Guy N. Smith - Snakes

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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 would 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 turned 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.

Jesus Christ! There were no prizes for guessing that that was a python. As thick as his own arm, with

brown and green markings that would have camouflaged it almost anywhere, not moving. Maybe it was

dead. No, that was too much to hope for. Even coiled it filled the container and he found himself mentally

calculating the constrictor's length; it had to be eighteen, twenty feet, possibly more. Christ only knew

what other horrors were down in that underground place waiting to be brought up and loaded into the

van. And they would be his travelling companions for the next five or six hours! Do like the man said,

forget about 'em, they're just a cargo, units in transit. No, he couldn't shut them out of his mind, that was

impossible. Once he got out of here he would go like hell as soon as he hit the motorway, push the old

wagon to its limit until he reached his destination. Come on, you buggers, get her loaded up and let's get

the job done.

It was hotter today than it had been yesterday, more of a sultry heat with cloud formations building up in

the western sky. The driver had listened to the weather forecast on the way down - hot and dry

becoming thundery towards mid-afternoon.

He tensed, thought he caught a far-off rumble of thunder. It could have been an aircraft. Thunderstorms

always made him uneasy, had done so ever since childhood. And those bleedin' snakes didn't help. He

shuddered again.

He glanced about him almost furtively. He knew this area well, and that made him uneasy too. Hold on,

you're imagining things, that woman isn't likely to be wandering around a closed-down zoo. Your

chances of bumping into her are virtually nil and, anyway, she wouldn't recognise you with this

moustache, certainly not in passing. He shaded his eyes with a hand that was unsteady and squinted

across to where the conurbation began, or ended, depending on how you looked at it. Tall, unsightly

blocks of council flats; there was a rumpus going on about whether they were safe or not. He had read in

the papers that they had put glass tell-tales in them to check whether the foundations were shifting or not.

She lived in one of those. Ken Wilson used to go there, sometimes stopping overnight. No. 117. He

experienced a twinge of guilt. Maybe Veronica had forgotten all about him, certainly she hadn't made

much effort to trace him and she wasn't likely to after all this time. Stop worrying, she's OK, probably

shacked up with another guy by now. Nevertheless, Ken Wilson did not like it when his truck driving

brought him this way. There was always the awful chance that Fate might have destined him to meet up

with Veronica Jones again. And now that he was living with an eighteen-year-old check-out girl from

Wiggins superstore the last thing he wanted was a thirty-five-year-old spectre coming out of the past.

Forget the woman and the snakes.

'Everything's loaded up, mate.'

Ken Wilson turned slowly, saw that the zoo workmen had even shut the back of the van up for him. All

you have to do is to drive it.

A clap of thunder had him starting visibly.

'Looks like we're goin' to get it this time, mate,'

'Yeah, looks like it.' Wilson walked towards the cab, opened the door, felt the heat come out at him like

the forerunner of a fireball. He winced, saw the clouds of flies buzzing on the windscreen. This was what

you got in flaming June, either pouring wet or too hot to move. No moderation.

He climbed up into the cab, wound the window down; he should have done that as soon as he arrived.

He felt in his pockets for cigarettes and matches - his hands were still shaking. Deliberately blowing

smoke at the flies. Take that lot, you bastards. They bunched and buzzed their protest but they did not fly

off.

Finger on the starter button, he hesitated. Listening, Listening intently, anticipating slitherings and stirrings

from the back. They can't get into the cab even if they escape from their containers. Can they?

Then the thunder rolled again, terminating in a reverberating clap almost overhead. The sun was obscured

by the advancing clouds which brought with them a gloom that was akin to dusk. Eerie.

He pressed the starter and the engine turned over maybe half a dozen times before it fired. This van was

a heap of crap, a 'P'-registered vehicle that had struggled to pass its MOT. Like everything else at

Hadleys Transport it was on the way out. But in this day and age a job was a job and you stuck it.

Ken Wilson let in the clutch and the van rolled forward, crunched on the gravel as he turned towards the

main gates. A few rain spots smacked on the windscreen, but the expected downpour did not follow.

The storm was coming from the south-west, he was travelling north. He might just keep ahead of it. He

was going to do his damnedest, anyhow.

Motorway - 1 mile. A sense of freedom, no stops until he reached his destination. One last glance in the

direction of those hideous council flats. Just thinking about Veronica gave him an arousement. Well, that

was all she was good for; get her out of bed and she wasn't much use for anything else. No intelligence,

you couldn't take her anywhere, not with that whining complaining voice. Veronica's virtues began and

ended between her thighs. All the same, he hoped she was OK. Hell, he was getting a guilt complex.

The motorway was unusually busy, an unending line of trundling trucks in the slow lane, cars cruising in

the middle one. He awaited his chance and pulled out, got in behind a Mini Clubman estate that seemed

packed with kids and luggage right up to the roof. A gimmicky notice above the rear number plate read:

'If you can read this you're too bloody close.' Silly buggers, what did they expect on the motorway? If

you dropped back then somebody overtook you and cut in front so you couldn't make a gap no matter

what you did. The roads were dry. All the same, Ken doubted if he could pull up in time if anything

happened in front. Very few drivers could.

The sun was shining again. He glanced in his mirror, saw those black and yellow clouds way behind,

thought he could make out the rain sheeting down. He'd give the storm a run for its money. He

experienced momentary exhilaration.

He was watching those kids in the Clubman quarrelling and fighting when something on the seat beside

him moved; something cylindrical, rolling, jerking. Oh God! The van swerved violently and he only just

hauled it back into the middle lane in time. Horns blared, somebody flashed his headlights.

Now he could see the offending object lying motionless on the floor; a screwdriver, one he had used to

tighten a loose screw on" the dash earlier and had left lying on the seat. Bloody hell, for a moment he had

thought it was a ...

Don't think about those snakes. Like the man at the zoo said, you won't even have to unload them at the

other end. You can report your arrival, go and get a cup of tea and by the time you get back you'll have

an empty van to take home. As simple as that. You're just a driver, Ken Wilson, nothing else.

He would have to break the return journey overnight. That was a bit of a bummer when there was a

teenage girl waiting back home, willing to do anything you wanted her to. If it wasn't for these bloody

tachometers they fitted in HGVs these days he would have put his foot down and gone all out to get

home in one run.

Those bloody kids in front were getting on his nerves. One had climbed over into the boot and was

clinging precariously on to a pile of luggage and trying to kick hell out of the other at the same time. Why,

for fuck's sake, didn't their bloody parents do something about it! Vandals and muggers in the making,

that's how it all started, a lack of discipline in the home.

The sun had gone behind the clouds and it was hotter than ever. That crap cooling system must have

packed up altogether. Wilson wondered if he could get his overalls undone whilst he was driving but

changed his mind when a police patrol car passed him in the fast lane. The sweat was pouring off him, his

trousers were stuck to the seat.

In his mirror he noticed headlights being used, and switched his own on. Those thunder clouds had

moved at an unbelievable rate of knots. Now he heard the thunder again, resonant rolls like an angry

monster roaring its wrath as it tried to run him down.

The sudden daytime gloom had him thinking about his reptilian passengers in the back again. Man was a

daytime creature, scared of the dark no matter how he tried to tell himself he wasn't. Probably the snakes

were all asleep. It was bloody cruel imprisoning them in zoos. Just done to make money. Taken out of

their natural environment they slept and ate their lives away in sheer boredom. You couldn't blame them if

they got nasty and turned on somebody. Man was the cruellest creature of all, there was no getting away

from that. Christ, Ken thought, I'm going bloody soft.

He found himself listening again but all he heard was engine noise. If the buggers did manage to escape

they couldn't go anywhere. It was the guys the other end who would find them whilst he was somewhere

safe having a bite to eat. He'd keep well clear of the van until it was empty.

The rain came without warning, a few heavy spots followed by an instant downpour, the wipers struggling

to cope. Ken Wilson cursed under his breath; the most depressing sound of all was that of the

monotonous noise of windscreen wipers. Fuck it!

Rain was bouncing up off the tarmac, being whipped into a blinding spray by the tyres of speeding traffic,

obliterating from view the vehicles up ahead. The cars and lorries did not seem to be slowing any and

those idiot children in the Clubman were still slinging punches at each other. One had found a tennis

racket somewhere and was attempting to brain the other, battering him viciously with it.

Ken glanced at his watch. 5.45. Night had come about four hours early; there was driving rain and a

lashing gale that was bending newly planted birch saplings on the embankments almost double. Another

police car passed, doing a ton for sure. One law for some, another for others.

And then it happened! Ken did not know whether the Clubman estate had failed to see the brake lights

of the Ford Transit in front or whether he had simply driven into its back, distracted by those bastards of

fighting kids. Suddenly the Clubman crunched, reared like a frisky filly, momentarily upright on its rear

wheels. AH in an instant before he hit it; the roof buckled, split and the glass showered out of the

windows spilling those children with it.

He saw them for a split second and braked hard, but knew he could not miss them. One was still

clutching the racket, swinging it, the other's face a mass of scarlet pulp, a broken rag doll bouncing on the

hard surface. Disappearing.

Please God! He felt the front tyre crushing the infant body, saw in his mind the squashed form like those

hedgehogs you saw flattened on the roads every morning. The crunching of frail bones, instant death. The

other child was still airborne when he hit it, saw it flatten on the windscreen without breaking the glass, a

gnat caught by a speeding vehicle. The wipers would knock it off in a second; they were buffeting it,

bouncing back off, swiping it again with mechanical determination.

Then Ken Wilson's van ploughed into the wreckage of the Clubman and the Transit, and seconds later

came a shuddering jolt as he was hit from behind. He screamed aloud, gave up trying to do anything

positive. The windscreen shattered and that bloody mulch disintegrated, some of it splattering the interior

of the cab.

And in that same second his own van appeared to concertina, the rear of the vehicle crushing and coming

forward, his seat and harness ripped from their moorings. He was catapulted; blinding pain as the steering

column shattered his chest, threw him back and then bounced him down on to the floor of the cab.

Dazed, screaming, tasting his own blood, he lay there in the semi-darkness. He heard the squeal of

tortured rubber, smelled its acrid stench, the screech of tearing metal, cries of anguish. Vehicles were still

running into one another, he felt the van move again, pushed forward another few yards. Shouting,

screams of pain and terror.

Then silence, complete and utter for a few seconds. He did not try to move, just lay there in the bloody

half-darkness trying to figure out exactly what had happened. A multi pile-up, they made the television

news every so often but everybody forgot and they happened again. Vehicles travelling too close

together in adverse weather conditions; people never learned, including himself. It can't happen to me, it's

those other silly buggers. And suddenly he was one of those silly buggers.

Don't move, just lie still and somebody will come to help soon. I'm scared to hell to look out there, I'm

not badly hurt really, just cut and bruised. His senses swam, came back again. He fought down his rising

panic.

It might have been seconds or hours later - he had lost all concept of time - when he sensed rather than

heard a movement in the cab. A flicker of hope, raising his head up a few inches off the ground. His eyes

hurt, as if somebody was pushing a sharp instrument into them; he gasped, coughed, tasted blood. I'm

here, you bloody fool. Help me. He tried to call out but the words would not come, were strangulated

into a low moan.

Something moved. His vision blurred, cleared, but only partially. An arm was reaching in through the

smashed cab window, feeling inside. Jesus, don't tell me you can't see me! Ken tried to shout, mustered

his vocal cords for one supreme effort and managed a wheezing gurgle, experienced a sensation as if he

were drowning and tasted blood again.

A fist, clenched. Erect. Some guy's got one helluva long arm, he thought. If they can't get to me why the

fuck don't they start cutting into the cab?

That fist was starting to open out. The driver stared, forced his agonised eyes to work with sheer

willpower. It did not look right, the arm was elongated like one of those cartoons they fed the kids every

afternoon on TV; no fingers, either a malformed hand or else the berk was wearing mittens. Bloody

crazy, I'll go mad in a second.

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Chapter1SUDDENLYTHEchildbegantoscream,piercingshrieksofterrorthatdieddowntoshakingsobs,clutchingathismothersothathistinyringerspinchedherskinagonisinglythroughherflimsysummerdress.VeronicaJonesgrimacedinthedeepgreengloomofthereptilehouse,hadtocheckherselffromgivingherfive-year-oldsononeofherhabitual...

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Guy N. Smith - Snakes

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