Hunters and Hunted: The Predator Prequel Plot & Lore

Published: 31 July 2018
Author: James A. Moore
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Paperback
Pages: 304
ISBN: 978-1-78565-426-8
Series: Official movie prequel
Setting: Florida / Georgia dam

The Predator: Hunters and Hunted is a 2018 novel by James A. Moore, published by Titan Books on 31 July 2018, six weeks before the 2018 film opened. It followed CIA trainer Roger "Pappy" Elliott and an eight-man strike team called the Reapers as they tried to take a live hunter for Project Stargazer. They caught it on a Florida cul-de-sac, lost it at the dam lab, and killed it at a carnival in a tropical storm. It was an original prequel, not a film novelization, and it sat beside Golden and Morris's movie book from the same year.

Plot Summary

The Reapers came home from an off-books raid in Nicaragua to a lab beside a hydroelectric dam in southern Georgia. A hunter was already working the wetlands around Deer Water Springs, Florida, just south of the state line. Project Stargazer needed a live body before Congress cut the money.

Nicaragua

Field commander Erik Tomlin took eight men into a Quonset hut that intel treated as a cartel lab for new synthetic cocaine. They expected a dozen to twenty men. They found more, killed more than thirty in under five minutes, and took unlocked files from the office past the lab. Elmore Strand wired the hut and blew it four minutes after the last body dropped. Officially the Reapers did not exist, and officially they were not in Central America. On the flight back, former Navy SEAL Devon Hill wanted harder prey than clumsy smugglers.

The Dam

General Douglas Woodhurst ran Stargazer from that swampy dam site. The program's older name was the Other Worldly Life Forms Program, and the money had been easier then. CIA agent Will Traeger, Elliott's political deputy, wanted private money, patents, and control. He had also arranged the Reapers' CIA loan work. Woodhurst wanted a live capture and a government program, not a weapons shop for contractors.

Traeger worked senators and aides in Washington while Woodhurst tried to keep the unit alive. He used adultery files on Senator Raferty and kompromat on Phil Amsburg, an aide to Senator Andrea Laurel. Laurel later warned the general that Traeger had offered her subcontracts and first crack at alien tech if she helped replace him. Elliott stayed in Georgia and kept training the team. Stargazer already held old recordings of an alien voice that communications man Dmitri Orologas could not crack, and a rumor that similar signals had once helped civilian labs invent disc compression.

Vietnam

Roger Elliott had trained local allies in explosives and terror work for a CIA program in Vietnam. A cloaked hunter wiped the camp. A man named Maple found about ten eviscerated bodies on the second night. Later dead included Costanza, Gorman, Harris, Terrence Carter, Simons, Eppinger, Groff, Fowler, Chambers, Hancock, Rabinowitz, and Burton. Woodhurst's file later put the loss at about a dozen men, with grainy photographs of a ship.

Elliott was the last man standing. He walked the hunter onto Fowler's Claymore and set it off. A green blood trail led to a ship that lifted north. Two hours of search did not prove a kill. Elliott kept a fragment of a telescoping spear, and a mandible scar through the web of his right hand still hurt in the heat. Two other men from that hunt had lived, then dropped out of sight.

Okefenokee

In the Florida wetlands of Coyahunga County, a hunter killed poachers Neal Foster and Cooper "Coop" Monroe off a skiff, one raked through the chest and one through the throat. It copied their talk before it struck, including a line about the right day to hunt. It later 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. Emergency crews took him away. Stargazer later counted three women and two men still alive there, and trophies that included skin, two skulls, and a spine.

Heavy rain made the cloak flicker, so the hunter pulled its mask and fought a large alligator in the open with claws. It took the head, the spine, and the clawed forefeet as trophies and went back to a hidden ship it opened from a wrist control. It did not eat the alligator. Stargazer mapped the kills to Deer Water Springs, close enough to the Georgia line for a quiet deployment.

Deer Water Springs

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. His wife Jamie ran out the back. The hunter joined that fight for sport, using a returning disc, plasma, blades, and a telescoping spear. A cloak-kill in the street showed a figure about seven feet tall, masked, with dreadlocks and mottled hide. An ex-Marine sniper called Red died on a roof when his own disc came back. The Reapers came in from the back of the house. Their orders were to take it alive.

The Cul-De-Sac

All eight Reapers hit it together. Orologas fired a stun slug from an Ithaca. Edward King put a Taser into the torso. Hill shot it in the chest with a non-lethal load. Strand used a cattle prod. Steve Burke dumped rubber street-sweeper shells. Jermaine Hyde got a garrote on it and locked inch-thick zip ties. Kyle Pulver kept putting tranquilizer darts in until it stayed down. They stripped the gauntlets and the shoulder mount and left the mask on.

A disc went through Orologas's arm and chest. A plasma bolt killed King. Strand's face was smashed. He died on the flight back to Georgia. Burke lost both segments of a forearm and died on the table at Stargazer. Hill later counted at least ten police dead on that street, plus dealers and Red. Four Reapers were still breathing when the helicopter lifted: Tomlin, Hill, Hyde, and Pulver.

The Lab

Sean Keyes took the captive from the Reapers. He was a second-generation hunter of the same problem. His father had been a Company man killed in the Los Angeles hunt. The book does not give that father a first name. The surviving Reapers sat in quarantine for seventy-two hours after a burn-down decontamination. Elliott photographed the specimen. It copied speech and laughed. He judged it a different hunter from Vietnam. That earlier one had lost an eye and taken a Claymore, and Elliott still hoped it had died before it reached home.

Elliott locked the helmet, the disc, the shoulder cannon, and the computer gauntlet in a vault two rooms from the lab. Small barb discs went into the same catalogue. A pale-blonde tech in a hazmat suit, working for Traeger, saw the hunter cutting its hide straps, showed it the twelve-button keypad, and left. The hunter clawed free, took a Combistick and small discs, and forced the next vacuum-sealed door. Alarms went up through the dam.

The Escape

The hunter killed two door guards, one through the head and one at the throat. Elliott shot at it in the rain, and the thrown Combistick went through his chest. Agent Church reached Traeger and reported that Pappy had tried to stop it.

On the trail south, a dog named King charged the hunter, and the two people walking it came after the body. The hunter killed all three and took no trophies. This was survival, not a hunt. It ate from a thigh to keep moving, then dumped the three corpses in a marsh.

At the ship it pulled a Stargazer tracker out of its own shoulder, then restocked a command gauntlet, a bladed gauntlet, an old scarred mask, a spear, and a plasma caster. It planted that same tracker in a carnival post to bait whoever followed. A CIA team under LaValle, flown by Miguel Rodriguez, chased the dead signal to the closed Hartshorn grounds and was wiped. Tomlin, Hill, Hyde, and Pulver went back out with orders to kill, not recapture. Elliott's last paperwork had been fake terrorist-attack letters for the men already dead, one dated Thursday, 27 October.

The Carnival

The last fight was at the closed Hartshorn Carnival in Deer Water Springs, under a tropical storm that sat on 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.

Hyde first dumped an HK45C into the hunter, then took Lauder's SIG Sauer P226 and put four rounds into its chest at conversational range. The hunter still cut him down. Hyde died believing he had finished it. The hunter, dying, opened a gauntlet to self-destruct and sealed a wound from a pocket vial. Wounded Tomlin drove a spear through that open keypad and stopped the flashing countdown.

The Blast

Rodriguez pulled Tomlin and Hill out and confirmed the hunter was dead. A later explosion still leveled the carnival and part of the town. The cover story was a failed levee and the Army Corps of Engineers, and the levee did break. Church thought a warning transmission had hidden in the blast.

Four weeks later, Tomlin and Hill were in medically induced comas. Keyes was guardedly optimistic about Hill. Tomlin was fighting sepsis after organs dragged through mud. Traeger held Project Stargazer. Woodhurst stayed on a short leash. The original mask and computer gauntlet remained in the vault, the gauntlet still holding recorded talk, for the next hunter who would walk into that lab.

The Hunter

Human chapters called it an alien, an off-world life form, then a Predator after Traeger put that label on the committee table. Hill used the word earlier, after the cul-de-sac. The hunter's own chapters used the word Yautja. The book never names a clan or a homeworld, and it never names Dutch. It stood about seven feet and about four hundred pounds, with a mesh cloak, mottled hide that also hid it in foliage, and a mask with heat vision until hard rain blinded the gear.

The kit was a shoulder cannon aimed from the mask, a returning disc, wrist blades, a Combistick, small barb discs, a wrist dart, and a chemical seal for wounds. The weapons were coded to the hunter. The control key sat in the gauntlet. Blood was bright green. It took skulls, spines, and skins, and it wore a bone-and-skull necklace that included skulls that were not from Earth.

After the rain fight in Florida it claimed an alligator the same way it claimed men, head and spine first, and did not eat it. It copied voices, including laughter in the lab. It left no hunting dogs of its own.

This hunter escaped from the same Stargazer facility the later Fugitive broke out of. After the carnival, the original mask stayed there behind glass, with the computer gauntlet. The Fugitive took that mask from the display.

Confirmed Kills

A hunter in Vietnam took Elliott's team, including Maple's early find and the men named above. That hunter reached a ship and left. Elliott never proved it dead. In Florida a second hunter killed Foster and Coop, then most of the Four Horsemen, among them Billy, Harry, Burly Hanscomb, Danny, Landry, Suzie, and Tom-Tom Willis. Andy Simon lived minus a hand. On Hampstead Road it killed Red, at least ten police, and some of the dealers, then Orologas, King, Strand, and Burke.

At the dam it killed two guards and Elliott. On the walk back to the ship it killed a dog named King and both people on the leash. LaValle's CIA field team died on the tracker bait, including Murphy, Hamilton, Brown, Tanaka, Anderson, Ezquerra, and LaValle. At the carnival it killed Pulver, Hyde, Annie Raynor, and more deputies after Lauder went down. Hyde's pistol dump was not the killing volley. Tomlin wrecked the gauntlet. The later blast destroyed the body.

Tomlin and Hill lived, both in induced comas. Woodhurst, Traeger, Sean Keyes, Church, Rodriguez, Andy Simon, and Sheriff Lauder lived. Six of the eight Reapers were dead. Elliott was dead.

Key Characters

Edward James Olmos as General Woodhurst in a scene cut from The Predator

Roger "Pappy" Elliott was the CIA trainer who survived a Vietnam hunt by walking a hunter onto a Claymore. He trained the Reapers, wrote the fake death letters, and died in the dam rain with a Combistick through the chest.
Erik Tomlin was the field commander. He led the Nicaragua raid and the cul-de-sac capture, then drove a spear through the dying hunter's open gauntlet at the carnival. Four weeks later he was in a coma with sepsis.
Devon Hill was second-in-command and a former Navy SEAL. He wanted harder prey than cartel men, lasted to the carnival, and went into an induced coma beside Tomlin.
Jermaine Hyde was the quiet-kill specialist. He zip-tied the captive on Hampstead Road, emptied Lauder's SIG into the hunter at the carnival, and died believing the job was done.
Kyle Pulver was the primary heavy gunner and the man on the tranquilizer gun. He cut the carnival power, lost a hand, and died in the mud.
Elmore Strand blew the Nicaragua hut four minutes after the raid and died on the flight from the cul-de-sac after the hunter smashed his face.
Dmitri Orologas handled languages and radios. He never cracked the old alien recording. A disc killed him on Hampstead Road.
Edward King was the team's surgeon. Plasma killed him in the cul-de-sac.
Steve Burke was the second heavy gunner and security lead. He lost both segments of a forearm on Hampstead Road and died on Keyes's table.
Douglas Woodhurst was the Army general who ran Stargazer and wanted a live capture under military control. After the hunt he stayed on under Traeger. Edward James Olmos shot the role for the film, then the recut removed him.
Will Traeger was Elliott's CIA deputy. He pushed privatization, used kompromat in Washington, and held the program when the book ended.
Sean Keyes ran the lab team. His father had died in Los Angeles. He took the captive, then watched Tomlin and Hill in the epilogue.
Andy Simon was the mechanic in the wheelchair who wounded the cloaked hunter and lost a hand. He lived.
Sheriff Tom Lauder reached the carnival, lost his SIG to Hyde, and lived after the hunter knocked him out.

Place In The Books

The novel is an official film prequel, published in 2018 after Monette and Hawke and ahead of Golden and Morris's novelization. It is not a comic expansion and not part of the Alien vs. Predator line. Moore had already written Alien: Sea of Sorrows for Titan in 2014, and a story in Aliens: Bug Hunt. Two years later he co-wrote Predator: Stalking Shadows with Mark Morris. It is the stronger of Titan's two 2018 Predator novels, ahead of Golden and Morris's rushed film novelization.

The printed story leaves Stargazer its toys and its chain of command: Traeger in charge, Woodhurst constrained, Sean Keyes in the lab, and a mask and gauntlet in the vault. It does not use the Upgrade, the Loonies, or a climate-change motive, and it does not name Dutch. Later summaries sometimes put the capture in Georgia woods and the finale on a Florida ferry, or shrink the Reapers to six men. The book puts eight Reapers on a cul-de-sac in Deer Water Springs and the last fight at the Hartshorn Carnival.

Editions

Titan Books released the first edition as a mass-market paperback on 31 July 2018 in the United States and the United Kingdom, priced at $7.99 and £7.99. Titan lists 304 pages. Penguin Random House lists 322. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database records 302. The credit is an original novel by James A. Moore, based on the screenplay by Fred Dekker and Shane Black, from characters created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. An ebook went out the same day. Blackstone Audio issued an unabridged reading by James Patrick Cronin on 14 September 2018 that runs 6 hours 50 minutes. The common cover is black sky and a lightning bolt over a city, under the line "The Official Movie Prequel."

Behind The Scenes

James A. Moore wrote the book as a Fox-approved lead-in, working from material tied to Shane Black and Fred Dekker while the film was still being recut. The acknowledgements thank Carol Roeder, Nicole Spiegel, and Steve Tzirlin at Twentieth Century Fox, plus Titan names including Steve Saffel, Laura Price, and Hayley Shepherd. He also thanks Black, Dekker, and the Thomas brothers. In interviews he talked through the Reapers, Elliott's trauma, cloak trouble in rain, and the alligator fight.

Moore had already done Titan's Sea of Sorrows and other horror novels, and he had been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award. Edward James Olmos shot Woodhurst for the film. The recut dropped the general, so the novel is the place that role still runs Stargazer. The leftover mask and gauntlet are the book's handoff to the 2018 lab breakout. Later summaries that shrink the Reapers to six men, or move the last fight onto a ferry, are not the text.

Conclusion

The Predator: Hunters and Hunted is James A. Moore's 2018 Titan prequel, published six weeks before the film. It covers Roger Elliott and eight Reapers from a Nicaragua raid to a Florida carnival, with a hunter they took alive at a cul-de-sac and lost at the Georgia dam. The book ends with that hunter dead, the carnival gone, Tomlin and Hill in comas, Traeger holding Stargazer, and a mask still in the vault. It is often counted among the better Predator books, and as a stronger story than The Predator or that film's rushed novelization.