for others. Attacking the gunman seemed more like something Dax Mangold would have done, in the movies.
“Incredible,” Tuna agreed. “We should get your saliva tested. Yours too, Lance.”
They could hear the rescue boats racing through the saw grass prairie toward the island. Overhead the helicopter circled, the pilot expertly keeping the search beam trained on them to mark their location.
With Tuna standing guard, Wahoo had bound Jared Gordon’s wrists and ankles with a nylon rope from the airboat. Link himself had helped secure the knots, which would later have to be cut with a fish knife.
The bite wounds on Jared Gordon’s neck were painful but not life-threatening, due to Derek’s lack of proper fangs. Still, he’d clamped onto Tuna’s father with enough force that it had required all of Wahoo’s strength to pry him off.
One cheek in the dirt, Jared Gordon glowered up at the man who’d flattened him. “You sure don’t look the same as on TV.”
“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.
EPILOGUE
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
