Chomp

NINE

That evening, they drove down to Florida City and stocked up at the Walmart: sodas, Gatorades, bug spray, sunblock, coffee, bacon, powdered eggs, granola bars, Pringles, frozen hot dogs, black beans, matches and first-aid supplies, including a bottle of five hundred aspirins for Mickey.

When they got to the register, Wahoo slipped ahead of his father and paid for the supplies with cash.

Mickey eyed him warily. “Where’d you get that money?”

“Robbed a bank,” Wahoo said. Actually his mother had left three hundred dollars inside an envelope in his sock drawer, for emergencies.

Mickey said, “Don’t be such a wise bleep.”

“Okay, I didn’t rob a bank. I won the lottery.”

“I’m warning you.”

“Here, grab a couple of these bags,” Wahoo said. He’d promised his mom he wouldn’t tell his dad about the cash in the drawer.

They were loading the provisions into the back of the pickup truck when Wahoo heard someone call, “Wait up!”

He turned around and saw Tuna Gordon, a girl from school. She had curly ginger hair and was small for her age, but she wasn’t shy. Wahoo didn’t know her well, although she had caught his attention in biology class because she knew the Latin names of all the local snakes and lizards.

“I need a ride,” Tuna said. She wore a camo weather jacket, blue jeans and bright green flip-flops. Her canvas tote bag looked as if it weighed more than she did.

“This a friend of yours?” Mickey asked Wahoo.

“She’s in my biology class.”

“Algebra, too,” said Tuna.

Wahoo’s father was looking at the tote bag. “Which way are you headin’, hon?”

“Anywhere,” she said. “Wherever you guys are going.”

When she stepped closer, they saw she had a black eye.

“Who did that to you?” Mickey asked.

“I fell down the stairs.”

“Baloney.”

“Then never mind,” Tuna said, and turned to walk away.

“Hold on.” Wahoo motioned her to come back. He didn’t know what to say or how to act. Who in the world would hit a girl? he wondered.

His father asked Tuna where she lived. She pointed toward a dented old Winnebago at the far end of the parking lot.

“Okay, but where do you keep it?” Mickey asked.

“Right there.”

“You live at the Walmart?”

“They let motor homes stay for free,” Tuna explained. “We got electric and water, everything we need. It’s not so awful.”

Mickey’s father shook his head. “If you like campin’ in a parking lot.”

Wahoo knew Tuna was telling the truth. In fifth grade he’d met a boy who had spent a whole summer with his family towing a Gulf Stream trailer from one Walmart store to another, all the way from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Portland, Oregon.

“What really happened to your eye?” Wahoo asked.

“I told you. I fell down.”

Mickey said, “That’s bull. Somebody slugged her.”

Tuna’s cheeks turned red. Wahoo was shocked that his father would say it aloud and embarrassed for Tuna that it was probably true.

Mickey bent down and whispered, “Was it your old man?”

Tuna pulled away. “So what if it was?”

“Has he been drinkin’ tonight?”

Her eyes welled up. “Every damn night,” she said quietly.

“Where’s your mom?” Wahoo asked.

Tuna covered up a sniffle. “Up north with my grandma.”

Mickey Cray was staring darkly across the parking lot at the Winnebago, and Wahoo knew he was considering paying Mr. Gordon a visit. Such a confrontation could only end badly, with police cars and ambulances. Wahoo’s father had absolutely no use for creeps who beat on small animals, especially kids.

“You’re coming with us,” Wahoo said to Tuna, “on a real camping trip.”

Her eyes brightened. “Seriously?”

“We’re heading out to the Everglades for a few days.”

“Sweet.”

Mickey said, “I’ll be right back,” and started striding toward the camper where Tuna’s father was drinking.

Wahoo ran up and cut in front of him. “No, don’t.”

“He’s got a gun,” Tuna said, “by the way.”

Mickey frowned. “Then somebody better take it away from him.”

“Stay out of it, Pop. She’s safe now.” Wahoo unclenched his father’s right hand and pressed a twenty-dollar bill into it.

“What the bleep is this for?”

“Now that we’ve got company, we’ll need more food for the trip,” Wahoo said. He looked over at Tuna. “You like Coke or Mountain Dew?”

“Anything’s good,” she said.

Wahoo gave his father another five bucks. “Mountain Dew it is.”

Mickey shoved the cash in his pocket and muttered, “You two wait in the pickup.” Then he trudged back toward the Walmart. Wahoo kept an eye on him, to make sure he didn’t make a detour to Mr. Gordon’s RV.

Once they were seated in the truck, Tuna said, “Look, I don’t want to mess up your vacation.”

“It’s not a vacation. It’s a job,” said Wahoo.

“What kinda job?”

When he told her, she didn’t believe him.***

Swaddled in his fluffy purple robe, Derek Badger watched the replay of the alligator scene over and over.

“Crikey, this is golden,” he murmured.

Raven Stark sat beside the director at a small dining counter in Derek’s motor coach. A map of the Everglades was spread in front of them.

“Have you arranged for a chopper yet?” Derek called from his bed.

“It’s on my list,” Raven said patiently.

Derek loved using helicopters to shoot high aerial scenes of himself traipsing through the bush, making it appear as if he were all alone. The key was to find a place where there were no obvious signs of human habitation. Fortunately, the Everglades covered a vast region, and much of it was remote.

“Where’s the new script?” Derek demanded.

“The writers are still working on it,” the director said.

“I want fresh pages by tomorrow morning. Understood?”

The pages were being rewritten to put the gator “attack” at the very end of the show. Because the scene was so brief, it would be shown several times in slow motion and dragged out to fill the last ten minutes of the program.

For the earlier part of the show, the director would need other videotaped segments-Derek hacking his way through the saw grass, building a campsite and, of course, cooking some poor luckless creature for supper.

“What about using your face-to-face with the snapping turtle?” the director asked. “It’s really not so bad-”

“I told you to erase that!” Derek exploded.

“All right. Consider it done,” the director said, although he had no intention of destroying the turtle tape. The nose-nipping scene would be digitally added to a secret DVD of Derek’s spectacular blunders that would be played on a giant flat screen when the crew of Expedition Survival! held its annual end-of-the-season party, which Derek never attended because he considered himself too important. The DVD was always the high point of the evening-even Raven had found herself weeping with laughter.

She wasn’t laughing now, scanning the map of the Everglades.

At first the Miccosukee tribe had agreed to let Expedition Survival! base its operations at one of its settlements along the Tamiami Trail. Unfortunately, Raven had just been informed by a tribal lawyer that Mr. Badger and his crew were no longer welcome.

“Because of the incident involving the Navajos,” the attorney had explained stiffly. “We found out about it on the Internet.”

Raven had grimaced at the memory.

Derek had been doing a cave-camping scene in New Mexico when he’d brainlessly decided to use an ancient Navajo prayer pipe to scratch an itch on his back. The sacred relic had snapped into three pieces, greatly upsetting the tribal leaders. Derek had been ordered to depart the reservation and never return.

Now, on the eve of the Everglades taping, Raven was scrambling to find a new place to use as a headquarters.

The director tapped a place on the map. “What about here, down in Flamingo?”

Raven frowned. “That’s in the national park.”

“So what? Call ’em.”

“I think we’re on some sort of blacklist.”

“You’re joking,” the director said. “Because of what happened at Yellowstone? Geez, that was three, four years ago.”

“Not my fault!” Derek protested from the folds of his robe. “I didn’t know it was a bloody eagle nest.”

That wasn’t true. Everyone on the set had warned him it was an eagle nest. Before climbing the old cottonwood, he’d strapped on his Helmet Cam, thereby making sure that the whole idiotic crime had been recorded. A park ranger who’d arrived during the fiasco retrieved the eagle egg as soon as Derek descended from the tree, depriving the survivalist of a tasty breakfast omelet and possibly a prison term.

For disturbing a federally protected species, Derek had been slapped with a ten-thousand-dollar fine that was hastily paid by the producers of Expedition Survival! Miraculously, the story had never leaked out to the media.

Everglades National Park was a long way from Yellowstone, so it seemed possible to Derek’s director that the authorities in Florida were unaware of the nest-robbing incident.

“Fine,” Raven said. “I’ll call the park superintendent and give it a shot.”

Her lack of enthusiasm annoyed Derek. “Be sure and tell them we’re the number one rated survival show on TV!”

“Right.”

“Broadcast twice weekly across all eight continents!”

“ Eight continents?” whispered the director.

Raven put a finger to her lips. “Let it go.”

Derek beckoned them both to his bedside. “This is pure gold,” he said, touching the Replay button again and setting the alligator scene in motion. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime, near-death experience.”

Neither Raven nor the director could disagree. If it weren’t for Mickey Cray, Derek probably wouldn’t have survived the struggle with Alice.

“The rest of the show,” he said dreamily, “must all build up to this incredible, heart-stopping moment. We’ll spare no expense!”

Raven waited for Derek to finish savoring the replay so that she would have his full attention. She said, “Mr. Cray would like to know which animals to bring along when we go on location.”

“Tell him not to bring any.”

“But-”

“No tame animals, darling. This time we’re going totally raw and wild.”

Raven glanced apprehensively at the director, who said to Derek, “Why not have a few ringers handy, just for backup? They’ve got a gimpy bobcat that I’m sure we could use in a scene or two-”

“No more faking it, mate. From now on, we’re putting the ‘real’ back in ‘reality.’ ”

Raven didn’t like the sound of that.

Derek basked on the bed like a walrus, jowly and content. “Surely our talented Mr. Cray can track down some beasties for me to tangle with in the deep, dark Everglades,” he said. “I’m totally psyched about this show, aren’t you?”

The director was the opposite of psyched. Surviving the alligator scare obviously had inflated Derek’s already-bloated ego and filled his head with foolish notions.

“But what if we don’t come across any wild animals?” the director asked. “Then we’ve basically got fifty minutes of you schlepping through the muck.”

From somewhere inside his robe Derek produced a sprinkle-covered donut and crammed it in his cheeks. “No worries. Cray and his lad will come through-God knows we’re paying ’em enough.”

Raven went outside to think. The director caught up with her by the primate pen, a safe distance from the motor coach. There was no way Derek could hear them over the shrill din of monkey chatter.

“I’m not loving this scenario,” the director confided.

“Me neither,” Raven said grimly. “That’s his third donut since lunch. Pretty soon he’ll be too fat to fit in his khakis.”

“No, it’s the show I’m worried about. We’ve never done one with strictly wild animals.”

Raven decided to be positive. “This is just a phase. Derek will come to his senses, you’ll see.”

“If he doesn’t, then everything depends on that crazy redneck-and he’s not exactly a charter member of the Derek fan club.”

“Think positive,” Raven said.

At that moment, a disgusting glop of something flew out of the monkey pen and splatted in her hair.

“You have got to be kidding,” she said.

The director ran for cover as the monkeys threw more, yowling uproariously.