John Godey - The Snake

The streets were still clogged by official vehicular traffic. Police cars, fire engines, several ambulances. The fires in the park all seemed to be under control but smoke still climbed upward from a half-dozen different areas. The heat of the night seemed to have intensified, the humidity had thickened, and, where it reflected neon, the sky was the color of dirty blood.

"Hey, Mark, wait up."

Her voice reached him from the rear, and it sounded winded, so that he knew she must have been chasing him. She looked terribly pale, and he guessed that she had witnessed the slaughter of the black mamba.

She said, "I got a stitch in the side before, that's why I dropped out.

First time that's ever happened to me."

"Yes, well…" He really didn't feel like talking to anybody, even Holly. "It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"For me it is. I ran the marathon in the park the last two years and both times I damn near finished. I got blisters."

They were walking slowly, ambling, and people were staring at the Pilstrom tongs. A kid, about two inches taller than a fire hydrant, tried to grab the tongs. Converse lifted it beyond his reach and scowled at him. The kid collapsed to the pavement in laughter.

Holly said, "I just don't want you to get the idea that it would have been any trouble keeping up with you."

"Yeah."

"What does yeah mean?"

He noticed that she was carrying a pad and a ballpoint pen. "You were in the right place for a scoop, right?"

"You're going to have to stop using that word. Anyway, there were more reporters there than civilians-the dailies, the wire services, the television, the radio, and a reporter and a photographer from my own paper." She put the pad and pen into her bag. "I just made a couple of notes. You know, the old fireplug reaction."

He looked straight ahead as they walked, but he was aware that her face was turned up to him, in some sort of silent pleading or, at least, serious questioning. From time to time her shoulder brushed against him.

Then she reached for his hand. He withdrew it from her.

"Okay," she said. "You want me to go away?"

He shrugged.

"I guess I can take that any way I choose," she said. "I choose to take it as meaning that you don't want me to go but are too tight-assed to say so. Well, all right, but I can be tight-assed, too, and if I don't get any response soon-"

He reached down and took her hand.

"Better," she said. "But talk to me. Or at least look at me."

He said, choking with anger, "I could have bagged it. There wasn't any need to kill it."

She shook her head. -There was a need. The situation cried out for an execution, for catharsis."

"They savaged it to bits." He swore under his breath. "Screw it. Screw everything. Things will be better in Australia."

"You're thinking of going to Australia?"

"What's wrong with Australia?"

"It's too far."

"By plane?" He glanced at her face. "Oh, you mean too far from here?"

"I mean too far from me. Didn't you, for Chrisesake, know that's what I meant?"

"I'll only be gone a couple of months. Wouldn't you wait that long?"

"I could try, but we're living in a very impatient century. Nobody ever waits for anybody anymore."

He said, "You're not being reasonable."

"Right. Not being reasonable-that's what it's all about, Buster."

She looked angry, and there were tears in her eyes. Goddammit, Converse thought, I can't make up my mind this fast. I need time-say until we reach the next streetlamp.

The flames had swept over the burrow and scorched the earth black. They had set the fallen tree afire, and seared the two entrances, but they had not reached inside, and if the snake had remained in the burrow she might have survived unharmed.

She had mated in the spring at the breeding grounds near Elisabethville, and laid hereos in the burrow three days ago. If they survived hunting animals and the winter cold, they would hatch out in the spring.

Each egg that came to term would produce a twelve-inch-long black mamba, resembling the full-grown snake in every particular except color. Each would be light green on top, and pure white on the underside. Each would be highly aggressive, in the way of young snakes, and its venom, from the very instant of birth, would kill a large rat.

The snakes would grow very rapidly toward their mature size of ten or eleven feet. But, long before then, their venom would be potent enough to kill a man or a horse.

The eggs were approximately the size of a hen's eggs, oval in shape, and white in color. There were thirteen of them.