Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

Derek rested a boot against the farolete, and stopped dead. He was ashen, his face frozen in an expression of disbelief, amazement, and fear. Cameron stepped back quickly, following his gaze to the edge of the brush near her feet.

Inching slowly toward her was a plump, segmented larva, its head eight inches long and rounded. Almost three feet in length, it elevated its torso off the ground, its head cocking slightly to one side. Its mandibles curved into the slit of its mouth. Gills quivered behind its head. Cameron could see her terrified expression in the glassy sheen of the larva's round eyes. She felt her heart double-beat in her chest, and her hands went slick with sweat. The larva emitted a soft, gentle coo, and Derek stumbled back, tripping over his feet and falling down.

His yell echoed back to them from the walls of the lagoon. Cameron pulled him to her side speechlessly as the larva lowered itself flat to the ground again. It inched forward and Cameron and Derek stepped back.

Diego was scrambling up the slope of the lagoon, calling out, but they were transfixed by the strange creature before them and couldn't respond. Cameron wiped the sweat from her face with a sleeve, her cheeks raw, sunburnt, and trembling.

Panting, Diego reached Derek's side and leaned over, hands resting on his knees. When he saw the larva, he inhaled sharply. He stepped back, tears rising to his eyes. The larva inched forward again, prolegs squirming to find holds in the ground, and Diego stepped forward cau-tiously, leaning over it but ready to spring back at the slightest indication of danger.

Cameron grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back. "Let's just take this slow," she said through clenched teeth. Her chest was heaving beneath her top. "Let's just take this slow," she repeated, more for her benefit than for Diego and Derek's.

Diego stepped around the larva, pointing at the bushes. A thin path had been cleared; the larva had literally eaten its way through the dense underbrush. "Hay Maria Santisima," Diego said. "Its consumption is extraordinary."

"What the fuck is it?" Derek asked, his voice wavering. He rocked a little on his feet.

Diego leaned forward again, mumbling as if to himself. "An arthro-pod of some sort, probably an insect. Eruciform larva, a caterpillar, maybe. Distinct head, aristate antennae, three pairs of true legs off the thorax, multi-segmented abdomen." He reached out a hand but drew it back quickly when the larva's head turned to track its motion."! Cono la puta madre!"

Cameron could not tear her eyes from the thing's head. The wide saucers of the eyes connoted an innocence and gentleness she had seen before only in mammals. The cooing sound issued from the larva again, a soft click moving beneath the surface of the sound.

"Impossible," Diego said. "Insects have no lungs, no vocal cords. They only make stridulating noises, from rubbing their legs or wings together. It must be pushing air through its cuticle, or scraping its seg-ments together. It must be… " He stared at the larva's open mouth, the sturdy stocks of the mandibles.

"It's soothing," Derek said. "The noise."

"It has holes in its sides," Cameron said, pointing to the oblong spiracle openings, one on each side of each abdominal segment. "Maybe the air's coming through those."

She yanked a thorn tree up by its roots, protecting her hand with her shirt. Holding the bottom toward the larva, she shook it before its face. The larva's head moved slightly side to side as it eyed the dangling roots. Its segments seemed to contract and then spring, launching its head toward the thorn tree. It got its mouth around the base of the thin trunk and began munching. Cameron watched in amazement, the larva pulling its front segments up off the ground as it ate its way up the stalk toward her hands. She released the tree before the larva got too close. It finished the trunk on the ground, then looked at her again.

"Is it dangerous?" Cameron asked. "It looks kind of…I don't know…"

"Personable?" Diego offered.

"Something like that."

Diego reached out a hand and touched its terminal segment. "I don't know. I've never seen anything like it. But it doesn't have stingers, claws, or spines, and there's no warning coloration. Its mandibles are strong, but that's common in larvae. It has glands posterior to its labial mouth-parts, probably to expel silk for a pupation chamber. It appears to be herbivorous, but it might be an opportunistic carnivore. The size is alarming, but I'd guess it's not danger-"

The larva turned its head in response to his hand, and he pulled his arm quickly back out of reach.

"Convincing, Doc," Derek said. "Real convincing."

"Will it metamorphose?" Cameron asked.

"I would guess so," Diego replied. "It is distinctly larval. Maybe a large butterfly, or…"

"A tree monster?" Cameron finished. They all watched the larva for a few moments. "Do you think there are others?" she asked.

Diego shrugged, nodded, shook his head. "I have no idea. I've just never…I've never. I suppose there could be just this one, but I have to believe that it's a species of sorts, that it has a… that there are others. But we can't take a chance…if we never see it again, it could be…could be tragic…an opportunity like this…" He slid his lip to one side, chewing it.

"What are we going to do with it?" Cameron asked.

Diego rose from his crouch and scratched his head, his elbow pointing out like a flag. "I don't want to move it, but if we leave it, we could easily lose track of it. And even though we haven't seen any, there could still be feral dogs roaming the island. It could get killed. We need to make sure we at least have an opportunity to examine it. We could return it afterward, right where we found it." He looked at them sheepishly, as if waiting to be contradicted.

Finally, Cameron glanced over at Derek. "Do you think it'll fit in your bag?"

The others' faces reflected Cameron's thoughts. Tank, Rex, Tucker, Sav-age, and Szabla sat on the logs near the fire pit, flabbergasted. The larva crawled on the soft grass to the side of Derek's tent, and Diego stood over it, guiding it back toward the circle of logs. Derek stood, ghost-white and gaunt, staring into the dark stretch of the forest to the north.

"You gotta be shittin' me," Savage said.

Tucker cleared his throat loudly, bringing up a mouthful of phlegm. "There's no way."

Tank stood up, then sat back down. "Fuck," he said.

"What the…I don't…What is…I'm a…" Szabla stopped, evidently realizing she wasn't making any headway. She was deeply flushed.

"Kinda cute, ain't it?" Cameron asked.

Placing his hands on the larva's back safely behind the head, Diego elevated it slightly. Its prolegs wiggled in the air, searching for a hold. Cameron laughed and Tank couldn't help smiling. He walked over to the cruise box that had filled with rain and splashed some water over his face.

"We found it at the fringe of the arid zone," Diego said. "It's partial to shade, so it's probably disposed to the forest. The cuticle seems more papery and fragile at the back of the thorax-probably UV damage. My guess would be it worked its way down from the forest under cover of the palo santos."

"If its straying so far from the forest is anomalous," Rex said. "What was it doing?"

Diego didn't have an answer. The larva stopped squirming momen-tarily, regarding Derek's boot with an almost human curiosity.

"Should we name it?" Cameron asked, only half joking.

"Why all this ha-ha-look-how-cute-shit?" Szabla said, regaining her composure. "That thing could be dangerous. It could be whatever all this shit is about-all these superstitions. Could be what took out that scientist friend of Rex's."

"He wasn't my friend," Rex said slowly, still spellbound by the larva. It rippled forward over the grass, using the stumps of its prolegs for traction. It gazed up with its oversize eyes, its mouth working as if it were chewing something.