Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

"I'm the AOIC here," Szabla said.

Cameron looked at her a long time before speaking. "Yes, Szabla," she said. "We know."

Diego had wrapped the remains of the larva in his shirt to carry back to base. He stood with his feet a little too far apart, gazing blankly through the trees. "Smooth-billed ani," he said. The others looked and saw nothing, but then a black bird burst from a branch, shooting through the understory.

"How the hell do you notice that stuff?" Tucker asked.

Diego smoothed his mustache with his thumb and index finger. "No puedo ver las hojas," he said. "I don't see the leaves." His voice was smooth and sorrowful, like a slow-rushing river. He looked at the opening to the lava tube, shaking his head sadly.

Rex walked over to a puddle trapped on the concave slope of the basalt at the base of the lava tube, his hand digging in his bag for a sam-ple jar. He filled it, tilting the jar to take in the water, then held it up to the light. When viewed through glass, rather than against the black stone, the water was tinted red. Cameron watched him put the jar in his back-pack with the others and return slowly to the circle, a thoughtful expres-sion on his face. When he saw her looking at him, he shook his head, puzzled. "Dinoflagellates in the water."

Diego's brow furrowed. "How did phytoplankton get all the way up here?"

Cameron turned her attention back to Derek, who was a sickly white.

"You all right, LT?" Justin asked.

"Yes," Derek said sharply. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. We're gonna finish forest recon, find a slab of bedrock, and muster back at base at 2000. I want the fourth GPS site picked before we turn in."

"I want assurances that there won't be any more predatory behavior like that," Rex said.

"Fine," Derek said. "You have my assurance. Anyone who acts other than under direct orders will answer to me." He raised his eyes-tired, flat points of green.

"What about him?" Diego said, indicating Savage with a jerk of his head.

"I'll handle him."

"This is my survey," Rex said. "You know."

Szabla's eyes were intense with dislike. "You've made that clear," she said.

Derek glared at the small group. "Let's roll out."

They shuffled into movement, paired off, and headed into the forest. Tucker passed Savage without slowing, and Savage followed him into the underbrush.

Szabla paused by Derek, studying his face as if trying to get a read on it. Her whisper was barely audible to Cameron, certainly not to the scien-tists. "Look, LT, I think those things might-"

"Roll out, Szabla," he snarled. He did not look over at her.

She lingered for a moment by Derek, clearly wanting to say some-thing else, but he didn't acknowledge her, not even when she jerked her neck to the side to crack it. Justin waited patiently at the brink of the foliage. When she finally came, he let her take point.

Derek and Cameron stood alone in the clearing, dusk spreading the shadows around them into planes of black. The ground rumbled slightly, but the movement didn't escalate into a full-blown earthquake. Derek didn't even seem to notice.

"You all right, Derek?" she asked.

"Fine," he said sharply, still averting his eyes. "I'm gonna bust Sav-age's ass if he touches another baby."

Cameron drew her lips together and out, concerned. She had shared Derek's visceral reaction watching the thing die on the ground, but Derek seemed to be slipping down the slope of his emotions.

She cleared her throat uncomfortably. "It's not a baby, Derek."

His laugh was empty. "No shit. I didn't call it a baby."

They stood there dumbly with the whistle of the wind through the trees and the calls of strange animals all around them. Cameron watched a star spider make its way up a mossy log. She cleared her throat uncom-fortably. "Look, Derek, I know this must be hard, in light of-"

"You don't know anything, all right?" Derek said gruffly. He turned away from her, clenching his jaw. "Let's go."

Cameron took note of the pulse beating in his temple before turning and starting the trek back to camp, her canteen bouncing against her hip like a trophy kill.

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."