Chomp (22 page)

“Is it them?” she whispered anxiously.

“I don’t know. Stay here while I check it out.”

“No way.”

“I’m serious,” Wahoo said.

“Me too, Lance. I go where you go.”

They approached with cat-like caution. Tuna’s legs were speckled with mosquitoes, but she didn’t dare slap at them for fear of being heard. Wahoo listened intently for voices—especially his father’s. The woods remained silent except for the murmur of raindrops on the leaves.

Wahoo halted a few feet behind the beached airboat. “Wrong color,” he said.

The one that Tuna’s father hijacked had a glam sparkle-green hull. This boat was hand-painted in dull camo colors.

“It’s Link’s!” Tuna said with relief. “The one Derek took.”

From deep in the underbrush came a grunt, followed by an odd, quavering chant.

Wahoo edged closer. “Mr. Badger?”

“Go away, mate!” The bogus Steve Irwin accent was unmistakable.
Gah why, mite!

“It’s totally him,” whispered Tuna.

The off-key chanting resumed:
“Eee-ka-laro! Eee-ka-laro! Gumbo mucho eee-ka-laro.”

“Are you hurt?” Tuna called.

“Get lost!” Derek barked. “If you know what’s bloody good for you!”

Tuna followed Wahoo toward the hoarse voice in the woods. They came upon the TV star scrambling awkwardly up a Brazilian peppertree. The punctured Helmet Cam sat crookedly on his head, and a burn hole was visible in his shorts. He looked haggard and wild-eyed.

“Come on down from there,” Wahoo said.

“No! I’ve got the curse!”

“What curse?” Tuna asked.

“Run for your lives, both of you! Chop-chop!”

Wahoo said, “We need that airboat, Mr. Badger.”

“Are you blind, boy? The bloody thing’s full of water.”

“You’re going to help us bail it out.”

“Just leave me alone!”

“Take it easy up there,” Tuna advised. This was her second up close encounter with the legendary survivalist—the first being his botched attempt at bat eating—and so far she hadn’t been dazzled. He certainly wasn’t much of a climber.

“Eee-ka-laro! Eee-ka-laro! Gumbo mucho eee-ka-laro!”
he yowled from the peppertree.

Wahoo threw up his hands. “Who has time for this?”

“It’s the curse of the undead!” Derek decreed hoarsely.

More like the curse of the unglued
, thought Wahoo.

They heard a sharp pop, like a car backfiring. Then a heron began to screech.

Tuna spun around. “Was that a—?”

“Gun. Yeah.” Wahoo tensed. They were downwind from the shooter, although the distance was difficult to guess. One hundred yards? Two hundred?

Something tumbled through the branches and landed with a thud at Tuna’s feet. It was the battered Helmet Cam.

“Help me!” cried Derek Badger, suddenly with no trace of Australia in his voice.

He was dangling upside down, arms flailing, one fleshy leg hooked over a bough that was plainly too thin to support his tubbiness.

“Are you shot?” Tuna yelled. “Hang on tight!”

“Somebody catch me!”

“Uh-oh,” said Wahoo, tugging Tuna out of the way. “He’s gonna fall.”

And fall he did.

Mickey Cray’s plan wasn’t complicated: trick Jared Gordon into wasting his last three bullets, then jump him.

“Hear that?” Mickey asked with false excitement.

“I don’t hear nuthin’,” Jared Gordon grumped.

They were slopping across the flats, following a line of scrubby trees. Once the rain had slacked off, Jared Gordon had become restless and insisted they continue moving. Mickey had tried to stall, saying that the chances of finding Tuna were about a million to one since they no longer had an airboat to carry them across the marsh.

Jared Gordon refused to be persuaded, his logic having been hopelessly polluted by beer. He was on a mission to catch and punish his runaway daughter.

“Wait!” Mickey put a finger to his lips. “You hear it now?”

Jared Gordon shook his head.

“Sounds like a bear.”

“Aw, no way,” scoffed Jared Gordon.

“Seriously. Sickler said this place is crawlin’ with ’em.”

“Bears?”

Mickey dramatically dropped to one knee. “There! Over in those bay trees.”

Jared Gordon craned his neck, but he couldn’t see a bear or any other varmint. His mouth was as dry as sawdust.

“Is it a big one?” he asked Mickey.

“How good are you with that gun, brother?”

“Jest show me where he’s at.”

Mickey pointed. “See those branches moving?”

“Yeah!”

There were branches moving everywhere, of course. It was only the wind.

“Go ahead—take a shot!” Mickey urged. “Even if you don’t hit him, you’ll scare him off.”

“You say so.” Jared Gordon fired.

The slug pinged harmlessly through the trees.

“Aim six feet to the right,” Mickey instructed.

“No sweat.” Tuna’s father pulled the trigger again.

“See that? You got him on the run!”

“Not for long!” Jared Gordon took his third and final shot.

As the echo of the gunfire died, Mickey rose up and said, “That’s darn good shootin’.”

“You sure he’s gone? Better go have a look.”

“Oh, he’s gone. Don’t worry.” Mickey was already eyeing the pistol.

“I’ll wait here,” said Jared Gordon, stepping back.

Mickey played along. He entered the cluster of bay trees and pretended to scout for tracks. He didn’t mind stringing out the act a little longer. His plan had worked perfectly—Tuna’s father had emptied the gun at an imaginary beast. Finally it was safe for Mickey to take control and put an end to Jared Gordon’s nonsense.

He returned to the clearing and said, “Nice job, brother. That poor critter’s halfway to Shark River by now.”

Tuna’s father wore a smug grin that featured his jagged front tooth. “I told you I was good!”

“Well, you weren’t lyin’,” Mickey said, but the words trailed off in dejection.

He was staring at Jared Gordon’s left hand. It held six shiny new bullets, which Jared Gordon loaded one by one into the cylinder of his revolver.

“I always keep a handful of spares,” he said, “jest in case.” He clicked the gun shut and raised the barrel. “Okay, Sparky, let’s get movin’ ’fore the rain kicks up again.”

Mickey Cray nodded heavily. “Onward,” he muttered.

For once in Derek Badger’s show-business career, being chubby turned out to be a blessing. The flab cushioned his fall from the Brazilian peppertree.

“I’m alive!” he gasped, his accent still missing in action. He lay flat on a spongy bed of wet leaves and stared up at the two pesky kids, who stared back.

“You are definitely alive,” Wahoo confirmed.

“Did I break my neck?”

“I think you’d notice,” Tuna said.

Derek was a mess. Without his TV makeup and spray-on tan, he displayed all the vivid damage from the Everglades fiasco—the nicked nose from the snapping turtle; the tooth marks on his chin, arms and thumb from the water snake;
the scabbed lip and skinned knees from his wrestling match with Alice; the angry rash from the poison ivy; the punctured tongue from his bat encounter.

“Where’s Raven? Oh, never mind.” Derek sat up.

Wahoo said, “We need to go. Link’s been shot and my dad’s in trouble.”

“No,
you
need to go,” said Derek, “before the sun sets.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Get out of here, both of you! I’ve got the dark curse, don’t you see?” His gaze settled on Tuna’s canvas tote. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of sparkling mineral water?”

“Why’d you run away from camp?” she asked.

Derek struggled to his feet. “Because I was savagely attacked by a vampire bat. You know what that means.”

“What attack?” Wahoo said. “It bit you because you tried to eat it.”

Tuna added, “It wasn’t a vampire bat, Mr. Badger, it was a mastiff. The scientific classification is
Eumops glaucinus floridanus
.”

“Which translates to what in the King’s English—‘hairy bloodsucking fiend’?”

“So what’s this ‘curse’?” Wahoo asked.

In an icy whisper, Derek replied, “The same one as Dax Mangold got.
That
curse.”

Wahoo turned quizzically to Tuna, who said, “Oh-my-God.”

“What?”

“The Night Wing Trilogy.”

Derek nodded. “Exactly! You know what happens next!”

“Okay, I give up,” Wahoo said impatiently. “What’s the Night Wing Trilogy?”

Tuna’s review was harsh: “I barely got through the first book. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever read.”

“The movie was a classic!” Derek protested.

“Wall-to-wall vampires,” Tuna went on. “Vampire shortstops, vampire cheerleaders, even a vampire beagle. I’ll spare you the plot.”

“This isn’t funny. We need to go, like
now
.” Wahoo kept thinking about the lone gunshot they’d heard earlier. Had it been a signal? Or had Jared Gordon shot at Wahoo’s dad?

Derek tilted his stubbled chin toward the clouds. “What time is it?”

“Time to get real. You’re not a vampire.” Wahoo reached for Derek’s arm, but he ducked away.

“How long until dark?” he asked anxiously. “Will there be a moon?”

Tuna rolled her eyes.

“Mr. Badger, if you don’t knock it off,” she said, “I’m going on your Facebook page and rat you out big-time. I’ll tell all your fans how you got lost in the Everglades and started whining like an epic crybaby. I’ll tell about your bogus parachute jump and the bat on your tongue and the puny little water snake that almost gave you a heart attack and how you can’t even climb a tree, you’re such a
pitiful phony. Is that something you want the whole world to know?”

Derek paled. “Hold on, sweetie, don’t get your knickers in a knot. I’ll help you with the boat.”

The lightning zap had not scrambled Derek’s senses so much that he couldn’t recognize a serious threat to his stardom. Regardless of whether he was destined to become one of the undead, he wanted to keep his reputation—and his TV show. How else could he afford the payments on his magnificent
Sea Badger
, the yacht of his dreams? As spacey as he was at the moment, Derek still understood that he could never, ever go back to being Lee Bluepenny, unknown Irish folk dancer.

“Just start walking,” said Wahoo. They’d wasted too much time already. His dad’s life was in danger, and this nutcase was yammering about weird curses and vampires.

A close examination of Link’s airboat proved disappointing. From bow to stern it brimmed with rainwater. Wahoo located a rusty drain plug in the transom, but the release lever broke off in his fingers. The hole in the Helmet Cam made it useless as a bucket, so they were forced to bail with their hands.

Derek proved worthless as a helper. He dribbled more than he scooped, complaining all the while. Ruefully Tuna thought of all the hours she’d spent glued to episodes of
Expedition Survival!
, even the Sunday repeats. She felt like a fool for ever thinking Derek’s adventures—and his
ruggedness—were real. He was no tough guy; he was just a Hollywood fake.

And obviously a whack job, if he really believed in vampires. Tuna no longer had any desire for an autograph.

Meanwhile, Wahoo bailed furiously. If they could lighten the weight in the hull, they might be able to slide it off the bank and into the shallows. An airboat like Link’s could float in only three or four inches of water. The next challenge would be getting the engine started.

“Mates, I need a break,” Derek said wearily.

Tuna snorted. “Oh please. You think Dax Mangold would take a break?”

Wahoo noticed that Derek didn’t look too lively. His forehead was pink and beaded with sweat, as if from a fever. Although he’d received first aid at the base camp, it was possible that he’d still gotten an infection from the bat bite. That had happened a few times to Mickey Cray after being chomped by various critters.

“Take a rest,” Wahoo said to Derek, who nodded gratefully and sprawled next to the boat.

“Here,” he said, and handed one of his “survival” soda straws to Wahoo. It was imprinted with a tiny likeness of Derek’s signature. “Use it as a siphon,” he suggested.

Wahoo wasn’t sarcastic by nature, but this straw was, literally, the last straw. “Gosh, I’ll cherish it always,” he said thinly, and flicked it away.

With her hands, Tuna ladled another cup-sized portion
of water over the side of the boat. “This is gonna take forever, Lance. You get that, right?”

Wahoo refused to become discouraged. The airboat was their only means of finding his father and Jared Gordon before something bad happened.

If it hadn’t happened already.

And if Link’s medical condition didn’t take a turn for the worse—in which case, they’d need the boat to haul him straight to the mainland. Mickey Cray would be on his own.

Don’t think that way
, Wahoo told himself.
Stay positive
.

It wasn’t easy. He was the one who’d talked his dad into taking the
Expedition Survival!
job, and he was the one who
had
talked him out of quitting when quitting would have been the smart thing to do.

Tuna lowered her voice so Derek wouldn’t hear. “I’m really sorry for all this. You don’t know how sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Wahoo said.

“I’m the one who dragged you guys into this mess. I should never have run away. I should’ve stayed and hidden at the Walmart.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The garden department is immense. It would take Daddy a week to find me in there.”

“Okay, that’s just crazy,” Wahoo said.

Between the two of them, water was flying out of the boat in all directions.

Tuna clenched her jaw, fighting back tears. “I never thought he’d shoot a person. Not in a million years.”

“Maybe it was an accident, like you said.”

“No, he’s totally gone off the deep end. What if he kills someone, Lance?”

Wahoo didn’t look up. “My father can take care of himself.”

“Well,
my
father …” Tuna laughed bitterly. “My father can’t take care of breakfast—”

Three more shots rang out, one after the other. Wahoo and Tuna stopped bailing and turned to listen. Derek, who was dozing, didn’t stir.