Chomp

TWENTY-FIVE

Wahoo smelled wood burning and wondered if Derek Badger had built a fire. Maybe even a lame TV survivalist could scrounge up some twigs for kindling.

But once he drew close enough to see the flames, Wahoo dropped flat and held motionless among the trees. Three figures were visible in the clearing, and Derek wasn’t one of them. Tuna sat cross-legged on the ground, her curly-topped head bowed. Kneeling beside her was Mickey Cray, his brow bloodied and hands bound behind him with vines.

A stocky, stubble-cheeked man who Wahoo presumed was Tuna’s father paced by the small campfire. In one hand was a revolver and in the other was a small green flip-flop, which he occasionally waggled over his head. Even from thirty yards, Wahoo could see well enough to put detailed features on the blank-faced attacker from his nightmare, the one who’d chased Tuna around the Walmart parking lot. In real life, Jared Gordon didn’t look like a zombie monster; he looked like a loser with a mean streak.

The conversation rose and fell around the crackling flames. Wahoo could hear most of it. Jared Gordon’s new plan was to escape with Tuna in Link’s airboat, and he wanted Mickey to drive.

“We’ll crash” was Mickey’s raw response.

“And why’s that?” Tuna’s father demanded.

“ ’Cause you brained me with your pistole, and now I’m seein’ double.”

“Ha! Nice try, Sparky.”

Tuna looked up. “Mr. Cray’s telling the truth, Daddy. He’s had a concussion for months, and you just gave him another one.”

Jared Gordon scowled. “He can still run the danged boat. Just go slow is all.”

“Are you serious?” said Wahoo’s father. “My head’s about to split open.”

“You want a bullet to finish the job?”

Mickey shrugged. “Couldn’t feel any worse.”

Again Tuna spoke up. “Daddy, just wait a little while for his vision to settle. Then he can take us to the highway.”

Wahoo knew she was stalling for time, which was smart. Once darkness fell across the Glades, Mickey could steer the airboat in circles and Jared Gordon probably wouldn’t know the difference.

“Hey, I got an idea.” Jared Gordon kneed his daughter in the back. “Give ’im some of your magic pink pills.”

Tuna didn’t react. She made eye contact with Mickey, who said, “Sure, why not?”

There were four tablets left, and Wahoo’s dad swallowed them dry. Jared Gordon tossed away the telltale flip-flop and plopped down to wait, as fidgety as a bug.

To Tuna he said, “I still can’t believe you run off the way you did. This is the thanks I get after all these years? You sneak off in the night?”

The girl’s response was a whisper, but Wahoo clearly heard Mickey weigh in:

“Say, Gordon, you must be proud of that shiner you gave her. Tell me-what kind of sorry-ass excuse for a man would beat on a child?”

Wahoo lay there cringing. Lay off, Pop, before he loses it.

But all Jared Gordon said was: “Shut up, fool.”

The flames were dying. Tuna found more dry sticks and peat, yet the freshened fire was still rather small-too small to be spotted by searchers, Wahoo feared. The buzzing of the other boats sounded as distant as ever.

Jared Gordon complained that the beer was all gone, but nobody had much else to say. The sun slipped below the western horizon and a buttery half-moon appeared in the east. It was the first cloudless sky in a week, and the stars began to sparkle as night deepened.

Still hunkered in the trees, Wahoo wondered what had happened to Derek. Had he done something to provoke Jared Gordon into clobbering him unconscious-or worse? Wahoo struggled to steady his nerves and think of a plan. One wrong move and his father might wind up dead.

Jared Gordon tossed a pocketknife to his daughter and told her to free Mickey’s hands, which she did. Jared Gordon snatched the knife back and said, “Time to roll. Them pills got to be workin’ by now.”

“Not yet they aren’t,” Mickey said.

“Too bad for you, then. Suck it up.”

Staying close to the ground, Wahoo frantically groped through the leafy mulch. He was hoping to locate a heavy stick or maybe a rock for a weapon.

He listened to his father saying: “Gordon, I’ll take you to the highway but only on one condition: you let your daughter stay here and wait for help.”

“No! I told you, she’s real sick with the Floyd’s disease. She needs a doctor, like, right away.”

Tuna raised her voice. “Don’t believe a word he says, Mr. Cray. I’m not sick-and Floyd happens to be the name of my hamster.”

“Adorable,” said Mickey.

“But I’ll go with Daddy, if that’s what he wants.”

“No, you won’t. Not as long as I’m drivin’ the boat.”

Wahoo gasped as he watched Jared Gordon step forward and level the gun at his father’s heart.

“That girl’s my flesh and blood, Sparky, and I ain’t leavin’ this swamp without her.”

“Then you ain’t leavin’,” Mickey Cray said.

Wahoo was not prepared to watch his dad die right in front of him. Never in his life had he experienced such a powerful flood of emotions-fear, dread, desperation and rage. He wasn’t as bold or impulsive as Mickey, but Wahoo’s sense of devotion was equally fierce. He had to do something big, and he had to do it fast. In his own mind, it was never a matter of courage.

But courage it was.***

Like his son, Mickey Cray didn’t have a death wish.

Yet there was no way he could allow Tuna to go away with her father, not after what Jared Gordon had already done to the girl. If that meant Mickey had to take a bullet, so be it. At least the gunfire would alert Wahoo to the trouble.

Where is that kid, anyway? Mickey wondered.

Lying low, I hope. Playing it smarter than his old man.

The roundhouse punch that Wahoo’s father had thrown at Jared Gordon never landed because Jared Gordon had seen it coming and clubbed Mickey with the pistol butt. Mickey had awakened with the second-worst headache of his life (the falling iguana was more painful) and with his wrists crudely knotted together with air potato vines.

He’d been lying to Tuna’s father when he complained about seeing double. His vision was fine. He was merely scheming to get the man alone with him on the airboat, away from Tuna and Wahoo, wherever the heck Wahoo might be.

Although Jared Gordon’s gun was now aimed squarely at Mickey’s chest, he didn’t panic. He was waiting for Jared Gordon to realize that, being unable to operate an airboat himself, he needed Mickey alive if he hoped to get out of the Glades.

The incredible stupidity of shooting his only driver would have been obvious to a person of semi-average intelligence, but Tuna’s father had so far failed to impress Mickey with his keen logic.

Mickey’s other problem was his own anger and disgust for Jared Gordon, which he struggled to keep under control. Susan Cray sometimes joked that her husband needed a special filter implanted between his brain and his mouth to prevent him from blurting every single thought that entered his mind.

Such as when he called Tuna’s father a “sorry-ass excuse for a man.”

Probably not the smartest way to address a beer-soaked oaf with a loaded weapon.

Now the same oaf was holding his gun on Mickey and saying, “That girl’s my flesh and blood, Sparky, and I ain’t leavin’ this swamp without her.”

To which Mickey, who’d grown annoyed with the whole “Sparky” routine, replied: “Then you ain’t leavin’.”

An epic gamble, as the kids would say.

And possibly an epic fail-if Jared Gordon wasn’t bright enough to see the foolishness of killing the one person who could guide his escape.

“Well,” said Mickey, “what’s it gonna be?”

Jared Gordon didn’t answer. He was peering beyond Mickey, and his face was twisted like a dirty rag.

“Now what?” he growled.

“Wahoo!” Tuna cried.

Mickey felt a sickening chill and spun around. There was his son, jumping up and down at the edge of the trees. He looked like he was being attacked by bees.

“Wahoo, run!” Tuna shouted.

Jared Gordon said, “ ‘Wahoo’? What’s that mean? Is it some kinda code?”

“No, Daddy, it’s his name.”

“Wahoo who?”

“He’s just a boy from school,” Tuna said.

“Sure he is. Doing jumpin’ jacks in the middle of the boonies?” Jared Gordon distractedly let the revolver swing away from Mickey, who said nothing to give away his relationship with Wahoo. He understood what his son was trying to do. It was brave, but way too dangerous.

Wahoo was hoping to draw fire from Jared Gordon so that Mickey could jump the man.

“What’s a matter with you?” Tuna’s father called out.

Wahoo stopped hopping. “What’s the matter with you?” he snapped back.

“Run away!” Tuna yelled.

“No, boy,” said Jared Gordon, “you get your butt over here right now.”

“Make me,” Wahoo said.

“Make you?” Tuna’s father cackled. “See this gun, boy?”

“See this phone, Mr. Gordon?” Wahoo held up Link’s waterlogged cellular, which from a distance appeared undamaged. “I’m calling the cops and telling ’em exactly where you are!”

“No, you ain’t! And how’d you know my name?”

“It’s got a GPS, too!”

Jared Gordon purpled with rage. He shook the pistol at Wahoo, who retreated into the hardwoods, where he resumed bouncing like a cartoon kangaroo.

“Hold still, you!” Jared Gordon hissed.

“Daddy, leave him be,” Tuna pleaded. “He’s sort of sick in the head.”

“Yeah, well, he’s fixin’ to be dead in the head.”

Wahoo’s father hastily stepped in front of the gun. “Don’t waste a bullet on that crazy kid.”

“You’re right,” said Jared Gordon, and shot Mickey Cray point-blank.

Wahoo came bolting in horror out of the trees. “Pop! No!”

“Did he say ‘Pop’?” Jared Gordon grinned. “Now we’re gettin’ somewheres.”

Derek Badger had gone off into the woods to relieve himself, and wasted no time getting lost. He was peering up at the half-moon, wondering if it meant he would turn into a half-vampire, when another gunshot split the air.

Hoping it was a signal from a search team, Derek aimed himself in the general direction of the sound. Thrashing clumsily through the underbrush, he began making up a script for the occasion of his rescue, which could be later reenacted to juice up the ending of the show:

“My harrowing Everglades adventure is finally drawing to an end, and not a moment too soon. I’m completely out of food, out of water and dangerously weak after being attacked by a rare but deadly vampire bat.

“Its savage bite left me dazed and delirious, racked with fever. Why, at times I even imagined myself morphing into a real-life vampire! Hopefully, the gunshot I just heard means that search crews are approaching, and my ordeal is almost over…”

But it wasn’t over.

A bulky shadow appeared in Derek’s path, and he lurched to a halt. Cloaked by darkness, the creature was difficult to identify-a bear? a panther? — but it produced a series of volcanic snorts that were unmistakably hostile.

For protection, Derek whipped out his famed Swiss army knife, a cheap replica of which was sent to lucky viewers of Expedition Survival! who correctly answered a weekly trivia question. (Example: What does fried cobra meat taste like? Answer: Chicken.)

Derek tested the knife’s blade, which was barely long enough to slice a kumquat.

“Scram!” he said to the mystery intruder.

Another surly snort was the only reply. The thing made no move to flee.

Derek was rethinking his decision to stage the Everglades episode without Mickey Cray’s captive animals-to “put the ‘real’ back in ‘reality’ ” by using only wild critters. The beast now blocking his escape probably never had laid eyes on a human, and it showed no fear.

Interestingly, Dax Mangold had faced a similar predicament in Revenge of the Blood Moon. A mutant possum the size of a Saint Bernard had cornered Dax deep in Slackjaw Forest, but the stouthearted young fighter had used his vampire superpowers to subdue the monstrous marsupial by wrestling it to the ground and gnawing through its jugular vein.

Derek wasn’t sure that such a bold tactic would work for him, a doubt that was well founded.

Had he bothered to do any research about South Florida before his arrival, he would have known that the woods and marshlands had become plagued by wild pigs. These free-roaming marauders were descended from ordinary porkers that had escaped from farms, although the Everglades version was bigger, hairier and more foul-tempered. The boars were especially dangerous, growing long, curved tusks that were sharp enough to kill.

A funky heat radiated from the massive form confronting Derek Badger. In a way, the night shadow was a blessing, because Derek wasn’t able to see the look in the creature’s coal-black eyes. If he had, he might have fainted.

“Scram!” he said again, and the boar did exactly the opposite.

Derek tried to flee but, after years of French cheese and rich pastries, he wasn’t exactly a speedster. The pig’s tusks scooped the celebrity survivalist from behind and tossed him halfway up the trunk of a sabal palm, to which he clung like a terrified frog.

After circling a few times, the wild hog huffed loudly and trotted away. To better secure his elevated position, Derek attempted to spike his Swiss army knife into the bark of the palm. The blade promptly snapped off, and he hit the ground like a sack of beans.

That’s it, he thought dismally, brushing himself off. No more tree climbing for me.

Mickey Cray looked up at his son and said, “Don’t tell your mom.”

“How bad does it hurt, Pop?”

“How bad does it look?”

“Pretty bad,” Wahoo admitted.

Jared Gordon had put a bullet through Mickey’s left foot.

“The same one Beulah tried to eat,” he noted sullenly.

Tuna cried, “Daddy, what’s wrong with you? Have you totally lost your mind?”

“The man wasn’t takin’ me serious. Now he will,” said Jared Gordon.

Wahoo removed his father’s bloody shoe and said, “Oh boy.”

The bones in Mickey’s foot were shattered, and his big toe had been shot clean off.

He winced at the sight. “Now we match,” he said to Wahoo.

“Not quite, Pop.”

“You’re right. I’d rather lose a toe than a thumb.”

“Be still.” Wahoo pulled off his T-shirt and tore it into strips, which he wrapped tightly around his father’s foot.

“Hope you’re smarter than your old man,” Jared Gordon grunted. “What’re you doin’ way out here, boy? Tell the truth.”

“Working for a TV show.” Wahoo didn’t have to glance up to know that Tuna’s dad was still brandishing the gun.

“What TV show is that?” Jared Gordon asked.

Tuna told him.

“The one with that Australian survivor dude?” Jared Gordon snickered. “No way! He’s big-time.”

“The Crays are professional animal wranglers, Daddy.”

“You mean, like, they can teach a polar bear how to ride a bike? Stuff like that?”

Wahoo sighed and said, “Never mind.”

Jared Gordon poked him. “Your daddy’s good to go. Now let’s git outta here.”

“In case you didn’t notice,” Mickey said, “I can’t walk.”

“Yeah, but you can still drive a boat.”

“It’s not hard. I’ll teach you how.”

“No, Sparky,” said Tuna’s father. “You’re gonna be my sho-fer!”

Wahoo knotted his Expedition Survival! jacket around the stump of a buttonwood branch and poked it in the embers of the fire to make a torch, which he handed to Tuna. Then he and Jared Gordon boosted Mickey upright, one on each side, acting as human crutches. Tuna led the way as they set off on the short trek to the water’s edge.

With six hands scooping (Jared Gordon’s being occupied by the revolver and now the torch), bailing the airboat took about an hour. After a forceful group shove, the craft was safely afloat.

Wahoo hopped up in the driver’s seat and said, “I can do this.”

His father frowned. “Since when?”

“I learned how this afternoon.”

“Ha! No way,” Jared Gordon said. “Git down from there, boy, and let your old man drive. Move it!”

Mickey rose to his knees. “Do what he says, son.”

He was in major pain as Wahoo and Tuna helped him get positioned at the controls.

“Crank ’er up, Sparky,” Jared Gordon commanded. “Take us to the big road.”

“We’ll see,” Mickey said through gritted teeth.

The engine burped and stuttered, but it wouldn’t start. He tried a half-dozen times, waited a few minutes, then tried again.

“Maybe some rain got in the bleeping gas tank,” he said.

“Or maybe you’re jest jerkin’ my chain.” Jared Gordon was glaring in the torchlight. “Maybe you don’t really want to git ’er started.”

Wahoo’s father laughed emptily. “Yeah, that makes sense. I’d much rather stay out here and watch my leg rot off than get to a hospital.” He gave Tuna a look of sympathy. “No offense, young lady, but your daddy’s not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, is he?”

“Knock it off, Pop,” Wahoo said.

Tuna cocked her head. “You hear that?”

Mickey raised his eyes to the sky. “Sounds like a chopper.”

Now Jared Gordon was steaming. “Jest git the motor runnin’! Now!”

“Try again,” Wahoo told his father.

This time the engine coughed to life, and the airboat’s jumbo propeller began turning.

“Well, hooray,” Tuna’s dad muttered, though no one could hear him over the racket.

Then, just as suddenly: silence.

“No! No! No!” Jared Gordon was hopping with exasperation. “Are you kiddin’ me? Did you flood this stupid thing?”

Mickey said, “Actually, I turned it off.”

“What! You better have a damn good reason, Sparky.”

“I believe the owner of this vessel wants a word with you.”

“Uh?” Tuna’s father swung the torch toward the shoreline, where a broad-shouldered stranger loomed.

“Git out my boat,” he said. It was Link.

Jared Gordon sneered. “And who the heck’re you?”

“The man what you shot in the back.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll shoot you in the front, too, you don’t vamos outta here.”

Tuna shouted, “Daddy, that’s enough!” She lunged to grab him, but he shoved her to the deck.

Wahoo helped her sit up. Where is that chopper? He scanned the sky anxiously.

“Gimme my airboat,” Link said, and he began sloshing toward them.

Mickey Cray raised a hand. “Easy, brother. It ain’t worth dyin’ over.”

“Says you.” Link was wheezing.

“Stop!” Wahoo said. “You’ll get your boat back, I promise.”

But Link kept coming.

Jared Gordon steadied himself against the propeller cage. He raised the torch higher to better illuminate the intruder, and with his gun arm he took aim.

“I warned you, Tarzan,” he said.

His mistake was taking his eyes off the wrangler’s son. Wahoo nailed him broadside with a flying tackle that carried both of them overboard. The revolver in Jared Gordon’s hand went off harmlessly, and the torch flew up on the muddy bank.

The option of doing nothing had never occurred to Wahoo, even for a split second. He was acting on gut reflex and pure adrenaline. There’d been no time to ponder the extreme danger of tangling with Tuna’s whacked-out father. The man plainly intended to shoot Link-and not just in the foot, either. His pistol had been leveled at the center of Link’s forehead when Wahoo had sprung at him.

Tuna jumped in to help while Mickey, cursing his crippled foot, watched from the driver’s seat. The scene in the shallows was pure turmoil, a frantic thrash of arms and legs. It reminded Mickey of bull gators fighting. Link was trying to gain control of the gun as the kids struggled to subdue Jared Gordon, who kicked and flailed like a madman.

Mickey couldn’t stand being a bystander. He restarted the airboat and nosed it against the shore at an angle from which the propeller’s gale-force backwash blew full blast into Jared Gordon’s face.

Incredibly, the man didn’t go down. Somehow he got his back turned and held his balance. Soon he shook free from his daughter, then from Wahoo.

Only Link kept his hold on Jared Gordon, though barely. The pain from the lung shot had sapped his strength. Mickey could see him begin to wobble and wheeze, while the revolver remained firmly in Jared Gordon’s fist.

Meanwhile, Wahoo and Tuna were preparing to rush at her father again. Mickey shut off the boat engine and hollered for them to stay back. A rumble drew his gaze to the southern sky. It wasn’t thunder; it was the helicopter, locked in a low hover no more than a mile away. Its violet search beam was sweeping back and forth across the black swamp below.

“Let’s go, Sparky!” Jared Gordon rasped. His shirt was in tatters and his face was clawed. The airboat’s slipstream had made a spiky nest of his hair.

Mickey saw Link keel and go down. The kids began hauling him toward dry land, trying to hold his head above the water.

Jared Gordon fired into the air. “I said let’s go!”

Wahoo’s father motioned him toward the boat. “Whenever you’re ready.”

The helicopter was moving closer. Jared Gordon glared up at it. “They spotted our fire,” he mumbled sourly.

“Hop in,” Mickey said. “I’ll take you wherever you want.”

Wahoo and Tuna had placed Link on the ground and were working to make him comfortable. Jared Gordon waded to shore and snatched his daughter by the jacket collar. Wahoo grabbed him around the knees but got booted in the jaw and fell back.

Furious, Mickey attempted to climb off the boat and help his son. His mangled foot was useless, and he tumbled in agony from the driver’s platform.

“Git up, you! Git up and drive!” screamed Jared Gordon as he slogged with his daughter toward Mickey.

Wahoo rolled over and tried to call Tuna’s name. She couldn’t hear him over the din of the oncoming chopper. She fought to break away, but her father hooked a beefy arm around her neck. The gun he waved at Mickey Cray, still crumpled on the deck.

“I’m gonna count to three!”

“I can’t move, brother.”

“You will move, Sparky! Or you’ll die!”

“But-”

“One!.. Two!..”

The counting faded away. Wahoo rose to his knees and saw Jared Gordon hunched in a bright spear of bluish light, Tuna writhing in his grasp. The police helicopter was no more than a hundred feet above them.

Under a halo of flitting insects, Jared Gordon appeared demented in the eerie cone of the search beam. Squinting like a shrew, he ranted and cussed up at the chopper, his drooling threats smothered by the heavy thump of its rotor blades.

Wahoo knew what would happen next, and he knew he couldn’t possibly cover the distance between him and Tuna’s father in time to stop it.

Jared Gordon aimed his revolver directly at the cockpit of the helicopter.

Sick with dread, Wahoo almost looked away. Had he done that, he would have missed a truly unforgettable sight, one he could never have foreseen.

Derek Badger exploded with a howl out of the woods. At a dead run he bounded from the bank of the island to the bow of Link’s airboat, from which he vaulted himself at Tuna’s father, who stood there gaping in disbelief.

The three of them toppled with a heavy splash-Derek, Jared Gordon and Tuna. By the time Wahoo reached them, Tuna was back on her feet and she was clutching the gun.

Jared Gordon had worse problems. Gagging on swamp muck, he found himself pinned underwater by a plump, wild-eyed stranger.

A stranger who, for some reason, was chomping him ferociously on the throat.