Minutes to Burn

Chapter 5

His gold scraggly coat spotted with brown and draped sheetlike over his gaunt frame, the feral dog paused at the edge of the field facing the Scalesia forest of Sangre de Dios. A garua haunted the curves of the forest, lurking in the trees' rounded domes.

Shrubs and plants tangled the forest understory, and the tree branches were draped with moss and festooned with twisting vines, giving the forest a massy thickness from ground to treetop. Usually white, but sometimes a surprising red or orange, the lichen on the tree trunks broke up the greens and browns of the forest.

Hunger had driven the dog up into the highlands; the departure of most of Sangre de Dios's farm families meant fewer compost heaps to raid outside the rugged houses. The chickens left behind had already been slaughtered in their coops by a fortunate pack of dogs, but they had driven him away when he'd tried to sneak in on the kill. He had returned the next day, but little had been left aside from a few blood stains on the wooden planks, which he had licked until his tongue bled. Managing to unearth a couple of tortoise nests in the fallow fields that had been cleared beside the forest, he'd eaten a few eggs, but that had been the previous week, and he'd found no food since then.

He moved forward between the trees, his eyes glinting yellow. A stone lodged in the pad of his front foot made his gait awkward, but as he hit the soft ground of the forest, his trot smoothed into the effortless glide of a predator.

He sensed movement up ahead and caught a whiff of something when the wind shifted. Something living. His nose twitched, his lip drawing back from his teeth in a silent snarl that gleamed in the night. Dark streaks of dried mucus trailed from the corners of his eyes.

Slinking forward, the soft pads of his feet sinking in the mud, the dog lowered his head, his skin rippling in waves of coarse hair. He crept past a cluster of trees, the long trunks lost among the leaves and stalks of lesser plants. The path widened into a clearing, trees lining the edges of a mud wallow like sentinels. Wind whispered through the dead sprays of elephant grass.

Abruptly, the dog halted, sensing an odd blend of danger and opportunity. One foot raised above the ground and angled back like a pointer's, the other three sunk in the mud, he stopped breathing. His eyes were wide, but he didn't turn his head. The rise and fall of his ribs beneath his coat died. He was still. He was almost invisible in the night.

Suddenly, a plant right beside him sprang to life, lunging at him with two raptorial legs. The spiked appendages folded back on themselves, snapping shut around the dog's midsection. The dog emitted a pained grunt as he was lifted into the air. He struggled in the grasp of the massive clamp, yelping. The strike occurred in a fraction of a second.

A triangular head full of sharp, quivering mouthparts lowered to the dog's skull. The dog's yelp was cut short when the creature chewed through his neck.

The dog twitched in the jagged legs as the creature devoured him, nibbling through his neck to get at the nourishing tissues packed inside the chest cavity. The dog provided good sustenance, but it was not nearly large enough. The creature's appetite was growing. The supply of dogs and goats on the island was dwindling, and the cows had proved too heavy for it.

It discarded the paws and the head, as well as a long segment of the dog's intestines, which dropped to the ground like a length of rope. It rarely ate off the ground.

After it finished, the creature dipped its head, cleaning chunks of flesh from the spines of its legs and wiping its face in deft, catlike motions. Then it stepped back into line with the trees, undulating until it mimicked perfectly the movement of the surrounding foliage in the breeze. It swayed with the trees, all but disappearing from sight.