Minutes to Burn (2001) (61 page)

The mantid watched her work.

The other manuals were flapping along the grass and Cameron ran them down frantically, fearful she had overlooked the one she needed. She stepped on one just before it blew across the field, and when she glanced down at it, her face lightened with relief. In large stenciled letters across the front cover, it said: Tactical Demolitions Training Manual.

Cameron ran her finger down the table of contents, flipping to the page labeled Abatis. A rough sketch showed two rows of trees felled in a crisscross pattern, blasted but still clinging to their stumps.

The wind picked up, howling through the watchtower.

She was ready to get down to business.

Chapter
71

Cameron had five hours until dark and a lot of work to get done.

As she unwound the tape from the TNT blocks she'd retrieved from the hole, she prayed that the other larva had died somehow or that it would not emerge from metamorphosis until tomorrow. She stood a chance, however small, of surviving until 2200 with only one mantid on the island, but with two, there was no way she'd make it.

And two could mate.

Cameron had rigged an Abatis tree trap only once, in Iran in '03, but between her memory and the demo manual, she'd be fine. She retrieved the previously rigged TNT blocks from where she'd set them beside the fire pit and threw them in one of the explosives crates. The crates left furrows in the grass as she dragged them across the field toward the road, ignoring the pain spreading through her body like a fever.

The mantid watched her with interest, then pulled back into the for-est, disappearing. As Cameron struggled with the heavy crates, the man-tid appeared at regular intervals, craning her neck out from different spots in the foliage along the forest's edge. She wouldn't dare come down here in the heat, not now with the sun near its peak.

Cameron would have to hurry to get all the trees wired before dusk. She still carried the scent of the body from the freezer, carried it on the bottom of her pants and in the hardened smear on the back of her tank top. After she finished setting the Abatis, she'd have to wash all the virus-laden secretions off herself.

She finally reached the middle of the road and dropped the end of the cruise box. It thunked to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Carrying the blocks of TNT two at a time, she laid them beside some of the balsas lining the road. She selected ten of the taller trees on each side, including the slender quinine toward the middle of the row, spacing them out so that they were roughly five yards apart. Diego would approve of the fact that she was only blasting introduced species, she realized with mild amusement.

Despite her aching arms and back, she went to work immediately on the twenty trees she'd chosen, aware all the time of the creature leering at her from the cover of the forest at the road's end. Whenever Cameron looked up, it took her several minutes to actually see the creature, but she could sense her immediately and instinctively.

If she used too much TNT on a tree, she was liable to blow it straight off the stump, and she'd have much less control over which direction it fell. If the charge was too small, then the tree might not go over at all, in which case she'd be a sitting duck. In the manual, she'd found the conversion chart that calculated the size of the charge to use. The trees she'd chosen were old and sturdy, with diameters that she estimated at three feet; according to the equation, she'd need roughly twenty-four pounds of TNT per tree.

She fit the TNT blocks with nonelectric blasting caps, smearing the puttylike booster around their bases. Technically, TNT didn't require booster, but she used it on each charge anyway. She wasn't going to fuck around and have something not blow at the last minute.

There were no tools to make bore holes in the trees, but the blocks of TNT could be easily fastened to the trunks and used as untamped con-centrated external charges. The manual, she recalled, had said to set the charges five feet above the ground to ensure the trees would remain attached to the stumps when they fell. But Cameron wanted them low to the ground all the way across, so she primed the timber at three and a half feet, notching the bark with the peen of the hammer Szabla had brought back from one of the farmhouses.

The work was hard and tiresome, and it took her even longer because she kept glancing nervously at the forest. Now, the creature was nowhere in sight.

Using the thick tape that was stored in the underside of the explosives box lid, she adhered the TNT blocks to the trees--two rows of six blocks for each trunk. The tape stood out in shiny bands. She used one strand of det cord, with small extensions, for the charges on each side of the road, carefully crimping the aluminum ends of the blasting caps around it. It looked pretty when she was done; Tucker would've been proud.

The TNT would blow out a chunk of tree beneath it when it deto-nated. Because of the placement of the blocks, the trees of each side would fall parallel at a forty-five-degree angle to the road, crashing down on the dirt in the middle. Cameron would have to set two trip wires so that one side would detonate before the other, or the trees would deflect each other on the way down. She dug through the explosives box for eyelets, then started to run wire off the spool. She decided to set the trip wires about ten yards apart, each of them four feet off the ground so that the mantid wouldn't unwittingly step over them.

The sun had already peaked and begun its descent. Cameron checked the watch face and saw that it was already three o'clock. Only three hours remained until dusk.

The air was already starting to cool across her shoulders.

Diego placed the dino DNA segments from the seventeen water sam-ples into separate wells of the ethidium-bromide-soaked agar and plugged in the gel box, a voltage machine that would draw the negatively charged DNA downward. The DNA's progress through the viscous agar would form distinct banding patterns visible under UV light, which he and Rex could compare to the control dinoflagellates' banding pattern to determine if the samples were infected.

Rex drummed his fingers on the countertop, checking his watch. "How long will this take?" he asked.

Diego settled back on the high metal stool, fished for a joint in his shirt pocket, and lit it. Ramoncito watched him, shaking his head.

"An hour," Diego said.

Rex tapped the gel box. "Can't we speed it up?" he asked. "It's only at one hundred fifty volts."

Diego shook his head; his chest expanded with a toke. Smoke wafted from his mouth when he spoke. "It'll melt the gel. Fuck up the resolu
tion
."

He pointed to Rex's knee, which was vibrating up and down in a nerv-ous tick, then held out the joint. Rex stared at the joint, at Diego.

"There's nothing more we can do now," Diego said.

Rex reached out and took the joint.

The mantid's legs moved her back into the forest, the cuticle scraping loosely around her body as she walked.

She crawled up the trunk of a tree and secured herself upside down, her slightest movements causing her to swing. Dangling like a bat, she began to push through her old exoskeleton. It split first along the seam of the thorax, and she wriggled her head and raptorial legs from the gash, squirming. The spear stock was deeply embedded in her head; the old cuticle had disintegrated around it. Her abdomen remained encased in the old cuticle and she flailed back and forth, screeching, until it popped free. Then, she hung from the exuvia for the better part of an hour, which gave her new cuticle a chance to begin hardening. When she finally dropped to the ground, she landed in a heap, her new cuticle still moist and tender. She rose quickly; the dirt could crumple up her new wings and dry out her exoskeleton. Her anomalous post-metamorphosis molt was complete.

Her protective tegmina were a deep brown, attached to her body at the second link of her thorax and overlaying her light-green speckled underwings. Sprouting from the third section of her thorax, the under-wings stuck out a bit, forming green stripes along her sides.

The mantid crawled back up the tree, past the branch to which her old cuticle still clung, past the other branches that spread like balconies from the core of the trunk, and when she reached the top of the canopy, where the foliage of all the Scalesias wove itself together, she pushed through and stood on top of it, her four back legs taking hold of the uppermost branches and leafy boughs.

She was standing atop the forest.

The water circling the island was visible all around, the sky stretching clear and blue for as far as the eye could see.

Unfurling her wings from her sides like massive capes, she spread them wide. Their span was enormous, and as they dried, they would con-tinue to stretch and grow; only this benefit had driven her to brave the sun. Already, the new cuticle stiffened around her, a living suit of armor. Her body unfolded to the air, the mantid rested, growing stronger and harder in the sun.

Soon, it would be nightfall.

Chapter
72

A
s Cameron finished setting the trip wire, a shriek echoed up the road. She wasn't sure whether it was the mantid or a wounded animal, but it sent a chill from the depths of her bowels all the way up her spine.

Using herself as bait, Cameron would attract the mantid. The mantid would be drawn from the forest, heading for Cameron along the open stretch of the road. About a third of the way down, the mantid would trip the first wire. The det cord would explode, detonating the blasting caps and, in turn, the TNT. All the trees on the corresponding side would fall simultaneously. The explosion would either freeze the crea-ture or startle her forward. If she froze, she'd be crushed by the toppling trees, and if she started forward, she'd trip the second wire and the whole trap would go. The trees would fall from both sides, pounding the ground along a hundred-yard segment of the road.

There would be gaps--that was certain, since the Abatis was gener-ally used as a roadblock, not a killing trap, but that was a risk Cameron would have to take. She was fairly confident that the trees falling at criss-crossing angles would crush anything beneath them. Once the wire was tripped, no matter which direction the mantid moved she didn't stand a good chance.

The trap had a number of situation-specific advantages. Most impor-tant, it expanded the danger zone drastically; if the mantid moved any-where along the guessed route, she stood a good chance of getting killed or maimed. A compact little boar might find its way through an Abatis, but not the long, wiry mantid. If Cameron had elected to rig a smaller booby trap, she would have had to predict exactly where the mantid would step, and that had already proven difficult. The Abatis also had the advantage of drawing the prey into a known area, cutting down the variables one faced when dealing with a free-roaming adversary.

Cameron walked the path she hoped the mantid would take, careful not to get too close to the forest at the northern end of the road. She saw the first thin trip wire gleaming in the sunlight and stopped, letting it rest across her stomach. Ducking under, she counted ten steps to the second trip wire, which she also cautiously avoided.

The Abatis was ready.

She strode down the road to the trail just beyond the watchtower. She still had time to wash off.

The water reminded her of Justin. It always had. When he swam, his entire body moved with a grace usually reserved for porpoises and rays. For fear of revealing his hiding place to the creature, she had resisted the urge to go and check on him, though she wanted to desperately. As long as his heart rate stayed low, he shouldn't bleed out. And he was resting, maybe even sleeping, cool beneath the surface of the earth. He'd have to wait until after the Abatis was detonated.

Cameron sank all the way beneath the surface, the water closing over her head with a gulp, and then she was drifting, alone and lifeless and free. The teal water was so clear that when she opened her eyes, it was as if she were looking through a mask. She rinsed herself off, wiping the virus-laden smudges from her clothes and skin.

The sand on the bottom was brilliantly white, ribbed like desert dunes. Mini-cyclones swirled, the white grains glimmering as light swept through them. Ahead, a series of vesicular lava rocks unfolded like the vertebrae of a sunken creature.

Just beyond them, Cameron saw an outline of something large, majestic. She swam toward it in awe, breaststroking underwater. It rip-pled into view, a magnificent and rare coral head, standing alone before the wall of the reef. As Cameron approached it, she saw that it curved around, encircling an underwater lagoon. The walls would keep growing upward, eventually forming an atoll.

Small patches of the coral were bleached, destroyed by UV sunlight, but for the most part the underwater life had rejuvenated since the last El Nino. Within the ring was a fantasia of color and movement. Shiny green sea urchins dotted the white surface of the walls, flicking into view behind drifting strands of seaweed. A jewel moray shot from a dark hol-low, narrowly missing a darting minnow. A blue parrot fish grazed, its small mouth emitting bubbles as it nibbled along a notch of coral. A marine iguana tirelessly navigated the surface, its small legs churning, tail undulating.

The water within the reef was tinted green from the minuscule bits of floating algae, but still it retained a near perfect clarity. Cameron watched a yellow damselfish chase the parrot fish off the coral wall, flicking its tail as it shot forward. The parrot fish swam away, though Cameron could see it for several yards before it disappeared from sight. Tri-umphantly, the damselfish banked in a fighter jet's wide turn before returning to the inner sanctum of the reef, its bright yellow tail and lip contrasting sharply with the sleek black of the rest of its body. With wonder, Cameron watched it slither through the water, her lungs begin
ning
to burn.