Minutes to Burn

After Cameron left, leading Tank and Justin into the forest, Szabla hydrated, then poured water from her canteen down her sweaty neck and back. When she turned to survey the expanse of the pasture to the east, Savage was already about fifty yards off, poking through the high grass and looking for holes.

It was fortunate there were air vesicles in the open field; searching the forest was a greater risk, since the foliage provided cover in which a mantid could hide. Plus, if one of the larvae did metamorphose, it would be better to lure it somewhere out in the open where they could keep an eye on it-after dusk, of course, so the sun wouldn't drive it away.

The heat was unforgiving, so Szabla pulled off her cammy shirt. Tossing it to the side, she headed out toward Savage in her black tank top. Savage was shirtless, his bandanna dripping-he must have doused it with water from his canteen. He was crouched, shaking his head. As she drew nearer, she realized he was laughing.

"I think I just solved the mystery of Dr. Frank Friedman," he said, pointing through the waving grass into a hole in the ground.

Szabla bent over, drawing aside the grass. The odor hit her hard and she drew back, waving an arm in front of her face. Savage laughed, a low grumble in his throat. Pulling her tank top up over her nose bandido-style, Szabla leaned over the hole again, looking down.

A bloated corpse lay at the bottom of the narrow twelve-foot drop, the sharply angled head indicating a broken neck. Having worked on the body for over a month, maggots, ants, and other critters had reduced the face and hands to grotesque appendages-clothes remained over the rest of the body, seemingly holding it together. A fisherman's hat lay on the ground a few feet from the head.

"All the shit going down on this island," Savage said, "and the fucker died taking a header into a goddamn hole." He shook his head again.

It took them the better part of an hour in the baking sun to find an air vesicle appropriately sized for the trap. About ten feet deep, six wide, and twelve long, it was originally a spherical gap in the lava. Decades of erosion had worn away the top, creating sheer walls. Since the vesicle collected shade and moisture, and slowed evaporation, it contained an entirely different ecosystem: ferns flourished in shafts of light; stubby miniature trees sprouted up between the mounds of rubble.

Szabla and Savage stood facing each other across the length of the hole. Szabla's undershirt was pasted to her body and drenched through all around. She tried to spit, but it dangled from her bottom lip, a thick pasty cord. She spit again and it spun to the ground.

Base camp was about a hundred yards west, and the forest several hundred yards upslope. "This is good," Szabla said. "Nice and open. Nothing can sneak up on us here, and it's close enough to the forest that the motherfucker could see it and come if it had cover of night."

Savage nodded, his fingers rasping in his beard.

"Let's get some of that rock cleared from the base of the walls," Szabla said. "Make sure nothing can crawl out."

They headed back to base camp to retrieve shovels and some rope, steering clear of the hole in which Frank Friedman's body lay rotting.

They trudged through the forest, Cameron hacking with the spike as if it were a machete when the foliage grew thick. Tank and Justin followed her silently.

When she heard the cooing, her legs went slack with the memory of the thing she'd beaten along the floor of the cave. She slowed down, Tank and Justin immediately halting to see what was wrong.

The sound was coming from behind a plant with thin elongated leaves cascading to the sides. The leaves' serrated edges cut her hand as she pulled them aside, expecting to be greeted with the engaging face of another larva.

When she saw the dark-rumpled petrel's white face and black bill, her eyes welled with relief. The petrel had scraped a burrow in the soft soil and was guarding over her full nest of eggs. She squawked at Cameron indignantly, her wedge-shaped tail fluttering, and Cameron withdrew.

She stood up right into Justin, who had moved close behind her with the spike, ready to take care of the kill to spare her having to go through it again. A perversely sweet gesture. She leaned back into him just to feel his body against hers for a moment. His hands around the circle of her waist calmed her, and she winked at him before turning and cutting back into the trees.

The fact that she'd been certain of her obligation-that she had to kill the larva last night-had not made the task easier for her. She'd had to fight every instinct in her to swing the spike, to batter the thing to death.