Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

Samantha smiled. "Nothing." She turned to go, but Dr. Foster gently grasped her elbow, turning her back to the window.

The woman was breathing hard, her chest rising and falling beneath a thin hospital gown. A tear spilled from her eye and ran sideways down her cheek to the pillow. She opened her mouth, her lips forming sound-less words.

Thank you.

His boots hooked up on one of the logs and his hands resting in the grass, Savage began a series of decline push-ups. Tucker watched him, his thumb working away on his thimble like a small piston. Justin paced loose, meandering circles around the fire.

Diego and Rex had set out several hours ago to circle the coast and collect water samples. Despite Justin's advice, Tank had escorted them to try to walk the remaining stiffness from his back. The scientists had planned to concentrate on the southern coast, where the cold Peruvian Oceanic Current would have carried the infected dinoflagellates to the island from the deep-sea core holes.

At the base of the log, the larva curled around Derek's ankles. "What if it gets hungry?" Derek asked.

"If it starts crying," Savage grunted between push-ups, "you can always breast-feed."

Accordioning its segments, the larva squirmed up onto the log. It raised its thorax, its true legs spread in the air, and angled its head toward Derek. He looked back. They gazed at each other for a few moments, exchanging information in some wordless tongue. The larva made the cooing noise, just once, then lowered its thorax. Its prolegs pulsed and tensed, moving its body forward into Derek's lap. He raised his hands, allowing the larva to ease across his thighs.

Szabla stood up brusquely. "I don't like this. I don't like it at all."

Derek rested a hand on the back of the larva's head. "It's fine, Szabla. Sit down. Sit down."

Szabla sat.

Cameron watched the larva in Derek's lap, noting just how much they were juxtaposed like mother and child. She looked away, scratching her nose. "Requesting permission to check on the Estradas," she said.

"Who the fuck are the Estradas?" Szabla asked.

"Ramon and Floreana."

"Who the fuck are Ramon and Floreana?"

Cameron turned to Szabla, unamused. "I'm not requesting permis-sion from you." She turned back to Derek, but he was lost again, gazing down at the larva. "Well? Derek?"

Derek looked up. "Huh?"

"Can I go?"

"Where?"

"To check on the Estradas?"

"Why do they need checking?"

"I don't know, I just thought I'd…" Her voice trailed off, leaving an awkward silence. Justin tried to catch her eye, but she refused to look over at him.

"The woman is pregnant," Justin said, turning to Derek. "It might be wise for someone to look in on her." He bit an edge of nail off his thumb, spitting it aside.

Derek shrugged. "Fine," he said. He nodded without looking at Cameron. "Go."

Again, Cameron found she had some trouble with Ramon and Flore-ana's Spanish. She asked Ramon to repeat his question and listened extra carefully.

"Why did I come?" Cameron repeated to make sure she'd gotten the question correct. Her Spanish wasn't great, but since she didn't have Diego to translate like last time, she had to forge ahead with it. She shrugged. "I suppose to check up on you." She turned to Floreana. "To make sure you were okay." She pointed to Floreana's stomach, and Flo-reana smiled. "Are you all right?"

Ramon smiled and walked over to his wife, leaning over to embrace her from behind. She set down the small blue quilt she was stitching and smiled. "I'm happy," she said.

"Are you still worried about getting off the island?"

Ramon reached around his wife, laying his hands on her stomach. "Once she gives birth to our son, then we will worry about getting off the island." His eyes saddened. "Our island."

"What are you going to do for work? When you leave here?"

"I don't know. I'll find something." Ramon took a deep breath and sat down at the table, sliding his hands along the rough, wooden surface. "There are things that matter and things that don't." His eyes traced over his wife lovingly-her crow's feet, the dark wave of her hair, her full stomach. "It's simple."

Cameron started to sit down, then decided not to. "Well, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you're taken care of," she said.

Floreana's smile was beautiful. She noticed Cameron's eyes drop to the baby quilt. "Do you have children?"

"No," Cameron said. She smiled curtly, backing up to the door. "No," she said again.

"Perhaps you could stay for some-"

"That's all right," Cameron said. "I really should get back." She nodded once and left before Floreana could protest.

Derek walked down the two-hundred-yard stretch of dirt road toward the watchtower, the sturdy balsas rising overhead, the forest looming behind him like a broad, slumbering beast. He climbed the makeshift ladder and reached the top of the wobbly structure, a decrepit open shack with an overhang about fifty feet up.

He faced south toward the darkening blue of the ocean, leaning heavily against one of the shack walls, which groaned under his weight. A big wave rolled in, disappearing from view beneath the cliffs of Punta Berlanga, and then he saw the five distinct sprays of the blowholes shooting up in the air. They misted, dissolved. He wondered if the slight moisture he felt against his cheeks was the water from the blowholes reaching him up here, kilometers away.

His eyelids felt heavy, almost leaden. He fought them open, and his vision blurred. He let it, taking in the island like an Impressionist land-scape. Since the mission's start, he'd hardly slept at all. He nodded off and almost toppled from the tower, awakening at the last moment and grabbing the wall. Adrenaline pounded through him.

He needed to sleep. Climbing slowly down the ladder, he headed back to base and ducked into his tent early.

The humble fire fought the dusk. The larva rustled in the grass, no longer needing to seek shade. Rex and Diego had been analyzing its movements, seeing how it responded to light and touch. They'd already grown accustomed to its gentle, lethargic movements-there was some-thing almost hypnotic about them.

Savage dumped an armful of firewood near the pit. He noticed Szabla way off down the dirt road, staring at something against the base of a tree at the forest's edge. He ducked through the alley of balsas onto the road and walked up to her.

"Look," she whispered, pointing. "A praying mantis." The mantid was about eight inches tall, standing in a patch of weeds by a thick gnarled root. "She's a big one, huh? I almost didn't see her there. I was just watching these finches."

A few finch chicks hopped among the rocks, searching for grubs and beetles. The mantid regarded them with interest.

"Growing up, we called praying mantises 'soothsayers,'" Szabla said. "My mother said they point the way home for lost children."

One of the finch chicks hopped close to the patch of weeds. With a movement too quick to see, the mantid lunged forward, crushing the chick in its front legs.

Szabla's smile faded.

The mantid's head lowered beneath the squawking beak and the chick was still. The mantid continued working on the chick, turning it with its legs. It pulled back into the weeds on its spindly legs.

"Back home," Savage said, letting his hand come to rest on Szabla's shoulder, "we called them 'Devil Horses.'"

The dirt around the fire pit was growing scorched, dark sediment set-tling over it like snow. Cameron toyed with the ring around her neck, rubbing the top of the sapphire with a fingernail. Tank tried to stretch his lower back, then sat on the log next to her and rested a heavy forearm across her shoulders.