Erosion from recent rainfall could explain why I'd found that enormous fossil so easily, not that Doug needed to know that detail.
I ran my hand across the wall and it crumbled under my touch. The clay was soft. Unstable. This pit was fragile. And that made excavation dangerous. I'd already seen how easily the upper layer had collapsed after I'd knocked away a chunk of dirt.
I glanced across the pit. The far wall was barely two feet thick. Not a lot of earth separated this discovery from the ravine beyond. Now that I'd reopened the pit, one heavy storm could take out the whole damn side, and everything in it could tumble into the dry creek bed below.
My boots hit the bottom with a soft crunch. The floor was studded with bone fragments and compacted sediment that shifted slightly under my weight. I picked my way carefully across the fossil-strewn ground toward a partially buried skull near the centre. Its jagged teeth were splayed in a permanent snarl. I crouched to get a better look, my fingers working carefully to brush away loose sediment. The bone structure suggested a carnivore, but I needed to see more of the jaw to be certain.
The teeth were unusual: curved and serrated in a way I hadn't seen before. My breath caught as I leaned in closer, squinting at the fossilized enamel.
Out of the corner of my eye, a shadow shifted in the wall behind me.
I turned just in time to see a hole in the pit wall darken. Then a thick, scaled body emerged from the hole. A six foot long brown snake poured from the crevice in one smooth, muscular wave and hit the ground with a dull thud just a few feet from me.
I screamed and scrambled backward, slipping in the loose dirt and scattered bones.
"Shit. Shit. Shit!" My boot caught on a femur and I windmilled my arms for balance, trying not to fall.
My heart hammered against my ribs so hard, it pulsed in my throat.
The snake's head rose, tongue flicking out to taste the air between us.
Shrieking, I bolted for the ladder.
Halfway there, I risked a glance over my shoulder.
The snake was slithering straight for me, its body rippling in smooth, terrifying waves across the ancient bones.
Chapter 5
Frank
* * *
Title: Diamonds don’t rot.
Date: Don’t know. But it was in the late 80s, and it was damn hot, so maybe January or Feb.
* * *
I always said the city sends its worst out to Koolaroo. This one was a pilot. Don’t remember his name. Dave. Or Dan. Don’t matter. Man was already halfway dead when I saw him. Cut over his right eye, smelled like he’d flown through a bar instead of a cloud. Should’ve walked the other way. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. Not when Pamela was involved.
That woman. Christ. I only knew her for a month, but she got under my skin like a splinter you can’t get out. Fancy American, fancy clothes, shiny hair, red nails.
I’d never met a woman like her. She was stayin at the homestead with that flash husband of hers. That prick who was meant to pour money into Koolaroo and keep me from going under in the drought. He bailed last minute, probably reckonin somethin didn’t add up. Bastard was right, and I hated that, too.
Pamela was furious about him pullin out. Like she was the one losing out. Made me think she had her fingers in that pie too, and not for the sake of Koolaroo.
So, she cooked up her own plan. She just didn’t count on her getaway plane crashin.
I was out near Opal Ridge checkin fences when I saw the little charter plane up above sputter like a dying calf, then drop behind the tree line with a thump that shook the bloody ground. I knew straight away someone was either dead or wishin they were.
By the time I got there, smoke curled up from the wreck, and bits of metal was scattered across the ground. And standin there in the dirt, shakin, blood drippin down her face, dress ripped, was Pamela. The woman who’d opened her legs for me the night before. She looked at me like she’d been waitin for me.
The pilot wasn’t dead, though. Not yet anyway. Poor bastard had a gash in his forehead that was spillin blood into his eyes, his breath rattlin deep in his chest. He begged me to take him to a hospital. Said he had a wife. Kids. All sorts of shit Pamela didn’t want me hearin.
I aint scared of dyin. Never have been. And now that the Grim Reapers knockin at my door, I’ll tell you this much—he’ll come on my terms. I say when. I say how. And it sure as shit won’t be in a piss-stained hospital bed hooked up to tubes.
That’s punishment, not death.