Chomp (17 page)

The man slapped a wallet-sized photograph on the countertop. “She’s not a woman,” he said gruffly. “She’s my daughter.”

It was a school picture of the scrawny girl who’d been hanging around with Derek Badger’s television crew. She looked exactly the same, except that in the photo she didn’t have a black eye.

“She’s real sick,” the man said. “She run off without her medicine.”

“What’s the matter with her?” Sickler asked.

“It’s called Floyd’s disease. She could die from it.”

“Never heard of that one. Floyd’s disease?”

“It’s rare,” the man said. “Only one out of twenty-two million kids get it is what the doctors told us.”

Sickler had seen enough trouble over the years that he wasn’t looking for more. Maybe the stranger was telling the truth, and maybe he wasn’t. In any case, Sickler had no desire to get in the middle of a family hassle.

He pushed the girl’s photograph away. “Sorry. She don’t look familiar.”

“Oh, is that right?” The man lunged across the counter and hissed, “She called me from
here
, Slim!”

Sickler shoved him back. He was larger than the stranger—at nearly three hundred pounds, he was larger than almost everybody—but he was hopelessly out of shape. That’s why he kept a claw hammer behind the counter.

He took it out and said, “Settle down, sport.”

The man raised his hands apologetically. “Sorry, buddy. I just gotta find her, that’s all, before she goes into a coma or somethin’. You can put that hammer away; I won’t make no trouble.”

Sickler didn’t put it away. He said, “We get lots of tourists come in off the highway to borrow the phone when their cell batteries go dead. I don’t pay attention to what they look like, or their kids.”

“She’s not a tourist.”

The shop owner didn’t like that the man had grabbed at him, or the meanness in the man’s eyes. The “Slim” wisecrack was out of line, too.

“I told you—the girl don’t look familiar. Now I got work to do, so be on your way.”

“Hold on—”

“But first, pay for the beer.” Sickler tapped the claw hammer on the countertop. “Four bucks even.”

The stranger thumbed out the cash from a grimy wad. “Her name’s Tuna.”

“Tina?”

“No. Tuna.”

“Like the fish?”

“She said on the phone she was in Aruba,” the man said, “making lists of moths and butterflies. She told me not to worry, said she hitched a ride on a sailboat with some circus folks.”

“Aruba?” Sickler laughed. “That’s quite a story.”

“Thing is, I got caller ID on my cell. That’s how I know for a fact she was here.”

Oh great
, Sickler thought.

“The name of this place came up on my phone when she called,” the man went on. “I looked up your address on the Internet, and here I am.”

Sickler wasn’t ever going to admit that he knew the girl, or that he’d charged her two bucks to use his office phone. “What time did she call you?”

“An hour ago,” the stranger said. He checked his watch. “Make it one hour and eleven minutes.”

“Whatever.” Sickler shrugged. “I wasn’t here; I was over
in Naples. But I’ll ask the lady who watches the shop for me, see if she recalls seein’ the girl. That’s the best I can do.”

“I’ll leave her picture with you,” the man said. “Hey, is that your motor coach parked outside? The big black number with tinted windows?”

“Sure is,” Sickler lied again.

“Sweet. How much that bad boy set you back?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“I got a Winnebago Chieftain that’s seen better days. Lucky I don’t have to drive it far.”

Sickler said, “Hey, tell me somethin’.”

“Sure.”

“Why would this girl—”

“My daughter,” the stranger interjected.

“Why would she call to say she’s in Aruba if she ain’t? Why the heck would she lie about somethin’ like that to her own daddy?”

The man finished his beer with a burp and headed for the door. “Long story,” he said.

I’ll bet it is
, thought Sickler.

They searched all afternoon and couldn’t find Derek Badger. The helicopter had to quit early because of mechanical trouble with something called a trim actuator. When the boats returned at sunset to Sickler’s dock, the mood was grim.

Contrary to what TV viewers were led to believe, never in the history of
Expedition Survival!
had Derek actually been lost. He always stayed close to the snacks and beverages.

Raven had no confidence that the made-for-television survivalist would last very long alone in the Everglades, a fear shared by the show’s director. Derek did not have a surplus of common sense, and it was only a matter of time before he accidentally ate a toxic berry or stepped on a deadly cottonmouth.

Assuming he wasn’t already dying of rabies.

“You’re Mr. Expert,” Raven said sharply to Mickey Cray. “Any brilliant ideas?”

“Yeah. We try again tomorrow.”

The director looked up from his iPhone. “Bummer. The forecast calls for more rain.”

“So we get wet,” said Mickey.

Raven threw up her hands. “That’s your plan? Seriously? We get wet?”

“It’s big country out there, lady. Plus, we’re hunting for a knucklehead who doesn’t want to be found.”

“But that’s ridiculous! Why would Derek be hiding?”

“Beats me. Critters I can figure out just fine. People like him? I got no clue what goes on in their itty-bitty brains.”

Link, who’d hardly spoken a word all day, shocked the group by saying: “That man be wreckin’ my airboat, I break him in two.” He demonstrated by snapping a tree branch over one knee.

Raven immediately called for a private strategy session in Derek’s motor coach. Mickey told Wahoo and Tuna to set up the tents while he was gone.

They selected an open area near some picnic tables at the edge of Sickler’s property. The mosquitoes were thick and fearless, stinging any patch of bare flesh that wasn’t coated with bug repellent—eyelids, earlobes, even armpits. Tuna and Wahoo swatted themselves constantly as they worked. Their cheeks, already windburned from the airboat ride, became pink and puffy from self-inflicted slaps.

Tuna paused to examine a mashed attacker in the palm of her hand.

“Okay, what’s the verdict?” Wahoo said.

“I’m guessing
Aedes aegypti
.” She flicked the dead insect away. “There are forty-three different species of mosquitoes in the Everglades, but only thirteen kinds like to bite humans. Isn’t that weird?”

Wahoo smiled ruefully. “Where are the friendly ones?”

After the tents were in place, he and Tuna unrolled their sleeping bags. She wanted to build a campfire, but a big yellow sign warned against it. As darkness fell, they ate a tube of Pringles and washed it down with Gatorade. Wahoo was glad that Tuna seemed her usual perky self again.

“Who gave you the fish name?” she asked, out of the blue.

He told her about the agreement his parents had made soon after they were married. His mom would choose the name of the first baby—who turned out to be Julie, his older sister—and his father would get to name the next one.

“Too bad for you,” said Tuna.

“When Pop was little, his favorite pro wrestler was a guy called Wahoo McDaniel. He was part Choctaw Indian, strong as a bear. He also played linebacker for the Dolphins.”

“What’s your mom think? Does she seriously call you Wahoo?”

“She’s not thrilled about it, but she says a deal’s a deal.”

“You a wrestler, Lance?”

“Nope. I’m not on the football team, either.”

“But don’t you get picked on at school? Because of that goofy name?”

“I used to,” Wahoo said, “until this happened.” He wiggled the bony nub where his right thumb once had been. “Now the jocks leave me alone. Anybody who gets bitten by a gator and walks away, they think he must be super-tough. But that’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

“I’m not so sure.” Tuna opened her tote bag and saw, among her journals and nature books, the
Expedition Survival!
script. “I guess we can throw this thing away,” she said.

“Wait, let’s see how it was supposed to end.” Wahoo took out the flashlight and sat on the sleeping bag beside her. They turned to the last page:

Tuna tossed the script to the ground. “Nobody can chip out a whole canoe with a dinky pocketknife! Gimme a break.”

“Welcome to the reality of reality TV.” Wahoo switched off the flashlight, which was attracting a cloud of insects.

In the final layer of twilight, before the swamp darkness settled in, he heard Tuna say, “What if he croaks out there?”

“You mean Derek?”

“What if he’s already dead?”

The same awful possibility had occurred to Wahoo. He reached for Tuna’s hand and said, “The airboat probably ran out of gas is all.”

Wahoo couldn’t figure out why Derek had bolted from the base camp after the bat bite. Maybe he was just trying to stir up a little drama for the director and the crew. The man clearly enjoyed being the center of attention.

“Look, I know he’s a total goober,” Tuna said, “but I used to love, love, love his show. Every Thursday night, nine o’clock. Just about the time my dad would pass out.”

Wahoo could picture the scene all too clearly, though he still couldn’t put a human face on Tuna’s father.

She went on: “The Walmart has a real good TV
department—that’s where I go to watch
Expedition
and
Shrimp Wars
if Daddy’s snoring too loud.”

“Derek’s not dead, Lucille. They’ll find him.”

“I sure hope so.”

Wahoo hoped so, too. Of one thing he felt certain: whatever the so-called survivalist was doing at large in the Everglades, he wasn’t carving a homemade canoe.

The snails tasted nasty, and Derek chewed up three of them in spite of his bloated tongue. They were small, and their thin, spiral shells crunched easily. He also captured a green tree frog, which he managed to gulp whole. It wriggled going down his throat and continued wriggling all the way to his stomach. He sucked on some leaves to get the slime out of his mouth.

This happened after the sun had gone down, when it was safe for vampires to roam.

Derek didn’t yet feel like a vampire, though he was jittery with anticipation. Almost twenty-four hours had passed since the bat attack, and there was no sign of a transformation from mortal human to undead night stalker.

As thirsty as he was, Derek had no desire to drink blood from somebody’s neck. A cold Diet Coke, however, would have been cause for rejoicing. Every so often he ran his fleshy fingertips along his capped teeth in expectation of fangs.

He was still sweaty and feverish, and now he noticed an annoying new symptom: dreadful, fiery itching all over his
arms and legs. A knowledgeable person would have recognized the marks of poison ivy, but Derek was loopy from the infection. He wondered if the itch could be vampire-related, although he didn’t recall Dax Mangold or any of the other Night Wing characters scratching so much.

He was still hungry after eating the frog and snails, which he had located using the small light mounted on the Helmet Cam. Despite being banged up in the crash, the device seemed to be working fine. Derek pawed through the items in the beached airboat until he came across Link’s jug of water, which he guzzled heedlessly.

The night air thrummed and ticked with insects, and an occasional rustle came from deep in the brushy hammock. He stretched out on one of the airboat’s bench seats and stared up at the sky, which was again filling with clouds. The unfriendly moon remained out of sight.

His stomach gurgled, and he desperately hoped it wasn’t the frog, seeking escape. A fabulously clever idea entered his head: he would record a video of himself morphing into a vampire for
Expedition Survival!
The ratings for such a show would be sensational!