I can see over the wall into what must once have been an ideal roomy habitat for something like a big crocodile, replete with running stream, marshy pond, and palm trees.
But, like the crushed fences that no longer protect the driveway, that running stream is no more. There’s only a dry streambed lined with the broken stalks of dead coconut palm trees marking the upper reaches of where it once flowed. Once the pumps stopped, the water features of Big Ranch must have evaporated. All dead and dessicated.
There’s a wide roadway that leads up from the gate. I shift the scope and see half a mile further up that road an extravagant mansion. It is seven stories tall with countless windows, tall turrets, a crenellated roofline, and battlements like those of a castle. It’s built up on a bluff in the center of Big Ranch’s thousand-acre spread. That mansion is my main objective. And it looks as if luck is with me. The drawbridge over the dry moat that encircles it is down.
Far to my right is the gigantic enclosure that had been the big snake’s habitat—including a man-made cave half a mile up the hill. The cavern’s mouth gapes wide and dark. Is the snake in there? My Power is not telling me that it is. Just that danger is nearby. But where? Is Super Snake anywhere within the walls of Big Ranch or is it out hunting miles from here? There’s no motion at all within the walls. And there were no recent gigantic crawl marks on the road I’ve followed to get here.
The shapes of the hills around the valley show me that there are other passes, trails that could be followed on foot—or by slithering. Other ways out of this valley in addition to the dead-end road I followed.
I can’t stay here forever. I have to do something. At least get close enough to get a better look. I put away the scope, lower my goggles, hop on my bike, and coast down the hill. Soon I am standing by that wide entryway looking in. And I see that I was partially wrong about everything being dried up. The swamp still remains. The springs that gave this place its name are still seeping up enough water to cover a wide expanse of perhaps ten acres of deep green water. It almost comes to the edge of the wall itself, less than forty feet from the entryway where I stand. The water is stagnant. Its rank odor of decay is so strong I crinkle my nose. Gnats buzz at my eyes. I keep brushing them away, not taking my eyes off the pond.
Although there must still be a natural spring feeding this and keeping it from disappearing, it is mostly dead water. Only a small trickle flows from it into the large channel that passes under the roadway. It disappears within a few yards through a crack in the basalt basin.
Normally you’d see wading birds, turtles, all sorts of animal life around a pond such as this one, an oasis in the midst of the dry lands all around. But there are no signs of any life other than dragonflies, gnats, and the green algae slicking the water’s surface. Bubbles, likely from swamp gas, rise here and there to the eerily placid face of the pond. The slow, steady popping of those bubbles is almost hypnotic.
I tear my eyes away from the pond and shade them against the sun to peer up the mile of roadway that terminates at the overblown building ahead. It is more like a castle built by a crazy king than a zillionaire’s mansion. Therein, untouched or viewed by human eyes since the demise of electricity, lies the objective of my quest: the room housing the art collection that includes that stupid mirror.
This close, I can now see there used to be lots of interior walls at Big Ranch. Heavy chain link fences surrounded the castle and lined the roadway. But they are all crushed. Some might think they were flattened by a hurricane, given the force it would take to pull down such strong fencing.
But not me. I don’t really need to speculate about what took down the fences or what happened to whatever animals used to inhabit that pond and all the other deadly denizens of the ten other once-securely-electrified enclosures I count from where I stand.
Something there is that does not love a wall. Especially when that wall stands between it and lunch. Big snakes do have big appetites. And once the normal supply of food furnished to it was no longer being supplied, that Super Snake was still hungry. So it began catching and eating everything (and everybody) living within Big Ranch. Alligators and crocodiles, immense Gila monsters, supersized Komodo dragons or whatever turned into main courses.
And then what? Did Super Snake die of hunger? It had been years since the Cloud came. So maybe all that was left of it is a mountain of massive reptile bones somewhere way back in Big Ranch. That was what the first team sent here by the Dreamer had assumed.
Snakes don’t have to eat every day, or every month. I knew that as a little girl. I’d vidded that big snakes can go for a year without eating anything at all as long as there’s water to drink. And they can just lay around for days or weeks hardly moving, dozing until there’s food to be had.
And that was what the Dreamer’s unfortunate men had become. Just another serving of appetizers.
I’d studied the hundred foot high wall from the hilltop. Close up now, I can see that its interior surface is mirror smooth. Even a giant snake would have found it hard to climb. But that’s clearly not what it did when the food sources inside the walls ran out. When it had to venture outside Big Ranch and seek food elsewhere—like in the empty towns around this area. Which is where it probably is now.
I look at what remains of the gate that once closed off the entry to Big Ranch. It was not just pushed open. The heavy metal was bent as it was battered, then it was levered off its runners by a giant, rock-hard head. Just how strong does a creature have to be to be able to do something like that? I feel a chill go down my back.
The two survivors told how their bullets could not pierce its skin, so they’d aimed for its eyes. But that didn’t work either. But the eyes of snakes are not soft and moist like those of birds and mammals. Snakes have no eyelids, just clear scales. When they shed their skin the scales over their eyes peel off as well. The heavy rounds just ricocheted off its eyes.
You can do this, girl.
Right.
Be careful, Lozen. Both my memory and my Power are telling me that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Inside
I’m still standing just outside the gate leading into Big Ranch, thinking about one of Mom’s stories. The one about the Swallowing Hill.
Long ago, Mom said, there was a huge being they called the Swallowing Hill. It was a monster so big that it looked like a small mountain. Whenever any person or any animal came close enough, it would open its mouth and suck them into its belly.
Coyote noticed that the people and the animals were all disappearing. When he found out they were all being sucked in by the Swallowing Hill, he got an idea. Coyote is always getting ideas.
But this was a good one.
Coyote got his sharpest flint knife. He wove a strong belt out of fibers and tied that knife tight to his waist. He also made four torches out of cedar bark and tied them to his belt as well. He put a hot burning coal and some dry decayed wood to keep that coal alive into a clam shell. He put that clam shell into his bag. Then Coyote was ready and he went walking along to the place where he knew the Swallowing Hill lived.
Sure enough, it sucked him into its belly.
As soon as Coyote was in the monster’s belly, he used that coal and that punk to make a fire and lit one of his torches. He looked around. It was all moist and pink and warm in there. The air smelled bad and it was hard to breathe. By the light of that torch he could see all the people and all the animals. They all looked weak and sick.
“Coyote,” they said. “now the monster has got you, too.”
“Are you sure about that?” Coyote replied.
Then he went walking. As he walked along he spoke.
“Where am I now?” he asked.
“You are in my belly,” answered a deep voice that came from all around him.
“That is interesting,” Coyote said. “I have never been here before.”
“Who are you?” the deep voice asked.
“I’m just walking around,” Coyote said,
and as he kept walking he lit his second torch.
The passageway got narrower as Coyote walked. “Where am I now?” he asked.
“You are in my chest, Just-Walking-Around,” came the answer. “What are you doing?”
“Looking,” Coyote said as he kept walking.
Now he could hear a sound like a drum beating. He lit his third torch and walked toward that sound. He came into a red chamber. In the middle of it was a big pulsing thing that hung from the ceiling. It looked like a huge ball and was the color of blood. It was making that sound like drumming.
“What is this?” Coyote asked.
“Just-Walking-Around, that is my heart,” the voice answered.
“That is good,” Coyote said, taking his sharp flint knife from his belt.
“What are you doing, Just-Walking-Around?” said the deep voice. It sounded frightened.
“I am just killing you,” Coyote said. He stabbed the heart of the Swallowing Hill with his knife and Swallowing Hill died.
Then Coyote went back to the other animals and people. He used his knife to cut a hole in the Swallowing Hill’s side and let everyone out. Swallowing Hill’s body turned into a real hill and it is still there to this day.
That is what Coyote did.
So, is that my brilliant plan? Get that giant snake to swallow me? Then pull out my Bowie knife and kill it from inside its belly?
Are you kidding me? No way am I going to do that. A constrictor squeezes its prey until all the air is pressed out of its victim’s lungs. Its victim dies before it is swallowed. And even if I was swallowed whole without one of those nice warm hugs, the stomach acid inside a snake would turn me into mush. It’s strong enough to digest an entire giant crocodile, armor-plated scales and all.
The only way I would get out of the belly of Mr. Super Snake would be as whatever is left of me inside a big pile of reptile scat!
I don’t even know if Super Snake is home today. One way to find out. I hold up my hands and turn slowly, waiting for the touch of my Power.
There! The warmth that suddenly begins to burn the center of my open hands tells me that my enemy is not within the walls. But it is closer than I would like . . . and getting closer. I can feel it.
But I don’t see anything. Especially not a two-hundred-foot-long reptile. And why is that? The reason comes to me right away—fortunately a little faster than the monster that is slowly crawling my way. It’s approaching me from the outside. I can’t see it yet because it is still hidden by the curve of the gigantic wall. What next? Get on the bike and pedal as fast as I can, either back up the hill or along the roadway up to Doc Samson’s castle?
Not that good an idea. Though its approach is slow and stealthy right now, as soon as I try to make a break for it Super Snake will speed up for sure. And who knows how fast a giant snake can crawl?
Hide?
But where?
My Power is pulling me forward. I put the bike aside where I hope Super Snake will ignore it, then I take one step, and another, until I am standing within the arc of the entranceway through the wall. As is the case throughout its mammoth length, the wall is eighty feet thick at its base and tapers up a hundred feet until it is forty feet wide at its top. The surface of the entrance tunnel is ornately decorated with twining bas relief vines and flowers, a duplicate of the imitation rain forests that once thrived within Big Ranch. Nothing like it could be constructed today. To build it must have cost billions of creds. But money was no object and no problem in the pre-Cloud world.
I can feel the big snake getting closer. I try to calm my breathing, feel what my Power is telling me. I hold out my hand and feel it drawn forward as if it was a piece of iron being attracted by a magnet.
There. An ersatz vine that thrusts out from the inner surface and looks most like a doorknob or a handle. I grasp it, twist it, feel it start to turn.
Let it be simple. Let no electronic key be needed. Let it be unlocked.
The click of the latch comes just as an impossibly huge head, wider than a banquet table begins to appear around the outside of the entryway. Its eyes are deep and black as midnight, gleaming with malignant intelligence.
Its thought washes over me, rank and sickening as the stagnant water in the swamp. Not words. Just an image of my body crushed by the snap of its jaws that look big enough to swallow one of our long-gone-back-to-rust maglev buses.
Got you!
Oh no, you don’t!
I dive through the opening as Super Snake’s head strikes down where I was. The stairs start so close to that door that I slam into them and almost bounce back out the opening. Almost, but not quite. My out-thrust hands hit the door frame and I push myself back to land sprawling on the first wide stair.
Who cares about form when your life is on the line? The snake is right there on the other side of the door. It thuds again and again against the door frame. The door is still open, it can’t get through. Its head is at least twice as wide as the doorframe, which is made of the same impregnable material as the rest of the wall and not breaking.
Ka-boom. Ka-boom. The echoing sound of Super Snake’s noggin bouncing off the unyielding surface reverberates through the hollow stairway like the beat of an immense drum.
Now might be the time to try my plan. If it will just open that big mouth.
I reach back for my pack. As always, it is tightly strapped to my back. Thus it stayed with me as I dove to safety.
But as I do so, one very large and much-too-knowing eye peers at me through the doorway. And before I can undo a single strap—whoosh—Super Snake’s head is whipped back out of sight.
Am I going to lean out that doorway to see where it went?
Am I feeling suicidal right now?
I start up the stairs. It’s a winding climb, but I manage to reach the top without running into any obstacles. There’s just enough light from the open door at the bottom for me to see the handle on the hatchway overhead. I lift it and step out. I am atop the wall. I walk to peer down over the waist-high railings into Big Ranch.
Quite a view from up here. The roadway that runs the inner length of the encircling wall is in front of me. Not only is it as wide as a highway, fifty yards down to my left are two maglev Caddies. Both as dead as the industrial system that birthed them. I look over the outside wall. No sign there of my would-be meal companion. (His meal, that is.) Is he inside now? I walk to the other side of the wall and look down again into Big Ranch. Nothing moving but the bubbles on the stagnant pond. No giant reptile hungry for my flesh visible down there, either. I suppose I am safe for now. At least I hope so.
But there are two things that I know for sure.
Numero Uno, my serpentine adversary is somewhere down there.
Numero Dos, Super Snake has not forgotten about me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A Simple Plan
As I walk along the wall, never taking my eyes off the ruined panorama of the thousand acre serpentarium below me, I’m wondering if my idea is going to work.
“Sometimes the simplest plan is the best.” That is what Dad told me.
But is my plan so simple that it is just plain stupid? How could something that big move that fast? I hadn’t expected that. Somehow, in my mind, I’d pictured the giant gemod anaconda as being slow, ponderous. But the creature I’ve just seen and narrowly escaped is far different from that. Rather than bloated and fat, its huge body is rippled with muscle and it moved as sudden and deadly as the snap of a steel trap. And then there is the intelligence that I read in its cat-like eye as it studied me through the doorway.
A shiver goes down my back again at the thought of that measuring gaze. That last look it gave me before it suddenly whipped its head out of sight. It was not an angry or frustrated look. I could feel that. Instead it was a look that seemed almost amused, a knowing, self-confident, arrogant stare.
And the thought came to me then, just as it returns to me now, that even though I have a plan to kill it, the giant snak
e has a plan of its own that ends with me down its gullet.
But what could the snake’s plan be? Although the great snake is even bigger than I had expected—the result, I suppose, of consuming uncounted tons of other cold-blooded main courses, as well as the unfortunate populations of nearby towns—it still is not large enough to reach up to the top of this wall. Its weight is so immense that even with its great strength, lifting more than a third of its two-hundred-foot body shouldn’t be possible. And the inner side of the ring wall around Big Ranch is still as concave and glassy smooth as it was when it was first made. The only ways up to the top of the wall are almost certainly no wider than the staircase I just took—relatively narrow entrances, tunnels, and stairways.
Does that means I’m safe up here? Maybe. But I am also still trapped. And I have only enough water in my canteens to last me for a few days at most. I could go back down that stairway and try to make a run for it. But that may be what Super Snake is expecting as it lies in wait.
Not only that, I would be leaving a trail for it to follow. Right back to Haven, whose walls are far from impregnable to something that big. I can only guess at why it didn’t follow the survivors of the Dreamer’s last expedition—perhaps it was sated enough with their friends that the trail went cold before it attempted to do so. Much as I hate to admit it, selfish as the Dreamer’s primary motive may have been for sending me here after that mirror, the secondary duty he assigned to me—of getting rid of this creature—is the kind of job I was made for. It is right that I am here.
Sooner or later, that creature’s appetite would have brought it to Haven. The picture that comes to my mind is far too vivid. Walls being crushed by its coils, buildings broken by its immense bulk, our weapons having little or no effect as it seeks out its screaming prey.
Time to hunt.
Uncle Chatto was the best hunter in our family. His advice comes to my mind.
“Prepare.” One simple word that meant so much. Prepare your mind, prepare your weapons.
Killer of Enemies Page 13