by Guy N Smith
Then not thinking, lying there stupefied, oblivious to his pain and his injuries, sprawled across the shot-blasted corpse of a coral snake whilst its mate was trying to reach it.
The live snake's anger had subsided, its killing fury gone as quickly as it had come. Now its agitation was caused by grief, a disbelief that its mate was dead, unable to understand. Rubbing itself on the mutilated body, desperately trying to revive it. Failing.
Peter Eversham's head fell back and the cigarette which had adhered to his lower lip was dislodged, rolling and bouncing away in a shower of sparks, coming to rest against a barley stalk; fizzing, the green growth smouldering, giving off a pungent wisp of smoke that had the bereaved coral snake backing off in alarm.
The sparks were fanned by the faint night breeze, burst into a little yellow flame that almost failed, grew again and licked out at the next piece of undergrowth. Catching again. Spreading; the dead man's clothes singed, ignited, gave off a stench of roasting human flesh. Death and instant cremation.
The surviving snake fled terror-stricken before the advancing flames, its mate forgotten, the strongest instinct of the wild taking over, one that had been passed on to it by its mother in a far-off land across the Atlantic. Survival.
Only after that would its thoughts return to revenge.
Chapter 9
JOHN PRICE had remained in the bungalow after they had taken Aunt Elsie's body away simply because he had nowhere else to go. A little voice inside his head whispered, 'It's your bungalow now, John. You know very well she's left it to you in her will. Quite a nice little nest-egg for you.' Shut up, I'm not interested.
Oh God, what a damnable thing to happen. And he couldn't even hate the escaped snakes for it because it was nothing to do with them, would have happened anyway. Elsie Harrison had left the back door ajar, an inquisitive grass snake had found its way in, and as a result she had suffered a heart attack. What bloody rotten luck!
He knew he would stay on in Stainforth, maybe for quite some time because now he had a home here even if he did not have work. For the moment he had a job; oh yes, help us find these snakes before anybody else gets killed. Now a western diamondback rattler had been shot in the village and that was going to scare an awful lot of people. Up on the moors, even on the grassy slopes, was another world, near enough to be interesting but when a rattler turned up in the village itself then folks really began to mess their pants.
John made himself a cup of coffee, knew he had a lot of thinking to do. Somehow he and the rest of the police and army searchers had got it all wrong. They had settled for the obvious, the most wild and desolate place. OK, the rattler could just be one that had stayed behind—or two, because there was a pair of them according to the inventory. So there was certainly another one not too far away. He found himself glancing around the kitchen; you're getting jumpy, John Price.
He had just sipped his coffee when he heard the first fire engine go by; a few seconds later another followed in its wake. More traffic, a police car.
John Price opened the door and that was when he smelled the smoke, life-stifling fumes, choking, burning vegetation. The sky was aglow, a deep smoky red, activity everywhere. His eyes smarted; it was surely a heath or woodland fire and this was the last thing they needed in Stainforth with killer snakes on the loose. So much for tomorrow's carefully laid plans; anything could happen now.
He closed the door, went outside. Wherever the fire was the smoke could well drive the reptiles out from their hiding places, disperse them in all directions.
And infuriate them.
Being a single parent in a village like Stainforth was both a source of embarrassment and bitterness as Barbara Brown knew only too well. Tall and lanky, she was 'not bad-looking' as most of the youths in Stainforth agreed, but she wasn't the sort of girl you could get worked up over. Some boasted of having 'had her' after youth club, others kept quiet about it. 'Respectable' parents worried about their sons associating with her, to some she was just a joke, 'the village boot' as they referred to her.
But in reality Barbara was no local whore, merely an unfortunate and misunderstood girl who craved affection and could not find it. She had been desperate for a steady boyfriend from the time she reached fifteen and she had grossly misunderstood the attentions of the teenage boys at youth club; she genuinely thought that when one of them slipped his arm through hers and led her up behind the ramshackle Nissen hut that had served as a youth club since the war ended, it was because he felt for her, loved her. It took her a long time to cotton on to the fact that all the rough element of the local male population were interested in was their own pleasure. And that was how it was for three years, hopes built and dashed, and no chance of a permanent relationship.
Barbara's father had walked out on her mother when Barbara was eleven; he had an affair with a woman in the next town, and he left home to go and five with her. Betty Brown did not seem to care as long as she had enough money to buy forty fags a day; every evening she went down to the pub and usually got-air the free booze she wanted there. Barbara remembered the time her mother brought a boyfriend home. Bill was several years older than her and unemployed, and he used to stop overnight on occasions, sharing Betty's bed. Eventually he moved in permanently.
The young girl felt that she was in the way, the hints that a lot of girls leave home and set up in a flat on their own hurt her. She would have left if she had had the opportunity, but with no money and no job the idea was little more than a pipe dream. She was jealous of her mother, too. How was it that a woman of forty-five got a steady boyfriend whilst she, at seventeen, was still searching for a relationship?
It was on the cards that Barbara would get herself pregnant eventually. Some of Stainforth's youths had standing bets on it; a quid she's got one in the oven before she's eighteen, 50p it's a boy. And a fiver says it's Ted Growson's. But nobody would ever conclusively prove that it was Ted's because there were three or four of the younger men who would be reluctant to help with an inquiry concerning the fathering of the Brown baby, and even if they were willing it was very doubtful if anything could be proved conclusively.
Barbara had her baby three months after her seventeenth birthday and it cost George Rowley a quid. Tom Sproson forked out 50p because it was a boy but that fiver was still unclaimed and Ted Growson's girlfriend had blacked his eye but that did not prove anything.
Life underwent a drastic change for Barbara Brown after she returned to Stainforth from the maternity hospital. Her own mother didn't want to know the baby. 'If you get doin' them kinda things, Babs, then you gotta take the consequences for it,' Betty mumbled from behind her cigarette. 'You can stop 'ere but don't let that baby get makin' a row in the night, 'cause me and Bill needs our sleep.'
Somehow Barbara muddled through, relied on inborn maternal instincts to help her. In her own way she was happy, she had somebody who loved her even if baby Michael taxed her patience to its limits. Often in the night she nursed him to stop him from crying, sat up in bed with eyes heavy from lack of sleep, because if Michael had a screaming fit Bill would bang on the flimsy adjoining bedroom wall, yelling, 'shuddup'. But usually on fine days she could catch up on her sleep whilst her son slept in his second-hand pram in the garden. Overall, everything worked out, more or less.
Yesterday she had kept him indoors because of the snakes warning. They had kept doors and windows closed in accordance with the policeman's instructions and Michael had been restless, crying for long periods, and Betty had lost her temper. 'Don't know what the bloody place is comin' to,' she had screeched. 'You can't go out 'cause they reckon there's snakes on the loose but I never seen none. So we all stops inside and that flamin' babby 'owls his bleedin' 'ead off. Well, we ain't standin' for this day after day. It makes Bill proper niggly and then 'e gets on at me. You take it from me, Babs, there ain't no snakes in the village, if there are any they're up on the moors. You put the babby out tomorrow, 'e won't come to no 'arm.'
There had been a
big fire in the night, Roberta's barley field ablaze, the smoke pall hanging over the village so that the inhabitants of Stainforth had to keep their windows shut anyway. The smoky night air was filled with the demonic howling of fire engine and police sirens, everywhere eerily aglow with an orange hue, vehicles coming and going all night long.
By dawn the fire was out but the stench of burning lingered, would hang around for days, flaked ashes floating in the slight breeze like a black summer snowstorm.
'It won't do Michael no good out there,' Barbara had said as she helped herself to the sawdust-like remains of a packet of cornflakes, her baby held to her bosom with her free arm, seemingly unable to make up his mind which breast he wanted to feed off first. Bill was still upstairs in bed; he rarely put in an appearance before midday.
'It wunna 'urt 'im,' Betty Brown screwed up her face into her usual expression of perpetual discontentment. 'Trouble with babbies today is they're pampered. If 'e lived in the town then he'd have to put up with petrol fumes and the like and learn to like 'em. A bit o' smoke never 'urt nobody. Bill'll go mad if 'e 'as to put up with 'im indoors all day again today.'
So, with some misgivings, Barbara wheeled the pram out on to the square of grass at the rear of the council house, found Michael a patch of shade beside the single struggling lilac bush and secured the pram's rickety brake.
'You go to sleep, darlin', like a good little boy.' She fixed the hood, pulled the stick of beads across for him to play with if he had the inclination, and placed his rattle on the coverlet. He looked like he might just go to sleep. 'You have a nice sleepy-byes, my love, and in a bit mummy will come out and move your pram so that the sun doesn't shine in it. See you in a bit, lovey.'
Michael gurgled, but he did not start to shriek when she tip-toed away. Thank God, for that. After all that commotion last night she needed to sleep for an hour or two.
She turned back at the doorway for one last look. Silence from the pram, maybe he was asleep already. She coughed; this smoky air wouldn't do anybody any good, worse than smoking fags all day long like her mother did. No good for the lungs.
There was a lot of activity in the surrounding area again today. Two helicopters flying back and forth on the hillside below the moors, a steady drone that could be either soothing or get on your nerves, depending on what sort of mood you were in. Cars up and down all the time. She shrugged her shoulders, went inside and upstairs. There was no sign of her mother, perhaps Betty Brown had decided to go back to bed and keep Bill company. The pair of them must get bored, she decided, with nothing to do all day except moan at somebody whose life was taken up looking after a baby.
Barbara stripped off her clothes and lay on the bed. Christ, it was going to be hot again today; she hoped Michael would be all right out there. In an hour or so she would go out and check him.
She felt sure that the father of her baby was Ted Growson; it could have been Alun Donnison but she thought the odds were in favour of Ted because the time of the month had been right that Sunday afternoon when she had gone up on to the moors with him. It could just be Alun's though. Not that it really mattered which of them had fathered her child because she would not want to be shacked up with Ted or Alun. They were OK for an hour or two on a date but living with them would be like living with Bill in the next room, all booze, fags and sleeping in late.
Barbara wished she could get away from Stainforth, just walk out of the village pushing Michael in his pram and never come back. A fantasy, because she didn't have any money nor anywhere to go. So that was that and she would have to stay put. Bill had threatened to throw her out on occasions and that was something that really worried her, in fact she had almost mentioned it to the health visitor last week but she didn't want to cause a rumpus.
Her eyelids began to droop. Those helicopters up on the moor were soothing, like the distant drone of bees on the heather. The sort of sound that could send you off to sleep whether you were tired or not.
Barbara woke with a start, sat bolt upright, knew instinctively that she had overslept. She fought to focus her bleary eyes, saw that the cheap alarm clock on the dresser said 2.30. And it was always half an hour slow. Oh, Christ! She leaped off the bed, grabbed her crumpled dress and shrugged it over her head. Michael was overdue for his next feed. It was a wonder he hadn't been screaming the place down, with Bill yelling, 'Shaddup, you little bugger,' or, 'Jesus, somebody go and throttle that babby.'
She ran downstairs barefooted. Bill and Betty must still be in bed or else they had gone down to the pub for a lunchtime pint. That was one bit of bonus peace anyway. Michael had obviously slept right through, which was fine except that in all probability he would not want to sleep tonight. You couldn't win, you were backing a loser whichever way you looked at it.
He must have just woken up. As she stepped out of the back door into the hot charred atmosphere she heard his rattle clicking, or it could have been the beads shooting from one end of the rod to the other.
'There's a good boy.' She quickened her pace across the rough unmown grass. 'He's ever such a good boy. He knew his momma was tired so he's played with his rattle and let his momma get some sleep. I'm going to feed you now, my darling'
She grasped the handle of the pram, pulled it round so that it was back in the shade of the lilac again.
And then she let out a piercing scream that filled the smoky Stainforth air, dung on to the pram in rigid terror. Michael was up in the far corner and it was quite obvious that he was dead, his tiny pink face bloated and purplish, head back, eyes wide and staring, tongue lolling lifelessly out of his open mouth.
In that instant Barbara Brown's mind snapped. She stopped screaming, failed to wonder why Michael's rattle was still clicking and clinking even though he was dead. She reached across to grab him and at that moment the crumpled coverlet moved and from beneath it a living coil began to unfurl, a light-coloured creature with diamond-shaped markings on its back, a head with fangs bared, rearing up, a killer that had patiently lain in ambush beside the corpse of its fast kill.
It struck; once, twice, thrice. Darting blows, each one finding their mark on arms and face. She screamed again, fell back clutching at the pram, toppled it over so that it threw both baby and snake to the ground.
She was doubled up with pain, her brain unable to cope, staggering blindly away, falling once and picking herself up. Oblivious of her own safety, the thoughts of a mother only for her baby, refusing to accept that he was dead. She ran but the snake did not follow; it moved with amazing speed that could easily have overtaken her had it so wished, turning and slithering away beneath the thick lilac bush; eased its way beneath the hedge and into the undergrowth beyond.
Barbara did not run back into the house. No logical reason except perhaps that she had long ago given up asking her mother for help in any matter relating to baby Michael. Instead, she staggered down the front path, through the open gate and out into the road.
The pain was unbearable, anybody except a distraught mother still clinging to the hope that her offspring might be saved, would have collapsed and succumbed to the writhings and convulsions usually caused by a rattler's bite. Somehow she remained upright, staggering, holding on to parked vehicles for support, yelling insanely, her lips blue and puffed, swelling rapidly so that by the time a group of bystanders rushed towards her she was babbling incoherently.
She tried to wave an arm back the way she had come, attempted to scream, 'My baby, save my baby from the snake,' but she only managed a groan.
And that was when her brain and body gave out and she slumped forward in the road.
In the crowd that had gathered somebody muttered 'I think she's dead.' '
Chapter 10
KEITH DOYLE had not been to work for two days, not since his nightmarish experience in the Evershams' garage. But he couldn't just sit at home doing nothing; the snakes might not be caught for weeks and it could cost him hundreds of pounds in lost earnings.
'Now, don't you get going o
ut gardening.' His mother turned from the sink, fixed him with a disapproving stare, a pleading, frightened look in her eyes. 'We don't want any more trouble. It's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack last time. I'll sit here worrying myself to death if you go out of the house.'
'There's nothing whatever the matter with your heart,' he snapped irritably. 'You're as fit as I am. You're just using emotional blackmail to try and keep me at home.'
'You'll be safe here.' She dried a plate vigorously, sensed that she was fighting a losing battle, decided to change the subject. 'How's Kirsten? You haven't brought her home lately, is everything all right between you?'
He bit his lip, had to stop himself from snapping, 'It's none of your business, Mother.' He had not seen Kirsten for three days now. After his experience with the rattlesnake at the Evershams' he had spent the whole evening being interviewed by reporters eager for the latest snake story, and when he had finally gone to meet Kirsten she wasn't there. She had probably given him up and gone home. He should have gone to her house but he didn't. Diplomacy, or was it just bloody cowardice? The next morning he phoned the drapery shop in town and Mrs Holloway's caustic voice informed him, 'She's not in today.' That was all, no reason, no 'Thank you for calling, she'll be in tomorrow.' Later he had tried to phone Kirsten at home but there had been no reply. And the phone rang unanswered again yesterday.
All sorts of fears crammed his frustrated mind, relegating escaped snakes to incidentals. Maybe the Davis family had left Stainforth for the time being, were keeping clear until it was safe. Kirsten's parents were like that, the kind who would have fled to America at the outbreak of war. They were the bloody cowards, not him.