Carl Hiaasen - Chomp

“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?”