'But maybe they'll kill 'em after all. I'd like that. Snakes are horrible.'
'Come on.' Veronica grabbed her son's hand and pulled him along with her, almost running until they reached the open gate that led out into the street by the bus-stop.
Veronica Jones felt foolish now. It had been the excessive heat, the eerie lighting in the reptile house which had been responsible. She was just glad that nobody there had recognised her, witnessed her terror. Everything was going to be all right now.
All the same, that night mother and son had a dual nightmare in the cramped bed which they shared in the council flat.
In the darkness the snakes came, condemned creatures that had escaped from their death cells, slithering their way up the steep flights of stairs and across the dingy ill-lit landings until they smelled out flat number 117. Their, serpent bodies shrank and flattened, enabling them to pass beneath the warped door, guided by that sour human body odour emanating from the woman who had scorned and defied them.
Growing again to their full size once they were within, wriggling and sliding up on to the bed, wrapping themselves around the warm-blooded forms of the adult and the boy, delighting in the screams of their victims, entwining them until their death throes ceased.
And then moving on in search of others . . .
'It was only a bad dream.' Veronica comforted the sobbing Ian until the first light of a summer dawn crept through the dirt-stained bedroom window.
'It was real.' he muttered. 'But they've gone now.'
'It's always worse at night.' She held him close and kissed him. 'Tell you what, tonight we'll sleep with the light on.' She wondered how much the meter would take and regretted her rash statement. 'It's always all right in the light.'
But she still had that uneasy feeling and wondered how long it would take to get yesterday out of her system. Even in full daylight she could still see those snakes, the way they glared their hate out of their prisons, desperate hopeless inmates willing to risk death rather than succumb to a life of incarceration.
They would kill if they could, there was no doubt in Veronica's mind about that.
'HEY.' THERE was a cry of indignation mingled with horror from the fair-haired man in dungarees standing back from the big van. 'This bloody ain't on. No, it bloody ain't and I'm not standing for it.'
The two workmen carrying the large glass case covered with a soiled and torn dust sheet lowered it to the floor of the van and turned to the speaker. 'What bloody ain't on, mate?'
'That.' Ken Wilson's normally pale features had turned deathly white. 'Nobody told me the consignment was ... was fucking snakes?
'Nothin' to do with you.' One of the workmen drew himself up to his full height and his expression hardened. 'Why should it be? You're just the bleedin' driver.'
'I refuse,' Wilson began to bluster, but deep down he already accepted the futility of his protests. He had been lucky to get this driving job; he might have to wait months, years to get another. 'I can't stand bloody snakes. The very thought of 'em makes me ill.'
'They'll be safely locked up in the back of the van,' the second workman intervened, tried to cool it. The last thing they wanted was a bloody driver refusing to take the snakes up north. He visualised union intervention, maybe an embargo on the transport of all dangerous animals. A little diplomacy was called for. 'You won't even see 'em, mate. They'll all be stacked in the back, covered up, locked up, and when you get to the other end you'll have 'em unloaded for you. AH on a plate and you don't have to do anything except drive from A to B. Can't see what you're complaining about. Christ, yesterday we were moving the elephants and giraffes.'
'All right, all right.' Ken Wilson puckered his lips, hoped the others didn't notice the way his skin goosepimpled and a shudder shook his body. 'I'll take 'em. Just wish somebody had had the common courtesy to tell me first what the load would be. I thought it'd probably be monkeys.'
'They went Wednesday.'
Wilson turned away. There was a cafeteria some fifty yards across the children's playground but he could tell from here that it was closed. You sensed the desolation, the atmosphere of a place that had once been alive with animals and sightseers and was now suddenly dead. A sadness that you couldn't escape even as an onlooker.
Some more men in overalls were struggling out of a narrow doorway with a cage that reminded Ken of a coffin. It was bigger, in fact, the one side a hinged glass partition. He didn't want to look, tried to turn his head away, but all the same he looked.
Jesus Christ! There were no prizes for guessing that that was a python. As thick as his own arm, with brown and green markings that would have camouflaged it almost anywhere, not moving. Maybe it was dead. No, that was too much to hope for. Even coiled it filled the container and he found himself mentally calculating the constrictor's length; it had to be eighteen, twenty feet, possibly more. Christ only knew what other horrors were down in that underground place waiting to be brought up and loaded into the van. And they would be his travelling companions for the next five or six hours! Do like the man said, forget about 'em, they're just a cargo, units in transit. No, he couldn't shut them out of his mind, that was impossible. Once he got out of here he would go like hell as soon as he hit the motorway, push the old wagon to its limit until he reached his destination. Come on, you buggers, get her loaded up and let's get the job done.
It was hotter today than it had been yesterday, more of a sultry heat with cloud formations building up in the western sky. The driver had listened to the weather forecast on the way down—hot and dry becoming thundery towards mid-afternoon.
He tensed, thought he caught a far-off rumble of thunder. It could have been an aircraft. Thunderstorms always made him uneasy, had done so ever since childhood. And those bleedin' snakes didn't help. He shuddered again.
He glanced about him almost furtively. He knew this area well, and that made him uneasy too. Hold on, you're imagining things, that woman isn't likely to be wandering around a closed-down zoo. Your chances of bumping into her are virtually nil and, anyway, she wouldn't recognise you with this moustache, certainly not in passing. He shaded his eyes with a hand that was unsteady and squinted across to where the conurbation began, or ended, depending on how you looked at it. Tall, unsightly blocks of council flats; there was a rumpus going on about whether they were safe or not. He had read in the papers that they had put glass tell-tales in them to check whether the foundations were shifting or not.
She lived in one of those. Ken Wilson used to go there, sometimes stopping overnight. No. 117. He experienced a twinge of guilt. Maybe Veronica had forgotten all about him, certainly she hadn't made much effort to trace him and she wasn't likely to after all this time. Stop worrying, she's OK, probably shacked up with another guy by now. Nevertheless, Ken Wilson did not like it when his truck driving brought him this way. There was always the awful chance that Fate might have destined him to meet up with Veronica Jones again. And now that he was living with an eighteen-year-old check-out girl from Wiggins superstore the last thing he wanted was a thirty-five-year-old spectre coming out of the past. Forget the woman and the snakes.
'Everything's loaded up, mate.'
Ken Wilson turned slowly, saw that the zoo workmen had even shut the back of the van up for him. All you have to do is to drive it.
A clap of thunder had him starting visibly.
'Looks like we're goin' to get it this time, mate,'
'Yeah, looks like it.' Wilson walked towards the cab, opened the door, felt the heat come out at him like the forerunner of a fireball. He winced, saw the clouds of flies buzzing on the windscreen. This was what you got in flaming June, either pouring wet or too hot to move. No moderation.
He climbed up into the cab, wound the window down; he should have done that as soon as he arrived. He felt in his pockets for cigarettes and matches—his hands were still shaking. Deliberately blowing smoke at the flies. Take that lot, you bastards. They bunched and buzzed their protest but they did not fly off.
Finger on the starter button, he hesitated. Listening, Listening intently, anticipating slitherings and stirrings from the back. They can't get into the cab even if they escape from their containers. Can they?
Then the thunder rolled again, terminating in a reverberating clap almost overhead. The sun was obscured by the advancing clouds which brought with them a gloom that was akin to dusk. Eerie.
He pressed the starter and the engine turned over maybe half a dozen times before it fired. This van was a heap of crap, a 'P'-registered vehicle that had struggled to pass its MOT. Like everything else at Hadleys Transport it was on the way out. But in this day and age a job was a job and you stuck it.
Ken Wilson let in the clutch and the van rolled forward, crunched on the gravel as he turned towards the main gates. A few rain spots smacked on the windscreen, but the expected downpour did not follow. The storm was coming from the south-west, he was travelling north. He might just keep ahead of it. He was going to do his damnedest, anyhow.
Motorway—1 mile. A sense of freedom, no stops until he reached his destination. One last glance in the direction of those hideous council flats. Just thinking about Veronica gave him an arousement. Well, that was all she was good for; get her out of bed and she wasn't much use for anything else. No intelligence, you couldn't take her anywhere, not with that whining complaining voice. Veronica's virtues began and ended between her thighs. All the same, he hoped she was OK. Hell, he was getting a guilt complex.
The motorway was unusually busy, an unending line of trundling trucks in the slow lane, cars cruising in the middle one. He awaited his chance and pulled out, got in behind a Mini Clubman estate that seemed packed with kids and luggage right up to the roof. A gimmicky notice above the rear number plate read: 'If you can read this you're too bloody close.' Silly buggers, what did they expect on the motorway? If you dropped back then somebody overtook you and cut in front so you couldn't make a gap no matter what you did. The roads were dry. All the same, Ken doubted if he could pull up in time if anything happened in front. Very few drivers could.
The sun was shining again. He glanced in his mirror, saw those black and yellow clouds way behind, thought he could make out the rain sheeting down. He'd give the storm a run for its money. He experienced momentary exhilaration.
He was watching those kids in the Clubman quarrelling and fighting when something on the seat beside him moved; something cylindrical, rolling, jerking. Oh God! The van swerved violently and he only just hauled it back into the middle lane in time. Horns blared, somebody flashed his headlights.
Now he could see the offending object lying motionless on the floor; a screwdriver, one he had used to tighten a loose screw on" the dash earlier and had left lying on the seat. Bloody hell, for a moment he had thought it was a ...
Don't think about those snakes. Like the man at the zoo said, you won't even have to unload them at the other end. You can report your arrival, go and get a cup of tea and by the time you get back you'll have an empty van to take home. As simple as that. You're just a driver, Ken Wilson, nothing else.
He would have to break the return journey overnight. That was a bit of a bummer when there was a teenage girl waiting back home, willing to do anything you wanted her to. If it wasn't for these bloody tachometers they fitted in HGVs these days he would have put his foot down and gone all out to get home in one run.
Those bloody kids in front were getting on his nerves. One had climbed over into the boot and was clinging precariously on to a pile of luggage and trying to kick hell out of the other at the same time. Why, for fuck's sake, didn't their bloody parents do something about it! Vandals and muggers in the making, that's how it all started, a lack of discipline in the home.
The sun had gone behind the clouds and it was hotter than ever. That crap cooling system must have packed up altogether. Wilson wondered if he could get his overalls undone whilst he was driving but changed his mind when a police patrol car passed him in the fast lane. The sweat was pouring off him, his trousers were stuck to the seat.
In his mirror he noticed headlights being used, and switched his own on. Those thunder clouds had moved at an unbelievable rate of knots. Now he heard the thunder again, resonant rolls like an angry monster roaring its wrath as it tried to run him down.
The sudden daytime gloom had him thinking about his reptilian passengers in the back again. Man was a daytime creature, scared of the dark no matter how he tried to tell himself he wasn't. Probably the snakes were all asleep. It was bloody cruel imprisoning them in zoos. Just done to make money. Taken out of their natural environment they slept and ate their lives away in sheer boredom. You couldn't blame them if they got nasty and turned on somebody. Man was the cruellest creature of all, there was no getting away from that. Christ, Ken thought, I'm going bloody soft.
He found himself listening again but all he heard was engine noise. If the buggers did manage to escape they couldn't go anywhere. It was the guys the other end who would find them whilst he was somewhere safe having a bite to eat. He'd keep well clear of the van until it was empty.