Chomp (25 page)

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.

“It’s not even a full moon,” Tuna pointed out.

Derek Badger shrugged. “What can I say?”

He had no future as a vampire. Jared Gordon’s blood had tasted awful.

Wahoo reached out and shook Derek’s hand. “That was huge. Thanks.”

“No worries.” Derek didn’t know what in the world had come over him. It wasn’t in his nature to risk his life for others. Attacking the gunman seemed more like something Dax Mangold would have done, in the movies.

“Incredible,” Tuna agreed. “We should get your saliva tested. Yours too, Lance.”

They could hear the rescue boats racing through the saw grass prairie toward the island. Overhead the helicopter circled, the pilot expertly keeping the search beam trained on them to mark their location.

With Tuna standing guard, Wahoo had bound Jared Gordon’s wrists and ankles with a nylon rope from the airboat. Link himself had helped secure the knots, which would later have to be cut with a fish knife.

The bite wounds on Jared Gordon’s neck were painful but not life-threatening, due to Derek’s lack of proper fangs.
Still, he’d clamped onto Tuna’s father with enough force that it had required all of Wahoo’s strength to pry him off.

One cheek in the dirt, Jared Gordon glowered up at the man who’d flattened him. “You sure don’t look the same as on TV.”