I almost felt disappointed. Not that I especially wanted to watch the violence and gore of a dinosaur battle. I simply felt that no matter who won the fight, there would most likely be plenty of meat for us to scavenge. We had been eating little else but the small dinosaurs and furry shrewlike mammals we could catch with our crude nets and clubs. A thick slab of meat would have been welcome.
The second night of our trek I awoke in pitch blackness to a sense of danger. Anya and I were half sitting in the crotch of a tree, as high above the ground as we could find branches to support us.
We were not alone. I felt the menacing presence of someone—something—else. I could see nothing in the utter darkness. The night was quiet except for the background drone of insects. There were no wolves howling in this Cretaceous time, no lions roaring. Only the forefathers of field mice and tree squirrels were awake and active in the darkness, and they made as little sound as possible.
The clouds parted overhead. The moon was down, but the ruddy star that I had first seen in the Neolithic glowered down at me. In its blood red light I caught the glint of a pair of evil eyes watching me, unblinking.
Without consciously willing it, my body went into hyperdrive. Just in time, as the huge snake struck at me, jaws extended, poisonous fangs ready to sink into my flesh.
I saw the snake coiled around our tree branch, saw its mouth gaping wide and the fangs already dripping venom, saw its head rear back and then lunge forward at me. All as if in slow motion. Those lidless slitted eyes glared hatefully at me.
My right hand darted out and caught the snake in midstrike. It was so big that my fingers could barely reach around half its width to clutch it. The momentum of its long muscular body nearly knocked me off the branch into a long fall to the shadows far below. But I gripped the branch with my legs and free hand as my back slammed against the tree trunk with a force that made me grunt.
Pressing my thumb against the snake’s lower jaw, I held its head at arm’s length away from me. It writhed and coiled and tried to shake loose. Anya awoke, took in the situation immediately, and reached for her club.
I struggled to one knee, fearful of being knocked off the branch by the snake’s bucking and writhing.
“Lie down flat!” I commanded Anya.
As she did I let my hand slide partway down the snake’s body and swung it as mightily as I could against the tree trunk. Its head hit the wood with a loud, satisfying thunk. Again I bashed it against the tree, and again. It stopped writhing, stopped moving at all. The head hung limp in my grasp. I threw the serpent away, heard it crash among the lower branches and finally hit the ground.
Anya raised her head. “From Set?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
I made a shrug that she could not see in the shadows.
“Who knows? There are plenty of snakes here. They probably prey on the little nocturnal mammals that live in these trees. We may simply have picked the wrong tree.”
Anya moved close to me. I could feel her shuddering. From that night onward we always slept in shifts.
And I realized why all human beings have acquired three instinctive fears: fear of the dark, fear of heights, and fear of snakes.