Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

Justin sat behind her, his stomach against her back, his legs outside hers. Tank plopped down next to her and rested one of his paws on her shoulder.

"I'm gonna kick both your asses if you keep babying me like this," she said. "I'm fine, you know. Quit touching me."

Tank withdrew his hand, and Justin made to strangle her from behind, but she caught a pressure point under his elbow, and he released his grip quickly.

"Ouch!"

"Yeah, ouch. There's more where that came from, too." A breeze brought them the scents of the forest. "I'm feeling a little hopeless looking for these things," she conceded. "Needles in haystacks."

"We should head back," Justin said. "Help them with the hole."

Despite her earlier complaints, Cameron leaned back slightly into her husband.

Before them, the water stretched clear and endless to the horizon. It whispered against the base of the cliff beneath Cameron's feet, stirring in swirls of white, frothy bubbles. Fronds dipped in the breeze next to them, bowing politely.

"You're pregnant," Tank said. "Aren't you?"

Cameron sucked her bottom lip. It was salty from the air. "When did you know?"

He shrugged. "When I picked you up at your house."

They sat quietly for a few moments.

"I won't let anything happen to you," Tank said.

His voice was low and steady as ever, but something in it made Cameron bite her lip to keep back the emotion. After a moment, she reached for his hand, but Tank hesitated and looked at Justin, as though he'd been caught doing something wrong.

Justin nodded at him, as if to say, go ahead.

Tank's hand was large and warm-it enveloped hers easily. Cameron leaned between the two men, letting herself feel calm and safe, if only for a moment.

Tank pulled his hand back and the three sat again in silence. The blue-footed boobies plunge-dived to the waters and popped to the surface. American oystercatchers hopped along the rocky coast, their bright-red bills and yellow eyes standing out against the dark lava.

"In another life," Tank said, "this would be a beautiful place." He leaned back on his hands, the red skin of his scalp visible through his thin, bristling hair.

Cameron looked from the stunning view to the spike lying beside her, the end still stained with the larva's fluids.

"Yeah," she said. "It would."

The sky drained quickly of color. Derek murmured and dozed in fits, the leaves soft against the side of his head. He was back outside his house The Night Of, his legs weak and fluid beneath him, knowing something was dreadfully wrong. The house had looked like a church, a demonic church.

Panic had seized his guts, gripping him like a cramp, but he'd fought it off, refusing to run, refusing to lose his head. The front door hadn't been hot to his touch, not hot as he'd imagined it would be. It had swung open slowly, uncreaking, a coffin standing on end. He'd managed to choke out his wife's name once, and then again. When she'd answered, her voice had been light and airy, like silk afloat on wind. "In here," she'd called. Her voice had seemed to issue from the dining room.

He'd staggered through the kitchen, knocking over a chair, leaning on the countertop to gain his balance. The knife block had been on its side, a black slit where the largest blade should have been.

He'd paused just short of the doorway to the dining room before shuffling weakly forward, sucking air, his chest heaving, his face blotched crimson.

He'd seen Jacqueline standing at the head of the table like a high priestess over an altar, a ghost in the blurry movement of her night-gown. He'd seen the curtains fluffed behind her with the night breeze. He'd seen the smudge of blood across Jacqueline's cheek. He'd seen the small flaccid limb, the arch of the tiny dough-soft fingers on the lac-quered rosewood, four slivers of crescent moon. He'd felt his heart beating in his temples, his hands, his eyes. He'd looked at her, transfixed, unperceiving. He'd known what she was going to say before her mouth moved, before he'd heard the words.

"No bugs," she'd murmured.

Suddenly he was yelling and shuffling backward on the forest floor on all fours, slapping at his face, swiping at the cobwebs of the memory. He slammed into a tree before realizing where he was, within a small ring of Scalesias in the highlands of Sangre de Dios.

His breath caught in his chest when he saw the thing woven between the two trees across from him. A pupation chamber. About five feet tall, cylindrical, and horizontally striated, the cocoon was a dull beige. A sticky substance ran up along the trunk on each side, securing the cocoon to the tree. It bulged near the center, like a body bag.

It was pulsing.

Derek tried to crawl backward, again hitting the tree trunk behind him. He stood, gazing at the cocoon in horror and amazement. His lips trembled, trying to form sounds.

The cocoon seemed to float in the shadows, framed by the dark trees stretching up around it. It looked almost holy, the circle of moss, like the apse of a cathedral. Derek felt as he had as a boy when he'd stepped forth from his confirmation, surrounded by a group of relatives. Their eyes had all been on him, and for a fleeting moment, he'd felt he must have been something holy for so many adults to be staring at him in his too-tight suit.

Derek's knees jarred the ground when he fell, bringing him back to the forest. He felt wetness on his cheeks and realized he was crying, though he wasn't sure why.

A grumbling creak came from within the cocoon.

Though the sun had already slipped beyond the horizon, the sky was still lit with its distant glow-a light shade of purple. A heap of cumulus clouds drifted, barely visible through the treetops. Derek was crying so hard the world seemed to streak before his eyes-the trees, the purple sky, the light sheen of the cocoon.

He turned to his shoulder and it took him three tries to say the name so his transmitter could read it. "Cameron," he finally sputtered. "Pri-mary channel."

Cameron was in the vesicle when Derek's voice clicked through. Tank had been shoveling like a back-hoe, clearing out the excess rock at the bottom. They were all working now, using the light of the hastily made torches that Justin had stuck in the ground at the edges of the hole. "Yeah?" she said. "Derek? Derek?"

"Are you private? Get private."

Cameron threw her shovel aside and scrambled out of the hole, using a knotted rope they had tied to a spike up top. She was careful not to bring more rock tumbling down beneath her feet. She felt Szabla's angry eyes on her as she ran toward the camp, and she knew her secrecy prob-ably upset Justin as well, but she owed Derek at least that. She ran until she was clear of the others, leaning over with her hands on her knees. For a moment, she thought the transmitter had cut out, but then she realized that the wavering noise was Derek sobbing. "Derek," she said. "What's up?"

Derek wiped his eyes and stared at the cocoon. It was wiggling now, and he could see something moving beneath the surface. It was creaking as it stretched.

Cameron tried to be patient, but her voice wouldn't allow it. She heard a noise in the background, like the supports of a bridge groaning. "Derek, what's going on there?"

An image moved through him-four tiny, lifeless fingers curved on lacquered rosewood. "It was my fault, Cam," he said. "I should've known it was going to happen."

"What's there, Derek? What's going on?"

"I don't know. I think…I think she's changing."

"Is there a cocoon?" He didn't respond, so she forged ahead. "Derek, listen to me very carefully. Find a branch, a rock, anything. You have to protect yourself. You saw that thing Savage dragged back here."

Weighted with grief and exhaustion, Derek searched the area for a suitable branch. He finally found one. It was a bit thicker than he had hoped for, but he could still get his hands around it well enough to swing it with some force.