"Guy N. Smith - Snakes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

Except that the crowd in here seemed to have swelled, a crush of bodies hemming her in. You aren't
going anywhere, lady. You can't escape as easily as that. You've got to stay and look.

She almost screamed, 'For God's sake let me out,' but she realised the futility of it. Nobody was
interested in her, they didn't give a damn whether she lived or died. Just faceless shapes that were
supposed to be people, aliens in a reptile den. Everybody just staring, gloating at the hideous things on
the other side of the glass. Somebody was tapping on the front of a case, stabbing a finger at the hideous
thing only a quarter of an inch away. You can't get at me, you bugger. You'll stop in there till you die. Go
on, try and bite me. Go on!

It was the same snake that had scared Ian. Veronica stared at the toad-like head, the large unblinking
eyes, features that might have been left unchanged over a million years. Coiled, motionless, you didn't
even know if it saw you, knew you were there. It could even have been dead. 'It's a bloody stuffed one,'
someone said, but nobody laughed. Veronica felt the watchers move back half a pace; a man trod on her
toe and it hurt but she stopped her self from crying out aloud. Don't make a noise, it might hear you. And
it might get out.

She found herself reading the illuminated notice below the aquarium-type cage. She read the printed
words because for some reason she wanted to know just what kind of creature it was that remained
motionless and scared you to hell.

RUSSELL'S VIPER. One of the most feared snakes of India, Burma and Thailand. Its bite is usually
fatal, but its venom is sometimes used in medication.

Ugh! Veronica Jones hoped that she had never had any injected into her. You couldn't trust doctors
these days, they got up to all sorts of tricks. That snake ought never to have been brought back to
England, it should've been left in peace in India or wherever they'd got it. There should be a ban on
importing such things. It moved!

At least, she thought it did, although it could have been just her own start of fright. Everybody seemed to
move back another half-pace and a clumsy shoe scraped the side of her sandalled foot again. Faces still
staring, an entire audience hypnotised by that viper in its pseudo-jungle of no more than a cubic metre.
Watching it intently, basking in their terror, though logically it could not get at them. All the same, the
finger-poking jibes had stopped, the reptile's tormentor standing well back from the glass. He was scared
too.

And then its jaws opened, a reptilian cavern of sheer evil; the watchers felt its hate for them as if a dragon
had breathed angry fire. Those glassy eyes fixed them, searched out every single one of them without so
much as a blink or a movement of that squat head. A loathsome creature that loathed its captors with a
malevolence that even plate glass could not shut in. You felt the sheer power of the viper, felt it turning
your lathered sweat to an icy chill, drying out your mouth and weakening your legs, huddling you
together; silent mass panic that made you incapable of flight. And if it got out then you wouldn't be able to
do a damned thing to protect yourself.
The Russell's viper's spell might have lasted a second or an hour. Veronica was aware of the others
pressed up against her, of Ian pinching her flesh in his infantile terror but she made no move to push him
away. Greenish silhouettes all around that might have been statues in some underground temple of snake
worship. Bow before your lord and master and beg of him forgiveness and mercy.

The snake's eyes were closed and suddenly everybody was moving, just a flexing of cramped limbs,
turning one way, then another, as though they had become so disorientated that they had forgotten in