The mound had been home to a Desert Death Adder.
I’d been lucky. My overturned vehicle was spotted by the Flying Doctor Service, on their way to a routine call at a remote settlement. From then on I made it my business to know snakes.
Unless you threaten them, most are shy. But, for whatever reason, the rattlesnakes below were fired up for battle. They were malignant coils of fury that wanted to sink their fangs into us. And rattlesnakes could coil up and spring over a third of their length. The stage, our island in this sea of venom, was only three feet high. I searched the floor. Yep, I was just betting that some of them could make it.
We had to get out of here!
I grabbed my phactor out of the breast pocket of my suit. I flipped it open, switched it back on and tapped in 911. As though emerging from some kind of fear-induced paralysis, everyone around me pulled theirs out and began doing exactly the same thing.
I listened. There was no dial tone.
I checked the screen. It was like my phactor was dead. I checked the signal strength.
There was none.
I looked around; everyone had the same bewildered expression.
My heart started racing. The signals were being jammed.
A woman staring down at her useless phactor began hyperventilating.
Professor Wauhope shoved past her to get to the very edge of the podium. His face was stark with disbelief. ‘This can’t be real,’ he muttered. ‘This can’t be happening … Not again.’
Again? What did he mean?
‘Someone help me!’ The man who’d been last onto the podium slid down with a thump … to huddle, trembling, over his bitten ankle. It was swelling. I hunched over him, checking his pulse. It raced. He was having trouble sucking in a full breath.
I looked around. Others were gripping their arms and legs in exactly the same panic-stricken way.
Soon they’d all succumb to the venom. Soon their poison-induced anxiety would make them do stupid things — like trying to get off the stage.
But was that so stupid?
We were standing in the middle of a sea of rattlesnakes and our phactors had been jammed.
It was a carefully executed trap.
A death trap.
I stood up and searched the far doorway, dimly lit from above by the Exit sign. We had to get out of here now!
I searched the podium. Wauhope had piles of stapled handouts, ready to distribute. He’d been overly optimistic about the number of attendees.
I swiped up a thick sheaf, twisted it diagonally into a tight, long roll and stuck it under my armpit. Then I scanned the crowd. Earlier, I’d seen one of them standing in the park in the middle of Portsmouth Square, smoking. I searched the faces and found him. He was clutching his hand to his chest and moaning in fear and pain.
He was too sunk in his own desperate misery to respond to less than a directive. ‘Give me your lighter,’ I ordered.
He didn’t look at me, let alone reply.
I frisked him. He struggled weakly, protesting, but I got his lighter out of his coat pocket.
I went back to the edge of the podium and flicked the lighter on.
‘What d’ya think you’re doing?’ someone behind me demanded, their voice sharp with fear.
‘Make yourself two rolls of paper,’ I replied, nodding at the stacked handouts behind us.
‘No!’ he replied. ‘We’re safe if we all stay up here.’
‘Then you stay,’ I snapped. ‘But someone riled up a bunch of rattlesnakes, released them into this theatre, and then jammed our phactors. I don’t think I want to stick around here and find out what the punch line is!’
The man next to me stiffened, several people gasped. I’d just redefined reality in a way they couldn’t comprehend, only react to. Now I had to act fast and refocus their fear into getting us all safely off the stage and out of here.
I used the lighter to ignite the end of my makeshift torch.
Everyone watched as I lowered the flame to the seething mass on the floor below. It took a little persuasion but I cleared a space. I nodded to myself. Yes, this could work …
Immediately the crowd came out of their trance. They dived for the piles of handouts and began rolling.
At first we worked as a team, but only half the crowd had made it through the rear doors before the paper torches ran out. It became a headlong race — everyone for themselves, pushing and shoving anyone in their way.
I was at the rear, a torch in each hand and holding off the snakes, when I heard the doors slam shut. There were still two of us left inside. Me and another older woman who was limping badly from a swollen bite on her leg. She was pushing on the door handle with one weak hand and banging with her other, pleading for help.
But they stayed shut.
I made it to the doors and slammed against them with one elbow but they were shut tight.
I turned to watch a wave of enraged rattlesnakes slither towards us.
The older woman turned as well. She began screaming and throwing herself against the doors. I dropped my torches with a gasp; they’d burnt down to my fingertips.
I hurled myself backwards against the doors … they gave way.
I thrust the woman out, slipped through and slammed the doors shut behind me.
4
RATTLESNAKES MEAN
REVENGE
In the foyer everyone was pressed up against the opposite wall, trying to force their way out of the building. Half of them were banging on the metal door to the internal fire stairs in a blind panic.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up at the sight. The fire door was stuck.
The rest were crowded in front of the elevator, pushing and shoving for a place inside, while the occupants resisted, shrieking with fright. Using their fists and multiple threats, two men managed to push the rest of the crowd away from the elevator. They squeezed back into the dangerously overloaded elevator and the doors closed.
Immediately there was a horrendous whining sound — metal scraping along metal.
The people in the elevator began screaming and banging their fists on the doors to get back out. There was a piercing grinding noise. Like the building was trying to tear itself inside out. Then a thundering crash.
The elevator doors popped open again, with nothing to be seen but a black hole and a cloud of dust.
A man who’d been fighting to get into the elevator but failed, dropped to the floor, sobbing in horror. The rest, including the limping woman who’d been trapped in the lecture theatre with me, surged over to join the horde banging on the metal door to the fire stairs.
I followed, in stunned disbelief. This whole building was one giant death trap: rattlesnakes, jammed phactors, a sabotaged elevator … now locked fire stairs.
I sneezed. My eyes widened. That had to be smoke.
I pushed my way through the panicked horde to stick one hand on the metal fire door. It felt warm.
A sandy-haired man had found the fire axe on the far wall. He broke the glass, wrenched it out then roughly shoved his way through to the metal door. He raised the axe, ready to try to take out the lock.
I grabbed the axe handle, wresting it away from him. Utterly surprised, he let me take it.
‘What are you doing?’ shrieked the man, ready to punch me. ‘I have to cut through the lock!’
The panic-stricken horde around us shouted for him to take the axe back and cut open the door.
‘No!’ I shouted back. ‘Listen to me!’
He tried to wrestle the axe away from me.
I elbowed him off. ‘Wait a minute!’ I gave him a threatening glare, bared teeth and all.
He recoiled.
I tried the fire door again. It was hot now. I slid my hand across its surface. Very hot.
The sandy-haired man watched me, confused.
I sniffed. That was definitely smoke. We had to get out of here but not this way.
The crowd, now beside themselves with fear, demanded that
the man knock me down and open the fire door.
The sandy-haired man tried to take the axe back, so I grabbed his hand and stuck it on the metal door.
He jerked his hand away, his eyes wide with terror. ‘No!’
The incensed crowd pressed us both into the hot metal door, screaming for action.
‘We can’t open that door!’ I yelled. ‘The floors below us must be on fire. If we open that door, it’ll sweep in here and incinerate us.’
The crowd was so panicked they couldn’t take in what I was saying. I might as well have been speaking Swahili. If I didn’t act fast they’d take the axe from me and smash open that door. Then we’d all be finished.
I started grabbing random hands and forcing them onto the hot door. Someone yelled ‘fire’ at the top of their lungs. That did it — everyone careened back and away from the door, their mouths open in shock.
I searched for a diversion, a Plan B.
‘We’ve got to find the external fire escape!’ I yelled. I looked for the nearest window and raced to it. I put the axe down to fling it open, only to stand transfixed at the sight opposite.
The next building, only a few yards away from us, was on fire too. Flames spurted out of it and upwards like a Roman candle. I stopped breathing. It was the inferno we’d become in a few short minutes.
I looked directly down. There was a grated metal landing beneath the window, with stairs leading to the ground. The fire escape looked all right, but after all the booby traps we’d encountered could it be trusted?
The drive for survival answered my question. It had to be.
A window shattered in the building opposite. I protected my face with one hand and watched as sheets of flame exploded, grasping with fiery fingers towards our precious metal stairs.
How long before those fiery fingers would actually reach it? How long before the inferno next door engulfed us?
The manic horde had followed me to the window and now pressed me into it. The blaze engulfing the building opposite only inflamed their drive to get out of here at any cost.
But the blaze had shaken mine.
When I hesitated, the sandy-haired man pushed past me and slid out the open window. He pounded down the metal stairs. I pressed myself to one side as a river of bodies flooded past me to thud down the metal stairs after him.
I looked around — there was no one left. I had one leg out the window, ready to follow, when there was a loud moan from the far corner.
There was a body slumped face down on the floor. I rolled him over.
It was Professor Wauhope. His eyes were open but he was delirious. His hands were a swelling, oozing mass of snakebites.
Oh my God … Could I make it down the fire escape with him in time? I couldn’t leave him.
I raced back to the open window and out onto the metal landing. Below me, most of the crowd had made it to the ground and were sprinting to safety — to the park in the centre of Portsmouth Square.
Good, finally some luck. The fire stairs hadn’t been booby-trapped. It wouldn’t be easy, but I could get Wauhope down them.
I purposely didn’t look at the raging inferno next door. No point now. But I could feel it … If I could just get us down those stairs to the ground, a few scorch marks would be worth it.
Then the fire escape shifted beneath me, the metal groaning like a snakebite victim …
Holy hell!
Then it dropped by a foot.
Through the metal grating I watched in horror as the lowest flight of stairs, now heavily laden with screaming victims, peeled away from the side of the building like an opening zipper.
They all dangled in mid-air then dropped to the ground like overripe fruit.
Beneath my feet the landing dropped another foot as the unzipping raced for the top. I grabbed for the windowsill but the landing dropped again and I missed, smashing my knuckles hard against the gritty external wall.
Arrgh! That hurt.
I launched myself at the windowsill, just as the whole fire escape twisted away beneath me and fell crashing into the burning building next door. I grabbed for the sill; got it with one hand … and then the other, and hung there, dangling.
I tried to find a hold for my feet but scrambled wildly against the wall finding nothing instead. Both my dress shoes were knocked off, dropping through the space below like a warning of what was to come.
My hands were jarred from smashing against the wall. They just held me … If I didn’t find a foothold soon I wouldn’t be able to pull myself up.
If I didn’t find a foothold soon, I’d follow the shoes.
I looked down and around only to see that the fire escape, in collapsing into the inferno next door, had propelled that blaze up and out.
Fingers of flame reached out to swipe my back and limbs. I yowled in pain and fear.
There had to be a foothold! There just had to be!
I scanned down … There was a tiny, tiny decorative ledge, no more than an inch in width, jutting out from the wall near my waist. Would it hold my weight?
It didn’t matter — that was all there was. But I had to get a foot up to it. I bent my right leg, grasping up with it for the tiny ledge.
Another burst of flame seared my back and I missed, grunting with the effort to hold my weight.
My fingers felt like they were stretched to breaking point. I couldn’t hold on much longer.
Ignoring the pain, I tried again, hooking my leg up to catch the ledge.
Sweat ran down my face. My fingers and palms became clammy. They started to slip …
I heaved my right leg up one last time. I was going either up or down. This was it.
I caught the ledge with my big toe, then wriggled the other four toes onto the ledge. It was only an inch wide. A toehold, not a foothold.
I used the ledge as a lever and hoisted myself up the wall, slithering over the windowsill, just as another burst of flame reached for me.
I collapsed on my side on the floor, exhausted … only to see that smoke now covered the ceiling. It was pouring out of the elevator shaft.
I found Professor Wauhope, hoisted him over my shoulder then set him down near the floor-to-ceiling window on the opposite side of the building.
Come on, Cosmos — send me some luck!
The next building on this side was close too. It had to be a boutique hotel — just below us was a fancy roof garden with a fancy turquoise swimming pool. There was no smoke pouring out of it. It looked okay. Well, a lot better than this smoke-filled death trap.
Good. With a decent run-up, I could make that jump.
Oh God … but I couldn’t make it laden with Wauhope. And I couldn’t swing him that far either. No way! But there was nothing for me to lower him down with. And I couldn’t leave Wauhope here … not to die like this.
I checked the trajectory we’d have to follow very carefully. The swimming pool wasn’t that big, and looked smaller every time I checked it.
‘Well, Kannon,’ I said aloud. ‘Now you know why you work out. And why you have to lay off that damned bread.’
The floor-to-ceiling window didn’t open so I threw a chair through it and used the axe to clear out the broken glass. The gaping window sucked the black smoke from the elevator shaft even further into the foyer. Soon flames would follow it.
I lifted Wauhope back onto my shoulder and sucked in as deep a breath as I could. Positioning myself in relation to the window and the pool, I backed about ten feet into the thick, clogging smoke. I wasn’t game to go back any further.
Now, coughing and almost blinded by the tears streaming from my eyes, I ran towards the window like it was a lover’s arms. I pushed my calves and thighs to the max, thrusting my feet into the floor like pistons.
We burst out of the smoke and straight through the window.
There was no room for holding back. I pushed off the ledge, in one final bound, like an Olympic diver going for gold.
We flew across space for a few precious seconds of mo
mentum. Then gravity wrenched Wauhope’s body off my shoulder and we dropped.
Into cold water.
I hauled Wauhope up and out; he was still breathing but it was far too laboured. I looked back. Flames now poured out of the broken window we’d just dived from. I grabbed heavy pool towels from the lounges, wet them and covered us both. The hotel seemed okay; it had just been evacuated. We made it down the stairs to safety and across the road to the park.
I knelt to place Wauhope gently on the ground then turned in wonder to see that Portsmouth Square was ringed in fire.
Above us a weathered stone statue of a man clad in Western gear, boots and spurs, and holding two pistols ready to fire, took aim at the conflagration we’d just escaped.
I blinked. It was the hero from Professor Wauhope’s lecture — Hector Kershaw.
Wauhope muttered something. I leant in. His eyes were open and staring up at the statue behind me.
‘What did you say?’
He mumbled.
I leant closer.
‘I don’t understand,’ he whispered. ‘Why now?’
‘What, Professor? What are you talking about?’
He coughed once, then wheezed, struggling for each breath. ‘But the rattlesnakes mean vengeance?’
His glazed eyes held a question. His last. And one I couldn’t understand — let alone answer.
‘But why now?’ Wauhope’s face froze and he gave a long whistling exhalation, the question still shaping his lips.
Above, the heavens opened and heavy rain battered down on us. It was as though someone had opened a trap door in the bottom of a dam. I tried to shelter Wauhope from the sudden deluge with my body.
The sirens wailed, converging on us from every direction.
The paramedics surged into the park.
I put my head in my hands — they were too late.
5
THE ZEBULON HOTEL,
PRENDERGAST STREET,
Coyote Page 3
