The mantid froze, watching Szabla with ravenous curiosity.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Savage growled.
"Live bait."
"What if you don't get off in time?"
"Dead bait."
Escaping air hissed from the mantid's spiracles, nearly scaring Szabla off her feet and into the hole, but she recovered her balance just in time.
"Keep calm," Savage growled. "Keep your movements smooth and slow."
One of the branches started to roll beneath Szabla's foot but she stayed with it, easing her weight down to nestle it back into place.
"Keep it together, Szabla," Savage said, "and get her up onto the trap."
Szabla waved her hands and the mantid darted forward a few steps, thrusting her head forward like a punch. Emitting a half-cry, Szabla stumbled back, almost falling between the branches. The mantid reared up, her front legs spread wide, revealing the eye markings on their insides. The upper part of her abdomen scraped against her underwings, screeching. Szabla swayed on her feet.
"Calm the hell down!" Savage yelled. "She's fucking with you, testing how you move. If you go into that hole, you're finished."
"Come on!" Szabla screamed. She threw her arms wide. "Come get me!" She crouched down, snapped a twig off the branch beneath her feet, and hurled it at the mantid. The twig struck the mantid between her front legs, and she reared up again, spreading her underwings. Her wingspan nearly filled Szabla's field of vision.
Szabla wondered whether Cameron, Justin, and Tank were watching right now, somewhere in the darkness. She stepped back, stammering something to herself, and Savage tried to even her out with his voice. "It's all right. Doesn't matter how big she is if we get her in the hole. Just get her to come forward."
Her raptorial legs raised hungrily, the mantid stepped onto one of the branches veiling the hole. It creaked under her weight. She pulled another leg up, easing forward toward Szabla.
Szabla turned and looked frantically behind her, gauging how far she'd have to jump when the branches started to give. She was standing on the second-to-last branch from the end, the uncovered strip of the hole looming ominously between her and solid ground.
As she glanced back, the mantid stepped forward with one of her back legs, finding and hooking the branch expertly. Her last leg trailed it, and then the mantid was standing with her full weight on the creaking and groaning branches, facing Szabla, her razor jaws mere feet away. Her front legs weren't yet coiled to strike.
"It's gonna give!" Savage said. "Get off!"
"Not yet," Szabla whispered. "Not yet."
The mantid folded her raptorial legs to her chest, pulling them up and readying them to explode. The rows of spikes meshed perfectly, like cogs in a gear. She took another step forward, directly above the explo-sives. With a strangely peaceful expression, she started to sway.
One of the branches cracked, and the mantid sank a few inches, but it didn't give.
"It's perfect!" Savage yelled. "Get the fuck off before it goes!"
Szabla turned to jump, but the last branch rolled under her boot, and in a moment of terror, she felt herself go weightless. Her hands flew up over her head as she fell, and she saw Savage's bearded face in a blur as she dropped into the hole.
She hit the ground hard on her back, breaking one of her elbows and sending pain throbbing through her shoulders and tailbone. She bit back a cry, determined not to make a sound. The earth smelled of clay and rot. It was astoundingly dark, but she could see glimpses of the torch's light between the crisscross pattern of leaves and branches above her, narrow slivers of gold that fell across her arms and face like cuts. The red tissue wrapping of the TNT was visible a few feet away. A broken fern tickled her cheek.
In the middle of the network of branches was an immense dark blot, the underbelly of the creature. The branches started to bow beneath her weight and then one of them cracked, held barely together by bark and pulp. Dirt was pouring in on Szabla from the sides, the ends of the branches digging jagged paths down the loose rock of the walls, and then the veil gave.
With an enormous crash, the branches split, and Szabla rolled flat against the far wall of the hole with the open air above. An explosion of bark, leaves, and dirt filled the air, refusing to settle even after the branches hit earth.
Szabla slumped against the far corner of the hole, her head bent achingly forward. With panicked hands, she wiped the dirt from her eyes and saw the mantid looming over her. The mantid had landed squarely in the vesicle on her four back legs; even so, her head was near the earth's surface. Only Savage's soldier's code stood between Szabla and death; she knew he'd never leave another soldier down.
Savage stepped to the edge of the hole, the Clacker tight in his hand. If he engaged the detonator, the blast would surely kill Szabla as well as the mantid.
In the back of her mind, Szabla could hear Savage screaming for Cameron and Tank, but she knew it wouldn't matter. She knew it was too late.
She saw a flash overhead and Savage was airborne at the thing in a dive, his body a spear ending with the tip of his blade. The mantid turned and batted him like a fly with one armored leg, striking him with the backside of her tibia. A bloody crack opened in his forehead as he flew to the wall, striking it upside down and sliding into a mound of fronds and broken branches. Unconscious, he tumbled forward, one leg sliding over the blocks of TNT.
The mantid whirled back to Szabla, her antennae erect like two reeds. She swayed once, her mouth a hole ringed with moist, sharp pieces. The legs snapped Szabla up before she had time to close her eyes, the spikes skewering her from both sides. Szabla screamed as the points tore through her ribcage, and then the mantid curled her up to her mouth and Szabla saw the cutting jaws lower out of view behind her head. She screamed again, thinking, God, oh God, what an awful way to die.
The pale faces of Cameron and Justin appeared above, and then Tank's, but she was already flailing and screaming in its grip.
The smell of the creature pungent all around her, Szabla felt the piercing jaws go to work on the back of her neck, the sharp pain of her skin being pierced like a roast. She screamed as blood spurted out on both sides of the thing gnawing on her, as the viselike jaw ripped through her bone and gristle, and then she was hanging limply in the mantid's arms as she turned her like a pig on a spit, sucking and chewing and grinding.
Szabla's arms and legs weren't obeying anymore and there was one moment of perfect silent terror as she felt, deep within her head, the vibration of the mandibles scraping the bone of her skull before she went out.
Tank picked up the Clacker where Savage had cast it aside before his dive, and stared at the hole helplessly. The explosives were nestled right beneath one of Savage's legs.
Justin was screaming and trying to jump into the hole on the mantid's back, but Cameron had her arms locked around his waist. He broke her grip and she slid to his legs, tripping him, clinging to an ankle and holding him back.
Justin was screaming and crying, the spike tight in his fist. "Lemme go! She's my fucking partner!"
"She's gone already," Cameron yelled. "Use your head! She's fin-ished."
Justin kicked free and stood, but Tank collared him with one massive hand and pulled him back tight against his chest, wrapping his arms around him in a bear hug until his struggles lessened.
Szabla continued to twitch. The mantid's mandibles worked on her head until she was a faceless bloody pulp above the shoulders.