I don't own either Predator or Wrong Turn.
X
Wrong Prey.
By TimeTraveller-1900.
The Predator trilled in alarm as his ship began to lose power.
He had been flying the ship out of the planet's atmosphere when the ship began to lose power and a series of small explosions only made it worse, and the ship lost height.
The familiar comforting hum of the antigravity engines and the rocket motors were vibrating alarmingly. Quickly the Predator interfaced with the ship's semi-intelligent AI and examined the damage. He had known the ship had taken damage during the hunt across the ocean where the humans from two of their countries were waging war.
According to the intelligence he had received before he had embarked on the hunt, the president of the neighbouring country had instigated a sudden invasion of a neighbouring country, although the Predator was unsure what the long-term goal was since invasions were usually done because the other was developing a dangerous technology, they had more resources, or they just wanted military glory, but nothing was known at this point.
It didn't matter.
War drew Predators to them because they knew the inhabitants of the worlds they visited and hunted on honed the killer instincts in the prey. The Predators were a race of warriors - for countless aeons, they had been travelling the universe, seeking out fresh prey to test themselves and prove themselves worthy of being hunters. To a Predator, nothing was greater, more thrilling, or more dangerous than coming face to face with the prey and defeating them in combat, removing the trophy - the skull and spinal column and placing it in the living quarters to display it with pride as a symbol of status and skill.
The Predator had been on Earth for a whole month (Earth time), hunting and collecting trophies out of the soldiers of two sides, while observing them at the same time. The invading soldiers varied in terms of skill. For all their equipment many of them were half-trained, and while the same could be true of the defending side in the conflict, the Predator had witnessed these particular humans were willing to do whatever it took to defend their homeland, which made the hunt more thrilling since he had seen them adopt increasingly new and savage methods to win. Once he had even broken into a prison camp where the invading side captured their soldiers, and the Predator had not approved of it. In his culture, an enemy was only defeated if they were dead, but the humans were sometimes so weak-minded that it made the Predators wonder why they bothered.
After he had narrowly defeated a group of humans, one of them who had somehow managed to survive, which made the Predator wonder if some of the humans had worked out he could only see body heat and had hidden themselves to take precautions, or he had simply missed them as a result of the chaotic fight, but either way, the human warrior had damaged his ships' engines on take off. The Predator had managed to get his ship high into the atmosphere before the damage made itself known, and he had begun to crash before he could dock his shuttle to the mothership and leave Earth.
And now he was going to crash.
He was falling out of orbit extremely fast, towards a continent several of his race had visited and hunted over the centuries, the most notable times being when the planet hadn't developed steam technology, never mind nuclear physics and a primitive warrior female killed a hunter, or when a hunter skillfully stalked and eliminated a team of human soldiers before being confronted by a superior human warrior, and that occasion where another warrior fought and killed a Predator in front of his hunting clan.
But he wasn't falling towards a jungle or a city, but rather to a large area of undeveloped land, and when he learnt of the destination, the Predator did everything he could to make it so. In a deserted forested area, he could find ways of repairing his ship.
The Predator checked the damage control reports, and he trilled aggressively in anger and horror. The damage was worse than he had expected. Predator ships were propelled at sub-light speeds with a mixture of gravimetric engines to lower the inertial mass and fusion rockets. When the human damaged the ship, the explosion damaged the fusion drive, causing a rupture in the fuel conduits, and now the ship was losing power despite the gravimetric engines trying to get them safely out of the atmosphere. But now the damage to the engines was causing more damage to the powerplant, and to the rest of the systems.
Quickly the Predator tapped a command into the wrist computer on his wrist, sending a transmission to the mother ship, knowing it would be picked up and would begin transmitting a distress call to the homeworld. He wasn't worried about the call being traced; it was beyond Earth's technology.
When the ship finally crashed on Earth, the Predator had already wrapped himself in a protective webbed cocoon to blanket himself to stop the blow, but he still felt the jarring impact, knowing that the ship would receive more damage.
Once he was sure the ship was not going to move, a few minutes later, the Predator slowly cut his way out of the cocoon, and he shook off any aches or twinges he felt as he climbed slowly to his feet and he began checking the damage control reports. He grunted. A Predator version of a sigh before he went to check for himself. The moment he saw the damage, the Predator knew he had no hope of making a difference here.
The crash had caused even more damage despite several backup systems kicking in, but this ship would never fly again unless he could get it back to the homeworld.
The Predator could see the destruct system and the cloaking device still worked, but he was loathe to use them since the power plant had taken quite a bit of damage, but luckily it wasn't critical. Checking his wrist computer, the Predator quickly checked the distress call being transmitted by his mother ship. It was still going strong. Good. Underneath his bio mask, the Predator's mouth and mandible parts contorted into his race's version of a smile.
But what surprised him the most was there were no human settlements for miles around, but it didn't matter. The fewer humans near him at the moment, the better because he could ensure the security of his ship.
He planned to explore the forests around him. It might take his people a while to pick up the distress call up and despatch a recovery team. At that time he could explore the forests and give himself something to do. There was no chance he could repair his ship in the state it was in and he had no desire to remain inside it personally.
A good hunter was always prepared for a hunt, or for a fight.
That was an old expression that was not without foundation within his race's extensive culture and philosophy. The Predators had learnt over the years to always be prepared for anything when they landed on a planet, while there may not be humans out here although it was certain there might be individuals or small family groups who lived off the land, there were predators in this wilderness. The Predator replaced his razor discs and razor net supplies, and after checking his plasma caster to make sure it hadn't been damaged, he put it back onto his shoulder mount.
The Predator hesitated before he removed several drones from their mounts on the walls. Capable of flight with built-in invisibility, the drones were kept as spies for the hunter. Many elders dismissed them, believing that they stunted a hunter's skills, but the Predator wasn't quick to dismiss them since they could discover potential prey miles away. And besides, he didn't know how long he would be; the more security he kept around his ship, the better.
Opening up the airlock, the Predator stepped out of his crashed ship slowly. Gripping the sides of the airlock doorway with his organic arm and his prosthetic limb - he had lost his right arm during his Blooding ritual when he had hunted a serpent and sliced its head in two before he was attacked by four others, and he had fought the others quickly but one of them bit into his arm before tearing it off at just the same time as he cut its head off, spilling acid into the wound, fighting the pain he had managed to barely kill the others and collect several trophies as a reminder to all hunters he had lost a limb and was in absolute mind bending pain but he had emerged victorious; his elders had been impressed with his skills, and had been even more impressed with his focus before he'd injected himself with a painkiller, but the area had been so badly chemically burnt by the acid which destroyed so much flesh and so many nerves that he'd had a prosthetic limb attached instead of having a clone arm grown and attached to the joint; the incident had been the first and last time he'd hunted the serpents down and he didn't care what anyone thought since he had five skulls cleaned and polished and he had several tails that were also cleaned and polished hanging in his quarters - the Predator learnt out of his ship and into the open air.
For a moment he stood there, surveying the area, but something was wrong.
The forest was silent. The Predator had visited Earth many times and he knew forests and jungles were usually vibrating with noise from different animals. But there was nothing here, and it made the Predator's instincts super alert. Activating the invisibility screen on thought command, the Predator swung around when he suddenly heard a twig snap behind him, the sound was super enhanced by the audio receptors in his mask, but as he swung around, he realised something had been thrown at him but he realised he was too late to avoid.
The Predator bellowed with surprise and rage when he felt the axe suddenly hit him in the chest. For a moment the Predator was stunned somebody had managed to sneak up on him, and he realised his distraction had been a costly mistake. Pushing the pain to the side, the Predator turned and quickly scanned the area, and saw a human's heat signature standing a fair distance away from where his ship had crash-landed. Over the audio receptors, the sound of cackling only enraged the Predator even more than before.
Tearing the axe out of his flesh, tearing small pieces of flesh and spilling droplets of luminous green blood onto the forest floor, the Predator activated the plasma caster and activated the targeting sensors.
The creature was still cackling and the Predator zoomed in on the human's face before targeting the creature's chest. The creature didn't see the blast coming. It shrieked in surprise and was blasted to the ground…..and then a few minutes later, it stood up! The Predator tilted his head curiously. Body armour? Interesting. This warranted an investigation. The Predator charged at the creature while it still staggered around and got its equilibrium back.
By the time the human creature realised what was happening, the Predator was on him, his hand claws already extended. The creature took out a knife and made a sound which reminded the Predator of the clicking mandibles of his own race, and he made a few jabs. A human might have dodged them, but the Predator was not one of them. Instead, he growled and clicked his own mandibles threateningly, and impaled the creature's knife arm with his claws. The creature screamed, but the Predator twisted the arm until he and the creature were close together.
For the first time, the Predator could see the features of the human creature and he realised something was wrong, extremely wrong.
The Predator had fought and hunted dozens of humans in the past, so he was a veteran expert in them. There was something odd and wrong about this creature's facial heat cast.
The creature continued goading and taunting the Predator with that strange laugh, before lunging clumsily towards the Predator…who simply dodged out of the way and impaled the creature with his arm claws. The creature screamed, but the Predator, deciding to end the fight now because he wanted answers, tore the claws out and quickly tore the creature's spine and head out of the body.
Once the creature's remains were on the floor, the Predator began examining the DNA using its scanner built into his wrist gauntlet. Predators regularly discovered new kinds of prey, and their genetic structures were analysed by the homeworld's scientists. The Predator's suspicions were confirmed. This creature was a human, but instead of being some strange subspecies his race had never encountered, the genetic structure was warped, and the computer quickly worked out why.
The creature was the subject of inbreeding.
The Predator's race had encountered individuals who were warped by inbreeding before, and depending on the severity, they either made poor or reasonably good prey. But the Predator wasn't sure about this creature. But what surprised the Predator was how strong the mutant was, and how quickly they seemed to recover from injuries which would otherwise kill a normal human; granted, they seemed to die permanently if the damage was greater, but otherwise, they seemed to have a higher than normal healing capacity.
That could be appealing to other hunters and merited further study. But it was the inbreeding factor that bothered him the most. He supposed it made sense; this part of Earth was a long way from other human habitations and settlements, and what few humans there were likely did not have a very strong gene pool. But one thing sprang to mind, this area seemed silent to animal life. Were they connected?
Still puzzled, the Predator rose slowly to his feet and decided to continue investigating the mystery.
X
The Predator had barely risen to his feet when his senses alerted him to a presence. He swung around, and just in time before the arrow thudded into a tree where his head would have been. The arrow itself wouldn't have fatally harmed the Predator, as their skin and muscles and their bone structures were more robust than a human's, but it would have still hurt.
Swinging around with an angry grow, the Predator's heat vision caught the sight of another creature only a few yards away. The Predator took a moment, adjusting his helmet's genetic sensors to study this new human. It was the same thing. The human in front of him was genetically inbred. The creature quickly slotted in a fresh arrow, but it was too late as the Predator took out his razor disc and sent it towards the creature, who barely had any time to react before the disc sliced through their head, spilling thick liquid all over the forest floor. Deftly the Predator caught the disc and he leapt into the air, engaging his invisibility screen with thought command.
X
After the last confrontation, the Predator's senses were on full alert as he leapt from tree to tree with a more agile strength that would have made any human Olympic gymnast envious. As he further explored the forest, the Predator cast his thermal scanners around the forest and he found nothing. The Predator knew Earth was a very rich planet when it came to life, despite all of humanity's stupid actions in polluting and irradiating their own world, so it was strange to come to a part of the planet where life was nonexistent. Even in deserts, there was some life.
But not here.
There weren't even any heat signatures of small rodents or smaller animals. But it didn't make any sense to the Predator since the forest was lush enough to support a very large diversity of life. There was a huge amount of room for flying animals, birds, and land animals that would provide a suitable food chain, but there was nothing. Using his thought command control, the Predator was scanning through every section of the EM spectrum to look for clues.
Thanks to the beacon and tracking sensors built into his helmet and computer, the Predator was building up quite an excellently detailed map of the surrounding forest from where he was all the way to his ship. According to his computer, he had travelled over 2 Earth miles when he came across a half-decayed skeleton on the ground and he went to investigate. His people were familiar with the species humans called 'bears,' large predatory creatures that in the past had been hunted by humans as a way of proving themselves as warriors while retaining the meat and the fur.
As the Predator examined the skeletal structure, he discovered something.
His people might have been a race of warriors, but he knew as a creature - animal or sentient - grew, they would absorb nutrients and minerals into their skeletons. The forest was easily large enough to support a large population so they would not have any need to migrate. As the Predator took samples and allowed his computer to analyse the readings he discovered traces of toxin in what had once been a very large bear, which spoke volumes about its original health. The traces of toxins would have been hard to detect by human science, but Predator technology was created to very high standards, aided by the various technologies of the races they plundered from. They were not poisons used for any kind of pest control. No, these poisons were used in human industrial processes and dumped because the humans were too lazy and incompetent to bother looking for any kind of proper treatment.
The Predator felt the puzzle was beginning to be explained. From what he could tell, the poisons of some local human industry had killed off a large amount of the animal life in the forest, and it was so total that very few animals had likely survived, and the ones that had were likely breeding within their own gene pool. Everything else had likely died off. The Predator left soon after examining the skeleton, deciding to learn more about the lay of the land and to find something meaningful to do with his time while he waited for the rescue party. And the presence of inbred humans might not be seen by many of his kin as a test of a hunter's calibre but they were different, and he hoped they could provide a challenge.
By now the message must have reached homeworld and a rescue party formed of specialists who were trained in the recovery of ships and equipment would have been assembled to come for him. All he had to do was wait, and learn more about what was happening here. It wasn't a particularly interesting mystery for the Predator, but thanks to the toxin clue, he had a good idea of what happened.
X
By the time the Predator found the road, he had solved the mystery of the inbred humans and this strangely quiet forest. When his audiovisual sensors detected the sound of running water the Predator soon discovered a pipe, long since corroded, spilling a poisonous chemical slick into the water. The poison had entered the water supply and poisoned the drinking water, and so everything had died although he was surprised it was so complete and devastating. And the few organisms that survived - human and animal - had survived only by inbreeding while others either left or died so they could avoid the risk of further poisoning and move somewhere else.
But the Predator only had a few ideas and he wasn't really interested in the mystery anymore since it had already been solved in his mind.
And yet…
There was something niggling at the back of his mind; if the animals and humans were inbred here, how did they eat? What sources of food were there here?
But as the Predator moved through the forest, he was surprised to see one of the human ground vehicles travelling along one of the roads, distinctive thanks to its sound and the heat signatures. Strange. He had assumed this region was too remote to be visited by any human, but he couldn't deny reality. It seemed humans did still pass through. The Predator watched as the ground vehicle moved.
And then it made a metal rending sound as it swerved as it lost control before stopping. The Predator was stunned by the action. He hadn't expected it, but as he watched he saw the hidden thermal signatures in the bushes close to the ground vehicle. The Predator trilled quietly in a quick growl of surprise.
He knew what this was.
A hunting party.
Suddenly the pieces were slotting into place for the Predator, and he watched as two humans left the ground vehicle, talking in their language.
"For Christ's sake, Harry, I told you about your driving-!" A distinctive human female voice shouted, but the male shouted back, "It wasn't me."
"Mum, dad, what happened?" The Predator watched as one of the ground vehicle's windows opened and a human head stuck out of it.
"I don't know," the male replied as he went and bent down by the wheels. "Oh my god!"
"What is it?"
"Our wheels have been shredded, that's what's happened," the male, the patriarch of this family group replied.
The Predator nodded his invisible head as he translated the humans' words. That made sense. He knew enough of the ground vehicles to know how fragile they were.
The patriarch of the human family walked further down the road, and he bent down and picked up a thick band of wire. "There's barbed wire over here. Someone put this here deliberately."
Fear seeped into the patriarch's mate's voice, "But…who? Why?"
The Predator would never know if the patriarch was going to reply or not to that question. He just watched as one of the mutants throw a weapon with impressive strength and accuracy that spoke of many long hours of dedicated practice, aimed right at the human's head. The female screamed in horror as her mate collapsed and the Predator's audio sensors and own impressive hearing picked up three distinct younger, more immature human voices. This family group was quite large.
And they were in danger.
But why? A suspicion was becoming strengthened within the mind of the Predator.
A primal cry borne within the throat of one of the inbred humans echoed through the nearby woods, frightening and confusing the family group. The female adult tried to get back into the ground vehicle for cover, but it was too late. An arrow thudded into her back, and as she collapsed to the ground like her mate, the sounds of panic from the immature younglings in the back of the vehicle escalated.
One of the mutant humans leapt out of the cover of the woods and threw themselves to the ground near her body, and like an animal, he tore the flesh from the body and ate it.
The Predator trilled in disgust. Cannibalism. So he was right. That was how the mutant humans had survived this long. There was nothing to eat around here and inbreeding had affected their brains and transformed them into the lowest form of savage life. The Predators were a warrior race and contrary to the races who knew of them and their savage ways, they were never going to lower themselves to this. Even at their worst, with the blood feuds between the clans, none of their race would ever turn to cannibalism.
The Predator was pleased he had not made trophies out of the two creatures he had killed earlier. Their taint would have made them reviled by him, and he did not regret leaving them where they lay. To rot.
But as he watched the hunting party from his vantage point in the trees, the Predator knew the younglings screaming at the loss of their parents were vulnerable now. They likely couldn't drive the vehicle, although even if they could their control would be shaky and they wouldn't likely get very far anyway. They couldn't escape and run away, they would be picked off too easily. They were trapped.
Rising to his full height on the thick tree branch which was so large and thick it didn't even creak as it took his full weight, the Predator prepared himself for the fight ahead. Ordinarily, the Predator wouldn't really care about humans enough to save them, but these were different circumstances. Nobody deserved the fate that awaited them.
The ground vehicle was surrounded by the inbred mutants. Many races got it wrong when it came to Predators. Yes, they were a race of warriors, who took undeniable pride in what they did as they sought to prove themselves as masters over other races in the universe. But at the same time, they could be merciful and even generous, and sometimes even borderline compassionate. The Predator leapt off of the tree, and as gravity caught his body, he targeted one of the mutant's heads and fired once his cannon had compensated for the decrease in height. The blast took off the mutant's head and shocked the younglings in the vehicle and the mutants. The Predator launched his discs at the mutants, but one of them got out of the way just in time but the second one wasn't as lucky. The disc sliced its head, making the corpse fall to the ground in a thick burst of blood.
A loud cry from behind made the Predator swing around, and he caught sight of the massive hulking mutant rushing towards him with a large cutting weapon.
The Predator extended his hand claws, and he jumped out of the way, slashing the mutant cannibal creature with his claws, which pierced the bone of the creature, but it didn't stop the creature from trying to cleave him in half. The Predator had to admire the creature's determination and his persistence; no matter how many wounds they took, they still came after him. The blade of the weapon smashed into the window of the ground vehicle, smashing the glass and making the younglings inside scream louder. The Predator snarled as he became tired of the seemingly never-ending fight, and he grabbed the mutant's arm with his cybernetic limb and crushed the mutant's hand in a grip that was several times stronger than the grip of his own organic limb.
But the mutant barely noticed the pain, so the Predator flung him away and fired his Type 2 razor net. The thick lines wrapped astound the mutant and the tree, and the creature shrieked as the lines tightened and sliced through the mutant, and the trunk of the tree disintegrating both in a shower of gore and wood.
The Predator turned to the younglings in the vehicle. There were three of them, cowering inside. The Predator considered what he was going to do to take them away from here, and how he was going to reassure them he had no intention of hurting them. The Predator had the power to mimic, but he didn't have the translation feature since he hadn't seen any point in using it, and he didn't have anything that could make them fall asleep to make it easier to carry them away from here and take them back to his ship as it was the safest place for them. And then it occurred to him. His ship possessed a hover bout, a vehicle that could arrive and take him away if he was too badly injured or weakened on a hunt.
The Predator sent a thought command message to his ship's subspace relay to order the hover bout to come to him, and it arrived a few minutes later. Once it arrived, the Predator tore the door off, making the younglings inside scream…
X
Every Predator ship possessed suspended animation capsules to store prey that they could kidnap and place in an entirely different setting to give both the prey and the hunter the opportunity to give each other a challenge. The Predator had a hard time making sure the younglings were secured on the hover bout before bringing them back to his ship. It had taken a while for the humans to realise that he wasn't actually going to harm any of them, and it had taken him longer than he would have liked to bring back to his ship.
But they were here now. They had been put into the capsules and they would remain here until his people came, and he would take them to the nearest settlement, after that they could be indoctrinated into another family group to replace the one that was destroyed today.
The Predator checked the capsules. He had set them to the right rate recorded for humans, and while his checks into the systems of the ship had shown it to be heavily damaged, he had never really needed to use the capsules since he had never bothered understanding the practice of kidnapping prey from their natural environment since there was enough challenge. But the capsules were still working, and he just set them for the human setting.
Once he was finished he checked the latest message. The rescue team would be arriving in the morning. Good. He would just wait for the rescue party to arrive and then he would return home with the trophies he had collected originally. These younglings could stay on Earth where they belonged. He had no intention of going for those mutants. They were not pure enough to be prey, they were just feral savages.
While he waited for the dawn of the next day, the Predator found himself with nothing to do beyond watching several reenactments of legendary hunts and some of his people's original forays into the universe, but later that night he was disturbed by the ship's sensors. The Predator was embarrassed by how relaxed he had been. A warrior was always alert.
He checked the sensors. A band of mutant cannibals were right outside the ship, and judging by the number of them they were planning to attack him and his ship. The Predator wondered if one of them had seen the hover bout earlier, and alerted more of them that there was prey. The Predator prepared to defend himself. After checking his weapons and slotting another plasma cannon onto his shoulder, the Predator leapt out of his ship.
His helmet sensors picked up the heat of torches approaching the ship, and he counted over thirteen of them, but he could see the thermal signatures of sixteen of them.
The Predator growled and leapt into the trees, instantly engaging his light-bending camouflage screen and taking a vantage point up in the trees. Once he reached the top branch, the Predator began scanning below and he saw that it was going to be a massacre. Readying his plasma cannons and his razor disks and his dart guns, the Predator waited until the mutants came closer before he leapt down, letting out an otherworldly alien cry to disorientate and confuse them before he fired the plasma cannons and blew two heads apart before he launched the razor disks. The mutants couldn't exactly see the alien weapons as they were too confused and too shocked by the sudden attack, but when they did see the disks it was too late, and several of them were slaughtered before they could do anything to get out of the way or defend themselves.
Using his superior agility and ape-like speed, the Predator was able to launch himself at the mutants and cut them down, killing three of them in rapid succession with the cannon.
X
By morning, the Predator's fellow hunters arrived to take him and the human younglings away. The rescue party were intrigued by the inbred mutants, and a few of them lamented they hadn't had the chance to engage them in a fight, but once they discovered the extent of their feral nature, they shared their brother's disgust and they agreed to help him take the human younglings to a nearby human settlement far from here.
But as the ship cloaked, in the woods a lone humanoid figure wearing ragged clothes and thinning long hair gazed up with distorted deformed features.
