Minutes To Burn Part 28

Ramn held up the soft blue quilt she had finished the day before. "Right here, carinito. Right here."

Floreana arched her back and shrieked. Her elbows were shoved back hard into the mattress, her hands gnarled, dangling from her limp wrists like claws. "It's not right," she groaned. "This is not right."

"It's okay," he said. "Everything's okay." He hoped she wouldn't notice the panic lurking beneath his eyes, the rush of blood in his cheeks.

Her eyes rolled back until he saw just moon slivers of brown beneath her upper lids. She began to seize.

Ramn fell on her, careful to keep his weight off her belly. She bucked and jerked, thrashing violently. One of her knees popped up and caught him on the side of the head, and his vision went momentarily blurry. He rose and took a step back. Her face was a mask stretched tight across her skull. Her arms rattled beside her like snakes.

He'd need to get help.

He backed up, knocking over a bucket with a clang. Grabbing the ax, he stumbled outside. Even with the sound of his wife's thrashing urging him on, he was afraid to venture into the dark. The sky was p.r.i.c.ked through with pinholes, stars colored yellow like the soft licks of a flame. His wife's moaning followed him out into the night.

He'd need to find the woman soldier. She would help. His wife's cries propelled him, but he stopped about fifty meters from the row of balsas. The soldiers' base camp was far away-across the road and well into the gra.s.sy fields to the northeast. He might not have time to reach them.

He paused, trying to fight away fear and frustration, his eyes moisten-ing. He peered in the direction of the soldiers' camp, then headed back to the rectangular block of light that filled the window of his house. Turning again, he stared at the road, spilling tears.

He did not know what to do and did not have any time to make up his mind.

Floreana's scream rent the night, startling him into action. He ran off into his field, toward his supply shed at the edge of the plantains. A rope could tie Floreana to the bed, then he'd do his best to deliver the baby alone. As soon as the baby was safely wrapped in the quilt, he'd go find the blonde soldier and she'd know what to do.

His hands shook so badly it took him three tries to get the little key in the shed's lock. Floreana's screams crashed down on him like waves, and he cursed the southeast winds, sweeping the screams west across the uninhabited pahoehoe plains instead of east to the soldiers' camp. He swung the door open and staggered inside, knocking over supplies on the thin wooden shelves.

He groped in the dark for a length of rope, his cheeks damp as he tried to block out the sound of his wife's cries. Finally, he felt the coa.r.s.e fibers against his palm. He yanked the rope from under a bag of fertil-izer and draped it around his neck. The door had swung shut behind him, and he kicked it open, leaving it crooked on its hinges.

Another scream, this one impossibly high and protracted.

I'm coming, mi vida, he thought. I'm coming.

He stepped through the narrow door frame into the night. The cry stopped, cut off mid-scream. He froze, breathing hard, lips trembling. Even from across the field, he could make out a stillness in the block of light from the window. The wind blew hot and lazy across his face, carry-ing with it the smells of moss and decomposing wood from the forest. He tried desperately to slow his breathing but could not.

He called his wife's name, just once. His voice sounded hollow and weak in the night.

The air reverberated with silence. He was filled with a sudden and unde-niable dread. The ax slid from his hand, disappearing into the tall gra.s.s.

His eyes fixed on the window, he trudged toward his house, his boots dragging reluctantly across the furrowed soil and damp gra.s.s. The rope was slick in his hands, a rough-skinned eel.

After an eternity, he reached the side of the house. He headed for the door, leaning weakly against the wall. Bloque sc.r.a.ped against his bare shoulder, drawing blood.

He tried to call Floreana's name again, but his throat was too raspy and the sound came out a hoa.r.s.e whisper. He paused just beside the doorway, gathering the threads of his fear. The silence unrolled around him like a black sea, endless and unremitting.

His teeth chattering, he stepped into the single room of his house. The rope slid from his hand to the floor.

His wife lay on the mattress, her lower body a muddle of flesh and blood. She'd been torn open from the inside. A splatter of blood ran up the wall beside the mattress, nearly four feet away. Her body was stiff and twisted, her back still arched.

On the floor lay a tangle of limbs and claws and half-shaped organs laid open to the outside air. The fetus. His child. A gnarled, cursed crea-ture that looked as though it had been forged in some h.e.l.l's oven-a col-lection of viscera and tissue, only some of it human.

It had expired before ever drawing air, and it lay, dead, beside its dead mother. Ramn's wife.

His skin felt intensely hot, as if it were burning off his bones. With slow, drugged movements, he walked to the mattress and straightened his wife's limbs, trying his best to lay her arms by her sides so that she looked relaxed. He pulled the thin, stained blanket across her lower body, thumbed her eyes closed, kissed her still-moist forehead.

He dragged a chair from the table over to the fireplace, above which some bloque had fallen away to reveal a brief stretch of rafter.

He fetched the rope from the doorway.

CHAPTER 49.

--------------------- 29 DEC 07 MISSION DAY 5.

erek lay on his back in the dark of early morning, watching the rain patter on the roof of the tent. It slid to the sides and formed pud-dles, moving patterns of darkness. The tent looked alive, as if he were lying in the belly of some great beast and watching its stomach digest him.

The rain slowed, then stopped, leaving the canvas above bowed. Though morning was only a few minutes away, the sky was still gray. Cameron slept soundly on her sleeping pad to Derek's right, and the cruise box containing the larva was still safely latched.

Again, he had not slept. Frustration had honed its edge on his sleep-lessness, but he resisted it. He rose and walked outside, where Justin was standing watch.

Justin turned his fingers in a reverse temple and cracked them sharply across his forehead as he yawned. He shifted on the log, groaning. "My a.s.s feels like I just spent the night with the Marquis de Sade."

Derek stood with his hands on his hips, surveying the waving tops of the Scalesias. His face was swollen, puffy around the eyes and through the cheeks. He blinked long and hard and looked back at Justin, forcing his eyes to adjust. The spikes from the GPS tripods were lined up on the ground by Justin's feet. Beside them were four flares and the bolt Tank had taken from the specimen freezer.

He walked a few paces off and urinated into the higher gra.s.s. "Get the others mustered for recon," he mumbled over his shoulder.

The softness of the forest floor was surprising. Cameron felt it was yielding to her, giving way beneath her heavy boots. The spike swung at her side.

Moving stealthily through the trees in their cammies, their skin tender from the sun and greasy with sunblock, Cameron and Derek blurred from spot to spot like shadows. If they needed to, they could just disap-pear, stepping back against the trunk of a tree, lying flat on the forest floor, fading into bushes.

Once, in Iraq, she and Derek had been caught by surprise by a truck-ful of enemy soldiers. They'd been wearing their desert cammies, and they'd leaned back on the steep dune behind them, kicking sand over their black boots and letting more sand crumble down over their faces. The truck had rattled past them so close she'd been worried it would run over her feet.

Cameron led, forging through the branches with her shoulders and chest. When they didn't give way, she could usually snap them with a shove. Her legs were firm beneath her, solid through the thighs and a.s.s. If she ever stopped working out, her figure would soften into volup-tuousness. She didn't plan to ever stop working out.

Derek followed in her wake. Trapped beneath the canopy, the air was thick with humidity, stirring with clouds of gnats and particles of leaves and bark. About every ten yards, they'd pause, surveying the area around them and listening for movement. At all times, they had 360-degree security coverage. Cameron scanned the area to the front and the sides, and Derek covered the rear, turning in circles to check behind them. Their patrolling formation was tighter than usual because of the limited visibility; the canopy made it seem like it was dusk.

They fell into a rhythm, Cameron and Derek, when they worked like this, sharing each other's senses, movements, and instincts. Years of functioning as a buddy pair had welded them into one ent.i.ty. They tra-versed the forest, two beating hearts moving through the thickets and tree trunks. They did not speak. They never even had to gesture when they switched point.

Cameron always knew where Derek was, not because she could hear him or see him, but because she sensed him, sensed the life moving behind her among the trees, the life for which she was responsible. If something happened to Derek, she sometimes thought, it would be almost as upsetting as if something happened to her own husband. That made his recent behavior all the more alarming.

Since they weren't humping gear, they didn't stop to rehydrate every hour as they normally would. Cameron's movements became almost hypnotic-the rise of her feet, the sink of her boots into the thick mud, the pattern of her steps. One, two, three, and a crossing side step to dodge a tree trunk. Her breathing was slow and even, her face damp with the heat. She felt sweat stinging her eyes.

About halfway to the forest's peak, a small clearing opened among the trunks of the trees, a break of a few square yards matted with decaying leaves and dead ferns. Vines twisted their way along the ground, winding themselves through the low brush and darting up the trees around the clearing. The Scalesias stretched overhead, growing together in a living tapestry. Some of the larger trees faded away, their trunks reaching up and up until they were lost in the canopy.

The forest felt suddenly alive to Cameron. Like it was watching her.

She held up a hand, stopping Derek in his tracks. Her grip on the spike tightened. Derek sidestepped quickly behind a trunk, leaning against the white spotted bark.

The forest was moving all around her, leaves, fronds, and branches swaying in the wind. The slow, hypnotic motions reminded her of a mat-ing dance. The air was musky with the scents of mud, hidden creatures, fresh and rotting fruit.

She scanned the area but saw only green and brown, vines dripping from branches like stalact.i.tes, foliage vibrating in the breeze. For a moment, she closed her eyes and listened. The buzz of insects, the flap-ping of a bird, the creek of bending trees. She opened her eyes again and saw nothing, though she still felt the eyes of the forest on her.

A length of vine by her foot hissed and slid away, rustling in the dark-ness. Between the trunks, the forest stretched on forever, a dim under-world.

Moving slowly to her right, stepping sideways foot over foot so that she could remain facing forward, Cameron headed out of the clearing. She counted off fifteen paces before Derek followed her. They disap-peared into the shadows ahead.

A spiderweb broke across Cameron's face, but she didn't flinch. She wiped it away using the back of her hand that held the spike. The spider fell to the ground, scurrying clumsily for cover, and she crushed it underfoot. A triad of birds left a tree in a burst of noise, darting through the branches and calling to one another.

Cameron raised her hand and snapped her fingers. Derek froze and they stood perfectly still, Cameron resisting the urge to swipe away the last strands of the spiderweb stubbornly clinging to the bridge of her nose. Finally, she signaled him forward with two fingers and pointed to the ground, where a gnawed head lay, about the size of a medicine ball- the male's head that the female had chewed off during mating.

Cameron stepped forward and picked up the head carefully, as if con-cerned it would spring to life. The sh.e.l.l of the head was intact, but much of the insides had been eaten by ants. She tilted it in a shaft of light fil-tering through the treetops, admiring the hard, jagged line of the mandibles.

"Looks like it's just us and the larvae now," she said.

CHAPTER 50.

--------------------- amantha nearly fell out of bed when she heard the loud banging at the slammer window. She jolted upright, eyes swollen with sleep, her hands immediately dancing along the countertop beside her bed in search of her gla.s.ses. She found them and pushed them onto her head at an angle. Her scrubs were twisted around her hips and she loosened them and pulled them straight.

Tom was at the window, his face animated with excitement. "It's the same virus!"

"What?" Samantha said. "Who?"

"In the thermoproteaceae living in the deep sea cores they pulled off the coast of Sangre de Dios. They must've been released from the crust by the drilling and entered the ocean, where they infected the species of dinoflagellates. Since the dinos were pushed toward the ocean's surface by quakes, they were made susceptible by UV exposure, and the virus must have bridged that structural gap. And get this-just like Dr. Den-ton noticed that the dinos were altered, somehow, genetically, the ther-moproteaceae are all f.u.c.ked up. Each one has a different genetic profile than the next."

"How is that..."

Tom shrugged. "Rajit's been playing with it in lab, trying to nail its eti-ology and pathogenicity, and make sense of the PCR test. The virus seems to contain a ma.s.sive range of DNA code-blueprints for pro-teins from all kinds of species. The guys have already nicknamed it: the Darwin virus."

Samantha scratched her head. "Just don't name it after a location- the last thing we need right now is an outraged Chamber of Commerce somewhere."

"What's been happening with the rabbits?" Tom asked.

"Not a thing as of last night," Samantha said. "Cytopathic effect is what I'm thinking. We might have to bleed them, get the serum under a scope."

"Have you checked on them this morning?" he asked. She shook her head. "Well, you'd better hurry and take a peek before they s.h.i.tcan you and ship you home in a bubble."

Still rubbing her eyes, Samantha trudged over to the crash door and pushed through into the next room. Tom waited for her at the window rather than walking around to the observation post. When she reap-peared, she was ghost white.

"You'd better suit up and get in here," she said, her voice trembling. "You need to see this."

Several tables were set up outside the slammer window, a team of virolo-gists and high-ranking officers gathered around them. Phones, faxes, and computers were running simultaneously, blinking, beeping, and ringing. Still clad only in medical scrubs, Samantha pulled a chair up to the gla.s.s and sat watching the others. Though her viral count was contin-uing to decrease, it was not yet zero; she would not be cleared from quar-antine until she'd been held the requisite seven days. A stack of micrographs sat in her lap.

Colonel Douglas Strickland strode up the hallway behind the makeshift workstation, his polished shoes clicking on the tile. The work-ers froze.

He pulled to a halt, facing Samantha through the window. "Dr. Everett," he said.

She smiled and nodded. "Yes, darling?"

He grimaced. "I've been informed we have something of a crisis on our hands."

"You could say that."

Strickland removed his beret and shuttled it through his hands. "If you continue to lend us your professional expertise in contending with this problem, I'm quite certain that such efforts will counterbalance the charges that have been leveled against you for your prior indiscretions. a.s.suming, of course, that you express remorse to the JAG officer."

Samantha stood up. "The only thing I'm remorseful about is that I placed myself in a position where my medical judgment was subject to military review."

"I would hardly-"

"Don't panic, Doug. I'll help you, but not for that reason. I'll help you because I'm actually still foolish enough to give a s.h.i.t. So here's question number one for you: Is this something you've been working on behind the fence?"

Strickland's face drained of color. "You're implying that we devel-oped this killer virus here on the premises for the sake of biological war-fare?"

"We don't have time for implying-I'm asking outright. Is this virus out of the BW facility or not?"

Strickland stepped forward until his nose was almost touching the gla.s.s. His face was almost comically red, his jaw clenched. "Look at my face, Dr. Everett. Do you think I'd be exhibiting this level of concern if I had any idea with what we are contending?"

Samantha looked at him. Believed him.

"I saw the...offspring of that rabbit." Strickland shuddered. Sam-antha did not imagine he shuddered often. "Creatures unlike any-thing...abortions,all of them."

"Unviable mutations," Samantha said.

"Did the virus actually impregnate the rabbit?"

"No. We checked the records from the Crimean Congo virus study- the one the rabbits were shipped in for. One was pregnant, a few days, maybe. The virus drastically accelerated the pregnancy, but it didn't cause it to begin with."

"Is this thing going to spread?"

Samantha shrugged. "As it stands, we don't know if it will infect humans. But technically, a virus's sole mission is to replicate. To survive, it's got to hop continually from host to host, usually mutating, adapting and evolving as it goes. Viruses are mindless-just as short-sighted as humans, in fact. They have no long-term strategy. This virus could run virulent through its population and extinguish itself by killing off all available hosts. Dr. Denton and I are crunching the numbers right now to estimate the odds of another mutated mantid lineage on Sangre de Dios."

"How does it function? This...Darwin virus?"

Samantha nodded at the bustling work station behind Strickland. "That's what we're working on now."

"What is your informed opinion-or your hunch-at this stage?" he asked.

She sighed, winding a fist in the bottom of her scrub top. "My prelim-inary a.n.a.lysis of the genetic sequencing has shown that the virus itself contains genetic sequences from myriad other life forms. Like all viruses, it invades the host cells, using their machinery to replicate itself. In higher organisms, it seems to splice into the site between a promoter gene and a gene expressed only during embryonic development-in the case of the rabbits, the HOX series. Because of that, the viral DNA is promoted only during embryonic development. During this time, it attacks the DNA sequencing of its host, inserting its own segments of functional DNA code into the equation, and using these materials like primordial building blocks to create new life forms in the next genera-tion."

"Segments of functional DNA code?"

"Yes. They carry the marching orders for cells, causing them to form complex structures, like wings, legs, skeletal configuration, lungs, and other structures with or without utility."