. It was Simons, with a nearly perfect round hole driven through the back of his skull. Whatever had hit him, it punched through his head and into a tree he’d been leaning against for a moment. It was a damned bad way to die and that was all there was to it.

Simons had been at the back of the group, yes, but he was plainly visible to Eppinger and Groff. They heard him scream and turned in time to see his head slammed against the tree. They’d watched while he died from an injury that appeared for no apparent reason. It wasn’t a bullet wound. It wasn’t an explosive. It was just a death blow that shouldn’t have been possible.

Then things went sideways.

Eppinger and Groff sent a hail of lead, tearing the hell out of the trees behind Simons’s corpse. If anyone was back there they were dead before the firing was done. But when they checked, if there was anything at all that they had hit and killed, there was no physical evidence.

Fowler scanned the area as carefully as he could.

“There,” he hissed. “Up in the trees.”

By the time Elliott looked, there was nothing to see.

“What was it?”

“I don’t know,” Fowler admitted. “Just movement—I couldn’t get a good look.”

They kept looking. There was nothing else to do about it. They grabbed the dog tags, wrapped Simons up in a canvas sack. The body had to be left behind, though. If they could, they’d pick it up on the way back, but there was no telling when that would be. They had every intention of continuing their march until they found what they were looking for.

Elliott said a prayer for the man.

* * *

His faith was tested for the next two days.

Groff disappeared. They never found an indication of what happened to him. No body, no tags. Not even a drop of blood. It was always possible that he just decided to run, but Elliott didn’t believe it for a second.

A few hours later they found Eppinger, or at least most of him. Something had literally torn his skull and spine free of his body. The remains were close by, yet he’d never made a sound. That was the most terrifying part. The poor bastard went off to relieve himself—his pants were still down around his ankles when they found him—and something killed him and pulled him in half without making enough noise to alert the men standing maybe thirty yards away.

* * *

The third day saw Carter skinned. The man had several tattoos that he’d gotten abroad. Morbidly Elliott wondered if that was why his flesh was peeled away.

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