The Stone Serpent, page 14
“Are you all right?” she asked.
The boy opened his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. “I can’t move my left leg. I can’t—I can’t feel it.”
Laura pulled the hem of his left pants leg away from his shoe and rolled down his sock. The leg was already petrified.
“He’s been bitten,” Laura told Morales.
Morales, coming up behind her, shook her head. “What the hell are you doing out here, kid? Didn’t they tell you about the snakes?”
“I—I didn’t believe it,” he sobbed. “We’ve had snakes in the village before, and it’s never been a big deal. I thought—I thought everyone was overreacting. Please, help me. You have to help me!”
Laura took his hand and held it tight. It was hot from fever. “What’s your name?”
“Eddie,” he said. “Eddie Gordon.”
“I’m so sorry, Eddie,” she said. “We don’t know how to stop it.”
“You have to do something!” he yelled, his voice turning hoarse. “It’s getting worse. My stomach, it feels…” He winced and let out a strangled cry.
The petrifaction was spreading up his body, transforming his organs. It wouldn’t be long now.
“My family…” Eddie wheezed.
“They’re safe.” She didn’t know that for sure, but it was what he needed to hear.
“I was supposed…to be an Elder one day,” he said. His voice grew weaker as the tissue of his lungs began to crystallize. “But I…I didn’t stay chaste. I went into the woods with girls. Now I’m going to Hell.”
Laura brushed his hair out of his sweaty forehead. “I don’t think that’s true.”
His dry throat making a clicking sound as he swallowed. More tears leaked from his eyes. “I hope…it’s not true.”
She held his hand until the seizures began. She did her best to keep him steady until they stopped and he fell over onto his side. Through the open collar of Eddie’s shirt, she could see his neck begin to change color. She stood up. She didn’t want to see the rest of him petrify. She’d seen enough.
Morales looked down at the dead boy and shook her head. “Doesn’t get easier, does it, watching someone die?”
“No. Especially when they’re so young,” Laura said. “It’s not how things are supposed to be.”
They were interrupted by men’s voices in the distance. This time, they weren’t cheers of triumph, they were shouts of confusion and alarm.
“What’s happening?” Morales asked.
“Look out!” Laura yelled.
A snake came racing toward them through the grass, its iridescent eyes flashing in the light. It was smaller than the last, but no less vicious. Morales trapped it with the rake and Laura chopped its head off with the hatchet. Another snake appeared in the grass, and then another. The lawn around them was alive with snakes. They emerged from trees and bushes, darting quickly across the ground. Laura raised her hatchet…and watched a snake sidewind right past her. All the snakes went right past her. They were heading for the main road on the other side of the houses.
“What the hell is going on?” Morales asked.
“Come on, I want to see where they’re going,” Laura said.
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“They’re not attacking anymore. Something changed. I want to know what.”
They hurried to the main road. Groups of men poured into the woods, chasing the snakes through the trees. Morales stopped a young man wielding a garden hoe.
“What’s going on?”
“The snakes are leaving!” the young man said happily. “They know they’ve been beaten!”
Dumbfounded, they watched the young man run into the woods.
“What does he mean, they’re leaving?” Morales said.
They followed the crowd of men into the forest and once more found themselves on the trail that led to the lakeshore. There, standing by the petrified body of Beth Richter that still lay curled near the water’s edge, they watched the snakes slither into the lake and swim away. The men cheered and danced. On the far side of the lake, the dark shape of the Thurmond Biotech plant squatted atop the cliff, its windows reflecting the rising sun in the east.
“Of course.” Laura turned to face the crowd. “Listen, everyone! Listen!” She waved her arms. The men quieted and turned to her. “The snakes are nocturnal. They’re only active at night. Now that the sun’s coming up, they’re going back to their den.”
The men cheered and hollered. Someone yelled, “It’s over!”
“Wait!” Laura shouted, and they quieted again. “This is important. You still need to be careful. Some snakes might have stayed behind. They’ll look for places to hide from the sun, under rocks or bushes. They’ll be lethargic during the day, but that doesn’t make them any less deadly.”
“What about tomorrow night?” an older man with silver hair asked. “Will they come back?”
“I don’t know,” Laura said. “We won’t know anything until we know why they came here in the first place.”
“I know why they came here.” Shepherd Eliezer emerged from the crowd. He held a blood-spattered shovel in his hands like a soldier holding a rifle. The men turned to him, eager for answers from their leader. “The snakes came because God is angry with us. He’s angry that we’ve lost our way. He’s angry that we allowed these outsiders, these women, to come into our fold to lie to us and pollute our minds with their perversions, so He sent the snakes to punish us.”
“Now wait a minute,” Laura started to say.
“I was not spared God’s wrath,” Eliezer interrupted, his voice booming over hers. “In His anger, the Lord punished me, too. My wife Sharon, and the child we were going to have, are both dead. Killed by a snake that got into our home. Our hallowed home.”
Laura’s stomach dropped. Sharon was dead? What about Meredith? Was the girl all right? She dropped her hatchet and started to run back up the trail toward the village.
Eliezer grabbed her roughly by the arm and pulled her back. “This is your fault. Both you and Chief Morales are to leave Valley Grove immediately.”
Laura yanked her arm out of his grasp. “You can’t—”
His sharp eyes drilled into her. “You’ve done enough harm, woman. Go, and don’t come back.”
A sharp, angry murmur rippled through the crowd of men. “This is your fault!” someone yelled. Others followed his lead. “Go home, outsiders!” Laura could feel the hatred and anger coming off the crowd like a wall of heat.
Morales stepped forward. “We’ll go. We just have to take custody of Craig Hutsell’s body first.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Eliezer said. “In the Church of the Divine Chariot, the dead remain in their homes for twenty-four hours before burial.”
“He wasn’t a member of your church,” Morales pointed out.
“Nevertheless, he died here,” Eliezer said. “Therefore, our customs will be observed. And since there’s nothing else to keep you here any longer, it’s time for you to leave.”
Morales squinted at him, then nodded. “Very well. Twenty-four hours.”
She laid down her rake and joined Laura. Together, they left the men at the lakeshore and walked up the path to the village.
“You can’t just let him keep Craig’s body,” Laura said. “It’s evidence that what happened to Malachai wasn’t a fluke.”
“Eliezer isn’t going to back down without a warrant for the body,” Morales said. “It’ll take at least a day to get the warrant anyway. I’m better off just coming back for the body tomorrow, when the twenty-four-hour waiting period is over.”
“If it’s okay, I’d like to come back with you,” Laura said. “I need to make sure my family is all right. And Meredith, too.”
“No, I need you in the lab with Dae-jung,” Morales said. “I’ll check on your people when I come back. I promise, but the best way you can help is for you and Dae-jung to figured out how to counteract the venom before anyone else gets killed.”
Laura’s first instinct was to argue, to insist that she needed to be here herself, but she knew the chief was right. She could save more lives in the lab, including her family’s.
“Okay,” she said.
“Good, then I’ll see you back in Sakima.”
They exited the woods at the top of the trail and parted ways. The street felt unusually quiet after the chaotic snake hunt. The houses were silent. No one had ventured out yet to see if it was safe. They wouldn’t until the men returned and gave them the all-clear.
As Chief Morales drove out of Valley Grove in her official Sakima police cruiser, Laura returned to her car to retrieve a plastic evidence bag and a pair of blue nitrile gloves. If she was going to find out how to counteract the venom, she would need to bring one of the dead snakes back to Sakima to perform a necropsy. She didn’t have to walk far from her car to find one. The street and lawns were littered with them. She poked the decapitated snake’s head with a stick to be certain it was truly dead, then picked it up carefully with one gloved hand and dropped it into the bag. She put the long, limp body in with it and sealed the bag.
When she returned to her car, she tossed the evidence bag onto the passenger seat and stripped off the gloves, which she carefully placed in another bag in case they’d gotten venom on them. Normally, venom needed to be injected into the bloodstream for its toxin to take effect, which made it safe to touch so long as you didn’t have any scars or open wounds on your hand. However, if this really was a new mutation, anything was possible. She didn’t want to take any chances.
She was about to start the car when Meredith came running out of Eliezer’s house. “Laura! Laura!” She was dressed in a fresh prairie dress with pink designs on the skirt. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
The relief at seeing Meredith alive and safe was overwhelming. She opened the door and stepped out of the car. Meredith ran into her embrace.
“I heard about Sharon,” Laura said, holding the girl tightly. “I’m so sorry.”
Meredith cried into her shoulder. “It’s my fault! She was protecting me!”
“It’s not your fault. She loved you, and she protected you the way any mother would.” She looked Meredith up and down while the girl wiped tears from her eyes. “I’m glad you’re all right. You should be safe for now, but it’s best you stay inside.”
Meredith’s face reddened with anger. Her small hands balled into fists.
“I don’t want to stay here! I hate it! I should have left with Mal! I would have rather died in the car with him than stay here!”
“You don’t mean that,” Laura said.
“I do! I wish that snake had bitten me, not Sharon!” Meredith burst into tears again and hugged Laura once more. “What am I going to do?”
She held Meredith until the girl stopped crying. She retrieved a pad of sticky notes from the glove compartment of her car. She wrote down her home address and phone number, then peeled off the note and handed it to her.
“If you need help, or if you ever need someplace to stay, for any reason,” Laura said. “Any reason at all.”
Meredith nodded, holding the paper tight in one hand. “I wish you could take me with you to Sakima.”
Laura wished she could, too. The temptation to put Meredith in the car and drive her away from Valley Grove was almost more than she could bear, the law be damned. Instead, her heart breaking, she gave Meredith one last hug and watched her run back home.
18.
* * *
Laura was bone tired. After staying awake all night, she was tempted to drive straight home to get a few hours’ rest. Instead, she drove to Sakima’s central police station. She could sleep later. There was too much work to do, and with a good chance that tonight would bring more snakes to Valley Grove, there was no time to waste. She parked in the official lot and called Booker from the car.
“Laura?” he said.
She looked at the clock in the car. It wasn’t even seven a.m. yet.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” she asked.
“No, I’m still up. Are you okay? What happened with the snakes?”
“I’m fine. I’m back in Sakima now,” she said. “Turns out the snakes were nocturnal. As soon as the sun came up, they went back across the lake. Unfortunately, more people got bitten. I don’t know how many.”
“I’m sorry,” Booker said. “I wish I could have been more helpful. I’ve been researching snakes all night. I had no idea there were so many species. More than three thousand. Only about two hundred are venomous enough to kill a human being. As far as I can tell, exactly none of them are able to petrify the tissue of their prey.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “I think they’re a mutation, a new breed that branched off from the common northern copperhead, probably recently. I’m at the station now. Dae-jung and I are going to perform a necropsy on one of the snakes. Hopefully, we’ll know more after that.”
“Be careful, all right? Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will,” she said. “I love you. Get some sleep.”
She ended the call and entered the police station. Making her way to the Science Wing in back, she was surprised to find Dae-jung waiting for her in the forensics lab.
“I didn’t think you’d be in this early,” she said.
“I got an urgent call from Chief Morales,” Dae-jung said. “She said she needed me to help you with something important, but she didn’t say what.”
Laura held up the plastic evidence bag with the decapitated snake inside it. “This.”
Dae-jung made a face. “Eww. Is that a snake? What happened to its head?”
“Chopped off.”
He looked impressed. “Badass.”
“I need your help analyzing its venom,” she said. “These snakes are responsible for the petrifaction you saw in Malachai Applewhite’s body, and there are hundreds of them living just outside Valley Grove.”
Dae-jung stepped closer for a better look at the contents of the evidence bag. “A snake whose venom petrifies its victims? That doesn’t make sense. Snakes use venom to kill their prey. How can they eat something that’s turned to stone?”
“It’s not stone,” she reminded him. “But that’s an excellent question. I’d like to take another look at Malachai’s body. Can you help me get him onto the autopsy table?”
“Sure thing.”
Leaving the snake’s remains in the forensics lab, they went down the hallway to the morgue. Laura unlocked the door and turned on the overhead fixtures. In the light, the stainless-steel autopsy table gleamed like an unsheathed sword. She put on a pair of nitrile gloves and approached the large, eight-door refrigerator that loomed against the far wall.
“Did you manage to extract his marrow yesterday to check for toxins?” she asked.
Dae-jung put on a pair of gloves, too. “I couldn’t, the tools I asked for still haven’t arrived. Before Chief Morales left for Valley Grove yesterday, she called me every five minutes about it. With luck, they’ll come today. Even knowing about the snake venom now, I’d still like to examine the marrow, just in case there’s anything helpful.”
Laura opened the morgue refrigerator door where they’d stored Malachai’s body and pulled out the telescoping body tray. One look at the sealed black bag told her something was wrong. Malachai had been curled on his side, petrified in an almost fetal position, and it had left the bag bulging so much at the sides that it almost hadn’t fit on the tray. Now the bag was wide and flat, and fit the tray perfectly.
“This doesn’t look right.” She double-checked the tag attached to the zipper pull. It bore Malachai Applewhite’s name.
Dae-jung pressed on the bag with one gloved hand. “It doesn’t feel right, either. Have you ever touched a waterbed? It feels kind of like that.”
“I’m going to open it up and see what’s going on,” she said.
She unzipped the bag a couple of inches, only intending to look inside, but once it was open, it was like a dam had burst. A cascade of multicolored goo erupted from the opening and splattered onto the floor. Laura and Dae-jung scrambled back before any of it could get on them. The slime continued to flow out of the open body bag like jam from an overturned jar, a swirling mix of dark red and thick yellowish-white. Liquefied tissue and fat, Laura realized. Carried with it were white shapes that she quickly identified as bones. A rib here, a portion of spine there; even the skull slid out and fell to the floor with the rest.
“What the fuck!” Dae-jung tried not to gag.
They backed farther away as the puddle grew larger on the floor. Its frothy edge inched toward them.
“Don’t let it touch you,” Laura said. “I don’t know how toxic it is.”
The individual phalanges of Malachai’s fingers slid out of the body bag in a waterfall of blood-colored sludge and splashed into the growing pool on the floor.
“Oh, fuck, I’m going to be sick,” Dae-jung said and ran out of the morgue.
Laura had no choice but to necropsy the snake in the forensics lab while the morgue was being cleaned and decontaminated by a HAZMAT team. Malachai’s remains would be collected for evidence, or as much of his remains as possible, which probably meant just the bones. Somehow, the petrified tissue had broken down into an organic slurry, yet the bones had been left untouched. Dae-jung, who was looking considerably less green now, doubted the marrow would be suitable for testing anymore. Even with the bones still intact, there was no way the marrow inside them was unaffected by whatever chemical process had liquified the soft tissue.
Putting on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves, Laura laid the snake’s headless carcass ventral side up on an aluminum dissection tray. Using sharp dissecting scissors, she made a long incision through the skin along the ventral surface, from the cloacal opening to the throat. As she cut, she lifted the skin away from the body to make sure she didn’t damage any of the organs underneath. Once the incision was complete, she carefully pulled the skin back and pinned it down on either side. She used a scalpel to cut away the thin membrane that covered the internal organs.
