Minutes to Burn (2001)

by Gregg Hurwitz

Justin stepped forward and helped Diego to his feet.

  Cameron pointed to the larva. "That's an entirely new creation," she said. "Something that's never lived before. Ever. I don't think you can just decide unilaterally to kill it."

  "I'm the senior officer right now," Szabla said. "I can decide whatever the fuck I want."

  "Look, Szabla, I'm only saying--"

  "Why are you having such a reaction to this, Cam? To this thing?"

  "Back off, Szabla," Justin said. "She's just arguing chain of com-mand."

  "Not with that face, she isn't. This ain't her normal stain-in-her-school-dress-following-orders crap. This is different."

  "You don't have a right--the authority or the right--to do this," Cameron said.

  Szabla turned sharply and faced Cameron. "Step back, girl," she said. "That's a direct order from your superior officer. Need I be more explicit?"

  Cameron felt her face growing flushed with the heat from the fire and her blossoming anger.

  "Step back," Szabla repeated.

  Cameron stepped back.

  "Goddamnit," Rex said, glaring at Cameron. "Why can't you think for yourself?"

  "It's not my job to think for myself," Cameron said, her voice sounding distant and foreign. "We're a military squad, not a think tank."

  The larva raised itself up, its thorax nearly perpendicular to the ground, its head tilted and attentive. Cameron felt a wave of nausea wash through her and her knees buckled, just slightly. Justin steadied her with an arm around her waist, which he dropped once she got her legs under her again.

  "Mammy! Bring Miss Scarlet her smelling salts," Szabla said derisively.

  Rex glared up at the stars, his hands on his hips. Tank ran a hand over his sunburnt scalp.

  "Who's gonna..." Justin's words were choked with phlegm. He cleared his throat and started over. "Who's gonna do it?"

  Savage studied the fire, knowing the answer before he even raised his head. He closed his eyes in a long blink, bouncing his head once in a nod, then rose.

  When he seized the larva around the base of its head, air escaped it in a screech, and Cameron felt herself sucking shallow breaths to keep from breaking. Savage walked right in front of her, the larva squirming and squealing in his grip, and seized the spike leaning against the log beside her.

  A figure cut from the shadows and a hand fell across his wrist, pale in the darkness. Savage jerked away and dropped the larva, drawing back the spike until he saw it was Derek.

  "What are you doing?" Derek asked, stepping over the log. His eyes were cold and glassy, the skin on his face stretched tight with stress and fatigue.

  His eyes narrowed on Szabla's until she looked away. He crouched above the larva and ran his hand along its side, over the bumps of its abdominal segments.

  Derek looked at Diego, and Diego shook his head.

  Rex said, "I didn't want them to...They wouldn't listen."

  The pulse in Derek's temple worked like a spasm. His fingers, thin and pale in the moonlight, continued to stroke the larva's back.

  "Derek," Szabla said, attempting to soften her voice. "We can't afford to follow scientists' orders anymore. We're playing in a different game here."

  Derek stood and walked to Szabla, leaning forward until his face was inches away. Cameron did not recognize his eyes at all. Savage took a step over so that he was standing behind Szabla.

  Cameron rose uneasily to her feet. "Easy, LT," she said.

  The scientists watched quietly. It was as if a spell had been woven around the camp, and everyone hesitated to speak for fear of shattering it.

  Szabla finally took a small step back, not giving up much ground. She turned and faced Cameron, and then Cameron noticed Derek's eyes on her as well, and she realized that everyone was looking to her, waiting for her move.

  She inhaled the sharp island air, gazing at the perfect black beyond the edges of the fire. Something small fluttered overhead. The seconds stretched themselves out into what seemed like hours.

  Cameron stepped over and stood behind Derek, her shoulders squared, her elbow brushing his. Justin followed suit, and then Tank, and then Szabla took another step back and sat on the log. Savage twirled the spike around his hand like a bandleader's baton and turned his back. Szabla's mouth contracted in a straight line and she scowled at Cameron, her eyes lit with disappointment and anger.

  Derek exhaled deeply, his shoulders settling. "Rex?"

  Rex turned to him, his face ashen.

  "The first order of business is putting the larva in a safe place," Derek said. He glared at Szabla. "For us and for it. Then, we secure the island and determine if there are any more adult creatures here. Are we agreed?"

  Rex started to speak but had to clear his throat and start over. He spoke in a brisk, scientific voice; that seemed to help him regain control. "Yes. Whatever occurred here in the formation of these animals was anomalous enough that I believe we can proceed cautiously with the assumption that there is only one lineage. Of the ten surviving offspring that Frank noted, he captured eight, and Savage killed one. That means there could be another out there somewhere, if it survived."

  "Don't female mantises eat the males after they mate?" Cameron asked.

  "Some," Diego said. "Not all. Female Galapagia obstinati have been known to."

  "Well, let's hope we got a Gloria Steinem motherfucker," Szabla said.

  "Would it have metamorphosed?" Cameron asked. "The surviving larva?"

  Rex said, "I would think so. Especially since they evidently mated."

  "Gentlemen," Cameron said, looking at the two scientists. "You're gonna have to help us out here. What are we up against? If there's another one out there, we need to know its habits, strategies, any weak-nesses we can exploit."

  Diego and Rex exchanged a long look. "Neither of us are entomolo-gists," Diego said. "Do you have any way of contacting one?"

  "Yes," Rex said. "I can ask Donald to."

  "We don't have time to wait," Cameron said. "In the meantime, what do you know?"

  "Well," Diego began slowly, "we'll have to continue to assume these animals have behavioral traits in common with the mantid the virus infected and altered."

  "And?" Cameron urged. Derek stood silently beside her.

  "They don't hear as humans do. They can only detect ultrasound, which filters to them through a slit on the mesothorax, so they generally need movement or vibration to sense prey. They tend to be stationary hunters. They await their prey, taking advantage of camouflage and their lightning strike."

  "So if we move to pursue it, we'd be the ones at a disadvantage?" Cameron asked.

  Diego nodded.

  "We might have to risk that," Justin said.

  Cameron waved him off. "We'll argue later. What else?"

  "They need the shade," Rex said. "They're hesitant to leave the forest understory during the day. Especially to hunt--they have a hard time in the hot sunlight. I'd imagine that's truer now than ever before, given the UV. But at night, they'll roam anywhere. They'll also be attracted to light at night, like most insects."

  "How about the eyes?" Cameron asked. "Will blinding it help?"

  "I'm not going to help you figure out how to maim this animal," Diego said.

  "You bet your ass you are," Szabla said.

  "We need this knowledge," Cameron said. "We'll decide later if and how we're going to deploy it."

  "Yes," Rex said. "Blinding it will help. And taking out a single eye will compromise its depth-of-field perception. Their antennae are also strategically essential."

  Szabla took a breath and exhaled deeply. "Couldn't we poison it? Use some venom from indigenous snakes or something?"

  They looked at Diego. "There is one poisonous snake here," he said reluctantly. "But it's a sea snake and quite rare."

  "Anything else that could harm it? Or that it'd be afraid of?"

  "Well, aposematically colored insects--red and black ones--often sequester unpalatable substances from their host p
lants, so animals seek to avoid them. But I don't know. If we're basing this assessment on the physiology of mantids, we have to remember mantids have iron digestive systems. They can eat anything--paint, rubber, lighter fluid. In lab, I even saw one eat an insect straight from a cyanide jar."

  Rex nodded. "I'd guess we'd need something stronger than snake venom."

  "So how would we kill it?" Szabla asked. She glanced down at the spike at her side. "I mean, how'd you take it, Savage?"

  Savage told them.

  "What's so funny, Szabla?" Cameron asked.

  "Nothing. It just figures," she said. "It just figures."

  "If there is another," Rex said, "let's hope it's a male. They're smaller, and they tend to be less aggressive. It's too bad they're such a solitary order. If it was a bull seal, we could just round up a bunch of females and it'd come running."

  "Could we lure it with bait?" Cameron asked.

  Rex grimaced. "Well, we've just figured out why we haven't run across any feral dogs or goats since we arrived. And even though mantids are known for eating prey larger than themselves, I'd guess a cow would be too large. It could kill one, probably, but would have a hard time eating it."

  "Sea lions?" Tank asked.

  "They've wisely retreated off the island to the tuff cones," Rex said. "Plus we'd have a bitch of a time dragging one up near the forest. I'd say the only reasonably sized prey is us." He smiled. "I volunteer Savage."

  "Anything else you can think of?" Cameron asked. "Anything at all?"

  "They'll only eat live bait," Savage said. They all looked at him, surprised. "I've seen one eat a deer mouse. Started with the whiskers. Ate its whole face off before it got through to the brain and killed it."

  "Imagine that," Justin murmured. "An insect eating a fucking mam-mal."

  Cameron looked to Rex, hoping to gauge the accuracy of Savage's story. He nodded. "I once saw one devour a gecko from the tail up. Hard, tireless mastication--combing the flesh, grinding the bones. Took over an hour. The gecko was alive for at least half of it."

  Justin was pale. "Let's hope there aren't any more adults."

  "Let's keep busy while we're hoping," Cameron said.

  "We'll sweep the forest at first light." Derek swayed on his feet, then caught himself.

  "Why not now?" Cameron asked.

  "You want to go trekking through a predator's natural environment in the dark with bright lights to attract its attention? Use your goddamn head, Cam. We'll wait for first light, then see if there's another adult kicking around."

  "If we locate it, are we cleared to kill it?" Szabla asked.

  "Yes." Diego started to protest but stopped as soon as Derek held up a hand.

  "But none of you are to lay a finger on any of these," Derek contin-ued, walking over to the larva and picking it up. "I'll be keeping him with me tonight. Safely locked in a cruise box. Szabla, since you have so much excess testosterone to burn, you can stand first guard." He disappeared through the flap of his and Cameron's tent.

  "We're assuming that there's only one lineage of mantids, but remem-ber that's only an assumption," Rex said. "We have to be observant of the wildlife, see if we notice anything else that appears abnormal." He pressed his fingertips to his closed eyes. "We'll need to keep our eyes peeled for the four remaining larvae as well. Bring them back and keep them under observation."

  "How do you know they haven't metamorphosed already?" Justin asked.

  Savage raised the spike and pointed to the enormous slumped corpse beside the fire pit. "We'll know soon enough," he said.

  Chapter 48

  Floreana woke up screaming.

  Ramon was on his feet instantly, as if he'd levitated out of bed. Floreana's screams had a different timbre to them, high-pitched and lined with panic. Her thighs were wet and sticky; her water had broken.

  She was gasping for breath, the large sphere of her belly heaving with her respiration. Crying her husband's name over and over, she tore at the sheets, balling them in her fists. Ramon knelt beside her, resting his fore-head on her sweaty temple, trying to soothe her with his voice.

  "Already, carinito?" he asked, his voice shaking. "How close? How close?" He took her hand and her nails left red lines down his palm.

  The sheets around her had darkened with sweat. He spread her legs and looked, but he couldn't see the baby's head. He wanted to be pre-pared when it first showed so that he could support its neck and squeeze below his wife's vagina to make sure her flesh didn't tear.

  "The blanket," Floreana gasped. "Do you have the blanket?"

  Ramon held up the soft blue quilt she had finished the day before. "Right here, carinito. Right here."

  Floreana arched her back and shrieked. Her elbows were shoved back hard into the mattress, her hands gnarled, dangling from her limp wrists like claws. "It's not right," she groaned. "This is not right."

  "It's okay," he said. "Everything's okay." He hoped she wouldn't notice the panic lurking beneath his eyes, the rush of blood in his cheeks.

  Her eyes rolled back until he saw just moon slivers of brown beneath her upper lids. She began to seize.

  Ramon fell on her, careful to keep his weight off her belly. She bucked and jerked, thrashing violently. One of her knees popped up and caught him on the side of the head, and his vision went momentarily blurry. He rose and took a step back. Her face was a mask stretched tight across her skull. Her arms rattled beside her like snakes.

  He'd need to get help.

  He backed up, knocking over a bucket with a clang. Grabbing the ax, he stumbled outside. Even with the sound of his wife's thrashing urging him on, he was afraid to venture into the dark. The sky was pricked through with pinholes, stars colored yellow like the soft licks of a flame. His wife's moaning followed him out into the night.

  He'd need to find the woman soldier. She would help. His wife's cries propelled him, but he stopped about fifty meters from the row of balsas. The soldiers' base camp was far away--across the road and well into the grassy fields to the northeast. He might not have time to reach them.

  He paused, trying to fight away fear and frustration, his eyes moistening. He peered in the direction of the soldiers' camp, then headed back to the rectangular block of light that filled the window of his house. Turning again, he stared at the road, spilling tears.

  He did not know what to do and did not have any time to make up his mind.

  Floreana's scream rent the night, startling him into action. He ran off into his field, toward his supply shed at the edge of the plantains. A rope could tie Floreana to the bed, then he'd do his best to deliver the baby alone. As soon as the baby was safely wrapped in the quilt, he'd go find the blonde soldier and she'd know what to do.

  His hands shook so badly it took him three tries to get the little key in the shed's lock. Floreana's screams crashed down on him like waves, and he cursed the southeast winds, sweeping the screams west across the uninhabited pahoehoe plains instead of east to the soldiers' camp. He swung the door open and staggered inside, knocking over supplies on the thin wooden shelves.

  He groped in the dark for a length of rope, his cheeks damp as he tried to block out the sound of his wife's cries. Finally, he felt the coarse fibers against his palm. He yanked the rope from under a bag of fertil-izer and draped it around his neck. The door had swung shut behind him, and he kicked it open, leaving it crooked on its hinges.

  Another scream, this one impossibly high and protracted.

  I'm coming, mi vida, he thought. I'm coming.

  He stepped through the narrow door frame into the night. The cry stopped, cut off mid-scream. He froze, breathing hard, lips trembling. Even from across the field, he could make out a stillness in the block of light from the window. The wind blew hot and lazy across his face, carrying with it the smells of moss and decomposing wood from the forest. He tried desperately to slow his breathing but could not.

  He called his wife's name, just once. His voice sounded hollow and weak in the night.
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  The air reverberated with silence. He was filled with a sudden and unde-niable dread. The ax slid from his hand, disappearing into the tall grass.

  His eyes fixed on the window, he trudged toward his house, his boots dragging reluctantly across the furrowed soil and damp grass. The rope was slick in his hands, a rough-skinned eel.

  After an eternity, he reached the side of the house. He headed for the door, leaning weakly against the wall. Bloque scraped against his bare shoulder, drawing blood.

  He tried to call Floreana's name again, but his throat was too raspy and the sound came out a hoarse whisper. He paused just beside the doorway, gathering the threads of his fear. The silence unrolled around him like a black sea, endless and unremitting.

  His teeth chattering, he stepped into the single room of his house. The rope slid from his hand to the floor.

  His wife lay on the mattress, her lower body a muddle of flesh and blood. She'd been torn open from the inside. A splatter of blood ran up the wall beside the mattress, nearly four feet away. Her body was stiff and twisted, her back still arched.

  On the floor lay a tangle of limbs and claws and half-shaped organs laid open to the outside air. The fetus. His child. A gnarled, cursed crea-ture that looked as though it had been forged in some hell's oven--a col-lection of viscera and tissue, only some of it human.

  It had expired before ever drawing air, and it lay, dead, beside its dead mother. Ramon's wife.

  His skin felt intensely hot, as if it were burning off his bones. With slow, drugged movements, he walked to the mattress and straightened his wife's limbs, trying his best to lay her arms by her sides so that she looked relaxed. He pulled the thin, stained blanket across her lower body, thumbed her eyes closed, kissed her still-moist forehead.

  He dragged a chair from the table over to the fireplace, above which some bloque had fallen away to reveal a brief stretch of rafter.

  He fetched the rope from the doorway.

  Chapter 49

  29 DEC 07 MISSION DAY 5

  Derek lay on his back in the dark of early morning, watching the rain patter on the roof of the tent. It slid to the sides and formed puddles, moving patterns of darkness. The tent looked alive, as if he were lying in the belly of some great beast and watching its stomach digest him.