It started in the spring down near Latham Lake. A snakebite and a description of a snake that wasn't indigenous to the area. And that no antivenom seemed to work on. The autopsy showed it attacked both the nervous system and the blood. Most venoms are one or the other.

"Mace! You got your snakebite kit?" Daniels snapped at the man standing at the river's edge.
"Of course," Mace replied. "Why?"
Daniels felt the same way. The others hadn't been favorably affected by treatment of any kind. It was a done deal. Bit was dead.
"It might be some other kind of snake, rattler, copperhead. Let's try anyway," he said. Mace stepped up the bank, eyes darting at every clump of grass or drift debris as he stepped. He began the treatment but before he got to the point of applying suction, the rookie's breath rattled out of him in one last heave. His young brown eyes stared into the pines. Bit was dead.

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