Skink--No Surrender (19 page)

“That old man gets hurt or killed, it’s all on me,” Malley said. “If he ends up dead, I’ll hate myself forever.”

“Don’t worry. He threw the pistol overboard.”

She looked downcast. “Tommy’s got another one.”

“Don’t tell me that.”

“He stashed it somewhere on the boat. He didn’t want
me to see where, ’cause he said I’d ‘cap’ him if I got the chance, but no way. Guns scare the pee out of me, Richard. Speaking of which, I can’t believe you jumped T.C. after he shot at that bird! You went all Vin Diesel on him!”

“Another opposite-of-genius move,” I said.

It was bad news that Tommy Chalmers had stashed a second gun aboard. I told myself everything would work out all right—Tommy was weakened and woozy from the catfish infection. He probably wouldn’t even remember where he hid the pistol on the houseboat.

Was the houseboat even still afloat? If so, probably not for long.

Skink would know when it was time to abandon ship. Would he take Tommy with him? I could totally picture the governor coming out of the river alone, the kidnapper’s body being found days later in the sunken wreck.

Or never seen again.

From what Skink had told me about his life, I knew he was capable of such things. I also suspected that he wasn’t one to exaggerate.

Malley was growing restless on the riverbank. “How will we get somebody to stop and pick us up?”

“Uh, we yell ‘Help’?”

“Not funny, Richard.”

“I’m serious. That’s what marooned people do.”

She made a snarky face. “So not cool.”

This was my cousin in full-on diva mode—too vain to call for help. Unbelievable.

“Then yell ‘Asparagus!’ if you want,” I said. “I’m yelling ‘Help!’ ”

As it turned out, we didn’t get a chance to yell anything. Two hours passed without a single boat appearing on the Choctawhatchee. The fishermen were staying home because the river was too churned from the storm. So far I hadn’t seen one osprey make a dive, which meant that even full-time fishing birds couldn’t find any fish. Only the occasional leaping sturgeon broke the surface.

I told Malley we’d better get moving.

“Which way?”

“Back toward the highway bridge where Skink parked. We’ll walk close to the shoreline in case a boat comes by.”

“Richard, you do see it’s a total swamp, right? Thanks to that insane rain.”

“It was swampy
before
the rain,” I said.

“Yeah, what if I want to go the other way?”

“Be my guest. Maybe you’ll find a paved bike path with water fountains.”

“Sometimes you’re such an ass,” said Malley.

“Hurry, put on your shoes.”

She went ahead of me, taking long, show-offy strides. We definitely weren’t in ninja mode—more like two buffaloes splashing through a rice paddy. Not that we were trying to sneak up on anything, just the opposite. We
wanted
to be heard and seen, preferably by a friendly human who could lead us to safety.

The hiking would have gone easier if we’d had higher,
drier ground, but the deep woods that lay ahead of us were low-lying and boggy. The sticky air buzzed with gnats, mosquitoes and small biting flies. I couldn’t find any wax myrtle leaves to crush and wipe on our skin.

Hooked to her iPod earbuds, Malley could go forever. Without her music she quickly got bored and cranky. After a while I ignored the complaining, though I was tempted to say:
Would you rather be back on the boat with your maniac kidnapper?

As thirsty as we were, neither of us would drink the murky river water. The last thing we needed on our trek was an attack of jungle diarrhea. We grew tired in the heat, and our pace slowed down. Rest breaks became more frequent. We got good at slapping insects off of each other without leaving a mark.

The sun was almost dead high, so cool patches of shade got harder to find. In the brutal humidity my cousin and I were panting like old hound dogs.

“How long till we get there?” she asked.

“I don’t know. A while longer.”

“This sucks, Richard.”

The next time we stopped it was pretty much the same conversation. The time after that, Malley got superexcited and said she heard an ambulance siren, which meant we must be nearing the highway. While I wanted that to be true, I couldn’t hear anything except the rattle of cicadas in the bushes. She got mad at me, of course, and declared that we should immediately turn due west because
that’s where the sound of the ambulance had come from. I said no.

“Who made you the navigator?” she huffed.

“I’m older.”

“By only nine stupid days!”

“Come on, Mal, it’s a joke. Let’s keep walking.”

My cousin isn’t a patient person, but extreme patience is what the situation called for. It’s not as if we were lost. The Road 20 bridge wasn’t going anywhere, and we didn’t need a GPS to find it. All we had to do was follow the shoreline of the Choctawhatchee upstream. I didn’t want to be too harsh with Malley, after all she’d been through, but there was no way I’d let her take charge of our escape.

The last time we stopped to rest, I was the one who heard a noise.

“Somebody’s following us.”

“Okay, you’re finally losing it, Richard.”

“Please shut up and listen.”

“It’s probably a deer. They’re thick around here.”

“Not a deer,” I said. “A deer would be running the other way.”

Something definitely was approaching us from behind, moving with zero stealth through the tangled cover and rain puddles. My first emotion was relief, because I thought it had to be the governor—the houseboat had sunk and he’d made it to shore and was trying to find us.

“Hey, Skink!” I shouted. “This way!”

Nobody shouted back.

“It’s Richard! We’re over here!”

Still no voice answered from the woods. Malley and I stood up.

“Now I hear him,” she whispered.

The splash of footfalls, the snapping of twigs and a muffled snort, like a man trying to swallow a laugh.

I thought of Tommy Chalmers and my stomach pitched. What if he’d gotten hold of the second gun and shot Skink? What if he alone made it off the sinking boat, and now he was stalking me and my cousin?

She looked at me anxiously. “Well?”

“I say let’s wait and see.”

“I say let’s run.”

There was no time to continue the discussion because our stalker had materialized like a glistening ghost at the edge of the clearing. He was hunched forward, slobbering and gape-jawed, his black eyes narrowed in fury.

“This is
not
happening,” Malley said in a cracked voice.

“Don’t panic,” I told her, which was idiotic. Panic was the only logical reaction.

“Richard?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I run now?”

“Yes, run.”

And I was right behind her.

NINETEEN

One man was to blame for our present dilemma, and it wasn’t Tommy Chalmers.

It was Hernando de Soto, the Spanish explorer. He is most famous for discovering the Mississippi River, but he did something else on his historic expedition that caused Malley and me to be running for our lives nearly five centuries later, along the banks of a different river.

On May 25, 1539, de Soto’s flotilla sailed into Tampa Bay and pitched camp. The conquistador and his soldiers had crossed the sea carrying weapons, ammo, supplies and, for food, thirteen pigs. These were the very first pigs ever to set foot (hoof, actually) on the North American continent, and from the beginning the sturdy oinkers made it clear that they didn’t miss Europe one bit.

If de Soto had brought cows or even goats to the New World, my cousin and I wouldn’t have been in such deep trouble. Goats and cows are grazing animals, content to hang out in a pasture and mind their own business. Not pigs. Pigs require supervision, because they’re so curious and crafty, adaptable to almost every type of habitat. They
totally loved Florida, and since happy grownup pigs produce lots of baby pigs, de Soto’s pack multiplied faster than he and his men could barbecue.

For three years the Spanish forces tramped through the southeastern wilderness terrorizing, torturing and enslaving the native Indians. This was standard operating procedure back in those days, though it doesn’t make de Soto any less of a cruel thug. Who knows how much more misery he would have inflicted on the locals if he hadn’t caught a fever and croaked. It happened soon after he reached the Mississippi, by which time his imported pig herd had grown to seven hundred slobbering mouths.

Flash forward to the twenty-first century and a sprawling country that’s been settled from coast to coast—a country that craves a fat, juicy pork chop. Pigs are a huge business in America, raised and slaughtered by the millions. Over the decades, however, many have escaped from farm pens and scuttled into the woods, where they’ve become as wild as bobcats or coyotes—only bigger, and way more destructive.

I researched all this myself later, though not for a new science project. I was simply curious to know all about the badass creature that nearly killed me.

These so-called feral pigs now roam forty-five states and they party hard, destroying valuable crops and wetlands with their sloppy rooting. Some places have officially declared war on free-roaming swine and offer cash bounties to hunters. So far, the swine are winning.

The boar chasing Malley and me must’ve weighed at least two hundred pounds, and that’s no lie. His long black nose was bristly, and his nappy thick fur was the color of a rusted junkyard heap. He owned two sets of filthy yellowed tusks, the bottom pair being longer and more curved. My goal was to avoid finding out how sharp they were.

Malley was way ahead, weaving through trees, hurtling the scrub, bounding over puddles. It was ridiculous, she was so much faster than me. Every few strides she’d glance back to see if I was catching up, and I’d yell at her to keep running. “Don’t slow down! Go! Go!”

The wild pig huffed like a locomotive at my heels. His shoulders were low to the ground, and he kept slashing his tusks in an upward motion that would have sliced the tendons in my legs, had I faltered. Only later did I learn that a boar that size can reach a speed of thirty miles an hour, much fleeter than any human, which explained why he seemed to be moving at such an easy trot.

Optimistically I surmised that he wasn’t interested in eating me for breakfast (pigs will eat
anything
), but rather that he only wished to drive us out of his territory. Malley and I would have happily departed with no further encouragement, yet the beast continued his cold-eyed pursuit. If it had been a movie, Nickel the gar man would have stepped out of the bushes and plugged the pig with his .22. Then he would have grinned at me and said, “See, boy? Dint I warn you ’bout them things?”

But that wasn’t going to happen. There was no sign
of Nickel and now, ahead of me, no sign of my track-star cousin. She’d left me in the dust (well, the muck), which is what I’d urged her to do. No sense in both of us getting mauled.

My lungs burned, my knees throbbed and I was painfully aware I’d never outrun the mad boar, undoubtedly a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of a seafaring de Soto piglet.

I decided to climb a tree. No big deal, right?

Wrong. Not all trees are designed for rapid climbing, and the good ones are scarce when you absolutely, positively need to reach a safe altitude. Try scaling an ancient bald cypress when the trunk is slick from a rainstorm or the nearest boughs are too high to offer a step. It’s a sure way to end up flat on your back, staring up a hairy pair of cavernous pig nostrils.

So onward I ran until spying a young maple that forked conveniently at a height of maybe five feet. I scaled straight up the bark, wedged a foot into that snug cleft and slapped both hands around a sturdy branch. With a tired grunt I pulled myself into the tree’s leafy embrace and there I balanced, huffing to catch my breath. Below, the wild boar swiped his tusks back and forth across the trunk, sharpening their edges with each long scrape.

Hang in there
, I told myself.
He’ll get bored soon and go away
.

Then the demon pig did the one thing I didn’t expect. He lay down panting and closed his eyes.

“You’re kidding,” I said out loud.

My mood was not good. I was desperately thirsty, sore, itchy, exhausted, worried about Malley being alone in the forest.…

And now the swine was taking a nap under my maple tree.

I said, “No. Way.”

The critter began to snore, his upper lip flapping slightly. He reminded me of Trent dozing on the sofa in front of our TV.

I considered jumping down from the tree, but I feared the sound of my landing would rouse the boar and spark another chase. A second choice was to stay patient and pray that the smelly porker would wake up and wander away, having forgotten what had led him to that spot. Unfortunately, a pig that size could sleep all day, and I didn’t have the whole day to waste. I didn’t even have an hour.

My cousin wasn’t blessed with a flawless sense of direction, and all the foot-speed in the world wouldn’t help if she made a wrong turn. She had no water or food, and the midday heat was hellish. Another unpleasant issue was snakes. Malley was accustomed to running safe ovals on our school’s bright, smooth, reptile-free track. But the Choctawhatchee River basin was basically snake heaven, and it would be easy to accidentally step on a murky-colored water moccasin.

I didn’t want to think about Malley getting snakebit all by herself, lost and miles from a hospital. Instead I focused
on my problem porker, who was drifting deep into piggy dreamland. The new plan was to startle him so badly that he’d jump up and gallop off, freeing me to go find Malley. Working in my favor (or so I thought) was the element of surprise.

My family used to have a beagle-setter mix named Slater who would freak out if anyone tried to pet him while he was asleep. I mean, this dog would whip around and snap like crazy. Yet when he was awake, he was the chillest, friendliest little dude you ever met. Dad said he had a college roommate who was the same way, a total bundle of nerves once his head hit the pillow. You couldn’t make a sound in the dorm room because you didn’t know how he might react. One night, as a joke, my father and another student put a live gerbil on the sleeping kid’s bed, and he leaped naked and yowling out the window. Luckily, the room was on the first floor.