Predator vine

  Silently Dillon disappeared into the jungle. Mac watched him vanish among the vine-locked boulders, then made his own way toward the target, working round the razor-sharp rocks and heaving himself through the masses of vines. It was a brief distance, but a rugged journey, trying to move quietly and invisibly through the knotted confusion of the high jungle. The place seemed more primeval, less touched by man, than any ground they’d trod so far. It was the site of some vast Darwinian nakedness, prehuman and without remorse. Mac cursed himself as a branch snapped back in his face or a vine grasped at his leg. But finally he made it to the rocky spur, settled into position, and scanned the jungle below. He could see Dillon moving off to his left several meters away, his face intense and determined.

  Vague, unidentifiable sounds echoed through the clotted canyon forest as Mac pulled himself forward. Then he caught a fleeting image of movement in the foliage ahead. He began to sweat bullets as recollections of the hideous blood-red creature crowded into his mind. Was it out there waiting? He recalled the row of dead men hanging gutted, their insides spilled and their faces twisted in anguish. He forced the thought from his mind, switched the safety catch off his rifle, and reached up for another vine to pull himself even higher.

  He felt a queer warm movement beneath his grip. He didn’t even have time to react as the vine began to crawl around his fingers. A second later he was horrified to see the sinewy green bark change even as he gripped it, till he was suddenly holding the clawlike hand of the alien. It ripped loose from Mac’s grip, flipped around in a swirl of flashing prehensile fingers, and grabbed the commando by the wrist.

  The stunned soldier looked up in time to see the creature’s two burning yellow eyes piercing down at him like burning liquid starlight, just as its other hand swooped to his throat, its razor-sharp spur slashing through his windpipe. Mac pitched forward, instantly dead, and landed with a thud in a scatter of moldering leaves. His heart, still pumping, gushed out spurts of blood from his severed jugular. It was all done quietly, smoothly, quickly, and life ran away in a meaningless ooze, to be swallowed up by the famished jungle floor.

   The Predator (1987 novelization), chapter 14