Minutes to Burn Read online

  The forest had a freshness from yesterday's rain. In the cups of leaves, nooks of logs, and footprints in the mud, the rainwater pooled in twin-kling disks. The air was hot and humid, scented so sharply Szabla could taste it in the back of her throat.

  Justin moved in the direction of the yelps, thin branches bowing out of his way. Szabla hooked his shoulder with a hand, pulling him to a stop. "I'll take point," she said.

  She passed him and started ahead. She couldn't help looking around in wonder at the varied flora-mint with purple flowers, vines with leathery leaves, the occasional white orchid flowering from a Scalesia trunk. A brown finch wove through the tree trunks, making a soft shushing call. Justin imitated it, turning to watch it disappear.

  Szabla stopped when they reached an area where the forest floor was disturbed, leaves and dirt kicked up in a recent struggle of some sort. She sniffed the air. "Something smell funny to you?"

  "Well, I wasn't gonna say anything, but-"

  She cut him off quickly. "Kates. For once in your life be serious."

  Justin looked at her sheepishly. "It was such a good setup, though."

  Tilting back her head, Szabla inhaled, flaring her nostrils. Justin wrin-kled his nose at the odor. "Something is rotten in the state of Sangre de Dios," he said.

  Szabla noticed the shiny stock of the mandible hidden among a mat of decomposing leaves. She picked it up, holding it out in a shaft of light that broke through the canopy. "Looks like a mandible," she said. "From another larva."

  Justin stepped forward into a patch of ferns, and one of his legs shot out from under him. There was a whispering sound and then he was gone. Into thin air.

  Szabla stood dumbfounded, staring at the ferns and fallen leaves woven together on the forest floor. She approached them slowly, reaching out a boot to test the ground.

  Justin's laugh scared her half to death; it was deep, resonant. "I gave the Lion his courage, the Tin Man a heart, but what would you like, dearie?" his voice bellowed, echoing within the ground. "A new set of dumbbells?"

  Szabla yanked back her leg, almost falling over. "Justin, knock it off." Her voice was less stable than she would have liked. "Where the fuck are you?"

  "I don't know," his voice boomed. "In some kind of cave. I would get up and look around, but I kind of landed on my head."

  Szabla swept back the ferns, revealing the gaping entrance to the lava tube, which sloped gently down into a horizontal shaft. Justin blinked against the light. He had only rolled in a few feet. He glanced up, then shot to his feet, scrambling toward the entrance.

  The ootheca pulsed on the roof of the lava tube, strung along the thick Scalesia root just above where Justin's head had been. The remaining closed chamber was writhing, wiggling the rest of the mighty egg sac. The cords that had lowered the other larvae were shriveled up; it looked as if the ootheca had sprouted curled wood shavings.

  "What the fuck is that thing?" Szabla asked.

  "A quiche. Why don't you try it?"

  "You scrambled out of there pretty fast for a goddamn quiche."

  "Well, you know. The whole 'real men' bit." Justin grimaced. "Looks like we found our larva's happy home."

  Szabla started for the ootheca, then thought better of it. "Jesus," she said. "Each of these chambers is bigger than a human womb." She took one last look before ducking back out through the ferns, swearing softly to herself.

  With annoyance, Savage watched Tucker pace around the fire pit.

  "So why aren't they back?" Tucker checked his clunky Iron Man watch again. "Over twenty minutes past muster, and Justin and Szabla are never late."

  Suntan lotion smeared thickly across their burnt faces and necks, the other soldiers stood, even as they dug into their MREs. A few dark clouds had begun to gather. Though they cut some of the glare, they did nothing to stifle the heat. Tank did a deep knee bend and grimaced. Straightening up, he bit his lip, wincing through obvious pain.

  Diego had set the larva loose on the mound of firewood. It was con-tentedly working its way through a fresh Scalesia branch that was still weeping from the severed end. It stopped its mastications from time to time to track the movement around it. Rex refilled the hurricane lamps from the sole white-fuel bottle, holding the cap in his mouth.

  Tucker stood up and paced abbreviated circles. "Relax," Cameron said through a mouthful of cookie bar. She bent back her front pants pocket and glanced at the digital clock face sewn into the cloth. "It's fine.

  They probably stumbled across something."

  "Like a complete set of Russell Wright dinnerware?" Rex asked.

  "Why aren't you more worried about it?" Tucker said. "You are his wife."

  Cameron's eyes were flat when she looked at him. "Not here," she said.

  Savage rolled his eyes, stabbing his fork into a pouch of scalloped potatoes. "This fuckin' crew," he muttered. "Faggots and couples."

  Derek clamped his teeth, raising the corners of his jaw. He crossed the circle of the fire pit and crouched, bringing his face inches from Sav-age's. Savage took his time looking up at him, finishing the pattern he'd been tracing in the dirt with his heel before meeting Derek's eyes apa-thetically.

  Derek raised a hand to rest on Savage's shoulder but evidently thought the better of it. Wise choice. He spoke calmly. "I will not have this mission compromised because you want to play bad new kid on the block. You push me about one more inch and I will have no reservation about skulling you and leaving you out here to rot."

  A pulse was beating in Derek's temple. Savage watched it work as Derek fought to maintain composure. He met Derek's eyes, refusing to blink until Derek stepped back. He'd known Derek would step back. He tilted his head, sniffing the air. "I can smell it on you," he said. "Weak-ness. You've lost your killing nerve."

  "Try me," Derek said. "Just you fuckin' try me."

  As Derek walked away, Savage pulled his knife from the ankle sheath, flipped it once in the air, and tossed it at Derek. Derek stum-bled back to get out of the way, and it stuck in the log. "Sure thing, LT," Savage said.

  Cameron reached over, pried the knife from the log, and lofted it over her shoulder at Savage. He stepped back out of the way and plucked it from the air.

  "Believe it or not," Cameron said, still not turning to face him, "we're really not all that impressed with knife tricks here."

  Savage stood foolishly holding his knife.

  Szabla's voice broke through Derek's transmitter after he activated it.

  "Mitchell. Szabla. We found something. You'd better grab the pencil necks and head uphill."

  Diego carried the larva into his tent to secure it in its cruise box. Rex stood excitedly, screwing the cap onto the small fuel bottle as he headed for the forest.

  Savage stuffed two more forkfuls of potato into his mouth and stuck the gum and matches into a pocket on his cammies. By the time he turned to go, the others had already disappeared into the trees.

  The ootheca vibrated on its root, sending a spill of dirt trickling from the roof of the lava tube. Cameron stepped back toward the sunlight, glad that Derek had cut the ferns that covered the entrance. Savage had yet to arrive.

  Justin peered down the dark hole of the shaft and shivered. "How long is this tunnel?"

  "It's a lava tube," Diego said softly. "We're standing at the southern entrance. It runs about three hundred and fifty meters before finding its way back up through the forest floor."

  The paperlike covering of the ootheca's last closed chamber split down the center.

  "Jesus," Cameron said. "It's hatching."

  "Have you ever seen anything like this?" Derek asked.

  "It's an ootheca of some sort," Diego said hesitantly. "It resembles that of a mantid, but it's much larger, and with fewer chambers."

  "It's like an oversize variation on the ootheca we found in Frank's camp. The one he sketched." Rex raised his fingers, running them along the hard line of his jaw. "Why only eight chambers? Why not two hundred fifty-something?"


  "I don't know." Diego shook his head. "It looks like this animal, whatever it is, has fewer offspring, but places more resources in them. Better equips them to survive."

  A slick green head emerged from the chamber, wiggling and pulling a tadpole-like body out behind it. It was weakened and stunted. Writhing in its membranous sac, it lowered slowly on its thread. Spellbound, they watched it descend. The larva managed to break its head and thorax free from its sac, but its prolegs were still pasted to its abdominal segments. One of its true legs was misshapen; the others looked shriveled and use-less.

  It was sure to die.

  "That's it. That's our thing we have back at the camp," Justin said, as if the thought hadn't occurred to anyone else. Shaking off a shiver, Tucker took a step back, his hand instinctively digging for the hard metal cylin-der of the thermite grenade buried deep in the cargo pocket of his cammy pants.

  "It's hatching like a mantid," Rex said, rolling the fuel bottle between his hands. "But mantid nymphs don't look like this. They're usually just smaller versions of adults."

  "I found this, too," Szabla said, holding out the mandible from the forest floor.

  Diego examined it. "It's one of the larvae's sawing mouthparts. A mandible." Even the meager light left a sheen on his forehead. He glanced back up at the ootheca. "There are more of them," he said, his voice colored with both excitement and concern.

  "If there's one larva for each chamber, that means there are eight of them," Rex said, stepping forward and touching a finger to the side of the egg sac. "At least from this ootheca. We have one locked safely in the cruise box at camp, the one whose mandible Szabla found, this one hatching, and there's presumably another that didn't make it." He pointed to the corner of the cave where several mouthparts lay.

  Cameron crouched above the half-buried pieces, raising a mandible to the light. It was already covered with ants. "They must not be edible, these parts," she said. "There are two mandibles here-probably from the same animal."

  The larva squirmed on its thread, emitting a pained, high-pitched squeal as the air rushed through its spiracles.

  Tank held up four fingers, raising his eyebrows. "He's right," Szabla said. "Assuming this is the only ootheca, we got four more of these things out there."

  Savage burst into the lava tube just as the larva squirmed free of its thread, dropping to the ground. Diego touched a finger to his lips, and Savage joined the circle wordlessly, watching the larva attempt to crawl. Its squealing was high-pitched and sharp, like air leaking slowly from a balloon. The larva managed to squirm forward a few inches, leaving a trail in the dirt behind it. Its skin was still moist and tender.

  Rex absentmindedly handed Savage the white-fuel bottle as he stepped forward to get a closer view of the larva.

  "Jesus, we should… help it or something," Derek said. He looked around frantically.

  Savage unscrewed the cap of the fuel bottle, stepped forward, and poured a trickle of white fuel up the length of the larva's body. It squirmed at the touch of the liquid.

  "Goddamnit," Diego said. "What the hell are you…?" He crouched over the larva, running a hand gently along the soft, pliant hairs. "Thank God. It seems to be all right."

  Pulling the matches from the pouch on his cammies, Savage flicked a match across the striker with his thumb, shooting it at the larva. It landed on its back, igniting the white fuel. The larva's spiracles emitted a screech as the small flames spread, burning down into the still-unhardened cuti-cle. It struggled forward as the fire attacked its body.

  "What the fuck did you do that for?" Rex yelled.

  Derek turned and seized Savage by the shirt, but Savage was watching the larva die and didn't react. The shrieks brought Derek's attention back to the larva, and he released Savage and crouched over the dying animal. Diego was on his knees, his hands opening and closing impotently. Cameron stared at the ground. She could feel the sweat hammering through her pores, her heart pounding in her fingertips.

  The larva writhed in place, unable to scrape itself forward any farther, the flames eating away small holes in its body. The screeching was weaker, and the clicking noise became audible beneath it. A pasty material foamed from its mouth.

  With a last squeal, the larva shuddered and died, curling up. The fire dwindled, leaving behind only a blackened husk. Thin, fragile bones pro-truded from holes in the cuticle-a slender snake of a vertebrate and what looked like a parallel series of large, curved wishbones. Diego and Rex had been right about the internal skeleton.

  "What the fuck was that about?" Derek screamed, his voice echoing down the shaft.

  "You said we should help it," Savage said. "I did."

  Diego rose. "You've just destroyed what could be a one-of-a-kind specimen," he barked. His hand sliced through the air, fingers splayed."! Cono tu madre!" he cursed.

  Her breath hitching in her chest, Cameron stared at the far wall of the cave, where a line of ants were streaming up and carrying away tiny pieces of the ootheca.

  "That thing was gonna die anyways," Szabla said.

  Rex turned on her angrily. "That's your logic? Brilliant. Fucking bril-liant. You're like eight-year-old boys lighting ants on fire with magnifying glasses, pulling wings off butterflies."

  "He might have just done us a favor," Szabla said, smacking Savage on the chest with the back of her hand.

  "We don't know that these larvae are dangerous."

  "I'd rather not find out."

  Rex turned to Derek, his eyes hard and angry. "They're your troops, under your command. It's your job to keep them in line."

  Derek looked at the burnt little corpse, his eyes loose and unfocused. "We do not just kill whatever we want to. It isn't natural."

  "Bullshit!" Savage yelled, the veins in his neck bulging. His fingers were white-knuckled around the shaft of his knife. "Natural," he growled. "What the fuck is natural anyway? Anything we want. Anything we are. Everything we make is from the earth and our own primitive brains. Nuclear missiles, Agent Orange…" He flipped his knife in the air and caught the blade end expertly between his thumb and index fin-ger. "… knives. They're all natural. Don't be so arrogant to think other-wise. So don't you give me this natural shit when you only kill things that are ugly, all right? Because I've killed 'em all. Women, children, babies. I could tell stories that would make your heart jump out of your fuckin' body. And you know what? It's all the same. There is no natural. There are no rules."

  Derek started to speak, but Savage raised the blade and pointed it at him, inches from his eye. "That's a blood lesson, LT. Learn that."

  They gathered in the clearing outside the lava tube except Savage, who stood staring out into the forest, one foot resting on a gnarled tree root that rose out of the ground like an arm from a grave. He raised a wedge of plantain to his mouth, thumbing it against the side of his Death Wind.

  He was a good distance off from the others as they circled, speaking in lowered voices so that he wouldn't hear them. Cameron watched Derek with concern, her mind reeling with all she'd just witnessed. She wondered why Derek didn't order Savage over.

  The forest blurred before Cameron's eyes then focused, pinpoint sharp. "I hate to sound like a broken record here," she said. "But we have one objective, and that's to fulfill the mission. No more, no less. Any-thing that doesn't help us meet that goal is irrelevant."

  "I'm the AOIC here," Szabla said.

  Cameron looked at her a long time before speaking. "Yes, Szabla," she said. "We know."

  Diego had wrapped the remains of the larva in his shirt to carry back to base. He stood with his feet a little too far apart, gazing blankly through the trees. "Smooth-billed ani," he said. The others looked and saw nothing, but then a black bird burst from a branch, shooting through the understory.

  "How the hell do you notice that stuff?" Tucker asked.

  Diego smoothed his mustache with his thumb and index finger. "No puedo ver las hojas," he said. "I don't see the leaves." His voice was smooth and sorro
wful, like a slow-rushing river. He looked at the opening to the lava tube, shaking his head sadly.

  Rex walked over to a puddle trapped on the concave slope of the basalt at the base of the lava tube, his hand digging in his bag for a sam-ple jar. He filled it, tilting the jar to take in the water, then held it up to the light. When viewed through glass, rather than against the black stone, the water was tinted red. Cameron watched him put the jar in his back-pack with the others and return slowly to the circle, a thoughtful expres-sion on his face. When he saw her looking at him, he shook his head, puzzled. "Dinoflagellates in the water."

  Diego's brow furrowed. "How did phytoplankton get all the way up here?"

  Cameron turned her attention back to Derek, who was a sickly white.

  "You all right, LT?" Justin asked.

  "Yes," Derek said sharply. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. We're gonna finish forest recon, find a slab of bedrock, and muster back at base at 2000. I want the fourth GPS site picked before we turn in."

  "I want assurances that there won't be any more predatory behavior like that," Rex said.

  "Fine," Derek said. "You have my assurance. Anyone who acts other than under direct orders will answer to me." He raised his eyes-tired, flat points of green.

  "What about him?" Diego said, indicating Savage with a jerk of his head.

  "I'll handle him."

  "This is my survey," Rex said. "You know."

  Szabla's eyes were intense with dislike. "You've made that clear," she said.

  Derek glared at the small group. "Let's roll out."

  They shuffled into movement, paired off, and headed into the forest. Tucker passed Savage without slowing, and Savage followed him into the underbrush.

  Szabla paused by Derek, studying his face as if trying to get a read on it. Her whisper was barely audible to Cameron, certainly not to the scien-tists. "Look, LT, I think those things might-"