The Big Game Predator was a lone Yautja who hunted in New Mexico across the twentieth century, first at Two-Witch Mesa and later near Cole Army Base. He appeared in John Arcudi's 1991 Predator: Big Game comic and in Sandy Schofield's 1999 novel of the same name. Navajo soldiers called him Adilgashii, a word for witch. Corporal Enoch Nakai killed him in the lava of El Malpais and took the head.
Biography
Hunt On Two-Witch Mesa
The hunter came to Two-Witch Mesa in 1919, when a US oil crew set a drill on the sacred Navajo burial ground in Cibola County. Overnight he hit the drunken drill camp, killed six workers, flayed two, and hung the bodies from a tree. Enoch Nakai's great-grandfather had gathered men to talk the crew off that ground. The crew had driven them away, and the Navajo had made camp nearby.
The remaining workers blamed the Navajo, shot into their camp, and took two prisoners, one of them Nakai's great-grandfather. The next day more Navajo came back for those men, and a gunfight opened between the oil camp and the Navajo line. The hunter fired his plasmacaster into the melee and killed men from both groups.
Wounded On The Ridge
A stray bullet hit the hunter in the arm on the crest of the ridge. He roared, and the oil workers and the Navajo stopped shooting long enough to stare at him. The local sheriff arrived with men and drove him off Two-Witch Mesa under that gunfire. He left the mesa wounded, and a widow later gave Nakai's great-grandfather the speargun dart that had killed her husband. Seventy-five years later, after Cole, Enoch's grandfather showed him that dart and treated the mesa visitor as the same witch.
Return To Cole Army Base
Seventy-five years later the hunter came back to the high desert near Cole Army Base in Cibola County. His one-person saucer passed low over the mesas on a dark night and sat on desert rock, no bigger than a pickup. He killed a wild boar with a blue bolt, hooked the head on his belt, and left a watching puma. At sunrise a shimmer in the trees locked three aiming dots on Private Dietl during tank duty with Corporal Enoch Nakai, and a chest bolt killed Dietl. Nakai fired at empty air and ran.
Soldiers found the circular craft, lifted it on a chain, and hauled it into a Cole hangar. Colonel Athelry first treated it as a possible spy craft. That evening the hunter went back for Dietl. Private Nathaniel Clowes and Corporal Ryan found the body hung by the feet, the skin gone, the heart and lungs missing, and the skull removed. The cloaked hunter lifted Ryan and killed him. Clowes fired through Ryan's body, hit the shimmer twice, and died from a bolt through the back. Those hits damaged the cloak. The hunter took Dietl's skull and left the hangar standing for the night.
He waited near the base with three human skulls and the boar skull on his belt. From his wrist gauntlet he started the hangar ship's countdown. Red lights on the captured saucer went out one by one. The last light went out, and the ship destroyed the entire base. Corporal Benson, Sergeant Coates, Athelry, and about a thousand other personnel were vaporized while the hunter watched from three miles away. Nakai was the only soldier who had seen how he fought. In Agate, Alda pulled Nakai out of Ben's Saloon after the blast.
The Nadire Sheep Ranch
The hunter moved west of the reservation and took sheep from the Nadire flock. Wool buyer Dan Bonney and third-generation herder Robert Nadire found gutted, beheaded animals on the roof, one of them a messy meal. The cloaked hunter ripped another sheep in half, killed Robert with a chest bolt, and beheaded Dan. Robert's six-year-old son Billy watched from the house and later spoke of blue fire.
Sheriff Bogle stayed after his county emptied and brought Dr. Ellison, the county doctor people called Pro, to the ranch after Billy's report and after Walking Dove was found in shock. The hunter bound Ellison's chest with a wrapping red weapon that turned blue and burned him to death. Bogle hit him in the arm with a .357 Magnum. Green blood sprayed, and the cloak dropped. The hunter killed Bogle with a blue bolt, cut off the sheriff's head with a wristblade, and left with it on his belt. Walking Dove drove into Agate, told people to lock doors, and left with her children.
The Puma At The Trophy Camp
The hunter built a trophy fire with Sheriff Bogle's head on a rock, hat and sunglasses on, Dr. Ellison's head beside it, and other heads including Dietl's. He sat unmasked across the fire, working on the forearm panel Bogle's shots had damaged, with an antlike face, inward mandibles, and thick beaded hair. A puma on the same ridge attacked him. They fought until he killed the cat with blue fire. Nakai reached the crater on foot, saw the fire, and ran for the army tents when that fight ended.
By the time a tracking party under Major Lee reached the camp, the hunter was gone. The puma lay broken and skinned, and false trails covered the real path south toward Agate, about twenty miles. The soldiers hid Humvees behind Henry Barber's locked gas station and followed that trail.
The Street Fight In Agate
After dark the hunter stepped into empty Agate in front of a red sports car. Television reporter Jay Newport and cameraman Scott Richards had driven from Phoenix for a Cole story. The hunter pulled Jay onto the hood after the crash and cut off his head. When Nakai's Humvees reached town, an antitank missile wrecked a hardware store and rolled the sports car. The hunter threw Jay's head through a windshield and escaped over a roof. Scott survived with a head cut and was evacuated.
More soldiers came in by air. Major Lee sent Mayhew, Chaney, and Corales to check the trail. The hunter, at least seven feet tall, beheaded Chaney, took the man's M-16, and used that rifle to kill Mayhew. He toggled the safety and drew other soldiers toward the sound. Then he left town on a trail toward a volcanic ridgeline about ten miles away.
The Nest In El Malpais
The hunter waited on a lava-slope ledge in El Malpais while about twenty-six men left Agate with a commando unit and a helicopter gunship. A gunship lit the slope with flares and fired four rockets. He took cover in a cave, then destroyed the gunship on the valley floor. Shoulder-cannon fire wrecked both Humvees and killed more troops, including Major Lee with a bolt to the face. Of some thirty soldiers, fewer than ten remained. Green blood covered the ledge where he had stood.
He went deeper into the lava to rest. Nakai named him Adilgashii to Private Tilden, who was Zuni, then claimed the monster-slayer name Nayenezgani for himself. Tilden hiked back to Agate to call for tanks and air strikes. Nakai went onto the lava alone and nearly fell through a thin lava-dome roof into a hole about sixty feet down before he caught the rim.
The hunter rested in a makeshift nest in a hidden green valley where old lava had forked around a pocket of trees. Human and animal heads stood around him, with Bogle's skull on a stump. Vultures came for the trophies and he did not drive them off. When Nakai went in to finish him, a thin cord trap sprang. A spiked branch ripped Nakai's right shoulder. The hunter had been resting, not dead.
Last Fight In El Malpais
The hunter came at Nakai, yanked the rifle away after Nakai fired one-handed and emptied it, and smashed the weapon. A rotten limb broke under his weight. He fell spraying green blood, then limped back to the heads by Bogle's skull. Nakai slung his ruined right arm, covered the lava-dome hole with brush, and circled the valley lighting dry brush. The fire drove the hunter toward that gap.
He climbed the lava toward Nakai, fell through the brush-covered roof, climbed out, threw Nakai on his back, and extended the wristblades. Tilden watched from a distant ridge, too far for a useful shot. Flame hit Nakai's broken ammunition belt and cooked off the shells. The hunter turned toward the fire. Nakai shot with his left hand, hitting the soft area above the eyes, the mouth, the right eye, and then the forehead.
Killed By Enoch Nakai
Nakai cut off the head and packed it out of the burned valley. The hunter's body stayed in the lava. His ship was gone. It had destroyed itself with Cole days earlier, and nothing remained of that craft but the crater. Tilden treated Nakai as Nayenezgani and helped him down the ridge with the right arm in a sling. They met the colonel with the head held up, and the colonel accepted it as a finished job. The tanks and gunships staged for a second attack were never used. Alda had gone to Phoenix. Nakai lived with the wrecked arm.
Weapons And Equipment
The Yautja stood at least seven feet tall, with hidelike skin, an antlike unmasked face, inward mandibles, and thick beaded hair. Armor covered his knees, thighs, arms, shoulders, and a removable flat-topped helmet. A bone necklace hung on his chest. His main weapon was the shoulder cannon, which painted three red dots and fired blue bolts. He used it at Two-Witch Mesa, on Dietl, on the ranch, and on the gunship in El Malpais.
Wristblades snapped from the forearm for close work, including Bogle's beheading. The wrist gauntlet ran the cloak, took damage from Bogle's shots, and started the ship's countdown. The wrapping red-to-blue electroshock bolas killed Ellison, frying him until smoke came from the eyes and mouth. After the Agate fight he also used a captured M-16 when the shoulder cannon was out of reach. The one-person circular ship blended with desert rock, sat in the Cole hangar, and vaporized the post.
Rank And Type
No clan name is given, and no other Yautja appear with him. The kit is that of an experienced hunter, closer to an Elite than a first-hunt young blood: a personal ship, a working plasmacaster, a cloak, and two Earth hunts decades apart. The New Mexico hunt did not follow the usual rules. He killed unarmed herders and a county doctor, ate in the open, slept in a nest of heads, and used a human rifle when it suited him. That conduct marks him as a Bad Blood.
Nakai named him Adilgashii to Tilden, then claimed the monster-slayer name Nayenezgani for himself. Schofield's novel prints the witch-name as Adikgashii. Soldiers and civilians also called him the pilot, the occupant, or the target. Dark Horse's later Predator: Hunters brought Nakai onto a team of people who had killed hunters, and the dead witch from Cole appeared there only as that earlier kill.
Behind The Scenes
John Arcudi wrote the four-issue Predator: Big Game comic for Dark Horse, published from March to June 1991. Evan Dorkin pencilled it, Armando Gil inked it, Julia Lacquement colored it, and Chris Warner painted the covers. It was the first Dark Horse Predator story that was not tied to a film.
Terry LaBan wrote the Two-Witch Mesa sequel Predator: Blood on Two-Witch Mesa for Dark Horse Comics #20-21, April and May 1994, with art by Howard Cobb and colors by Lea Hernandez. Issue #20 also carried a Predator cover by Brom. Sandy Schofield, the pen name of Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, novelized Arcudi's comic for Bantam Spectra in February 1999. The novel keeps Cole, Agate, Nakai, and the lava finish, and it adds first-person chapters from Nakai's stillborn twin.
Conclusion
The Big Game Predator was a lone Yautja who hunted New Mexico twice, first at Two-Witch Mesa and later near Cole Army Base. His captured saucer wrecked that post, and Corporal Enoch Nakai killed him in El Malpais and took the head.
Appearances
- Predator: Blood on Two-Witch Mesa (Dark Horse Comics #20-21, 1994)
- Predator: Big Game (Dark Horse Comics #1-4, 1991)
- Predator: Big Game (Bantam Spectra, 1999)
- Predator: Hunters (Dark Horse, 2017) - flashback
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Comics | Predators From The Novels | Historical Predator Hunts | Yautja Outcasts | Predator Lore
