Fragment

1:00 P.M.

Zero looked behind him and fired his flamethrower at a swarm of flying bugs diving down at him. “Goddamned flying piranhas,” he muttered, fending them off. As he ran ahead of the others, who followed him, gasping in panic, Zero remembered the NASA camera. He tapped the button over his right temple and flipped the band over to see behind him. He swiveled the arm of the viewfinder forward-he had a rearview mirror.

With one eye on the viewfinder, he ran for his life, more or less following the tracks of the rover up the hillside as he faked left and right like a running back on the longest sudden death touchdown run of all time.

Otto picked up the video feed from Zero. “I got something!” On the monitor they could see Zero’s pursuers and the two other men running desperately behind him.

“Oh NO!” Nell crumpled into a chair behind Otto, staring at the screen.

Zero sprinted uphill along the tracks of the rover, toward the island’s core.

Wasps dive-bombed around him as he constantly zigzagged like Red Grange. As creatures leaped through the air at him, he dodged or slowed or sped up to avoid them.

Kirk and Pound ran behind him up the hillside. Pound was winded and staggering when five wasps hit him simultaneously. He screamed.

As their abdominal maws pierced his neck, back, and arms, the wasps injected capsules of embryos. These hatched instantly and bored their way through his flesh.

Pound dropped the flamethrower and fell writhing in agony to the ground. The twisting larvae devoured nerve after nerve. The explosions of pain sent his body into deep shock. His glasses fell off, and the world became a blur. He tried to yell for help but could not. Two drill-worms landed on his forehead, and he screamed involuntarily as they bored their abdomens through his eyelids.

In the headcam’s viewfinder, Zero saw a cloud of bugs cover Pound as the President’s envoy flailed on the slope behind him. It seemed to Zero that Pound screamed for a long time.

Kirk pumped his feet over the squishy field of green vegetation, running behind Zero, who was headed for the canyon they had originally traversed in the safety of the rover. Halfway up the clover fields, Zero continued to gain ground, but suddenly Kirk doubled over, exhausted. His head was swimming and sweat stung his eyes, as he struggled to catch his breath. The sole of his right shoe seemed to be melting.

Kirk pivoted and blasted his flamethrower blindly at the train of creatures racing up the slope behind him. Undaunted by the tongue of flame, they swirled around him in tight circles and, singed and smoking, struck into him with ravenous spikes and jaws.

Kirk screamed and spun around, staggering as he tried to pull a rat off his chest with his left hand and fire the flamethrower wildly with his right. Two Henders rats, hurtling up the slope in twenty-foot lunges under the stream of fire, clamped on to his legs. He heard two loud pops as their claw-strikes severed the muscles in his calves. He shrieked in pain and fell forward, his legs useless.

As a swarm of small animals overran him, he rolled onto his back and blasted his flamethrower up the slope, desperate to fry as many of Zero’s pursuers as possible.

But it was Kirk’s flesh that helped Zero more. It bought the cameraman a few precious seconds as the hungry horde behind him slowed, then doubled back to help devour the fallen driver.

Nell watched the monitor as Kirk screamed on the slope behind Zero.

She sat frozen in the chair, watching as it happened again-her nightmare coming to life on a television screen.

Otto sobbed and turned away from the monitor, retching.

“God damn it, come on, Zero!” Nell yelled, tears streaking her face as she stared at the screen. “Come on, get out of there!”

Watching through the viewfinder, Zero blasted the flame thrower in irregular short bursts behind him, hearing Kirk’s dying scream.

He ran fast but erratically, continuously changing direction and speed to confuse the trajectories of the long-jumping predators, which continually sailed past him, missing by inches. He never stopped for more than a second.

He reached the top of the slope and the flat ravine they had driven through only a half hour earlier. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Finally on level ground, he sprinted over the rover’s tracks into the canyon.

Then, for only a heartbeat he relaxed his pace, breathing raggedly as the animals pursuing him dropped out of sight below the rise behind him. The air was fresher here and there was some relief from the heat and humidity generated by the clover. He watched the viewfinder as he jogged, relaxing his pace and sucking air into his chest. About thirty yards back, his pursuers crested the rise and poured into the canyon.

He sprinted again, zigzagging and firing the flamethrower in bursts behind him.

Three rats closed the distance in two leaps and two seconds. Zero fired a steady flame over his shoulder and fried them into flying meatballs. The sauteed rats hit the ground rolling and screaming, drawing off some of his pursuers.

He ran straight for about twenty yards, drawing a column of predators, which lunged as he turned abruptly left.

He saw a leaping rat in the viewfinder and slowed his step, catching it like a football player over his shoulder with both hands. In the same motion he jammed its head into the maw of a cactus-barnacle-like thing sprouting out of the canyon wall beside him. The “cactus” bit the rat’s head off. Zero dropped its headless body and kept running.

Blow-dart urchins shot across the canyon on tendrils forcing him to leap, duck, and hurdle, always trying to keep his forward motion unpredictable. It was a constant struggle against the instinct to run as fast and hard as he could.

The purple bug-hives they had passed earlier lined the corridor before him.

The vampire drones began popping out of the hives. Zero ran straight at them, firing the flamethrower in front of him until it ran out of fuel.

He unstrapped the tank and flung it away, and the devouring bug clouds descended on it instantly.

Zero reached the edge of the mesa. Below was the salty pool they had passed earlier.

Skidding down the slope on the greasy ground-cover, he saw that it had turned purple as the mid-afternoon sun cast it in shadow. A strong stench of rotten eggs wafted up the hillside. He almost stepped on a sprouting clovore, and slipped, landing painfully on his butt. He scrambled back onto his feet without losing a beat and continued pounding downhill.

In the viewfinder he saw the wasps, vampire drones, and rats that had made it through the gauntlet of vampire bees. They were emerging from the canyon, on his trail.

Then, charging around the slope of the island’s core, he saw two large red beasts.

Two marauding spigers had picked up his scent and were lunging down the slope to cut him off.