Gregg Hurwitz - Minutes to Burn

The creature loomed before him, nine feet of spikes and armor. She lowered her head, regarding him for a moment as her jawlike legs scraped together and then apart.

He dived to his side, rolling over his right shoulder and readying the speargun for when he surfaced. He fired as soon as he came up, aiming for the broken black hole of the eye. It hit the edge of the cuticle around the socket and stuck. The mantid's body contracted, air screeching through the spiracles and bubbling the water as her legs flailed. She stumbled back, shaking her head from side to side, the spear protruding ridiculously.

Justin dragged himself toward the beach on weak legs. He was losing blood at an alarming rate from his shoulder, and he blinked hard, as if trying to clear his vision. The water splashed around his thighs, slowing his pace. Behind him, the creature thrashed in the water, but he didn't turn around; he plodded heavily toward the beach.

Stumbling onto the sand, he went down on a knee. He tried to rise again but could not. He fell flat on his chest and stomach, sand pressing into his nose and mouth. He turned his head and fought to stand up, as the mantid lumbered to shore behind him, but went limp on the sand.

With all her thrashing, the mantid finally snapped the spear against a raised leg. The spear stock sticking out from her head, she made her way slowly to shore, pausing above the still, sprawled body. A chunk of flesh slid from her claw, thunking on the sand. Embedded in the soft pink underside was a small metal disk, Justin's transmitter. The mantid watched the body for another moment, but it did not stir.

Stepping heavily around Justin, she began the long walk back to the forest.

31 Dec 07

MISSION DAY 7

Cameron's trembling subsided as suddenly as it had started, though she was still breathing so hard and fast that she thought she might hyperventilate. She stared at the small black squiggles of the graffiti lichen on the bark before her, tracing them with her eyes and waiting for her breathing to slow. Though it was still quite dark in the forest, the sky was just beginning to draw light from the still-unseen sun.

Life was so far from her here in the forest, as far as it had ever been. She couldn't remember ever driving a car, cooking dinner, getting dressed. A line of ants crawled across her thigh and she let them.

Grief came not as a sharp stab but an ache. It spread itself inside her like a deadly flower. Her eyes glazed over; her tongue went numb against her teeth.

She pressed her face to the tree and wept. She gave herself time to cry, relearning as she went. It was an indulgence of sorts, a dark under-current that carried her soothingly even as it drowned her. Her pain was bottomless and calm, and chilling for its purity. She cried softly until her throat went hoarse, cried until it seemed as though the burn in her eyes would never subside.

She had been widowed here, in this tree; everything had changed since she'd shinnied up the trunk. Part of her didn't want to go back down. The loss and defeat weren't entirely real as long as she stayed up in the tree, as long as she didn't have to walk, or speak, or eat.

Death had always been the third member of their marriage, with the work they did, but she'd never thought it would come down like this. It wasn't as if she hadn't prepared herself mentally-she'd never let herself think about rocking chairs and grandchildren, she didn't look older cou-ples in the eye, and it seemed she'd gone through what life would be like without Justin or for Justin without her a thousand times-but still it felt like a blind side punch.

And his cries, Jesus, his cries. They still rang in her ears.

Maybe she could stay up here until she died. Maybe she'd waste away, her skin rotting from her bones until she was just a skeleton perched on a branch, arms wrapped around the trunk. Her resolve to live drained away with her tears; she felt weak, deflated. It was an effort just to wipe her cheek-she couldn't even comprehend continuing the battle against the thing that waited for her in the forest.

Her head throbbed from the base of her skull through her forehead. The dark purple bruises around her neck stood out, dead flowers against her pale skin.

The creature was out there still, Cameron knew.

And there was still another larva unaccounted for. For all she knew, it had already slid into the cool sea and made its way to open waters, its body brimming with virus. If it was on the island, it would be metamorphosing soon.

Cameron imagined being trapped on the island with two creatures. If only she could survive another sixteen hours, she could escape in the helo. But there was no way she'd make it from nightfall to her 2200 extraction, not alone. She imagined the death that almost surely awaited her.

She thought of her father-in-law's gentle hands and white hair, a Christmas table fully set, the slope of Justin's shoulders, the smell of him right before she kissed him, the grocery store, cold fall mornings, the blue sheets on their bed back home, and the reddish glow of their alarm clock. She thought of these things and began to sob.

The agony compounded wherever she tried to turn her mind- Tank's swollen arm laced through the braces, Derek's wobbling voice through the transmitter, Szabla's body shaking as if she were having a seizure, Juan, Savage, Tucker.

There were no tears left. She opened her mouth, expecting something to come out, but nothing did. Snot ran down her upper lip and she tasted its saltiness before wiping her nose with her forearm. Her shoulders curved forward as she slumped into the trunk, spent. She wasn't sure how long she sat with her face pressed to the tree, but when she leaned back, her cheeks felt raw.

Her voice was throaty and uneven, and the operator at Fort Detrick barely understood to patch her through to Samantha Everett's room.

"Yes, Samantha here. Everything all right? Cameron? Cameron?"

Just hearing a familiar voice reduced her to tears again. "Samantha."

"Yes. Are you all right? Cameron, talk to me. Tell me what's going on."

Cameron tilted back her head to prevent more tears from spilling. "It's down to me," she said. "It's just me. And it."

"Everyone's gone? Even your…Even Justin?"

"Yes," Cameron said. Samantha could do nothing to help, and they both knew it, but Cameron didn't want to let her go, because then she'd be alone floating up in a tree in the middle of a forest on this godfor-saken island. Now, she at least had a connection to the world, to another life, to another person she could hear breathing in the darkness. She pressed her forehead again to the rough bark and let it scrape against her cheek. "Are you married?" she asked.

"No. But I have kids."

Cameron was winded, as if after a long run. "You hold on to them. You hold on to everything you can as tight as you can because there's a time… " Her lower lip wavered a few times before she caught it. "Because there's a time you can't anymore."

"I will," Samantha said. "I will."

More silence. Something chirped.

"There's nothing I can say or do that will be useful, and I'm not gonna fake it," Samantha said.

Thank you, Cameron thought. Thank you for knowing and admitting.

"And things are going to get worse, probably, before we can get you out of there," Samantha continued. "But you make me one promise.

When you hit bottom, you keep going. You find that small part of your-self that's unbreakable and grip it until your fingers bleed. It may not seem worth it to keep fighting, not now, but it is and someday-in a month, in a year, in five years-you'll know that again." She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was filled with intensity. "Don't you give up. Don't you roll over on me."