The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World

In the morning I was stiff but feeling more fit. The growth and healing drugs had whipped my cells into a frenzy of growth that had half healed my various wounds and given me a raging appetite. We dined and drank from the meager supplies that Angelina had brought—eked out by some coarse bread and dried meat liberated from the homicidal farmers. Angelina took the wheel and I rode shotgun, not liking the look of the decomposing landscape at all. The track now wandered down from the hills as the highlands turned into a vertical escarpment of rock. Then there were more swamps and some very nasty-looking jungle into which the road dipped. Creepers hung low enough to brush our heads and the soggy trees touched overhead. The air, which did not seem possible, became even more humid and hotter.

"I don't like this place," Angelina said, steering around a boggy spot that slopped across the track.

"I don't like it even less," I said, gun in hand and a clip of explosive cartridges in the butt. "If the wildlife here is anything like that in the river, we could have some fun and games in store."

Ever alert, I looked ahead, behind, right and left and wished my eyeballs grew on stalks. There were numberless suspicious dark shapes among the trees and occasional heavy crashings could be heard, but nothing appeared to threaten us. That I could see. Of course the one spot I wasn't watching was the surface of the road, and that is where the imminent danger lay.

"That tree has fallen right across the road," Angelina said. "Just bump over it—"

"I wouldn't!" I said, just a little bit too late as our wheels trundled over the green trunk that lay across the track and vanished into the jungle on both sides.

Our center wheels were on it when it shuddered and heaved upward in a great loop. The vehicle turned over, and Angelina and I were buried clear. But not clear enough. I hit the ground and tucked my head in and rolled and came up with the gun ready. A good thing too. The pseudo tree trunk was writhing nicely, while out of the foliage across the track appeared the front end of the thing.

A snake. With a head as big as a barrel, gaping mouth, flicking tongue, beady eyes, hissing like an exploding boiler. While right under those widespread jaws was Angelina, sitting up and shaking her head dizzily and totally unaware of what was happening. There was time for one shot, and I wanted it to be a good one. As that demonic head came down, I held my wrist with my left hand to steady the gun and squeezed off a round right into the thing's mouth. With a muffled thud its head was blown off in a cloud of smoke.

That should have been the end of it—except for a gigantic spasm that went through the entire length of that muscular body. Before I could get out of the way, a shuddering thrashing loop struck me, bowled me over, and buried me into the trees. This time there was no fancy roll and dive but a simple crunch splintery bang as I crashed through the branches, and one got me on the side of the head, and with a nice white explosion of pain that was that.

A period of time passed that I was not aware of. It was the ache in my head that drew me reluctantly back to consciousness, plus a new and sharper pain in my leg. I opened one bleary eye and saw something small and brown with a lot of claws and teeth that was tearing an opening in my pants leg in order to make lunch out of my thigh. The first hungry bite was what had woken me, and before it could go on to a second course, I kicked it with my boot. It growled and screeched at this and showed me all its teeth but reluctantly slipped away into the foliage when I attempted another weak kick in its direction.

Weak was the word for everything I felt. It took me some time to do more than lie there and gasp and try to remember what had happened. The road, the snake, the wreck…

"Angelina!" I shouted hoarsely and struggled to my feet, ignoring the waves of pain that washed through me. "Angelina!"

There was no answer. I pushed through the shrubbery to witness a singularly nasty sight. A churning row of brown animals, relatives of the one who had nibbled me, were working on the carcass of the snake and had already reduced great sections of it to neatly polished rib cage. And my gun was gone. I turned back and searched where I had fallen, but it was not there. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the shrill voice of panic was beginning to keen in the back of my head.

As long as I stayed clear of them, the carrion eaters ignored me, so I made a wide circle across the road. The car was gone as well. And so was Angelina.