Sam figured the entire field was full of snakes—deadly poisonous. He continued walking and studying the wall looking for anything that might help them get to the top of it. He had another hundred feet to go when Rennie caught up.
"What are you looking for? It's just plain dirt."
"I don't know, but keep your eyes open."
They were fifty feet away when Sam saw the little dark spots near the corner of the wall going all the way to the top.
As they came closer, he could see they were grooves. "I think I got it," he said. They were now ten feet from the wall.
"Got what?"
"Those grooves. See those Grooves?"
"Yeah."
"They're spaced every twelve inches, and they go all the way up. With your sword and dagger you can go hand over hand to the top of the short wall."
"Damn, I think your right,” said Rennie. “It'll take a lot of arm strength, but it can be done." He surveyed the wall for a moment longer and then said, "We need to tell the others." Without waiting for a reply from Sam he turned and started back, but he had only gone three strides when, in his haste, his foot hit a clump of dirt causing him to lose his balance. His arms started whirling to keep him from falling, and in that moment the tips of his fingers touched one of the beams. His eyes became wide. "Crap," he yelled back at Sam.
"Get the hell back here!”
Ten feet behind them, parallel to the beams, a wall started slowly rising out of the dirt spewing dust in all directions. It was thick and it was solid. It stood like the last barrier in a rat trap.
It was still rising when Sam said, "There's no going back now.” He walked over to the sidewall and scrutinized the grooves. He pulled his sword and dagger free from their sheaths. “Come on,” he yelled to Rennie. “The others will see what we’re doing.”
The short sidewalls began to move back and forth causing the ground to rumble. The noise was deafening.
Little black heads started to pop out of the ground. Suddenly the whole field was alive with snakes, thousands of them.
"Let’s climb," yelled Sam.
Rennie raced the last ten feet, and when he was close enough Sam pulled him by the arm. "Go," he yelled.
Rennie started up the wall with his sword and dagger, hand over hand. When he was a full body length up, Sam started after him. The wall was still shaking which made it difficult to get the points of the dagger and the sword into the slots. They had to go slow as they pulled themselves up. Sometimes it was frustrating as it took two or three tries, but they continued to move up the wall without falling into a field of deadly snakes.
When Sam was a safe distance from the ground, he looked to the other side. Dahms was already standing on top of the short wall, and the others were moving quickly up without the use of their swords or daggers.
"Damn," said Sam. "They must have hand and foot holds. I should have remembered what she said about going to the left.”
Sam climbed the last five feet using his arm strength to pull himself up. The climb was physically exhausting and when he reached the top he could barely drag himself onto the ledge. It wasn't so much the climb as it was the shaking of the wall.
"Gaal and Hal aren’t moving," said Rennie.
They were frozen with indecision standing before a sea of black squirming snakes, which were slowly coming toward them like an incoming tide. It seemed they didn’t know whether to run for the walls or run down the path.
But Sam knew they wouldn’t have time to start up the wall without being bitten. The snakes would be there before they were. "Run down the path!" he yelled. “It's your only chance."
Sam watched as Gaal shook himself out of his state of indecision and took off running with Hal right behind him stride for stride. There were so many countless numbers of snakes, they had to run on top of them.
"One slip," said Rennie as he watched, "and they're dead."
And just like that, as if he had had a psychic premonition, Hal tripped on a small rise in the ground and went sprawling into the black sea of sapphires. He was dead so quick his body didn't even realize it. The brain willed the flesh to rise, and he continued running down the path another twenty yards with little black snakes hanging to his flesh. He suddenly came to a standstill, weaved to and fro a few times, and fell again into the squirming and wriggling sea of blackness.
Sam continued to watch as Gaal made it safely out of the zone and into the safety station, then Sam looked at Hal's dead body. It was already turning black and becoming bloated. At first he didn't say anything, but finally, "At least it was quick," he said. He threw his half smoked cigar into the wriggling mass of snakes.
Because the wall was shaking so violently, they were unable to stand up. So he and Rennie had to scoot their butts along the top until they came to the far side of the zone.