Minutes to Burn

Chapter 74

Cameron sat patiently, legs folded Indian-style beneath her at the south end of the road, about twenty yards north of the watchtower. The wind whipped over her shoulder, blowing to the forest. She gazed up the road into the Scalesias, watching the trip wires blend into the air as the sun sank from view. The air tinted with shadow, turning dusty gray, then black, but still the mantid did not appear.

The glow of the red flares in the shed became more pronounced as the light drained from the sky. Soon, the watchtower behind her was the only point of light in the dark landscape, a shining devil's eye. The squeals of the larva should have been horrifying to Cameron, yet she found them almost pleasing, riffs of a symphony she had composed. The watchtower's howls joined the larva's squeals, sometimes even over-powering them.

Underlit with the red glow of the flares, the larva continued to strug-gle against the hook, its head cocked back at an excruciating angle, its figure shadowed on the shed's inside. Cameron hummed to herself, the tortured outline writhing behind her.

She didn't understand what was delaying the mantid. The wriggling larva, in combination with the bright artificial light of the flares, surely should have drawn her attention by now.

Cameron sat in the dead center of the road, completely unprotected. Whether the mantid was attracted to the larva or to Cameron, she'd be heading down the road toward the watchtower. Cameron would stand and wave her arms once the creature appeared by the edge of the forest, drawing her forward across the trip wires. The two minuscule wires would be all that stood between Cameron and certain death.

Cameron was growing impatient, anxious about the mantid's delay. She stood, letting the wind carry her scent up the road to the dark leaves of the forest.

The moon cast the road in a pale yellow glow. Cameron stared hard at the dark mass of the forest, as if she could will the creature to appear. She expected to see her at any moment, the wide insect head leering on the thin neck, the legs pulling her forward, graceful and ungainly at the same time.

The howl of the wind rose to a pitch that for an instant drowned out the larva's piercing squeals. And then a shadow fell across the road.

Cameron whirled around, trying to figure out how the dark night could have gotten darker, and then she saw her, stretched wide across the watchtower. The mantid clung to the walls around the shed's mouth with her legs, spread wide like a spider in a web.

The mass of her body nearly filled the shed's entrance, blocking out most of the reddish light. Cameron stumbled back, surprised. It hadn't occurred to her that the mantid would circle around to the watchtower. For some reason, she had assumed that she would come directly down the length of the road.

For an awful instant, Cameron thought that it was a different man-tid-a new creature that she had not yet encountered-but then she rec-ognized the shattered eye and the black stock of the spear. She realized why the mantid was so much larger; she had molted. She'd taken so long to appear because her new cuticle was hardening.

Cameron glanced nervously down the dark road, trying desperately to recall the location of the trip wires. She'd have to get the mantid to run up the road toward the forest in order to trip the wires, opposite the direction for which she had planned.

The mantid pulled herself into the shed and stood in profile facing the larva. The red light outlined her dark figure, shining around her with a glow that looked almost divine. The rows of spikes on her raptorial legs glistened like fangs. Cameron could see exactly how they fit together, like the teeth of a bear trap.

Cameron started moving quietly up the road, backing up into the Abatis trap. She'd try to sneak under the trip wires and get the mantid's attention when she was on the other side. She hoped the creature would charge her, tripping the wires on the way.

Cameron would be all right if she could just get to the other side undetected.

The mantid leaned forward, her massive head angled. Through her unbroken eye she regarded the larva, her last dying hope for procreation. The larva writhed in pain, shaking its head back and forth, attempting to rip the hook free. The squeals from its spiracles reached a pitch rife with nearly human agony. Its posterior end plopped across the mantid's head, but the mantid did not flinch.

Cameron felt viciousness emanating from the creature like waves of heat. A drop of digestive fluid slid down one of the mantid's mandibles and dripped to the ground. The light of the flares reflected in the crea-ture's eye, which had again gone black with the night.

With one swift motion, the mantid lashed her legs at her squirming sibling, raking it from the hook. Clenched in her spikes, the larva screeched, the sound continuing even after its head rose into the crea-ture's mouth and was severed with a single bite.

Cameron felt her stomach churning, but she continued her slow pace, careful not to disturb the occasional rock on the road. As she backed up, her heel caught on a lip of the road raised in the recent earthquake, and she went down softly on her ass.

But not softly enough.

The mantid's antennae snapped erect, and she rotated her head and front legs, peering into the night. Cameron felt her stare, felt her locate her in the darkness. The creature's head split in a gargantuan soundless scream, the pieces of her mouth flailing in the cavernous rictus. The larva's head fell from the mouth.

Panic rose like vomit through Cameron's chest and she tasted it at the back of her throat. The road dug into her chafed palms as she watched, frozen.

The mantid's legs snapped once, discharging the larva's small, limp body.

Moving to the edge of the shed, the mantid extended her slender neck, sticking her head out into the open air and fixing Cameron in her stare.

Relax, Cameron thought. You still have time. She's gotta climb down the watchtower. You can still make it past the trip wires.

The mantid stepped forward, her four back legs crowding the edge of the shed's entrance. Folding her raptorial legs to her chest, the mantid leaned forward even farther into the open air. Slowly, her enormous inner wings slid out from beneath the tegmina, fanning behind her and spreading across the expanse of the watchtower. The red light shone through them, casting a bloody glow over the road.

Cameron tried to swallow, but her throat had tightened into a ball.

The mantid tipped forward from the edge of the tower, drawing her massive wings up behind her like the sail of a hang glider. Their span was so wide it dwarfed her body. She stepped from the watchtower, her sharp front legs hanging beneath her like missiles.

She was gliding. She hurtled up the road at Cameron.

Cameron screamed and started sprinting for the forest. She had nothing by which to gauge the creature's progress, no sound of footsteps, no crunching foliage. Blindly, terrified, she ran, the trees watching solemnly over her from both sides like spectators at an execution. Her legs seemed to move in slow motion; her boots felt as if they were made of concrete. The hammering of her breath filled her entire body. Her heartbeat pounded in the tips of her fingers and the backs of her knees.

The mantid was at her back; Cameron could sense her closing in. If she could have died instantly, simply melted into the ground before the creature seized her, she would have.

The mantid screeched, sending a fresh wave of terror through Cameron. She chanced a glance behind her. The mantid was about twenty yards back, swooping down fast.

Cameron whirled back around and saw the first trip wire right in front of her. With a yell, she hurled her body in the air over it, rolled once side-ways across the road, and was up running, having barely slowed down.

The explosion should have come right behind her, but Cameron real-ized that the mantid was up too high, that she had glided right over the wire. Cameron would have to trip the last wire herself. But if she ran into it, it would slow her down, and she'd never make it off the road before the trees crushed her. If she tried to roll under the wire, the creature would be on her instantly.

She had ten walking steps until the next trip wire, that much she remembered. Her body flew forward, her mind racing. Air from the plummeting mantid blew across her shoulders. She had no time to think. The thin wire gleamed in the moonlight, mere feet away.

Reaching behind her, Cameron yanked the knife from the back of her pants, pulling it from its sheath. It slid smoothly out. She twirled it in her hand, never slowing, angling it down her forearm with the blade out, just as Savage used to do.

The blade met the wire with a click and bent it forward as she ran through it. The explosives went off with a deep roar, sending fragments of bark and tree chunks flying. A plug of pulp whistled just over her head. The blasts were blinding, flashing one after another and illuminating the road like a strobe light.

The mantid was momentarily startled, but she kept her eye on her prey below, trained on the kill.

The wire stretched to its limit against the knife and then broke with a twang, whipping off to both sides. Cameron's legs didn't stop pumping for an instant.

Above her, the mantid drew her raptorial legs up under her chin. They were coiled, ready to flash out like the talons of a hawk.

Higher still, the balsa trees started their downward crash, sporadically lit by the explosions. The twelve blocks of TNT had been too much for the quinine trunk, blowing it straight off the stump. It went horizontal almost instantly. Heavy with branches, the top end of the tree clubbed through the air.

The mantid sped down at Cameron's back. The raptorial legs flexed, pausing a split second before the lightning-fast strike.

Cameron felt the whole island closing in on her, the falling trees blocking out the sky, the flying predator at her back, and it seemed her blood itself was adrenaline as she raced toward the end of the constricting road.

The quinine tree struck the mantid across the back, knocking air through her spiracles with a screech and sending a splattering of digestive juice across Cameron's shoulders. Knocked off balance, the mantid careened upside down, one wing crunched to a worthless flap. The momentum from the blow shot her ahead of Cameron on the ground, and Cameron leapt over her gnashing head, dodging the snap of a leg midair. The mantid rolled once and began a fast limp after Cameron.

The airborne quinine smashed the ground behind them, tripping the second wire. The road lit with another blaze of light. The air filled with flying wood, the fragments zooming overhead. The other trees crackled on their stumps as they tipped in on Cameron and the mantid from both sides.

The tree closest to the forest, right at the end of the trap, was falling ahead of the others. The TNT had blown out a huge section of the trunk, hastening its plummet.

Cameron sprinted at the shrinking space beneath the final tree, the mantid dragging herself rapidly after her. If Cameron didn't squeeze under the tree before it hit the ground, she'd either be caught by the creature or crushed by the other trees. Overhead, the air was filled with falling timber, flash-lit, so it appeared to crash down in great jerks.

Gasping, Cameron threw herself under the last tree as it closed to the ground like a guillotine. Her shoulder barely glanced off the trunk as she skimmed under, but it was enough to send her flying. Pain clawed through her back, tempered only by her relief that she hadn't been crushed. She spun in the air 180 degrees, landing flat on her stomach and chest, facing the imploding road.

Above the fallen trunk of the last tree, she could see the mantid reared up to her full nine feet, hurtling forward even with the left side of her body crushed. A tree smashed to the ground behind her, barely missing.

Oh God, Cameron thought, what if they don't hit her? What if they all miss?

The mantid leapt forward, screeching as she barely outran another falling tree, and Cameron tried to get up and run, but she was limp with fear and exhaustion. Her body had nothing left.

No images flashed before her eyes, no childhood memories, no thoughts of Justin-there was just the charging creature, the road dig-ging into her chin, her mouth full of dirt.

She had resigned herself at last to death, when the last falling tree smashed across the mantid's back, pounding her into the ground with such force that Cameron's eyes couldn't even track her movement down.

A large tree trunk blocked the creature from view, but Cameron heard her screech turn into a rasping whistle. The air filled with settling leaves and dust and a magnificent silence, broken only by an occasional rustle from the mantid, which she heard even over the ringing in her ears.

Cameron slid the knife back into the sheath behind her pants and tried to rise, but pain raked through her back and she crumpled up with a yell. Her hip was completely numb, and her leg did not respond when she tried to move it. Pulling herself forward, her fingers clawing holds in the dirt, Cameron scraped along the ground toward the fallen tree trunk that was blocking the mantid from view. The dirt felt like steel wool across her stomach, and a few sharp stones stung her through her ragged tank top.

As she neared, the rasping grew louder. She used a knot to pull herself on top of the trunk. The mantid was lying on her back, the massive trunk having crushed her abdomen nearly flat. Though her head and prothorax still extended from beneath the tree, her raptorial legs were pinned beneath it, the razor spikes smashed somewhere in the mess of tree, guts, and earth. Her head moved slightly back and forth, her mouth opening feebly.

She was dying.

Cameron tried to climb down the other side of the trunk but ended up falling. She landed on her hip and screamed, the pain watering her eyes. Her vision dotted, then cleared, and she pulled herself toward the creature.

The mantid couldn't lift the back of her head from the dirt. Her mouth gnashed at Cameron, moving as if trying to free itself and attack her on its own.

The smell of the rotting mouth rising to her, Cameron lowered her face right above the mantid's, her reflection clear in the creature's remaining eye. Glaring into the black eye, she knew, somehow, that the mantid sensed her life draining away.

The mantid struggled, trying desperately to lift her head so she could crush Cameron's face in her jaws. But she was too weak; she succeeded only in turning her head meekly from side to side. Cameron reached for the protruding spear stock, the movement causing her to lean over the mantid. Her blond hair fell in neat curves around her cheeks. Her chin was awash with saliva and blood; she inadvertently drooled a thick cord into the quivering maw. Cameron grabbed the stock of the spear with both fists. The whole head lifted when she drew back her arms. She smashed the head back against the ground, driving the spear stock deeper through the cuticle. The mantid's mouth gaped in its awful silent fashion. The spear tip continued to press through the creature's head, which yielded with a moist crackling.

The mantid shuddered beneath Cameron's hands, then convulsed, her cuticle rattling against the tree trunk that was now part of her abdomen. Her mouth still spread wide, the mantid stopped shaking and her head rolled up and to the side.

Spitting a mouthful of blood down the front of her chin and onto the ground, Cameron started to sob. She wept lying flat on her stomach, tears cutting through the dirt on her face, her fists still gripping the last protruding inches of the spear.

Cameron lowered her head, resting it on her forearm as she fought for control, pushing her lips together until they stopped quivering.

Savage's knife was lying where it had fallen in the dirt nearby. She closed her fingers around the black Micarta as if to draw strength from it. Raising her aching arm, she plunged the Death Wind into the top of the tree trunk that lay across the creature's chest. The knife rose verti-cally, like a cross from a grave.

She thought of Justin and tried to rise, but could not. A few dry sobs escaped her, shaking her shoulders. She rolled onto her back, the stars above blurring into a fantasia of pinpoints and yellow streaks.

Darkness claimed her.