Minutes to Burn

The nights were growing warmer and the air outside was thick and moist. The garua was settling into the peaks of the forest, crowning it with ribbons of mist. The cry came again, this time with more urgency, and Ramon imagined he felt it rattling through his bones. He passed through the low castor oil plants, the wide-leafed flowering guavas, the tall stands of platanos. Beside him hung the bunches of fruit, hard-sheathed and ridged. He thought of the panicked looks in the eyes of his neighbors who had fled, the foolish stories that had been told around the village. The tall tales seemed more real in the darkness.

The cry elevated into an almost human scream, undulating unnaturally, like the wail of a child seized and shaken. Its pitch, except when wrenched high with pain, was low and broad, issuing from some large creature. There was more bleating, more sounds of struggle. Though the air was cool, Ramon felt his shirt clinging to his body, moist and limp. He tightened his grip on the ax, thinking of his over-under shot-gun in the small house and cursing the ammunition shortage, and reached a hand out cautiously to part the fronds.

Something lay up ahead, wheezing in the tall grass of the western-most livestock pen. A large creature, lost in the shadows, the darkness, and Ramon's own intoxicating fear, was retreating slowly to the brink of the forest. At least three meters tall, it seemed to walk upright like a man, the grass shushing around its swollen body. Unhurried, it reached the edge of the Scalesia forest and faded from sight.

A renewed cry brought Ramon's attention back to the injured beast. It was one of Ramon's favorites, a thick brown-and-white spotted cow. He stepped forward, trying to focus on her, but his mind was slow and unresponsive, having followed the thick majestic creature through the mist and into the forest.

The cow bleated again, but its cries had none of the fearful edge of before. Its side was raked open in two diagonal strips, the torn flesh revealing a crushed tangle of ribs and tissue. Her breath rattled through the holes, fluttering the fur surrounding the gashes. Her hind leg was snapped back under her body, and her head rested at a painful angle to her neck, as if she'd been raised and dropped, or thrown a short distance in frustration.

As if something had bitten off more than it could chew.

Ramon lowered the ax to his side, breathing hard. There were no bears here, no large cats or crocodiles. As far as he knew, the largest natural predator in the entire archipelago was the Galapagos hawk.

The cow moaned and Ramon crouched over her, caressing her flank. Her mouth was sprayed with froth. He noticed that the back of her neck had been attacked, scraped or gnawed through to the thick plate of the scapula. The flesh was ribboned across the wound, glistening with blood and a foreign, clear, viscid liquid that looked like saliva. Ramon reached out and touched the wound, drawing his hand back sharply as pain shot through the cut on his index finger. He wiped the excess blood on his jeans and instinctively put his finger in his mouth to clear the wound. He spit into the grass, a red-lined glob thick with mucus, and rose.

The cow rustled in the grass, her head trembling above the ground. Ramon picked up the ax, again cursing the fact that there were no shells for his shotgun. With a nervous glance at the band of forest into which the large creature had vanished, he raised the ax back over one shoulder and swung downward at the cow's neck.

Chapter 1

17 DEC 07

Cameron leaned forward, resting her elbows on the steering wheel of her Cherokee. The horn blasted, startling her back in her seat, and several of the children on the playground turned and glanced in her direction. She waved, but none waved back.

The timing was less than perfect.

Though not beautiful, Cameron had neat, pretty features. Her blond hair was badly cut-thirteen dollars at SuperCuts-yet it somehow added to her casual good looks. It was short, up off her shoulders in the back and blunt along the sides. She was solid through the hips and broad across the shoulders. She was not a petite woman.

In the twenty minutes she had been watching, children had overrun the small playground. She found something vulgar in their exuberance-the exaggerated swinging of their arms, the open screaming mouths, the tint of their rosy cheeks. A stocky girl tripped a smaller boy, and he went down with a yelp. He stood, bawling, the knees of his jeans marked with dirt.