Minutes to Burn

Chapter 41

Tucker and Savage stopped for a moment to rehydrate in the darkness, the smell of dampness lingering in the air. Tucker broke the long-standing silence by clearing his throat. Savage watched him expectantly. "Everything has a name back home," Tucker said. "Streets, house num-bers. You can always say where you're going, where you been. Not here. Just trees and dirt and hills. You could lose track of yourself here."

Savage scratched his beard, fingers losing themselves in tangles of hair. "Or find yourself." He worked his cheek between his teeth, shifting his jaw and feeling the flesh roll between his molars. "Your LT-he's not standing firm right now."

Tucker did not respond.

"What's all that shit you guys were talking about at the briefing back in Sac? About something he went through?"

"Derek's been a soldier for a long time," Tucker said.

"Doesn't matter. I seen veterans suddenly lose their killing nerve one day and…" Savage drew a finger across his neck and made a slicing sound. "Can happen to anyone, anywhere. Saw it all the time in Nam. Good buddy of mine went into a village, bayoneted some old bitch. Kept him up nights, thought she looked like his grandma back home. Next day he got the shakes, starting in his hands, spreading up his arms. His fire team takes a walk through a village, stumbles in on six Charlies in a hut, my buddy freezes up, couldn't pull the trigger. Lost the whole team, except one man."

"Sounds like a bit of a war story," Tucker said derisively.

"Don't it, though?" Savage replied quietly. He pursed his lips. "But it happened."

"How do you know?"

Savage looked away. "I was the one man."

He walked off into the woods, and after a moment, Tucker followed. The quiet encroached on them. Every sound magnified-the crunch of leaves underfoot, the sighing of the wind through the branches, the strange cackling calls of the petrels.

They reached a stretch of forest where a fault had rent the ground, engendering a constellation of smaller cracks. Trees protruded from the earth at strange angles, struggling to keep hold of the crooked rock beneath them, the last few feet of their tops turning straight up. Clumps of browning Spanish moss dangled over the branches like dead rats.

Savage glided across the fallen trees, the upthrust blocks of stone, the cracks in the earth that seemed to stretch down all the way to hell. Tucker's steps were unsteady in the gloom. At one point, he nearly lost his footing at the edge of a rift, but Savage was there instantly, a firm hand on his arm to pull him back. As abruptly as the disrupted section of land began, it ended, fading into vines and leafy domes.

The night was jet black, as though the moon had simply vanished. It was raining again, not hard rain like last night, but a soft misting through the air. Szabla and Justin had been walking for hours. It seemed that all the large masses of rock they'd located were either cracked, or dangerously near a cliff or fissure. Having stripped off her cammy shirt, Szabla cut through the foliage in her tank top. It clung wetly to her breasts and stomach, and when she ran a hand across the ridge of her clavicle, it came away slick with moisture.

A length of snake draped across a fallen tree limb, brown with yellow flecks. She pointed at it to alert Justin and kept moving. Mating dragon-flies zoomed dangerously, coupling briefly and separating to dodge tree trunks. She remembered hearing about birds that mate in a midair dive, sometimes rocketing to their death because they can't break off the act. She glanced behind her, checking Justin's position. Turning her mouth to her shoulder, she muttered into the transmitter, "Murphy. Primary channel."

Tucker activated his transmitter, grinning when he heard Szabla. "We're secure."

Her voice came through with exceptional clarity, as if she were standing right beside him. "This shit's making me nervous," she said in a hoarse whisper. "Have you noticed the look in Derek's eyes? Like he's a few bulbs short of a full string."

Some dirt had collected under Tucker's Iron Man watch, and he dug it out with his pinkie. He snapped a stick off a tree and used it to lop a frond off a plant. Savage was a good twenty-five feet behind him, out of earshot. "I don't know," Tucker replied. "He is the LT."

"He sure as hell's not acting like one. He's acting like the scientists' fuckboy. I spoke with Mako earlier. Private conversation. He was con-cerned but political. I'm thinking the rest of us should round up. Have a chat."

"What'd Cam say?"

"What the fuck does it matter what Cam says?"

"Well, maybe we could-"

"Don't move," Savage growled.

Though Savage had startled the hell out of him, Tucker froze. Savage stood about five feet to his left in the shadow beneath the dipping bough of a tree. Tucker hadn't seen him come up on him; he'd just heard a voice issuing from a patch of darkness.

Tucker was vulnerable from three sides, shadows all around him. He sensed a presence right beside him, the darkness shaping itself into something rudimentary and lifelike. Panic flickered through his eyes as he slowly turned his head to get his bearings. He tightened his grip on the stick.

"Tucker?" Szabla's voice crackled through the transmitter. "You there?"

The connection was breaking up with the rain, and Tucker prayed it would go dead. He'd have to speak to deactivate the transmitter, but he knew not to make a sound. Lips trembling, he tried to shush Szabla, but the air seemed to stick in his throat.

He hadn't moved an inch, not since Savage had spoken. His foot was raised mid-step, poised about four inches above the ground. A roll of thunder filled the air. Sweat beaded across his forehead.

"Not an inch," Savage hissed. "Don't even exhale."

Because it was supporting all his weight, Tucker's left leg started to quiver, ever so slightly, in the thigh. He flexed it and it stilled. More rain swept to his face and he blinked against it, fighting the water out of his eyes. His hand was white-knuckled around the branch. Some mud slid from the bottom of his raised boot and slopped to the ground.

A flash of lightning lit the air, and he saw dangling beside and above him the enormous creature, not more than an arm's length to his right. She swayed upside down from the branch of a tree, blending in almost perfectly with the fluctuating foliage all around her. Her forelegs were folded, as if in prayer, her wide wings pulled in tight across her back. If she weren't right next to him, he wouldn't have even seen her among the branches, twigs, and leaves.

Normally a greenish-tan, the creature's eyes had turned black for the night. Set in a triangle between them were the ocelli, three smaller eyes used only to distinguish the degree of light. They glimmered like pearls beneath the arc of her antennae. The hooks on the ends of her legs were clamped shut around a wide Scalesia branch about fifteen feet above the ground; it creaked when she swayed.

Tucker turned his head with excruciating slowness and looked into her face. Her front antennae vibrated in the breeze, her mouthparts quivering, and for an instant, Tucker caught his own frightened reflection in her black eyes.

Szabla's voice cut back in sharply. "-next in command. I'm thinking we could use a little leadership-" Tucker jerked ever so slightly, and the creature's antennae snapped erect at the movement. His nostrils flared, his chest jerked with a quick intake of air.

The strike was so quick Savage couldn't even see it. The raptorial legs flashed out, folding over themselves and crushing Tucker within them. Tucker screamed as the spikes dug through his flesh, almost scissoring him in two. His arm was pinned to his side. The strike took three hun-dredths of a second.

Tucker's stick tumbled to the ground.

The creature dropped from the branch, landing expertly on her legs while not relinquishing her hold on Tucker. Her frightful head lowered to the back of Tucker's neck, the mouth spreading wide, a collection of living tools.

Savage charged the creature, swinging his knife at the prothorax. The blade glanced off the hard waxy exoskeleton, unable to dig into the smooth surface. Though the blow didn't puncture her cuticle, the crea-ture swayed back with its force. Tucker's free arm flailed, his hand fisting the air as he screamed. Savage grabbed his arm and pulled, though he knew the thing had him wrapped up too tight. Blood spurted from Tucker's mouth, spilling over his chin.

The creature would have struck Savage were her raptorial legs not wrapped around Tucker's body. She flung Tucker to the ground and low-ered herself swiftly, standing territorially over his body.

Savage staggered back. Beneath the creature's abdomen, Tucker squirmed in the leaves. The creature spread her mouth, though no sound issued forth. Then air hissed from her spiracles, forcing Savage back another step.

A stream of blood ran down one of Tucker's arms, stark red against his white flesh. Savage could hear him rasping through a punctured lung. He was lost. There was no way he was going to pull through.

But it was in Savage's blood to stand ground when there was a com-rade down. He stepped back farther out of the creature's range and reverse-gripped the knife with the blade running down along his fore-arm, sharp edge out, ready to punch. The creature tilted her head, watching him curiously. It was night all around them, but in the lightning he could see the rain running off her sides. Her mouth opened in another silent roar, a maw of mandibles, maxillae, and labrum, and she drew her-self up to her full nine feet. Behind her, her abdomen and wings stretched back, thick and firm, like a horse's body. Though Savage was across the clearing from her, she seemed to tower over him.

She gave a startle display, spreading her wings and rearing up on her hind legs, filling the entire space between the trees and revealing two eye-like markings on the insides of her front legs. The upper part of her abdomen scraped against her underwings, producing a harsh hissing. She lowered herself, then stepped deliberately back behind Tucker's body and struck him with her front legs, knocking him a few feet across the ground. He howled, more in fear than pain, and tried to struggle away. His intestines were spilled on the ground beside him, and one of his hands was trying to scoop them back inside his body as the other clawed him forward.

Savage was frozen with indecision, unable to venture within range of the thing without being killed but desperately wanting to get his hands on it. He hoped for Tucker to pass out. But Tucker had never passed out, not from pain or panic. He kept moving, clawing and scooping like a wind-up toy running out of steam.

The creature's raptorial legs flashed out again, snatching Tucker off the ground and curling his body in toward her face. He screamed as the mouth approached him. The mandibles cut into the back of his neck and then he went limp in her front legs, twitching.

Savage and the creature watched each other as she ate.

She chewed with her mandibles, holding and manipulating chunks of flesh with her maxillae. Tucker's head rolled off and struck the ground with a thud. The creature made no effort to pick it up.

Savage watched one of Tucker's arms go down, the elbow sticking out of the preoral cavity. Despite her strong cutting jaws, the creature was a messy eater. It was not a pleasant meal to see consumed in any event, but the image of Tucker's various parts protruding from the crea-ture's mouth was sickening.

Savage crouched and glared at the creature, wiping the rain from his eyes with a swipe of his arm. "I'm gonna fuckin' kill you," he whispered, almost lovingly.

The creature paused, as if she had heard him. She lowered her head, tearing a thick band of meat from Tucker's flank, and when she looked up, Savage was gone.