Double Dexter (34 page)

Once again, I made some small movement in the direction of escaping, and just as if he was a prison guard nailing a fleeing prisoner with his sniper’s rifle, Frank whipped up his finger, pointed right at me, and said, “And don’t forget the insects, because there are
so many
venomous insects. Not just fire ants, which you all know about?” The
boys nodded solemnly; we all knew about fire ants. “Well, out here you got wasp mounds, too, and Africanized bees are possible—and scorpions? The black scorpion can really sting you good—and there are some spiders to watch out for, too, the brown recluse, the black widow, the
brown
widow.… ”

I had always thought that Miami was a dangerous place, but as Frank rambled on through his recital of the countless forms of hideous death awaiting us in the woods, Miami began to pale in comparison to the rapacious bloodlust of Nature. There was an endless list of things that could kill us, or at least make us very unhappy, and while the thought of murderous ravening Nature truly did have its charms, I began to think it might not have been such a good idea to come to a place that was so crammed full of lethal plants and animals. I also wondered if we would escape Frank before nightfall, since his list of the Terrors of the Wild was still unfolding after fifteen minutes, and he seemed quite capable of talking at length on each and every one of them. I looked around me for a way to escape, but it seemed that every single direction was blocked by lurking terror. Apparently almost everything in the park was just waiting for a chance to murder us, or at least cause fits of bloody vomiting.

Frank finally wound down with a few words of caution about alligators—and don’t forget the American crocodile! Which has a pointier nose and is much more aggressive! He finished with a final reminder that Nature was Our Friend, which seemed a little delusional, considering the long and deadly census of the park he had just completed. At any rate, Cody was impressed enough that he insisted on going back to the tent and getting his pocketknife. I stood at the head of the trail and waited for him, watching as the other work parties got busy with their jobs. Doug Crowley was leading a trio of boys around the camp in a quest for litter, and I watched them for a moment, until he abruptly stood up with a crushed and faded Dr Pepper can in his hand and turned to look back at me.

For a long moment Crowley just stared, his mouth hanging slightly open. I stared back, although my mouth was closed. The moment stretched on and I wondered why we didn’t both simply look away. But then one of Crowley’s crew shouted something about an indigo snake, and he turned quickly away. I watched his back for
a few more seconds, and then I turned away, too. On top of being a total nonentity, Crowley was quite clearly far more socially inept than I had ever been; he had no idea how to relate to other people, and his awkwardness made me a little uncomfortable. But it would be easy enough to avoid him once this expedition into deadly horror was over, assuming I survived. A minute later, Cody came back with his pocketknife and he and I finally managed to tiptoe off into the venomous forest in search of a few combustible twigs that would not kill us.

We moved slowly and carefully; Frank had done a wonderful job of convincing us that we would only survive by a miracle of random chance, and I could tell that Cody felt danger and violent death breathing down his neck with every cautious step he took. He crept along the path with his pocketknife open in his hand, approaching each leaf and twig as if it might leap up and sever his jugular. Still, after an hour or so we had managed to collect a decent pile of deadwood, and miraculously enough, we were still alive. We took our wood back to the fire circle at the campsite, and then slunk back to the relative safety of our tent.

The tent’s flap was open, although I had definitely closed it. Clearly Cody had left it open when he went back for his pocketknife. This was doubly annoying, since we now knew that the whole area was swarming with terrifying creatures that were absolutely trembling with eagerness for a chance to slip into our tent to poison, torture, and devour us. But the whole purpose of the trip was to have quality time with Cody, and scolding him for his carelessness would probably not be a bonding experience in the best sense of the words, so I just sighed and crawled watchfully into the tent.

Dinner that night was a communal affair, with everyone gathered around the fire circle and happily eating traditional wilderness food, just like the Calusas ate—beans and wieners. Afterward, Frank pulled out a small and battered guitar and launched into a program of campfire songs, and by the end of the second song he had worn down the boys’ resistance enough that they began to sing along. Cody stared around him with a look of appalled disbelief on his face, which grew even bigger when I finally joined in on “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.” I nudged him to get him to sing,
too—after all, we were trying to teach him to fit in. But this was too much for his finer nature, and he just shook his head and watched with disapproval.

I had to set an example, of course, and show him how simple and painless it could be to pretend to be human. So I plowed on grimly through “Be Kind to Your Web-footed Friends,” “Davy Crockett,” “Cannibal King,” the Cubs’ version of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and dozens of other touching and funny reminders that America is a nation with a song in its heart and a hole in its head.

Cody sat and looked around him as if the world had gone mad and exploded into a hideous caterwauling din, and he was the only one left with a clear head and a sense of decency. Even when Frank finally put down his guitar the fun was not over. The magical evening wound on through a series of terrifying ghost stories. Frank seemed to get real enjoyment out of telling them, and he had a knack for horrific detail that made his listeners slack-jawed with fear. We listened with growing dread to “The Hook,” “The Terrible Smell,” “The Quiet Thump in the Next Room,” “The Dark Sucker,” “The Viper,” and many more, until the fire died down to a red glow, and Frank finally released us to stagger away and crawl stunned and trembling into our snug little sleeping bags, with visions of supernatural terror now mingling with our thoughts of snakes and spiders and bears and rabid raccoons.

And as I finally drifted off into sleep, I vowed to myself that if I lived through the night, I would never go camping again without a flamethrower, a bag of dynamite, and some holy water.

Ah, wilderness.

I
T MAY BE THAT I WILL HAVE TO RETHINK THE POSSIBILITY OF
a kind and caring Deity, because I did live through the night. This did not come without a price, however. Frank’s nearly endless list of the terrors of the wild had included dozens of lethal insects, and yet he had left out one of the most common—the mosquito. Perhaps upset at being left off the list, the mosquito hordes had gathered their vast army inside our tent, and they spent the night making sure that I would never forget them again. When I woke up, much too early, my face and hands, which had been exposed all night, were covered with bites, and as I sat up I was actually a little bit dizzy from the loss of blood.

Cody was in slightly better shape, since he had been so worried about rabid alligators and zombies with metal hooks that he had wiggled all the way down inside his sleeping bag and left only his nose sticking out. But the tip of his nose was crowded with red dots, as if the insects had held a competition to see how many bites they could fit onto the smallest area of exposed skin.

We crawled weakly out of the tent, scratching ourselves vigorously, and somehow staggered over to the fire circle without fainting. Frank already had a cooking fire going, and I perked up a little when
I saw he had some water boiling in a kettle. But because the Universe was clearly set on punishing Dexter for all his real and imagined sins, no one had brought any kind of coffee, not even instant, and the boiling water was all used to make hot chocolate.

The morning crawled on through breakfast and into Organized Activities. Frank started the boys on a snipe hunt, which was mostly intended to humiliate the new Cubs who had not been camping with the pack before. Each of these Newbies was given a large paper bag and a stick and told to beat the bushes with the stick and yodel until the snipes ran out and jumped into the bag. Luckily, Cody was too suspicious to fall for this hoax, and he stood beside me and watched the hilarity with a puzzled frown, until a giggling Frank finally called off the game.

After that, everyone got out their nature booklets, and we all wandered into the Lethal Forest again to see how many different things from the booklet we could identify before one of them killed us. Cody and I did very well, finding many of the birds, and almost all the plants. I even discovered some poison ivy. Unfortunately, I found it in a very direct way. I saw what I thought was a black scorpion crawling away, and when I carefully pushed aside some foliage to show it to Cody, he pointed at the plant I was holding and held up his booklet.

“Poison ivy,” he said. He pointed to the illustration, and I nodded; it was a perfect match. I was actually holding poison ivy in my unprotected hands. Since they were already covered with mosquito bites, it seemed redundant, but clearly I was in for an epic itch. Now if only an endangered species of eagle would attack me and claw out my eyeballs, my Wilderness Adventure would be complete. I scrubbed with soap and water and even took an antihistamine, but my already itchy hands were throbbing and swelling up by the time we hiked back to our cars for the drive home.

Other campers who had not had such wonderful luck encountering Our Lethal Forest Friends milled around and called to each other happily, while I cradled my hands and waited for everyone to arrive in the parking lot and find their assigned vehicle. For some reason, possibly just one more mean trick on me by a positively cranky Fate, Doug Crowley’s group all arrived together, got into the beat-up old Cadillac, and drove away for home while Cody and I were still waiting for
Mario. I watched the old car cruise past and head out of the parking lot and then turn right onto the highway. The car gave a funny lurch and backfired once, causing a strange rattling sound as the piston knocked at the same time the loose front bumper shook. Then the old Caddy accelerated and was gone down the road, and I turned away and leaned on my car, watching the trailhead for any sign of Mario.

Mario did not appear. A fly began to circle my head obsessively, searching for whatever it is that flies always want. I didn’t know what it was, but I was evidently full of it, because the fly found me overwhelmingly attractive. It circled, darted in toward my face, and circled some more, and it would not give up and go away. I swatted at the fly, but I couldn’t touch it, and my flailing didn’t seem to discourage it. I wondered whether the fly was poisonous, too. If not, I would certainly be allergic to it. I swatted again with no luck, maybe because my hands were swollen from the poison ivy and mosquito bites. Or maybe I was just getting old and slow. I probably was, just when I needed all my reflexes at peak ability to deal with the threats coming at me, known and unknown.

I thought about Hood and Doakes, and wondered what they had been doing to frame me while I was busy infecting myself with plant and insect venom. I hoped that the lawyer Rita was arranging would help, but I had a very bad feeling that he wouldn’t. I have been in and around the law my whole life, and it’s always seemed to me that when you need a lawyer it’s already too late.

Then I thought about my Shadow, and I wondered how and when he would come at me. It sounded so melodramatic, right out of an ancient comic book. The Shadow is coming. Mooo-hahaha. Goofy rather than dangerous, as far as the sound was concerned, but then sounds can be misleading. Like the sound of Crowley’s car backfiring—it sounded like the car was about to fall apart, but obviously the old thing made it here safely. And I had heard that sound before.

I blinked. Where had that thought come from?

I swatted at the fly again and missed. I was certain I had heard that distinctive clattering backfire not too long ago, but I couldn’t remember when. But so what? Not important. Just more clutter in my overloaded mental works. Funny sound, though, very singular, and
I was sure I’d heard it before.
Bang, rattle-rattle
. But my brain stayed blank; perhaps the poor ravaged thing was collapsing into premature senility. Quite likely an inevitable side effect of the recent combination of peril and frustration and loss of blood from the mosquitoes. Even the one time I had slipped out for a little amusement had gone wrong; I played that evening back mentally, once again remembering the horrible surprise in the grubby little house. And it had started out with such a promising feel to it, from the dark and deserted street outside when I felt so eager, ready, unstoppable even, when I had been unexpectedly lit up by a passing car—

Without realizing what I was doing I found myself standing up straight and staring out at the highway. It was a stupid thing to do; Crowley’s car was long gone. I stared after it anyway, for a very long time, until I finally became aware that Cody was jerking on my arm and saying my name.

“Dexter. Dexter. Mario’s here. Dexter, let’s go,” he said, and I became aware that he had said it more than once, but it didn’t matter, because I was also aware of something much more important.

I knew when I had heard that backfire before.

Bang
. Double rattle.

Dexter stands there bathed in the light of an old car’s high beams, holding his gym bag filled with party favors and blinking at the light. Just standing on the sidewalk, wrapped in the cool cocoon of my Need-filled disguise, and as the car turns the corner I am suddenly lit up like I am on center stage and singing the title song of a Broadway show—and whoever is in that car can see me as clearly as if it is a bright summer afternoon
.

Just that one frozen moment of perfect illumination; then the car speeds up:

Bang.
Double rattle
.