Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

He flung the head aside, and it flapped limply from the sheet of flesh hinged on the intact cuticle at the back of the neck. His boots sank in mud almost to the ankles when he slid off the abdomen.

The rain had cleared some of the mud from his body, but he was still filthy. His hair was heavy, tangled with grime. He sheathed his blade, pat-ting it once affectionately.

He recognized the sour taste in his mouth. Combat juice, they used to call it, the saliva that flooded one's tongue along the sides. Some water had collected on a frond, and he poured it over his mouth and chin, drinking. Crouching to rest by a tree, he plucked a granadilla from the mud and split the shell with his thumbs, scraping his bottom teeth along the lining of the skin to get at the meat.

Once he no longer felt his heart moving in his chest, he rose and faced the dead creature. He grabbed her back legs and tugged, and the large body slid easily in the mud. She was surprisingly light given her size. She'd had a good fighting build-large body surface in proportion to bulk, low weight to leverage her strength.

It had taken him nearly an hour to get out there; it would be at least three more pulling the thing back to base camp. He began the trek, clenching the back legs between his biceps and sides and dragging the corpse behind him. The wings crumpled up under the body, their slick-ness helping him move it through the mud.

Time passed in a crawl. He heard rats rustling around him, and when he glanced back he saw them there, feeding on the head and the tender flesh of the neck in droves. At first he paused and shooed them off, but eventually he grew too tired. As long as they didn't take the head off altogether, he no longer cared.

At one point, he noticed the red top of Tucker's thermite grenade, half-buried in the mud. He picked it up, stuffing it into a pocket, before returning to the body.

The body caught in bushes and branches and more than once between tree trunks. He'd have to back up and reroute, his breath coming like fire from his lungs, his face pounding with the heat.

The creature's legs wore blisters under his armpits and along his biceps and the ridges of his palms, but he dragged his kill onward with the dull, plodding determination of a machine, afraid to rest in case the pain set in.

When he reached the edge of the forest, a vicious fatigue overcame him. The creature's head was still there, lolling behind the body, but one of the eyes had been eaten out, an antenna chewed down to a nub. His knees almost buckled when the body caught the friction of a band of rocks, but he had come too far to drop now, so he pulled on toward the flickering light of the fire.

They watched him approach with large horrified eyes. Derek rose from the log, but the rest couldn't move. Cameron took a halting step back. Szabla's mouth was wide-open, and Justin looked as though he'd just swallowed something live. Diego slid from the log onto his knees.

They didn't even dare to blink as Savage pulled the mangled body into the ring of logs around the fire and released it, his arms going to knots and his legs cramping the instant he stopped. Rather than thumping to the ground, the creature's legs stayed right where he'd let go of them, sticking out like the arms of a wheelbarrow. The body stretched before them on the grass like a dropped buffalo, the fire reflecting off its shiny cuticle.

Savage moved slowly to face Derek. "There's your fuckin' proof," he said.

Turning his back, he staggered to his tent.

John Mako's voice betrayed his annoyance, sounding sharp and tinny as it echoed through Derek's transmitter. "This better be something goddamn important, Mitchell, to pull my tired ass out of bed again," he barked. "You're a fully functional half-platoon of Navy SEALs. I send you on a mission that involves mostly equipment hauling and ass-wiping, and you've all been calling in every five minutes with your panties in a knot."

Surprise flickered across Derek's face. "Who else has been-?"

"Though it's probably a big surprise to you and that pain-in-the-ass scientist-" Mako continued.

From his crouch by the creature's body, Rex gave a big, smiling, beauty-pageant wave. The others were arrayed around the fire, the larva snuggled along the base of one of the logs. Cameron stared at the body, drowning in something like disbelief.

"— there are more important things on my desk and in the world than you and your cataclysmic troubles getting a couple of satellite dishes nailed down to some shit-stripped island in the middle of the goddamn Pacific."

Derek's face was pale, his voice wavering. "We lost Tucker, sir," he said.

There was a long pause. "You lost Tucker? How the fuck did you lose Tucker?"

"There's something here on this island, sir. A…a creature of sorts. We're concerned there are more."

A longer pause. "Mitchell, let me talk to Kates. Cameron, that is."

Cameron rose to her feet and clicked on. "Yes, sir."

"Is this aboveboard, Kates?"

Cameron cleared her throat. "Yes, sir. It is. We seem to have run into some kind of a… what appears to be a large insect, sir, and I-"

"A large insect? "

"About nine feet tall. Sir, I know it doesn't sound… " Cameron sat back down on the log. She looked at Diego and he raised one eyebrow until it disappeared beneath the shaggy line of his bangs.

"And this large insect ate Tucker? Is that what happened?"

Derek blinked hard a few times. "Yes. Sir. We really need…we really need that extraction. Sir."

"Or the large insects might eat you."

"Well…" Derek looked at the enormous body slumped beside the fire. "Actually, there's no longer…we don't know…it's quite compli-cated. Sir."

"Indeed," Mako replied. "Perhaps you can comprehend some com-plications with which I'm contending on this end of the wire, soldier. The army's deploying two more battalions this week to deal with out-breaks along the Peruvian border. Colombia's a mess from the southern border through Bogota, we're down to our last task force, and I have NATO, the UN, the OAS, and my own lovable superiors leaning on me to provide more manpower from Mexico to Chile. That's not even bringing domestic problems into the equation. To say that our air assets are one hundred percent committed is something of an understatement. In light of this, you'd like me now, at three thirty-seven in the fuckdamn morning, to call the Commander of Naval Special Warfare Group One and ask him to redirect a helo from the mainland to the Galapagos Islands so that a half-platoon of reserves don't get devoured by giant bugs. Is that about the gist of your request?"

Derek's lip twitched. Szabla stood with one foot on the corpse like an old-style game hunter while Diego and Rex examined it. She turned and headed for the tents.

"Yes. Sir."

"Mitchell, I have two words for you, and they're not especially pleas-ant. Would you like to hear them?"

"No, sir."

"I didn't think so. I don't know what kind of peyote you've been smoking down there, but I don't like having my chain yanked unless it involves soft lighting and Vaseline. Don't be surprised to find yourself waylaid with a Page Thirteen when you limp your sorry ass back to base. Do I make myself clear?"

Derek opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The others exchanged frustrated glances. Cameron stood. "Sir," she said. "This is not a joke."

"Listen, Kates-"

"No," Cameron said. "You need to listen." Tank drew back his head, eyebrows raised. "This is a real threat," Cameron continued. "There is a large organism here that appears to be predatory. We have no weapons, and we're stranded on the island. You need to take steps to assure our safety, and we need orders in the meantime."

Her transmitter hummed with silence. "First of all," Mako finally replied, "you watch your goddamn tone when speaking to a superior. Is that clear?"