Chomp (24 page)

He was talking about U.S. Highway 41, the Tamiami Trail.

“Then what?”

“Then we say adios.” Jared Gordon smirked at his own cleverness. “You drop me off on a nice, empty stretch, and I disappear like a ghost. Sneak away to the Bahamas, whatever. There’s a place I saw on the Travel Channel called Harbour Island—you can ride horses on the beach. And the sand, they say it’s the color of an Easter rose. I could seriously get used to that.”

“What about your daughter?”

“Oh, I’ll come back and deal with her later. She’s the cause of all this trouble.”

Mickey had no intention of letting Jared Gordon get away, but he played along.

He said, “We should stop and make a fire. They’ll find us quicker that way.”

“Fine by me, Sparky.”

Not far ahead was a patch of hardwood trees that promised higher ground. When they got there, Mickey started searching for dry tinder. Most everything was still soggy from the long downpour, and the funky ground mulch had been disturbed by some type of animal activity. Mickey spied a single track in the dirt, and his heart began to thump against his ribs. It was a human footprint, belonging to a small person who wasn’t wearing shoes. Mickey quickly smudged over the telltale mark with one of his boots.

To Tuna’s father he said, “Too wet here. Let’s look someplace else.”

“It’s wet
everywhere
. I’m sick of walkin’.”

Mickey strained to hear the engines of the search boats. It was hard to tell if any of them had gotten closer.

Jared Gordon picked something off the ground and crowed, “Well, look here!”

He was waving a lime-colored flip-flop with rhinestones on the strap. Mickey didn’t need to be told whose it was. He recognized it right away.

“What’re the odds—like a million to one? Isn’t that what you said?” Tuna’s father was gloating. “But this here’s her sandal, Sparky. That means she’s around someplace, and I’m gonna git her. Million to one? Ha!”

The odds weren’t really a million to one, as Mickey knew from studying Raven Stark’s map. Within range of Sickler’s dock were no more than a half-dozen tree islands, lush emerald groves rising from the pan-flat marsh. They were the
most obvious places for a Glades traveler to seek cover, as well as solid ground.

But why did Link stop here?
Mickey wondered.
Did his boat break down, or was there some sort of emergency?

One chilling fact was clear: if Tuna was hiding on the island, so was Wahoo. He would have never left her alone. For Mickey, the stakes couldn’t possibly get any higher. The kids were nearby. It was time to do something.

“Let’s go find your girl,” he said to Tuna’s dad, and headed the opposite direction of where the small footprint had pointed.

Jared Gordon came up from behind and slapped the top of his head with Tuna’s flip-flop. “Hey, you think I’m stupid or what? I got you figgered out.”

Mickey balled his right fist. One solid punch to the jaw would knock the guy cold. He wouldn’t have time to pull the trigger.

“I know what you’re up to,” Jared Gordon went on. “You wanna take me down, huh? You wanna be a hero.”

Mickey shifted his balance. “I’m no hero. What’re you talkin’ about? Do I look like a hero?”

“Shut up and git your paws in the air.”

“Why?”

“You got three seconds.”

“That’ll work,” Mickey said.

He wheeled around, swinging hard, but the punch never got there.

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.…”