Carl Hiaasen - Chomp

None of her yapping could be heard by Link, who’d pushed the boat clear and taken his seat in front of the big aviation propeller. As he revved the engine, something stung him sharply below his right shoulder blade. He grunted and turned to glimpse a stranger in a football jersey standing on the bank of the canal. With one arm the man was aiming a stubby black pistol. His other arm was locked around the neck of Cray, the animal wrangler.

Link was both puzzled and alarmed. He hit the gas and the airboat took off. Ten minutes and seven miles later, his brain finally made the unhappy connection between the worsening pain in his back and the stranger with the gun.

Maybe I been shot, he thought.

Everything in his vision-the clouds, the water, the tan waves of saw grass-began to turn fuzzy. The back of his T-shirt felt warm and sticky.

For sure I been shot, he thought.

Before collapsing, he managed to stop the boat. The kids apparently found the first-aid kit and started treating his bullet wound. Floating in and out of consciousness, Link picked up part of their conversation.

“Can’t you stop the bleeding?” the girl was pleading.

“I’m trying,” said the boy. “Did you see the gun? What was it?”

“A. 38 revolver.”

How’d she know that? Link wondered in a fog.

He lifted his head and cracked one eyelid. “You got a fix on who shot me?”

“Yeah,” the girl replied. “My whacked-out dad.”

“Ugh.”

“A new low,” she added, “even for him.”

“Am I gone die?” Link asked.

“No way,” the boy said.

“Good.” Link closed his eye and took a nap.

Wahoo was experienced at first aid. Keeping a backyard full of animals, he and his father frequently got scratched, scraped or chomped. Pain-wise, monkey bites were the worst, with raccoon nips a close second. Such injuries weren’t life-threatening, but they required speedy attention in order to prevent infections, which could be dangerous. From practice Wahoo had learned how to quickly stanch bleeding, clean a wound and apply antibiotics.

Tuna knelt beside him while he worked on Link. He began by using a screwdriver from the boat’s toolbox to cut away Link’s bloody shirt. Then he applied some hydrogen peroxide, followed by a dab of alcohol, which caused Link to groan from the sting.

After tweezing a crumb of broken lead from the pea-sized hole, Wahoo said, “The slug broke into pieces. It might’ve hit a bone.”

Tuna took the jagged fragment and placed it in the palm of her hand. “Unbelievable,” she said. “My father’s officially out of his mind.”

“How the heck did he find you?” Wahoo asked.

“I’m a total idiot, that’s how. The battery in my cell was dead, so I borrowed the phone at the tourist shop. Sickler’s name must have come up on Daddy’s caller ID. Totally my fault-and now look what happened!”

She stared forlornly at Link unconscious on the deck of the airboat, where she and Wahoo had rolled him facedown after he’d tumbled from the driver’s platform.

“This is horrible,” she said.

Wahoo couldn’t disagree. Despite what he’d told Link, he couldn’t be certain that the injury wasn’t fatal. Without X-rays and other hospital tests, there was no way to know how much internal damage the bullet had caused. It was overwhelming to think that Link might die, so Wahoo pushed the thought out of his mind. In that way he was able to remain steady-handed as he painted the gunshot wound with an antibiotic that looked like A1 steak sauce.

Tuna was explaining the frantic scene at Sickler’s place: “When I spotted our dumpy old Winnebago in the parking lot, I almost had a stroke… I couldn’t believe he tracked me down… The only thing to do was run.”

“Why’d you call him in the first place?” Wahoo asked.

“I’ve got this pet hamster.”

“So?”

“He needs to eat, Lance, just like your animals. I phoned Daddy to ask if he would please feed him,” she said, “because he forgets when I’m not around. It’s been four days.”

Wahoo thought: This whole mess broke loose because of a hungry hamster?

“Don’t be mad,” Tuna said.

“I’m not mad. Slightly stressed is all.”

The rain began to fall. Link stirred. His breathing sounded heavy, but at least he was breathing. Wahoo cross-taped a square of medical gauze over the bullet hole, which was no longer bleeding.

“What are we going to do? I can’t go back while Daddy’s there,” Tuna said.

Wahoo didn’t know where they were or how to find help. Most importantly, he didn’t know how to run an airboat-and Link seemed in no shape to give lessons. The boats were fast and tricky to steer. Even experienced drivers flipped over on occasion.

He wondered what was happening back at Sickler’s dock. Wahoo couldn’t picture his father standing around doing nothing while some drunk with a pistol went nuts. It wasn’t Mickey Cray’s style to lay back. When trouble sprang up, he usually got involved in a major way. Wahoo thought of himself as more calm and cautious-but then again, he hadn’t really been tested.

“Was your dad trying to shoot you?” he asked Tuna. The question came out halting and raspy. It didn’t sound like his own voice.

Tuna blinked the raindrops from her eyelashes and thought about the answer. Finally she said, “I think he was aiming for the motor. That’s what I choose to believe.”

Wahoo nodded and took a deep breath. Then the wind shifted and they heard another airboat, coming full speed.

Derek Badger knew from the movies that it was dangerous for vampires to expose themselves to sunshine-but what about dark cloudy days, when the sun was blotted out?

He decided to take a chance. From his shelter, a damp hollow beneath the grounded airboat, he cautiously extended a bare hand into the morning air. He was relieved when his flesh didn’t burst into flaming blisters, which sometimes happened to careless vampires in the Night Wing Trilogy.

As Derek squeezed from his hiding spot, a cool rain began to beat down. He felt a slight chill crawl down his spine, as if the fever were breaking. He remembered a scene from a program he’d done in a Costa Rican jungle-a nifty trick that one of the writers had thought up. He took off the Helmet Cam and turned it upside down so it functioned as a bucket. The rain wasn’t as sweet as the bottled Italian spring water in the refrigerator of his motor coach, but Derek drank eagerly. It made him feel like a genuine survivalist.

Afterward, using the airboat’s propeller blade as a mirror, he checked out his dental situation: still no fangs.

His bat-punctured tongue had shrunk to a size that almost fit inside his cheeks. In addition, the dreadful itching rash that had tormented him all night seemed to be ebbing. A normal person would have been pleased by these developments, but Derek was disappointed. He’d sort of been looking forward to becoming a vampire, defeating the evil curse and then triumphantly morphing back into human form-just like Dax Mangold did.

Sadly, there would be no special vampire edition of Expedition Survival! The Helmet Cam’s video recorder wasn’t working because of water damage to the wiring.

Drenched to the bone, Derek struggled to shove the airboat off the bank and get it floating. It wouldn’t budge. Three inches of water puddled in the bottom didn’t help.

As too often happened, his empty stomach took control of his brain. He was overpowered by a delicious vision of buttermilk pancakes flanked by strips of lean Canadian bacon, smoked Scottish salmon and luscious jade wedges of kiwifruit. Hot tears of desire welled up in his eyes.

Derek wasn’t accustomed to the solitary life. The previous night, spent hunkered under Link’s airboat, was the first time he’d ever slept truly alone in the wilderness, a fact that would have shocked millions of TV fans. Derek missed having the crew and the director to boss around. He missed Raven Stark hovering constantly, tending to his every whim.