Chomp

SIXTEEN

The airboat awoke Wahoo. He figured it was coming to get Derek Badger and take him away for medical treatment.

Emerging from the tent, Wahoo saw Tuna reading a green book. It was a field guide to Florida mammals. She kept it in her canvas tote bag with several other books, journals and sketch pads. Tuna never let the bag out of her sight.

“Here’s our prime suspect,” she announced. “It’s called a mastiff bat. Eumops glaucinus floridanus.”

She showed the photograph in the field guide to Wahoo. “Yeah, that’s the one,” he agreed.

“I’m gonna learn the Latin names of all tropical bats, starting today.”

“You seen my dad?”

“He went for a hunt.” Tuna was eating a lame breakfast-trail mix and Mountain Dew. “I bet they’re taking Derek to Miami for rabies shots,” she said.

“Which way did Pop go?”

“Relax, Lance. He said his head feels fine.”

Their campsite was a mud pit because of the overnight rain. Wahoo didn’t bother trying to start the fire and cook some food. He settled for two snack bars and a lukewarm lime Gatorade.

“So, what happens now?” Tuna asked.

After seeing Derek’s trance-like condition the night before, Wahoo assumed that the Everglades episode of Expedition Survival! would be canceled and that his father’s wrangling job was over.

“I guess we pack up and go home,” he said.

“Home, sweet home.” Tuna chuckled bitterly. “I can’t wait.”

Wahoo noticed that the bruise beneath her eye had faded a bit, taking on a yellowish tinge. “Maybe you can stay with us for a while,” he suggested.

She was flipping through the bat chapter of the book. “I’m sure I’ll hear from Daddy, soon as he needs his laundry done. That’s the usual program. He’s the king of fake tears and phony apologies.”

“You’ve run away before?”

Tuna looked up. “Sure. Twice.”

“And you go back.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like forever. Mom’s serious about leaving him.”

Wahoo had an idea. “Soon as Pop and I get paid for this job, we’ll get you a plane ticket to Chicago.”

“No,” said Tuna, “but thanks anyway.” She turned away, trying not to choke up.

“School’s out for the summer. There’s no reason for you to stay here.”

She tucked the field guide in her bag and popped to her feet. “Look, I know you guys are tryin’ to help, but I’ll be okay. I can deal with my dad until Mom gets home.”

“All right,” said Wahoo, thinking: But the man’s got a gun.

Tuna broke into a smile when she spotted three striped butterflies, flitting in a casual ballet through the hammock.

“Hey, Lance, check it out!” she said. “Zebra swallowtails. Eurytides marcellus! ”

Wahoo wondered if the butterflies were traveling together or had met by coincidence. High overhead he saw a string of somber turkey buzzards, riding the thermals under a mat of gray-blue clouds. The sun had been up for some time, but the heavy sky gave no clue it was morning. Wahoo was tired of the lousy weather, tired of being wet.

His father stepped out of the scrub holding a pair of Everglades rat snakes. They were good ones-five-footers, dark orange with grayish stripes and butter-colored underbellies.

“Look who I found,” he said cheerily.

“Biters?” asked Wahoo.

“Big-time.”

Tuna agreed that the snakes were beautiful, but she kept a distance.

“All right, Lucille,” said Wahoo, “tell us what Mr. Linnaeus would call ’em.”

“Wait, I’m tryin’ to remember.” She closed her eyes in concentration. “The scientific name is Elaphe something-or-other. It’ll come to me.”

Wahoo grinned. “Way to go, Pop. I think you stumped her.”

Mickey wasn’t listening to the conversation. He heard something nearby-the heavy snapping of branches. “We got a visitor,” he said.

Link, the hulking airboat driver, stalked into the clearing. He wore a grime-streaked undershirt, faded Wranglers and rotted hiking boots with no laces. He scanned the campsite, sneering slightly when his eyes settled on Mickey and the snakes.

“Where’s he at?” Link demanded.

“Who?” said Wahoo.

“The TV man.”

Tuna stepped forward. “You mean Mr. Badger?”

“Yeah. He be gone.”

Wahoo’s father muttered, “If only.” He had an Elaphe entwined on each arm.

“Keep dem tings ’way f’me,” Link warned.

“Aw, don’t be a baby.”

“TV man be gone from his tent dis mornin’.”

Tuna said, “Maybe he went for a hike.”

“Or mebbe he out here wid you.”

Mickey laughed. “That’s right, Sherlock. We kidnapped him in the middle of the night! I remember now.”

“Pop, lay off,” said Wahoo. Link was built like a refrigerator, and he didn’t have a rollicking sense of humor.

“Dey tole me to come’n git him,” the airboat driver went on. “Take him back to Sickler’s. Hospital sent a ambulance on account of he got bit by a otter.”

“Actually, it was a bat,” Tuna interjected.

Wahoo couldn’t imagine why Derek Badger took off, or where he might have gone. The tree island wasn’t very large, maybe fifteen acres. “We’ll help you find him,” he said to Link.

While Mickey bagged the rat snakes in a pillowcase, Tuna and Wahoo varnished themselves with bug spray. Link accepted a Gatorade, which he downed in four gulps. Then they all set out through the vines and the hardwoods in search of the missing reality TV star. Wahoo’s father led the way.

Before long, they crossed paths with the director and the crew, accompanied by a distraught Raven Stark, her red hair laced with spiderwebs.

“We’ve looked everywhere,” she lamented. “Derek’s gone! Vanished!”

“Not possible,” said Mickey.

The director pulled him aside and whispered, “What if a bear got him?”

“Florida bears don’t eat people. Plus, there’d be blood and bones.”

“Then he must be lost out here someplace…”

Mickey said, “He’s not lost. He’s hiding.”

They were gathered at the low, skinny tail of the island, where the trees thinned out.

“Hiding?” Raven exclaimed. “From what?” She turned and called Derek’s name.

Wahoo and Tuna felt obliged to do the same. There was no response. Mickey advised the group to split up once more and work their way back toward the main camp.

“Here. Take a walkie-talkie,” said the director.

That’s when they heard the loud growl of the airboat engine, cranking up. Link at first appeared confused, then angry.

“DAT’S MINE!” he bellowed, and lowered his shoulders, crashing like a mad buffalo through the underbrush.

The director cursed, and Raven let out a despairing moan. Wahoo and Tuna could hardly believe what was happening.

Mickey Cray shook his head. “It just gets better and better.”

The executive producer of Expedition Survival! was a man named Gerry Germaine, a crabby, bullet-headed fellow who drove a canary-yellow Ferrari and wore loafers that cost nine hundred dollars. The sprawling office from which he ruled his television empire was in Studio City, California, not far from downtown Los Angeles. In addition to Expedition Survival! Gerry Germaine produced three other popular reality shows- Rattlesnake Roundup, Shrimp Wars and Polar Madness, which featured a quarrelsome family that lived on a melting iceberg.

Gerry Germaine seldom watched his own TV programs, but he paid close attention to the budgets. Derek Badger was a constant problem, and his latest salary demands had angered the bosses at the Untamed Channel, which broadcast all of Gerry Germaine’s reality shows. Having recently purchased an expensive vacation home in Aspen, Colorado, Gerry Germaine wanted to remain on good terms with the Untamed Channel. Therefore it was his view that Expedition Survival! would do just fine without Derek Badger, whose frequent tantrums and mishaps were expensive.

“What do you mean by ‘gone’?” Gerry Germaine asked Raven, who had contacted him on her satellite phone from the Everglades.

“Last night he was bitten by a bat.”

“What else is new?”

“A seriously ticked-off bat. Derek was bleeding all over the place,” Raven said. “And this morning, when we checked his tent, he was gone.”

“Hmmm.”

“It appears that he stole-let’s say ‘borrowed’-an airboat. We don’t know why.”

“Where did that klutz learn to drive an airboat?” wondered Gerry Germaine.

“Two years ago we taped that show in the Louisiana bayou. The one where Derek finds an old beat-up airboat and uses his Swiss army knife to fix the engine so he can escape-remember?”

“I remember the bills,” Gerry Germaine said. “Twenty-four hundred bucks we paid some Cajun fisherman for ‘vessel repairs.’ ”

Raven cleared her throat. “That’s the one. Derek crashed it into a cypress stump.”

“Naturally.” In his mind, Gerry Germaine was sorting through the options. “What’s your plan to find him?”

“Well, the local sheriff has a search team.”

“Absolutely not. I don’t want to see this all over the media.”

“But he’s hurt,” Raven said. “He needs help.”

“How badly hurt? You think he might… die?” Gerry Germaine had pondered such coldhearted fantasies before. It would be a humongous night for the show’s TV ratings if Derek Badger failed to survive one of his survival expeditions. It would also open the way for him to be replaced with another actor who wasn’t as pompous, demanding and clumsy. Plenty of guys would jump at the job, for half the pay.

Raven said, “It’s possible the bat had rabies. Derek could be losing his mind.”

Out of curiosity, Gerry Germaine Googled “rabies symptoms” on his laptop.

“We need to keep this ultra-hush-hush,” he said, “especially if your boy’s gone off the deep end. The show definitely doesn’t need that kind of publicity.”

He could easily imagine the scene: Derek blathering and wild-eyed as deputies hauled him out of the marsh. There was no telling what kind of nutty nonsense the guy might spout with news cameras poking in his face. The Untamed Channel was a family network, run by fussy businesspeople who didn’t like being embarrassed.

“No cops yet,” Gerry Germaine said firmly.

Raven was silent on the other end.

“Get the crew together and do what you can to find him.”

“And if we can’t?” Raven asked.

“Then call me back.”

“We’ll need the helicopter, Gerry.”

“Whoa, there, missy. Badger’s contract says he gets a chopper ride back to his hotel every night. It doesn’t say a word about chartering one of those fuel hogs if he happens to go bonkers and runs away. You know what it costs to keep a helicopter in the air?”

“Eight hundred dollars an hour,” Raven said, “last time I checked.”

“More like a thousand.”

Raven was dumbfounded that Gerry Germaine was giving her grief about hiring the chopper to help with the search.

“Four hours,” he told her, “not a minute more.”

“But this is a man’s life we’re talking about!”

“Good luck,” said Gerry Germaine.

He hung up the phone and continued reading on his office laptop. Rabies, it seemed, was a most unpleasant disease.

By the time Sickler’s other two airboats arrived at the tree island, Derek Badger had been gone for more than an hour and Link was seething. Another thirty minutes was spent debating how and where the search should be conducted. Eventually it was decided that Mickey Cray and Raven Stark would go with one driver, while Link and the show’s director would ride with the other. Nobody anticipated that the first boat would break down and require towing by the second. The result was a waste of the entire morning that put everybody in a testy mood.

Four big cruiser airboats were called in from the Miccosukee reservation to haul the crew, its video equipment and the catering team back to Sickler’s dock. Over a tense lunch of barbecued chicken wings, provided by Sickler at the criminal price of eight dollars a box, Raven and the director studied a map of the area while Link fumed.

Mickey decided to start packing the gear in the truck.

“Where’s the girl?” he asked Wahoo.

“Inside the shop.”

“Go fetch her. We’re outta here.”

“Just a minute, dear.” It was Raven, peering over the rims of her glasses. “You’re not seriously quitting, are you?”

Mickey was taken by surprise. “I figured the job was over, now that Mr. Beaver turned jackrabbit. But if you wanna pay me to hang around, ma’am, I’ll gladly oblige.”

Link spoke up. “Let’m go. We don’t need him.”

“I believe we do,” said Raven. She tapped a finger on the map. “This place goes on forever. By now, Derek could be anywhere.”

Wahoo and his father knew that wasn’t true. Derek Badger wasn’t some sly old swamp rat who could outwit his trackers. The man had no clue where he was going or what he was doing. Most likely he would steer Link’s airboat wildly through the saw grass marsh until he beached it on dry land, plowed it into a stand of trees or simply ran out of gas.

“He won’t starve,” Mickey Cray said to Raven, “but there’s other ways for a fool to die out here. I’ll help you find him.”

The director stared hopelessly at the green, featureless swath of map that represented the area where Derek had gone missing. There were no roads, no canals, no levees to follow. It was pure swamp.

Link said, “They’s a gallon of water on my boat.”

Raven was relieved. “That should keep him alive for a while.” She stood up, all business, trying not to show her concern. “Let’s get moving while the rain holds off.”

Wahoo went looking for Tuna. He found her standing by the cash register in Sickler’s tourist shop. “What’d you get?” he asked.

“Nuthin’.” She handed him three one-dollar bills. He’d given her a five to purchase a snack.

“Well, you must’ve bought something,” Wahoo said.

She seemed flustered. “Oh yeah. I forgot-I had a burrito. Hard as a rock.”

Wahoo could tell that something was wrong. “What’s up?”

“I’m fine,” Tuna replied, but she definitely seemed different.

“Come on. You can tell me.”

“It’ll be fine.” She slipped past him and headed for the screen door. “Which boat are we in, Lance? I want to ride in the same one as Link.”