The noise was terrific, a painful bang that hurt my ears and startled me into almost dropping the SIG. I felt the snap of the bullet as it smashed into the steel wall right behind my head, after clearly missing the snake altogether and then ricocheting around the container. Then something leathery and heavy whacked the side of my head as the snake finally struck, missing my face but ending up with its neck alongside mine for a single horrifying instant before it withdrew.
I lunged to the left before it could strike again and tripped over one of the dogs. We all ended up on the floor in a heap of scrambling legs. I still had the penlight but didn’t stop to relocate the snake. I yelled at the dogs to come and bolted for the other end of the container, flying blind along one slippery side until I came up against the back corner of the can. The dogs were still with me, trying hard to get behind me in the corner.
I pointed the tiny light out into the darkness of the container and listened. Then I realized I was providing a target and quickly shut it off. I didn’t know if a python could see well in the conventional sense or if, like a pit viper, it tracked by infrared. Either way, I didn’t want to help it find us.
I heard the sliding sound again. It was a huge snake, probably a couple of hundred pounds, and it was making no effort to be quiet. I pointed the SIG out into the darkness and tried to control my breathing, subconsciously aware that breathing was what the snake intended to attack. One of the shepherds growled and then barked. I again held the light out to one side and flicked it on. The snake was right in front of us, head low and flat above the floor, shifting sideways. Two huge coils of its trunklike body were rising behind it as it prepared to throw a hundred pounds or so of hungry muscle at one of us.
I fired again, twice this time, aiming at the body. I hit it once, and possibly both times. The coils collapsed on the floor with a sodden thump, but this time that head came up, way up, rising almost to the top of the container as the beast arched in response to the trauma to its body. I rolled to the right, keeping the light on the snake, the dogs tumbling with me. We collided with the other side and then scrambled all the way down to the door end. The penlight could no longer reach across the container, so I shut it off.
We listened.
I tried to tamp down my own heavy breathing. The shepherds were better at that than I was and didn’t make a sound, although I could feel their hearts going a hundred miles an hour. Like mine.
I knew I hadn’t killed the thing. Primitive animals, Trask had called them. Like a dinosaur-hit it in the ass and it took a few minutes for the impact to register all the way up in the brain. But then, look out.
Sliding sounds again… and then a chilling, prolonged hiss, followed by the reek of primordial ooze that seemed to hang over this reptile. I had no sense of where that hiss had come from, other than it wasn’t behind me. I looked up and thought I saw a small red square at the top of my line of vision. Then I remembered there had been what looked like a glass window up there. Was Trask watching, using night vision gear? Watching, and possibly even filming? Like Hitler when he had his rebellious generals hung on meat hooks in the basement of the supreme court building in Berlin?
That thought pissed me off. I raised the SIG and took careful aim at that dim red square and fired one round. When I can shoot carefully, I’m going to hit what I aim at, and this time no bullet came spanging back at me from the other end of the container.
Then the snake hit. I felt a hammer blow on my raised forearm, a sharp pain as several dozen backward-curving teeth sank into my arm, and then I was being buried under the satin coils of an infuriated python. I distantly heard the dogs get into it, with lots of savage growling and snapping, but I was too busy to wonder what they might be accomplishing. I crumpled into as round a ball as I could and switched the gun from my right hand to my left just before the snake pulled hard and took my forearm straight out away from my body. Before I could react or retract it, it had pushed a coil completely over me and now had a partial grip on my chest, a grip that instantly tightened.
But my left hand was still free.
And the snake’s head was not free, attached as it was to my right arm. I knew there was only one way to end this.
I turned sideways, to my right. Instantly the snake increased the pressure and I felt my ribs starting to compress. I couldn’t see anything, but actually didn’t want to. I pressed the muzzle of the. 45 against the snake’s head and fired.
The first thing that happened was that the damned thing gripped even tighter. I could exhale, but I could not inhale. The gun was still pressed against something. Just before I fired again, I realized it was pressed against my arm. The area where the teeth were embedded had gone numb, but I moved the barrel slightly, found what I prayed was the head, and fired again.
This time I felt a lance of pain-the bullet must have grazed or even penetrated my own arm. Then the snake really constricted. I saw a red cloud coming toward me through the darkness, and I went out. The last thing I heard was another one of those hideous hisses and the roar of the shepherds as they attacked the snake in total darkness.
I could breathe.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t see, but I could breathe. I could hear.
The shepherds were whimpering and tugging at my legs, but I was wrapped in what felt like a ton of slippery muscle meat.
Slippery. Contrary to popular opinion, snakes aren’t slippery, so I’d done some damage with those two body shots. And the fact that I could breathe meant that I’d done some real damage with the head shots. Now the problem was to get out from under before the damned thing stiffened up and pinned me here forever.
I backed the dogs off and started to wriggle my way out from under a mile or so of dead coil. At one point the head flopped down into my hands. It was a satisfyingly soggy mess. I fished out the penlight. I had to see.
Bad idea.
The top of the snake’s head was ruptured; the bottom was gone, with the lower jaw unhinged and gaping open large enough to accommodate a soccer ball. Its eyes looked no different dead than alive. I felt the coils moving slightly. My bowels constricted.
Was it dead, or just getting its second wind?
Then I examined the head and realized it had to be dead. Had to be.
Primitive creature. The head was dead, but the snake’s body hadn’t got the memo yet.
Frick stuck her face into mine. You coming, or are we going to eat it?
I slipped out from under the mess in one quick move and took a deep breath, which hurt like hell. All my ribs felt like they’d been cracked, and even my innards felt like they’d been repacked inside.
The penlight was failing fast, but I still took one more look back at the huge snake, just to make damned sure it hadn’t revived. It was still there, leaking copious amounts of nasty fluids onto the container floor, its massive coils still moving. I turned off the light. The darkness was almost comforting, now that I knew there wasn’t a Pleistocene worm monster coming for me. My right arm was starting to hurt. I was glad I hadn’t wasted any flashlight on the wound. Besides, we had bigger troubles than that right now.
I checked the SIG. The slide was locked back. I extracted the spare mag from my belt and fed my friend. Then I realized I could see. Sort of, anyway. I looked up. The little red square up high at the other end was now a little white square.
Had Trask been watching our wrestling match down here in the box? I hoped he had, because that soft white light meant that night vision equipment was no longer running. With any luck, I’d parked one in his eye and he was no longer running, either, but that was probably too much to hope for. Right now we had to get out of here.