Andrew Klavan - If We Survive

That’s what I hoped his tone meant, anyway. I thought— I hoped—I prayed with all my might—that they were about to give up, about to turn around, about to go.

And I think they were planning to do just that—right up until the moment Nicki gasped.

It was a short sound but sharp and clear. Meredith moved fast and clamped her hand over Nicki’s mouth, holding her tight. Nicki’s eyes stared over Meredith’s hand and they looked about as large and bright as two of those big spotlights they use to announce a new movie.

I followed her terrified gaze and felt my belly fill with a blackness of terror and disgust.

A snake. Slithering up out of the stream. Twisting up over the mud. Coming right toward us. Right toward Nicki.

It wasn’t huge, but it was big enough, maybe four feet long and as thick around as a hot dog. It wasn’t the size that bothered me, though. It was the colors on its scaly skin. Bands of black and yellow and red. I didn’t know much about snakes, but I knew a little because there are some in California and you just hear about them from hikers and so on. And what I remembered was that there were two kinds of snakes with those sorts of colors: a harmless milk snake and a coral snake, one of the most deadly snakes alive. I remembered a little rhyme a science teacher, Mr. Larue, taught us once so we could tell the difference:

Red touches yellow kills a fellow. Red touches black, you’re all right, Jack .

I peered down narrow-eyed through the rain and saw that the bands of red on the twining creature’s scales touched the bands of yellow. It was a coral snake, all right. One bite from one of those and you were history. A lousy way to die.

In a panic now, Nicki was trying to draw her feet up away from the oncoming thing, but that just made her lose her footing so that her body slid down the mud wall toward it. I could hear her whimpering under Meredith’s hand as she realized she had to let her feet down into the mud to stop her fall. She planted her feet right next to the snake—and the snake didn’t like that. He lifted his head as if he were ready to strike, his tongue darting out of his mouth as his cold, blank, unfeeling eyes stared at Nicki’s sneakers.

Nicki, wide-eyed with terror, somehow managed to keep still. Finally, I guess the snake decided the danger had passed. He lowered his head to the ground again and went on slithering toward her.

Meanwhile, above us, I heard Mendoza speak again. I wasn’t sure what he was saying, but his tone of voice had definitely changed. He sounded discouraged before. Now he whispered harshly. An order, I thought. Then silence. Of course. Mendoza thought he had heard something—Nicki’s gasp. But he couldn’t be sure in all this hammering rain. And he still couldn’t see us, still didn’t know we were right beneath him. He was telling his men to listen. They were listening—in case the sound came again.

Shivering, I held my breath. I looked at Nicki. Meredith still had her hand clamped over Nicki’s mouth and Nicki’s eyes still beamed out over it, their brightness dimming as they filled with tears. I looked down and saw the coral snake. It was slithering now right over Nicki’s sneaker. I saw Nicki’s whole body give a huge, disgusted shudder. I saw the tears spill from her eyes. But somehow she managed to stay quiet, stay still.

There was quiet above me too as the rebels listened, waiting for us to make another noise so they could find us, kill us.

The snake slid slowly over Nicki’s sneaker, slanting upward toward Meredith’s leg. It paused to explore Meredith’s muddy slacks and then slid on over them at the shin. I looked up at Meredith. The sight of her shocked me. Up until now, even facing death before the firing squad, I don’t think I had seen the slightest trace of fear in her. Her courage, her steadiness were almost uncanny. But everyone’s afraid of something— that’s the truth. Everyone has something that they fear. And clearly, Meredith was terrified of snakes.

If she had seemed pale before—and, like I said, the cold and damp had turned her as white as marble—she now seemed gray and colorless as a corpse. A tinge of horrible zombie green had even entered her cheeks. And her eyes—they were red-rimmed and seemed almost lifeless with disgust.

But for all that, like Nicki, she didn’t move, she didn’t budge, as the snake made its slow, slithering way across her shin. She simply stared down at it with her dead eyes and her deathly pallor, giving one enormous shudder as the thing passed over first one of her legs and then the other.

Then it moved toward me.

A knot of disgust and fear rose in my throat—but before the snake got to me, it turned and headed back down the muddy slope toward the running water below.

At the same moment I heard Mendoza speak decisively.

“Vamanos.” Let’s go .

As I watched the coral snake nose its way back down into the stream, I heard the footsteps start up again above my head—the sharp, determined footsteps of the rebels moving away from us, moving back through the jungle toward the trail. Quickly, the sound of them faded. I heard Mendoza shout one more string of orders, his voice growing farther away with every word. I could tell the rebels were already back on the trail, already marching back toward the airstrip.

Cautiously, Palmer rose up again to peek over the top of the ravine. I watched him, waiting for him to give the signal that it was clear.

I saw him nod to himself and let out a breath, the tension flowing out of him.

He lowered himself until he was in the stream and came walking toward us along the ravine wall.

“They’re gone,” he said, still keeping his voice low.

With that, Meredith let Nicki go. Nicki immediately rolled away from her, sobbing violently. And for once, Meredith didn’t comfort her. She just bent forward and covered her own face with her hands. I heard her make a noise and I knew that she was crying too.

I reached out to her. I wanted to touch her shoulder, to comfort her, but somehow I didn’t have the nerve. I hated to see her so upset—but I couldn’t work up the courage to put my hand on her. I glanced up at Palmer. I saw him look down toward the water. He saw the coral snake moving away on the opposite bank of the stream. He nodded once, as he understood what had happened.

“Hey. You. Girl.” He nudged Nicki’s shoulder with his knuckle.

She gasped out of her sobs and stared up at him as if he were some fresh danger.

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Nicki,” she managed to say in a trembling voice.

“Good job keeping quiet, Nicki. Saved our lives. Personally, those snakes always make me shriek like a banshee.”

Nicki went on staring up at him as if she couldn’t comprehend what he was saying. Then she did comprehend. Almost at once, her sobs subsided to a series of smaller sniffles. She nodded her thanks. She was proud of herself.

Then Palmer looked up at me—and with one swift smooth motion, he pulled that giant hunting knife of his out of his belt.

“Hold still a second, kid,” he said.

Before I could even react—before I even understood what he was saying—his hand flicked like a bullwhip and the knife came flying toward me, flying straight at my face.

I didn’t have time to flinch. I didn’t have time for anything. The knife struck—plunged into the mud of the ravine wall—right next to me, right next to my head, maybe an inch or two away, no more.

I turned to look at it. And—I couldn’t help myself—I let out a sharp cry and scrambled away from the spot, slipping and splashing in the mud.

There on the mud wall, pinioned by Palmer’s knife, thrashing in its hideous death throes, was a spider the size of a loaf of bread. Really. I’m not exaggerating. The size of one of those big, round loaves of sourdough bread.