Minutes to Burn (2001) (16 page)

Diego cranked the throttle, landing the Zodiac hard on the beach. The pigs acknowledged him with grunts as he splashed toward them through the surf, yelling and cursing. The turtle nesting ground, the twenty-meter stretch of sand that crested the top of the beach, was trampled and uprooted, the pocked and mounded sand resembling the site of an archaeological dig. Snorting and rooting into the sand, the pigs were enjoying a lavish feast of eggs and hatchlings. Whatever eggs may have remained buried in the nests were surely crushed.

A spotted sow gobbled up a soft, pale-green sea turtle hatchling as it struggled toward the surf. Diego took off the top of the sow's head with his first shot. He hit two pigs dead in the chest with his next shots before missing, and they spit blood, their legs stroking the air like broken pis-tons as he paused and regarded the width of the herd.

When he stepped, his feet pulled from the sand with a sucking noise. Inland, a scattering of rocks gave way to low scrubby brush, broken only by the path leading back to the lagoon. The mineral crystals in the sand gave the beach a subtle, green cast that, with the darkening sky and the carnage ahead, made the events unfolding around Diego seem dreamlike.

He felt his chest tighten with grief and rage and he fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded even through the spray of blood, the wet and wounded snorts, the wriggling bodies that layered the sand. Pieces of hatchlings lay discarded on the beach, flippers and heads and peels of flesh dusted with sand. Halfway through the carton of bullets, Diego realized he was crying. He cursed the pigs as he fired, cursed the yolk and shell dripping from their sticky snouts, cursed their curled tails protruding from holes and their forked feet trampling the sand. Then he cursed the farmers who'd left them behind to roam the island. Despite the crack of the rifle, the pained squeals, and the stench of death emanating from the blood-drenched sand, the pigs refused to spook. They remained, rooting and chomping and falling dumbly, torn through with bullets.

There were at least ten pigs dead or wounded, but their numbers seemed inexhaustible; every time a pig dropped, two more seemed to spring from its shadow, running tight, excited circles in the sand. Seem
ingly
oblivious, a large turtle was bedded down in the middle of the ruckus, continuing to lay her eggs, even as a piglet ate them right out of her body. Diego took aim with a blurry eye and fired, but the hammer clicked down on nothing. He dug through the carton, found it empty, and cast it aside. The turtle squeezed out another egg, directly into the waiting mouth of the piglet. Cocking the stock of the rifle back over one shoulder, his scream an echo from the pit of his stomach, Diego charged into the fray.

Chapter
17

R
amon stirred in the night, feeling oddly uneasy. It had been hard adjusting to living on a deserted island, just he and Floreana. He had caught himself talking to one of his cows again today, and though he had laughed it off, it was increasingly difficult to deny that it was very lonely on Sangre de Dios.

He rolled over on the mattress, resting his hand on his wife's rounded belly. The bloque de hormigon walls of the small house were slightly aglow with the embers from the fireplace. He lay on his back, staring at the soft orange tint of the ceiling for a few minutes, counting the cracks and trying to wipe the feeling of discomfort from his mind. The cut on his index finger had healed, leaving a smooth strip of a scar.

Floreana murmured something in her sleep, her hand moving to rest atop his, though she didn't wake. He leaned over and kissed her softly on her temple, damp with sweat. It used to be cooler up in the highlands, but ever since the large hurricanes that damaged the skies, it had grown hotter, even in the night. He still made fires, but only for cooking and light.

Ramon stood and crossed to the sink, his feet bare on the dirt floor. The door rattled slightly in the wind, loose against the frame. He doused a towel under the spigot and returned to his wife's side, lying beside her and gently wiping her forehead. The feeling of unease returned, and finally he sat up in bed, staring around the small room. The fire was dwindling now, but a few stubborn coals persisted, staring out at him like demon eyes.

He looked at the small stack of firewood in the corner, the ax leaning on its side, the humble wooden table, the black hole of the window. Something caught his eye in the window--a tiny glowing point, one of the embers reflected back into the house.

His breath caught in his throat, but he let it out evenly, not wanting to make a sound. He felt blood go to his face in a rush. There should have been nothing outside that window, only an open field.

Beside him, Floreana nuzzled into her pillow, and the pinpoint reflec
tion
shifted slightly, as if whatever was out there had tracked her move-ment. Ramon's mind ran back through the countless stories he'd heard over the past few months, and he pictured the tall, thin creature he'd seen that night in the garua.

He fought the darkness, straining his eyes to distinguish the outline of the thing in the window. He'd never believed in monsters, not even as a child, but right now in the night, his beliefs seemed far away.

The last ember died, and Ramon waited for the darkness to ease all through the room. His eyes adjusted, and he saw it just barely--a large triangular head, tilted slightly to one side. The ember had been reflected back in one large, glassy eye, an eye that now seemed riveted on him and his sleeping wife. Ramon held his breath, praying his wife would not stir. He shifted his eyes to the ax in the corner, careful not to turn his head, gauging its distance from the bed. He looked back at the window, losing himself in the liquid black eye.

The thing turned its head slightly, taking in the room in a long, slow sweep, then pulled back, fading into the darkness.

Ramon waited a moment, then let his breath out sharply. He ran a hand across his chest and it came away slick with sweat. Beside him, his wife rolled to her side, facing away from him. He leaned over and kissed her softly between the shoulder blades with trembling lips.

He lay quietly for a few minutes, but every time he almost drifted off, he'd snap to, his eyes on the window. Finally, he rose and retrieved the ax from its recline in the corner.

He fell asleep with the blunt edge of the ax head pressed against his cheek.

Chapter
18

A
t dawn, the ootheca began to squirm. The individual chambers wrig-gled until the ceiling of the lava tube looked alive.

A crackle echoed down the shaft as the ootheca strained and trem-bled. A small bright-green head pushed through the papier-mache-like egg case exterior, making use of the special exit valve in the chamber. Encased within a membranous sac, it wiggled forward like a worm, a thin body following.

Rather than dropping to the ground, the larva eased slowly down, suspended by a fine silk thread produced by a gland in its abdomen. As it descended, other larvae began to break free and fall as well--writhing, slime-covered packages dropping from the roof of the cave. They were visible through their translucent surrounding membranes. Three of them clumped together, dangling from their lifelines and spinning in the air.

Blood pressure pumped into the first larva's head, causing the mem-brane to split. It wriggled, shaking off the nursery-cowl and falling to the ground. About two feet in length, the larva resembled an enormous grub or caterpillar. With a fat, curved eruciform body composed of a long abdomen and smaller thorax, and a well-developed head, the larva was smooth and cylindrical. It had six true legs--tiny, pointed exten-sions, each one ending in an apical hook. The true legs were paired, each set protruding from one of the three segments of the thorax--the pronotum, mesonotum, and metanotum. The abdomen was also seg-mented, into nine parts, but instead of true legs it featured prolegs, fleshy stumplike appendages. The larva used its overgrown prolegs to inch along in something like a crawl.

Most startling about the larva's appearance, however, was its head, which seemed oddly animated due to its size and the precise placement of its features. Unlike most larvae, which had clusters of ocelli rather than true eyes, it had large glassy eyes, one on each side, and a mouth that darted in a line beneath a sloping bump of a nose. Though the tho-rax was a mere half foot to the abdomen's ten inches, the head took up a full eight inches of the larva's length.

Three thin gills quivered on each side of its head as it breathed. Two antennae, each segmented into three parts and terminating in a long fila-ment, extended from the top of the larva's head. A pair of spiracles on each abdominal segment permitted it to draw air.

Heads began to poke from the other membranes as the larvae shook themselves free, scrabbling with their tiny true legs and puncturing the sacs. Once loose, the prolegs waved in the air like blunted human hands. The larvae landed and eased forward, rippling their bodies and gripping the ground with their prolegs.

Up in the ootheca, a runt larva flailed partially out of its chamber, air squealing through its cuticle. Wriggling forward in its sac, it tried to pull its lower body free. The other larvae gazed up at the squawking runt, their heads instinctively going on point.

With a final, struggling shriek of air, the runt pulled itself free of its chamber. Even through the membranous sac, one true leg caught in the ootheca and tore off with a wet ripping sound. The runt flailed as it descended slowly on its mucuslike strand, air rushing irregularly and audibly through its spiracles. It managed to push itself partially free of its sac, but two of its true legs remained pasted to its side. Its cuticle, like that of the other larvae, was almost transparent, a soft, green sheath stretched over the network of hemolymph and organs pulsing beneath.

The other larvae, crawling with slow awkward movements, gathered beneath the descending runt, watching expectantly. Wriggling its remaining five true legs, the runt neared the circle of its siblings. The mouths of the other larvae peeled open, each revealing two opposing dark mandibles. The mandibles were heavily sclerotized, pointed and arced like jagged moons. At first conforming with the head, they were now spread, exposing a front labrum and lower labium, fleshy and flap-like, that worked together like toothless gums. The runt fell into the ring of the larvae's upturned faces, air screeching through its spiracles as their mandibles began to saw through its still-fragile cuticle.

The larvae fell on it ravenously, sawing and nipping as it writhed and squealed and slowly died. They concentrated on the plump abdomen, fighting over the richest mouthfuls. When they finished, their faces were covered with a moist sheen, the greenish paste of the dead larva's insides.

They crawled away from the kill once they finished eating. The runt's body was almost entirely gone; only a portion of its head and the sharp mandibles remained. The larvae eyed one another suspiciously, like box-ers in a ring, but they all were of equal strength. There would be no more meals without a fight.

Overhead, one of the ootheca's chambers remained stubbornly closed, devoid of movement within.

A first larva struck out for the forest, pushing through the wall of ferns at the mouth of the lava tube and turning its head from the sun-light that assaulted its eyes. The air was filled with alarming sounds--the call of a yellow warbler, the howl of a feral dog, the wind rustling through the leaves. The fronds fell back into place around the opening, again enclosing the other larvae in darkness. A second larva resolutely followed, the other four trailing behind.

With their prolegs and rippling contortions of their abdomens, they crawled off in different directions, disappearing into the lush vegetation. Fronds rustled around the last larva, then stilled.

The forest was quiet.

Chapter
19

E
ven compared to Guayaquil's, the airport at Baltra was in bad shape. One of the runways was decimated with cracks and fissures. Cameron stretched her legs as the C-130 came in evenly on the one remaining strip of intact pavement and eased to a halt.

The flight had been smooth. Difficult getting out of Guayaquil, but once they'd been airborne, it had been an easy hour-and-a-half glide over miles of blue ocean. The pilot would rest, fly back to Guayaquil, and return to pick them up in five days.

The tension within the squad seemed to be even worse. Szabla was furious that Derek had breached protocol by ordering Cameron to bunk in with her and Justin, and Justin had made things worse by cracking threesome jokes all night. At four-thirty in the morning, Savage had woken the entire hall screaming from the depths of some nightmare, and Derek had had to kick in the door to see what was wrong. It had taken two of them to awaken Savage. Tucker had gotten the sweats in the middle of breakfast, and after one look at him, Justin had removed the morphine Syrettes from his trauma bag, wrapped them in a sock, and hid them at the bottom of the weapons box.

At least Juan seemed to be getting along with everyone--at the Guayaquil airport, he'd greeted the squad with a half bow, telling them how pleased he was to be along on their mission. Szabla had scooted over, letting Juan sit beside her for the flight.

Derek had been quiet since takeoff, standing by one of the windows and gazing out across the water. He looked as if he hadn't slept at all.

Rex had filled the uncomfortable silences on the flight, providing a geology lesson and pointing out the window at the islands as they passed. Born of volcanic eruptions--fierce plumes of magma shot through the earth's crust--the Galapagos, he said, had spent much of its ten-million-year existence in flux, its islands undergoing a continual process of reshaping and reforming through eruptions and earthquakes. Rising from the Galapagos Platform, a basaltic submarine plateau some two hundred to five hundred fathoms beneath the sea, the islands were arranged chronologically, aging as they moved east. The shadowy ghosts of islands past lurked beneath the waters east of the current island chain, victims of erosion and the erratic movement of the earth's crust.