Guy Smith - Snakes

Mounting the stairs, his feeling that all was not well escalated with each step and then when he was almost at the landing the stench hit him, a vile odour that brought back memories of those hours he had spent in the laboratory at university carrying out experiments on dead creatures, steeling himself to the stink of dissected bodies, intestines, blood. Offal.

God, this place stank. I don't know what the hell's happened, maybe I should go for the police. You might as well check first.

He recoiled in the bedroom doorway, had to lean against the wall for support, heaved and almost threw up, wanted to turn and flee and would probably have done so had his legs not suddenly weakened until they were scarcely able to support the weight of his body.

The crumpled bed sheets were soaked in blood which had saturated the mattress and dripped right through to form a pool on the carpet beneath. The wails were splashed and streaked with crimson, and a vile slimy matter which he recognised instantly as human intestines, adhered to the flowery wallpaper in places, hanging down in strings. A human intestinal explosion had taken place, whoever had been in this room had been crushed with such force that they had burst. And then disappeared, the remnants of the corpse vanished completely.

It was the python, of course. Even in his state of dazed shock John Price read the scene as others might read a book. The constrictor had entered by the open window—had scented a victim inside and scaled the wall by means of a convenient drainpipe; no trouble at all. Then, having devoured its prey, it had returned whence it had come. And that was what was eluding everybody, the whereabouts of the snakes' lair.

He went back downstairs, holding on to the stair-rail the whole way. Shaken, repulsed, he vomited outside on the drive. If Mrs Doyle was the victim then where was her son?

The operational HQ had an atmosphere of confusion about it; groups of police and soldiers clustered outside around the vehicles; a meeting of some kind was being held in the small office. John recognised Burlington, Colonel Marks, Chief Inspector Watts and several others through the open window, caught a buzz oflow voices.

'You can't go in there, sir.' A uniformed sergeant barred his path to the door.

'I ... have to . . .'

'I'm sorry, sir.'

'There's been a ... killing. Another death.'

The officer puffed his cheeks out, closed his eyes, opened them again. 'Who? Where?' His voice was low, tired.

'The council houses .. . the Doyles ... I'm not sure which one, Mrs Doyle probably. It was the python.'

'We'll get somebody up there right away.' The sergeant gave some instructions to another officer in the doorway, turned back to the zoologist. 'There's problems this morning. PC Aylott vanished during the night shift. We don't think it's the snakes, he just appears to have walked out. His nerve might have cracked, we don't know. Anyway, it's not up to me to say.'

'Where are we going to search today?' John was still shaking from his experience; the last thing he wanted was another day in the burning sun bashing out thick undergrowth.

'We'll be told soon,' the policeman replied. 'Until then you'll just have to hang around like everybody else.'

It was another ten minutes before the superintendent emerged from the building, those lines in his features etched even deeper, his voice husky as though he had done a lot of talking and his vocal cords were on the verge of packing up.

'There is the possibility that we have another snake casualty.' He addressed the crowded driveway, commanded an instant silence. The listeners felt the tension, the sudden change in those around them. 'We cannot be sure at the moment but it seems that way. Also we have one of our officers missing but again we do not know if that is directly linked to the current crisis. We must, therefore, for the safety of this community, assume that the snakes have not left the area. We have searched for them diligently, and for that I thank every one of you, but now the time has come when we must change our tactics. We shall not let up on the offensive but priority has to be given to the defence of this village. We must guard every house 24 hours a day, leaving just a small band to continue the search. No more lives must be lost. Let us hope that we can conclude this terrible business in as short a time as possible.'

John Price moved away back out on to the road. They would not be needing him today, maybe not again. The searches over the last few days had yielded nothing, he had not come up with a magical formula for finding the serpents' hidden lair, so he had not been much use after all. They could dispense with him now. The authorities resented civilian help, you could sense it even if they did not put it into words. They used you just so long as you were useful to them.

He had the rest of the day to kill somehow; the rest of the week, month, year. Except for Aunt Elsie's funeral tomorrow he had no plans. That was when being unemployed hit you; you had no plans, nobody had any for you. Just hang around, John Price. The game of eternal waiting, building up futile hopes.

A police van passed him, It would be going up to the Doyles. He grimaced. He wondered again where Keith had gone. And Aylott. There were a lot of disquieting, unexplained mysteries right now.

Something interrupted his thoughts, a movement breaking into his morbid reverie, a small creature darting across the road, long body, reddish brown fur, streamlined. A half-jar on his nerves, alarm bells starting to ring in his system and then cutting out because it was a false alarm. These days everything that moved had to be a snake until proved otherwise.

He identified the animal just as it was disappearing into the overgrown verge on the opposite side of the road. A stoat, the fiercest of all British mammals for its size. A predator. A killer of...

His brain was beginning to click, a human computer assimilating facts, processing data. A killer of snakes, certainly, but only small ones; grass snakes like die one that had caused his aunt to have a heart attack, adders .., not big ones like those that had escaped but . . .

. . . family mustelidae, comprising stoats, weasels, otters, .pine martens, polecats and . . .

His pulses were beginning to race, his computer was coming up with the answer, had already given it to him but he was barely able to accept it in his excitement. Family mustelidae, the ferret family, and the Big Daddy of them all—the mongoose.

Jesus Christ Almighty, why hadn't he thought of it before, the one creature that was the nemesis of all snakes, at one time imported from India to Latin America to control a plague of reptiles. Rikki-tikki-tavi, the mongoose hero invented by Rudyard Kipling, the creature that fought and overcame a cobra and a krait.

It was the answer, the only solution to the crisis in Stainforth, Juvenile excitement took him over, almost had him sprinting back to the station. Superintendent, I've hit on the answer, all we need is a pair of mongooses. They'd find the snakes, kill 'em too. The whole thing could be over in an hour or two. You're crazy, laddie. We can't go loosing more wild animals into the countryside, contravening the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981. Look what happened when a few mink escaped and bred, the scourge of domestic animals, poultry, rivers. And we've never got rid of the rat-like grey squirrel since some bloody idiot thought it would be great to have a few of them in the suburban parks and gardens. It wouldn't work, we wouldn't allow it.

You wouldn't allow it but it would work as far as the snakes are concerned. Isn't human life more important than ducks and geese and trout in the rivers? It was a matter of conscience, not a decision to be taken at a desk somewhere far removed from the danger. His decision.