Pavlik and I strode toward the man. Well, Pavlik strode. I scurried fearfully in his wake.
‘Jake Pavlik,’ the sheriff said, sticking out his hand to the other man. ‘I assume you’re the engineer. Nobody onboard seems to be hurt. What happened?’
The engineer turned. His name was ‘Theodore B. Hertel, Jr,’ according to the embroidery that covered nearly the full width of the pocket on his bib overalls. It probably didn’t improve my first impression of our train pilot that he shared a first name with my ex-husband, but his appearance didn’t fill me with confidence either. The man looked close to eighty, and if the denim overalls had been striped and matched with a hat and red bandana, I’d have said he was in costume for the event. I only hoped he wasn’t as ‘fictitious’ as our bartender/Wagon Lit conductor, Pete. Or whatever his name was.
‘Did we derail?’ I asked anxiously. ‘Or someone pull the emergency brake?’
Hertel shook Pavlik’s hand, but virtually ignored me. ‘Well, sir, I certainly did pull on that brake my own self. Have to say, I’m glad to hear the people inside the train are OK.’
A shiver crawled up my back. I didn’t like the way the engineer had said that, given that Pavlik and I were standing outside.
Was that banjo music I heard? In addition, I mean, to the feral monkeys and God knew what else.
Pavlik seemed unconcerned. ‘Looks like the track is flooded.’
The nose of the engine was tilted down and the tracks in front of it gone. Or at least submerged under water blacker than a crow’s wing.
‘You’re right about that, for sure,’ Hertel said, rubbing his chin. ‘But I’m thinking that might be the least of somebody’s worries.’
I put my hand on Pavlik’s sleeve, trying to pull him away from the engineer who even Missy thought was ‘eccentric.’
‘What?’ Pavlik glanced over at me. Hertel was watching me, too.
‘DoodooDOOdoo—’ I tried shakily.
‘Maggy, use your mother tongue, please?’ Pavlik went to shake off my hand.
‘Dueling banjos,’ I hissed, hanging on. ‘Ned Beatty. Squeal like a pig?’
The engineer was eyeing me suspiciously. Hertel had abnormally long earlobes, like he’d been hanging heavy earrings on them for years and years. He pulled at one lobe, a more likely cause of the droop. ‘No, ma’am. That just ain’t right.’
‘It’s not?’ I was backing away. Pavlik could fend for himself.
‘No, ma’am. It weren’t Dueling Banjos. That was the name of the music. The movie was Deliverance. But I’m scratching my head wondering why you’re trying to sing about anything when we’ve got this mess on our hands.’
Pavlik cocked his head, probably wondering which of his two companions was crazier. Then he turned to the engineer. ‘I’m a county sheriff up north, but I don’t know a whole lot about trains or the Everglades. I assume from your exclamation that we’re stuck pretty good?’
‘My “exclamation”?’
‘“Holy mother of God”?’ I was trying to be helpful.
‘Oh, that. No, it weren’t the flooded track got me down. I seen worse. It’s that what sort of took me by surprise.’ He pointed.
Pavlik and I both followed Hertel’s index finger. On the other side of the dip in the tracks and not ten feet away from us was the biggest fucking snake I’d ever seen.
With a pair of custom-made wingtips protruding from its jaws, the knees and shoes flicking up and down in a primeval two-step.
SIXTEEN
‘Holy mother of God!’ I screamed, echoing the engineer’s sentiments. Except I had more information to add: ‘It’s Potter!’
Pavlik and Hertel just looked at me.
‘Those are Potter’s legs sticking out of that thing.’ Even as I said it, I was backing-pedaling as far and as fast as I could.
The snakes I was accustomed to sunned themselves in my flower bed. They were maybe two feet long and an inch thick and they scared the bejeebers out of me. This one … this one, it could be a whole different species. Not a snake at all. This monster was big enough to devour—
The limbs sticking out of the thing did a scissor-kick. ‘Oh-my-god, oh-my-god,’ I said, as my back slammed into the locomotive. ‘He’s still alive!’
‘Well, ma’am,’ Hertel said, ‘I suppose that’s possible. I didn’t spot the snake until I climbed down to examine the tracks, but I think we’ve got us some kind of python. They like to squeeze their victims mostly to death and then swallow ’em whole to digest later. Sort of nature’s doggy bag.’