7

With a shock, my feet hit bottom. The impact bent my knees and threw me backward into darkness, jolting me against something. My knapsack jammed against my back, the flashlight, water bottle, and pistol in it walloping against my shoulder blades. I cracked my head and almost passed out. A moldy earthen smell widened my nostrils. The furious whir of rattles made me press harder against what I'd struck.

It felt like a wall. It was made from wood that had turned spongy. Simultaneously, I realized that what I'd fallen onto was the rotted remains of a wooden floor. Concrete showed through. It was pooled with water and had soaked my pants. But none of that mattered. All I cared about were the rattles in the darkness across from me and the rippling movement in the sunlight that came down through the hole in the ground.

Snakes. I scrambled to my feet, pressing into a corner. The flashlight, get the damned flashlight, I thought. Frantic, I tugged the knapsack off my back, yanked at its zipper, and reached in, fumbling for the light. In a rush, I turned it on and aimed its powerful beam at the darkness across from me.

The floor over there was alive with coiled snakes, their angry rattles echoing. A moan caught in my throat. I switched the flashlight's aim toward the scummy water at my feet, fearing that snakes would be coiled there. But the green-tinted water was free of them. It was about two inches deep, and I prayed that something in its scum was noxious to them. The floor tilted down toward the corner I was in, which explained why the water had collected there, but to my right and left and in the corner across from me, the raised part of the floor was dry, which was why the snakes had gathered on that side.

How far can a rattlesnake spring? I thought. Twice its length? Three times? If so, the snakes could fling themselves across the water at me. But my fall had startled them, making them dart back before they coiled. Their writhing mass was on the other side of the enclosure, a sufficient distance to keep me safe for the moment.

The enclosure. What the hell had I fallen into? It was about the size of a double-car garage. To the left of the opposite corner, a portion of the wall had collapsed. Behind its wooden exterior, insulation and concrete had toppled inward, exposing dank earth. A downward channel in the earth showed that whoever had poured the concrete for this chamber had failed to put in adequate drainage behind it. Rain had filtered down, accumulating behind the concrete until its weight had overwhelmed that section of the wall.

The gap explained how water had gotten into the chamber. So did the roof-not concrete, but made of timbers with plywood slabs on top (the hole in the roof showed the layers) and a waterproof rubber sheet above that, with six inches of earth over everything. Nothing prevented mice and other small animals from burrowing through the earth, reaching the rubber sheet and chewing through it. Once rain soaked down to the support beams, the process of rot would have begun, ultimately making the roof incapable of bearing weight.

But the chamber had obviously been built years earlier. During that much time, more than just a few inches of water would have accumulated where I was standing. There had to be a crack in the floor that allowed the water to seep away. That would have caused further erosion, explaining why the floor tilted toward the corner I was in.

I stared toward the fallen section of the wall. In the exposed earth, a channel angled toward the surface-the snakes used it to come and go. I wondered desperately if I could dig up through it, piling the earth in the chamber behind me as I went.

But how was I going to get past the snakes? As the rattles intensified, I braced the flashlight under my right arm and fumbled in my knapsack, gripping the pistol. Immediately I realized the flaw in what I intended. Even with fifteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, not to mention a further fifteen-round magazine in the knapsack, I couldn't hope to kill every snake. Oh, I could hit most of them. There were so many that it would be difficult for me to miss. But all of them? Killing them, not merely wounding? No way. Besides, I had to consider the effect of the gunshots. The reports would send the surviving snakes into a frenzy, making them strike insanely at anything that moved, even if it meant flinging themselves across the water to get at me. And what about ricocheting bullets slamming back at me?

I pressed harder into the corner. Stay quiet, I warned myself, trying to control my hoarse breathing. Once the snakes realize. you're not a threat, they'll calm down.

I hoped. But I hadn't brought spare flashlight batteries. In a couple of hours, the flashlight would stop working. A few more hours after that, the sun would go down. The hole in the roof would darken. I'd be trapped in blackness, not knowing if the snakes would disregard the water (which possibly wasn't noxious to them at all) and slither close to me, attracted by my body heat.

The meager illumination through the hole in the roof would have to be sufficient. Hoping that my eyes would adjust to the shadows, I shut off the flashlight, conserving the batteries. Despite the cold water I stood in, sweat trickled down my face. Fear made me tremble. Stop moving! I warned myself. Don't attract attention! I squeezed my muscles, straining to control their reflexive tremors.

At first I wondered if it was my imagination. Long seconds after I shut off the light and willed myself not to move, the buzz from the rattles lessened. Slowly, the frenzy subsided. My shadow-adapted eyes showed me the snakes eventually uncoiling, their unblinking gaze no longer fixed on me. Their movements became less threatening. A few went up the channel toward the surface.

But snakes preferred heat. Why had they gathered in the cool chamber rather than remaining outside and basking in the sun? What had driven them down? The question made my skin feel prickly, especially when the few snakes that had gone up returned. God help me, what didn't they like up there?

The rattling had almost completely stopped, just a few snakes continuing to coil. Then, except for the hammering of my heart, the chamber became quiet. Above, I heard sounds past the hole I'd fallen through. The breeze became a wind, whistling through bushes. I heard a rumble that I hoped was an approaching car but that I suddenly understood was thunder. The light through the hole dimmed.

Lightning cracked. The wind shrieked harder. But none of that was why fear squeezed my chest tighter. No, what terrified me was the pat pat pat I heard on the floor, the rain falling through the hole.

8

It came faster. The snakes that were positioned under the hole jerked when the drops hit them. Some slithered toward their companions on the far side of the enclosure. They accumulated on something slightly higher than the floor, a long, flat object that the shadows kept me from identifying, its soft contours having dissolved after years of periodic flooding. But other snakes veered in my direction, the floor seeming to waver as they approached the scummy water.

Some slithered onto it. Rank fumes from the water assaulted my nostrils. I aimed my pistol, trembling, holding fire when I saw that the snakes on the water reversed direction and headed back toward the dry floor. Others had paused at the water and angled away. I'd been right. Something in the water repelled them.

But the rain fell rapidly through the hole, splashing the floor, widening its circle of moisture. A small pool formed, trickling toward my corner. Soon the entire area would be covered. When there wasn't a dry space, the snakes wouldn't have a reason to avoid my corner.