view. Finally, only his face remained, an oval of flesh sunk in the dirt.
'You gonna be all right?' Cameron asked.
Justin nodded weakly. He glanced at the side of her shirt, moist with rotting hemolymph. 'Good color for you.' He closed his eyes and Cameron felt her heart quicken.
'Don't you fucking die on me.'
'Please,' Justin managed. 'I have dry cleaning out.'
Cameron leaned over her husband and kissed him tenderly on the lips, then fitted into his mouth a short length of camel bak tubing she'd found in Savage's kit bag. She smoothed dirt over his face until it was gone from view. The tubing protruded from the dirt a few inches, but aside from that, the ground above Justin was perfectly flat.
Since the gash hadn't compromised any major arteries, he would sur-vive if he didn't lose any more blood. And she'd made a point of digging deep enough so that he'd be buried in cool earth, protected from the pounding sun.
Cameron rose and stood near the overturned soil for a moment, then placed her hand near the top of the tubing, wanting to feel Justin's breath on her palm. The person whom she cherished most in the world was buried alive at her feet, and she would have to leave him there for a good long time.
Turning, she headed back to the base camp. She changed her cam-mies, rinsed with water from the canteen, and applied the last of the antibacterial gel, smearing it liberally over her cuts. She didn't want to waste time now hiking down to the beach for a more thorough washing-it would have to wait until she figured out a plan.
She ripped a blank sheet of paper from a logbook and jotted a note explaining that Justin was in fact alive, and that she'd buried him. Beneath, she scribbled a diagram showing where he was buried. She pinned the piece of paper on the front of one of the remaining tents, where it flapped conspicuously. She stood and stared at the note for a few moments before turning to find her kit bag.
She dug out her IR strobe, turning over the rounded, cigarette pack-sized unit and clicking the waterproof button on the bottom. A soft whirring indicated that it was strobing, though the infrared cover ensured it could only be seen with night vision. She set the strobe in the grass a safe distance from Justin, about midway between base camp and the air vesicle they'd used for the trap.
She returned to her kit bag, finding a bottle of multipurpose solution encased in a Ziploc bag, and cleaned and reinserted her contacts. Pressing her fingers to her temples, she ran through her options in her head, trying to come up with a plan to survive until the helo arrived.
Pulling back the top lip of her pants pocket, Cameron glanced at the small digital clock face. A couple minutes past eleven. For now, the man-tid was trapped in the forest, needing shade. Dusk would hit at about six o'clock, which gave Cameron seven hours. In seven hours, the creature could travel wherever she wanted.
Cameron couldn't swim out to the tuff cones for the night because the mantid might discover Justin's hiding place or fly off in search of food, taking the virus with her. And if Cameron couldn't find the remaining larva, which seemed quite likely, there was a good chance she'd have two of the things on her hands at nightfall.
Given Justin's vulnerability and the creature's advantage at night, Cameron would have to take the offensive. The speargun was lost, but she still had three flares, and two crates of TNT. She tried to think of different traps that she could rig, but her mind came up blank. She'd never realized how much they'd counted on Tucker for demo.
Virtually alone on an island, no gun, tracked by one of nature's most advanced predators in its own habitat. Her husband's and the island's life dependent not just on her surviving, but triumphing over the creature. Things looked bad.
Covered with blood, hemolymph, and sweat, Cameron rose and stood on unsteady legs. She needed to eat. If she had food in her stom-ach, she'd be able to think more clearly.
She staggered toward her old tent, her arms sore, cramps setting in through her legs. The insides of her thighs brushed with each step, sending waves of pain through her lower body. Her head felt close to exploding, her shoulder throbbed incessantly, and the cut on her calf from the freezer vent was deeper than she'd thought.
In all likelihood, she had seven hours to live.
She drank from the canteen until she vomited, the water tasting pure and fresh on the way back up. After that, she regulated how much she hydrated, even though the pork and rice from the MRE felt as dry as sand in her mouth. If she threw up again, she'd lose the nutrients from the meal.
Ravenously devouring the oatmeal cookie bar, she glanced out along the edge of the forest. It took her a long time to pick out the mantid from her hiding place among the foliage. With her motionless, alert stance, she protruded just barely from the last line of trees like a gar-goyle, her head swiveling ever so slightly, keeping Cameron in view.
Cameron lay back on the grass, propping her head up on the log so that she could keep an eye on the mantid. It was not long before she began to doze off, and when she snapped awake, she saw that the mantid had broken from cover, taking a few steps toward her.
With a choking gasp, Cameron jumped up, waving her arms and yelling, and the mantid scrambled back to the trees. Evidently, the man-tid would risk going out in the direct sunlight only if she was assured an easy kill. Cameron's display of liveliness had saved her-the mantid couldn't afford a chase, since her energy would drain quickly in the hot sun. She knew she could just wait until dark.
The incident reinforced Cameron's relief that Justin was buried, hid-den safely from view. It would not have taken long for the mantid to work up the courage to go after wounded prey. The adrenaline from the scare kept Cameron wired for a while, but physical exhaustion, coupled with emotional fatigue, made it hard for her not to think of napping. Sleep called her like a siren's song. She chomped down on her cheek until it bled; she bit her fingers as hard as she could across the nails; she even forced herself to stand, but still, she drifted off.
A jolt of images thrashed through her mind-deformed babies choked and burnt and flaming, piled up in pyres and slaughterhouse mounds, twisted eyes and mouths spread in wordless, thoughtless terror. A mutated baby pulled itself from the melting mound of infant flesh, crawling on distorted limbs though it sank to the wrists. The baby's mouth stretched wide, a clown's screaming frown.
Listing to her left so she had to stumble to recover her balance, Cameron realized that the scream was her own. Her hands struck at her face, trying to wrench the images from her eyes. Remembering where she was, she turned frantically to locate the mantid in the forest. She was gone.
With alarm, Cameron glanced down along the forest's edge. Instinctively, she stepped back toward base camp, then she finally saw her, blending in among the balsas along the side of the road, swaying slightly in the breeze, her one good eye staring at Cameron.
Cameron waved her arms and screamed, 'I'm not asleep, you bitch. I'm awake. I'm fucking awake!'
Cameron's wild movements again made it clear that she was not slug-gish prey. The mantid scurried back to the forest, using the trees for cover, moving with surprising speed. Cameron plucked a rock from the ground and hurled it at the mantid, but it careened harmlessly off a tree trunk several yards behind her.
'Fuck you!' Cameron screamed. 'Fuck…' She fell to her knees.
When she closed her eyes, the deformed babies crowded her, soft-fleshed and innocent and screaming all the screams of hell. She shook her head, trying to clear the haze from her mind, then watched the man-tid fade back into the forest, the razor spikes flashing in the sunlight.
She was going to die a slow, painful death and no one would ever know about it. She felt tears filling her eyes beneath the lids, and her chest closed in a mix of panic, frustration, and grief. She pulled Savage's knife from the back of her pants and hurled it at the log. It stuck with a thunk. She broke down sobbing for a few minutes, rocking and pressing her hands to her eyes.
She sat for a long time before the fear started to fade, and then she started muttering to herself, running her fingers through the grass. The fear burned away, leaving only hard, hot embers of rage. Her fist snapped shut around a handful of grass.
When the babies flashed through her mind again, she greeted them, refusing to flinch from the image. She stared at them shrieking and whining until she felt nothing, just a numb tingling across her face.
A part of her had died. She could feel it hanging, loose weight around her heart.
Even though Cameron remembered right where the mantid was, it took her a few moments to distinguish her from the trees. The creature came slowly into view-the angled head, the greenish-tan good eye, the smashed hull of the other. Cameron stared at the mouth that was always slightly open, a collection of protruding parts, and felt
