The Florida Hunter was the unnamed Yautja in James A. Moore's 2018 novel The Predator: Hunters and Hunted. Roger "Pappy" Elliott trained the Reapers to take a hunter alive for Project Stargazer, and they caught this one on a cul-de-sac in Deer Water Springs, Florida. The lab that held him was a hydroelectric dam in southern Georgia, across the state line from that town. He broke out, killed Elliott, and died at the closed Hartshorn Carnival after Erik Tomlin drove a spear through his open gauntlet. The blast destroyed the carnival and the body, and his mask and computer gauntlet stayed in the vault.
Biography
The Coyahunga Wetlands
The Florida Hunter hunted the wetlands of Coyahunga County, Florida, before Stargazer had a team on the ground. Off a skiff he killed poachers Neal Foster and Cooper "Coop" Monroe, one through the chest and one through the throat, after copying their talk, including a line about the right day to hunt. He then hit a motorcycle club called the Four Horsemen at their clubhouse. Mechanic Andy Simon, in a wheelchair, wounded the cloaked figure and lost the hand that held the gun. Andy lived, and emergency crews took him away. Stargazer later counted three women and two men alive there, and trophies that included skin, two skulls, and a spine. Among the dead were Billy, Harry, Burly Hanscomb, Danny, Landry, Suzie, and Tom-Tom Willis.
Heavy rain made the cloak flicker, so he pulled his mask and fought a large alligator in the open with his claws. He took the head, the spine, and the clawed forefeet the same way he took trophies from men, and he did not eat the alligator. He went back to a hidden ship he opened from a wrist control. Stargazer mapped those kills to Deer Water Springs, close enough to the Georgia line to send a team from the dam.
The Hampstead Capture
Local police moved on a meth house at the end of Hampstead Road, a cul-de-sac of six 1960s ranch houses owned through a shell called El Corazon Holding. Nick Lamden ran the cook, and his wife Jamie ran out the back. The Florida Hunter entered that fight with a returning disc, plasma, wristblades, and a telescoping spear. A witness in the street put him at about seven feet, masked, with dreadlocks and a mottled hide. An ex-Marine sniper called Red died on a roof when the disc came back and cut him. The Reapers came in from the back of the house under orders to take him alive.
All eight Reapers hit him together. Dmitri Orologas fired a stun slug from an Ithaca, Edward King put a Taser into the torso, and Devon Hill shot him in the chest with a non-lethal load. Elmore Strand used a cattle prod, Steve Burke fired rubber street-sweeper shells, and Jermaine Hyde got a garrote on him and locked inch-thick zip ties. Kyle Pulver fired tranquilizer darts until the hunter went down. They stripped the gauntlets and the shoulder mount and left the mask on. In the same fight a disc went through Orologas's arm and chest, and a plasma bolt killed King. Strand's face was smashed, and he died on the flight back to Georgia. Burke lost both segments of a forearm and died on the table at the dam. Hill later counted at least ten police dead on that street, along with dealers and Red. Four Reapers were alive when the helicopter lifted: Tomlin, Hill, Hyde, and Pulver.
The Dam Breakout
Sean Keyes took the captive from the Reapers. His father, Peter Keyes, had been killed in the Los Angeles hunt. The surviving Reapers went through a burn-down decontamination and stayed in quarantine for seventy-two hours. Elliott had the specimen photographed. It copied speech and laughed, and he took it for a different hunter from the one in Vietnam, which had lost an eye to a Claymore and left on a ship.
Elliott locked the helmet, the disc, the shoulder cannon, and the computer gauntlet in a vault two rooms from the lab, and small barb discs went into the same catalogue. A pale-blonde tech in a hazmat suit, working for Will Traeger, saw the hunter cutting his hide straps, showed him the twelve-button keypad, and left. The hunter clawed free, took a Combistick and small discs, and forced the next vacuum-sealed door as alarms went through the dam. He killed two door guards, one through the head and one at the throat. Elliott shot at him in the rain, and the thrown Combistick went through Elliott's chest. Agent Church reached Traeger and reported that Pappy had tried to stop him.
On the trail south, a dog named King charged him, and the two people walking it came after the body. He killed all three without taking trophies, ate from a thigh, and dumped the three corpses in a marsh on the way to the ship. At the ship he pulled a Stargazer tracker out of his own shoulder, then took a command gauntlet, a bladed gauntlet, an old scarred mask, a spear, and a plasma caster. He planted that tracker in a post at the closed carnival so the pursuit would follow the signal.
The Hartshorn Fight
A CIA team under LaValle, flown by Miguel Rodriguez, chased the dead signal to the Hartshorn grounds and was wiped out. The dead included Murphy, Hamilton, Brown, Tanaka, Anderson, Hector Ezquerra, and LaValle. Tomlin, Hill, Hyde, and Pulver went back out with orders to kill rather than recapture. Elliott's last paperwork had been fake terrorist-attack letters for the men who had died, one dated Thursday, 27 October. They fought at the closed carnival under a tropical storm that covered northern Florida and southern Georgia. Pulver cut the carnival generator, then lost a hand to a blade and was smothered in the mud. Deputy Annie Raynor died when her head was destroyed. Sheriff Tom Lauder was knocked out. More deputies died after the first cars arrived.
Death At Hartshorn
Hyde fired an HK45C into the Florida Hunter, then took Lauder's SIG Sauer P226 and put four rounds into his chest from a few feet away. The Florida Hunter cut Hyde down, and in the mud he opened his gauntlet. The keypad flashed and the beeps sped up, and Tomlin read it as a self-destruct. Wounded Tomlin drove a spear through that open keypad. The lights stopped in an electrical discharge. Rodriguez pulled Tomlin and Hill out and confirmed the hunter was dead before the helicopter left.
A later explosion leveled the carnival and part of Deer Water Springs. The cover story was a failed levee and the Army Corps of Engineers, and the levee did break. Four weeks later, Church told Traeger that a warning transmission might have been hidden in that blast. The lab could not show a signal in the recording it had. Traeger held Stargazer after that. The mask and the computer gauntlet, which held recorded talk, stayed in the vault.
Weapons And Hide
Before the cul-de-sac, Elliott's staff called the captive an alien and an otherworldly life form. After that fight Hill used predator for that kind of hunter, and Traeger put Predator before a committee as the name for the species. He thought of his people as the Yautja. He has no personal name, clan name, or homeworld in the book. A witness put him at about seven feet, with a mottled hide that also hid him in foliage when the cloak was off. The mask carried heat vision, and hard rain blinded that gear. His blood was bright green.
He carried a shoulder cannon aimed from the mask, a returning disc, wristblades, a Combistick, small barb discs, a wrist dart, and a chemical seal for wounds. The weapons were coded to him, and the control key was in the gauntlet. He took skulls, spines, and skins, and he wore a bone-and-skull necklace that included skulls from off Earth. He copied voices, and in the lab he laughed. He hunted without hunting dogs of his own.
The Mask In The Vault
After the carnival, his mask, computer gauntlet, and shoulder cannon remained in the Stargazer vault. The 2018 film put a lit case at the same dam, with two bio-helmets and a shoulder cannon behind the glass. In the film novelization, Casey Brackett saw a scarred helmet, a chest plate, weapons, and a battle staff in that case. The Fugitive broke the glass, took the scarred helmet and several throwing stars, and left the cannon. He used the helmet to see through his own lost mask, the one Rory McKenna had at home. Traeger later packed pieces from those cases into a duffel. The compact shoulder cannon he mounted from that bag was one he had watched Stargazer test, and it killed him when he turned his head and the barrel tracked with him.
Confirmed Kills
The names below are the dead given for Deer Water Springs, the dam, and the carnival. Elliott's Vietnam dead belong to the other hunter, the one who left on a ship after the Claymore. Andy Simon and Sheriff Tom Lauder lived, and so did Tomlin and Hill, though both were in induced comas four weeks later. Tomlin had sepsis after Rodriguez dragged him through the mud. Six of the eight Reapers died, and Elliott died at the dam. Woodhurst, Traeger, Sean Keyes, Church, and Rodriguez lived.
- Wetlands: Neal Foster and Cooper "Coop" Monroe. Four Horsemen dead included Billy, Harry, Burly Hanscomb, Danny, Landry, Suzie, and Tom-Tom Willis. Andy Simon lived and lost a hand.
- Hampstead Road: Red, at least ten police, and some of the dealers. Reapers Dmitri Orologas, Edward King, Elmore Strand, and Steve Burke.
- Dam: two door guards and Roger Elliott.
- Trail south: a dog named King and both people on the leash. He ate from a thigh and left the bodies in a marsh.
- Hartshorn: LaValle's team, including Murphy, Hamilton, Brown, Tanaka, Anderson, Hector Ezquerra, and LaValle. Then Kyle Pulver, Jermaine Hyde, Deputy Annie Raynor, and more deputies after Sheriff Lauder went down.
Behind The Scenes
James A. Moore wrote the novel as a Fox-approved lead-in while The Predator was being recut, from material tied to Shane Black and Fred Dekker. The acknowledgements thank Carol Roeder, Nicole Spiegel, and Steve Tzirlin at Twentieth Century Fox, and Titan editors including Steve Saffel. He also thanks Black, Dekker, and Jim Thomas and John Thomas. Edward James Olmos shot General Douglas Woodhurst, the officer who wanted the live capture. The recut removed the general, so the novel is where Woodhurst runs the dam until Traeger takes the program.
Conclusion
The Florida Hunter was the unnamed Yautja of The Predator: Hunters and Hunted. James A. Moore's novel gives him no personal name, clan, or callsign. He hunted Deer Water Springs, was the first live captive at the Stargazer dam in southern Georgia, killed Roger Elliott on the way out, and died at the Hartshorn Carnival after Erik Tomlin speared his gauntlet. The blast destroyed the body, and the mask and the computer gauntlet stayed in the vault.
Appearances
- The Predator: Hunters and Hunted (Titan Books, 2018)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Novels | Predator Lore
