The Stone Serpent, page 13
She lay curled on her side next to Sharon’s body, her hands tucked between her knees. She couldn’t bring herself to hold Sharon’s hard, stony hand anymore. From the other side of the bedroom door, she heard her father kill the snakes in the hallway with something heavy that shook the floor.
He entered the bedroom with a blood-spattered shovel in his hands.
“Sharon!” He hurried to the bed. When he saw he was too late, he lowered his head and muttered a prayer under his breath.
Meredith sat up. “She killed a snake, but not before it bit her.”
She nodded listlessly toward the dead snake on the bedroom floor. The snake that had changed everything.
“Why would Sharon do that?” her father asked. “Why would she take such a foolish risk in her condition? She should have protected the baby.”
Meredith’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. Angry tears squeezed from her eyes. “She was protecting me, Father!”
“You should have protected her! And the baby!” he yelled. “Now they’re both dead!”
Meredith watched through tear-blurred eyes as her father stormed out of the room, the bloody shovel still in his hands.
She told me, Father, Meredith thought angrily. She told me what you did.
17.
* * *
Laura and Chief Morales were hustled into the holy sanctuary along with roughly two dozen other women and girls, all of whom had been too far from their homes when the snakes invaded Valley Grove. The wooden house of worship was enormous, with exposed beams on the ceiling and walls, and a huge pulpit carved to resemble Elijah’s chariot from the Bible. Everyone took seats in the pews. Mothers clutched their daughters nervously. Some of them rocked back and forth and sang softly or prayed under their breath. A few of the smaller children were crying in confusion and fear.
Laura noticed two men were stationed outside the door to keep the women safe. Or to keep them from leaving, depending on how you looked at it. She texted Booker to let him know what was happening. He texted back immediately making sure she was okay and promised to let her know the moment he had any new information.
The hours ticked by. Laura chewed her fingernail and kept checking her phone, waiting for a call or text from Booker saying he’d found a match. It wasn’t a good sign that it was taking so long. She did an Internet image search on her phone for “snake with red stripes,” but none of the pictures that came up looked like the snakes she’d seen slithering out of the lake. With the phone’s battery only at 28%, she put it away again to conserve power. This was not the night to be caught without a phone.
Morales sat in the pew in front of her, looking at her own phone. Laura leaned forward.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “We should be out there helping people, keeping them safe, not stuck in here.”
“What exactly do you propose we do?” Morales asked.
“I don’t know yet,” she said, “but I can’t just sit here doing nothing.”
Morales smirked. “Why am I not surprised? Going off half-cocked without a plan seems to be your M.O.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s your problem, Dr. Powell. You don’t think things through. What did you think would happen when you came to Valley Grove against my orders? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Or when I told you to leave this case alone, did you think it was just a friendly suggestion?”
Laura shook her head. “I…what? I don’t think things through? That’s all I do.”
“Then the only other answer is that you don’t respect my authority,” Morales said. “So which is it?”
“This is unbelievable,” Laura said. “You’ve had it out for me ever since you got to Sakima, Chief. What is it? Did we get off on the wrong foot somehow? Did I rub you the wrong way? Or do you just hate me?”
She was surprised she blurted it out like that, but what did she have to lose? She was on the verge of being fired anyway.
Morales turned in her pew to face Laura. “Did I ever tell you where I was stationed before I came to Sakima, Dr. Powell?”
The question surprised her. She expected Morales to lay into her, not…whatever this was.
“No,” she said. “You never mentioned it.”
“I was in Texas, on the border patrol,” she said. “My father and grandfather both wore badges. Law enforcement is in my blood. Ever since I was young, I wanted to follow in their footsteps. The border patrol was where I figured I could do the most good. A lot of the officers I worked with didn’t speak Spanish. They needed a translator in the interview room, so that’s where they put me, talking with the migrants we caught crossing the river, helping to determine who was eligible for asylum and who got sent back.”
A dark-haired woman dressed all in white watched them from another pew. Morales stopped talking until the woman looked away, pretending not to eavesdrop.
“I rose up the ranks quickly because I had a skill the others didn’t,” she continued. “But the border patrol is still mostly men, and still mostly White, and after a while, I guess I rose up too far for their liking. Things changed. People got suspicious. My colleagues started to wonder if I was telling the truth about what the migrants told me in that room, or if I was covering for them because of my Mexican heritage.”
Laura was taken aback. “What?”
“Everything turned on a dime,” Morales said. “People I had worked with side by side for years, people I considered my friends, started whispering about whose side I was on. A rumor started going around that the migrants were actually from the cartels, sneaking across the border to sell drugs and giving me a cut of the money to lie for them. All the work I’d done for the border patrol, all my years of service—none of it mattered. All that mattered anymore was that I was Mexican.”
Morales turned away. She looked at the polished wooden wall for a moment, gathering her thoughts.
“Soon after that,” she said, “I wasn’t allowed in the interview room anymore. Even though we were told every year that our budget was stretched to the limit, somehow they found the money to hire a new translator to replace me. A new translator who wasn’t Mexican. They stuck me at a desk, because if I couldn’t be trusted in the interview room, then I certainly couldn’t be trusted in the field. I’m surprised they didn’t just fire me, but I suppose they didn’t want the scandal. Anyway, if they were planning to let me go, I beat them to the punch. When the Sakima position opened up, I jumped at it.”
“I’m so sorry that happened,” Laura said. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s still happening, Dr. Powell.” Morales turned to face her again. “It’s been an uphill battle in Sakima, too, even if the reasoning is different. The mayor, certain members the city council, even some of the officers under my command are skeptical I can do the job because I’m a woman. My career spans more than thirty years, and I have never stopped having to prove myself, either because I’m Mexican or because I’m female. You know as well as I do, Dr. Powell, that if I make a mistake, if I screw up even once, I won’t just be Sakima’s first female chief of police. I’ll be the last.”
Laura knew the feeling well. How many times had patients questioned her medical advice? How many times had police officers doubted her autopsy findings? She would need more than two hands to count all the instances. The reason was always the same. They didn’t trust her expertise because she was a woman.
“You think I’m being hard on you,” Morales continued, “but it’s not just you. I demand the best from everybody in the department, because I know any failure, at any level, will reflect on me. They’re looking for any reason to say a woman can’t be chief of police, particularly a woman of color, and I’m not about to give them one. So forgive me if I don’t take it well when people ignore my authority. I don’t have that luxury.”
Laura hung her head. She felt mortified. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I—I guess I got used to doing things a certain way.”
“I know Ralph Gorney was a friend of yours, and he allowed you to do things the way you wanted to,” Morales said. “He was a good chief. People at the station speak highly of him. But like it or not, I’m chief now, and I have my own way of doing things. If you’re going to continue to work for the Sakima PD, you need to accept that.”
“You’re not firing me?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I was sure you’d already put out the call for a new medical examiner.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Morales said. “Second chances are few and far between in this life, Dr. Powell. Don’t make me regret giving you one.”
Shouting came from outside, drawing Laura to the window. Through the glass, she saw men hurrying back and forth, hunting snakes by the light of their flashlights and lanterns. They wielded lawn rakes and garden hoes as makeshift snake hooks, and shovels, hammers, and axes as weapons. Women, children, and the elderly had been ordered to stay inside until it was safe again.
“Another one, over here!” someone yelled. A group of men came running with flashlights to dispatch the snake. She heard the clang of a shovel’s sharp edge striking pavement. The men danced and shouted in celebration. “God be praised! God be praised!”
One of them reached down toward the snake’s remains on the ground.
“Don’t touch the head!” Laura yelled.
There was no way they could hear her through the glass from that far away. When the man straightened again, he held the headless body of the snake and joining the others in the celebration. Laura breathed a sigh of relief.
“Why shouldn’t they touch the head?” Morales asked.
“A decapitated snake head is still dangerous,” she explained. “Severing the head doesn’t cause immediate death. Snakes are cold-blooded, which means they don’t need as much oxygen to fuel their brains as warm-blooded creatures do. Even if you cut their heads off, the heads can live on for as long as an hour. It can still bite you.”
“Is that true?” a woman sitting in a nearby pew asked. She smoothed her blue floral prairie dress with nervous hands.
Laura gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s true, but it’s nothing you have to worry about. They’re not going to let any of the snakes get in here.”
Turning back to the window, Laura watched men stalk the streets with their makeshift weapons.
“This is bullshit,” she told Morales. “We shouldn’t be cooped up in here when we can help.”
“I agree,” Morales said.
“Language!” a skinny blonde woman snarled. She put her hands over the ears of her daughter.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Morales said.
“Let the men do their jobs and protect us,” the blonde woman continued. “It’s the natural order of things. God made them stronger than us for a reason. Our job as women is to be with the children.”
Laura held her tongue. It wouldn’t do any good to argue the point. The Church of the Divine Chariot had drilled its ideas about strict gender roles into the woman’s head for so long she didn’t question it. It was doubtful she was the only one. If Francis wanted to change things around here, he had his work cut out for him.
She looked out the window again. How many snakes had the men killed so far? Had any of the men been bitten? It was impossible to know anything from inside the holy sanctuary. She needed to be out there, but there was no way the men guarding the door would let her leave.
The dark-haired woman who’d been eavesdropping earlier came running up to her. “Miss, please, I—I heard your friend say you’re a doctor. Something is wrong with one of the girls in back. I think she’s sick. Can you come look at her?”
“Where is she?” Laura asked.
“This way. Hurry!”
Laura and Morales followed the woman to one side of the holy sanctuary, where an aisle ran the length of the wall. They followed it past the pulpit and entered a hallway in the back. Laura didn’t see any girls anywhere, let alone a sick one. The woman led them through a door at the end of the hallway and into a storeroom filled with tools and gardening equipment. Still no girls. Laura tensed, wondering if this was some kind of trap.
“I’m sorry for the lie,” the woman said. “There are tools in here you can use.”
"For what?” Morales asked.
“To kill snakes.” She pointed to a door in the back of the storeroom. “That door leads outside. The men in front won’t see you.”
“Why are you doing this?” Laura asked.
The woman lowered her voice to a whisper. “My husband and I support Elder Francis for Shepherd. We agree with what he has to say about women having a larger role in our community. More people support him than you might think, but it’s not safe to do it openly right now. That’s why I had to lie to bring you back here. I didn’t know who might be listening. If word got back to Shepherd Eliezer that I helped you…”
“I understand,” Laura said. “Thank you.”
The woman wished them luck and hurried out of the storeroom, closing the door behind her. Laura took a small hatchet and a flashlight off the shelves. Morales grabbed a rake. Together, they sneaked out the back door and into the dark of night.
They walked through the backyards of the houses adjacent to the holy sanctuary. Occasionally, they came across the body of a decapitated snake. They made sure to give the heads a wide berth, just in case. Each house had a concrete garage at the far end of the yard like the one she’d seen behind Eliezer’s house. They looked bulky in the darkness, with plenty of shadows for snakes to hide in, waiting to ambush them. Laura stayed on high alert.
“I thought your boyfriend said copperheads weren’t aggressive,” Morales said. She poked at the grass with the rake as they walked. “From what I’ve seen, these snakes are aggressive as hell.”
“His name’s Booker,” Laura said, holding the flashlight in one hand and the hatchet in the other. “Obviously, despite the similar markings, these aren’t copperheads.”
“So what are they?” Morales asked.
“Good question.” Laura’s phone vibrated in her pocket. She handed the flashlight to Morales and took out her phone. It was a text from Booker. “I think we’re about to find out.”
She opened the message.
STILL NO LUCK TRACKING DOWN WHAT KIND OF SNAKE IT IS. THOSE HOURGLASS MARKINGS ARE UNIQUE TO COPPERHEADS. NO OTHER SNAKE HAS THEM. THE ONLY ONE THAT COMES CLOSE IS THE EASTERN RATTLESNAKE, BUT THEIR COLORING IS BLACK AND WHITE, NOT BROWN, AND THEIR HEADS ARE A DIFFERENT SHAPE. CAN’T EXPLAIN THOSE RED STRIPES ON THE SIDES EITHER. HAVEN’T FOUND ANY SNAKE THAT MATCHES. WILL KEEP SEARCHING.
“Damn,” she said, putting her phone away. “Still nothing.”
“Strange. It’s like these snakes came out of nowhere.”
They passed behind a house where two small children, a boy and a girl, stared at them with their hands and faces pressed against the window glass. They looked frightened. Laura smiled at them to put them at ease. It didn’t work, and she immediately felt foolish. Children know when you’re lying to them. They know when the danger is real.
“I’ve been working on a theory,” she told Morales.
“And what theory is that?” Morales asked.
They sidestepped around another dead snake.
“I think they’re a new breed. Probably a mutation that branched off from copperheads, which would explain why they look so similar. Booker can’t identify them with his research, so I’m thinking the mutation must have occurred recently, within one or two copperhead generations.”
In the beam of Laura’s flashlight, Morales swept the rake through the grass. “It’s evolution, then. The next step in snake life, with venom that kills and petrifies its victims, all in about half an hour. Great.”
“Not necessarily. Not every new breed succeeds or becomes dominant. There are plenty of blind-alley mutations that don’t go anywhere. Aberrations that don’t last,” Laura said. “Genetic mutations like this don’t occur without a mutagen, something that causes it to happen, whether it’s an environmental factor or—”
“Watch it!” Morales yelled.
A snake darted toward them across the lawn. It was a big one, made bigger by the shadows cast by the flashlight beam, sidewinding through the grass with shocking speed. Its forked tongue, as red as the stripes on its sides, flicked in and out of its mouth. Its white eyes were iridescent in the light. It opened its mouth and unsheathed its fangs, but before it could strike, Morales slammed the rake on top of it, pinning it. It thrashed angrily, looking for an escape.
Keeping the flashlight beam on the snake, Laura raised the hatchet. At her signal, Morales pulled the rake away quickly. Laura brought the hatchet down, severing the snake’s head from the rest of its body. A small puddle of dark blood oozed from the wound. The body twitched and spasmed before growing still. The head continued to snap its jaws at them. Laura hit it with the hatchet again, right between the eyes, putting a stop to it.
“We’re not bad at this,” Laura said as they walked into the next backyard. “How about we quit the force and become exterminators? It probably pays better.”
Morales didn’t say anything. Laura wasn’t surprised. She didn’t seem like the type to enjoy a joke. In the east, a rosy haze appeared at the horizon, the first sign of dawn. Laura kept her flashlight pointed at the ground in front of them. More cheers came from nearby and men shouting, “God be praised! God be praised!” Another snake down, but how many more to go? When she’d seen them come out of the lake, it had looked like there were hundreds of them.
She and Morales moved on, dispatching two more snakes before they heard a faint voice cry out, “Help!”
Laura stopped. “Did you hear that?”
Morales pointed. “It came from over there.”
Someone sat slumped with their back against the concrete garage in the next yard over. Laura ran toward the figure, keeping an eye on the ground in front of her for any more snakes hiding in the grass. It was a teenaged boy. His face was flushed. He grimaced in pain as tears squeezed from his tightly shut eyes. Laura knelt down beside him.
