Chomp (26 page)

“Pipe down, mate,” said Derek. “You got owned.”

Wahoo’s jaw was throbbing as if he’d been slugged by Mike Tyson. Before dousing the campfire, he relit the torch that he’d made from his
Expedition Survival!
jacket. Then he returned to the airboat and sat down beside his father, who was still lying on the deck.

“I’m proud of you,” Mickey told him.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Tell that to Link. You saved the man’s life.”

“I didn’t save
you
from getting shot,” Wahoo said.

“Hey, I asked for it.” Mickey winked. “Alice got me, okay?”

“What?”

“Mom asks how come I’m limpin’, it’s ’cause Alice chomped me.”

“Weak,” Wahoo said.

“Yeah? Isn’t that what happened to your thumb?”

“Okay, Pop. We’ll give it a try.”

Link was upright again, his breathing shallower than before. It hurt to talk, so he didn’t. He was so elated to see his beloved airboat that he wasn’t worrying about the bullet in his body.

Derek asked, “What are you people going to tell the police?”

“The truth,” Wahoo replied.

“Everything?”

“He wants us to leave out the Night Wing stuff,” Tuna said. “Right, Mr. Badger?”

He nodded uneasily. “Please.”

“Okay—but only if you sign my coat.” She fished through her bag and took out a black Sharpie.

Derek looked dubious. “You want my autograph?”

Tuna said, “You’re the first real TV star I ever met. Plus, you did a seriously brave thing tonight. Twisted, but brave.”

“Bull!” her father blurted. “That maniac tried to drown me!”

“Hush up, Daddy.” She pulled off one of Jared Gordon’s moldy wet socks and crammed it in his mouth.

Then she handed the Sharpie to Derek. “The name’s Tuna,” she said, “like the fish.”

With a flourish, he wrote on her coat sleeve:
To my friend Tuna, a true survivor! Your fan, Derek Badger
.

She was still beaming when the first rescue boat arrived. With no small effort, the driver and the police officer lifted Link off the ground and laid him on one of the bench seats. Next they loaded Mickey Cray.

Wahoo gave the torch to Tuna and climbed in beside his father.

“These two need a doctor,” said the driver, who wore a frogger’s lamp on his head. “We gotta go.”

Wahoo waved his thumbless hand. “Later, Lucille.”

Tuna laughed and wiggled four fingers in return. After the boat sped away, she gave her father’s pistol to the police officer, who’d stayed behind to read Jared Gordon his legal rights and officially place him under arrest.

Meanwhile, Derek Badger was basking in his heroic moment. “Say, mate, would you happen to know if that chopper’s equipped with a video camera?”

The cop said he wasn’t sure. “You’re the Beaver guy from cable, right? My kids watch your show every week.”

“It’s Badger,” Derek said tightly.

A second rescue boat pulled up carrying two more uniformed officers, who jumped out and yanked Tuna’s father to a standing position.

He spit out the sock and said, “I want a lawyer.”

“You got a name, mister?” asked one of the policemen.

“No comment.”

“Homo sapiens,”
said Tuna, “but a really lame specimen.”

She tossed the torch into the shallows, where it hissed and went cold.

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, soufflés 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 éclair 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.”