“Nothing,” said Coco. She sounded relieved. They kept on going toward the beach.
Silence under the trees.
Then they heard the fishhooks again. This time, the chiming was a little closer.
Brian strained his eyes through the gathering dark. Didn’t see anything.
“Trees,” muttered Phil. “What is it about trees? I feel like there’s something important . . .” There was sweat on Brian’s palms, on the back of his neck, even though it was cold already and getting colder.
A chiming off to the right. Closer.
“Water snakes like trees,” murmured Phil, as though he were reciting from memory. “They sometimes come out of the water and perch in trees to . . .”
He paused.
“To . . .”
A chime from the fishhooks in the trees right behind them.
“Hunt,” Phil whispered.
Brian turned around. His mouth went dry as dust. Ten feet of snake had unwound itself from a branch overhead. Its open cotton-pink mouth was four feet away, jammed with teeth.
Phil screamed, and Coco gasped. “Run!” bellowed Brian. All three of them bolted. Brian thought he heard the sound of the axe man laughing—or maybe he was screaming—somewhere in the dimness. Behind them the hooks clanged together. Brian risked a look back, saw the snake heaving its body from a branch, slowed down by three or four big fishhooks that had gotten jammed into its side. But fishhooks obviously weren’t going to slow this thing down for long.
Brian didn’t think they could outrun it. He was already pulling ahead of Phil and Coco. And it was only a matter of time before Coco . . .
Thud.
Coco had already tripped, slipping in the glassy mud. She hauled herself to her feet just as Brian whipped around to help her, but the snake had yanked free of the fishhooks and was gaining on them. It wasn’t bothering to be sneaky now. It was just coming like a wave, its body sliding across the ground in wild loops, faster than they could run, its eyes white and cloudy, its toothy mouth open.
“Coco, come on!” he cried, and they took off again.
A stitch was forming in Brian’s side. He’d never run so hard in his life. Phil was sobbing for breath just behind him. Coco was running along gamely, stumbling on roots, but slow, too slow. Brian’s brain raced like a gerbil in a cage. They could climb a tree. But so could the snake.
Maybe, if they got high enough, they could get higher than the massive thing could reach?
What choice did they have?
“Coco!” he said. “We have to climb!” He saw Coco’s eyes go wide with understanding. But Coco, being Coco, didn’t say anything. She just, without a word, turned sideways, got a foot on the trunk of the nearest pine, and jumped, stretching up as high she could go. She snagged the lowest branch just as Phil came up, panting. Phil wasn’t that good at climbing trees. Brian hastily knelt, cupping his hands.
“Phil,” he said. “Put a foot in my hand and . . . now!” he snapped when Phil hesitated, looking between the tree and the oncoming lake monster.
Phil put a foot on Brian’s interlaced fingers, and Brian heaved him upward with all his strength, giving his friend just enough height to grab the lowest branch of the tree. Coco caught his hands when he would have slipped and instructed, “Put your feet up! No, there, against the trunk!”
For a heart-stopping moment, Brian thought Phil was going to fall and that there wouldn’t be time to try again. But Phil steadied, got his hands on a higher branch, and then he and Coco were just climbing frantically, while Brian jumped for the lowest branch himself, hooked his legs around it.
Coco was already ten feet above, pulling herself up like a gymnast through the branches. Phil was slower. Brian caught up. “Come on, Phil, faster!” he said.
He risked a glance down.
The snake was coming up like a silver river. Coco had picked a massive old tree, thankfully; otherwise, Brian was pretty sure a snake that could sink boats could just knock the tree down. But if they didn’t get high enough, it could just heave its body straight up and pluck them out.
It was below the tree now and rearing its body high through the branches. Brian saw the fangs, glistening with venom, come close to Phil’s ankle. Phil shrieked and scrabbled upward, and the snake fell back.
But then it tried to climb the tree. Up it went, wrapping the old trunk like a glittering, deadly vine. The lower branches held under its enormous weight. Coco had already gone up as high as she dared; Brian had to stop at the branch below her; he weighed more than she did. Phil joined him, gasping. His hands were bleeding from the bark. They all stared down. Nowhere to go, and the snake was still climbing. Higher and higher it climbed. Brian saw tears leaking from Phil’s stretched-wide eyes. What could they do? Throw something at it? How? He was clutching his branch with both hands, and there were no dead b
ranches convenient . . .