P Deutermann - The Moonpool

“I did say that, didn’t I. But I don’t know-you’re a pretty resourceful fella. You might yet get out of that hole you’re in. As long as you don’t manage that in the next twenty-four hours or so, I won’t care, of course.”

I wondered if that meant tonight was the big night. “So give me a hint,” I said.

“Okay, I will: What was her maiden name?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” I said. “I guess I just assumed Gardner was her maiden name, after two divorces.”

“Therein lies the tale, Lieutenant. Now: I have things to do, people to see. Some spectacular incidents to precipitate. That. 45 loaded?”

“Of course.”

“And you still have that baby penlight you were flashing around all over the place outside?”

I did, even if the single AA battery was running down. I realized then that it had stayed on when I dropped it. The tiny spot of white light was now yellow.

“Okay,” he said. “If it were me, I wouldn’t go shooting that hand-cannon of yours down there. Steel walls over hard-packed earth, sides and floor. What goes around will almost certainly come back around, if you follow me.”

“Why would I be shooting?” I asked.

“Because something’s coming for dinner,” he said.

The phone connection switched off. I put the thing in my pocket, retrieved and switched off the penlight, and then walked around the confines of the chamber. I tapped the side walls, and, although they seemed to be made of metal, there was obviously hard-packed earth behind them. They felt like brick walls. He was right about the. 45-there’d be ricochets forever. The dogs just sat there watching me, panting a little, and waiting for orders. I wished I had some for them, but this looked like a modern version of an oubliette. Then the shepherds both looked up at that black hole high up on the left side.

A soft sound, like grain coming down a silo chute, began to fill the air, and then an enormous snake head came into view, its black tongue flickering urgently. The triangular head was pale white and the size of a partially flattened regulation-size football. The snake looked around, saw me, and then saw the shepherds, who were raising hackles and backing up. Locking on to the dogs, the snake continued to emerge from the hole. The body was proportionally smaller than it should have been right behind that enormous head, but then began to swell as the thing reached the floor and began to spread across it.

I backed up right along with the dogs. Time began to slow down as more and more snake kept coming, the body getting thicker and thicker before finally slimming down to a vigorously switching tail, itself the size of a full-grown rattler. The cell phone began to vibrate in my pocket.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” Trask said when I picked up. “Albino Burmese python.”

“Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder,” I said, pulling out the. 45. Ricochets be damned, I wasn’t going to let that thing get a whole lot closer.

“Yeah, I get that,” he said. “She’s almost six meters, and did I mention that she’s hungry? She just loves a good dog for dinner.”

The snake wasn’t coiling, which surprised me. It lay full-length-out on the floor of the container in a big serpentine arc, that flat bone-white head maybe ten feet away, watching all three of us. At the moment, its six meters looked like six miles. Wearing two German shepherds, I backed against the front wall of the container, and aimed the SIG at the thickest part of the snake’s body. I recognized the smell now as the scent I’d picked up on the boat. Jungle smell, something rotting and hideously primitive. The tongue never stopped.

“She’ll go for the dogs, not you,” he said. “Unless you interfere, of course. But it’ll be a fairer fight than if you were, say, doing this in the swamp. See the tail? Nothing for her to hold on to down there. They need to anchor that tail to really throw coils.”

“I’m going to shoot this fucker, starting right now,” I said.

“Only if you can see her, Lieutenant,” he said. And then the overhead lights all went out. Almost immediately I heard that flowing-grain sound. I dropped the cell phone and nearly fired, but realized in time that that would be pointless. The penlight. Where was that goddamned penlight?

Both dogs began to growl deep in their chests as I fished for it in my pockets.

More sliding sounds, and that primordial stink was getting more pronounced.

My fingers closed in on the plastic light, and I popped it out of my shirt pocket. Tactical instinct took over as I held the light in my left hand, way out to one side, and pointed the SIG into the darkness. I switched it on.

No snake.

The light seemed a tiny bit brighter than it had been; maybe the battery had rested, or maybe it was just because the darkness was damned near absolute.

Where was the snake?

I scanned the floor of the container in an arc right in front of us, then sensed something looming to my right.

To my right, and up, not on the floor. I could feel the shepherds pressing harder against my legs.

I swept the light over there and found myself looking into that white snake face, which was no more than three feet away. The snake had lifted its forebody on its coils like a cobra, which still left about a half mile of snake on the floor behind it. Without thinking, I fired a round at that face.

The noise was terrific, a painful bang that hurt my ears and startled me into almost dropping the SIG. I felt the snap of the bullet as it smashed into the steel wall right behind my head, after clearly missing the snake altogether and then ricocheting around the container. Then something leathery and heavy whacked the side of my head as the snake finally struck, missing my face but ending up with its neck alongside mine for a single horrifying instant before it withdrew.

I lunged to the left before it could strike again and tripped over one of the dogs. We all ended up on the floor in a heap of scrambling legs. I still had the penlight but didn’t stop to relocate the snake. I yelled at the dogs to come and bolted for the other end of the container, flying blind along one slippery side until I came up against the back corner of the can. The dogs were still with me, trying hard to get behind me in the corner.

I pointed the tiny light out into the darkness of the container and listened. Then I realized I was providing a target and quickly shut it off. I didn’t know if a python could see well in the conventional sense or if, like a pit viper, it tracked by infrared. Either way, I didn’t want to help it find us.

I heard the sliding sound again. It was a huge snake, probably a couple of hundred pounds, and it was making no effort to be quiet. I pointed the SIG out into the darkness and tried to control my breathing, subconsciously aware that breathing was what the snake intended to attack. One of the shepherds growled and then barked. I again held the light out to one side and flicked it on. The snake was right in front of us, head low and flat above the floor, shifting sideways. Two huge coils of its trunklike body were rising behind it as it prepared to throw a hundred pounds or so of hungry muscle at one of us.

I fired again, twice this time, aiming at the body. I hit it once, and possibly both times. The coils collapsed on the floor with a sodden thump, but this time that head came up, way up, rising almost to the top of the container as the beast arched in response to the trauma to its body. I rolled to the right, keeping the light on the snake, the dogs tumbling with me. We collided with the other side and then scrambled all the way down to the door end. The penlight could no longer reach across the container, so I shut it off.

We listened.

I tried to tamp down my own heavy breathing. The shepherds were better at that than I was and didn’t make a sound, although I could feel their hearts going a hundred miles an hour. Like mine.