Minutes to Burn (2001) (58 page)

She fought against the weariness, her lips still moving even as she started taking longer and longer blinks. Her head bowed, then snapped back up. She had been trying not to rest it against the trunk, but finally, she gave in. Her eyelids shut, her forehead pressed to the tree, and sleep washed over her like a salve. If she wasn't aching so much, it would have felt divine.

The rhythm of her counting continued, though the numbers were no longer there. Instead of numbers, there were knocks, even and firm, like a blacksmith's hammer. The knocking pulled her up through the layers of sleep, through grief and fear and hunger, and then she felt the tree bark against her cheek.

She opened her eyes.

The knocking continued, continued from below.

Cameron glanced down and saw the mantid halfway up the tree, pushing the hooks of her front legs into the bark, pulling herself up using her claws. Cameron's mouth opened to yell, but her vocal cords were raw, so her scream came out as a rush of air.

She popped up to a crouch on the branch, glancing around. The trees nearby were much shorter, the closest branches a good twenty feet out and below. She had only about five more steps out before the branch would give under her weight. Even with her strength, she could never make that jump.

The mantid pulled herself toward Cameron, each knock of her hooks against the bark followed by the drag of her body up the trunk. Cameron could hear her breathing, feel the air from her spiracles. About ten inches of the spear protruded from the mantid's cuticle, just above the broken eye--Justin had gotten off the shot. The eye was out, shat-tered through the middle in a run of ooze, and Cameron looked franti-cally for anything to plunge into the other. The twigs were all too small.

There were no bushes on the ground to break her fall, and the thirty-foot drop would certainly leave her wounded. About fifteen feet to her right was another quinine with a long, thin trunk. It had been snapped in an earthquake, so it was missing its conspicuous crown. She might make it in a fully-extended dive, but if she misjudged her leap, she could be impaled by the sharp, broken trunk. She looked around at the other trees, but they all seemed much farther away.

When she edged farther out on the branch, it started to bend under her weight, so she shuffled back toward the trunk, her heart rising in her chest as the mantid's head pulled into view. A long leg shot out and hooked onto the branch.

With a cry, Cameron scurried forward and kicked the mantid's leg away, jabbing with her heel. She wobbled like a performer on a high wire, sensing the curve of the branch beneath her arches. The mantid reeled as the hook came loose, but swung right back into place. Cameron knew she would be up and on her in seconds.

She had to move or she was going to topple over, and she couldn't step to the trunk for support because she'd be within the creature's grasp. The mantid wrapped one leg around the branch, the other around the trunk, and began to pull herself up. Her back legs found their footing.

Cameron inched away from the mantid, her boots scraping off bits of bark, sending them spiraling to the ground. She stared at the nearest Scalesia branch. At least twenty feet away. There was no chance.

Behind her, she heard the mantid slide up onto the branch, mere feet away from her. The branch dipped under the weight. Cameron almost fell but regained her balance by doubling over at the waist and waving her arms.

A raptorial leg snapped shut less than an inch from her skull as she pulled herself upright. Having been meticulously cleaned, the spikes were perfectly smooth, the chunks of flesh removed. Cameron saw a tuft of her blond hair dangling between two of the spikes.

She glanced at the narrowing branch, the step and a half she had left, and the drop beyond. The broken quinine was her only realistic option. She'd have to jump far enough to make the trunk, and pray she hit it safely below the jagged end. Whether she could hold on or not was another question, but she didn't have time to debate it.

The mantid was wrapped around the branch and trunk like an odd growth. Having stabilized herself, she was readying her raptorial legs for another strike. They jackknifed in, folding to her chest.

The massive eye stared through Cameron, the antennae on end. The creature's mouth was a fearful hole; the mandibles glistened with diges
tive
fluid, and the labrum looked soft and spongy, though Cameron knew it was not.

The mantid tilted her head to the right. There was no more time. Bending deep at the knee until her ass brushed her heels, Cameron uncoiled like a spring, flying from the branch in a horizontal dive. Though she couldn't see the legs snap shut behind her, she heard them.

Her shoulders led her body as she began to descend, and her stomach left her in a rush. The air whistled in her ears; the ground blurred beneath her; her eyes watered. The trunk approached.

For a moment, she was sure her momentum wouldn't carry her, that she'd fall short and wind up a tangle of bones and limbs at the base of the tree, but she kept moving forward even as she plummeted down.

The trunk struck her shoulder with the force of a major-league swing. She hit it in a flying tackle, clenching it in the circle of her arms as she jarred to a halt, feeling the transmitter in her shoulder go to pieces beneath her flesh. The bark scraped along her cheek, drawing blood. Her torso and legs swung down into the tree beneath her, her breasts and crotch smashing into the trunk. Pain seared through her, her mus-cles contracting all at once.

Losing her grip, she slid down the trunk, clawing and digging at it with her ankles and hands. Twigs broke off beneath her as she fell, and she squeezed with her arms, trying to pull her chest tight to the bark even though it was flying past like a belt sander.

A knot protruding through the bark miraculously flew between her legs, but it nicked her chin, knocking her torso away from the trunk. The brilliant green of the canopy zoomed overhead and she spread her legs, then clenched them around the trunk, flexing so hard through her thighs and calves she thought her muscles would snap like pieces of twine. Her heels dug like spikes into the trunk, stripping away sections of bark.

Her arms were extended back over her head, bouncing with her torso as she ground to a halt. Though her thick cammy pants provided some protection, the burning through the insides of her legs was excruciating. She winced as she pulled herself upright, flexing through her stomach to bring her chest to the trunk.

She was fifteen feet above the ground.

Immediately, she tried to locate the creature on the branch but could not. Then she saw the bulge of the abdomen behind the trunk, the legs wrapped around the bark. The mantid was moving down already, down to the ground.

In something of a halting fall, Cameron slid down the remaining fif-teen feet of the trunk, squeezing occasionally with her arms and legs to slow herself, trying to ignore the pain. Her teeth knocked together when she hit the ground and she sprawled flat on her back for an instant before rolling onto all fours.

The mantid sprang from the other tree, dropping to the ground. Her wings fluttered for a moment but did not spread wide.

Cameron found her feet before the mantid drew herself up, and she turned and sprinted into the foliage, praying she could remember the correct direction. Her arms were a blur of motion as she knocked vines and fronds out of her way. Kicking through bushes and leaping over fallen trees and boulders, Cameron moved as quickly as she ever had.

She didn't know how she was running so fast, especially after the slide down the tree, but her body was feeding off adrenaline, hurtling forward through the forest on autopilot. She should have been weak and tired-- she couldn't even remember the last time she'd eaten--but she felt a sec-ond wind sweeping through her.

Not far behind, the mantid crashed through the undergrowth. Cameron rolled under a fallen tree with one end propped on a boulder and counted the seconds until she heard the mantid smash through it. Six. There were six seconds between her and the jaws.

The rumbling neared, a semi truck bearing down. Praying she'd see the low grass of the fields, Cameron pushed through bush after bush, slid between tree trunks, leapt across creeks, but there was only forest and more forest.

Just when she was convinced that she'd been running the wrong way, the ground went out from under her and she was enveloped in black-ness. She slid down a slope and found herself lying flat on her back about ten feet beneath the earth's surface, staring up at the small circle of sky above.

She turned her head and pain shot down her neck. The realization dawned slowly on her; she'd fallen into the lava tunnel. She searched overhead for the remains of the ootheca they'd found earlier, but it was nowhere to be seen. A few roots had made their way through the entrance along the roof; they curled against the rock like enormous mag-gots--crawling things fat with life.

The lava tube was smaller than she'd remembered; it was only about two and a half meters high, and two wide. She realized she must be on the other end--the northern end closer to the heart of the forest.

The tube curved back out of sight, running horizontal to the ground, the top of the tunnel a few feet beneath the surface. Calcium carbonate textured the walls like coral, and stalactites hung from the ceiling like lone fangs. Iron had oxidized on the lava in yellow-reddish patches. Long and slender, the lava tube looked like a corroding subway tunnel, or the intestines of some immense beast.

A shadow fell across Cameron's face, and she looked up at the man-tid's head, a dark silhouette framed perfectly in the lava tube's entrance. She rolled to all fours, pain screaming through her, and limped a few steps down the corridor. The mantid tried to navigate the drop through the narrow entrance but could not. She backed away, seemingly frus

trated.

She would just have to wait.

Cameron's bloody knee was visible through the leg of her ripped cammies. A deep sob shook her as she realized that, if it had survived on her clothing, the virus could have leaked through the cut into her blood-stream. Her mouth loose and wavering, she looked up at the mantid's head waiting within the small patch of light.

She remembered Diego saying that the lava tube was about 350 meters; she'd just have to walk its length and emerge through the south-ern opening, closer to base camp.

The flesh over her broken transmitter was bruised, raised in a few hard edges from the metal pieces. She whispered a test command into it, but she knew it was dead even before she was greeted by silence. She couldn't remain in hiding here in the lava tube; she'd have no way to con-tact the helo when it arrived. She had to make it back to base camp and the dirt road, and set the infrared strobe to guide the helo in.

She turned and limped a few steps farther down the tube; when she glanced behind her, the creature was gone. What appeared to be bur-rows potholed the ground, worn into the rock from the unremitting drip of water from overhead. Her shoulder brushed a fragile stalactite, sending it crashing to the ground.

She walked a few more steps, surrounded by the echo of her breathing and dripping water. A trickle of dirt landed on her shoulder. She thought at first that it was an earthquake coming on, and she was sure she'd be buried here, beneath the earth's surface, but the trickling dirt stopped. She took another step and felt a tiny vibration, then another trickle of dirt fell from the roof, clouding into dust around her head.

The mantid was shadowing her overhead, sensing Cameron's move-ments with her delicate antennae, even through the earth.

Cameron stepped and paused, and sure enough, a moment later, another thin stream of dirt dropped from the ceiling. She leaned against a wall, the lava moist and claylike against her back. Sobs rose in her chest, but she choked them down. She dropped to all fours, wincing as her ten-der knee struck lava, and crawled forward as quietly as she could. She froze, waiting to sense the small vibration overhead.

There was none.

She continued at that tedious pace for what seemed days, crawling slowly forward and pausing, listening for the vibration of footsteps overhead.

It was pitch black now that she was a good distance from the north-ern entrance; for all she knew, the lava tube would drop off at any point into a bottomless cavern. The humidity made it difficult to breathe, but she fought to control herself, inching forward, regulating her inhalations and exhalations.

Finally, she rounded a corner and saw a dot of light ahead. Another endless stretch of time as she pulled herself, slowly crawling, to the northern opening. She saw the ootheca overhead, the shriveled cords still dangling from it like wood shavings. When she stood, her legs immediately cramped and she took a few silent moments to get the blood running back through them.

She peered cautiously around the entrance of the lava tube, but there were no signs of danger. Tentatively, she stepped through the partial curtain of ferns into the forest. There was nothing waiting for her.

She glanced quickly behind her just as the mantid pivoted atop the lava tube's opening, seemingly surprised that Cameron had emerged behind her. The mantid scrambled down from her perch, the wind from her snapping legs rushing across Cameron's face. Because of her pierced eye, the mantid's strikes were slightly imprecise.

Cameron screamed, adrenaline shooting through her body, and hit a dead sprint in four steps, heading for camp. The mantid pursued, leaves and branches shushing around her cuticle. Her remaining eye was still acutely sensitive; it wouldn't be long before she adjusted her movements.