Read Online City of the Snakes by Darren Shan - Free Book Online

tabloid exposés, staffed by unqualified nurses, patients fed on watered-down porridge and stale bread, bedclothes washed once a month, orderlies having their wicked way with the unfortunate women. As if the situation weren’t grim enough, the staff had a run-in with the manager and walked out
en masse
. Whether because he expected them to return, or just didn’t have the funds to hire replacements, he took over the running of the asylum himself. The relatives of the inmates didn’t find that out until later. Few visited regularly, being either unwilling to face their incarcerated kin or unable, as in the case of Jennifer, who had to work three jobs to pay for the upkeep of her house and cancer-stricken husband.
    For a couple of weeks the manager struggled by, buying food and drink from nearby supermarkets, using Laundromats to wash the sheets a few at a time. Perhaps he could have carried on indefinitely, but the strain musthave gotten to him, because he died of a heart attack while preparing dinner one night. He was only discovered three weeks later, when a local councillor running for reelection wandered in with the intention of obtaining positive press shots of himself with some of the less privileged members of the community.
    Nobody knows how long the crazed inmates tolerated the hunger pangs. Some held out to the end—there were nine to begin with, and three died of starvation. The other half dozen, having raided and emptied the cupboards, fridges and freezers, turned in the end to the only remaining food source—the manager and their dead companions.
    “How’s life?” I ask Jennifer as we stand guard and wait for the Harpies to finish eating.
    “So-so,” she answers. It’s been several months since we last ran into one another and she looks healthier than she did. “Rose died just before New Year’s, poor dear.” Rose was the mother of one of the Harpies. She’d been helping Jennifer care for the three remaining members of the cannibalistic clan.
    “You’re looking after this lot by yourself?”
    She shakes her head. “A very kind friend of mine, Mr. Clarke, has taken responsibility. He’s let them move in with him and he sees to their day-to-day needs. I’ve been able to relax for the first time in years, though I chip in with my share of the duties, which include chaperoning them when they go on the prowl.”
    The councillor hushed up the scandal, terrified of being associated with a media nightmare. Bribing the photographer to keep his mouth shut, he contacted the relatives of the surviving inmates, told them what had happened and gave them the option of quietly coming to collect the survivors. Four responded, two didn’t. Jennifer and Rose, unwilling to leave any of the ladies to the discretion of the councillor—he promised to place them in a first-rate home, but they didn’t trust him—each took one of the “spare crazies” home along with her own relative.
    With the survivors cleared, the councillor torched the nursing home, destroyed the evidence, put the mess behind him and focused on his campaign (in the end he lost by a thousand votes and hasn’t been heard of since).
    Jennifer and Rose weren’t sure what to do with their charges. If they’d admitted them to another nursing facility, they would have had to explain where the women had been previously. The ladies were quieter than they’d been in the past, so Jennifer and Rose decided to tend to them by themselves until they could work something out.
    The four weren’t difficult to care for. Apart from the occasional hysterical fit, they were model patients. Jennifer and Rose were both working women, but they arranged their shifts so that one was free while the other was busy. It wasn’t easy, but they managed, and everything ran smoothly until Rose fell asleep one afternoon while minding the four, and woke to find they’d vanished.
    One frantic phone call later, Jennifer met Rose on the street and they went searching for the