Cheating Time (Longevity, #1)
Page 20
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Later that afternoon, our tiny expedition was making its way over a small hill covered with early spring's ground cover, the kind that, according to Jayden, provided perfect hiding places for poisonous snakes.
By Dad's and Jayden's own admission, I had a keen eye when it came to picking out the most dangerous copperheads, cottonmouths, coral snakes, diamondbacks, and rattlesnakes. It was as if I were the snake whisperer because I knew where they were before anyone else.
As the appointed snake whisper, I was leading the team. Jayden was following behind us, gauging Tawney's and Gran's progress and deciding when rest periods were required in order to prevent complete collapse and the loss of hours rather than minutes.
"All right, everyone, let's take a few minutes to rest and hydrate," Jayden yelled from behind us.
Instinctively, I glanced around to see who required the rest, Tawney or Gran. It only took a second to see that both looked like they were about to fold in on themselves. I dashed back toward them. While Jayden ushered Gran, only because he was a tiny bit worse off than Tawney, over to a log where he could sit and rest, I grabbed a pale and shaky Tawney's elbow.
"Tawney, you need to come over here and sit down," I suggested, leading her to a log on the opposite side of the trail, since the log Gran was resting against was too small for the two of them and possibly even too far away from Tawney to walk given her current condition.
Tawney nodded, and like Gran had with Jayden, she allowed me to guide her. She tripped and stumbled a couple of times, and with each, I became more confident that neither Tawney nor Gran would be leaving the spots they dropped down into for the next hour. If then.
After she was situated, I strolled over to Jayden and held out my hand for a bottle of water for Tawney. I caught it when he tossed one over and headed back over to where my cousin was sitting. I was just about to drop down next to her and give her the water when I saw something slithering behind her head.
My heart stopped, and before Tawney made any sort of movement that would cause the coppery snake to strike, I jerked her away from the log while blocking her from the snake's face. As suspected, the sudden movement startled the serpent, and it lashed out, biting the closest moving target, which just happened to be my forearm.
As soon as the fangs sank in and the poison shot into me, I dropped to my knees. I felt as if I'd been stabbed right before having boiling water injected into my veins.
"GODDAMMIT!" I shouted.
When I looked down at the ground around me, I realized there was something worse than the bite I'd just gotten, and that was the fact that I was suddenly surrounded by at least a dozen more copperheads.
Leave it to me to stir up an entire den of poisonous snakes.
I was shaking like a leaf, and no matter how still I tried to be, it wasn't enough for the snakes that were coiling themselves around my arms and legs, biting me with every last shiver.
I was too focused on being their prisoner, on the scalding poison pumping through my veins, to give any thought to anything going on around me. In a distant way, I realized Tawney had escaped clean and free of bites and Jayden was cursing viciously behind me.
"Don't move, Carlie!" he ordered.
Does he really think I'm moving on purpose?
Deciding it would be better for me if I closed my eyes and pretended to be anywhere but here, I did just that. The next thing I knew, Jayden was in the middle of the snakes' den with me. The difference was Jayden was grabbing them by the tails and slinging them far away from me as fast as I've ever seen him do anything.
I'm sure I was bitten a few more times as the snakes showed me just how much they hated the way Jayden was man-handling them. Fortunately, there was a point when there just wasn't much more they could do to me. As soon as Jayden had the last snake off me, he had me in his arms and was carrying me in the direction opposite the den.
A few minutes later, the venom pumping its way through me was beginning to cause other effects. Dizziness. Nausea. Blurred vision. Slow heart rate. Low blood pressure. Increased swelling every place I'd been bitten.
MicroPharm or not, there wasn't enough medication to instantly—if ever—act as an antidote to all of the venom pulsing through me and killing off every cell it seeped its way into.
When an ache in my chest that made me feel as if an elephant were sitting on it made every other throb and burn pale in comparison, I knew things were bad. Within seconds, I was gasping for a long, deep breath of air, but nothing I did made me feel like I was getting it.
Hysterical, I began jerking and thrashing. I needed to stand up… I needed to see if I could catch my breath. I fought Jayden until he finally and very carefully put me down. I may have naïvely thought I could stand and do what I needed to, that I'd be fine if he put me down, but I'd been wrong.
My legs were so wobbly that I dropped to my knees and fell forward, face planting into the forest's floor.
"DAMMIT! DO SOMETHING! YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HELP HER! DO SOMETHING… PLEASE!" Jayden yelled, and I just assumed he was directing his anger at my scientist great-grandfather.
Taking short, wheezing breaths and drifting in and out of consciousness, I heard the dumping of our backpacks' contents, the shuffling of feet, and the ripping of material. After that, I felt another sting. This one was in my thigh, and I wondered if a final, malevolent snake had come back to finish the job.
By then, I didn't care. A heartbeat later, the blurring greens and browns of the forest turned into complete and utter blackness.