Chapter 10: The Hunt Begins
Leo was still running his mouth, jerking his own chain about how he was going to be the next big hero.
Suddenly, Billy—the squad's human radar—snapped to a halt. He didn't just stop; he froze, his eyes boring into the deep, oppressive shadows of the forest ahead.
Dutch didn't need to be told twice. He signaled the squad to go dark. Every man slid into the brush, weapons raised, hearts hammering. Dutch crept up to Billy, intending to ask for a sitrep, but he stopped when he saw the tracker's face.
Billy, the man who feared nothing, was drenched in a cold, oily sweat. His eyes were wide, fixed on the canopy.
"Talk to me, Billy," Dutch whispered.
Billy didn't answer. He looked like he was staring at his own ghost. Dutch had to grab him by the tactical vest and shake him. "Snap out of it! What do you see?"
Billy's pupils dilated. "Major... there's something in those trees. Something... wrong."
Before Dutch could press for more, the silence was shattered. Anna—the guerrilla prisoner—didn't miss her chance. She grabbed a heavy fallen branch and swung it with everything she had, cracking it against the back of Leo's skull.
Leo went down like a sack of wet flour.
Anna didn't hesitate. She shoved past Monica and Jerry, diving headlong into the thickest part of the jungle.
"Prisoner's rabbiting!" Hawkins, the team's radio tech, shouted as he took off after her.
Dillon looked at the three "specialist" candidates and felt a vein throb in his temple. "You useless pieces of shit! Move! Get her back!"
Leo, nursing a growing knot on his head and his ego bruised, scrambled up, snarling. "That bitch! I'm going to break her legs!"
He took off after Hawkins. Surprisingly, Leo was fast. His "outdoor enthusiast" hobby wasn't just talk; he moved through the brush with decent agility, matching Hawkins' pace.
***
Hawkins was a blur. He ducked under vines and leaped over fallen trunks, quickly closing the gap on the terrified Anna. He tackled her hard, pinning her to the muddy floor.
"Stop struggling!" Hawkins grunted, pinning her wrists. "You're done!"
Anna didn't look at him. She was staring past his shoulder, her face a mask of primal, soul-crushing terror.
Hawkins frowned, following her gaze. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it—a shimmering, refractive distortion in the air. A humanoid shape, like warped glass, was lunging toward him.
It was too fast. Hawkins didn't even have time to scream before a jagged wrist blade carved through his throat, opening him from ear to ear.
Leo skidded to a halt a few yards away, his boots splashing in a puddle. He saw the shimmering ghost standing over Hawkins. Panic surged through him, and he fumbled to raise his rifle.
"I'll kill you! I'll kill—"
Three blood-red dots flickered onto Leo's forehead.
A split second later, a bolt of electric-blue plasma tore through the air. The energy impact was catastrophic. Leo's head, along with half his neck, didn't just die—it was vaporized into a fine red mist and scorched bone.
[Candidate 952703 has been ELIMINATED by the Predator.]
Back in the brush, Jerry and Monica heard the sharp, high-pitched screech of the system notification.
"Leo? Leo's dead?!" Jerry shrieked, his voice hitting a falsetto. "He met the Boss? He's dead!"
Jerry collapsed, shaking like a crackhead in withdrawal, refusing to take another step.
Monica stared into the dark woods. Panic was clawing at her throat, but she remembered Dante's voice. Stick to Anna. Stay unarmed.
She gritted her teeth, ignored Jerry's pathetic whimpering, and bolted toward where she'd heard the blast. She didn't stop. She ran past the smell of burnt flesh, disappearing into the green maze.
"Don't go!" Jerry wailed. "You'll be next!"
Monica didn't look back.
***
By the time Dutch and the others reached the site, the jungle was silent again. They found a headless corpse in CIA fatigues and a pile of steaming, wet entrails scattered across the ferns.
Anna was there, huddled on the ground, her face splashed with fresh gore.
Dutch grabbed her, checking for wounds. "Not her blood," he muttered, his voice dropping an octave. "So... whose?"
Poncho stepped back from the remains, his face grim. "Major... the headless one is the blonde kid. As for the guts... I think they belong to Hawkins."
"You think?" Dutch snapped. "Where's the rest of him?"
"Gone, Major. Just gone."
Dutch's jaw tightened. He turned to Anna, his voice a low growl. "Talk to me. Who did this? Was it your people?"
Anna was catatonic. It took Poncho shouting in her face three times before she whispered, "The jungle... it came alive and took them."
"Bullshit!" Dillon barked. "It's a guerrilla ambush! Dutch, their main force is closing in. We need to move before they circle us!"
"You're full of it, Dillon," Poncho countered. "We're ahead of their line. Nobody could have gotten behind us that fast."
"Enough!" Dutch shouted. "I'm not leaving Hawkins behind to be humiliated like Hopper's team. We find him, and we find whatever did this. Wide sweep! Move out!"
The squad fanned out, their nerves frayed to the breaking point. Hawkins was the heart of the team—the guy who kept them sane with his shitty dirty jokes. Now he was just a memory in the mud.
Blain, the team's heavy gunner, hefted "Old Painless"—his customized M134 Minigun. He spat a stream of tobacco juice. "Come on, you bastards. Show yourselves. I've got plenty of 'painless' to go around."
A bush rustled in front of him. Blain leveled the six-barrel monster, his finger twitching on the trigger.
A small lizard scurried out.
Blain let out a shaky breath, half-smirking at his own jumpiness. He started to turn, but he never finished the motion.
An electric-blue bolt of pure heat slammed into his back.
BOOM.
The plasma bolt tore through his chest cavity, vaporizing his lungs and heart instantly. He hit the ground like a felled redwood.
Mac, Blain's closest friend, heard the thud and turned just in time to see a shimmering silhouette standing over Blain's body. He saw two glowing yellow eyes peering out of the distortion.
"CONTACT!!" Mac screamed, his voice raw with grief and rage.
He didn't wait for a command. He opened up with his assault rifle, screaming as he held the trigger down.
"DIE! YOU MOTHERFUCKER, DIE!!"
The bullets seemed to clip the creature's leg, but it didn't slow down. It leaped into the canopy, vanishing into the leaves.
Mac didn't stop. He dropped his empty rifle, grabbed "Old Painless" from Blain's dead hands, and let the minigun scream.
The six barrels spun into a blur of fire. A storm of lead tore into the jungle, shredding trees, vines, and everything in its path. The rest of the squad arrived and added their own fire, turning the treeline into a literal blender of wood pulp and smoke. Poncho started lobbing grenades into the brush, the explosions making the ground tremble.
When the last shell casing hit the dirt, the jungle was a graveyard of splintered wood. Nothing could have survived that storm.
Poncho crept into the smoke to search. Dutch grabbed Mac, who was still shaking, his eyes wild.
"Mac! Look at me!" Dutch shouted. "Who killed Blain? What did you see?"
Mac gasped for air, his voice trembling. "It was a ghost, Major... it had eyes like fire, and it was invisible. That's all... that's all there was."
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A/n: This is a bonus chapter for a 5 star review. If you want to see what happens next asap, keep those 5 star reviews coming! (You've got 4/10 chances left.)