life. And he wanted nothing more than a big glass of cold water back in the kitchen at Elm Medona.
Ahead on the path, Felix saw a big branch blocking his way.
Great,
he thought miserably.
Just great
.
Now he was going to have to lug that thing into the brush, and maybe lose Maisie and the silverback.
With a sigh, he bent to try and pick it up. And just as he did, the branch moved.
Felix gaped at the thing.
It wasnât moving really. It was . . . slithering.
Felix took a step backward.
He was inches away from an enormous snake! So enormous that he couldnât even see its head, just what seemed in that moment like miles and miles of snake, slithering across the path.
His mind began to list all the kinds of snakes he knew lived in Africa: black mambas and boomslangs and wasnât there something called a puff adder that was the most poisonous snake in the world? Back in third grade, Maisie had written a report on deadly snakes and sheâd given him nightmares by describing just how venomous certain ones were. Her favorite one was the boomslang, whose venom affected your bloodâs ability to clot. It could take hours for the symptoms to appear, and then you bled to death from every orifice. Felix shivered despite the heat.
The snake in front of him was the color of the ground, spotted tan and white. He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on the pictures in Maisieâs report. The boomslang, he remembered with relief, was green. Bright green. But his relief disappeared when he remembered that black mambas werenât actually black. Felix took several more steps backward. If a black mamba encountered prey, Felix knew it would strike as many as twelve times. He could almost hear Maisie telling him how each bite delivered enough cardio- and neurotoxic venom to kill a dozen men within one hour.
Isnât that cool?
sheâd told him before shutting off the light and going to sleep, leaving Felix alone in the dark to contemplate all the terrible snakes out in the world. Like the one right in front of him. Without antivenom, he thought, the mortality rate for a black mambaâs bite was 100 percent.
There were all kinds of vipers, too, he suddenly recalled with a sickening feeling. And cobras. And puff adders, he reminded himself. They could kill a grown man with just one bite. And Felix wasnât a grown man; he was just a twelve-year-old kid. How fast would a puff adderâs venom kill a twelve-year-old kid?
Felix squinted at the snake. It was hard to make out against the ground because it blended in so well. The puff adder had such good camouflage, Felix knew, that people often stepped on it. The picture from Maisieâs report popped into his mind. Felix took a deep breath and then another, trying to calm himself. Because he was certain that snake in front of him was indeed a puff adder. By now, it was almost all the way across the path. But wouldnât it hide in the brush there and get him when he passed by? Some of the snakes were aggressive, and others only bit when provoked. Felix was too scared to sort out their personalities right now. Besides, how did he know what provoked a snake? Why, he could be provoking it just by staring at it.
He watched as the last of the snake disappeared. But even with it off the path, he was too scared to continue. Instead, he stood paralyzed in the hippo tracks. When he looked away from where the snake had been, Felix realized that Maisie and the silverback were nowhere in sight.
With surprising gentleness, the gorilla put Maisie down and walked away.
Maisie sighed. In no time, Felix would get here and the two of them would figure out what to do next. They would find the Ziff twins and Dr. Livingstone and maybe even Amy Pickworth. They would give the map of the Nile to Dr. Livingstone and explain themselves to Amy Pickworth and then they would go home, safe and sound, just like they always did. Until then, she just had to