Minutes to Burn

Cameron felt the vent about to give and she reared back and ham-mered both legs into it. One of the metal guard teeth ran a slit up her calf and she grunted with the pain but pushed through the end of her kick nonetheless. The vent left the back wall of the freezer, flying out onto the grass beyond.

Cameron felt the shadow of the mantid fall across her, and she dived forward through the toothed gap where the vent had been, the creature's raptorial legs snapping shut inches behind her. She curled up as she flew through the vent hole, dodging the teeth surrounding it. Tucking as she hit the grass, she rolled over her shoulders, still guiding her legs through the metal teeth behind her. One of the teeth caught her boot, swiping a section of rubber from the sole, but then she was on the grass and free.

The mantid rammed her head through the hole, her gaping mouth straining to reach Cameron. The metal teeth scraped into her cuticle and she expelled air in a breathy hiss, backing up and struggling. Her head stuck on the teeth for a moment before pulling free.

Cameron finished her roll, coming up and onto her feet immediately, and sprinted around the freezer. She kicked the front door closed as she passed, trapping the mantid inside. With its missing lock, the freezer wouldn't hold her, but Cameron hoped it would confuse her, buying time to escape.

She heard the mantid smash against one of the walls before she was more than ten yards away, a screech echoing in the cold aluminum walls. The wind picked up, howling through the watchtower and drowning out the fierce banging within the freezer.

Ignoring the burn setting in through her legs, Cameron sprinted for the forest.

Chapter 67

Even with a mask, Justin's visibility underwater would have been extremely low. Hiding sea-urchin-dotted stretches of coral and sharp lava ledges, the inky water enveloped him. He progressed steadily toward the tuff cones, his strokes regular, his breathing calm. He surfaced frequently, the cloud-hazed moonlight seeping across the waters and his own wan face.

His foot tangled in a strand of seaweed and he doubled over under-water, calmly freeing himself. He resurfaced and swam slowly in circles, glancing around through the darkness. He felt for the flashlight but did not turn it on.

Turtlebacking slowly, he floated on the ripples and looked at the stars above. Orion was clearly lit, the point of the arrow like a beacon. As he headed back through the darkness, the near-full moon broke clear of the clouds. The first of the tuff cones was about fifteen feet away from him. He would have swum directly into it had the moon not made its fortu-itous appearance.

He gripped the side of the tuff cone, breathing hard, then eased his way around it, kicking gently to the next one in the chain. He swam qui-etly, the dark slumbering forms of the sea lions dotting the nooks of the rock. When he reached the third cone, he swam about five yards west, then dived beneath the surface and kicked to the bottom. He hit sand in seven strokes. The moonlight filtered beneath the surface for the first several feet, but down at the bottom, it was pitch black.

He drifted for a moment, his body limp, suspended in perfect black-ness. Once his torso had oriented toward the truest angle upward, he kicked, paddling fiercely until he broke the surface. He was barely winded.

His fingers were white when he released the flashlight. He clicked the switch and headed down, following the yellow-white shaft of light. He followed a sharp slope, the sea bottom about ten feet deeper at the far end. He paused when his feet struck sand, the flashlight illuminating a band of water across the bottom.

Tightening his grasp on the flashlight, he bent his legs beneath his body on the sand, raising the flashlight as he started to push off from the bottom. It shot a beam of light in front of him and he jerked back, his breath billowing out in a burst of bubbles.

Directly in front of him, no more than an arm's length away, was the head of a large blacktip reef shark. Its mouth opened, revealing row upon row of razor-sharp teeth, and Justin threw himself supine as it glided above him, knocking his face with the leathery bottom of its jaw.

Before shoving off for the surface, he followed the shark with the light until it glided up the slope and out of view. Then, he kicked up hard, pushing a few meager bubbles from his nose.

He gasped when he broke the surface, sucking in a mouthful of water. He swam to the nearest tuff cone, ignoring the barking sea lion he'd awakened, and gripped it tightly as he regurgitated a mix of salt water and mucus.

He clung to the tuff cone for a few minutes, breathing steadily until he calmed. Kicking west again about fifteen yards, he swam to the bot-tom, scanning with the flashlight. He returned to the surface more quickly than he had before.

The second and third dives were equally fruitless. He was breathing heavily again by the time he surfaced from the fourth.