Minutes to Burn (2001)

by Gregg Hurwitz

  She peered cautiously around the entrance of the lava tube, but there were no signs of danger. Tentatively, she stepped through the partial curtain of ferns into the forest. There was nothing waiting for her.

  She glanced quickly behind her just as the mantid pivoted atop the lava tube's opening, seemingly surprised that Cameron had emerged behind her. The mantid scrambled down from her perch, the wind from her snapping legs rushing across Cameron's face. Because of her pierced eye, the mantid's strikes were slightly imprecise.

  Cameron screamed, adrenaline shooting through her body, and hit a dead sprint in four steps, heading for camp. The mantid pursued, leaves and branches shushing around her cuticle. Her remaining eye was still acutely sensitive; it wouldn't be long before she adjusted her movements.

  The knotting in Cameron's legs intensified, and just when she was sure she could sprint no longer, she burst through a line of trees onto the field about fifty yards west of the road, her feet skidding on a wash of rocks. A few scattered Scalesias still studded the ground, and together with the tall balsas that lined the road, they provided irregular shade.

  She barely had time to look back at the forest's edge before the man-tid flew into sight, a whirlwind of legs and spikes and mandibles screaming down on her. Cameron got her feet under her just as the mantid slid on the rocks, and she was two paces toward base camp when the mantid lost her footing, screaming and flailing.

  When Cameron saw her husband stumbling up the road toward her, bare-chested, weak, and bleeding, she thought at first that she was hallu-cinating. Her chest heaved as if her heart had flipped over in her ribcage, and she sprinted toward him, wanting to fall into him with an embrace. But there would be no time for that, no time for relief or joy or affection.

  Justin leaned heavily on the trunk of a balsa at the road's edge, almost falling over. A thick stream of blood ran from his shoulder, crusting across his chest and abdomen. His mouth moved weakly and she knew, somehow, that he was trying to say her name. He was still a good thirty yards away, though Cameron was running to him as fast as she could.

  Behind Cameron, the mantid popped up, her head rocking on her long neck. She started after Cameron. Lowering her head, she closed the space quickly, turning the ground over beneath her legs.

  Cameron had not even reached her husband when she realized there was no way, in his weakened state, that he could possibly escape. Perhaps she could outrun the creature if she only had herself to worry about, but she could see even from a distance that Justin was barely holding on. He didn't stand a chance.

  Behind her, the mantid was picking up speed. Cameron reached back and yanked out Savage's knife, twirling it once so the butt protruded from her fist. She closed in on Justin and he stretched out an arm to her, his eyes loose and rolling. He managed to call her name once before she shoved him, spinning him face-first into the tree trunk. She brought the butt of the knife down squarely on the back of his skull, and he crum-pled to the ground. The mantid was no less than ten yards away from her and moving fast.

  Shoving off Justin's body, Cameron sprinted up the road. She felt the creature bearing down, sensed the spikes only feet, then inches from her back, and she pumped her arms as hard as she could, sprinting for the watchtower and panting so hard the air almost choked her. She broke from the shadow of the trees, then the mantid screeched and Cameron ran toward the watchtower screaming and swinging her arms wildly, knowing the creature was upon her.

  But she wasn't.

  Cameron turned and saw the mantid watching her from the edge of the shade, her legs snapping reflexively. The dirt felt hot even through Cameron's boots.

  Cameron sank to her knees, throwing her arms wide and looking up at the sun. As Rex had said, the mantid wouldn't expose herself directly to the baking sun during the day; it would dry out her cuticle. Though she owned the whole island at night, she was limited to the forest's cover during the brightest daytime hours, needing the protective cover of the canopy.

  Justin's body lay in the road just behind the creature. Cameron had swung the butt of the knife so that it would strike him between the ear and the back of the head, a region where the skull plate was solid, so it wouldn't crack, and strong enough to absorb a blow that could knock a man unconscious. The mantid only attacked moving prey; she'd left Sav-age in the ditch earlier when he was unconscious.

  The mantid turned and examined Justin's body, lying still in the shade provided by the balsas that lined the east side of the road.

  "Don't you touch him!" Cameron screamed. "Don't you fucking touch him!"

  The mantid leaned over Justin, scanning his body with her massive head, the spear stock sticking up like a black feather. She paused over his face, her mouth inches from his cheek. Justin's eyes remained closed, but Cameron noticed one of his fingers twitching. The mantid's legs snapped, as if she were debating picking him up for a closer look.

  "Oh, Jesus," Cameron whispered. "Don't wake up. Oh, baby, please don't wake up." She shook her head, her lips moving quickly, as if in prayer.

  Justin's hand rose an inch above the ground, then fell. The mantid was too intent on his face to notice.

  Cameron stood up, waving her hands to get the creature's attention. The mantid raised her head to Cameron as Justin stirred on the ground beneath her. "Justin!" Cameron yelled. "Just stay perfectly still! Play dead and she'll leave you alone!"

  She thought she saw the flash of Justin's eyes, and then he seemed to be agitated, fighting off panic. His body trembled, his head rocked side to side.

  "Don't fucking move!" Cameron screamed.

  The mantid's head snapped down, but Justin lay perfectly still. Cameron felt herself go limp with terror, and she collapsed on the ground. She'd never felt so helpless.

  "Stay still, baby! God, please stay still!" Justin wasn't stirring; either he was still out cold or had registered what she was shouting to him. The wound on his shoulder glittered.

  Cameron sat on the road, her legs curled beneath her, the sun blazing down, and watched the mantid at the edge of the shadows. The mantid met her stare. As the sun rose, shortening the shadows the balsa trees threw across the road, the mantid was forced to step back off Justin's body. Cameron began to sob with relief, continuing to call to her hus-band, reassuring him and telling him not to move.

  Every few minutes, the mantid had to step back to remain in the shade. Her front legs remained just at the edge of the shadows, and she moved back only when forced to by the sun, her remaining eye never leaving its focus on Cameron.

  Finally, when the heat grew too intense, the creature turned and scur-ried back to the edge of the forest proper.

  Cameron ran forward to her husband. He stirred under her touch.

  "The speargun," Justin said. "I lost the speargun." He was trembling and sweating. The wound on his shoulder was deep and bleeding freely.

  "That's okay," Cameron said. She pressed her cheek to his, helping him sit up.

  When the mantid saw Justin move, she stepped forward into the sun-light, air issuing from her spiracles, but quickly withdrew again from the heat.

  Cameron looped Justin's good arm around her neck and half-carried, half-dragged him across the eastern field to base camp. To the north, the creature shadowed them, moving among the trees at the edge of the forest.

  Justin was delirious, mumbling to himself. "Gotta go into the forest," he muttered. "Gotta find my wife."

  "It's okay, baby. I'm here. I'm right here."

  When they neared the tents, Cameron's legs gave out. Justin grunted in pain when he hit the ground, then he passed out.

  The mantid watched them from among the waving trees, then turned and lumbered back out of sight. Cameron collapsed on top of Justin.

  They had survived the night.

  Chapter 69

  They were down to their last fuel can when the Zodiac puttered up to the blue-and-white painted dock behind the Bio Mar building. A few marine iguanas labored to get out of the bow's way, their heads and t
he top ridges of their tails protruding from the water as they swam. The morning light spilled across the water, lighting it a twinkling green.

  Save a stop directly over the location of the deep-sea core holes to gather three more water samples, they hadn't slowed their pace for the last seventeen and a half hours. The sea had been choppy, which had stretched their voyage an hour and a half longer than they'd anticipated. Diego's hands were chapped and raw from the salt water and the whip-ping wind, and Rex's back was so sore he could barely straighten up when he stood. Ramoncito was in surprisingly good shape, having passed the time sleeping beneath the edge of a tarp, Rex's Panama hat protecting his sun-chapped face.

  Diego was out of the boat in a flash, Rex right behind him, struggling to be careful with the bag full of water samples. He stumbled on the dock and the jars clicked together dangerously, but none broke. They jogged for Diego's office in the Plantas y Invertebrados building, ignoring the overturned furniture and shattered glass inside. Diego pointed down the hallway. "The lab," he said. "I'll grab a few things and meet you there."

  Rex entered the lab and arrayed the water jars, seventeen in all, on a countertop. He began to centrifuge the samples, spinning them to iso-late the denser dinos from the rest of the seawater. Accustomed to field-work, he was a little hesitant in the lab.

  Diego entered, holding a test tube filled with dinoflagellate DNA, a wild type sample known to be normal and uninfected; he could use it as a control against which to test the seventeen samples from around San-gre de Dios.

  "I'm pelleting at two thousand g," Rex said.

  Diego picked up a sample jar and weighed its heft in his hand. "Fine. Next we'll need to do genomic preps to pull the DNA away from the rest of the dino molecules." He headed for a storage closet and removed a stack of kits.

  "How long do those take?"

  Diego shrugged. "One and a half, two hours. Let's fly through them, get as many as possible running simultaneously."

  Diego walked over to the minus-twenty freezer and checked inside, locating the test tubes containing the enzymes they'd use to do restriction digests, which would cut specific sections of the dinoflagellates' code once they got the DNA separated.

  Working at a furious pace, they began to set up the genomic preps. Rex glanced at his watch. It was already 9:20, and they still had so much work to do.

  Out on the empty boat, Ramoncito stirred beneath the tarp, Rex's Panama hat crooked over his face. He pulled it back, squinting into the morning light. Looking around, he realized they had arrived back at Puerto Ayora, and he pulled himself stiffly to his feet and stretched.

  Pressing his fingertips to his sunburnt cheeks, his head still spinning with all that he'd been told earlier, he headed for the lab, where he knew Diego would be needing his help.

  Chapter 70

  Cameron raised her head from Justin's back and peered around. The base camp stood deserted twenty yards to their right. For the time being, they were safe. She rolled her husband onto his back and exam-ined his wound. He opened his eyes, blinking hard. Some of the haze had lifted from his eyes.

  "Hey, baby," he said. "Did I rescue you?" He tried to smile but couldn't. "I seem to remember taking out the butt of your knife with my head."

  "Stay still," Cameron said. She noted that he didn't ask about Tank; she must have looked worse than she thought.

  The mantid's hook had swiped a chunk of flesh from his left shoul-der. His collarbone was exposed and shattered, but it had managed to absorb the brunt of the blow, protecting the subclavian artery beneath. The mantid had not cut deep enough to reach the axillary artery.

  Staring at the exposed muscle and tissue, Cameron realized that Justin would be unable to help her. The plexus of nerves on his left side was compromised; his arm would be useless until he received real medical attention. Plus, his transmitter was missing--they had no way to contact anyone. She was on her own against the creature.

  Justin read her face. "I know. I've lost so much blood, I'm probably hypovolemic." He tried to raise his arm but could not. "Check my heart rate."

  Cameron took his pulse, pulling back the top lip of her pants so she could time it using the small digital clock face sewn into the material. Her lips tightened when she saw the reading. "One twenty-four."

  He cursed. "My resting's fifty-five. I'm tachycardic." He blinked hard, focusing. "You're gonna have to clean the wound for me. Apply pressure."

  Cameron retrieved an old cammy shirt from Szabla's tent and ripped it in half. She poured two salt packets into her canteen and shook it, then poured the water from the canteen over the rags. Returning to Justin, she leaned over him, the rag dripping salt water. It would help clean the wound. Justin blocked the open wound on his shoulder protectively with his good hand.

  "This is gonna be bad," he said.

  She nodded.

  He moved his hand and grimaced. "All right, Nurse Ratched."

  Cameron pressed the salty cloth to the open wound, and Justin's breath came in hard gasps, though he didn't cry out. Once the wound was clean, she ripped strips of material from the remainder of the cammy shirt and tied them tightly to secure the makeshift pressure dressing over the wound. Beads of sweat stood out along Justin's hairline. His forehead was red and peeling. For once, he didn't even attempt to joke.

  "There," she said, standing back to examine her work. "Hopefully it'll clot. Justin. Justin."

  Justin's head lolled back, and Cameron caught it. He blinked once, lazily. "It's all right," he said. "I'm all right. You're gonna have to stick me now. I think I threw some Lactate Ringer's in my kit bag."

  She retrieved the IV bag, then tied a strip of cloth around his arm as a tourniquet. Justin flexed his right fist, trying to swell his antecubital vein at the crook of his elbow. She inserted a large bore needle with his guid-ance, then spiked the IV bag. He lay back as she stood over him, squeezing the bag to push the fluids.

  Twenty minutes later when the bag was drained, she removed the nee-dle. Justin tried to struggle up to a sitting position, but she pushed him back down. He grunted in pain.

  "You're a liability, Justin. The minute I leave your side, the mantid will come after you, because she'll sense you're easy."

  "I am not easy," Justin said. He tried to move his injured arm and cried out. Scrunching his face up, he rolled on the grass, waiting for the pain to subside.

  Some blood had seeped through the cloth. Cameron pressed down on the bandage and Justin winced. "We need to get you out of the man-tid's sight. If she sees you as vulnerable prey, she might brave the sun to get you."

  "Okay. I'll just hide out in the ambulance." His lips were moving less and less when he spoke. His moan sounded like a door creaking open. "What do you want to do?"

  "Bury you."

  She couldn't help but notice that the hole she was digging for her hus-band looked like a shallow grave. It was about ten yards behind the base camp, the remaining tents blocking it from view of the forest in case the mantid was watching. Cameron held the pain at bay while she worked, refusing to let it set in until she finished. Her arms ached so much they finally went numb.

  Justin lay on his stomach, watching her work and doing his best to remain conscious. Cameron had already hydrated him as best she could. He would be going into the hole for a long time, until their 2200 pickup.

  If they lived that long.

  When she stepped aside, Justin rolled into the hole, lying on his back so his face was nearly level with the ground. His breath quickened as Cameron packed dirt over his legs, his stomach, his chest, obscuring them from view. Finally, only his face remained, an oval of flesh sunk in the dirt.

  "You gonna be all right?" Cameron asked.

  Justin nodded weakly. He glanced at the side of her shirt, moist with rotting hemolymph. "Good color for you." He closed his eyes and Cameron felt her heart quicken.

  "Don't you fucking die on me."

  "Please," Justin managed. "I have dry cleaning out."

  Cameron
leaned over her husband and kissed him tenderly on the lips, then fitted into his mouth a short length of camel bak tubing she'd found in Savage's kit bag. She smoothed dirt over his face until it was gone from view. The tubing protruded from the dirt a few inches, but aside from that, the ground above Justin was perfectly flat.

  Since the gash hadn't compromised any major arteries, he would sur-vive if he didn't lose any more blood. And she'd made a point of digging deep enough so that he'd be buried in cool earth, protected from the pounding sun.

  Cameron rose and stood near the overturned soil for a moment, then placed her hand near the top of the tubing, wanting to feel Justin's breath on her palm. The person whom she cherished most in the world was buried alive at her feet, and she would have to leave him there for a good long time.

  Turning, she headed back to the base camp. She changed her cam-mies, rinsed with water from the canteen, and applied the last of the antibacterial gel, smearing it liberally over her cuts. She didn't want to waste time now hiking down to the beach for a more thorough washing--it would have to wait until she figured out a plan.

  She ripped a blank sheet of paper from a logbook and jotted a note explaining that Justin was in fact alive, and that she'd buried him. Beneath, she scribbled a diagram showing where he was buried. She pinned the piece of paper on the front of one of the remaining tents, where it flapped conspicuously. She stood and stared at the note for a few moments before turning to find her kit bag.

  She dug out her IR strobe, turning over the rounded, cigarette pack-sized unit and clicking the waterproof button on the bottom. A soft whirring indicated that it was strobing, though the infrared cover ensured it could only be seen with night vision. She set the strobe in the grass a safe distance from Justin, about midway between base camp and the air vesicle they'd used for the trap.

  She returned to her kit bag, finding a bottle of multipurpose solution encased in a Ziploc bag, and cleaned and reinserted her contacts. Pressing her fingers to her temples, she ran through her options in her head, trying to come up with a plan to survive until the helo arrived.