“I wasn’t trying to, but what difference does it make at this point?” Shane asked. “We’ll never get him back without shooting him and we can’t let him get away.” Jesse wanted to disagree, but Shane was right. He stood bent over his knees, panting, and tried to catch his breath. It felt like a needle was being shoved into his left side just below the ribcage.
POW!
Another shot rang through the forest for no one to hear but the three of them. Ozzie was nearly out of sight now in a rising thicket, but he didn’t know that the men had momentarily stopped pursuit when the bullet swished over his head. The frightening sound brought forth the image of Ozzie’s father lying in the mud, eyes open and staring at him. What was the last thing his father had said to him? You’re almost grown now. Act like it! Yes, that was it. And his mother’s last words to him? Run, Ozzie, just run! Ozzie said to himself, run!
Ozzie crested a hill, terrified but relieved to be alive, a good 200 yards away from the boulder. For just a second, he stopped to glance back. Shane used the boulder to support his 30.06 rifle. He had been following Ozzie for fifty yards through his scope but couldn’t get a shot off. When Ozzie stopped and looked back it allowed Shane to zero in. Shane tried to catch his breath and control his breathing, but there was no time for the perfect shot. He squeezed the trigger, absorbed the recoil and then aimed his scope back at Ozzie. He found his target just in time to see Ozzie fall to the ground.
“Got him,” Shane panted to Jesse, who was on his knees now trying to catch his breath. Shane had run long distance track the year before as a senior at Rabun County High and he was still in decent shape, but Jesse was really hurting. “Just get your breath,” Shane said. “He ain’t going nowhere.”
Shane laid the gun on the pine needles and eyed the spring. A gift from above, Shane thought, just in the nick of time. A little piece of paradise, no bigger than a bathtub under this gigantic boulder, giving life to lush, fragrant rhododendrons on each side of the water. As he knelt before the water and prepared to drink, Shane felt almost as if he were at a Sunday church service. In the infinite blackness of the still water, he saw the reflection of the ancient, weathered rock, giving him the feeling of kneeling at an altar with God looming above as an everlasting boulder of strength. Shane knelt at God’s feet as a humble, grateful servant. He leaned forward and cupped his hands to collect His gracious gift in this Garden of Eden.
Before putting his hands in the water, Shane paused as he caught the reflection of wispy clouds streaming overhead against a deep blue sky. The moment was perfect. So quiet, so peaceful. And yet...he felt something else, something disquieting. What is it? He thought. Like...maybe I’m being watched. Is God watching me from above?
A trio of pinecones fell beside him as a raven launched from a branch and descended to perch atop the boulder. It folded its wings close to its side as it peered deep into Shane’s eyes.
“Well, I’ll be,” Shane said. “Look at that, Jesse.”
Jesse remained hunched over, catching his breath. Shane looked down at the reflection of the bird and put his hands back to the water, still feeling as if he was being watched. Is it the raven? He asked himself. No. It wasn’t the raven, he realized as he looked up into the bird’s black eyes. Nor was it something he sensed from above. It was...something closer, he felt. Something from the side. Shane shifted his eyes to his left at Jesse, who knelt with his eyes closed and sweat dripping from his face. Jesse wasn’t watching him. The hair on the back of Shane’s neck began to prickle as he felt the staring bore into him. Something from...his right side. Slithering eyes upon him.
In the dead quiet of the forest, he heard the slightest twitch of a rattle. He jerked his head quickly to his right, just in time to see a coiled timber rattlesnake that had chosen this oasis to give birth to her young. Shane’s eyes had time to open wide, but his scream couldn’t escape as the five-foot long rattler struck fast and hard, her fangs piercing the right carotid artery of Shane’s neck. Eden’s serpent hissed and recoiled to her newborn babies.
Shane stood, screaming, as he pressed his hands to his neck.
“JESUS! Rattler! I got bit!”
Jesse saw Shane jump back. Ejected from the spring as if hell had spit him out.
“What the hell happened?” Jesse shouted.
Shane hit the ground, his face already flush and feeling like someone dug into his neck with a red hot poker. Jesse pried Shane’s bloody hands off his neck just enough to see the marks on Shane’s swelling neck as if a vampire had repossessed his soul. Shane clamped down on the pain again.
“Shit!” Jesse exclaimed. “Holy shit!”
Shane was in complete agony as the toxin started its work, weakening and disorienting him. He couldn’t have been bitten in a worse spot. Jesse helped him past the rhododendron on the left side of the spring and leaned him up against the boulder.
“Shit!” Jesse was in a panic. He knew he needed to get help but—Where the hell are we? Shit! Jesse almost began hyperventilating. He tried to calm himself, tried to be the leader that Blake had told him he was of his clan. Think! he told himself. It was a timber rattler, but they’re not usually deadly if you get help.
Then another voice emerged inside his head, a voice less confident. A voice that frightened Jesse.
Ah, the voice said, but look at where the bite is. Right in the artery. D-E-A-T-H will be quick, the voice said in a raspy, haunting whisper.
“Shit!”
Jesse looked back at Shane, who no longer screamed. His neck had swollen to almost twice its normal size and was horribly bruised. Shane’s hands draped by his side. Jesse’s mind tugged him in all directions. Go get help. Stay and help. Save yourself. Comfort Shane. Kill that snake!
“Shit!” Jesse didn’t know what to do. There was no way to extract the venom, no way, not from that spot on his neck. He could carry Shane to help, but they had been on the hunt for hours. It was so far back, and even if he could carry Shane that far, even if Shane could make it that long, he wondered if he could even find the way back? Jesse grabbed the rifle and went around the bushes to look for the snake. He found the mother coiled up with three babies that had yet to squirm away. Had yet to slay their first victims. Jesse trembled as he took sight of the now defenseless creature and blew a hole right through her.
“Die, you bitch!” Jesse screamed as the rattler fell limp.
Jesse rushed back toward Shane but tripped on an embedded object at the mouth of the spring. He fell at Shane’s feet. “Goddamnit!” Jesse shouted, looking back to see the rusty metal he had dislodged. “What the hell?”
His mind briefly diverted from Shane’s suffering to the dislodged obstruction. He scraped wet pine needles away and clawed with his fingertips, using one finger to outline a smooth metal surface. Jesse darted his eyes back and forth looking for a stick, as he feared that the forest floor might be alive, slithering. The mountain soughed as the wind whistled through the pines. Jesse’s senses had never been so heightened. His trembling fingers picked up a stick. He used the tip to outline a metal shape that slowly became recognizable as he unearthed over a century’s worth of humus to free the rusty relic.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” he whispered. “An old double-barrel shotgun. Son of a bitch! Hey, Shane!”
There was no response, and no response would come. Shane’s chin dug into his chest as his lifeless eyes fixed on the poisoned soil between his legs. Jesse had been seduced by the moment and possessed by his archeological find at precisely the moment that Shane’s life expired.