Chomp

FIFTEEN

Raven Stark had asked Wahoo to stay and eat with the crew, but he said no thanks. When he got back to camp, Tuna was sitting on a corner of the tarp, reading by flashlight.

“Nice outerwear,” she said. “Does this mean you’re officially part of the team?”

He took off the Expedition Survival! jacket and put on a dry T-shirt. From his father’s tent came the familiar croaks and snuffles of snoring. Mickey had gone to bed early.

“I scared you off, huh?” Tuna said.

Wahoo shook his head. “The stuff about your dad, it’s sort of…”

“Heavy.”

“Definitely.” Wahoo sat down beside her. “You ever thought about going to the cops?”

The question hung there in the empty night and then evaporated, like a wisp of smoke.

Tuna said, “Today the airboat driver asked about my black eye. He thought it was you who socked me.”

“He actually said that?” Wahoo was mortified. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth, of course, and guess what? His old man used to do the same thing to him and his little sister.”

So that’s what Link and Tuna had been talking about on the boat. Once again, Wahoo wasn’t sure what to say.

“Even on Christmas they got slapped around is what he told me,” Tuna said.

“Did they call the police?”

“I didn’t ask.” Tuna closed the book and handed the flashlight to Wahoo. “Hey, I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“No, it’s all right. Anytime you want to talk.”

“The rain’s quit. Let’s get some food.”

They pulled up the tarp, which had kept the kindling dry. Wahoo started the fire and cooked hot dogs wrapped in bacon strips. It wasn’t a fancy catered meal, but it tasted great. Dessert was Fruit Roll-Ups.

Afterward, Tuna began telling him about the wild orchids of the Everglades. “There’s one called the ghost orchid. It’s incredibly rare and beautiful!”

Wahoo wasn’t paying close attention. He was thinking about what his mom said when he told her about Tuna.

“Earth to Lance. Am I boring you?”

“Sorry,” Wahoo said. “I was just-”

“What?”

“You said your mother’s up north.”

“In Chicago,” Tuna said.

Wahoo didn’t want to seem pushy, but there were things he needed to know. “When’s she coming home?”

Tuna shook her head. “I’m not sure. My grandma’s real sick.”

“Did you tell your mom what happened? What your dad did to you?”

“She’s got enough to worry about.”

“But-”

“Listen, he’s slugged her before, too,” Tuna said.

Again Wahoo was stunned. He couldn’t picture his dad ever hurting his mother. Living with Mr. Gordon must have been terrifying.

“Mom wanted me to go up with her to take care of Grandma,” Tuna said, “but I decided to stay here and finish out the school year. So she took Daddy aside and said, ‘If you lay a hand on that girl while I’m gone…’ Anyhow, it didn’t stop him.”

“When did all this start?” Wahoo asked. “The hitting, I mean.”

“Doesn’t matter. Sometimes you wait for somebody to change, and you end up waiting too long. Soon as Mom gets back, we’re outta there.”

“But isn’t there anyone else you could stay here with until then? Aunts or uncles?”

“I’m tired, Lance.”

“Sorry. This is none of my business.”

“Hey, we’re good.” Tuna smiled sadly. “If it was happening to you, I’d be asking the same questions.” She said good night and ducked into her tent.

Wahoo had no hope for sleep. He moved closer to the fire and poked the embers with a stick. Aiming the flashlight up in the branches, he counted a half-dozen air plants topped with dark red flowers. They looked like crazy Halloween wigs. Something fluttered with hushed wings among the treetops-probably a barred owl or a hawk.

From the other pup tent came a faint moan. Wahoo peeked inside and saw his dad was having a nightmare. Gently Wahoo shook him awake.

“My head,” Mickey murmured.

“You want Tuna’s pills?”

“All I want is to feel normal again.” He sat up, blinking.

Wahoo held up four fingers in the flashlight’s beam. “How many do you see, Pop?”

“Quatro.”

“Very good.”

“What if that bleeping iguana gave me a brain tumor?”

“That’s not even funny.” Wahoo had worried about the same thing after Googling his father’s medical symptoms. “A concussion won’t give you a brain tumor,” he asserted, although he wasn’t absolutely certain.

“You know what I dreamed?” Mickey said. “I dreamed some poacher got after Alice. It was ugly.”

As Wahoo helped him out of the tent, he couldn’t help but notice that the muscles in his father’s arms and shoulders were still as taut as ship cables. Even after weeks of inactivity, the man was in fairly solid shape.

“Tell the truth, Pop. You ever had a dream that turned out to be true? I mean good or bad?”

“Never once.”

“There you go. Alice is just fine.”

Mickey cocked his head and sniffed at the sky. “Rain again?”

“Hey, I talked to Mom,” said Wahoo.

“What! When?”

“While you were asleep. Ms. Stark let me call on her sat phone.”

“You should’ve got me up,” Mickey said crossly.

“She thinks we should take Tuna to the police so she can tell them what her dad did.”

“Yeah, then what?”

“Exactly.”

Mickey rubbed a knuckle across his stubbled chin. “What if the cops just take a report and send her back home? Or lock up her old man, like you said-then where the heck’s she supposed to live?”

The wind picked up, cooler than before. Wahoo zipped on the Expedition Survival! jacket and said, “Let’s think on this. We don’t have to decide tonight.”

“Well, boys, let me know when you do!” It was Tuna speaking, from inside her tent. “It’s only my life you’re talking about.”

Wahoo had no time for another apology, because at that instant a tremulous cry pierced the darkness, followed by another and still another…

The Florida mastiff bat is the largest in the southeastern United States, reaching a length of almost seven inches. Its short, glossy hair can be black or cinnamon, and a thin, mouse-like tail extends well beyond its winged membrane. The wings are long and slender.

Believed to have been carried by hurricane winds from Cuba to Florida years ago, the mastiff is quite rare and considered an endangered species. By day it sleeps, often in the shady crevices of palm fronds. It emerges not at dusk, as other bats do, but in the deep of night. A swift flier, the mastiff travels great distances in search of food. It feasts mainly on insects and has no natural appetite for the flesh or blood of humans.

The specimen that ended up in the Expedition Survival! catering tent was a young female whose internal sonar had malfunctioned as she’d swooped low in pursuit of a flying beetle. After bouncing at high speed off the canvas, the creature had landed in a muddle on Derek Badger’s cheesecake platter.

Like other nocturnal animals, the mastiff is extremely sensitive to light. The one that crashed at the TV camp was therefore frightened by an artificial blast of whiteness much brighter than that of the sun. The bat couldn’t see where this strange, blistering glare was coming from, nor could she see the cluster of humans that surrounded her.

With leaf-sized ears she absorbed strange vocal vibrations that only heightened her confusion:

“Deep in the Everglades, the swamp is unforgiving and food is scarce. Survival depends on making the best of the situation, and that means eating whatever you can get your hands on. Tonight the heavy squalls and dangerous thunderstorms have made it impossible for me to leave camp to hunt for the juicy bullfrogs and crayfish that I was hoping to cook for supper.

“But by sheer luck-and, believe me, that’s what you need out here-the violent weather has literally dropped on my platter a tasty morsel that will provide enough nutrition to get me through another brutal day in this tropical wilderness.

“Here, have a look…”

Mastiffs, like most species of bats, are equipped to hang upside down. However, they are not accustomed to being snatched by their tails and dangled in midair.

And even when half blinded by light, they are able at close range to recognize the presence of predators, particularly if such a predator has a shiny chin, a big oval mouth and vivid, orange-tinted hair.

“There are probably only fifteen grams of meat on this fellow’s bones. But when you’re as hungry as I am, this little bugger looks as juicy as a T-bone steak!

“Unfortunately, the rain has soaked all the tinder, so I can’t make a fire for cooking. That leaves me only one choice, I guess.

“Now, please don’t try this yourself-wild bats can be vicious, and their teeth are needle sharp. Remember, I’m an experienced survivalist. I know how to handle these unpredictable rascals…”

The mastiff bat that Derek Badger slowly lowered toward his gaping maw wasn’t vicious. She simply didn’t want to be eaten.

And so she reacted defensively and without hesitation. She chomped down on the first chompable target that came within reach, which happened to be Derek’s plump, purple-blotched tongue.

“Aaaieeeeeegh! Aaaieeeeeegh! Aaaieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegh!”

The shrieks were not part of the script that he’d hastily composed on a paper napkin following the bat’s unexpected arrival. The shrieks were totally spontaneous.

“Don’t move! Don’t move!” Raven Stark cried, but Derek did move. He tipped backward into a wet patch of ferns, the flapping mammal still attached to his bloody face.

“Cut!” barked the director. “Somebody go get Cray!”

Wahoo’s father stood over the fallen TV star, who lay rigid and goggle-eyed. The front of his safari shirt was dappled with wet crimson splotches, and the bat dangled from his mouth like a bizarre holiday ornament.

“Unbelievable,” Mickey said.

“Do something!” Raven pleaded.

Mickey turned to his son. “I’ll need my serious gloves.”

While Wahoo ran back to the other camp, Tuna stepped closer to take a look. “What kind of bat is that?” she asked. “It’s a freetail, I know, but what species?”

Wahoo’s father shrugged. He directed the crew to re-aim their bright lights toward the spot where Derek Badger had fallen, illuminating the scene like a hospital operating room. As soon as Wahoo returned with the heavy gloves, Mickey fitted them on and told everybody to stand back.

“Is he still breathing?” Raven said. “Please tell me he’s still breathing.”

“They’re both breathing.” Mickey knelt beside Derek and pondered how to remove the frightened creature without also removing the tip of Derek’s tongue.

Wahoo happened to know his father wasn’t fond of handling bats. They were tricky to wrangle and, like other mammals, they sometimes carried diseases. However, this was an emergency, and nobody else at the campsite was qualified to deal with it.

Mickey leaned in to whisper in one of Derek’s ears: “Blink twice if you can hear me.”

Derek blinked two times. The director clapped in relief, and some of the other crew members cheered.

“Hush!” Mickey snapped over his shoulder. Then, to Derek: “Don’t worry, we’ll get your dumb butt out of this mess. The trick is to not make your furry little friend any madder than it already is. So you’ve gotta stay still, mate, no matter how much this hurts. Blink once if you understand.”

Again Derek blinked. Mickey instructed Wahoo to strip the leaves off a fern, which left only the soft green stem. Wahoo handed it to his father, who said, “Perfect.”

“What are you going to do?” Raven asked skeptically.

“Tickle it,” said Wahoo’s father.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I believe he is,” said Tuna.

Wahoo observed that the crew was preparing to videotape the delicate procedure. Normally Derek would have protested indignantly, not wanting his TV audience to see their super-masculine hero disabled by a creature weighing two ounces. On this occasion, though, he remained mute.

Mickey got down on the ground so that he was level with the bat, which regarded him unpleasantly with moist black eyes. It didn’t appear to Wahoo and Tuna that the bewildered animal was enjoying the flavor of Derek Badger.

Using the flexible stem of the fern, Wahoo’s father went to work on the bat’s belly, lightly prodding and stroking. Very soon the mastiff began to twitch and squeak.

“Zoom in for a close-up! Hurry!” the director ordered the cameraman.

Wahoo waved his arms and motioned for everyone to remain still. He feared that the agitated bat would let go of Derek and then glom on to his father.

In fact, the critter had only one item on its agenda: escape.

There are no scientific studies that address the question of whether or not bats can experience the sensation of being tickled, the way people do. But whatever Mickey was doing with the fern stem, it worked. With a shudder, the bat unhooked its fangs from Derek’s swelling tongue.

“Now kill it! Kill it quick!” Raven cried.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Wahoo’s father.

The animal made a spitting noise and repositioned itself on Derek’s spray-tanned forehead, where it stretched its bony wings. Unlike most other bats, mastiffs can lift off from a flat surface, and that’s what this one did. On the next gust of wind it took flight, zigzagging through the hot beams of the TV lights until it disappeared into the dark canopy of the hardwoods.

Wahoo and Tuna high-fived each other, while the director called out, “Bravo, Mr. Cray. Well done!”

Raven rushed anxiously to Derek’s side, babbling something about rabies and distemper. Wahoo’s father assured her that the bat wasn’t sick. “She bit Mr. Beaver out of self-defense, pure and simple.”

Derek showed no reaction to being called Beaver, another indication that he might have been in shock. Several crew members gathered around and carried him to his tent. Raven followed gravely, carrying a first-aid kit.

To Wahoo and Tuna, Mickey said, “Come on. Let’s get some sleep.”

A slashing rain chased them back to their camp. It poured all night long on the tree island, and no living thing stirred.

Except one.