Minutes to Burn

Chapter 61

The sky drained quickly of color. Derek murmured and dozed in fits, the leaves soft against the side of his head. He was back outside his house The Night Of, his legs weak and fluid beneath him, knowing something was dreadfully wrong. The house had looked like a church, a demonic church.

Panic had seized his guts, gripping him like a cramp, but he'd fought it off, refusing to run, refusing to lose his head. The front door hadn't been hot to his touch, not hot as he'd imagined it would be. It had swung open slowly, uncreaking, a coffin standing on end. He'd managed to choke out his wife's name once, and then again. When she'd answered, her voice had been light and airy, like silk afloat on wind. "In here," she'd called. Her voice had seemed to issue from the dining room.

He'd staggered through the kitchen, knocking over a chair, leaning on the countertop to gain his balance. The knife block had been on its side, a black slit where the largest blade should have been.

He'd paused just short of the doorway to the dining room before shuffling weakly forward, sucking air, his chest heaving, his face blotched crimson.

He'd seen Jacqueline standing at the head of the table like a high priestess over an altar, a ghost in the blurry movement of her night-gown. He'd seen the curtains fluffed behind her with the night breeze. He'd seen the smudge of blood across Jacqueline's cheek. He'd seen the small flaccid limb, the arch of the tiny dough-soft fingers on the lac-quered rosewood, four slivers of crescent moon. He'd felt his heart beating in his temples, his hands, his eyes. He'd looked at her, transfixed, unperceiving. He'd known what she was going to say before her mouth moved, before he'd heard the words.

"No bugs," she'd murmured.

Suddenly he was yelling and shuffling backward on the forest floor on all fours, slapping at his face, swiping at the cobwebs of the memory. He slammed into a tree before realizing where he was, within a small ring of Scalesias in the highlands of Sangre de Dios.

His breath caught in his chest when he saw the thing woven between the two trees across from him. A pupation chamber. About five feet tall, cylindrical, and horizontally striated, the cocoon was a dull beige. A sticky substance ran up along the trunk on each side, securing the cocoon to the tree. It bulged near the center, like a body bag.

It was pulsing.

Derek tried to crawl backward, again hitting the tree trunk behind him. He stood, gazing at the cocoon in horror and amazement. His lips trembled, trying to form sounds.

The cocoon seemed to float in the shadows, framed by the dark trees stretching up around it. It looked almost holy, the circle of moss, like the apse of a cathedral. Derek felt as he had as a boy when he'd stepped forth from his confirmation, surrounded by a group of relatives. Their eyes had all been on him, and for a fleeting moment, he'd felt he must have been something holy for so many adults to be staring at him in his too-tight suit.

Derek's knees jarred the ground when he fell, bringing him back to the forest. He felt wetness on his cheeks and realized he was crying, though he wasn't sure why.

A grumbling creak came from within the cocoon.

Though the sun had already slipped beyond the horizon, the sky was still lit with its distant glow-a light shade of purple. A heap of cumulus clouds drifted, barely visible through the treetops. Derek was crying so hard the world seemed to streak before his eyes-the trees, the purple sky, the light sheen of the cocoon.

He turned to his shoulder and it took him three tries to say the name so his transmitter could read it. "Cameron," he finally sputtered. "Pri-mary channel."

Cameron was in the vesicle when Derek's voice clicked through. Tank had been shoveling like a back-hoe, clearing out the excess rock at the bottom. They were all working now, using the light of the hastily made torches that Justin had stuck in the ground at the edges of the hole. "Yeah?" she said. "Derek? Derek?"

"Are you private? Get private."

Cameron threw her shovel aside and scrambled out of the hole, using a knotted rope they had tied to a spike up top. She was careful not to bring more rock tumbling down beneath her feet. She felt Szabla's angry eyes on her as she ran toward the camp, and she knew her secrecy prob-ably upset Justin as well, but she owed Derek at least that. She ran until she was clear of the others, leaning over with her hands on her knees. For a moment, she thought the transmitter had cut out, but then she realized that the wavering noise was Derek sobbing. "Derek," she said. "What's up?"

Derek wiped his eyes and stared at the cocoon. It was wiggling now, and he could see something moving beneath the surface. It was creaking as it stretched.

Cameron tried to be patient, but her voice wouldn't allow it. She heard a noise in the background, like the supports of a bridge groaning. "Derek, what's going on there?"

An image moved through him-four tiny, lifeless fingers curved on lacquered rosewood. "It was my fault, Cam," he said. "I should've known it was going to happen."

"What's there, Derek? What's going on?"

"I don't know. I think…I think she's changing."

"Is there a cocoon?" He didn't respond, so she forged ahead. "Derek, listen to me very carefully. Find a branch, a rock, anything. You have to protect yourself. You saw that thing Savage dragged back here."

Weighted with grief and exhaustion, Derek searched the area for a suitable branch. He finally found one. It was a bit thicker than he had hoped for, but he could still get his hands around it well enough to swing it with some force.

Shoving himself up to his feet, he clutched the branch tightly, searching for rage. He stepped forward, raising the tree limb above his head, but became nauseously weak. He crouched, his head bowed as if in sup-plication, his shoulders heaving with sobs.

"She's just a baby, Cam," he said. "She's just a baby."

Cameron looked frantically at the forest. Somewhere in the dark patch of trees this was all taking place, and she was unable to do any-thing about it. "Derek, listen to me. If you don't pull your head out of your ass ASAP, we're all gonna be in a fuckload of trouble. Now toughen up! Do it!"

Derek stumbled to his feet, moving toward the cocoon. It swayed and convulsed, something pumping beneath its surface. He drew back the branch like a baseball bat, flexing his arms and his shoulders and throwing his full force into the swing. He struck the side of the cocoon, rocking it between the trees. It was hard, and much denser than he'd expected. He was just drawing back the branch again when a massive splitting sound filled the air. A seam had opened straight down the pupation chamber.

"It's hatching," he said. He stepped back in horror. "Jesus God."

"Run, Derek! It's too late-we're gonna have to deal with it later. Get the fuck out of there. Come back to base. Just run!"

Derek fought through the weakness. Closing his eyes, he felt anger return slowly to him, felt his soldier's instincts quickening his heart. When he opened his eyes again, the world was back in focus. "And leave everyone else to pay?" he said, his voice thick with mucus and tears. He shook his head. "Not again."

He clicked out as Cameron screamed into her transmitter.

The others ran toward her from the hole, Justin leading the way. She was still yelling when they got there, and then she fell silent. They stood around her expectantly. It was impossibly silent.

Derek saw a head rear through the slit and burst the shell of the cocoon like a melon. Pieces of hardened silk clung to the mantid's face in slimy strips as it slowly emerged. The new head was an open maw- sawing mandibles, yawning labrum, quivering maxillae. The face was alive with motion.

He snapped the head to one side with a swing of the branch.

The mantid's body slowly followed the fearsome head. First, a pair of snapping legs, then the thorax, then the orb of the abdomen. The man-tid unfolded from the white pupation chamber like a phoenix rising. Her head lifted on a high, towering neck, a ring of crusted silk clinging to her throat like a gory necklace. She rose unsurely on her legs, then shook herself like a wet dog, freeing her limbs from the slime and drawing out her mass.

It seemed inconceivable that the larva could have metamorphosed into such a large and terrible thing. The mantid was expanding still, like a chick fluffing itself out after hatching. Derek darted forward and struck its back with a solid blow, but the wing didn't crumple. He aimed for the thin neck and swung, but the mantid reared up and he hit only her armored thorax. He ran quickly out of range before she could focus on him.

Her raptorial legs practiced a few quick snatches at the air, jackknifing shut like a steel trap. She approached him, leaving the husk of her cocoon clinging to the trees.

When her front legs lowered, Derek lunged forward, hammering her head with a flurry of blows. The attack seemed to confuse her, and it kept her from striking. Sometimes hitting the head, sometimes the thorax, he continued his assault as the mantid adjusted to her new body and the onslaught. Finally, she raised a front leg, blocking a blow, and the branch snapped. Derek hurled the remaining piece at her, his arms aching.

She reared up, towering over him, rank and fetid. He stared up into the black pools of her eyes. Her mandibles spread slightly as her rapto-rial legs drew back. In the brief stillness before the strike, Derek drove himself up at the mantid, a whirlwind of fists and elbows.

The soldiers stood around Cameron on the dark grass, the distant torches at the hole flicking above the shadowy outlines of their faces like infernal halos. Cameron was shuddering all over, though it wasn't more than cool, and she crossed her arms against her chest to keep them from trembling. She opened her mouth to speak, but her jaw was shaking, so she closed it.

They stood in silent rank, waiting for something, though no one knew what.

Echoing from the darkest folds of the forest came a petrifying scream. It circled them once, twice, then departed, leaving only the wind whispering against the grass.