Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

They stood in perfect stillness for a long time before even daring to turn their heads and look around. Savage gazed at the line of trees, his eyes fighting to adjust to the shadows and small patches of intense sun-light. He backed up to Tucker, his blade out and hanging loose at his side. He moved slowly, making no sound save the brush of his cammies. He halted next to Tucker. They waited, listening in the breeze.

"There's something there," Savage said softly. His face was slick with the humidity, dark with sweat at the sides of his head along the edge of the bandanna.

He and Tucker stood side by side, breathing in unison. They stared ahead at the shadows, the trunks of the trees, the waving leaves. Some-thing wasn't right up ahead, but Savage couldn't put his finger on it.

The sky cracked with lightning, followed quickly by thunder. They heard the rain before they saw it, pattering atop the leaves of the canopy. It filtered down to them slowly, trickling through the network of tree-tops and branches. The air around them split in several narrow falls of water. "What do you think?" Tucker whispered.

Savage looked ahead again, but the surroundings were losing focus. "The rain's gonna cut visibility and the ground'll go to shit. Even more."

"Any bears or anything like that?"

Savage shook his head. "No predators. Just a hawk or two, a harmless snake. Nothing dangerous in here."

Tucker shook off a chill. "Guess we just spooked."

Savage reached out a hand, letting a stream splash onto his palm. "Been known to happen," he said. He glanced back into the forest, the air gray and heavy with rain. "Let's see if those slippers made it back to base yet."

He kept the lead on the way back.

Base camp was set by the time Cameron, Derek, and Rex returned, the five tents spotting the pasture. The sky over the forest was clear now; the rainfall had stopped as quickly as it had begun, never straying beyond the high altitude side of the transition zone. The grass around the base camp and the canvas tents were wet.

Since they were short on white fuel for the hurricane lamps, Tucker, Diego, and Justin cleared a fire pit. There was plenty of wood to burn, and in addition to providing light, a fire would make a good gathering site. Finding a few trees that had fallen in the recent earthquake, they'd rolled over the broken segments of trunk to serve as benches. Then, they'd torn up the grass within the ring of logs to ensure the fire wouldn't spread, leaving only a circle of dirt.

Tank had fallen asleep sitting on the tortoise, which was now walking slowly toward a mud wallow. His boots dragged along the ground, his head lolling with each of the tortoise's tedious steps. He'd accidentally left an empty cruise box open beside his tent during the rainfall; it had caught the water running off the tent roof in its waterproof liner, filling with water.

Szabla shadowboxed behind her tent. Savage whittled something into the bark of a nearby quinine tree. He didn't bother to look over as Cameron, Rex, and Derek approached. Though she'd been looking for-ward to seeing him, Cameron shot Justin a stern glance as he approached, to stop him from greeting her warmly.

The team circled up around the fire pit, pulling out their meals, ready to eat. Sealed in thick brown plastic bags, the MREs were high-energy, high-protein, and easy to prepare. Savage sliced the top of the tough plastic with his Death Wind and slid the contents out onto the ground- a plastic spoon, a vacuum-sealed cookie bar, a tiny Tabasco bottle, apple jelly in a tube, cocoa beverage powder, vacuum-sealed crackers and tube cheese, cardboard boxes holding pouches of potatoes au gratin and ham omelet, and a packet containing gum, coffee grounds, matches, sugar, salt, and a few pieces of toilet paper for when the need arose, as Justin often put it, to "take a squeeze."

A long, thin plastic heat bag warmed up when exposed to water. Sav-age filled it from his canteen, slid the omelet pouch inside, stuffed the whole thing back into the cardboard casing, and set it at a tilt against a nearby rock.

Tank lay flat to rest his intercostals, his hands laced across the back of his neck. Justin was already digging into his meal, spooning mushy bar-becue pork into his mouth. Rex watched him with disgust until Szabla tossed him a heated MRE pouch.

Rex glanced at the carton. "Tuna with noodles? You expect me to eat this?"

"Sorry, princess," Szabla said, squeezing a tube of cheese onto a cracker. "We're outta lobster."

"What chemicals are used to heat this crap?" Rex asked angrily, reaching for Szabla's heater bag. Szabla slapped his hand, and he withdrew it, surprised.

"Doubt they're biodegradable, Doc, if that's your concern," Savage said through a mouthful of cookie bar.

"Heaters and processed food." Rex shook his head. "So much waste. Did you know geothermal energy sources could provide the world's energy twenty times over?"

"Fascinating," Szabla said.

"But what do we have instead? What legacy do we leave? Ozone depletion, acid rain, anthropogenic emissions, industrial pollution, nuclear waste, urban smog, high-altitude cooling, increasing global mean surface temperature, fossil fuel combustion, biomass burning, defor-estation. We're like children. Stupid, vicious children." Rex paused, exas-perated. "What's next?"

"The Red Sox'll win the World Series." Szabla leaned forward, forked a hunk of tuna noodles from Rex's pouch, and ate it. Tank grabbed the pouch from Rex and tilted it back over his open mouth, emptying it.

Derek stuck his spoon into his apple jelly tube and turned it upside down like a Popsicle before throwing it aside. Cameron eyed the tube in the grass. "Diet?" she asked.

Derek ran a hand over his stubble, and Cameron noticed how gaunt he looked. "Yeah," he said. "Need to slim down for swimsuit season."

Diego stood quietly and picked up the discarded tube, setting it in a trash bag. Cameron watched him, but the others didn't seem to notice. Rex picked up another MRE and turned it upside down, searching for the opening.

Pale yellow tinged faintly with green, a sulfur butterfly flew a lurching figure eight overhead. It lit on Rex's shoulder, but he did not notice it. Diego reached over, trapping the butterfly's wings between the lengths of two fingers. Ever so delicately, he grasped the butterfly's fragile body with his other hand, then blew gently on the wings so they parted, revealing their full span. With a graceful flick of his wrist, he released the butterfly to the air, and it fluttered off. He glanced over at Cameron and smiled.

"Justin," Derek said, "After lunch, I want you to swim out and retrieve your trauma bag and the other gear we discussed. See if you can figure some way to anchor closer to shore for when we take off in four days. Get back here by 1500. That give you enough time?" Justin snapped his head down in a nod. He was the best swimmer on the squad, and he prided himself on his specialty.

"The rest of us'll break into buddy pairs and sweep the island. Once we find the other five sites, then we can focus on setting those last GPS units, getting the water samples Rex needs, and clearing out."

Grabbing the thin cardboard box, Savage slid out the contents, then pulled the warm omelet pouch from the heater. He sliced the top open and dumped in the cocoa powder, then the Tabasco, stirring the whole concoction together. He raised a spoonful of the mush, white shot through with red and chocolate swirls, to his mouth. "We gonna make it back for New Year's?" he asked. "I got a stripper name of Mary Anne, said she'd get me firing both pistons if I can swing through Boseman."

Justin caught Cameron's eye and made a jacking-off gesture with his fist.

Rex stood, picking up another antenna. "You can consider that your incentive."