Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

Derek squared himself, pulling back his shoulders. He seemed stretched taut under the weight of it all, ready to snap. But if he made a second charge, there would be a fight, and there were four of them and Tank, and there was no way he'd dare.

Eyes wild, Derek looked from one face to the next. His mouth hung slightly open, but no words came out.

Cameron stepped out in front of the others. "I think we got it from here, LT," she said. She sounded miserable, even to herself.

Derek rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, blinking tight around them. He started to speak, but still nothing came, and he closed his mouth dumbly. He turned to the larva, which squirmed along the top of the log. It arched upward, its true legs extending like antennae.

With trembling fingers, Derek reached down and smoothed his hands on his worn cammy shirt. One of his cheeks was twitching, just beneath the eye. He glared at Cameron for a long time. She met his gaze, unblinking.

Lowering his head, he stepped around the others and walked into his tent.

The silence seemed to fill them up, separately and together. Diego started to walk toward the larva, but Szabla took his arm at the elbow, very gently, and held him back. She shook her head.

Cameron looked at Tank, and then at Derek's tent. Tank nodded and walked over, standing guard by Derek's flap. She caught Savage's eye and something passed between them.

Savage picked up the larva roughly, swinging it by its posterior end. It squealed, a rush of air creaking through its cuticle, and tried to curl itself upward. Its wiggling shadow fell across their faces as Savage passed them, taking the spike that Cameron silently offered and heading into the dark night behind the tents.

Rex did not look over. Diego closed his eyes, lowering his head. He sat down heavily.

The air swarmed around Cameron and she felt her head go light. She refused to look behind the tents, afraid she'd see Savage with the spike cocked back over his head. Diego's eyes remained closed, his breathing heavy and irregular. Cameron thought he might be crying.

They waited, each alone with their thoughts. No one made eye contact.

Finally, Savage's figure cut from the blackness. The larva dangled beside him like a rag doll, the back of its head caved in. He looked at Cameron. Cameron thought of the virus running through the larva's body and nodded at the fire. He swung the body once, up and into the fire, where it crackled in the flames.

Savage handed Cameron the spike and sat down beside Szabla on the log.

Diego cupped his hand over his forehead, rubbing it hard. "Jesus Christ," he whispered. "You didn't even hesitate."

A log shifted in the fire, sending up a spray of sparks. The air smelled of burning wood, fresh like pine. Thin bones became visible in the glowing husk of the larva's body.

Savage leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands dan-gling between his thighs. His bandanna was moist with sweat.

Szabla started to talk, but her voice was gravelly; she cleared her throat and started again. "Earlier, when you said you'd killed women and children. Was that true?"

Savage ran his tongue slowly across his teeth. "The jungle around Khe Sanh was riddled with tunnels," he said over the crackling fire. "If we came across spider holes, we'd drop grenades first and ask questions later." His hand made a loose gesture. "Never knew what you were gonna find when you looked in after." He laughed darkly, remembering. "A surprise every time, like a Cracker Jack prize."

Szabla watched him, leaning heavily on her hands until her ass rose up off the log. The others shifted uncomfortably but did not speak. Cameron's hand tightened around the spike until it grew numb and tin-gling, as though it were no longer part of her.

"Some surprises were worse than others. Sometimes they'd be moving families through the tunnels." Savage's face went slack. "Sometimes you'd be almost afraid to look down after, see what prize you won."

He stood abruptly. Cameron watched his bare back until it disap-peared through the flap of his tent.

Samantha hadn't called to check in on her children in sixteen hours. Every time she picked up the phone, she got hit with something new-a chart, a micrograph, PCR results, Szabla calling in with news of the mutiny and the human infection on Sangre de Dios. Though Saman-tha had spoken to Donald on a few occasions, this was the first time she'd worked with him in person. He was an amusing, pleasant-looking man, his wrinkled linen shirt spotted with sweat. They'd quickly formed a partnership of sorts; he sat right beside the slammer window so that they could confer. Their opinion of how to rectify the situation on the island would be key-Cameron and the other troops now in control were in firm opposition to Diego and Derek, with Rex leaning heavily toward the dominant party.

Samantha sighed. "Jesus, if something like this hit the mainland…"

"How do we know it's isolated to Sangre de Dios?" Donald cleaned the lenses of his spectacles on his shirt.

"We don't. But don't underestimate how difficult it is for a virus to spread. Viruses are fragile, subject to the harsh laws of natural selection like everything else. We only hear about the ones that make it- Machupo, Sin Nombre, Ebola. For every virus we've heard of, there are untold millions that die away, disappear."

Donald raised a silver eyebrow, amused. "Viruses are people, too?"

Samantha did not return his smile. "The Darwin virus is not going to be able to infect everything it comes in contact with. It's never shown up in water samples from any of the other islands in the archipelago, and only once in a sample from Sangre de Dios. But now we have a problem.

We have a virus present in a stable life form without any natural preda-tors. It needs the host organisms to survive, and it will spread further when the hosts reproduce."

"The animals are effectively quarantined on the island." Donald shook his head. "I just don't know that killing them off is the right choice."

"The larvae appear to be amphibious, Donald. And the adults are winged. All we need is for one to get taken by a pregnant shark, or fly- unlikely as that seems-from one island to the next in search of food."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, we can never account for when, where, and how a virus will come out of hiding and threaten us. But if there was an island some-where teeming with rats carrying the bubonic plague, what would you do? Wait and observe?"

"If the rats were evolutionarily unique, maybe." He sighed, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "Are you suggesting we support Szabla and Cameron's decision?"

"The accountable virus reservoir needs to be exterminated. We're extraordinarily fortunate here; the ootheca chambers indicate the exact number of disease carriers to be found and killed, at least for this line of descent." She sighed, leaning against the glass. "For all we know, the drill hole off Sangre de Dios only shed the virus for a limited time. Rex claims that the dinos now present on the island appear normal, at least under a standard lens."

She looked at Donald, the sadness etching itself into the lines of his face. "The longer we sit on this thing, the greater chance it will spin out of control," she continued. "The spring months are coming on, and a whole new wave of reproductive activity from the island animals. Diatom bloom, red tides, increased seaborne pathogens as the ocean surface temp rises, El Nino breaking up the inversion layer and drawing rain down on the island. There'll be an explosion of life. With all the heat and reproductive activity, the virus could flourish. And if it gets into mosquitoes or maggots, forget it. Think about when eastern-equine-encephalitis-infected Asian tiger mosquitoes turned up in Florida." She grimaced. "You want to talk about a problematic intro-duced species."