Venom

Wilderness #63: Venom David Thompson

LEISURE BOOKS NEW YORK CITY

THE CREEPY-CRAWLIES

Nate was almost to the corner of the cabin. He stopped and turned. It took a few seconds for what he was seeing to sink in. Water covered much of the ground, inches of it, to within five or six yards of their front door. At first it appeared as if the water was moving, but it wasn’t the water; it was something in the water. He took a few steps and the shapes acquired form. “It can’t be,” he blurted.

“You see them, then?”

Nate nodded. Snakes. Rattlesnakes. Hundreds of the things, swimming, crawling, moving aimlessly about as if they had no sense of where they should go. “God in heaven.”

Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane.

And to Beatrice Bean, with the most loving regard.

Prologue

She was sleek and gorgeous and five feet long.

It was late summer in the Rocky Mountains. The sun blazed in a cloudless sky.

The female lay curled on a flat rock in a gully. The temperature hovered near one hundred degrees. Where most creatures would swelter, she thrived; she soaked up the heat as a sponge soaked up water.

A hawk screeched, causing the female to crawl under a nearby boulder. She didn’t have ears, but she was conscious of the vibrations the hawk’s cry created in the air. They were absorbed through her skin, muscle and bone to her inner ear. For a while she stayed in the relative coolness under the boulder, but she didn’t like the cool as much as the heat and she crawled back out to her rock and curled her body.

The female darted her forked tongue in and out and discovered she was no longer alone. Her tongue picked up scents and carried them to a tiny organ in the back of her mouth and the organ told her what the scent was.

A male, and it was close.

The female raised her head and looked about. Her eyesight wasn’t exceptional. She could see about ten times her body length. Beyond that was murky. But her kind didn’t rely solely on hearing and sight. She had another sense. Between her eyes and her false nostrils were pits that detected the body heat given off by other creatures. Her pits confirmed what her tongue and her eyes had told her.

Long and thick, the male twined down the side of the gully. His tongue kept flicking. He knew she was there, and he was coming for her. He had caught the special scent she gave off.

The female stayed coiled. He was almost to her when another male appeared. The second male had sensed her, too, and was intent on the same purpose. Both males stopped and swung their heads toward each other. The first male raised his head high. The second did the same. They slithered close and stopped.

The female watched. She had no part in what was to come. She did not get to pick.

Edging forward, the two males raised half their bodies off the ground, as if each was seeking to show that it was taller than its rival. They hissed and flicked their tongues and slowly pressed against each other. Swaying like reeds in a wind, they entwined. The first male tried to push the second male to the ground. The second male slipped free and sought to do the same to the first male.

Neither would relent until it had pinned its rival.

The female had witnessed the ritual many times. When the males were the same size it could go on a long time. She could be patient. She would wait as long as it took.

Eventually the first male won. He was bigger and the bigger males always won, but the smaller males never stopped trying.

The female lay still as the male joined her on the rock. He nudged her with his head, and when she didn’t bare her fangs he crawled up and over and on top of her. He nudged her a few times. After a while she uncoiled.

The male ran his body along hers and she ran hers along his. When she was ready she lay still and the male slid into position.

The female felt little. To her it was not pleasure but a necessity. She must do it to have young and to give birth to young was one of the foremost drives of her life. When the male was done he lay next to her for a space. Then, with a parting flick and a hiss, he was gone.

The female stayed where she was. She lay soaking up the sun until it was so low in the sky that the gully was plunged in twilight. The heat began to dissipate. She crawled off her rock and around the boulder and down the side of the gully to a cleft. It was not much wider than she was. She crawled into it and along a winding course that brought her to a large underground chamber.

Others of her kind were there. It was their haven, their breeding area, their den. It was where the females gave birth. All of her kind for many leagues around came to the den to winter over. Some winters there were more than others. This past winter there had been the most ever. Many had since dispersed and would gather again when the weather turned cold. Many more remained to roam the gully and the surrounding area. They formed an enormous roiling mass, entwining with one another, each as deadly as any creature could be.

For most of the summer they had lived as they always did, and all was well. Then the intruders came.

Chapter One

“Land sakes, it’s pretty,” Emala Worth declared. She sat astride a mare on a ridge overlooking a valley as beautiful as anything. Miles-high peaks, some crowned by ivory mantles of snow, bastioned the valley from the outside world. Thick woods covered the lower slopes and green grass covered the valley floor. The topaz blue of a pristine lake gleamed bright in the sunlight. “Isn’t it, Samuel?”

Samuel Worth grunted. They had taken forever to cross the prairie and come deep into the mountains, and now that they had finally arrived, he didn’t see much difference between the valley and the savage wilderness they had spent weeks penetrating.

“Nothin’ to say?” Emala goaded. “You’re the one wanted this. You’re the one had his heart set on livin’ free.”

“Don’t start,” Samuel warned. A big man, he wore a homespun shirt she had made and pants bought with money given him by his new friend Nate King. Samuel shifted in his saddle and said to his benefactor, “So you say this valley is named after you?”

“King Valley,” Nate confirmed. He was as big as Samuel but broader at the shoulders. His attire consisted of buckskins and moccasins and an eagle feather tied in his hair. A powder horn, ammo pouch and possibles bag crisscrossed his chest. In the crook of his elbow rested a Hawken rifle and around his waist was a virtual armory: two flintlock pistols, a Bowie knife and a tomahawk. “Shakespeare, here, started calling it that, and the handle stuck.”

The man Nate referred to was a fellow mountain man, Nate’s mentor and best friend in all creation, Shakespeare McNair. McNair was similarly attired and armed but had white hair to Nate’s black. “That I did, hoss. I could just as well have called it Nate’s Slice of Heaven.” He chuckled and quoted his namesake. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

“I can’t get over how funny you talk,” Emala said. “Half the time I can’t understand you.”

Nate laughed. “Don’t feel bad. No one else can understand him either.”

Shakespeare harrumphed and resorted to the Bard again. “Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtesan.”