Minutes to Burn

Chapter 71

Cameron had five hours until dark and a lot of work to get done.

As she unwound the tape from the TNT blocks she'd retrieved from the hole, she prayed that the other larva had died somehow or that it would not emerge from metamorphosis until tomorrow. She stood a chance, however small, of surviving until 2200 with only one mantid on the island, but with two, there was no way she'd make it.

And two could mate.

Cameron had rigged an Abatis tree trap only once, in Iran in '03, but between her memory and the demo manual, she'd be fine. She retrieved the previously rigged TNT blocks from where she'd set them beside the fire pit and threw them in one of the explosives crates. The crates left furrows in the grass as she dragged them across the field toward the road, ignoring the pain spreading through her body like a fever.

The mantid watched her with interest, then pulled back into the for-est, disappearing. As Cameron struggled with the heavy crates, the man-tid appeared at regular intervals, craning her neck out from different spots in the foliage along the forest's edge. She wouldn't dare come down here in the heat, not now with the sun near its peak.

Cameron would have to hurry to get all the trees wired before dusk. She still carried the scent of the body from the freezer, carried it on the bottom of her pants and in the hardened smear on the back of her tank top. After she finished setting the Abatis, she'd have to wash all the virus-laden secretions off herself.

She finally reached the middle of the road and dropped the end of the cruise box. It thunked to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Carrying the blocks of TNT two at a time, she laid them beside some of the balsas lining the road. She selected ten of the taller trees on each side, including the slender quinine toward the middle of the row, spacing them out so that they were roughly five yards apart. Diego would approve of the fact that she was only blasting introduced species, she realized with mild amusement.

Despite her aching arms and back, she went to work immediately on the twenty trees she'd chosen, aware all the time of the creature leering at her from the cover of the forest at the road's end. Whenever Cameron looked up, it took her several minutes to actually see the creature, but she could sense her immediately and instinctively.

If she used too much TNT on a tree, she was liable to blow it straight off the stump, and she'd have much less control over which direction it fell. If the charge was too small, then the tree might not go over at all, in which case she'd be a sitting duck. In the manual, she'd found the conversion chart that calculated the size of the charge to use. The trees she'd chosen were old and sturdy, with diameters that she estimated at three feet; according to the equation, she'd need roughly twenty-four pounds of TNT per tree.

She fit the TNT blocks with nonelectric blasting caps, smearing the puttylike booster around their bases. Technically, TNT didn't require booster, but she used it on each charge anyway. She wasn't going to fuck around and have something not blow at the last minute.

There were no tools to make bore holes in the trees, but the blocks of TNT could be easily fastened to the trunks and used as untamped con-centrated external charges. The manual, she recalled, had said to set the charges five feet above the ground to ensure the trees would remain attached to the stumps when they fell. But Cameron wanted them low to the ground all the way across, so she primed the timber at three and a half feet, notching the bark with the peen of the hammer Szabla had brought back from one of the farmhouses.

The work was hard and tiresome, and it took her even longer because she kept glancing nervously at the forest. Now, the creature was nowhere in sight.

Using the thick tape that was stored in the underside of the explosives box lid, she adhered the TNT blocks to the trees-two rows of six blocks for each trunk. The tape stood out in shiny bands. She used one strand of det cord, with small extensions, for the charges on each side of the road, carefully crimping the aluminum ends of the blasting caps around it. It looked pretty when she was done; Tucker would've been proud.

The TNT would blow out a chunk of tree beneath it when it deto-nated. Because of the placement of the blocks, the trees of each side would fall parallel at a forty-five-degree angle to the road, crashing down on the dirt in the middle. Cameron would have to set two trip wires so that one side would detonate before the other, or the trees would deflect each other on the way down. She dug through the explosives box for eyelets, then started to run wire off the spool. She decided to set the trip wires about ten yards apart, each of them four feet off the ground so that the mantid wouldn't unwittingly step over them.

The sun had already peaked and begun its descent. Cameron checked the watch face and saw that it was already three o'clock. Only three hours remained until dusk.

The air was already starting to cool across her shoulders.

Diego placed the dino DNA segments from the seventeen water sam-ples into separate wells of the ethidium-bromide-soaked agar and plugged in the gel box, a voltage machine that would draw the negatively charged DNA downward. The DNA's progress through the viscous agar would form distinct banding patterns visible under UV light, which he and Rex could compare to the control dinoflagellates' banding pattern to determine if the samples were infected.

Rex drummed his fingers on the countertop, checking his watch. "How long will this take?" he asked.

Diego settled back on the high metal stool, fished for a joint in his shirt pocket, and lit it. Ramoncito watched him, shaking his head.

"An hour," Diego said.

Rex tapped the gel box. "Can't we speed it up?" he asked. "It's only at one hundred fifty volts."

Diego shook his head; his chest expanded with a toke. Smoke wafted from his mouth when he spoke. "It'll melt the gel. Fuck up the resolution."

He pointed to Rex's knee, which was vibrating up and down in a nerv-ous tick, then held out the joint. Rex stared at the joint, at Diego.

"There's nothing more we can do now," Diego said.

Rex reached out and took the joint.

The mantid's legs moved her back into the forest, the cuticle scraping loosely around her body as she walked.

She crawled up the trunk of a tree and secured herself upside down, her slightest movements causing her to swing. Dangling like a bat, she began to push through her old exoskeleton. It split first along the seam of the thorax, and she wriggled her head and raptorial legs from the gash, squirming. The spear stock was deeply embedded in her head; the old cuticle had disintegrated around it. Her abdomen remained encased in the old cuticle and she flailed back and forth, screeching, until it popped free. Then, she hung from the exuvia for the better part of an hour, which gave her new cuticle a chance to begin hardening. When she finally dropped to the ground, she landed in a heap, her new cuticle still moist and tender. She rose quickly; the dirt could crumple up her new wings and dry out her exoskeleton. Her anomalous post-metamorphosis molt was complete.

Her protective tegmina were a deep brown, attached to her body at the second link of her thorax and overlaying her light-green speckled underwings. Sprouting from the third section of her thorax, the under-wings stuck out a bit, forming green stripes along her sides.

The mantid crawled back up the tree, past the branch to which her old cuticle still clung, past the other branches that spread like balconies from the core of the trunk, and when she reached the top of the canopy, where the foliage of all the Scalesias wove itself together, she pushed through and stood on top of it, her four back legs taking hold of the uppermost branches and leafy boughs.

She was standing atop the forest.

The water circling the island was visible all around, the sky stretching clear and blue for as far as the eye could see.

Unfurling her wings from her sides like massive capes, she spread them wide. Their span was enormous, and as they dried, they would con-tinue to stretch and grow; only this benefit had driven her to brave the sun. Already, the new cuticle stiffened around her, a living suit of armor. Her body unfolded to the air, the mantid rested, growing stronger and harder in the sun.

Soon, it would be nightfall.