Black Magic (20 page)

The snake hissed. Autumn hit the ground and the snake rocketed forward like a brown/green comet. She flicked the shovel up just in time to shield her neck. The snake’s head hit the spade with a clang, like it had been struck with a hammer. The impact bent Autumn’s wrists. She sidestepped and lowered the shovel, expecting to see a dead snake.

Instead it lay coiled for a second strike. Its mouth gaped open to expose needle-sharp fangs. Blood poured down from a gash between its eyes, unfazed and burning blue. It struck again.

Autumn swung like a baseball player. The shovel rang as it struck the snake’s skull. The upswing sent the snake’s head in a wide arc. It dropped down on its back, lighter belly exposed, head cocked at an unsurvivable angle. Its eyes were dark.

Oscar wailed and Autumn whirled in his direction. A second snake girdled the cat’s midsection. Orange fur stuck out between the tightening coils. Oscar snapped in vain at the scaly tail that writhed out of reach. To his rear, the python’s head rose to strike, blue eyes focused on the back of the cat’s neck.

Autumn launched the shovel like a javelin. The blade struck the snake below the head and then pinned it to the side of the RV. Its coils unraveled and the freed cat sunk its teeth into the snake’s underbelly. The python’s head, not quite severed by the blade, snapped back and forth in a futile search for revenge. Its eyes went dark and it dropped with a thump on the steel blade.

Oscar gave the carcass a hiss and bounded through the RV door. Underbrush rustled behind her. Autumn spun around. Seven snakes slithered in her direction, fourteen blazing points of blue locked on her and closing fast.

She yanked the shovel from the gash in the RV’s side. The severed snake head lay in the shovel. The scientist in her surfaced for a split second and she flicked the head and the shovel through the doorway. She bounded in and slammed the door behind her. A python hit the tiny door window with a crack. The glass shattered but held.

Autumn scrambled into the driver’s seat. Through the panoramic front windows she saw that pythons surrounded the RV. If some suicidal snake did break any of the glass…

She flicked the ignition key. The dash lights dimmed with each labored turn of the starter. The gauge said the batteries were fully charged. She pumped the accelerator and tried again. The motor turned even slower.
 

Not now,
she thought.
C’mon, Porky! You always start first try!

A snake pounded against the side of the RV. Out the left window, a python coiled for a puncturing strike at the RV’s front tire. Autumn’s heart raced.

She jammed the ignition key toward the dash. The starter uttered a long loping moan with each labored turn of the engine. The cranking wound slower and slower. The dash lights went dark.

Suddenly, the engine roared to life. A wet ripping sound splattered under her feet. Twin red sprays of python vomited from the RV’s front wheel wells as the fan blade shredded an under-hood snake. Autumn threw the shifter into drive and floored it. The RV spun a plume of sand behind it and lumbered forward. Autumn cut the wheel and the behemoth lurched sideways as it headed for the highway. The front wheels hit a python the size of a speed bump and Autumn slammed against the steering wheel with the impact. But momentum carried the day and the RV made its escape to the highway.

Autumn swung the RV south to hit Alligator Alley and civilization. She came to an immediate stop at the small truss bridge over the canal. Pythons with glowing blue eyes covered it.

She’d seen collections of snakes before, often coiled together for mating or warmth. But these giants weren’t a writhing mass. They were a concerted collective, wrapped around the trusses and intertwined like bread bag tie-wraps. The snakes contracted and the trusses buckled inward with the shrieking wail of shearing metal. The trusses went horizontal and the bridge collapsed with a crash into the canal. Thirty feet of air separated Autumn from her escape.

She piloted the RV through a swaying U-turn and went with Plan B. She headed north into Citrus Glade.

Oscar jumped up into the passenger seat and meowed. He put both paws on the dashboard and scanned out the front window. Python blood matted the white bib on his chest.

Chapter Forty-Six

Autumn didn’t see another car on the deserted streets of Citrus Glade. When she passed the Food Bonanza, she knew why. The lot was full to overflowing, everyone in town stocking up on supplies. The WAMM weatherman’s warnings had not fallen on deaf ears here. Rain squalls had blasted her on the way into town and the sky had grown noticeably, ominously darker.

Autumn was better stocked for the inevitable power outages and foodstuff shortages. The RV powered itself and she had food laid in for at least a week, if canned would be okay. She didn’t feel the need to fight that crowd. What she did want to do was take a better look at the snake head on the floor of the RV. Something had made it go homicidal.

She rolled down Main and looked for a parking spot with a bit of privacy to examine the snake’s severed head. One big lot had a street sweeper and a rusting dump truck in it. The space between the dump truck and a building wall looked pretty secluded. She spun the wheel and nosed the RV into its temporary home.

Once they parked, Oscar left his co-pilot perch and trotted back to the python’s head just ahead of Autumn. He gave it two perfunctory sniffs and a low growl. He looked up at Autumn.
 

“Thanks, boy,” she said. “I can take care of myself from here.”

Oscar retreated to an overwatch position on the kitchen table. Autumn scooped up the python head and set it on the countertop. She pulled her dissection kit from one of the drawers and rolled it open.
 

The snake’s neck was a ragged bloody mess where the shovel blade had worked with less than surgical skills. The jaw hung partly agape. Its eyes were open, but the lenses concave, as if the blue fire within them had boiled something away when it departed.

She removed a scalpel and flipped the head upside down. She cut away the lower jaw and what was left of the trachea. With a few slices through the upper pallet she exposed the snake’s brain.

She’d seen plenty of snake brains in her studies, usually about the size of a grape. She’d never seen one like this. The organ was black, like a tiny charred lump of coal. Snakes didn’t do much thinking with this undersized organ, but in this condition it wouldn’t do any. It looked like something had supercharged the brain from the inside and smoked every synapse.

Three sharp bangs on the RV door broke her concentration. She opened it to see her friend from the Citrus Glade DPW.

“I wondered if you would find some shelter with the hurricane brewing,” Andy said.

“This is a cozy little spot for Porky, but I hadn’t planned on staying here long.”

“Well, technically it’s illegal to park in the city lot,” Andy said. He gave the lot a dramatic inspection. “But there may be an extra space I can spare.” He gave her blood-striped wheels a sideways look. “What happened here?”

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Autumn started.
 

Attacks by pythons. Snakes destroying a bridge.
She
barely believed it. But that didn’t make it untrue. She relayed the story of her day, showed him the remains of the snake. He didn’t call her crazy.

“You might want to check these out,” he said. “Bring the tools of your trade.”

Autumn followed him to the tailgate of his pickup truck. A gust of wind delivered a spray of thick raindrops. Two gators lay in the rear. Andy told her his story. She was relieved that she wasn’t the only target of Mother Nature’s apparent rampage.
 

“You want to check out their brains?”

“Hell, yeah! I’ll be right back.”

The weather wasn’t conducive to a measured autopsy but all she needed to know was going to be right inside the skull anyway. She grabbed a small battery-powered saw and a rib spreader. By the time she got back, Andy had a blue tarp tied over the bed of the truck like a tent.

“Dead animals and a tarp shelter,” Autumn teased. “You know how to worm your way into a scientist’s heart, don’t you?”
 

Andy’s cheeks reddened a bit.
 

They both climbed into the protected bed. The claustrophobic humid air smelled like algae and blood.

Autumn flicked on the tiny saw. It spun into action with a high-pitched whir. She started at the top of the skull and sawed a stripe down the center to the tip of the snout. She inserted the rib spreader and twisted. The head popped open a few inches.

“Unreal,” she muttered.

Andy stuck his head in under the tarp. “Prognosis, Doc?”

“See this?” She pointed to a mass of blackened tissue about the size of three olives. “That’s the brain.”

“In all that head?”

“Alligators are all sinus,” she said. “This is all they have to think with. And this one’s fried. Cerebellum, medulla oblongata.” She prodded the inside with the screwdriver blade. “The pituitary looks like an exploded balloon, which would account for some of the behavior you saw. Something got inside this gator’s head and pushed the overdrive button. Just like the pythons.”

“Something like what?” Andy said.

Autumn gave the charred brain another poke. Rain pounded against the plastic over her head as the storm worsened.

“Like something I can’t explain.”
 

Chapter Forty-Seven

Gridlock.

From Key West to central Florida, the population’s prudent retreat had descended into panic. Announcers said
Rita
on the weather reports, but people heard
Katrina
. Twelve lanes of I-95 through Dade County became a long thin parking lot as rain-induced accidents blocked entire sections. Evacuees switched to surface streets and the gridlock spread like blood poisoning to the smaller thoroughfares. A firefight broke out on a bridge from a barrier island when a man in a black and chrome Hummer tried for a quick return to his home around the police blockade. At noon, the governor addressed the state, but particularly the residents of the Keys. He told them to sit tight. A1A was a Gordian knot of vehicles, backed up all the way from the mainland when hundreds of cars ran out of gas. He warned them that if they walked the Overseas Highway, there was still no place to go. Even the shelters were moving north.

Tens of thousands were trapped in the evacuation. Millions more watched the chaos and opted to forego it. Stores sold out of everything, alcohol of course being the first to go. Customers fought over what remained. Some long timers remembered Hurricane Andrew and this one would be ten times worse. The mayor of Miami-Dade imposed a curfew. The collective clicks of rounds being chambered and dead bolts locking echoed across the state.

All along both coasts, boats tore from their moorings as absentee owners had no time to reinforce the lines. Epic winds drove waves ashore that tossed the boats into piles. Entire marinas ripped their pilings from the ground and balled up into heaps of shattered fiberglass and smashed planking.

Small power outages in the morning grew into major blackouts by the afternoon. Crews, daunted by the worsening weather and the frozen traffic, did not venture out to make repairs. People with battery-powered radios heard the boiled water alerts that every city issued. Errant candles started dozens of fires that burned until the hurricane’s downpour quenched the flames.

An awful realization spread among the people huddled in dark corners of their homes or cowering under blankets in their bathtubs. No power. No water. No food but what they had on hand. Civilization had deserted them and if the storm did the damage everyone foretold, it would not return for a long time.

Chapter Forty-Eight

A curtain of rain fell and pounded the pavement outside. Juliana looked at that and then back at her livid boyfriend. She ducked her head and chose to face the elements. She ran though the downpour and climbed into the truck cab.

The diesel rumbled to life. The truck departed with a grind of the gears and a splash through a newly formed puddle. Juliana gripped the wheel so hard her knuckles went white. She was so good to Cente and in payment he told her to drive forty thousand pounds of steel through a hurricane.

Rain lashed the windscreen like intermittent cracks of a whip. Her eyes felt heavy and her arms were like lead. She’d been high most of the day and the resultant energy crash was on its way. She wasn’t going to make it to Macon in one day at this rate. She was going to need a little help, the same help that had gotten her through so much in the past.

She pulled over and slipped a baggie from her pocket. The white powder inside was damn near pure. The Colombians might cut it with filler once it got into the states, but they weren’t going to ship it in that way. There was no comparison between it and the watered-down blow she used to do in Liberty City as a kid. She tapped a line onto the truck’s center console and rolled a scrap of paper into a tiny tube.

When she inhaled the powder, every synapse in her brain caught fire. Her senses amped up to max. Colors got brighter, sounds got crisper. Above all, she was flush with energy, a boundless unbridled surge so powerful she felt like she was floating. Now she was ready to drive.

Another wave of rain pelted the windshield and she flicked the wipers on. The low speed was too slow, not for the rain, but for her senses and she switched it to high. She checked the side mirror six times, though the road was deserted, and pulled back onto CR 12. Her muscles jittered as the cocaine fueled them. She ground each gear as her left leg danced on the clutch.