enabling an efficiency of movement.
Grasping an outcropping of lava with the hooks of her forelegs, she tugged on it; it would hold her weight. Moving with quick halting motions and using the claws at the ends of her legs, the creature pulled herself up the wall until she was dangling upside down from the roof of the cave. She twisted her abdomen in tight circles, and a light frothy sub-stance began to emerge from the appendages at the tip.
As she turned her abdomen in continuous spirals, she formed the ootheca, the translucent case for her eggs. Two antennae-like protru-sions on the tip of her abdomen combed the froth as it emerged. Applying discreet doses of the white material, she built a structure five feet in width, enmeshed along the length of the thickest tree root. Then she began the laborious task of inserting her eggs inside the structure, each egg laid at the base of its individual chamber. The chambers would pro-tect her offspring from predators and desiccation; they were bordered with pockets of insulating air and topped with one-way valves that would permit the fragile larvae to emerge without damaging themselves.
The creature labored with the unremitting energy of a machine, twisting through her arcane, instinctual dance. The chambers of the ootheca that were laid first began to harden. The female finally egested the last bit of froth, pinching it off neatly into a final chamber. There were eight individual chambers in the ootheca. Her abdomen swayed again, straining, but nothing more emerged.
Still upside down, she curled up, grooming excess froth from the tip of her abdomen with her mouth. If the froth hardened, it would prevent her from being able to excrete wastes, and she would die prematurely. Rolled in a complete circle, she looked like a huge green bud sprouting from the roof. She cleaned herself meticulously, her mouth worrying over her lower extremities. Finally, exhausted, she crawled back to the ground.
The creature pulled herself from the cave, breaking through the veil of ferns into the open air. A pair of smooth-billed anis lifted from a tree to her left, and her head pivoted automatically to watch them depart. They called to each other in distinctive whining whistles, as they faded into the foliage, black dots with streaming tails.
The creature moved forward, tired but oddly strengthened.
She was hungry.
Chapter 15
Cameron was disappointed not to find her husband back in his room. She and Justin had done well maintaining a professional distance, but it was more difficult than she would have thought. Until now, she'd never realized how accustomed she was to small, affectionate exchanges-exchanges not overtly emotional but quietly attentive, like how he'd pull her shirt down in the back when it came untucked.
Tucker and Savage's room was empty, save Tucker's good-luck charm, a thermite grenade, which rested on top of the small minibar. Cameron peeled back the top pocket of her cammy pants, glancing at the digital face sewn inside-2107. The others had probably gone out for chow. She paged Szabla to ascertain everyone's location, then knocked on the door to Tank and Rex's room.
Tank stepped out into the hall. He looked at the ground as he some-times did when he was around Cameron, as if schoolboy-nervous to look her in the eye. 'Uh… Cam.' He cleared his throat. 'About the thing with the dog…' He scratched his hair above an ear.
'Apology accepted,' she said.
He nodded a little, then raised a hand halfway to her face, as though he wanted to touch her. He withdrew his hand and gestured. 'You have a, uh, a hair in your mouth.'
She brushed the wisp of hair aside, hooking it behind an ear, and headed to her and Derek's room. At first, she thought it was empty, and she was angry that the weapons had been left unguarded, but then the door to the balcony banged in the breeze and she crossed and saw Derek sitting out there alone. There was no sound of the baby next door.
'Cam,' he said without turning around.
'Yeah?' She pulled the mag from her Sig and tossed it in the cruise box.
Without looking at her, Derek pulled the key chain from around his neck and handed it to her. She unlocked the two padlocks on the weapons box and set her pistol next to Tank's on the foam. 'I might need a little time alone tonight,' he said when she handed him back the key. 'Would you mind bunking in with Justin and Szabla? I figured you wouldn't mind sharing a bed, given he's your husband.'
Cameron leaned against the door to the balcony. 'Well, I don't…I don't know that that's appropriate…Why don't-'
'I'm the OIC,' he murmured. 'I decide what's appropriate.'
Cameron took a moment to digest the rebuff before speaking. 'I paged Szabla. She said they're out at a restaurant down by the river. Sav-age took off somewhere.' She paused, deciding how to phrase her next sentence. 'I know everyone's antsy, but you gotta rein them in. We can't be scattered all over the city like this.'
'I know,' Derek said.
'Maybe I should go round them up.'
He nodded slowly but still did not turn around. She watched the back of his head for a moment, then reached out and set her hand on his shoulder. He did not seem to notice. She removed her hand, backed out of the room, and closed the door quietly behind her.
Derek sat trance-like after she left, gazing over the rooftops as the minutes smeared into one another. The streets within his view were empty. The construction crews would be back in the morning, hammering things together-streets, buildings, sidewalks-readying them for the next wave of destruction. The noise of a guitar being badly played carried to him, and occasional high-pitched voices and peals of laughter. The night never faded in these towns, these South American towns; it just eased into daylight.
He closed his eyes for a moment, felt the humidity on his cheeks, the tropical scent of life and rot in the air. Cameron was right; as the LT, he had to buckle down and keep things under better control. It would be some time before he felt as though his thoughts and emotions were put away where they belonged instead of sliding around inside him like bro-ken glass. The baby next door certainly wasn't helping. Though it hadn't cried in a while, he could still hear it, gurgling and cooing.
Down below, a couple walked up the street, holding hands. The man stopped and helped the woman over a wide fissure in the sidewalk. A vivid image caught Derek by surprise-Jacqueline late in her pregnancy watering the roses out back, her belly a globe beneath a yellow dress, her smile wide and drifting, full of secret thoughts.
He ran his fingers over the bump of the transmitter-his bug. Ever since Jacqueline had been committed to the institution, he'd awaken in the night, listening for the soft rasp of her breathing or the cry of the baby beneath the crickets, and the hum of the electric clock. But then he'd remember they weren't there. It was just him, just him and the crick-ets.
He'd stopped by to say good-bye to Jacqueline before leaving on the mission.
Her Haldol dosage had been increased again, the antipsychotic med-ication making her face fight itself- stretching, biting, popping like a carnival clown's. She'd stopped washing again; he'd noticed a thin line of dirt at the base of her hairline.
As soon as Derek had gotten within her reach, she'd dug a finger painfully into his ear, searching for bugs. She'd twisted her nail so hard he'd had to check his ear for blood. She believed they were planting bugs on their minions-a conviction exacerbated or maybe even caused, he feared, by the penny-sized transmitter that stood out from the curve of his left anterior deltoid. She thought he'd been bugged under his skin.
He had stood in the small, sterile hospital room, gazing at the woman who was his wife with tragic disbelief. In the hospital parking lot, he'd sat in his wife's old Subaru, pressing his forehead to the top of the steering wheel, a keen sense of loss moving inside him like a sharp-bladed tool. He hadn't been in his wife's car since Before; he'd only driven it that day because he'd banged his truck against a tree the night before coming home from a bar. Her car had echoed with memories of the unintelligi-ble cooing, sounds that wouldn't quite form themselves into words or laughter. Before driving off, he'd ripped the bright pink-and-white cush-ioned car seat from the upholstery and hurled it away.
It had been a long road since the wedding five years ago. Jacqueline had been nineteen years old then, just a
