There. Close. On one of the rocks no more than three feet away.
Huge.
Jesus!
Thick body coiled, tail vibrating, head poised forward, blood-red tongue flicking the air. And the eyes...
He fought to get up, couldn’t get up. Paralyzed! The snake’s eyes were black evil, mesmerizing. The mottled hexagonal pattern on its body rippled and gleamed — death shining in the dying sun. He couldn’t look at the eyes any longer; he watched the scaly body moving sinuously, changing the shape of its coil, the neck twisting into a long S-wave, the head lifting higher, the lower sections forming a wide circle. Coiling to strike, it was going to strike!
Adrenaline rush. And a jarring sensation in his head; his vision came into sudden sharp focus. A second later, the paralysis left him. It was as if his body were like the snake’s: tight coiled and then releasing all at once. He lunged to his feet, staggering, flailing for balance.
His foot slipped and slid in the loose earth. Instead of twisting back away from the snake, he stumbled closer to it.
And it, too, released.
The lancelike drive of the head was a blur; he had no time even to brace himself. It was like being struck in the ankle with a thrown rock. The leg went out from under him; he sat down hard, staring in terror at the diamondback’s fangs embedded in the high top of his hiking boot, its thick coils writhing as it struggled to free itself.
A noise came out of his throat. He kicked wildly at the ugly flattened head, the wide-open mouth, again and again until the rattler pulled free or he drove it free. It flopped and slithered backward, already starting to squirm into a new series of tight loops. On all fours he scuttled frantically away from it along the slope, his feet kicking up a shower of rocks and dirt, images in his mind of the snake coming after him, chasing him with bared fangs dripping venom. He didn’t stop moving or expecting a second strike until he realized he was all the way over on the far side of the pit. And only then did he look back to see how close the snake was.
It wasn’t close. It was still down where he’d last seen it, coiled, hissing, rattling again.
Relief flooded him, but it lasted no more than two or three heartbeats. His ankle! He twisted over onto his left hip, dragged the right foot up so he could peer at the boot. Fang holes in the leather, a thick whitish dribble of venom. Penetrated deep enough to break the skin? He felt no pain... there’d be pain if he was bitten, wouldn’t there? The impulse was strong to tear off the boot and sock under it, examine the skin with eyes and fingers to make sure. Another fear and an even stronger desire kept him from doing it.
How many more snakes hidden in those rocks?
Get out of here!
He managed to stand upright. His head ached where he’d been clubbed, but he had his equilibrium again and all his senses seemed to be working more or less normally. Only his breathing was erratic, wheezy. He scanned the ground around him, the rocks, the rest of the enclosure, and the catwalk above. As far as he could tell he was alone except for the diamondback. A closed door — stairway up from the shed, he thought — gave access to the gallery. The only opening in the inner fence, down here, was the now closed door to the passageway, directly across from where he stood.
He knew what this place was, now. What it was and why he’d been lured out here and then thrust down into the pit. And under the layer of fear a thin, bitter rage began to simmer.
He looked again at the diamondback. It was still coiled, still hissing faintly and tasting the air with its black-tipped tongue, but it no longer seemed to be rattling. His chest felt hot, constricted; he drew several deep, shallow breaths to stave off hyperventilation. Then he climbed higher on the slope, almost to the wire mesh at the fence’s base, and began to make his way around toward the lower door.
The rocks littering the slope were smaller than those in the nest below. A few were clustered together; he avoided these. Something else lay on the earth twenty feet from the door, half hidden by dust and dirt — a long, light-metal rod, about the size and length of a fishing pole, with a wire slip noose at one end and a cord running from the wire loop to the butt. Snake catcher. He stepped over it, took two more strides before movement caught and held his eye, at the base of the fence just ahead.
He froze. Another snake lay in shadow between the mesh and a chunk of limestone that was the same blotched brown as its body — the reason he hadn’t seen it before. Different species: shorter, the body thinner and less clearly patterned, a projection above each eye like a budding horn. Sidewinder? Whatever kind it was, it looked just as deadly as the diamondback.
It was already moving, swelling and coiling. He heard the dry sound like escaping steam, then the buzz from its tail. His first thought was to detour downslope and then over and back up to the door. But to do that he would have to venture close to the diamondback again. Fear made him indecisive, held him rooted until he remembered the snake catcher.
He backed up a slow, careful step. The sidewinder was coiled now, its tongue licking out; its eyes had vertical pupils, malevolent black slits. He kept retreating until his heel struck the metal pole, rattled it. The dark jutting head shifted that way. Messenger bent, not taking his eyes off the snake, and caught up the pole and brought it around in front of him as he straightened.
The cord leading from the loop to the butt was frayed through. Didn’t matter; he had too little knowledge to try snaring a poisonous sidewinder. Fend it off — that was his idea. Try to ease around it, and if it struck make it strike at the wire slip noose instead of him.
He moved forward again with the pole out at arm’s length, the blood-pound in his ears so loud he could no longer hear the rasp of his breathing. Sidesteps, baby steps. The snake watched him or the loop, he couldn’t tell which. Sweat hazed his eyes; he blinked rapidly, keeping both hands on the rod so it would remain steady. Just a little farther—
His sliding foot dislodged a rock, sent it clattering downslope. His nerves were as frayed as the cord on the snake catcher; his hands jerked involuntarily, thrusting the wire loop six inches closer to the sidewinder — close enough to provoke it into action.
The ugly horned head glanced off the loop and off the metal end, almost ripping the rod from Messenger’s grasp. The snake flopped down, squirmed, started to recoil. Frantically he jabbed at it with the pole, missed, jabbed again, and succeeded in snagging the lower section of the body and flipping it a short distance downhill. The sidewinder recovered, hissing, and seemed in Messenger’s overwrought state to turn toward him as if it were about to launch an attack. He threw the rod at it, lurched around and uphill for the door.
There was no knob or latch on this side. He flung himself against the heavy wood, felt the shock all the way through his upper body when the door failed to yield. He lunged at it again. It wouldn’t give an inch. Bastards had barred it somehow on the inside...
He twisted his head. The sidewinder appeared to be closer than it had been, tight-coiled now, head lifted high; in the fading sunlight the knobby horns gave it a Satanic look. He backed away from it in the shadows along the fence.
The gallery, he thought, the other door up there.
He pushed away from the fence, back into pale sunlight. The upper door was directly above where the sidewinder waited, but in line with where he stood was one of the vertical supports for the catwalk railing. It and the board floor were no more than a foot above his head. He shifted his gaze to the mesh at the base of the wall, shifted it upward again; then he stepped back into shadow, set himself, and made his jump.
He managed to lock both hands around the support. It gave a little — old, dry wood, rusty nails — but held his weight as his boots scrabbled against the mesh for a toehold. He found one, started to pull himself up... and his foot slipped and he lost his grip at the same time and dropped, skidding to one knee in the loose earth. He was up instantly, not looking anywhere but at the support, focused only on escape.