Minutes to Burn

"But now I feel soft. Emotional." She was trembling. "I broke orders. I led a fucking mutiny. Because of my own…" She made a fist and tapped it against her stomach.

"You stepped into yourself," Justin said. "You made a decision." There were better words for what he wanted to say, but she understood him.

Cameron tilted her head back so that she wouldn't spill tears. "It's so messy though. I feel so fucking messy." Her mouth tightened as she looked at her husband. "Why didn't you?" she asked. "Make the call?"

"First of all, the squad wouldn't follow me."

Cameron digested this for a moment. "And second?"

Justin lowered his hands, his light crossing Cameron's, illuminating the back of the small cave.

"Second?" she asked again.

He raised his eyes, meeting hers. "I don't have your strength, Cam." He shook his head, looking away.

She reached out and laid a finger on his cheek, turning his face to hers. "There are better things than strength," she said.

"Okay, but look at Derek."

Cameron's voice dropped to a whisper. "Look at Savage."

They stared at each other in the darkness of the cave, their lights dan-gling and throwing shadows all about them. Justin moved forward and hugged her tightly, a combat hug, wrapping his arms around her and raising her off the ground as he leaned back. He seemed to slow when he set her down. For a moment, she felt the warmth of his cheek against hers, and her hands were on his shoulders and she pulled back a little and looked at him, looked at him hard. He kissed her gently on the cheek. She turned to face him fully, surprised, and they kissed again, softly, wetly. When the kiss ended, they regarded each other, slightly bewil-dered.

They set down their lights and spikes. The wind whistled outside, reminding them of the peacefulness of the still air all around them. Somewhere, deep in the cave, water dripped.

Justin reached over and ran his finger along the length of her neck-lace, picking up the clasp and moving it to the back as he often did. Then he reached for her cheek, but she grasped his wrist, stopping him.

He splayed his fingers as he pulled back his hand.

She was just about to say something when she heard the noise, a soft cooing with clicks moving underneath it.

"What? What is it?" Justin asked.

At the edge of the cave near the entrance, its head protruding from behind a boulder, a larva watched them inquisitively. Drawn by their sounds and the light, it had crawled into the cave to find them.

It arched upward, its thorax and head curving up from the abdomen.

Cameron leaned over, grabbing for the spike before she lost her nerve.

The larva crawled from behind the boulder, inching for the cave entrance.

"It's moving," Justin said. He stepped forward, knocking the elbow light with his foot. It rocked on the hard floor, its beam rolling across the cave.

Cameron ran over and seized the larva by the terminal segment as it was about to reach the entrance. She dragged it back inside toward the light, its tender cuticle scraping on the rocky floor. Air screeched through its spiracles, and it balled up like a fetus, half-lit in the dark.

Choking on her own breath, Cameron drew back the spike and struck it at the base of the skull. It was knocked into a lengthwise roll, squealing louder than Cameron could have imagined, and something squirted from the hole in its head. Its abdomen loosened and contracted, its mouth hanging silently open and she swung again, hearing something in its thorax give way. It screeched, trying desperately to drag itself away and her vision went blurry, and she was screaming "Die, why won't you die!" and swinging and hacking and pounding, but it still kept struggling even as its head came apart at the top. Its prolegs kept pulsing and air kept screeching through the spiracles, its mouth bent wide with the thrust of the mandibles. Beside herself with revulsion at it and herself, she raised the spike behind her like a spear and thrust it right through the center of it. It shrieked again, flailing, but at last its true legs slowed and then it was quiet, its mouth hanging open.

Her face in her hands, she gasped, fighting down a sob. Swaying in the dancing yellow light of the cave, her shoulders rising and falling in great heaves, the thing impaled before her, she leaned over and vomited so hard she felt her whole chest rising with the effort. Her stomach felt as though it were turning itself inside-out within her throat, a thick cord of drool and regurgitated food spinning from her bottom lip.

She retched until she couldn't bring anything up and then retched a few times more, Justin pressing his palm to her forehead to keep her head up.

Her shoulders slumped with exhaustion, Cameron trudged into camp ahead of Justin, the larva draped across her arms. Sitting by the languishing fire, the others looked up with eyes dark and dreadful.