Minutes to Burn

He kept the grin on his face, a white floating crescent that reminded her of the Cheshire cat's, and she suddenly became aware of how close they were. One of her arms was pinned beneath his shoulder, her hand resting in the dirty tangle of his hair. He smelled of sweat and mud, and his body pressed against hers was the hardest she had ever felt, though he was over fifty years old. His muscles weren't inordinately large, but they were tight, hard like stones.

She turned her head slightly to face him full on, her cheek brushing against his beard. She held his eyes for a moment, her heart still pounding from the scare. Staring into his eyes was like looking into a black hole; they were bottomless, empty, tinged with gray. Szabla felt she was peering through the surface ice of a frozen lake, peering into death itself.

Her unease was clear as they separated and stood.

Savage cleared his throat, bringing up a plug of phlegm he spit out on a jet of air. It splatted against a frond and dripped to the ground. He stared at her, seeming to read her mind.

"You go places sometimes," he said, his voice soft, gravelly, and, if she wasn't mistaken, gentle, "you can't get back from." He looked up at the living ceiling above them. "I went into the jungle when I was eight-een, and I stepped out of life. I don't…I don't have a choice anymore."

Leaning back against the slimy bark of the tree, he watched a cluster of insects flutter around a branch overhead. Szabla looked everywhere but his eyes, then started back along the trail.

After a moment, he followed.

It was one of the longest days Cameron could recall.

Since the larvae needed shade of some sort, she, Tank, and Justin skipped the sparse coastal zone. They swept the rim of the arid zone near the lagoon where Cameron had located the first larva, before heading north and making their way through the transition zone above the volcanic rift. Finally, they cut into the forest proper, cresting Cerro Verde around noon, steering clear of the caldera itself by circumventing it from the safety of the surrounding trees. At one point, a vantage opened, and Cameron caught a clear glimpse of the active caldera through the tree trunks-a long, flat plain of lava set off with the occa-sional jumble of rocks and dipping out of sight in the middle. Myriad fissures split the dark rock, through which the glow of hot magma emanated. Steam rose in wisps, curling into elongated apparitions before dissipating.

They paused reverently before continuing down the steep eastern side of the Scalesia zone. They combed the terrain in huge swaths, beating the underbrush and waiting for the small creatures to crawl forth so they could beat them to death.

Tank carried the bolt from the specimen freezer, and Cameron and Justin each held a spike. If they didn't start picking the larvae off soon, their situation would get worse. They still had thirty-four hours to extraction, and thirty-four hours could be a long time stuck on a tiny island with master predators on the loose.

They walked on in silence, taking in the trees and the short, darting movements of birds. Cameron's arms were whipped and raw from plant stalks and twigs. Her left shoulder had a large abrasion she might have gotten scraping against the rough bark of a tree, but she couldn't remember for sure. In fact, she couldn't recall the source of most of the aches and pains that shot through her body with each step.

At one point, she could have sworn she sensed Derek close to them in the forest, but when she listened, she heard nothing except the whisper of leaves against one another. She tried reaching him on his transmitter a few times, but it was still deactivated.

They circled up to take a rest, snacking from their MREs. No one stood guard. Cameron rested in a crouch, eating vegetarian tortellini out of the pouch. The rain had stopped, though the air was still gray and heavy. After ten minutes of sitting, Tank was still breathing heavily. Justin said something softly to him that Cameron could not quite make out, but she guessed he asked about Tank's injuries, because Tank shook his head and stood up quickly, pretending not to wince.

They started to leave, but Cameron stopped herself, went back to their rest spot, and cleaned up the plastic wrappers from the MREs, shoving them into her bag.

For four more hours, they painstakingly canvassed the forest, peering into bushes and caves, through the gnarled hollows of trees, and within clusters of boulders. At one point, Tank stopped, snapping his fingers sharply, and they all froze.