Minutes to Burn

Chapter 60

We're gonna split duty," Szabla said, standing before the fire pit. She jerked her chin, indicating Cameron. "You, Justin, and Tank recon, try to beat the clock. Make sure you sweep up along the cliff faces to the east-no one's checked there too thoroughly yet. If you find Derek… " Szabla turned her eyes from Cameron and continued. "Kill the larva he's protecting, and him if you have to." She raised a finger at Cameron, though Cameron had not reacted. "Don't you go all woman on me again now."

"Can you handle that?" Savage asked, eyeballing Cameron.

Cameron stood up and slapped her muscular thighs with her hands. "Of course."

After Cameron left, leading Tank and Justin into the forest, Szabla hydrated, then poured water from her canteen down her sweaty neck and back. When she turned to survey the expanse of the pasture to the east, Savage was already about fifty yards off, poking through the high grass and looking for holes.

It was fortunate there were air vesicles in the open field; searching the forest was a greater risk, since the foliage provided cover in which a mantid could hide. Plus, if one of the larvae did metamorphose, it would be better to lure it somewhere out in the open where they could keep an eye on it-after dusk, of course, so the sun wouldn't drive it away.

The heat was unforgiving, so Szabla pulled off her cammy shirt. Tossing it to the side, she headed out toward Savage in her black tank top. Savage was shirtless, his bandanna dripping-he must have doused it with water from his canteen. He was crouched, shaking his head. As she drew nearer, she realized he was laughing.

"I think I just solved the mystery of Dr. Frank Friedman," he said, pointing through the waving grass into a hole in the ground.

Szabla bent over, drawing aside the grass. The odor hit her hard and she drew back, waving an arm in front of her face. Savage laughed, a low grumble in his throat. Pulling her tank top up over her nose bandido-style, Szabla leaned over the hole again, looking down.

A bloated corpse lay at the bottom of the narrow twelve-foot drop, the sharply angled head indicating a broken neck. Having worked on the body for over a month, maggots, ants, and other critters had reduced the face and hands to grotesque appendages-clothes remained over the rest of the body, seemingly holding it together. A fisherman's hat lay on the ground a few feet from the head.

"All the shit going down on this island," Savage said, "and the fucker died taking a header into a goddamn hole." He shook his head again.

It took them the better part of an hour in the baking sun to find an air vesicle appropriately sized for the trap. About ten feet deep, six wide, and twelve long, it was originally a spherical gap in the lava. Decades of erosion had worn away the top, creating sheer walls. Since the vesicle collected shade and moisture, and slowed evaporation, it contained an entirely different ecosystem: ferns flourished in shafts of light; stubby miniature trees sprouted up between the mounds of rubble.

Szabla and Savage stood facing each other across the length of the hole. Szabla's undershirt was pasted to her body and drenched through all around. She tried to spit, but it dangled from her bottom lip, a thick pasty cord. She spit again and it spun to the ground.

Base camp was about a hundred yards west, and the forest several hundred yards upslope. "This is good," Szabla said. "Nice and open. Nothing can sneak up on us here, and it's close enough to the forest that the motherfucker could see it and come if it had cover of night."

Savage nodded, his fingers rasping in his beard.

"Let's get some of that rock cleared from the base of the walls," Szabla said. "Make sure nothing can crawl out."

They headed back to base camp to retrieve shovels and some rope, steering clear of the hole in which Frank Friedman's body lay rotting.

They trudged through the forest, Cameron hacking with the spike as if it were a machete when the foliage grew thick. Tank and Justin followed her silently.

When she heard the cooing, her legs went slack with the memory of the thing she'd beaten along the floor of the cave. She slowed down, Tank and Justin immediately halting to see what was wrong.

The sound was coming from behind a plant with thin elongated leaves cascading to the sides. The leaves' serrated edges cut her hand as she pulled them aside, expecting to be greeted with the engaging face of another larva.

When she saw the dark-rumpled petrel's white face and black bill, her eyes welled with relief. The petrel had scraped a burrow in the soft soil and was guarding over her full nest of eggs. She squawked at Cameron indignantly, her wedge-shaped tail fluttering, and Cameron withdrew.

She stood up right into Justin, who had moved close behind her with the spike, ready to take care of the kill to spare her having to go through it again. A perversely sweet gesture. She leaned back into him just to feel his body against hers for a moment. His hands around the circle of her waist calmed her, and she winked at him before turning and cutting back into the trees.

The fact that she'd been certain of her obligation-that she had to kill the larva last night-had not made the task easier for her. She'd had to fight every instinct in her to swing the spike, to batter the thing to death.

She had not been trained to kill animals. Only other men, men with weapons and harsh accents. Combatants. Maybe she found killing the larva difficult because they were not political or malevolent, because they did not wish her harm or know how to wish at all. Or maybe it was because she was participating in the elimination of a life form-a task so vast, momentous, and irrevocable that she seemed to lose herself in the scope of its ramifications. At the very least, she found it simultaneously ironic and natural that it should give her greater pause than ending a human life.

The larvae were extraordinary, and literally unique. But the price they would exact were they to continue to exist was immense. The distorted thing Floreana had birthed refused to leave Cameron's mind even for a second; she carried it in every moment, a second, vicarious pregnancy on top of her unsettled own.

To the east, Cameron saw where a sheet of land had fallen away in the most recent earthquake, the forest ending suddenly in a cliff. She sat down on the edge, letting the spike clatter on the rocks beside her. Banging her heels against the precipice like a little girl, she kicked loose some pebbles, which spiraled down several hundred yards. She lost sight of them before she could see them splash in the water. The blood rushed into her legs in pins and needles. They'd been walking since sunrise, and the nonstop activity of the past few days was taking its toll.

The thought of the squad's rebellion filled her with shame and self-revulsion. Though she knew she'd been right in opposing Derek, she hadn't yet forgiven herself for it. The emotions playing through his face as he'd looked at them. Loss, confusion, fear tinged red with anger.

Justin sat behind her, his stomach against her back, his legs outside hers. Tank plopped down next to her and rested one of his paws on her shoulder.

"I'm gonna kick both your asses if you keep babying me like this," she said. "I'm fine, you know. Quit touching me."

Tank withdrew his hand, and Justin made to strangle her from behind, but she caught a pressure point under his elbow, and he released his grip quickly.

"Ouch!"

"Yeah, ouch. There's more where that came from, too." A breeze brought them the scents of the forest. "I'm feeling a little hopeless looking for these things," she conceded. "Needles in haystacks."

"We should head back," Justin said. "Help them with the hole."

Despite her earlier complaints, Cameron leaned back slightly into her husband.

Before them, the water stretched clear and endless to the horizon. It whispered against the base of the cliff beneath Cameron's feet, stirring in swirls of white, frothy bubbles. Fronds dipped in the breeze next to them, bowing politely.

"You're pregnant," Tank said. "Aren't you?"

Cameron sucked her bottom lip. It was salty from the air. "When did you know?"

He shrugged. "When I picked you up at your house."

They sat quietly for a few moments.

"I won't let anything happen to you," Tank said.

His voice was low and steady as ever, but something in it made Cameron bite her lip to keep back the emotion. After a moment, she reached for his hand, but Tank hesitated and looked at Justin, as though he'd been caught doing something wrong.

Justin nodded at him, as if to say, go ahead.

Tank's hand was large and warm-it enveloped hers easily. Cameron leaned between the two men, letting herself feel calm and safe, if only for a moment.

Tank pulled his hand back and the three sat again in silence. The blue-footed boobies plunge-dived to the waters and popped to the surface. American oystercatchers hopped along the rocky coast, their bright-red bills and yellow eyes standing out against the dark lava.

"In another life," Tank said, "this would be a beautiful place." He leaned back on his hands, the red skin of his scalp visible through his thin, bristling hair.

Cameron looked from the stunning view to the spike lying beside her, the end still stained with the larva's fluids.

"Yeah," she said. "It would."