Randy White - Seduced

I called, “Get rid of that pack-we’ll find it later. Are you stuck?” As I spoke, I yanked my right boot free. The effort suctioned my left leg deeper.

Roberta was having the same problem. “Geez… Dang it all! This is like trying to walk through glue. Do you think it would be better to crawl? You know, distribute the weight… Whoops!”

Again, she splashed forward, but was still in good spirits when she was upright again. She started to say, “I wish we had video of this because-” then stopped abruptly, her attention suddenly on something in the water to the right. I watched her expression go slack; her face drained ghostly pale. She attempted to speak through parted lips but couldn’t find words until instinct reverted to a child’s high-pitched wail. “Oh my god,” she screamed, “Hannah, what… what the hell is that?”

It was an alligator, I thought at first. No… the creature swimming toward her sailed too smoothly atop the water’s silver veneer. Gators ride low. This animal swam with its head up, as high and motionless as the prow of a Viking ship, while its body, fifteen feet long and as wide as my thigh, carved a curving, escalator wake.

It was a snake-a giant Burmese python. Ford, my biologist friend, had provided the name. Only twenty yards of water separated Roberta from the snake’s insect eyes and vectoring tongue.

“Dump that pack!” I hollered. “Get on your belly and crawl to the plane.”

She tried but only sank deeper. “Hannah, what should I…? Shit… I’m stuck. Goddamn it-do something. Throw me your machete! Oh Jesus Christ, it sees me-hurry…”

Panic helped me bust my left leg clear of the muck. I fell forward. I wrestled my right boot free. I fell forward again on my hands and knees. Survival instinct sent me crawling toward the trees. Then Roberta screamed another sickening plea for help-help from God, this time. Not me. I spun around. The python was there. It had stopped, its eyes at eye level with my friend’s face. A flicking tongue scanned her body for heat-two beating mammalian hearts thudded within. Roberta stared back at the snake’s massive head. She was panting, frozen, and still holding that damn pack instead of the machete she needed.

A microsecond later, the snake acted. The speed of its strike didn’t register. The thunk of fangs hitting bone did. Then the length of the reptile was on her; a writhing, coiled mass that boiled the water, and silenced a squealing plea that possessed no words.

When the python struck, I yelled something, no telling what, it all happened in such a blur. I belly flopped toward Roberta, then scrambled and crawled through mud, slowing only when I was close enough to know there was no turning back.

Rational thought played no role in what I did. My friend’s screams and wild thrashing were like an electric prod. The snake was too big to coil its entire length around Roberta yet tried to by swinging its tail section like a bullwhip in search of something more to grab onto. I lunged, got an arm around the animal’s girth-and was vaulted high out of the water, then slammed down into mud. I surfaced, fearing I’d lost the machete. But, no… the leather thong had kept it on my wrist.

I staggered up, anchored my feet in the muck, and waited, the machete poised above my head… waited for the tail section to writhe past me again. My god… the thing was huge. As thick as a log, so I used both hands and swung as if chopping wood. The snake’s back was a diamond pattern of yellow and black scales. When cleaved by steel, the skin split like a sausage, but the blade snagged for a sickening instant in bone. I pulled the blade free and swung again and again, missing a couple of times, but often the machete bit deep. My frenzy was such that it blinded me to the python’s head. Only at the last instant did the snake’s open jaws rocket into peripheral vision-not in time to stop the thing from burying its fangs just above my left elbow.

I went down beneath a relentless, seeking weight. The mesh bug jacket I wore became a tourniquet around my wrist. The snake spun; its teeth became a fulcrum. Desperately, I pulled the jacket over my head and wiggled my body free-all but my left arm. The snake’s head was tangled in the mesh. No… its teeth. The python had released me for some reason but could not free itself. We were locked in a gruesome tug-of-war that I was doomed to lose until Roberta, thank god, reappeared. She grabbed my belt, screaming, “Give it to me… give me the machete-I’ll kill that son of a bitch.”

She would have done it, too, but the mesh snapped at that instant. We both sprawled sideways into the water, then stumbled and staggered, in a panic, helping each other toward safety. We didn’t look back until we’d reached the plane.

The python was swimming away but on a confused course. My mind was slow to understand what had happened. The animal’s head was tangled in a ball of mesh-a jacket that had been impregnated with mosquito repellant. Chunks of its tail were attached only by skin because of the wounds I’d inflicted.

I pulled anchor; Roberta had to hop back in the water to spin the plane around so we could take off. Not until the doors were closed did we think about injuries. Wheezing, “Oh my god… Oh my god,” she stripped off her shirt and shorts, but her focus was on her abdomen, which was streaked with mud and yellow leaves. “Do you see any marks… teeth marks? Find something I can use as a towel. Oh Jesus, I can’t believe this is happening.”

I grabbed a bottle of water and an extra shirt from the back. While saying the reassuring things people do, I gently cleaned her belly until we could see there were no visible injuries.

“Scooch around,” I said, and checked her back, too. No cuts, or even scrapes, but there was a red, serrated welt across her shoulders as if she’d been slapped with a belt.

“Do you hurt anywhere else? What about your ribs?”

Roberta asked, “How about my lower back, near the kidneys? All I remember is not being able to breathe, that I would drown. My shoulders-it was like being crushed in a vise. But the water, that’s what saved me. The snake couldn’t seem to find the rest of me because my legs were underwater. I kept kicking.”

“No cuts,” I said, then asked again about her ribs.

“I don’t know, I didn’t hear anything crack. That slimy sonuvabitch! It bit you, Hannah, I saw it. Let’s have a look at your arm.”

A first-aid kit came out while I rolled up my left sleeve, for I was bleeding. We were both in shock. Neither could be sure what had happened. Roberta guessed the snake had struck her shoulder pack when she had lifted it as a shield-the same pack containing the camping shovel I’d ordered her to abandon.

“You should see a doctor anyway,” I said. By then, she had her clothes on and had started the plane.

“A psychiatrist, more like it,” she replied, “if we ever come back to this fucking place-without shotguns, at the very least. Oh my god, Hannah…”

“Now what?”

“Right there! Look at the size of that bastard.” She ruddered the plane around to give me a view out the starboard window.

A second python had appeared, swimming in pursuit of the wounded snake. This reptile was longer and heavier, with a head the size of a Doberman. I fumbled with my phone and managed a single, blurry photo while Roberta applied throttle, saying, “Screw it. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

Adrenaline can be a stimulant or a depressant. When we were airborne, there was no wild chatter, no nervous laughter. We each settled into ourselves, isolated by residual fear. Through the window, I watched the shadow of our rental plane cross miles of saw grass. It wasn’t until we were ten minutes from landing that I said, “You’ve got to promise me you’ll see a doctor.”