Carl Hiaasen - Chomp

Sure enough, within minutes Mickey’s eyes quit watering and his hands relaxed on the wheel. When Wahoo asked if he was feeling better, he denied it.

“Tell the truth, Pop.”

“Okay, maybe a little better. But so what?”

“Aren’t you even going to thank her?”

“Hey, I’m sorta busy right now. Driving?”

Wahoo turned to Tuna and said, “He’s too stubborn to say so, but thank you for the medicine.”

She smiled. “You’re welcome, Lance.”

Ahead of them, Derek Badger’s enormous black motor coach jounced and swayed on the road to the Everglades.

The man’s name was Sickler, and a year earlier he’d been run out of Tennessee for selling fake rubies at a fake mine outside of Gatlinburg. Now he had a souvenir shop on the Tamiami Trail, a two-lane road that crosses southern Florida between Miami and Naples.

There Sickler peddled counterfeit Seminole artifacts and charged tourists twenty dollars a head for a one-hour airboat tour-five bucks more when they asked for a box lunch. He promised a full refund if they didn’t spot at least one alligator during the boat ride, which they always did. That’s because Sickler had purchased an eight-footer from a taxidermist in Homestead and nailed it to a cypress log half a mile from the dock. He named the stuffed gator “Old Sleepy,” and the tourists never caught on.

For the sum of one thousand dollars, Sickler had agreed to let the crew of Expedition Survival! use his store and dock as a center of operations. He’d never seen the show because his television had been malfunctioning for years; the only channel that came in clearly was the Pastry Network, which was the main reason that Sickler weighed two hundred and ninety-one pounds.

“We’ll need all three of your airboats,” Raven Stark told him.

Sickler said that was fine. “But it’ll cost you another grand.”

“Five hundred,” said Raven. “End of discussion.” She handed him the cash.

Derek Badger sauntered up and introduced himself. “Would you like me to autograph the wall of your shop?”

“I’ll whip your hide if you do,” said Sickler. “I just repainted the place.”

“Easy, mate. Don’t you know who I am?” Derek looked at Raven. “Is he for real?”

“Let’s go look at the new script,” she suggested.

Derek remained focused on the portly Sickler. “What can we expect to encounter out there?” he asked, jerking his marshmallow chin toward the shimmering wetlands.

Sickler, who ventured into the wilderness as seldom as possible, sensed that Mr. Badger and his TV crew were seeking an element of danger.

“Poison snakes,” he replied ominously. “And gators, for sure.”

“What kinds of snakes?”

“Water moccasins, diamondbacks. We’re Snake Central.”

Derek’s face glowed. “That’s fantastic!”

“And now we got them killer pythons from Asia. They grow thirty feet long and eat the tourists right off the boardwalk.” This was utter nonsense, but Sickler laid it on thick.

“Panthers?” Derek inquired hopefully.

“You bet.” Sickler thinking: In your dreams, pal.

Maybe a hundred panthers were left in the entire state. Every so often a federal game officer would stop by the shop to ask if the airboat drivers had seen any sign of the big cats, which was sort of pointless. Powered by large automobile engines, the airboats were equipped with deck-mounted aviation propellers that worked as giant fans, pushing the flat-bottomed crafts at high speed. They were so loud that panthers heard them coming from miles away and ran for cover.

Raven raised a hand. “How about bears?”

“Absolutely, ma’am,” said Sickler, who hadn’t seen a bear since a field trip to the Atlanta zoo with his third-grade class, forty years earlier.

But Derek was sold. “We’ve come to the right spot! Now, where’s Cray?”

“Right here.”

The wrangler was leaning against a soda machine in a corner of the souvenir shop, where he’d been listening to Sickler’s baloney.

“Can you deal with a bear?” Derek asked Mickey. “What about panthers?”

Mickey gave Sickler such a cold, cutting stare that the crooked proprietor sheepishly excused himself and waddled off to the stockroom.

To Derek, Mickey said, “Whatever’s out there, I can handle.”

The TV star raised a cheery thumb. “That’s all I need to hear, mate.” Through a window he caught sight of the catering truck, and he hurried out the door on a quest for boysenberry pancakes.

Raven, who’d lain awake all night worrying about the show, asked Mickey if she could have a word with him.

“Aw, don’t worry,” he told her. “We’re not gonna run into any bears or panthers.”

“Promise me you’ll stay close to Derek,” she said. “We cannot have a repeat of what happened with your alligator. Is that clear?”

“Lady, do I look like a bleeping babysitter?”

“He nearly died.”

“Yeah, because he’s a fool,” Mickey said. “There’s no known cure for that.”

“Then do whatever’s necessary to keep him from getting harmed.”

Mickey chuckled. “You got a call from your bosses in California. Am I right?”

Raven blinked, but her tone remained firm. “We need Derek in one piece. He’s the whole franchise.”

“The franchise, huh?” Mickey whistled sarcastically. “Then I guess we’d better make sure a cottonmouth doesn’t crawl into his sleeping bag and bite him on the butt.”

Now it was Raven’s turn to chuckle. “Oh, Derek won’t be camping with the rest of us, Mr. Cray. He’ll be staying at the Empresario.”

“Isn’t that a hotel?”

“One of Miami’s finest,” Raven said.

Mickey was puzzled. “How’s he gonna get from the middle of the Everglades to the middle of the city every night?”

Raven touched a red fingernail to her ear. “Hear that?”

“What?”

“Listen.”

Mickey heard it now. “I should’ve guessed,” he muttered.

It was the sound of a helicopter.

Wahoo had been riding in airboats since he was two years old, but this was the biggest one he’d ever seen. It was designed to carry a driver and fifteen stout tourists.

Wahoo’s father said, “It’s nuthin’ but an old tin barge.”

“Hop in, mates!” Derek Badger chirped.

The other passengers included Raven, the director, two cameramen (without their cameras) and Tuna.

“And who would you be?” Raven asked.

“Oh, I’m the taxonomist,” Tuna replied as she took her seat.

Wahoo said, “It’s okay, Ms. Stark. She’s with us.”

Raven looked doubtful. “A taxonomist?”

Tuna nodded cheerfully.

“What happened to your eye, young lady?”

“I fell down the stairs. What happened to your hair?”

Raven’s face purpled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Derek rose and demanded to speak with Mr. Sickler.

“He ain’t comin’,” said the airboat driver, a beefy, dull-eyed man called Link.

“And why not?” Derek couldn’t understand why anyone would pass up the opportunity to take a nature ride with a world-renowned survivalist.

“Because he too big,” Link said.

Derek misunderstood. “You hear that?” he sneered to the others. “Mr. Sickler is too ‘big’ to be bothered with the likes of us.”

“Nossir, he too big for the boat,” Link explained. “He climb in now, we sink like a rock.”

Everybody laughed except Derek. Before starting the engine, Link handed out earmuffs to dampen the roar. Raven had difficulty fitting hers over her stupendous cliff of red hair, Tuna and Wahoo watching with amusement.

The airboat skimmed along a watery trail through the saw grass for only a couple minutes before Link cut the power and glided the craft to a stop.