Dreaded Waters [A Predator Story]

IV. Demise and Regret

The underground cave below Xunantunich.

The three cave explorers have come face-to-face with a gruesome being from another world in a cavern underneath miles of water and stone. Eyes wide with shock and terror as bloodthirsty Flint closes in on her team, Kim breathes heavily but quick intakes as she shakes off whatever sweat or perspiration she has on her brow and starts to play the peacemaker. She mentally devises a plan to slowly back out of the cave without showing signs of intimidation and escape the same route her team came in through.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?" Tamara shrieks as she begins to panic.
Clearly, this wasn't gonna be easy as she hoped. Tamara was looking at a creature straight out of a person's nightmares and was seemingly trapped underground.
"Tamara, calm down!" Kim urged before giving her a look of assurance. "We'll get out of this, I promise."
Taking Kim's words to heart, Tamara does as she says. Now let's hope nothing else goes awry.
Looking directly at Kim, and stops walking as he cocks his head with a suspicious clicking purr, Flint scans each of the human divers on thermal and skeletal imaging with his Bio-Mask. He was displeased to see that the intruders picked up from Hu'Kuo's motion sensors were a small team of explorers and not gun-toting mercenaries that he would consider worthy prey. Nevertheless, he was in the mood for a bloodbath for whatever wanders into his hidden base and pilfers his loot. Looking at each of them, Flint takes his time to decide which to pick off first.
Perhaps the only male in this team, who's frightened the most by his fidgeting.
"Back up, stay calm..."
Those were the words Kim chose to ease the tension. Unfortunately for her and Tamara, they apparently fell on deaf ears. Donny, having been freaked out by this monster copying his voice, reaches down to his calf.
"Calm?! You want CALM!?"
On insane and irrational impulse, Donny pulls out his knife!
"I'll show you calm...BACK OFF!"
Hysteric, Donny frantically waves his knife around in a frenzy. He didn't want to die miles below the surface to some monstrous freak with tentacle-like dreadlocks.
Flint, on the other hand, saw this as an opportunity to act upon his instincts with Donny foolishly waving his blade around.
"<Finally, something fun to skewer.>" Flint growled in a low voice.
Armed with both his fully charged Plasmacaster on his left shoulder and clutching his retracted Combistick in the vice grip of his right claws, Flint prepared to move in for the kill.
"Donny, don't!!" Kim pleaded to her less than composed teammate.
But by then, it was already too late.
Flint extends his Combistick with a sudden flick of his wrist, the ring of the metal echoed loud enough to ring throughout the cave's interior walls, making the human divers flinch with even more fear. The most terrified of all was Donny. He just made the grave and hapless mistake of threatening a Yautja, who by their sworn mandate, will kill without hesitation or mercy if their prey looks worthy enough. Once his spear was out, Flint thrusts his long-ranged weapon straight in the direction of the diver who threatened him: Donny. By the time Donny could get the chance to reach from the noise ringing in his ears, his fate was already sealed. The moment the piercing metal of Flint's Combistick seamlessly makes contact to Donny's sternum, the speartip dug it's a way through his chest, impaling his upper body and ripping out of his back! Donny couldn't say a word or breathe as his throat was clogged with a stream of his own blood that gushed from his mouth, making him give off a gurgling croak. Crumbling to his knees and falling on his side with a ringing thud, Donny dies in seconds with a blank expression on his face.
"DONNY!!!!!"Tamara screams as she could only watch her long-time travel friend get a metal spear through his chest.
Kim was just as terrified as Tamara. She ran over to Donny's body, mortified beyond all measure.
"DONNY!!!" She cries out, turning his corpse over. "Oh, Jesus...this can't be...please no.."
There was nothing more she could do now. Kim just lost a teammate and friend to a territorial Predator in an enclosed cavern. She has no way of getting help, especially with Tamara showing more fear than before. Before Kim is able to grieve her sudden loss, Tamara screams as something bubbles from the waters they entered the cave in.
"NOO!!!"
Rising slowly from the cave waters like a creature from a horror movie brought to life, another Yautja appears. This one wasn't Hu'Kuo as his armor and helmet look like an updated model with yellow lights flashing in the lens of his Bio-Mask. This was Flint's first lieutenant, Saxon. Saxon shared his superiors thrill of the hunt to a loyal degree and he displayed this as he sprung out his precise razor blades from his right bracer. These blades were honed to slice through flesh and bone with a single blow.
"<Ah, Saxon! Welcome to the party!" Flint greeted as he displays his first kill and the two frightened females.
"<Are these the intruders Hu'Kuo spoke of?>" Saxon asked, scanning Tamara and Kim. "<Huh. They don't look like much, boss.>"
"<The male pulled a blade on me. Is that not reason enough!?>" Flint yells. He didn't tolerate the slightest disobedience or weak link in his unit. Saxon, as obedient he was to his leader, knew however something was off. Did the male attack or show any sign that he put up a fight to be deemed worthy prey? While boxed in with the two hulking Predators, Kim was shaken up by this fatal encounter with killer monsters underground. Donny laid dead with a metal spear through his chest, Tamara is growing more and more terrified by the second, and Kim now has no way of contacting the surface. This was not the expedition she had planned. Her adventure with her two best friends has now become a tragedy. Now cradling Donny's cold body in her arms, Kim whispers a mournful apology and kisses his now cold face before shutting his eyelids before setting his body down. Kim, after sitting for a good ten seconds, springs off her feet with all the energy she could summon to her legs.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" Tamara hysterically cried out to her.
What Kim was doing was just as reckless as Donny's before he perished. Perhaps even more so! Kim sprints her quickest as she makes a suicidal run towards the rack of AKMs. If she could get her hands on at least one of the assault rifles and fire off a volley of bullets at Flint and Saxon, it should buy Tamara enough time to escape to the surface. Regardless of whether or not Kim has any experience with firearms is irrelevant now as she has the only option of saving her remaining friend.
"<Not so fast, human bitch!>" Flint snarled as he activated his shoulder-mounted Plasmacaster and locked on Kim from behind with his helmet's laser sight.
Running closer to the first rifle and grabbing it by the handguard, Kim froze immediately as a loud flashing noise is heard.
It all happened in an instant, but from Kim's end, it was the last excruciating minutes of her life. She grunts and clenches her teeth in a painful wince as she feels a burning, scorching ball of energy strike her upper back with piercing impact. Making a tight fist with her right hand, Kim lets out a screaming groan of intense agony from the full force of the Plasmacaster bolt singeing deep into her flesh and burn a searing surging tunnel through her upper body in a swift and merciless rate. The unfortunate woman couldn't even move as the discharged energy bolt paralyzed her entire body as she was being severely perforated from behind, groaning with each unpleasant second. The shot was so visceral that it practically seared through her interior chest cavity, like a set of flaming knives was drilling into her with ease in a whirring throbbing mill. Within the last few seconds before dying, Kim lets out an ear-splitting shriek as the insane and scorching hot build-up of the energy bolt that was fired from Flint's plasma cannon comes bursting out if Kim in the front of her chest -- namely her left bosom. Exploding in a flashing gaping hole that violently ruptures open her entire left breast with a sickening crackle sound, Kim's life comes to a swift end as her crimson blood splatters the rocks and soaks the skulls.
"NOOOOOOO!! KIIIIM!!!!" Tamara hysterically cried as Kim, her best friend and field guide, collapses to her knees and drops sideways dead on the ground, leaking a crimson puddle of blood from her lifeless punctured body before making few dying moans.
"<Was that necessary?!>" Saxon protested. "<She didn't even get a chance to fight.>"
"<Oops?>" Flint shrugged with smoke hissing from the end of his Plasmacaster barrel.
Tamara held her head, crying and wailing in terror before unsheathing her knife from her calf holster. With fearful tears running down her cheeks, Tamara held her knife out with a trembling hand. First Donny, who she got along most of the time with his lack of charm or enthusiasm, now Kim gets it worse than the former. Tamara had always looked up to Kim on their travels, loved her even. The sight of her getting a laser shot blasting through her chest sent Tamara into a crazed panic now that she was the only one left against the two menacing Yautjas.
"Stay...S-Stay b-back.." Tamara tearfully quivered. "P-Please...."
Now she was alone against two Predators and no other way out. Without a second thought or a plan, Tamara quickly discards her knife on the ground and turns to the water. Getting a good running start, Tamara screams and takes a large enough intake of air as she dives in. She was too scared out of her mind to do anything else.
"<Stop her, Saxon!>" Flint ordered his lieutenant.
"<Why? She discarded her weapon.>" Saxon pointed out.
Flint growled in frustration. By his logic, Flint has to kill this female before she can tell anyone else a band of Yautjas are hiding under the pyramid.
"<Useless cur!!>" Flint roars as he dives in after Tamara.
Just several feet away, Tamara swam the fastest she could underwater. She quickened each breaststroke as fast as she could. But the problem was Tamara was swimming in bleak cavern waters without proper direction, not emotionally stable from watching her two friends get killed, and without her diving tank to feed her oxygen. It was another suicidal move that was about to get worse. Tamara kicked and moved her arms with every ounce of energy she had. But that wasn't enough for what came from behind. Darkening the light above her, Flint swam closer and faster towards Tamara. Apart from his muscle mass and stamina, Flint's Bio-Mask had a built-in rebreather that gave him the advantage over this fleeing female he now has as his prey. With his massive powerful arms, Flint swung them one around Tamara's waist and the other around her chest.
Tamara was even more overwhelmed with the fact that this monster of a Predator has hooked himself onto her! Flint's weight and muscle mass brought Tamara down like she was tied to the shank of a ship anchor that was pulling her deeper and deeper below the cold cavern waters.
Tamara struggled and wriggled her head and legs around to break free but it was no use. Combined with the tightening grip of this ruthless Predator's arms and his oversized weight pulling her down faster than a boulder dropped in the deep end of a pool, Tamara can only let out a continuous gurgling scream. She screamed and squealed loud enough to cause a stream of bubbles from her mouth which was then silenced when Flint put his hand and forearm together and snapped Tamara's neck with a sudden crack.
Finally the last of the cave divers were snuffed out. Deciding to bring back a keepsake, Flint removed Tamara's goggles off her face, now blank and her eyes rolled back with bubbles of air escaping her mouth. Flint watched as Tamara, with her head turned halfway around after getting her neck broken, sinks down to the rocky floor of the limestone caverns.
Minutes later, Flint resurfaces back to the base camp. He tossed the goggles he pried off Tamara's corpse on the ground by her discarded knife.
Flint stomps back to where Saxon was waiting, only to give him an irritated shove.
"<What's gotten into you, hardass!?>" Saxon roared, drawing his wrist blades.
"<You disobeyed my direct order, welp! Why didn't you go after her!?>" Flint snarled with rage.
The two of them began to circle each other like a pair of wolves in a duel over meat. Saxon was reaching his limit with Flint's growing savagery and Flint wasn't having it if his own lieutenant was getting squeamish.
Before the two Yautjas can begin their fight, the cavern pool erupts like a geyser. And from this eruption of water came Hu'Kuo. Landing hard on the base cave's floor hard enough to make the interior shake, Hu'Kuo arrived with something black and human-shaped slung over his shoulder.
Looking around, Hu'Kuo roars furiously at Flint and Saxon upon seeing Donny and Kim's bodies strewn about. And to their bewildering shock, Hu'Kuo has brought with him Tamara's body that he carried on his shoulder. Her eyes white, expression blank, and cave water pouring out of her mouth.
"<Can someone explain to me...WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED HERE!?>" roared Hu'Kuo.
Flint was even more bewildered. With Hu'Kuo enraged and bringing back Tamara's body from her watery grave, Flint was itching to take it out on his sentry.
"<What happened here? I'll tell you what happened.>" Flint began his excuse. "<We were ambushed by these three humans! They entered our threshold, raided our camp and that's when the male attacked me and Saxon. He drew his blade on us, so I put him down and then dispatched the two females.>"
This all sounds ridiculous when Flint put it that way. But Hu'Kuo was far from naive.
"<Really? He attacked you and Saxon?>" Hu'Kuo cynically asked. "<Yet neither of you bear any signs of injury nor struggle. Explain that!>"
Removing his Bio-Mask, and revealing his monstrous Predator face, Flint expanded all four of his tusks and roars his most ferocious at Hu'Kuo. But the Yautja sentry stood there without so much as a flinch.
"<I don't have to explain anything to you, Elite scum.>" Flint huffed. "<What's done is done. Is there a problem with that?>"
"<The problem now is that the human authorities are going to send a search party for these three! What happens if they find your base here as well, huh?!>" Hu'Kuo sneered. He then walked over to Donny's body to examine his knife, which he bends like it was a blade of grass <"You two have officially compromised yourselves with this needless slaughter. The Elders back on Yautja Prime will hear of this.>"
Flint cackles at this threat Hu'Kuo posed. To him, Flint is immune to whatever infractions he may have caused on his hunt unless they can be proven against him.
"<Whose gonna believe you, sentry boy?>" mocked Flint. "<My Clan is among the Elders favorites back home. You only got three dead intruders and no proof that I violated the Code, Hu'Kuo. Let's head back up, Saxon.>"
With that, Flint donned his Bio-Mask back on and takes his leave. Saxon prepares to leave as well, but not before he receives a disgusted grunt from Hu'Kuo.
"<You disappoint me the most, Saxon.>" he growled.<"Get the hell out of my sight!>"
Saxon leaves without a word. Now Hu'Kuo was left alone with the dead bodies of the three cave divers. Throwing away Donny's bent knife, Hu'Kuo gets back up, remembering he left one of his devices in this base area for surveillance. He approaches the skull mounted on a stalagmite, the same one Donny and Kim examined before they were killed, and pulls it out.
"<No proof, huh>?"
Taking off the skull's mandible and turning it over, Hu'Kuo yanks out what looks like a hidden camera. It was implanted into the skull's inner dome with one of the lenses nestled inside the eye sockets. Removing the memory chip and plugging it into his Wrist Gauntlet's port, Hu'Kuo activates the surveillance footage being shown on his gauntlets holographic Sat-Com display. From there he could see the recording of the trio arriving in the air pocket, discovering the sacrificial remains, and then the skull displays.
"<Hm, so these three are explorers.>" Hu'Kuo murmured. "<But what really happened to you?>"
Toggling the fast forward option on his gauntlet, Hu'Kuo sees the moment Flint showed up. Of course, he likes to intimidate his "prey" and his appearance was enough to frighten one of them to draw a knife. The footage then shows Flint spearing Donny through his chest and the sudden arrival of Saxon, making the remaining two humans to panic. What happened next turned Hu'Kuo's insides like he never felt before. He sees the footage of Kim getting perforated with a plasma cannon shot! Not only was this an apparent violation of the Honor Code but, it made Hu'Kuo upset to see that the female who detected him on the surface get her life snuffed out.
"<I'm gonna enjoy running you down on the game preserves, Flint!!>" Hu'Kuo roars, crushing the skull that held his surveillance device in the palm of his hand to a puff of white smoke and bone fragments. He furiously shuts off his Sat-Com after taking a guess as to how Tamara met her end in the water. This act of disregard will not go unpunished.
Just then, he hears a noise. Using the sensors on his Bio-Mask, Hu'Kuo detects a fading life sign coming from one of the three humans. This was impossible. Which one could still have a shred of life in them after so many minutes from a grisly death? Hu'Kuo scans each of them until one of them flinches its leg. To his surprise, Hu'Kuo discovers that it's Kim's body that is somehow still active - at least for a few more seconds. Treading carefully and kneeling by her body, Hu'Kuo turns the deceased woman over.
Removing her flashlight mounted helmet and pulling down the hood of Kim's wetsuit, Hu'Kuo gets a better look at her face as he holds up her upper body to assess the damage done to her.
Scanning with his mask, Hu'Kuo sees that Flint's plasma bolt made a direct shot through her upper spine. Switching from skeletal to thermal vision, Hu'Kuo analyzes that the shrapnel in the plasma bolt tore across a pair of her ribs, fracturing them as a large portion of Kim's left lung and heart, including her pulmonary vein and left ventricle, was left incinerated before it made a gaping exit wound out of her breast. The exit wound looked like a crater of smoking flesh and fresh blood spilling from this poor woman's bosom. Truly a ghastly sight to see. It's a coward's method to shoot someone from behind, especially to a female such as this. Her face was like that of a ghost: pale as a sheet, eyes white, and had a stream of blood oozing from either corner of her lips.
She and her friends were only looking through the ruins to learn about the Mayans and make their bones with whatever new discovery they could find. Grabbing the bloodstained rifle she was holding, Hu'Kuo opens the bullet cartridge to find it unloaded! She didn't even know she had a chance against Flint. Upset with grief, Hu'Kuo could only lament that he couldn't make it sooner to stop Flint and Saxon and their deaths could've been avoided.
"<I feel sorry for you humans.>" Hu'Kuo solemnly purrs to the face of Kim's body, now showing no more life signs. "<This misunderstanding led to having your lives cut short. Your intentions were never to find our base camp. You just traipsed into the wrong Cave. The damage done to you and your friends is irreversible, that much is true. But I can arrange that your bodies are found on the surface to be properly buried. You deserve that much.>"
Hu'Kuo gently shuts Kim's eyelids, sets down her body, and crosses both of her arms over her chest to cover the exit wound for the time being.
He then lowered his head in mourning for the deaths of these ill-fated cave divers.
"<I only hope that one day our species could somehow coexist out of this senseless bloodshed and war.....but not today.>"

The End.

For now...