Chomp

EPILOGUE

Episode 103 of Expedition Survival! was broadcast nearly three months after the crew departed the Everglades. Derek Badger’s final appearance drew 17.2 million viewers worldwide, a cable-television record for non-sports programming.

The director and editors did a clever job of splicing the video clips into a believable story, the climax being Derek’s thirty-three-second struggle with Alice, who was of course portrayed as a random wild alligator instead of the old show-business pro that she was.

Derek’s embarrassing encounters with the snapping turtle and the water snake were digitally “improved” to save him from looking like a total klutz. At the urging of the Untamed Channel’s lawyers (who feared young viewers might try to imitate the stunt), Derek’s ill-fated attempt to eat the mastiff bat was cut entirely from the program. However, the scene would turn up later on the director’s private DVD of Derek’s worst bloopers, another smash hit at the crew’s end-of-the-year bash.

Jared Gordon watched the Everglades episode in the medical wing of the Miami-Dade County jail, where he was faking stomach cramps in order to receive favored treatment. Imprisonment had been depressing, especially when his defense attorney advised him to take a guilty plea rather than risk the wrath of a judge and jury. Tuna’s father hadn’t yet made up his mind what to do, but in any case the odds were slim that he’d be a free man before his ninety-ninth birthday.

Meanwhile, the person responsible for his bleak predicament was grinning down at him from a jailhouse television, flashing the same bleached teeth that had been embedded so ferociously in his throat, leaving a pattern of niblet-sized scars.

“Turn off that idiot!” Jared Gordon begged, but no one at the infirmary paid him any attention.

Raven Stark TiVo’d the Everglades broadcast in Derek’s luxury motor coach, which she’d been driving all summer, ever since the night Derek was found safe on the tree island. The bus was a sweet ride, and Raven-sporting her sombrero-sized sun hat-had decided to take the slow, scenic route back to California. She’d already visited Disney World; her mother’s house in Fairhope, Alabama; the French Market in New Orleans; the Great Smoky Mountains; and Graceland, the famed estate of Elvis Presley. Still ahead lay the Grand Canyon, Pikes Peak, the Custer battlefield and Glacier National Park, where she hoped to see a wild grizzly.

After everything that had happened, Raven felt she deserved a vacation.

It was she who’d composed the glowing press release about Derek’s starring role in the capture of a dangerous gunman and the rescue of four innocent persons. She had kindly made no mention of his daffy vampire delusion or of his biting Jared Gordon’s neck.

It was Raven who’d set up the secret doctor’s visit so that Derek could be tested for rabies (negative) and pumped full of antibiotics to combat the lingering infection from the bat wounds. It was also she who had arranged for Derek to be interviewed by Matt Lauer, David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and even Dr. Oz.

And it was she who’d persuaded the governor of Florida to present Derek with the Sunshine State Medallion of Distinction, which was shaped like a navel orange and not usually awarded to TV celebrities.

The wave of media attention gave a major ratings boost to Expedition Survival! Consequently, no one (besides Derek himself) was more shocked than Raven when Derek’s contract wasn’t renewed. The show’s executive producer, Gerry Germaine, went on Entertainment Tonight to say that, after the grueling Everglades ordeal, Mr. Badger would be taking some time off to “recharge his batteries” and “explore other career opportunities.”

That was Hollywood code for getting fired.

It was Derek’s own fault. Hoping to cash in on his new hero status, he’d demanded an even more outrageous raise for his new contract, which Gerry Germaine had been all too happy to reject. Brick Jeffers, the buff young outdoorsman from New Zealand, was grateful to work for half of Derek’s salary.

Raven had been bitter about Derek’s dismissal until Gerry Germaine called her on the road. She assumed he was going to yell at her for taking the motor coach, but instead he offered her a line producer’s position on the new, revamped edition of Expedition Survival!

At first she had said no, but then she Skyped with Brick Jeffers for an hour. He turned out to be charming, extremely good-looking-and he was at least twenty-five IQ points smarter than Derek Badger.

So Raven had accepted the job, and now Derek wasn’t returning her calls.

He was sulking on his yacht, the Sea Badger, moored off the Caribbean island of St. Barts. That’s where he watched his final appearance on Expedition Survival!

He thought the program was suitably flattering, although his life-or-death fight with Jared Gordon would have made a more spectacular ending than his wrestling match with Mickey Cray’s pet gator. Unfortunately, the police helicopter pilot had forgotten to turn on the video camera, so there was no tape of Derek’s real-life act of valor on the swamp island.

Getting fired from the show had dented his oversized ego. He’d immediately filed a grievance with his TV union-Guild 154 of Mountaineers, Ice Truckers and Survivalists-but he’d received no response. A couple of other networks wanted him to star in new reality programs, and he’d been pondering his options.

He was leaning toward the Catastrophe Channel, which had offered him a sick pile of money to intentionally place himself in the path of oncoming hurricanes, typhoons, lava eruptions, wildfires, mud slides, avalanches and tidal waves. Best of all, the show-titled Bring It On! — would be shown during the same Thursday-night time slot as Expedition Survival! giving Derek an opportunity to humiliate young Brick Jeffers in the ratings contest and make Gerry Germaine miserable.

There was only one catch: the producers of Bring It On! wanted Derek to perform his own stunts, including the opening parachute jump. Currently he wasn’t in prime physical shape, having gained nineteen jiggly pounds during his sojourn in St. Barts, a cruel calorie trap for lovers of Brie cheese, souffles and chocolate mousse.

Normally Derek would have relied on Raven Stark to endure his childish whining, but she’d deserted him. So he sat alone in the Sea Badger ’s master cabin, engulfing his third cinnamon eclair of the evening and watching his own breathless finale on Expedition Survival! As soon as the show ended, he dialed up the menu of his private video library and ordered all three Night Wing movies, to be played one after another in high-def.

Through the port hatch, Derek spied a full moon, pale as the petals of a spider lily, in the tropical sky.

Life, he admitted to himself, could be a whole lot worse.

Back in Florida, surgeons had successfully removed a bullet fragment from Link’s right lung. Once he was out of the hospital, he bought another flip phone and called up Wahoo Cray, the kid who’d saved his life by tackling the shooter at the tree island.

“Thanks for what you done,” Link said.

“Sure.”

“You ever want ’nother airboat drivin’ lesson, jest lemme know.”

“It’s a deal,” said Wahoo.

After all the media coverage about the dramatic events in the swamp, Link found himself a minor celebrity among his fellow Gladesmen. That made him uncomfortable, since he wasn’t a person who liked to socialize.

On the night of Derek Badger’s last show, Link had reluctantly agreed to attend an Expedition Survival! screening party at Sickler’s Jungle Outpost and Juice Bar. Sickler was in jolly spirits because the publicity about the lost survivalist and fugitive gunman had turned his cheesy roadside shop into a hot spot for curious tourists.

Scammer that he was, Sickler had acquired a large poster of Derek Badger, forged the star’s autograph on the bottom and tacked it to the wall beside the cash register. He’d also strung the weather-beaten mount of Old Sleepy from the ceiling beams, telling customers that it was the very same alligator Derek had wrestled on the TV program and that it had drowned after he battled it to exhaustion.

Sickler’s souvenir business was booming, with eager suckers lining up to purchase overpriced coconut carvings, polyester rattlesnake skins and “authentic” Seminole bead shirts that were actually made in Vietnam.

The crowd at the store that night cheered throughout the broadcast of Expedition Survival! the loudest applause erupting when Sickler’s name appeared among the credits as a “location consultant,” whatever that was. Link himself wasn’t particularly enchanted by the television show and grew bored with the repeated slow-motion replays of Derek Badger being tossed like a rodeo cowboy by the gator.

Ten minutes before the big ending, Link snuck out Sickler’s back door and went home to tinker with his airboat, which he’d recently named Lucille in honor of the kind-hearted girl with the mean, hard-drinking father, like his own. Eventually Link became a tour guide at the Miccosukee reservation, and he never took his boat on another TV job.

Wahoo Cray watched Derek’s last episode at home. His mother had returned at long last from China (and, naturally, did not believe Mickey’s version of how he’d lost his big toe). However, Susan Cray had been pleasantly surprised to learn that the house mortgage had been paid up, thanks to Mickey and Wahoo’s earnings from Expedition Survival! She’d been even happier to see that her husband had completely recovered from his iguana concussion and was no longer suffering with headaches or double vision.

Despite his damaged foot, Mickey had resumed work soon after surgery, hobbling around the backyard pens and tending to his animals. Beulah the python had made the mistake of trying to chomp him again and gotten her teeth stuck in his cast.

The night that Derek Badger’s Everglades adventure was broadcast, the Cray family sat down with a large bowl of buttered popcorn in front of the television. Wahoo thought the program turned out pretty tame, compared to what had really gone down in the swamp. Still, he was impressed by how the video editors had stitched the different scenes together in an entertaining way, including a shaky tree-climbing sequence they’d salvaged from Derek’s broken Helmet Cam.

Mickey Cray didn’t have much to say about the show, except that Alice had performed like a champ. Susan Cray thought the whole thing was overhyped and hokey.

The first phone call came from Julie, Wahoo’s sister.

“Let’s hear your review,” he said.

“The show was okay. That Derek guy, though, he’s still a tool.”

“He’s not so bad, Jule.”

“I’m just glad you and Pop finally got your money.”

“Thanks to you,” Wahoo said.

Gerry Germaine at first had refused to give the Crays the agreed-upon wrangler fee, claiming their involvement with Tuna Gordon and her trigger-happy father had disrupted the show’s production, endangered the crew and cost the company thousands of dollars.

The next day, Julie Cray had placed a phone call to Mr. Germaine, threatening to sue both him and the Untamed Channel for gross negligence by failing to provide safe working conditions on the set of Expedition Survival! She’d noted that her father’s traumatic foot injury had reduced his agility when handling large reptiles and other unpredictable creatures, which made his job more dangerous and even life-threatening. For extra ammunition, Julie Cray had also listed several obscure wildlife regulations that Expedition Survival! had ignored, information that she volunteered to share with the prosecutor’s office in Miami.

Gerry Germaine backed down in a heartbeat. He told Julie Cray that he’d be happy to pay Wahoo and Mickey the full contract amount for their services, and also take care of Mickey’s medical bills, which amounted to thirteen thousand dollars. It was Wahoo’s belief that his sister had a bright future in the legal profession.

At the end of his conversation with Julie, Gerry Germaine had a brainstorm: Would Mickey consider a full-time role as Brick Jeffers’s wrangler sidekick on the new, madeover version of Expedition Survival!?

Julie passed the offer along to her father, who responded with two words: “Bleep no!”

The next phone call after the show came from Tuna in Chicago, where she’d gone to join her mother.

“I saw my name in the credits!” she exclaimed. “ ‘Tuna J. Gordon-Taxonomist’!”

“You’re a rock star,” Wahoo said.

“How about you? ‘Wahoo Cray-First Assistant Wildlife Wrangler’!”

“Okay, we’re both rock stars.”

Wahoo’s parents had given him a cell phone as a birthday gift. He and Tuna had been texting regularly-he with one thumb-until Jocko, the bratty howler monkey, plucked the device from Wahoo’s jeans and beat it to smithereens with a banyan branch.

Since then, Wahoo and Tuna had spoken only a few times, when she’d called him on the Crays’ house phone.

“How’s your grandmother?” he asked.

“She’s hangin’ in there, thanks to Mom. We’re all hangin’ in.”

“And how’s Floyd dealing with the move?”

“He’s a hamster, dude. Every day’s a good day.”

Wahoo was curious to know if there was any wildlife to be classified in Chicago.

“Autumn is overrated,” Tuna said. “It’s already too cold for butterflies, though last month I logged a Vanessa atalanta.”

“Which is…?”

“A red admiral. He was just flyin’ around Grant Park, having a big old time.”

“Guess what I saw yesterday up in one of our palm trees.”

“Not an iguana!”

“Oh yeah,” Wahoo said. “A serious iguana.”

Tuna chortled. “Did you show your dad?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Smart call.”

She told Wahoo about her grandmother’s neighborhood on the city’s north side, which was overrun with obese and fearless raccoons. “They love chimneys,” she said, “otherwise known as coon-dominiums.”

Wahoo laughed, and he remembered how funny Tuna could be. He missed her, but he was glad she was safe, living in a place where she didn’t have to hide in her room at night with the door locked.

“Daddy might plead guilty,” she said.

“That’s good news.”

She and Wahoo had sometimes talked about hanging out together at the Miami courthouse while the case against her father was being heard. In truth, neither of them was looking forward to testifying while Jared Gordon sat only a few feet away, glaring murderously. It would be best if there was no need for a trial.

Selfishly, though, Wahoo felt disappointed that he might not get to see Tuna.

“So, you don’t know when you’ll be back in Florida?”

“At Christmas break, for sure,” she said. “Mom promised.”

“Really?”

“Maybe even sooner.”

“Cool,” he said. “We’ll go catch some critters.”

“I’d like that, Lance.”

“Me too, Lucille.”