by lethal predators from another continent-Burmese pythons! Imported by wildlife brokers for the exotic pet trade, hundreds and hundreds of baby pythons got scattered throughout the Glades when Hurricane Andrew destroyed breeding farms west of Miami. Now all those cute little buggers have grown into fierce levithanians, some of them twenty feet long!”
“Cut!” the director called.
“What’s wrong?” snapped Derek. “That bit was totally brilliant.”
“The word is ‘leviathan,’ not ‘levithanian.’ ”
They attempted the scene nine more times, but Derek couldn’t get the pronunciation right. Finally the director gave up. “Forget it, okay? Just say ‘monster’ instead.”
Derek nailed it on the first take:
“Now all those cute little snakes have grown into voracious monsters, some of them twenty feet long! They can swallow a whole deer, a panther and, yes, even a human being.
“Today I’m crawling through the most remote, untouched and dangerous stretch of the Everglades, following the trail of an enormous wild python-and look! There she is!”
With a cameraman on his heels, Derek wriggled forward and pounced with a triumphant cry upon Beulah. He locked both hands two feet below her head, which is just about the worst place to grab a snake. Wahoo was surprised that Beulah didn’t twist around and sink her chompers into Derek’s fat face.
“I’ve got her! I’ve caught the beast!” he crowed.
The python wasn’t particularly concerned. She hooked her tail around one of Derek’s ankles but didn’t even tighten up. Grunting and huffing, he rolled back and forth on the ground, shaking Beulah by the neck, trying to provoke her to fight back.
It was like wrestling a fourteen-foot noodle. All Beulah wanted to do was curl up and take a nap.
Wahoo glanced at his father and didn’t like what he saw. Mickey Cray was clenching and unclenching his fists.
Derek panted into the microphone:
“Whatever happens, I can’t let this jungle killer wrap her massive coils around my chest! She would literally crush the life out of me!”
Mickey turned to his son. “That’s what I’m fixin’ to do,” he whispered. “Literally.”
“No, Pop, wait-”
It was too late. Wahoo’s dad hurled himself furiously at Derek Badger, but the double vision caused him to miss.
Mickey got up, dusted off and tried again. This time he scored a direct hit, clinching both arms around Derek’s pudgy midsection. He dragged him away from the dizzy python and began to squeeze with all his might.
“Cut! Cut!” cried the director. “Are you nuts? Somebody stop this lunatic!”
The crew members seemed entertained by the scuffle. No one except Wahoo made a move to rescue Derek. By the time Wahoo was able to unfasten his dad, the famous survivalist’s face had turned the color of cranberries. He was down on all fours, coughing and whimpering with Raven Stark at his side, brushing the leaves and twigs from his hair.
“Now you’ve done it,” Wahoo said.
His father looked somber. “Let’s move Beulah back to her tank.”
Mickey took the front half while Wahoo hoisted the tail section.
“That’s the worst excuse for a python I ever saw!” It was Derek, lurching to his feet. “You call that a snake? Ha! I call it an overstuffed earthworm.”
Beulah opened her shovel-sized mouth and burped, displaying rows of hook-shaped teeth. Derek cringed and hopped backward.
“Take a hike,” advised Mickey Cray.
“What?”
“You heard me, Dork Man.”
Raven stood speechless. Wahoo noticed one of the cameramen chuckling.
Derek stiffened. “Listen, mate, we’ve got a contract.”
“Are you kidding?” said Mickey.
Wahoo and his dad began hauling the hefty python toward the snake tanks.
“Hey! What about the gator?” Derek Badger shouted after them.
“Over my dead body,” Mickey said.
“Three grand for a scene with Alice! Cash!”
“Pop, you hear that?” Wahoo whispered.
“Hear what?”
“Thirty-five hundred!” Derek called out.
“Pop, come on.”
“Keep walking.”
“Four grand!” cried Derek. “Four thousand dollars!”
Mickey Cray turned around, smiling. “ That I heard.”
SIX
Wahoo sat at the kitchen table, tapping the keypad of a calculator. His father was stretched out on the sofa. Outside, the rain poured down and the yard was turning to mud. The taping of Expedition Survival! had been suspended until the weather cleared.
“How much do we owe the bank?” Wahoo asked.
Mickey Cray grunted. “I don’t recall.”
“I bet Mom knows.”
“Down to the penny.” Mickey sat up. “Hey, let’s call her.”
“We can’t, Pop. She said once a week, remember?” Wahoo would have loved to hear his mother’s voice, but she’d warned about phoning too often. “It costs, like, ten bucks a minute,” he reminded his dad. “Plus, it’s the middle of the night in Shanghai.”
“Put that stupid calculator away,” Mickey said sourly. “Let me deal with the bleeping bank.”
Wahoo’s mom, who hated to hear cussing, made his father put a dollar in the cookie jar every time he said a bad word. Consequently, Mickey had trained himself to use “bleep” or “bleeping” instead. He’d gotten the idea from watching reality police shows, which replaced the criminals’ profanity with electronic toots.
Wahoo said, “I’m not trying to be nosy, Pop.”
He had a friend at school whose parents had lost their house to the bank because they couldn’t make the mortgage payments. Now the whole family was crammed into a small apartment in Naranja. Wahoo knew his mother was determined not to let that happen to them-that’s why she’d taken the job in China.
Still, he worried.
“Relax, would ya? We’ll be okay,” Mickey said.
Clutching the TV remote, he lay back down. He flipped through the channels until he found a show called When Animals Go Bonkers. The first segment featured a crazed Canada goose attacking a garbage truck. Mickey didn’t even crack a smile; his thoughts were a million miles away.
Wahoo was troubled to see his father acting so listless and distracted. He grabbed a weather jacket and walked outside.
Rain always made the animals sleepy, so the backyard was peaceful. The TV crew had stowed its equipment and gone to lunch. Only the hum of Derek Badger’s humongous motor coach could be heard over the patter of raindrops. As Wahoo passed by the vehicle, he looked through a side window and saw Derek standing with Raven Stark in front of a mirror. With a tissue she was dabbing makeup on his nose, undoubtedly trying to conceal the button-sized turtle bite. Wahoo smiled to himself and kept walking.
Alice the alligator was floating serenely in the faux Everglades pond. It was three times as large as a regular backyard swimming pool and twice as deep. Mickey Cray and two friends had dug out the hole and poured the
