Minutes to Burn

Chapter 44

Savage was back in the forest. Sometimes he felt he belonged there- that was his curse and his blessing. A kid from the bad side of Pitts-burgh, a city of smokestacks, drab concrete, and cigarette butts in gutters, and yet he'd spent more time than he'd care to remember sur-rounded by nothing but fronds and trees and things that went hiss in the night.

Slung low in the fork of a tree as if awaiting prey, body streaked with dried mud and grime, eyes beading white behind a mask of filth and the dusty tinge of a wild man's beard, Savage cocked his head and listened for the faintest sound. Camouflaged with mud, he blended into the branch, coiled along its length like an anaconda. He dropped from the tree and stepped into the hunt.

Stalking through the wilderness, hunting and being hunted, it made his balls tighten with the thrill. He could still remember the way it felt when he belly-crawled up behind a cluster of gooks on a stakeout, stood with his M-60 hammering in his arms like a living thing before they could even turn around. Like he'd shattered the third plate with as many baseballs and won the fuckin' Kewpie doll.

He was shirtless, streaked with mud and rain and sweat. He moved effortlessly, picking through the terrain like a native thing, whistling behind tree trunks, easing through underbrush, flowing through show-ers of vines so precisely that he blended with their movement.

Using no compass, he navigated through the darkness, feeling the plants wet against his face. He paused about a half mile from the spot where the creature had struck, pulling the Death Wind from his ankle sheath. He flexed his arm, curling his fist to his chin, and made an inci-sion along the backside of his forearm. It was not deep; it would let blood, but not too much blood, and it would heal quickly.

Turning his face up so the rain fell across his cheeks, he exhaled deeply, the noise whisked away in the wind, then continued through the mud and the leaves.

Blood curled down his arm, wrapping itself in thick bands around his wrist, moistening his palm and fingers until they were hot and sticky. He left blood on the fronds and leaves, in droplets on the mud, on tree trunks against which he leaned.

He left his blood on the forest.

The creature cleaned herself fastidiously, rubbing her forelegs over her face like a cat. She pulled her antennae down, sucking the blood off them, then wiped her eyes. It was essential that she remove all food from her eyes and antennae so that it wouldn't interfere with her sensory per-ception.

Bending her enormous head down, she nibbled free the chunks of flesh stuck in the tines of her legs.

She fluttered her translucent underwings once, folding them neatly beneath their protective outer wings, and headed back toward the thicket of bushes nestled between the trees in front of her. She stopped and retched twice, long shudders originating in her abdomen, and brought up Tucker's thermite grenade. It flew from her mouth as if she'd spit it, plopping in the mud beside Tucker's head.

She eyed it curiously.

A distant vibration reached her antennae and they snapped upright. She froze, holding one foreleg off the ground like a bird dog pointing, and waited for further vibrations. There were none.

But then it reached her antennae, the pungent reek of alarm pheromones.

Slowed by the considerable weight in her belly, she plodded in the direction of the scent, swiveling her head to glance around for the wounded prey. Her movements were conspicuous, brazen.

There was an almost arachnid jerkiness to her walk, but also an odd grace. Despite the formidable length of her body, she never scraped against trees or broke branches, not even with her rounded back or hind legs.

The rain washed over her and the forest, confusing her slightly since it made the leaves and twigs vibrate with small, lifelike motions. It appeared agitated, the forest.

The first drop of blood she came across was nestled in the palm of a large fern frond, protected from the rain by a broader frond that stretched over it like an umbrella. She paused, sensing the blood. Then she sped up, crashing through the underbrush, her antennae quivering, her eyes focusing to take in mosaic after mosaic of the forest. Her feet pressed hooflike imprints in the mud.

The blood trail was clearly marked, smudged through the mud and the plants. She crossed a hunk of tree bark liberally doused with blood and her head pivoted a near half turn on her thin neck, her mouth working like a pulsing heart.

Then the trail ended.

She stopped, a vine draped scarflike over her shoulder. Her raptorial legs were raised, snapping back on themselves, hungry mouths. There was no more blood, just rain and leaves and air so hot it steamed beneath the canopy. She leaned forward, her head inches off the ground, and examined the mud, then the tree trunks and the plants surrounding her. Craning her neck, she ran her head over the ground like a vacuum cleaner.

Ten feet behind her, one of her footprints vibrated, then the mud bubbled upward beneath it as though the earth were belching. A dome pulled itself from the sticky earth, mud thick with filth draining off its sides in gooey sheets.

As the mud fell away around it, two arms became visible, ridged at the shoulders, then the back haunches of some jungle thing. The haunches rose like a sprinter's in the blocks, then Savage pulled himself erect. His eyes blinked open, flashes of white amidst brown.

In a single clean movement, the mud slid from the Death Wind knife clutched in his hand, plopping to the earth. The blade gleamed cold and steel.

He saw the creature's antennae snap to attention. She started to turn her head.

Savage's heart pounded in his ears. He heard nothing, though he knew he was yelling at the top of his lungs as he charged; it was just him and his heart thundering through his body as he leapt up on the thing's back, his boot almost slipping off the slick waxy exoskeleton before taking hold in a crunch of wing and body. He propelled himself forward across the length of the abdomen toward the torsolike thorax, arms out-stretched to hug the big boulder of a head that was swiveling to look directly at him over its own body. His shoulder struck her cheek just before the razor-sharp mandibles could turn into him like tusks, and the thing reared like a stallion, her wings kicking open beneath his legs, her spiked front legs flailing and crushing closed. He would've slid off had he not locked an arm around the long thin neck, the crook of his fore-arm and biceps cinched against the thing's throat, and his yell fell into a growl though he still couldn't hear it. He was snarling through clenched teeth like a dog, his face heavy with mud and his bare chest flat against her body as she reared and shook and reared again, her cutting jaws snapping shut on air and air and air. The edge of his knife was inches from his cheek.

The creature pivoted, striking the base of a tree roughly and bringing down a scattering of leaves over Savage. He held his arm tight around her neck, locking up the wrist with his other hand, and nuzzled his face into the union of his fists under the knife, smelling mud and the scent of his own warm flesh.

Something crunched, a seam bursting in the cuticle, and the creature paused, only for a moment, but that was enough. Yanking the head to the side with all his force, Savage ripped the knife through her neck, dig-ging so deep he could feel the ooze against his knuckles. The creature's hissing went silent in a whistle of air that bubbled wetly from the sev-ered trachea in the gash. Shaking and twitching, she fell, her front legs folding so she looked as though she were kneeling. Her back legs gave out and she collapsed, Savage riding her down into the mud like a cow-boy, his legs forked over the spot where her thorax met her lengthy abdomen.

He flung the head aside, and it flapped limply from the sheet of flesh hinged on the intact cuticle at the back of the neck. His boots sank in mud almost to the ankles when he slid off the abdomen.

The rain had cleared some of the mud from his body, but he was still filthy. His hair was heavy, tangled with grime. He sheathed his blade, pat-ting it once affectionately.

He recognized the sour taste in his mouth. Combat juice, they used to call it, the saliva that flooded one's tongue along the sides. Some water had collected on a frond, and he poured it over his mouth and chin, drinking. Crouching to rest by a tree, he plucked a granadilla from the mud and split the shell with his thumbs, scraping his bottom teeth along the lining of the skin to get at the meat.

Once he no longer felt his heart moving in his chest, he rose and faced the dead creature. He grabbed her back legs and tugged, and the large body slid easily in the mud. She was surprisingly light given her size. She'd had a good fighting build-large body surface in proportion to bulk, low weight to leverage her strength.

It had taken him nearly an hour to get out there; it would be at least three more pulling the thing back to base camp. He began the trek, clenching the back legs between his biceps and sides and dragging the corpse behind him. The wings crumpled up under the body, their slick-ness helping him move it through the mud.

Time passed in a crawl. He heard rats rustling around him, and when he glanced back he saw them there, feeding on the head and the tender flesh of the neck in droves. At first he paused and shooed them off, but eventually he grew too tired. As long as they didn't take the head off altogether, he no longer cared.

At one point, he noticed the red top of Tucker's thermite grenade, half-buried in the mud. He picked it up, stuffing it into a pocket, before returning to the body.

The body caught in bushes and branches and more than once between tree trunks. He'd have to back up and reroute, his breath coming like fire from his lungs, his face pounding with the heat.

The creature's legs wore blisters under his armpits and along his biceps and the ridges of his palms, but he dragged his kill onward with the dull, plodding determination of a machine, afraid to rest in case the pain set in.

When he reached the edge of the forest, a vicious fatigue overcame him. The creature's head was still there, lolling behind the body, but one of the eyes had been eaten out, an antenna chewed down to a nub. His knees almost buckled when the body caught the friction of a band of rocks, but he had come too far to drop now, so he pulled on toward the flickering light of the fire.

They watched him approach with large horrified eyes. Derek rose from the log, but the rest couldn't move. Cameron took a halting step back. Szabla's mouth was wide-open, and Justin looked as though he'd just swallowed something live. Diego slid from the log onto his knees.

They didn't even dare to blink as Savage pulled the mangled body into the ring of logs around the fire and released it, his arms going to knots and his legs cramping the instant he stopped. Rather than thumping to the ground, the creature's legs stayed right where he'd let go of them, sticking out like the arms of a wheelbarrow. The body stretched before them on the grass like a dropped buffalo, the fire reflecting off its shiny cuticle.

Savage moved slowly to face Derek. "There's your fuckin' proof," he said.

Turning his back, he staggered to his tent.