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 pricked 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 grassy fields to the northeast. He might not have time to reach them.
He paused, trying to fight away fear and frustration, his eyes moistening. 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 coarse 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, carrying 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 grass.
His eyes fixed on the window, he trudged toward his house, his boots dragging reluctantly across the furrowed soil and damp grass. 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 scraped 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 hoarse 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 hell'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. Ramon'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
Derek 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 puddles, 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 ass 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 grass. '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 ass. 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 entity. 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.
