Minutes to Burn

Chapter 51

Donald's nasal voice clicked through Derek's shoulder. "Gentlemen," he said. "And women. I'm calling in from Fort Detrick, conferenced with Dr. Samantha Everett."

"You're in Maryland?" Rex asked. "You flew out?"

"Yes," Donald said. "And after I explain our preliminary findings about this virus, you'll understand why."

Donald introduced Samantha, and the squad circled tightly as she proceeded to explain what they'd gleaned about the virus so far. Diego and Rex interrupted occasionally to explain the scientific terms to the soldiers, and to update Donald and Samantha about what they'd discov-ered in the specimen freezer and the water samples. When Samantha finished describing her hypotheses about the virus, there was a long pause.

Cameron felt the blood leave her face. If she contracted the virus, it would go to work on the embryo inside her. She had stood in the freezer with the others, the infected bodies swinging and dripping all around her. She'd already had morning sickness once-she was hardly at the top of her game, and if things went south, there was nothing anyone could do for her. Tank was watching her, maybe with concern, but he averted his eyes quickly when she looked over.

"But if this is how the virus works," Diego was saying, "then why do all the larvae look identical? Why are they not all different like the last generation we saw captured in the specimen freezer?"

"The virus must go dormant after the first generation," Samantha answered.

"So the first generation is all different," Szabla said, "but the second wave of offspring resemble their parents."

Savage lit a cigarette and Diego didn't even bother to comment.

"Of course," Rex said. "From a fitness perspective, if one of the mutated organisms survives to reproduce, it would be advantageous for it to replicate its own phenotype in its offspring. Continued mutation would compromise stability."

"It's like the virus found a working model, so it's sticking with it," Szabla added.

There was a rush of air as Samantha sighed into her telephone in the slammer. "It's amazing," she said. "The virus has evolved such that it provides a one-time opportunity for massive mutation. An unthinking yet solution-oriented process to create new animals capable of filling environmental niches."

Savage exhaled a long, thick ribbon of smoke. "Evolution in over-drive," he said.

Diego stood up, sweat glistening on his forehead. "This could be an age-old process-the virus locked in the earth's core, living in ther-mophilic microbes, springing up at intervals of hundreds of thousands of years to revolutionize life forms. It could explain instances of rapid origination, anomalies in the fossil records. The jump from cold- to warm-blooded vertebrates. The archaeopteryx. The Cambrian explo-sion. The Burgess shale. We may be on the precipice of such a period." His hands were shaking. He put them in his pockets.

Cameron held up her hand. "Stop," she said. "First things first. How does the virus spread? Could we get it from one of these creatures?"

"It seems to spread in similar fashion as a blood-borne pathogen," Samantha said.

"What's that mean?" Justin asked.

"If you fuck one," Savage growled, "wear a condom."

"Don't have open contact with the larvae's secretions," Samantha said.

"Well, don't viruses mutate all the time?" Justin asked, his voice lined with panic. "I mean, what if this thing goes airborne?"

"Let's not get dramatic," Samantha answered calmly. "It's not aerosolinfectious now, and generally, viruses tend to retain similar properties as they evolve. Besides, you guys don't have mission-oriented protective posture suits, and even if you did, you wouldn't be able to bend over and touch your toes if you put 'em on."

"What steps should we take to ensure we don't get infected?" Cameron asked.

"Well, we don't even know if it can infect humans, though, clearly, we don't want to resolve that issue the hard way. So, for one, I'd steer clear of that specimen freezer. Those bodies are packed with the virus, and from what you said, they're discharging secretions copiously. The large body you have at the camp is probably still shedding. Burn it-for your safety, and so it doesn't work its way through the food chain as it decom-poses. Do you have any antibacterial gel?"

"Yes," Justin said. "One bottle."

"If you come into contact with any secretions, rinse off and apply the gel. Handle the larva with care, but there's no need to be paranoid. Touching it won't spread the virus." Her sneeze echoed through the transmitters. " 'xcuse me. I do have some good news for you. As Rex pointed out, the confluence of conditions that allowed the Darwin virus to find its way into a single viable animal host is quite extraordinary. If it operates like viruses that are similarly transmitted, the rate of infection we would anticipate in the type of contact between a virus-bearing microorganism and an insect embryo is only one in eight. Taking into account the wasp and mantid populations of the island, and the odds of infected dinos going to spore state, UV weakening an ootheca so it could be compromised by parasitic wasps, and the virus hitting the unhatched nymphs at precisely the right timing-we're looking at an estimated one in one hundred twenty-one shot that another mantid ootheca was infected. The odds that the infected ootheca would produce offspring that pulled the right combination of organs and structures from the resultant DNA soup to be viable are even lower, probably infinitesimal. It looks like the assumption you've been operating on-that there's only one mantid line-age-stands an extremely good chance of being accurate."

"So the larvae are infected," Diego said despondently. "All of them."

There was a pause before Samantha answered. "Yes, I would imagine so."

"If this virus does indeed increase mutation and speed generational turnover," Donald said, "that would explain a number of the things you've described about the animals."

"Like what?" Cameron asked.

"Well, the switch from incomplete to complete metamorphosis, for one."

"A two-stage metamorphosis allows an organism to take advantage of variant food sources," Rex murmured. "It opens up the range of food available to it through its life cycle. The larvae seem primarily herbivorous-"

"While the adults seem to prefer people food," Szabla said. No one laughed.

"It would also explain the mantids' accelerated rate of development," Donald said. "Early reproduction is one of the keys to rapid increase. A ten percent decrease in age at first reproduction is roughly equivalent to a one hundred percent increase in fecundity. The rapid cycling of gener-ations entails, of course, extremely short intergenerational gaps. Think of the Aphis fabae."

"I often do," Szabla said.

"It's an aphid. Embryonic development for the next three generations actually begins in the mother's body before her own birth. If all her off-spring survived, a single female could produce five hundred twenty-four billion progeny in a year. Not to mention cecidomyian gall midges, who eat their mother alive from the inside, only to crawl from her shell and be devoured by their own offspring two days later." There was a silence as Donald paused. "If this virus indeed hastens the infected species' radiation, don't expect your larvae to hold in instar stages too long. After another molting or two, you're due for a metamorphosis."

Derek gazed at the larva in his lap, clearly upset. "But how does the virus know to do all this?" he asked.

"It doesn't know anything," Donald answered. "It has adapted to act certain ways because it's been shaped over thousands, maybe millions, of generations by random mutation and natural selection. Its actions merely give the appearance of motive."

"Do you think the adults will actively hunt us?" Justin asked.

"As Rex pointed out, aside from the occasional dog, no other sizable and appropriate food source on the island comes to mind," Donald said slowly. "Livestock would be too large, iguanas too small, and they'd be unable to crack a tortoise."

"I know we're all in a bit of a creature feature mindset," Rex said. "But let's bear in mind that the mantids are not malevolent. They're ani-mals that act on need and instinct-no more, no less."

Savage covered one nostril with a thumb and blew snot on the ground. He wiped his hand off on his cammies.

"None of the other wildlife seems to be affected," Diego said. "Why would the virus merely affect one species of animal like this?"

"Viruses tend to be most prevalent in one species," Samantha said. "The 'virus reservoir.' Like deer mice to hantavirus, monkeys to simian hemorrhagic fever, Calomys callosus to Machupo. But the Darwin virus has been present in a fairly wide range-microbes, dinos, mantids, and rabbits. The fact that it affects animals in the embryonic stage is trouble-some, because that's the time when cells from different species most resemble one another. If it could infect a rabbit embryo, it's not unrea-sonable that it could infect a canine embryo, for instance. The long shot is that any of these infected embryos would actually be viable. As it stands, we only have one accountable virus reservoir-the mantid line-age."

"And what do you usually do with this 'virus reservoir?'" Diego asked. He closed his eyes, clearly not wanting to hear the answer.

"If we can, we exterminate it." Samantha's voice was soft through the transmitter.

Rex stood up, removed his dirty Panama hat, and poured water from a canteen over his head. It dripped down the jagged wisps of his bangs, running across his stubbled face. "We had hoped to observe them for longer," he said. "It's quite an… quite an amazing thing happening out here." The wind sucked through the watchtower in the distance.

"Let's not be hasty," Donald said. "There still might be some way around killing them all. I'd like to confer with Samantha and the other virologists here and check back in a few hours. In the meantime, we're still doing our best to get you pulled off that island."

Donald and Samantha clicked out. The group sat around the dead fire, staring at one another across the ashes. Rex raised his hands, then let them fall into his lap.

"I don't want to exterminate this species," Diego said.

"It's not a new species," Rex said. He stood, running his fingers through his wet hair. "They're just manifestations of the virus." The oth-ers looked puzzled. "You've heard the expression that a chicken is merely the egg's way of making another egg?" No one looked like they had, so Rex continued. "Well, the mantid is just the virus's way of making more virus. These are sick animals. Infected and altered."

"This is how evolution works," Diego snapped. "Through sickness. Through mutation. It's a natural virus. These are all natural processes."

Savage leaned close to Diego, almost singeing him with the end of his cigarette. "I don't give a shit about natural," he growled. "Murder is nat-ural. Eating one's young is natural. Don't pull that shit on me again. You're so worried about killing the right animals in the right places. Pigs are bad, but lizards are good. This tree belongs here, this bush should be pulled up. It's all bullshit. Who cares whether these things are natural or not? We're assessing risk here. Us or them."

A flight of birds erupted from the Scalesia canopy, flycatchers and petrels, rising in crazed, looping circles. "But we could be…we could be terminating a species here," Diego said. "Many species."

"This island isn't ready for them," Rex said. Diego was shaking his head, so he stepped forward, addressing him softly. "You actively elimi-nate other feral animals-puppies, kittens, goats. These mantids are the ultimate introduced species-they could devour all the other animals, become just as damaging as pigs. Worse. We have no idea how they'll impact the ecology here. We might want to think about-"

Derek rose abruptly. "Nobody's making a move without my approval," he said. When he unclenched his hands, Cameron noticed the marks his fingernails had pressed into his palms. "Nothing is to happen unless I give the order. Is that clear?"

Suddenly, the ground bucked underfoot and Derek went down. A thin crevice opened up, snaking its way through the field parallel to the road. A few of the Scalesias at the forest's edge snapped, their branch-heavy tops smashing into the ground. Szabla and Justin's tent flapped up in the air, pinned down only by two strainers staked deep in the grass.

Szabla fell, landing on her back so hard her breath left her in a grunt. A hurricane lamp was smashed by a rolling cruise box. One of the logs by the fireplace dislodged from its muddy base and spun toward Szabla. She was sucking air, trying to pull herself up, but Cameron reached her first, grabbing one boot and yanking her clear just in time.

A large balsa by the road snapped at its base, plummeting down with a fierce whistling. It smashed into a lava boulder, splitting it with cracks. It lay on its side, palmate leaves riffling in the wind, gray bark standing out against the green of the pasture.

Rex watched the waving trees in the forest through the L of his thumb and index finger. A massive shudder shook the ground as a shelf of rock and silt sheered off the steep eastern coast nearly a kilometer away, then there was silence. Dust and dirt swirled in the air, refusing to settle. Derek pulled himself up and trotted to his tent, Diego scurrying after him. The others rose, dusting themselves off.

Derek stumbled from his tent, holding the larva along the length of his arms. "Set it down!" Rex barked. "Don't handle it."

Derek placed the larva hastily on the grass, and Diego examined its soft underside. "It appears to be unharmed," Diego finally said.

An aftershock caused them to brace themselves, but it quickly passed. Savage reached over, wiping a smudge of mud roughly from Szabla's cheek.

"Well, that's a fucking relief," he said.