Minutes to Burn

Tucker and Savage stopped for a moment to rehydrate in the darkness, the smell of dampness lingering in the air. Tucker broke the long-standing silence by clearing his throat. Savage watched him expectantly. "Everything has a name back home," Tucker said. "Streets, house num-bers. You can always say where you're going, where you been. Not here. Just trees and dirt and hills. You could lose track of yourself here."

Savage scratched his beard, fingers losing themselves in tangles of hair. "Or find yourself." He worked his cheek between his teeth, shifting his jaw and feeling the flesh roll between his molars. "Your LT-he's not standing firm right now."

Tucker did not respond.

"What's all that shit you guys were talking about at the briefing back in Sac? About something he went through?"

"Derek's been a soldier for a long time," Tucker said.

"Doesn't matter. I seen veterans suddenly lose their killing nerve one day and…" Savage drew a finger across his neck and made a slicing sound. "Can happen to anyone, anywhere. Saw it all the time in Nam. Good buddy of mine went into a village, bayoneted some old bitch. Kept him up nights, thought she looked like his grandma back home. Next day he got the shakes, starting in his hands, spreading up his arms. His fire team takes a walk through a village, stumbles in on six Charlies in a hut, my buddy freezes up, couldn't pull the trigger. Lost the whole team, except one man."

"Sounds like a bit of a war story," Tucker said derisively.

"Don't it, though?" Savage replied quietly. He pursed his lips. "But it happened."

"How do you know?"

Savage looked away. "I was the one man."

He walked off into the woods, and after a moment, Tucker followed. The quiet encroached on them. Every sound magnified-the crunch of leaves underfoot, the sighing of the wind through the branches, the strange cackling calls of the petrels.

They reached a stretch of forest where a fault had rent the ground, engendering a constellation of smaller cracks. Trees protruded from the earth at strange angles, struggling to keep hold of the crooked rock beneath them, the last few feet of their tops turning straight up. Clumps of browning Spanish moss dangled over the branches like dead rats.

Savage glided across the fallen trees, the upthrust blocks of stone, the cracks in the earth that seemed to stretch down all the way to hell. Tucker's steps were unsteady in the gloom. At one point, he nearly lost his footing at the edge of a rift, but Savage was there instantly, a firm hand on his arm to pull him back. As abruptly as the disrupted section of land began, it ended, fading into vines and leafy domes.

The night was jet black, as though the moon had simply vanished. It was raining again, not hard rain like last night, but a soft misting through the air. Szabla and Justin had been walking for hours. It seemed that all the large masses of rock they'd located were either cracked, or dangerously near a cliff or fissure. Having stripped off her cammy shirt, Szabla cut through the foliage in her tank top. It clung wetly to her breasts and stomach, and when she ran a hand across the ridge of her clavicle, it came away slick with moisture.

A length of snake draped across a fallen tree limb, brown with yellow flecks. She pointed at it to alert Justin and kept moving. Mating dragon-flies zoomed dangerously, coupling briefly and separating to dodge tree trunks. She remembered hearing about birds that mate in a midair dive, sometimes rocketing to their death because they can't break off the act. She glanced behind her, checking Justin's position. Turning her mouth to her shoulder, she muttered into the transmitter, "Murphy. Primary channel."

Tucker activated his transmitter, grinning when he heard Szabla. "We're secure."

Her voice came through with exceptional clarity, as if she were standing right beside him. "This shit's making me nervous," she said in a hoarse whisper. "Have you noticed the look in Derek's eyes? Like he's a few bulbs short of a full string."

Some dirt had collected under Tucker's Iron Man watch, and he dug it out with his pinkie. He snapped a stick off a tree and used it to lop a frond off a plant. Savage was a good twenty-five feet behind him, out of earshot. "I don't know," Tucker replied. "He is the LT."

"He sure as hell's not acting like one. He's acting like the scientists' fuckboy. I spoke with Mako earlier. Private conversation. He was con-cerned but political. I'm thinking the rest of us should round up. Have a chat."

"What'd Cam say?"

"What the fuck does it matter what Cam says?"

"Well, maybe we could-"

"Don't move," Savage growled.

Though Savage had startled the hell out of him, Tucker froze. Savage stood about five feet to his left in the shadow beneath the dipping bough of a tree. Tucker hadn't seen him come up on him; he'd just heard a voice issuing from a patch of darkness.