Predator Big Game 11

Both Nakai and Tilden were slow to get up. They both kept their rifles aimed on the place where the creature had disappeared, just in case it wanted to come back and finish the job of killing them all. It had come close as it was.

Finally, Tilden said, "Shit."

Nakai pushed himself to his feet and shouldered his rifle. The creature wasn't coming back. It had won this battle. It didn't need to return. Nakai looked around him. The flares slowly drifted down and went out, leaving only the fires from the wrecked gunship and the two burning humvees to light the valley. Flickering yellow light that revealed broken weapons, and bodies, and blood.

"Major?" Tilden said, moving to where Major Lee lay, facedown. "Major?"

Nakai stood over him as Tilden rolled Lee over. His face was gone, blown off when a burst of blue flame had caught the right cheek. Only smoking, stinking, cauterized brains filled the area where Lee's face had been. Tilden quickly stood and took a step back, forcing himself to breathe deeply. It was the image of nightmares. Nakai did the same, and together they stood there and surveyed the carnage. Of the thirty-some soldiers and commandos who had gone into battle against one creature, fewer than ten remained.

Beside one humvee, the colonel stood, shaking his head in complete disbelief. Nakai could almost read his thoughts. It should have been enough. If they had brought this much weaponry in on any human, no matter how well defended, the man would be dead. They had wounded this thing, but they hadn't
destroyed it. Nakai suspected that they hadn't even come close.

The colonel wasn't moving yet. He looked stunned.
Nakai knew how he felt. One creature had defeated this many well-trained troops, in conditions that favored the army, not the creature.

"What the hell is this thing?" Tilden asked.

"Adikgashii," Nakai said.

Tilden looked at him, his mouth open. "If that thing is Adikgashii," Tilden said. "Who is Nayenezgani?"

Nakai stared at the ridge where the creature had disappeared, then said softly, "I am."-pg.632-633 pg.23

The rest of the night was like a long nightmare for Nakai. It took the remaining men over an hour to check the entire battlefield for wounded. There weren't any. It seemed that when that a blue ray hit a human, it killed him. Period. Nakai had never seen so many human body parts not attached to full bodies in all his life. The stench was the worst part. Bodies in pieces had an odor all their own.

The light, thin as it was, fell on the destruction. The humvees were crumpled hunks of metal in the midst of a ruined landscape. Bodies, unmoved except to be checked for life, were sprawled where they fell. Guns sat upright in the dirt, or bent in half by the force of blows. Nakai had never seen anything like it in his life. He hoped not to see anything like it again.-pg.634-635 chpt.24