Snakes

  Snakes

  Guy N Smith

  Guy N Smith

  Snakes

  Chapter 1

  SUDDENLY THE child began to scream, piercing shrieks of terror that died down to shaking sobs, clutching at his mother so that his tiny ringers pinched her skin agonisingly through her flimsy summer dress.

  Veronica Jones grimaced in the deep green gloom of the reptile house, had to check herself from giving her five-year-old son one of her habitual cuffs across his head. She held him to her, closed her eyes momentarily, a human ostrich trying to hide her embarrassment from the ghostly white faces that turned in her direction. Trust the little sod to start playing up. You squandered a sizeable chunk of the weekly family allowance to give him a treat and this was how he repaid you. Outside he had complained of the heat incessantly, and shown more interest in playing with the gravel on the paths than looking at the zoo animals, not that there were many on show because the bloody place was closing down at the end of the week and the owners appeared to have got rid of a lot of the exhibits already. Conning you right up to the end, the money grabbers. And now Ian was frightened of the snakes.

  'It's ... all right,' she muttered and forced her eyes open.

  'I'm frightened, Mam.'

  'There's nothing to be frightened of.' she replied, hoping her tone was reassuring, but she could not keep her annoyance out of it. 'The snakes are all in glass cages. They can't get at you.' At least, I hope they can't.

  'That one .. .' the boy pointed to a large glass exhibit case with a shaking hand. 'He wants to kill me.'

  'Don't be so stupid,' she hissed, the way an angry snake might hiss, 'it...' her voice died away and she felt the sweat on her body turning cold, a clammy invisible hand stroking her, sliding up and down her the way that creature in the cage might do if it got out, A slimy reptile, revolting in every aspect. And deadly.

  Veronica tried to pull herself together. It was the heat that was affecting her just like it had upset Ian. Hell, it was hot outside but it was like a blast furnace in here. No air-conditioning, the lighting just a dim green glow designed to make these reptiles doubly sinister. All part of the creep show, like the spook house at the funfair. An extra quid to go in the snake house, half-price for children and we'll guarantee to scare the shit out of them so that neither you nor they will get any sleep tonight. You'll have to have the little boy in your bed tonight, ma'am, after he's seen what we've got in store for him.

  'I want to go home, Mam.'

  'You'll get a clip round the ear in a minute,' she breathed. 'I can see that I've wasted my money on you, but I'm going to have my money's worth. So shut your eyes and hang on to me if you don't want to look.'

  She was aware that he was trembling, shaking with sheer terror, afraid to cry out loud in case she hit him. 'You start blarting and see what you get,' she warned. 'Now, hold on to my hand and let's have no more of this nonsense.'

  Veronica Jones wanted to move on, a quick glance at each cage as she passed just to satisfy her own conscience. No more than a cursory glimpse and then back outside into the heat of a summer's day. Except that the crowd in here seemed to have swelled, a crush of bodies hemming her in. You aren't going anywhere, lady. You can't escape as easily as that. You've got to stay and look.

  She almost screamed, 'For God's sake let me out,' but she realised the futility of it. Nobody was interested in her, they didn't give a damn whether she lived or died. Just faceless shapes that were supposed to be people, aliens in a reptile den. Everybody just staring, gloating at the hideous things on the other side of the glass. Somebody was tapping on the front of a case, stabbing a finger at the hideous thing only a quarter of an inch away. You can't get at me, you bugger. You'll stop in there till you die. Go on, try and bite me. Go on!

  It was the same snake that had scared Ian. Veronica stared at the toad-like head, the large unblinking eyes, features that might have been left unchanged over a million years. Coiled, motionless, you didn't even know if it saw you, knew you were there. It could even have been dead. 'It's a bloody stuffed one,' someone said, but nobody laughed. Veronica felt the watchers move back half a pace; a man trod on her toe and it hurt but she stopped her self from crying out aloud. Don't make a noise, it might hear you. And it might get out.

  She found herself reading the illuminated notice below the aquarium-type cage. She read the printed words because for some reason she wanted to know just what kind of creature it was that remained motionless and scared you to hell.

  RUSSELL'S VIPER. One of the most feared snakes of India, Burma and Thailand. Its bite is usually fatal, but its venom is sometimes used in medication.

  Ugh! Veronica Jones hoped that she had never had any injected into her. You couldn't trust doctors these days, they got up to all sorts of tricks. That snake ought never to have been brought back to England, it should've been left in peace in India or wherever they'd got it. There should be a ban on importing such things. It moved!

  At least, she thought it did, although it could have been just her own start of fright. Everybody seemed to move back another half-pace and a clumsy shoe scraped the side of her sandalled foot again. Faces still staring, an entire audience hypnotised by that viper in its pseudo-jungle of no more than a cubic metre. Watching it intently, basking in their terror, though logically it could not get at them. All the same, the finger-poking jibes had stopped, the reptile's tormentor standing well back from the glass. He was scared too.

  And then its jaws opened, a reptilian cavern of sheer evil; the watchers felt its hate for them as if a dragon had breathed angry fire. Those glassy eyes fixed them, searched out every single one of them without so much as a blink or a movement of that squat head. A loathsome creature that loathed its captors with a malevolence that even plate glass could not shut in. You felt the sheer power of the viper, felt it turning your lathered sweat to an icy chill, drying out your mouth and weakening your legs, huddling you together; silent mass panic that made you incapable of flight. And if it got out then you wouldn't be able to do a damned thing to protect yourself.

  The Russell's viper's spell might have lasted a second or an hour. Veronica was aware of the others pressed up against her, of Ian pinching her flesh in his infantile terror but she made no move to push him away. Greenish silhouettes all around that might have been statues in some underground temple of snake worship. Bow before your lord and master and beg of him forgiveness and mercy.

  The snake's eyes were closed and suddenly everybody was moving, just a flexing of cramped limbs, turning one way, then another, as though they had become so disorientated that they had forgotten in which direction the exit lay.

  The atmosphere was heavy with the sour smell of human sweat. The tension had built up to a peak; it might have blown but instead it had subsided. You knew it was still there, though, and you wanted to get the hell out of here before something happened.

  'Mam, I want to go home.' A distant muffled familiar cry. She didn't want to hit her bastard son any more; suddenly she wanted to protect him, to shield him from this illogical evil. She thought for a moment that she might cry.

  'They're nasty things in cages.' She wished her whispers didn't echo, didn't quaver. 'Shut your eyes and think of something else. We'll be outside in a minute.'

  The queue had bottlenecked. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry any more. More glass cages, all lit with that same eerie glow. The horror show isn't over yet, folks.

  Oh, Jesus Christ, get a move on! Veronica stole a sideways glance, breathed her relief aloud. This case was empty, thank God. The thick glass acted like a mirror, threw her own reflection back at her.

  A little more personal care and she could have been attractive. A perm for that shoulder-length blonde hair; she didn't have the money, but a good combing and brushing wou
ld have helped to separate those tangled strands. Cosmetics would have masked the lines in her face, knocked five years off her, maybe even made her feel thirty again. The flowered cotton dress, the one she had picked up for 50p at a jumble sale down at the hall, clung wetly to a figure that was still sensuous. An observer could see that she wasn't wearing a bra, that she didn't really care any longer. The hardness was there in her expression, the compressed lips, the lines beneath the eyes, the resentment towards life.

  Once, almost six years ago, it seemed an eternity, she had been happy. Her boyfriend was going to rescue her from a life of downtown squalor and hardship, a man of some means was going to spirit her away from all this, take her someplace else where she could forget the past like a bad dream. Which was why she had let him have his way most nights and had not been too bothered about being careful.

  The same week that she discovered that she was pregnant Ken wasn't around. No goodbyes, no sudden heart-breaking parting; she was just on her own again, like it always used to be except that this time she was going to have a baby to look after. Ken didn't leave, he just didn't come any more, faded back into the mists of a background which she had not bothered too much to explore. Not a new story, just another one of many thousands. And the kid was a burden on her, a perpetual memory of what might have been if it had not all been a lie.

  Oh God, where was that bloody exit? The crowd had slowed, bunched again, not even jostling one another, staring at the glass cages on either side, transfixed, immobile. So hot you could scarcely breathe, drawing the humidity down into your lungs, holding on to strangers, afraid you might faint.

  Faces staring back at you, reptilian features seemingly distorted by the heavy glass so that heads and bodies were out of proportion. Evil masks; things that might have been dead, except that you knew they weren't. They fixed you with those awful penetrating evil stares. Wanted to get to you, to coil themselves around you, let you feel the coldness of their supple bodies as they slid over your flesh. Savoured their sadistic delight before they sank their venomous fangs into you. Slid to the floor with you; writhed with you until you died.

  Somebody screamed; another child, not Ian this time. Her son clutched her cold sweaty hand and she felt his sobs, his fear. He was shaking violently.

  'We'll soon be outside,' she said and her words echoed, hung in the sultry stillness as though to mock her.

  Her anger welled up, temporarily overcame that claustrophobic terror that had engulfed her. She wanted to push these stupid people who stood about obstructing her, bang on those glass cages with her puny fists and scream obscenities at their occupants. I hope you die in there!

  Instead she spoke loudly and surprisingly calmly. 'The zoo's closing in a couple of days. All the animals will have to go. These snakes will probably be put down, destroyed. Killed. They haven't long to live.'

  Silence. People turned, she was aware of them looking at her in the half-darkness, wondering who she was and how she knew. Sensing relief, jubilation; not a trace of pity. Kill the snakes, kill 'em all.

  And then her terror came back. A fleeting sensation but she knew she was not mistaken. She heard the rustling of reptilian bodies behind the prison screens, serpent shapes becoming erect, rearing up and seeking out the puny mortal who had voiced her contempt, dared to issue a threat to the deadly killers from the swamps and jungles of the world.

  Veronica cowered, wanted to throw up her hands to shield her eyes from them, but Ian was clinging on to her in a panic-stricken determination. Again she had to look, meet their gazes, found herself muttering incoherent apologies for her blasphemy in this temple of serpents.

  We shall not die, Human. Our hour is nigh and soon we shall be free and there will be nowhere for Man to hide. Our vengeance will be terrible.

  Suddenly everybody was pushing and shoving, a once-dormant crowd that had awoken from a nightmare and was stampeding towards the dim neon exit sign. You went with them because you had no choice, swept along by a tide of panic, away from the evil green fluorescence towards a shaft of sunlight. Euphoria that it had all been a trick of the mind, your imagination succumbing to the mock swamps and forests and their awful reptilian killers. Staggering, gulping in the hot sunlit atmosphere, looking for a bench so that you could rest and allow your trembling legs to recover. A real live scare show but it hadn't hurt you, just made you appreciate living in a safe world.

  'Mam, I want to go home.'

  'We're going home.' Veronica glanced about her, spotted a blue-painted arrow with the words 'Way Out' painted on it. 'We're going home right now.'

  'Mam, what're they doin' over there?'

  She stopped, looked where he pointed. A large covered lorry was backed up to the elephant enclosure, its tailboard down. Several men were trying to coax a lumbering elephant up the ramp. The animal trumpeted once, then shambled up into the trailer. The men hurried to close the doors, bolting them.

  'Where are they takin' the elephant, Mam?'

  'Away somewhere. The zoo's closing, all the animals have got to go.'

  'They goin' to kill the elephant?'

  'I ... I shouldn't think so. They're probably taking it to another zoo. A bigger and better place than this scruffy dump where it'll have more room and be better looked after.'

  Then why don't they take the snakes there instead of killing them? Like you said they were goin' to.'

  'I ... I could've been wrong.' An instinctive mental apology to those serpents that saw into your mind. 'Maybe they'll take the snakes too.'

  'But maybe they'll kill 'em after all. I'd like that. Snakes are horrible.'

  'Come on.' Veronica grabbed her son's hand and pulled him along with her, almost running until they reached the open gate that led out into the street by the bus-stop.

  Veronica Jones felt foolish now. It had been the excessive heat, the eerie lighting in the reptile house which had been responsible. She was just glad that nobody there had recognised her, witnessed her terror. Everything was going to be all right now.

  All the same, that night mother and son had a dual nightmare in the cramped bed which they shared in the council flat.

  In the darkness the snakes came, condemned creatures that had escaped from their death cells, slithering their way up the steep flights of stairs and across the dingy ill-lit landings until they smelled out flat number 117. Their, serpent bodies shrank and flattened, enabling them to pass beneath the warped door, guided by that sour human body odour emanating from the woman who had scorned and defied them.

  Growing again to their full size once they were within, wriggling and sliding up on to the bed, wrapping themselves around the warm-blooded forms of the adult and the boy, delighting in the screams of their victims, entwining them until their death throes ceased.

  And then moving on in search of others . . .

  'It was only a bad dream.' Veronica comforted the sobbing Ian until the first light of a summer dawn crept through the dirt-stained bedroom window.

  'It was real.' he muttered. 'But they've gone now.'

  'It's always worse at night.' She held him close and kissed him. 'Tell you what, tonight we'll sleep with the light on.' She wondered how much the meter would take and regretted her rash statement. 'It's always all right in the light.'

  But she still had that uneasy feeling and wondered how long it would take to get yesterday out of her system. Even in full daylight she could still see those snakes, the way they glared their hate out of their prisons, desperate hopeless inmates willing to risk death rather than succumb to a life of incarceration.

  They would kill if they could, there was no doubt in Veronica's mind about that.

  Chapter 2

  'HEY.' THERE was a cry of indignation mingled with horror from the fair-haired man in dungarees standing back from the big van. 'This bloody ain't on. No, it bloody ain't and I'm not standing for it.'

  The two workmen carrying the large glass case covered with a soiled and torn dust sheet lowered it to the floor of the van and tu
rned to the speaker. 'What bloody ain't on, mate?'

  'That.' Ken Wilson's normally pale features had turned deathly white. 'Nobody told me the consignment was ... was fucking snakes?

  'Nothin' to do with you.' One of the workmen drew himself up to his full height and his expression hardened. 'Why should it be? You're just the bleedin' driver.'

  'I refuse,' Wilson began to bluster, but deep down he already accepted the futility of his protests. He had been lucky to get this driving job; he might have to wait months, years to get another. 'I can't stand bloody snakes. The very thought of 'em makes me ill.'

  'They'll be safely locked up in the back of the van,' the second workman intervened, tried to cool it. The last thing they wanted was a bloody driver refusing to take the snakes up north. He visualised union intervention, maybe an embargo on the transport of all dangerous animals. A little diplomacy was called for. 'You won't even see 'em, mate. They'll all be stacked in the back, covered up, locked up, and when you get to the other end you'll have 'em unloaded for you. AH on a plate and you don't have to do anything except drive from A to B. Can't see what you're complaining about. Christ, yesterday we were moving the elephants and giraffes.'

  'All right, all right.' Ken Wilson puckered his lips, hoped the others didn't notice the way his skin goosepimpled and a shudder shook his body. 'I'll take 'em. Just wish somebody had had the common courtesy to tell me first what the load would be. I thought it'd probably be monkeys.'

  'They went Wednesday.'

  Wilson turned away. There was a cafeteria some fifty yards across the children's playground but he could tell from here that it was closed. You sensed the desolation, the atmosphere of a place that had once been alive with animals and sightseers and was now suddenly dead. A sadness that you couldn't escape even as an onlooker.

  Some more men in overalls were struggling out of a narrow doorway with a cage that reminded Ken of a coffin. It was bigger, in fact, the one side a hinged glass partition. He didn't want to look, tried to turn his head away, but all the same he looked.