Minutes to Burn

It was a miracle that the mantid hadn't sensed her coming through the flap. Cameron stepped back, keeping her torso bent, hoping to extract her shoulders and head with the movement of her legs alone. She was aware of every noise she made-her shirt folding against itself as she doubled at the waist, the beating of her heart, her tongue scraping along the roof of her mouth. In a heart-stopping moment, the heel of her boot ground against a rock, but the mantid didn't sense the vibration.

The mouth of the tent passed her ribs, then her shoulders. It was just around her neck when she felt something behind her. She gasped with fright.

The mantid's head turned nearly 180 degrees on her neck, swiveling like a periscope. Her mouth opened as if in a scream, but there was only a horrid silence. Cameron shoved back hard into the thing behind her, knocking it over. She turned, fist raised, to see Tank lying on his ass.

"Get up!" she screamed. "She's in there!"

The GP tent reared up off the ground behind them. One of the strainers flew at Cameron's head, trailing a sharp stake, and she ducked it just in time.

The tent rattled and screeched, then split down the sides as two long deadly legs burst through it. The sharp spikes sliced through the canvas like razor blades, and the mantid's head emerged from one of the holes. She struggled to free herself from the tent, swinging her legs wildly at Cameron and Tank.

"Back to Frank's camp!" Cameron screamed. She grabbed Tank, hauling him to his feet. One of her hands closed on his wounded arm and he cried out in pain.

Wriggling her body as if she were molting, the mantid freed her tho-rax from the tent. She lunged forward and swung at Tank, the hook on the end of her leg slicing through the back of his shirt. His grunt sounded like a bark. The slit immediately began gushing blood, but Tank didn't stop moving.

The mantid leapt after them, but the tent had fallen around the base of her abdomen, tangling her legs. She fell to the ground, air rushing through her spiracles with a screech, her front legs bearing her weight.

Tank glanced back over his shoulder. The creature's raptorial legs were pushed into the grass, unable to strike. He ran toward her, raising the spike behind his head in his left hand, winding up for the swing with his entire body.

He yelled something Cameron couldn't make out, braced with his right leg, and threw his entire weight into the swing, aiming for the man-tid's eye.

At the last moment, the mantid ducked and his blow glanced off the top of her head. The force was great enough to snap her head to the other side, but her strong cuticle didn't even crack. The spike fell from Tank's hand to the ground. The mantid kicked free of the tent and rose, but Tank was gone before she had regained her raptorial legs.

Cameron reached Frank's camp before Tank, almost losing her footing as she ran between the tents. Tank appeared a moment later. They could hear the soft swishing of the mantid's approach as she crossed the road and headed onto the western field.

"Where are we gonna go!?" Cameron gasped, a line of drool spinning down her chin. "Where the fuck are we gonna go?"

She looked around frantically. The forest, two canvas tents, the dark open expanse of the field. There was nowhere safe to take cover. The rumbling in the darkness was getting closer. She could have sworn she smelled the creature approaching. She spun around, looking for some-where to hide, then fell to her knees. "Fuck!" she screamed.

Her hand closed on a cyanide jar and she hurled it into the darkness. It shattered against something with a metallic ring. She rose, her eyes wide with realization. Tank hesitated, but she pulled him forward.

They had no choice.

Chapter 66

The smell when she swung the specimen freezer door open was over-powering. Since they had burned through the lock, the freezer had not been properly sealed, and the mangled bodies were rotting in the heat. The odor pressed into their noses and pores, making their eyes burn. The air inside was so humid it felt liquid. Cameron took a deep breath of the fresh air outside and pulled the door shut behind them.

The blue light from the compressor barely lit the inside of the freezer, but it was enough for her to make out the shadowy outlines of the mutated bodies swinging overhead. Because the heat had softened the bodies, the hooks were tearing through the rotting flesh.

The canine-headed creature dangled from its jaw like a fish, the hook having pulled through its neck. Puddles of dark viscid liquid lay beneath each of the bodies, spotted with floating chunks of flesh and tangles of vessels. Another body had rotted right off the hook; it slumped on the ground as if sitting upright. The meat of its face had slid down, hanging loosely inside the translucent cuticle like water in a sac. One of its limbs had come off when it struck the ground and was lying beside it like a dis-carded toy.