Big Game (24 page)

“No!” I yelled, as loud as I could, trying to be heard over the wind. “Stop!”

The hunter looked toward me. I couldn't see her face in the darkness, but the way her body moved, I could tell she was startled. She certainly hadn't expected anyone to catch her in the act up there, let alone a couple of kids. She snapped to her feet, holding the rifle.

Summer raced past me, grabbing my hand. “Come on!” she shouted, dragging me along the catwalk. “Let's get out of here!”

“No!” I shouted back. “We have to stop her!”

“We
have
stopped her! For now! She's not gonna shoot the rhino as long as we're around to call security on her! But if she gets rid of us . . .”

Summer didn't get to finish the thought. The hunter suddenly dropped onto the catwalk ahead of us. Rather than circling around the glass dome as we had, she'd raced across the top and now stood between us and the hatch that led down from the roof. Her face was hidden beneath a ski mask, but I could clearly see the rifle cradled in her hands.

Summer and I pivoted on our heels at once, racing back the way we had come.

“That's the only way out!” I yelled. “She's got us trapped!”

“No, she doesn't.” Summer slid open one of the glass panels in the dome. Warm, humid air blasted out of it. Summer dropped to her knees and crawled through onto the inner catwalk.

I scrambled through after her, sliding the panel shut behind me. The sudden warmth inside was a welcome change from the cold and the wind, but our new position seemed worse in every other way. The catwalk was surprisingly narrow, with no safety rail. Instead, there was a bar around the dome so maintenance workers wearing safety harnesses could clip onto it, but Summer and I didn't have anything like that. We were essentially on a narrow ledge hanging over a five-story drop. And to make matters worse, we were directly above the saltwater crocodile tank. Far beneath us, I could see Didgeridoo lolling in the water. The big croc looked deceptively sluggish, but I knew that, should one of us happen to fall into the tank, we'd be attacked instantly. Escape would be impossible.

If Summer was worried about the crocodiles below, however, she didn't show it. Instead, she was far more concerned about the hunter. She pointed to a tree a few feet from the catwalk. It was the tallest in the atrium, rising so high its leaves brushed the glass. “There!” she exclaimed. “We can climb down that!”

I considered the tree uneasily. The branches this high didn't look very strong. And it still seemed disturbingly far away, given that falling short of it would result in a plummet into the croc tank. “I don't know . . .”

“There's no choice!” Summer told me. “The hunter's coming for us!”

I glanced at the dome, looking for the hunter, but the glass was too fogged with moisture to see through it. I couldn't tell if the hunter was following us or not, but if she was, Summer was probably right to expect trouble.

I turned back to Summer just in time to see her jump. She leaped though the air high above the crocodile tank and slammed into the tree, wrapping her arms around the trunk. The sudden jolt shook the whole tree, startling dozens of birds that had been roosting in the canopy and sending them screeching into the air. One nearly flew right into me, forcing me to rear back so quickly I nearly pitched off the catwalk. If I hadn't snagged the safety bar at the last second, I would have been crocodile chow.

In the tree, Summer was also having a bit of trouble. Her feet were slipping around on the smooth bark while she struggled to find a decent foothold. But then she located a small branch that could support her, and after that, she seemed perfectly fine. She turned to me, looking hugely relieved, and yelled, “It's not too hard! Come on!”

“You need to get out of the way!” I told her. “Start climbing down!”

Summer had realized the same thing and was already moving. She scrambled down through the branches quickly, clearing a spot for me to jump to. The last few birds flapped past, clearing the air between me and the tree.

I took a final second to gather my nerve. If I'd been on solid ground, I wouldn't have thought twice about making the jump. But the penalty for failure here was death by crocodile, so I didn't want to make any mistakes.

There was a thump outside the glass of the dome. It could have been a dozen things: a strong wind blowing something into the glass, some of the machinery on the roof turning on, or a local bird landing outside. But at the moment, I assumed it was the hunter trying to slide the glass panel open to get me.

I jumped.

I was in the air less than a second, but it seemed a lot longer. Somewhere along the way, I felt a pang of fear that I hadn't leaped far enough and was going to tumble down into the croc tank. And then, suddenly, I was at the tree. I smashed into the trunk far harder than I'd expected, so hard that I almost bounded right back off again. I started to drop down through the branches and lashed out, scrabbling for a handhold. A branch caught me under the right arm, and I clung on for dear life. The branch bowed, but it held, and I heaved a massive sigh of relief that I was safe. For the moment, at least.

Unfortunately, my sudden impact had shaken the tree again. Summer, climbing down below me, wasn't ready for it. She lost her balance and ended up with far too much of her weight on one spindly branch, which snapped beneath her. The crack echoed like a gunshot, followed by a scream from Summer. She pitched forward, arms pinwheeling madly, and would have tumbled out of the tree if her right hand hadn't somehow found another branch. She seized on it as she fell. It splintered, but held, leaving Summer dangling by one arm high above the crocs.

One of her pink shoes slipped off her feet, cartwheeled down through the air, and plopped into the crocodile tank.

Didgeridoo's attack instincts triggered instantly. One moment, he was still as a statue; the next, he was an explosion of energy. He whipped around, sensing prey, roiling the water as though a depth charge had gone off. His massive jaws snapped shut, and the shoe was gone. Didgeridoo gulped it down easily, then remained on the alert—as did the other six crocs, who'd been roused by his actions. Two slithered off the bank into the water and began to circle ominously below us.

The branch Summer hung from splintered some more.

“Teddy!” she cried. “Help me!”

I was already on my way, climbing down as quickly as I could, taking care not to put any more weight on the branch she was dangling from. Soon I was even with her, but to my dismay, she was hanging four feet away from the trunk, as far as I could reach. I propped one foot on the jagged stump of the branch that had broken beneath her, hoping it would hold, then extended my hand toward her. “Grab my arm! I'll pull you back!”

“I can't!” Summer looked to me. Her breath was coming in quick, ragged spurts. I could tell she was terrified but fighting to remain calm. “If I fall, both of us will go.”

I hadn't thought of that. And now that I did, I realized she was probably right. I quickly looked around for any other way I could help her but saw nothing. We weren't far from the highest rope bridge now. I could have shimmied along a branch over it and dropped to safety, but that wouldn't help Summer. I could have phoned my parents for help, but they were certainly at least five minutes away, if not more, and Summer didn't have that kind of time. The branch she hung from was splintering more every moment. And there was still the hunter to consider. Hanging out in the open over the crocodile pit, Summer was an easy target.

There was no other choice. I wrapped my left arm as tightly as I could around the tree, then held out my right arm again. “Summer! Grab on! We won't fall! I promise!”

The branch Summer clung to cracked a bit more and bent lower. Summer gave a yelp of fear and reached for me.

Far below, Didgeridoo had spotted us. He opened his massive mouth wide like a bear trap, waiting for us to fall.

Summer's fingers grazed mine. I fought the urge to simply grab her hand, knowing that I'd never be able to keep hold of her that way. I'd learned this from my father, who'd been in more than his share of tough spots. Our hands were slick with sweat; hers would slip right out of mine. The trick was to grasp each other's wrists, which would be far more secure.

Only, Summer's wrist was too far away. And her arm was waving wildly as the branch she hung from jostled and cracked.

“Summer, keep still,” I ordered.

“I'm trying!” she yelled, panic starting to kick in now. “It's not easy!”

“Just try!”

Summer did her best to steady herself, stretching her free arm toward me as far as she could, desperation in her eyes.

She was too far to reach with my left arm locked around the tree trunk. I found a branch to grab instead, which gave me another few inches but left me in a far more precarious position, and extended out as far as I could.

There was now nothing between me and Didgeridoo but air.

Summer swung toward me and desperately lashed out her arm. We clenched our hands around each other's wrists.

Right as the branch in her other hand snapped off.

There wasn't even time for Summer to scream. It happened so fast, neither of us was fully aware of what was going on. All I knew was that suddenly I felt as though both of my arms were going to rip from their sockets. I'd braced myself well, though, and held on tight, as did Summer. Instead of tumbling down through the branches into Didgeridoo's mouth, I stayed put, while Summer swung like Tarzan into the tree below me. Within a second, she had found hand and footholds and was clinging on tightly, safe and sound.

The broken branch dropped downward and landed right in Didgeridoo's mouth. His bear trap jaws snapped shut so hard that the branch shattered into toothpicks. The other crocs, sensing prey, pounced on top of him, and the water boiled as they thrashed about.

Summer was now right by the branch that extended over the rope bridge. Without a moment's hesitation, she scurried along it and dropped down to safety. I followed only a second behind her. The rope bridge jounced as we hit it and shook wildly, and we tumbled onto its wooden slats, tangled up together.

Somehow, our faces ended up only inches from each other. I was looking right into Summer's eyes and saw her panic fading and relief flooding in. “You saved my life!” she exclaimed.

And then, before either of us even realized what was happening, she kissed me.

It was the opposite experience of jumping over the crocodile pit. Neither event took very long, but while the jump had felt like it lasted forever, the kiss seemed to barely exist in time at all. It seemed to be over before it had even started: not a big, smoochy movie kiss, but a quick, thankful peck on the lips. And yet it was the first time I'd ever been kissed by a girl—a girl who I actually
liked
, no less—and as brief as it was, it still rocked my world. All the scares and near-death experiences of the past few minutes seemed completely worthwhile in exchange for it.

I was so startled by it, I didn't even notice the hunter had arrived.

Summer noticed the hunter first.
She suddenly pulled away from me and leaped to her feet, staring fearfully toward the end of the rope bridge.

The hunter was standing on the wooden platform. Rather than following us through the window and down the tree, she had taken the much safer route, through the hatch in the roof—the same way Summer and I had gone up. The moss-covered door hung open behind her. The hunter was in the shadow of the big tree there, the ski mask still pulled down over her face, the rifle in her hands.

There was another staircase behind us, at the opposite end of the bridge, but it was too far away; we didn't have time to run to it. So Summer did the only thing she could think of. She grabbed the closest large object and threw it at the hunter. It turned out, the closest large object to us was the sloth.

It was the same sloth we had startled earlier. The entire time we'd been up on the roof and dangling above the crocodile, it had gone a whole two feet along the branch and was now hanging right over the railing beside us. It went a lot faster once Summer threw it. Her aim was dead-on. The sloth hurtled straight for the hunter's chest.

The hunter instinctively dropped her rifle and caught the sloth. The sloth—even more startled now that it had flown for the first time in its life—instantly sank its claws into the hunter's arms. Meanwhile, the hundreds of moths that had been roosting in its fur took to the air, creating a living cloud. The hunter staggered backward, either from the pain of being clawed or the shock of suddenly finding a smelly, moth-infested mammal clinging to her, and slipped on her rifle. She crashed to the ground, and the sloth landed right on her face. The sloth gave a surprised bleat, the only sound I'd ever heard a sloth make in my life. The rifle skittered across the wooden platform, flew over the edge, and tumbled down into the rainforest. It caromed off a branch, spun through the air—and plopped right into the crocodile tank, where Didgeridoo, desperate to eat
something
besides a shoe and a tree branch, immediately pounced on it. Several of the other crocs lunged at it too, churning the water into froth as they battled for it.