The smoke was becoming thicker, burning tyres scaring your lungs, smarting your eyes. There was an ambulance not too far away, even this evil vapour could not screen its flashing beacon. Head that way. And hurry.
A hose was stretched across the road between some mangled cars; he sensed it rather than saw it, and went to step over it, swore as he stumbled, almost fell and dropped his burden. Damn, it wasn't easy in these conditions, your judgement was impaired. That fucking hose . . .
Something encircled his left leg, tightened. He kicked at it with his right foot, stared down in disbelief, felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to prickle. That hose, it had coiled, had trapped his leg with such pressure that it was already beginning to cut off the circulation. The firemen must be rolling it out and it had become lodged on some obstruction, kicked back.
It moved again, a flexible thing that came alive, whipped upwards and threw itself around his waist; he felt the pressure on his ribs, a constriction that threatened to crush and break them.
An inarticulate cry of terror escaped him as he saw the end of the hose in silhouette, a small slender head with eyes that shone redly in the glow from the burning vehicles. It shifted, secured an even tighter hold that virtually halted his breathing and looped round him again, pinioning his arms.
Mark Bazeley screamed but nobody heard him. His second shriek was merely a wheeze as his supply of air was cut off. The girl fell from his arms, thudded lifelessly on to the tarmac and sprawled full length, death sparing her this fresh horror.
The policeman realised only too well what it was that was swiftly crushing his bones and throttling the life out of him. He'd seen the species at the zoo, watched it in more spectacular settings on the television. He thought, oh my God, the girl was telling the truth! This can't be happening.
His ribs cracked and he knew that it was. Breathless, tasting blood, a roaring in his ears and his vision blurred and streaked with crimson as he felt himself being pulped. Consciousness was slipping from him, he had given up struggling, just wondered with his last thoughts where the sarge was.
The python relaxed its hold the moment it felt its prey go limp, uncoiled itself with amazing rapidity for its eighteen-foot length. Wary but hungry, capable of devouring a waterbuck, it began to swallow the corpse. There were other bodies it could have taken more easily but it was primarily a hunter and only ate its own kill.
The creature was confused, frightened by the noise and the smell of fire and now that its hunger was satisfied its instinct was to find a place of safety. A strange land of artificial surfaces, yet beyond these were grass and trees, and something else which it had never before known and yet had craved for freedom.
Chapter 4
THE TALL police superintendent had all the hallmarks of one who had not slept in 36 hours. His sallow face was etched with lines; there were discoloured puffy patches beneath his red-rimmed eyes. Tight-lipped he consulted a sheaf of papers on the desk before him in the temporary headquarters which had hastily been installed adjoining the small police station in the sleepy little village of Stainforth.
The set-up, the procedure, were all too familiar. Last summer a child had gone missing; it had taken them a week to find her body buried on the extensive moorland. Before that it had been a gunman holding an elderly couple hostage, and it had taken the police three days to talk him into surrendering. Now Stainforth would be in the public eye.
A crisis. You dropped routine work, devoted yourself mentally and physically to it, snatched food and sleep if you got the chance; if not, you drew on every bodily reserve until you dropped. This time it was different, oh Christ it was something you didn't expect ever to come across except in far-fetched movies. Dangerous snakes were on the loose in a countryside which was tailor-made for themmoorlands, woodlandsand there was a heat wave to keep them alive. A snap of cold weather would in all probability finish off the reptiles but according to the Met Office that was unlikely to happen in the near future, and before the snakes were found a number of humans might die. A sudden thunderstorm had been responsible for a motorway pile-up (no, the stupid bloody drivers were to blame for that, but right now that wasn't important), and as a result a vanload of poisonous snakes had crashed and the reptiles were on the loose. Frightened angry killers. A police officer had been crushed to death by an African rock python and a girl had been fatally bitten by a rattler. There might be other victims but there had been fifteen mutilated corpses, three as yet unidentified, out of that carnage and they could not be sure, might never be, if the snakes had got any of them.
Chief Superintendent Burlington glanced up at the others in the room. The clean-shaven PC Ken Aylott, Stainforth's resident bobby; you read resentment on the young copper's face, a chip on his shoulder because he wanted the action of the big city, got the crazy notion in his head that the Stainforth posting was a kind of demotion. Maybe all this would change his mind. It was up to him. It could be the big test.
Colonel Marks from Stainforth Barracks two miles away, a surprisingly mild-mannered man with rimless spectacles; but he wouldn't have got his rank for nothing. The police would need the soldiers and somebody to lead them.
Chief Inspector Watts, he would be in charge of operations outside the organisations room; a good man to have in the field, tough and meticulous, an invaluable blend of qualities.
And the civilian, Price. Burlington wasn't keen on civvy street help, a personal opinion which he was diplomatic enough to keep to himself. He let his gaze rest on the young man for a few seconds. Insignificant, like a lot of others today; he could not be more than twenty-two or twenty-three. A degree in zoology, he would not be here otherwise, with a specialist knowledge of poisonous snakes. A lot of good it had done him, just given him some kind of status on the dole. I'm an expert on snakes but I can't get a job. Might as well be an unemployed labourer. Burlington smiled cynically. Faded jeans and a T-shirt, a roll-your-own-man judging by the packet of Rizlas he was fidgeting with. Uncertain of himself; could be on drugs too. An upper-class hippy, his dark beard could do with a trim to tidy it up and his hair wouldn't miss a couple of inches shorn off it. Clean, though, so he obviously washed regularly or maybe he had had a spruce-up specially for this meeting, felt important at being called in to help the police. Burlington thought that maybe they'd have to take him down a peg or two to get the balance right but they'd give him a chance to prove himself first. 'Strewth, who else here really knew the enemy they were up against?
'Right, gentlemen,' the superintendent's voice was low, tired, and it was going to be very hot again today which was a daunting prospect when you had not seen your bed since the night before last. 'We all know what we're up against, killer snakes that have already claimed the lives of two people.' He dropped his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose and consulted his file once more. 'We have done our best to compile an accurate list of the escaped reptiles. I cannot guarantee it and neither can that Heath Robinson zoo. Apparently, various means of transport were used to take the zoo animals away and nobody really knows which vehicles took which. Consequently, we encountered an additional delay whilst the recipients of species were contacted and our inventory has had to be compiled by a process of elimination. Anyway, to the best of our knowledge we are hunting,' he paused, flipped over a page, 'one African rock python, presumably the one that killed PC Bazeley. A pair of western diamondback rattlesnakes which apparently kill more people in the United States than any other poisonous reptile. One cobra. One African mamba. A pair of coral snakes. And one Russell's viper. Eight in all. They have to be found and destroyed as quickly as possible because until they are,' his eyes closed momentarily, 'nobody in the area surrounding Stainforth village is safe. It will mean meticulous searching of the moors and woods by police and army with shotguns. There is no question of trying to recapture the snakes. They must be shot and we must risk the lives of tracker dogs to find them. Perhaps,' he smiled wryly, trying to exude optimism he did not feel, 'we shall come upon them quickly and blast them before they can do any harm.'