Minutes to Burn

Blood curled down his arm, wrapping itself in thick bands around his wrist, moistening his palm and fingers until they were hot and sticky. He left blood on the fronds and leaves, in droplets on the mud, on tree trunks against which he leaned.

He left his blood on the forest.

The creature cleaned herself fastidiously, rubbing her forelegs over her face like a cat. She pulled her antennae down, sucking the blood off them, then wiped her eyes. It was essential that she remove all food from her eyes and antennae so that it wouldn't interfere with her sensory per-ception.

Bending her enormous head down, she nibbled free the chunks of flesh stuck in the tines of her legs.

She fluttered her translucent underwings once, folding them neatly beneath their protective outer wings, and headed back toward the thicket of bushes nestled between the trees in front of her. She stopped and retched twice, long shudders originating in her abdomen, and brought up Tucker's thermite grenade. It flew from her mouth as if she'd spit it, plopping in the mud beside Tucker's head.

She eyed it curiously.

A distant vibration reached her antennae and they snapped upright. She froze, holding one foreleg off the ground like a bird dog pointing, and waited for further vibrations. There were none.

But then it reached her antennae, the pungent reek of alarm pheromones.

Slowed by the considerable weight in her belly, she plodded in the direction of the scent, swiveling her head to glance around for the wounded prey. Her movements were conspicuous, brazen.

There was an almost arachnid jerkiness to her walk, but also an odd grace. Despite the formidable length of her body, she never scraped against trees or broke branches, not even with her rounded back or hind legs.

The rain washed over her and the forest, confusing her slightly since it made the leaves and twigs vibrate with small, lifelike motions. It appeared agitated, the forest.

The first drop of blood she came across was nestled in the palm of a large fern frond, protected from the rain by a broader frond that stretched over it like an umbrella. She paused, sensing the blood. Then she sped up, crashing through the underbrush, her antennae quivering, her eyes focusing to take in mosaic after mosaic of the forest. Her feet pressed hooflike imprints in the mud.

The blood trail was clearly marked, smudged through the mud and the plants. She crossed a hunk of tree bark liberally doused with blood and her head pivoted a near half turn on her thin neck, her mouth working like a pulsing heart.

Then the trail ended.

She stopped, a vine draped scarflike over her shoulder. Her raptorial legs were raised, snapping back on themselves, hungry mouths. There was no more blood, just rain and leaves and air so hot it steamed beneath the canopy. She leaned forward, her head inches off the ground, and examined the mud, then the tree trunks and the plants surrounding her. Craning her neck, she ran her head over the ground like a vacuum cleaner.

Ten feet behind her, one of her footprints vibrated, then the mud bubbled upward beneath it as though the earth were belching. A dome pulled itself from the sticky earth, mud thick with filth draining off its sides in gooey sheets.

As the mud fell away around it, two arms became visible, ridged at the shoulders, then the back haunches of some jungle thing. The haunches rose like a sprinter's in the blocks, then Savage pulled himself erect. His eyes blinked open, flashes of white amidst brown.

In a single clean movement, the mud slid from the Death Wind knife clutched in his hand, plopping to the earth. The blade gleamed cold and steel.

He saw the creature's antennae snap to attention. She started to turn her head.

Savage's heart pounded in his ears. He heard nothing, though he knew he was yelling at the top of his lungs as he charged; it was just him and his heart thundering through his body as he leapt up on the thing's back, his boot almost slipping off the slick waxy exoskeleton before taking hold in a crunch of wing and body. He propelled himself forward across the length of the abdomen toward the torsolike thorax, arms out-stretched to hug the big boulder of a head that was swiveling to look directly at him over its own body. His shoulder struck her cheek just before the razor-sharp mandibles could turn into him like tusks, and the thing reared like a stallion, her wings kicking open beneath his legs, her spiked front legs flailing and crushing closed. He would've slid off had he not locked an arm around the long thin neck, the crook of his fore-arm and biceps cinched against the thing's throat, and his yell fell into a growl though he still couldn't hear it. He was snarling through clenched teeth like a dog, his face heavy with mud and his bare chest flat against her body as she reared and shook and reared again, her cutting jaws snapping shut on air and air and air. The edge of his knife was inches from his cheek.