Swamp Story: a Novel, page 23
Ken, who knew exactly what he was running from, was not reassured. He tried to smile, but he kept looking back toward the swamp as the fans thronged around him and Slater.
Meanwhile Secretary Chastain continued to pose for selfies, but after a few minutes it became clear, as the new arrivals rushed past him, that he was not the center of attention. He decided he wanted out of there. He turned to the two Park Police officers, hovering nearby, and said, “Let’s go.”
The senior officer looked uncomfortable. “Sir,” he said, “there’s a problem.”
“What?” said Chastain.
“We can’t get out right now,” said the officer. He pointed in the direction of the Lincoln Navigator. “The road’s blocked. There’s cars parked all over the place, all the way out to the highway. We called the Florida Highway Patrol, and they’re sending some—”
“I’m not waiting for the Florida Highway Patrol,” said Chastain. “I want those cars out of here now. Order them to move.”
The junior Park Police officer, a brave man, spoke up. “Sir, the thing is, right now there’s nobody in the cars that we could ask to move.” He gestured at the crowd. “They’re somewhere in this mess.”
“Then find them,” said Chastain.
The officers looked at each other for a moment, then turned and plunged into the crowd, which now numbered in the hundreds, with more arriving every minute.
As the two officers departed on their clearly impossible errand, Chastain turned to Frank. He was smiling, because somebody in the crowd could have been recording video. He put a hand on Frank’s shoulder in a fatherly manner.
“This is completely fucking unacceptable,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Frank.
“This whole fucking mess has been a fucking disaster from start to finish.”
“Yes, sir,” said Frank.
“I can’t have this level of staff incompetence.”
“No, sir,” said Frank.
Chastain, still smiling hugely, the Good-Guy Boss just hanging out with his staff, turned to Jacky.
“That goes for you, too,” he said.
“Sir,” said Frank, “I’m the one who’s responsible for—”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Chastain, still looking at Jacky. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that fucking pig.”
“No, sir,” said Jacky.
“These fucking pants are ruined.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jacky.
“That’s coming out of your fucking salary.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jacky.
“When we get back to Washington, if we ever get back to Washington, I am going to formally reevaluate both of you, your pathetic performance here. You understand what I’m saying?”
They both nodded.
“I cannot have this level of incompetence on my staff.”
They both nodded. Chastain took his fatherly hand off Frank’s shoulder and looked around at the crowd, which was still growing. The Park Police officers were not visible. Chastain looked back at Frank and said, “Get me a helicopter.”
“Sir,” said Frank, “I don’t know if a helicopter could land with all these—”
“GET ME A FUCKING HELICOPTER RIGHT FUCKING NOW,” said Chastain, starting to lose it.
“Yes, sir,” said Frank, pulling out his phone, although he had no earthly idea who he was supposed to call to summon a helicopter.
A roar went up from the crowd, followed by a surge toward the edge of the clearing as the Melon Monster fans caught sight of more figures appearing on the footpath, emerging, one by one, from the sawgrass.
The first figure was Kark, walking briskly, carrying his camera but no longer recording, glancing back frequently.
The second figure was Stu, looking hot and harried, dragging the third figure by the arm.
The third figure was Phil, still wearing the head.
The sight of Phil sent the crowd into a frenzy of speculation—was that the Melon Monster? Some porky guy wearing a weird head and a Duke sweatshirt? Was the whole Melon Monster thing a fake? Or were these guys making some kind of parody video? What was going on?
And then a fourth figure appeared, the hulking, sweating form of Pinky, his wide, flat face a mask of dead-eyed determination. He moved slowly, laboriously, swinging his massive body sumolike to advance each plodding, painful step.
The sight of him—this huge, scary, pissed-off dude—sent the monster fans to a new level of frenzied speculation. Who was he? Was he chasing the video guys? If not, what was he doing? Did he have something to do with the Melon Monster?
The crowd was thick along the water’s edge as people pushed forward to get a better view of the strange procession heading toward them.
In the heart of that crowd stood Ken. He’d thought about running but decided his best bet was to stay hidden in the mob, at least for now. He shrunk back, peering through the forest of upraised phones, watching Pinky’s slow, dogged advance.
A few feet away stood Channel 8 PeoplePower News reporter Patsy Hartmann and cameraman Bruce Morris.
“Are you getting this?” Patsy asked, nodding toward the odd procession emerging from the sawgrass.
“I am,” said Bruce, watching his viewfinder. “Whatever it is.”
“Should I maybe call the station?”
“What’re you gonna tell them?”
“I dunno,” said Patsy, looking around at the crowd. “But this seems to be getting kind of—”
She was interrupted by a chirp from her phone. She looked at the screen, made a face and said, “Jennifer.” She held the phone to her ear. “Hello? Yeah, we’re still here… Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. OK.” She ended the call, looked at Bruce.
“What?” he said.
“So apparently the Tamiami Trail is totally closed.”
“By this?”
“Yup. Big, big mess out there. Caused by this. They want us to go live.”
“OK.”
“I don’t know what the hell to say. I mean, what’s going on here? Is this about the Python Challenge? Is it about the monster thing? Or something else? What am I gonna say, Bruce?”
Bruce shrugged. “Florida,” he said. “Just say it’s Florida.”
Chapter 53
Brad nosed the ATV along the path, trying to avoid ruts, looking back every few seconds to make sure Jesse and Willa were OK in the jouncing trailer. A few times he shouted, “You OK?” Each time Jesse answered with a thumbs-up, although she looked pretty bad, her face swollen and bruised. Willa was crying hard.
Brad’s plan was to drive the ATV back to the pickup. He wasn’t sure what Jesse wanted to do about the gold. He figured he could shift it to the truck if she decided to hang on to it. He’d worry about that later. For now he wanted to get them as far as possible from the dead body and the two scumbags.
They were approaching the fork where their path was joined, from the left, by the lesser-used path—the one that veered off toward the highway; the one that had been taken a little while earlier by the video crew, followed by Pinky. Brad intended to go straight here, staying on the main path leading to where he’d left the truck.
He had almost reached the fork when he saw it.
The other ATV. With the big man driving. He was coming straight at them, fast. It looked to Brad like he was planning to ram them.
“Hang on!” he yelled back to Jesse. He yanked the ATV into a sharp left-hand turn, onto the smaller path. For a second he thought the trailer was going to tip over; he felt the heavy gold cargo shift, dragging the rear of the ATV with it, spinning it almost sideways. He looked back and saw Jesse struggling to stay upright, gripping the side of the trailer with one hand and Willa’s carrier with the other. He wrestled the skidding ATV onto the new path, got it straightened out and gunned it.
He took another look back.
The other ATV was right behind him, the big man grimacing, obviously in pain, but coming hard.
* * *
Tenklo was driving one-handed. His left arm was almost useless, the oozing bullet wound in his shoulder radiating searing spasms of pain each time the ATV hit a bump. But he hung on, grimly twisting the throttle, motivated by an emotion more powerful than the agony racking his body, which was fear of disappointing his boss, Kristov Berliuz.
After fleeing the gunfire, Tenklo had raced about a quarter mile down the path before stopping to call Berliuz. Speaking in the language of their homeland, he reported that they’d been ambushed, and he’d been wounded, and Kelmit might be dead.
Berliuz had expressed no concern about either of his men.
“Who ambushed you?” he said.
“Two men. I don’t know them.”
“And the gold?”
“I don’t know,” said Tenklo. “We didn’t get close.”
“And the woman?”
Tenklo looked at the iPad. “She was there,” he said. “But now the icon is gone.”
“Where are you?”
“Not far.”
“Go back,” said Berliuz. “Do not let them leave. I will send Lokias and Premi. Keep your phone on so they can track you.”
Tenklo didn’t want to go back; he wanted to get out of there and do something about his throbbing, bleeding shoulder. He felt dizzy and weak; he was unarmed, having dropped his weapon into the swamp. But he knew better than to tell any of this to Berliuz.
“Yes,” he said.
“Do not let them leave,” repeated Berliuz, ending the call.
Tenklo had just one-handedly wrestled the ATV into a U-turn when he heard the other ATV coming toward him. The driver was a man, but not one of the men who had shot at him; riding in the trailer was a woman, presumably the woman Tenklo had been tracking.
Whoever they were, Tenklo decided he had to stop them, so he gunned the ATV forward. When the other driver swerved onto the side path, Tenklo swerved after him. He wanted to call Berliuz, but with only one working arm he couldn’t call and drive at the same time. For now all he could do was follow the man and the woman, and find some way to stop them.
Chapter 54
The Python Challenge launch event was now the epicenter of a scene of utter chaos. The traffic jam on the Tamiami Trail stretched for miles. A dozen harried Florida Highway Patrol troopers were doing their best to unjam it, but they were overwhelmed by the number of cars, mostly out of Miami, filled with people, mostly young, who drove as far as they could, then, blocked by the mass of immobile vehicles, parked wherever and started running toward this… this thing that was happening out in the swamp.
Nobody knew exactly what the thing was, or if it was in fact many things. Social media was exploding with images and video—of Ken and the shirtless Slater (especially the shirtless Slater); of Skeeter with Buddy the boar and Zelda the snake; of secretary of the interior and presumed presidential aspirant Whitt Chastain getting peed on by a giant pig; of Phil in his weird, battered head; of the menacing figure of Pinky; of excited Melon Monster fans running alongside an endless line of cars. These images were instantly sucked into the vast, incomprehensibly complex content vortex that is TikTok, which immediately spewed them back out mixed, mashed, memed and mutated into a myriad of parodies, duets, dances, songs, riffs, rants, challenges, these new creations colliding and interacting with each other in a fission reaction that spewed out still more creations, and more, and more. Within minutes there was virtually no phone-owning young person in America who was not aware that something huge was happening out there in the middle of the Florida swamp, something too big to be random—a concert maybe (there were rumors of celebrity sightings, including DJ Marshmello) or something even bigger, some kind of reveal of the true story behind the Everglades Melon Monster. Or something even bigger than that, like some Bitcoin thing, or a new Kardashian fragrance. After all, a freaking cabinet member was there.
Whatever it was, it was big. Everyone could see that.
The people who were actually in it, who were part of the dense, nonvirtual crowd now overflowing the clearing, were as confused as everyone else; nobody knew what was going on more than a few feet away. The mob swirled and surged this way and that, phones held aloft, everybody trying to see whatever it was that everybody else was trying to see.
A large crowd had formed around Phil, who had been led into the clearing by Stu. Phil was no longer singing, having completed the Grease soundtrack, but he was still very high. He had briefly lifted off his monster head, but, seeing the mass of people aiming their phones at him, he immediately put the head back on. Nevertheless in the few moments his face was visible, he was recognized.
“It’s the guy from the YouTube video!” shouted a young man. “Who got hit in the balls by the little girl! And fell in the cake!”
Instantly word went out worldwide that Golf Club to the Balls Guy was here, wearing a weird, funky head. Speculation raged about what it meant, with the predominant theory being that it was a pathetic attempt by GCTTB Guy, having already had his fifteen minutes of fame, to cash in on the celebrity of the real Melon Monster. The crowd around Phil and Stu badgered them with questions, but Phil remained cloistered inside the head, and Stu would say only that the two of them were “tourists.”
Another part of the crowd was warily watching Pinky, who was lumbering around the clearing, his massive head turning slowly from side to side, scanning the faces around him. People quickly moved out of his path, as they would avoid an irate rhinoceros. Nobody asked Pinky any questions.
Pinky’s quarry, Ken, was watching the big man from behind, lurking inside the mass of gawkers, trying to decide whether he should make a run for it or remain hidden in the crowd.
Meanwhile at the edge of the clearing, Skeeter Toobs, with the help of some young men, was dragging his airboat back to the water. He still had Zelda the python in her sack and Buddy the boar on his rope.
Buddy was increasingly skittish. The two big eyeballs poking out of the murk were now a dozen feet closer to shore. As yet they had not been noticed by any of the excited, distracted humans. But Buddy was acutely aware of them. Buddy was very close to freaking out.
A few yards away, so was the secretary of the interior.
“Where is my fucking helicopter?” Chastain was asking Frank, for the fifth time. He was still smiling, so that onlookers wouldn’t know he was furious. But the smile was wearing thin.
Frank, holding a phone to his ear, said, “Sir, I’m talking to the Florida Highway Patrol, and they’re saying they can’t land a chopper in here. It’s just too dangerous, all these people…”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“They’re saying if we can get back to the highway, they can maybe get a trooper to pick you up.”
“I’m supposed to walk through this?” Chastain gestured at the crowd.
“I’m afraid so,” said Frank.
Chastain was about to say something unpleasant when Skeeter, still holding Zelda’s sack and towing Buddy, walked up.
“You folks need a ride outta here?” he asked. “I got the airboat back in the water.”
“No,” said Chastain. “And keep the pig away from me.”
As Chastain spoke, Buddy was moving behind him, pressing close to his legs. But this time it wasn’t because Buddy intended to pee on Chastain. This time Buddy was trying to hide.
What happened next was captured not only by dozens of onlookers’ phones, but also by Channel 8 PeoplePower News cameraman Bruce Morris, who happened to be standing in exactly the right spot to shoot the video that would soon be seen, in hi-def and slo-mo, by many millions of people.
It began with a scream, as a young woman standing at the water’s edge was the first person to spot the gator, a big fella, fourteen-footer, as it lunged out of the water and sprinted—oh yes, gators can sprint—directly toward Chastain.
The gator was not after Chastain. It had seen a few humans in its day, but it had never tasted one. No, the gator was after Buddy. Over the years it had eaten plenty of critters along the lines of Buddy. Buddy definitely qualified as gator chow.
It happened fast, but in hi-def slo-mo the sequence was clear:
Alerted by the scream, everyone looked toward the gator. Secretary Chastain saw this terrifying thing coming right at him, very fast, its massive jaws opening to reveal two long, ugly rows of gnarly, jagged teeth. Chastain assumed—who could blame him?—that the gator was coming for him. Chastain wanted to protect himself. It was a natural instinct.
So without thinking he grabbed the thing that was closest at hand, and he threw it at the advancing gator.
The thing closest at hand was Jacky.
Chastain was a strong and fit man—he benched 180—and Jacky was a slight woman, caught completely off guard. She was literally lifted off her feet and tossed through the air, landing, stunned, on her back, no more than a yard from the gator’s gaping jaws. The gator was not going for her, but she was right in its path; it seemed certain that she was going to get chomped.
And she surely would have been, if not for the astonishingly quick, decisive action of an unlikely hero.
Frank.
He launched himself before Jacky hit the ground, diving Superman-style, his arms outstretched, glasses flying off his face, phone flying from his hands. He reached Jacky a nanosecond before the gator did, getting his arms around her and rolling sideways hard, taking them both out of the way just as the jaws slammed shut, the two of them tumbling together for two full revolutions, winding up several feet away with Jacky on top, looking down at Frank, while he looked up at her, the two of them barely comprehending what had just happened.
Now the air was filled with screams and shouts. The gator was still charging toward Chastain, who lurched back, tripping over Buddy and emitting a distinctly un-Leadership-like shriek as he fell backward, arms flailing. Now he and Buddy were both on the ground, and the gator was upon them, jaws opening again. Chastain, attempting to shield himself, grabbed Buddy the way a drowning man would grab a life preserver, his face contorted by a look of terror that contracted into a violent flinch at the sudden BANG! from two feet away as the .357 Magnum revolver that had suddenly appeared in Skeeter’s hand fired a bullet into the gator’s skull, dead center, a few inches behind the eyes, perfect placement for an instant kill. The gator abruptly collapsed, lifeless. Skeeter calmly lifted his tank top and holstered his gun. He had done this before.
