Venom

Начало книги

Nate was almost to the corner of the cabin. He stopped and turned. It took a few seconds for what he was seeing to sink in. Water covered much of the ground, inches of it, to within five or six yards of their front door. At first it appeared as if the water was moving, but it wasn’t the water; it was something in the water. He took a few steps and the shapes acquired form. “It can’t be,” he blurted.

“You see them, then?”

Nate nodded. Snakes. Rattlesnakes. Hundreds of the things, swimming, crawling, moving aimlessly about as if they had no sense of where they should go. “God in heaven.”

Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane.

And to Beatrice Bean, with the most loving regard.

Prologue

She was sleek and gorgeous and five feet long.

It was late summer in the Rocky Mountains. The sun blazed in a cloudless sky.

The female lay curled on a flat rock in a gully. The temperature hovered near one hundred degrees. Where most creatures would swelter, she thrived; she soaked up the heat as a sponge soaked up water.

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