Buster sprang up from the drink to grab desperately at the tail. His fedora and headlamp had disappeared. Despite how wet he was, he managed to get a grip. The python—brought up short—whipped around with its pale mouth wide and bit him on the face. Buster gave a whimper, stumbled, and half disappeared beneath the surface, which the snake was now churning to a coffee froth.
I knew constrictors did this: used their backward-curving teeth to secure a hold on prey—or, also presumably, an attacker—but I hadn’t expected this one to act like a monster out of a horror movie, and neither did the two biologists.
“Buster!” Stacey jumped down to help.
The python’s distended jaws had fastened on his nose and chin. Gushing blood showed red in my flashlight beam. The coils wrapped around Buster’s arm, chest, and throat were as thick around as my thigh.
Stacey tried to pull the snake free, but her efforts only seemed to cause the serpent to latch onto Buster all the harder. I considered shooting it, but there was no way to fire a round through the head that didn’t risk hitting the man. What I would have given for a canister of pepper spray.
Then I remembered. I reached into my pocket and found the small bottle. I leaped clear off the bank and went into the water up to my chest.
Blood pumped rhythmically through Buster Lee’s fingers as he gripped the triangular skull. The fight had torn tatters in the python’s bluish hide. It looked like a zombie serpent.
As Buster muttered and moaned, I directed my pump dispenser of bug repellent at the snake’s squeezed-shut eyes. The poisonous liquid just ran off harmlessly. Then I caught a flash of pinkish white: the corner of the python’s mouth. I sprayed the exposed tissue with a shot of 100 percent diethyltoluamide: commonly known as DEET.
And just like that, Buster was free.
To his credit, the herpetologist continued to fight the thrashing, half-poisoned animal. He closed a hand around the throat below its jaws. Between the two of them, they wrestled the enormous serpent up the bank.
“Get the bag,” Stacey said.
I used the overhanging vines to pull myself out of the sloshing water. Then, on hands and knees, I crawled across the soaked grass to grab the burlap sack. I couldn’t imagine how a hundred pounds of serpentine muscle could fit inside it. Somehow they managed the feat.
Half-blind with blood, Buster knotted the top so the snake couldn’t escape. The sack pulsed like the gullet of a waterbird that had just swallowed a living fish. The wounded man then collapsed to the ground with a hand over his face.
“I believe I may need medical assistance.”
Stacey turned, blinding me with the headlamp she wore. “There’s a first aid kit in my Rover, behind the passenger seat. Grab it for me.”
As I took off down the trail, I remembered a similar incident years ago in which it had been Stacey who had been injured by an attacking animal. In that case, it had been a feral boar in the foothills of southwestern Maine.
It took me five minutes to return with supplies. I found Stacey clutching a handkerchief to her friend’s face. He might have been wearing a red mask.
“Never had that happen before.” His voice betrayed the genuine fear he was feeling. “Are you sure my nose is still attached?”
“Let’s have a look.”
I was struck by her calmness. Stacey had never been one to keep her cool.
In the focused light of her headlamp, I could see that Buster’s nose was ragged but intact. The python’s teeth had missed the major veins and arteries in his neck, fortunately, but his sun-reddened face was mangled and would require surgery to repair.
“How maimed am I?” he asked.
“Mildly,” said Stacey, squeezing his hand. “You’re mildly maimed.”
Buster blinked at me through blood-crusted lashes. “What did you spray into her mouth, anyway?”
“DEET.”
“No wonder she sounds like she swallowed a gallon of bleach.”
The snake thumped in its cloth prison. The sound made my heart hurt. The loud bird—a barn owl, I now believed it to be—screamed again from the darkness of the cypresses.
5
Mist rose from the crushed clamshells and drifted through my headlights as I turned in to the lot outside the ranger station. I climbed out of the Land Rover and stood there in the unbroken heat, listening to the night noises. The frogs were making deep, resonant grunts like an orchestra consisting entirely of tiny bassoons.
A minute later, the top-heavy Ford Expedition swung in beside the Rover. Stacey opened the driver’s door. Beside her sat Buster. His huge bristling face was bandaged from his lips to his hairline. The gauze was spotted with blood. But he was smoking a cigarette.
“Do you want me to follow you to the hospital?” I asked as she stepped out of the vehicle.
“There’s no need for the two of us to wait around there.” She waggled a key loose from her key ring. “Why don’t you go clean up at my house? I don’t know how long I’ll be. But maybe you can catch a few winks, and I’ll be home in time to take you to breakfast.”
The idea of showering at my ex-girlfriend’s felt like a betrayal of Dani.
Stacey noticed my hesitancy. “I won’t even be there, Mike. I’m sure Danielle will understand.”
At first, her use of Dani’s full name seemed like a jab, but there was no mockery in her tone.
Buster called from the Expedition, “I’m still bleeding here!”
“His injuries look worse than they are,” she said in a whisper.
“When did you get certified as an EMT?” I asked.
“Stevens!”
“Buster’s really a sweetheart if you get to know him.”
“So’s my wolf dog, but
