by John Godey
The snake swerved outward from the wall, and, with the crowd retreating before it, crawled toward the curb and ran up into the open door of a taxi which had just pulled up, and which contained a man and two women in its back seat.
Squad S poured out of the park behind Buck Pell.
***
The snake panicked in the close confines of the taxi. It struck out at the flailing legs, bit once, twice, a third time, perhaps the same leg. Then it succeeded in turning around, and it dropped to the pavement, already squirming forward, its whiplike tail following. It ran toward the entrance to the park, but there were many figures blocking its path. It changed direction to its left and the figures moved with it; to the right, and the figures moved with it. It stopped, piled its length into a coil, lifted its head high, hissed dryly, opened its mouth wide, and swayed menacingly.
***
The sound of the crowd carried into the park, and Eastman knew that the snake had been found. He lowered his head and ran, making outrageous demands on his heavy, out-of-shape body, grunting and sobbing as he fought for breath.
And if I have a stinking heart attack, he thought, there will be no inspector’s funeral, just the ordinary burial of a fat cop who died rather normally in line of duty, and thank God for the pension, though it won’t be enough to see the boys through college and so they’ll drift into the NYPD, and start accumulating pensions of their own, which, God willing, they’ll collect before they get so fat that they die in the simple act of running.
He heard the sound of a shot.
***
Converse had lagged behind the Puries, poking in some underbrush, when he heard the shot from outside the park. He began to run. By the time he burst out of the park, hurdling the stone wall, only dimly aware that the plodding figure he had passed was Eastman’s, the snake was in the center of a ring of black-clad Puries, which in its turn was surrounded by a massed, concentric ring of onlookers.
Holding the Pilstrom tongs over his head, he strained to break through the crowd to the inner ring. Pushing, pleading, using his shoulders and elbows, he tried to make a passage for himself. Once, when he raised his head to take a deep breath, he caught a glimpse of Holly, her face pale, her body cramped by the press of other bodies.
***
“Close on in,” Buck Pell shouted, “but slow, careful.”
With their weapons extended, the Puries shuffled forward, contracting their circle. The snake turned its head to follow their movements, hissing, its anterior rigid and swaying, mouth wide open. Suddenly, as the ring pressed in, it began to crawl forward. The crowd gasped and recoiled. A Purie leaped forward, and, half running to keep pace with the snake’s movement, smashed the flat side of his shovel down on its curving posterior quarter.
“Death to the Devil,” he screamed.
The snake rolled over completely, writhing, coiling over on itself. A ragged cry rose from the crowd, half horror, half exultation. Writhing, knotted, the snake moved forward again, its shattered rear dragging behind.
Buck Pell signaled, and the Puries of squad S closed in, flailing downward with their weapons. The snake’s head rose, and it launched a strike at a Purie that fell short. A swinging blow from a rake knocked the snake flat. Its body squirming, knotting, it tried to right itself. The head came up, but a second blow struck it to the ground, bleeding. It flopped over on its back, and its light underside was turned up before it succeeded in righting itself. As it started to crawl forward, Buck Pell went to meet it, an ax raised high over his head. He braced himself, and brought the bright axhead down in a gleaming arc. Sparks flew from the pavement, and a chip, white at its edges, flew off into the crowd. The snake’s head was severed just behind the neck. Near it, the long body, oozing blood, pulsed and shuddered and writhed.
***
Converse was still struggling against the density of the crowd when he saw the axhead flash upward and then down. He heard the thud and ring of the ax, and, from the crowd, a concerted gasp like a sudden gust of wind. At the same time, whether in awe or revulsion or both, the crowd eddied back, flowed around him, and he stood at the forefront. The black mamba’s head and writhing body lay on the blood-smeared pavement, no more than six inches apart, but grotesquely out of line with each other.
The man who had wielded the ax, grinning triumphantly, bent over suddenly and reached downward.
Converse screamed, “No! Don’t touch it! No!” But he was too late. The man had already picked up the severed head.
The snake’s gaping mouth snapped shut over Buck Pell’s hand; each of its fangs injected a minim of venom.
***
Buck Pell drew back his hand reflexively. The snake’s recurved teeth held their grip. Buck Pell whipped his hand downward sharply, and the head fell free. It struck the pavement, bounced slightly with the force of its descent, and rolled a few inches before it subsided, mouth open, eyes staring.
A Purie stepped forward, lifted his leg, with the knee flexed, and brought his foot down squarely on the snake’s head. The crowd screamed, surged forward, and, in a frenzy of competition, fought to reach the bloody pulp of the snake’s head with their stamping feet. The Puries of squad S began to beat the snake’s twisting body with their weapons.
TWENTY
Eastman watched a squad of blue-helmeted TPU cops form a wedge and start to bull their way through the crowd. If they were going to try to collar the Puries, they were in for serious trouble. Maybe the crowd would allow them to take some names, but that was the limit. Never mind that the Puries had burned up Central Park—they had killed the killer, hadn’t they? They were the heroes of the hour, weren’t they? He shrugged. Maybe the cops would have sense enough to act prudently.
The crowd murmured ominously and offered resistance to the passage of the TPU wedge. Walk away from it, Eastman told himself, you’re just an Emergency Service cop on special assignment whose job is now finished, even if somebody else did it for you. Fade out of the picture, you’re too old to brawl with an aroused citizenry.
He saw someone burst out of the crowd like a cork popped from a bottle, elbows flailing, face dark and scowling. It was Converse, still carrying his snake-catching stick. For a moment they came face to face.
Eastman started to speak, but Converse muttered, “So long” and moved on.
Sore loser, Eastman thought. He listened to the voice of the crowd. It was swelling to a roar, peppered with obscenities. He saw fists being formed.
He sighed, and began to push his way through the crowd, toward the stalled TPU wedge. “Police. Make way. Police officer.”
A hand reached out from somewhere and ripped his Hawaiian shirt down the front.
***
Marvin Thurman, a television reporter assigned to shooting “man in the street” reactions, spotted the Police Commissioner’s limousine two blocks south of where the snake had been killed. The P.C. and the mayor were in the car, which was barely able to move because of the hordes of people who had poured out into the street.
Pushing his microphone through the window of the limousine, Thurman said, “Mr. Mayor, have you been informed that the snake has been killed?”
The mayor’s pale, unshaven face lit up. “Wonderful. I didn’t doubt for an instant that New York’s finest would once again display their ability to cope with a difficult and unique problem.” He turned to the P.C. “Congratulations, Commissioner, to the dedicated and tireless men of the NYPD.”
Thurman, who was far too clever for his own good, refrained from telling the mayor who had killed the snake. Instead, he said, “What about the Puries? What will be done with them?”
“They will be prosecuted for arson, and all the other crimes they have committed, to the fullest extent of the law.” The mayor pounded on the side of the limousine for emphasis, and the commissioner, who was devoted to his car, winced. “There is no room for lawlessness and vigilantism in this great city, and it will be punished accordingly.”
“I see,” Thurman said. “
Does that include the Puries who killed the snake?”
The falling open of the mayor’s mouth was recorded for posterity in full color. So were the rapid changes his complexion underwent from ashen to bright pink to nearly black. But the epithet he flung at Thurman—“cocksucker”—went unrecorded because the Police Commissioner, with lightning-fast anticipation, had covered the microphone with his hand.
***
A police detachment, led by a Deputy Inspector, in deference to the subject’s importance, arrived at Purity House, and was admitted without incident. The Reverend Sanctus Milanese, who was fully dressed and obviously expecting the visit, offered no objections to accompanying the police to headquarters. He was fully cooperative and jovial in manner.
As he was being helped into his red-lined cape he said smilingly to the Deputy Inspector, “I can come to no harm since I am under the divine protection of a holy trinity—God, my attorney…” He nodded to the distinguished white-haired man by his side. “…and the grateful people of New York who, when all others had failed, I delivered from the cruel and merciless limb of Satan.”
But once outside the mansion, perhaps at the sight of the television cameras, the Reverend’s demeanor changed. Spreading his cape, he dropped to his knees, made a steeple of his hands beneath his chin, and turned his face upward to the skies.
“Dear God,” he said in a hushed tone, “I give Thee thanks. Again hast Thou prevailed over Evil, wielding, as the sword in Thy strong right arm, Thy faithful and humble followers, the members of the Church of the Purification. For Thy great trust, O Lord, we do bless Thee and rejoice. Amen.”
***
It might have been high noon, Converse thought, as he walked aimlessly southward on Central Park West. At 2 o’clock in the morning, streets were alive with people, some streaming toward the center of the action, others returning from it, all of them feeling, perhaps justifiably, that they were actors with a role to play in the drama. He was astonished to see how many children were out, some as young as six or seven, apparently unattended by parents.
The streets were still clogged by official vehicular traffic. Police cars, fire engines, several ambulances. The fires in the park all seemed to be under control but smoke still climbed upward from a half-dozen different areas. The heat of the night seemed to have intensified, the humidity had thickened, and, where it reflected neon, the sky was the color of dirty blood.
“Hey, Mark, wait up.”
Her voice reached him from the rear, and it sounded winded, so that he knew she must have been chasing him. She looked terribly pale, and he guessed that she had witnessed the slaughter of the black mamba.
She said, “I got a stitch in the side before, that’s why I dropped out. First time that’s ever happened to me.”
“Yes, well….” He really didn’t feel like talking to anybody, even Holly. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“For me it is. I ran the marathon in the park the last two years and both times I damn near finished. I got blisters.”
They were walking slowly, ambling, and people were staring at the Pilstrom tongs. A kid, about two inches taller than a fire hydrant, tried to grab the tongs. Converse lifted it beyond his reach and scowled at him. The kid collapsed to the pavement in laughter.
Holly said, “I just don’t want you to get the idea that it would have been any trouble keeping up with you.”
“Yeah.”
“What does yeah mean?”
He noticed that she was carrying a pad and a ballpoint pen. “You were in the right place for a scoop, right?”
“You’re going to have to stop using that word. Anyway, there were more reporters there than civilians—the dailies, the wire services, the television, the radio, and a reporter and a photographer from my own paper.” She put the pad and pen into her bag. “I just made a couple of notes. You know, the old fireplug reaction.”
He looked straight ahead as they walked, but he was aware that her face was turned up to him, in some sort of silent pleading or, at least, serious questioning. From time to time her shoulder brushed against him. Then she reached for his hand. He withdrew it from her.
“Okay,” she said. “You want me to go away?”
He shrugged.
“I guess I can take that any way I choose,” she-said. “I choose to take it as meaning that you don’t want me to go but are too tight-assed to say so. Well, all right, but I can be tight-assed, too, and if I don’t get any response soon—”
He reached down and took her hand.
“Better,” she said. “But talk to me. Or at least look at me.”
He said, choking with anger, “I could have bagged it. There wasn’t any need to kill it.”
She shook her head. “There was a need. The situation cried out for an execution, for catharsis.”
“They savaged it to bits.” He swore under his breath. “Screw it. Screw everything. Things will be better in Australia.”
“You’re thinking of going to Australia?”
“What’s wrong with Australia?”
“It’s too far.”
“By plane?” He glanced at her face. “Oh, you mean too far from here?”
“I mean too far from me. Didn’t you, for Chrisesake, know that’s what I meant?”
“I’ll only be gone a couple of months. Wouldn’t you wait that long?”
“I could try, but we’re living in a very impatient century. Nobody ever waits for anybody anymore.”
He said, “You’re not being reasonable.”
“Right. Not being reasonable—that’s what it’s all about, Buster.”
She looked angry, and there were tears in her eyes. Goddammit, Converse thought, I can’t make up my mind this fast. I need time—say until we reach the next streetlamp.
***
The flames had swept over the burrow and scorched the earth black. They had set the fallen tree afire, and seared the two entrances, but they had not reached inside, and if the snake had remained in the burrow she might have survived unharmed.
***
She had mated in the spring at the breeding grounds near Elisabethville, and laid her eggs in the burrow three days ago. If they survived hunting animals and the winter cold, they would hatch out in the spring. Each egg that came to term would produce a twelve-inch-long black mamba, resembling the full-grown snake in every particular except color. Each would be light green on top, and pure white on the underside. Each would be highly aggressive, in the way of young snakes, and its venom, from the very instant of birth, would kill a large rat.
The snakes would grow very rapidly toward their mature size of ten or eleven feet. But, long before then, their venom would be potent enough to kill a man or a horse.
The eggs were approximately the size of a hen’s eggs, oval in shape, and white in color. There were thirteen of them.
