Big Game

by Stuart Gibbs

  The building was constructed to look like a giant turtle, with a wide glass dome at the top of the shell. Beneath the dome was an enormous indoor rainforest, which housed a few hundred reptiles—as well as plenty of non-reptiles, because frankly, reptiles are rarely very exciting to watch. Since they’re cold-blooded, they tend to stay very still for hours, if not days. So the other animals had been brought in to spice things up. There were lots of brightly colored birds, small-clawed otters, capuchin monkeys, and some sloths. In truth, the sloths moved even less than a lot of the reptiles, but they were kind of cute and the tourists loved searching for them.

  The rest of the exhibits at World of Reptiles weren’t quite as impressive. Most were simply aquariums built into the walls with lizards, snakes, and turtles in them. While many of these animals were fascinating, they were often small, lethargic, and well camouflaged, so tourists tended to ignore them. Summer and I did the exact same thing, blowing past terrapins and skinks and puff adders in our hurry to get to the rain forest.

  The lights were still on inside and the fake waterfalls were still gushing, but there weren’t any other people there. Without the crowds, it really did feel like we were off in the Amazon together. It was nice and warm—the heat was always set to the mideighties to keep the reptiles healthy—far more comfortable than the raw, chilly weather outside. I would have loved to just hang out there with Summer, watching the animals where it was safe and cozy, but she didn’t slow for a moment in her rush to get to the roof.

  A series of staircases, platforms, and rope bridges headed upward into the rainforest. The official reason for these was to let guests see some of the tree-dwelling creatures up close, but they were really there to make the exhibit more exciting to explore. Summer quickly led me up a staircase that spiraled around an enormous fake fig tree, then started across the longest bridge in the forest.

  The bridge was the most visited place in the atrium, as it extended past the saltwater crocodile exhibit. It didn’t go directly over the salties, but it angled close enough to give the impression that you were over them, allowing you to see them in all their glory down below. Even though the crocs didn’t move much, they were among the most popular animals in World of Reptiles, because they were big—and they were dangerous.

  Crocodiles are among the most deadly large animals in the world—if not the deadliest. It’s estimated that they kill around three hundred people a year in Africa alone, although that number might be higher, because they don’t leave much evidence of the kill. They either wolf the entire victim down in a few gulps or drag their remains down to the bottom of lakes and rivers to store in holes there. Which was why the bridge didn’t go directly over their exhibit. The last thing J.J. McCracken needed was some idiot climbing over the safety rail, falling into the crocodile pit, and getting munched in front of the other tourists.

  Saltwater crocodiles are from the rain forests of Australia, and while they don’t kill quite as many people annually as their African relatives, they still take out a good number. (Of course, as Mom would point out, the number of people killed every year by crocodiles is only a tiny fraction of the number of people killed every year by people.) Saltwater crocs can be enormous, too. FunJungle had seven on display, each at least seventeen feet long and a thousand pounds—although the biggest, Didgeridoo, was twenty-three feet long and weighed more than a ton. They were so impressive that, even though Summer was in a hurry, she paused on the bridge to check them out.

  “Is this the only way up to the roof?” I asked.

  “It’s the only way I know,” Summer replied. “A little farther up, there’s an access to a secure staircase that goes up to the dome.”

  “Sounds pretty complicated. There’s no direct staircase?”

  “I don’t think they wanted to make it easy to get onto the roof. Why?”

  “If the hunter really did shoot from up here, it’s far more difficult to get to than the roof of the monorail. Anyone who wanted to get onto the monorail station could easily climb up there. But to get to the roof here, you’d need to know the route—and have an access code. Which means the hunter would have to work for FunJungle.”

  “Not necessarily,” Summer said. “There could be a way up without going through the building.”

  “You mean like climbing the outside?”

  “The walls aren’t that steep. In fact, they kind of curve inward to make the building look all turtle-y. A good rock-climber could probably do it. If people can climb El Capitan in Yosemite, they could climb this.”

  “So in addition to being a great shot, the hunter would also have to be a great rock-climber.”

  “Maybe.” Summer took one last look at Didgeridoo, then crossed the rest of the bridge and headed up another arboreal flight of stairs. “Or maybe it’s someone who knows how to get around the security system. Maybe the Trasks built this building and installed some kind of loophole.”

  “Just in case they someday went bankrupt and needed to poach a rhino horn and wanted to come to the roof of this building to do it?”

  “I don’t know,” Summer said curtly, annoyed at me for poking holes in her theory. “If it’s so hard to believe the hunter shot from up here, why don’t you come up with another solution?”

  We reached the top of the stairs, arriving at the highest viewing platform in the rain forest; it was four stories up, so close to the dome that we could see the rivets in the steel girders that supported the glass. A rope bridge extended from our platform to a matching one on the far side of the room. A lot of birds were nesting in the treetops close by, where they’d be safe from most predators in the wild. To my surprise, one of the sloths was moving along a branch right above the bridge.

  I’d seen the sloths hundreds of times, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one moving. It was hanging from the branch by its claws, poking along at a speed that made turtles look fast. Sloths are the slowest of all mammals; like koalas, they survive on leaves, which provide very little nutrition, and moving slowly conserves precious energy. (So does not going to the bathroom; most sloths only poop once a week.) In fact, sloths are so lethargic, they are their own ecosystems. There are species of moth and algae that live only in sloth fur; the sloths can’t even expend the energy to groom them away.

  This one seemed startled to see Summer and me, as if it knew humans normally didn’t come here at this time. It actually tried to swat at us in self-defense, but even this was done in slow motion. I could have waited five minutes and still had time to get out of the way. Instead, I backed off, raising my hands to show the sloth that I meant no harm.

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong that the hunter shot from up here,” I told Summer. “In fact, you’re probably right. I’m only trying to make sense of everything.”

  Summer turned away, still seeming annoyed at me. “You want to make sense of everything? How’s this? Hoenekker knows how to get around security. And I’ll bet you he knows how to get up here. So he could easily be our hunter.”

  I thought about pointing out that Hoenekker didn’t seem to have a motive but figured it would probably aggravate Summer even more.

  The wooden platform butted up against the wall not far below the dome. There was a door in the wall, though it was so well camouflaged—there was actually moss and other plants growing on it—that I’d never even noticed it before. A security keypad was hidden among the greenery. Summer tapped in her code and we slipped through the door.

  It led to a small cement room lit by bare bulbs. A steel ladder was bolted into the wall. The room was so cold and industrial compared to the rainforest that it felt as though we’d entered another dimension rather than merely passed through a door. There was no heat here. The rungs of the ladder felt like solid ice.

  Summer quickly scaled the ladder to a metal hatch in the ceiling. Then she flipped the hatch open and clambered outside.

  I followed her out onto the roof. The part we emerged onto was cement and surrounded the glass dome coverin
g the rain forest—but it still tilted more than I’d expected, slanting downward at a dangerous angle. Thankfully, there was a low wall built around the edge of the roof, so that if one of us fell, we wouldn’t tumble right off and splatter on the ground, but I watched my step anyhow. Two metal catwalks ringed the dome, one down by the wall below us and one higher up, circling the glass portion, so that maintenance workers could get around. We headed for the higher one, which was closer and better lit; the lights from inside the rain forest shone so brightly through the glass, the dome seemed to glow.

  I’d never realized it before, but except for the administration building, World of Reptiles was the highest structure in the park. So we had a great view of not just all of FunJungle, but of a great swath of the hill country as well. As big as the park was, it looked like a small bubble of light surrounded by a great dark sea of forest. In the distance, I could see the lights of town, and far to the south, San Antonio glimmered on the horizon.

  The building was also tall enough to catch a lot more wind than the rest of the park. It knifed through my clothes, chilling me quickly, and blew loud enough that it was hard for Summer and me to hear each other.

  The hatch we’d come through was located on the opposite side of the dome from SafariLand. “The hunter probably shot from the other side,” Summer said, leaning in close so she wouldn’t have to shout. I got a strong whiff of her shampoo, which smelled like flowers. “If there’s any evidence, it’d be over there.”

  “Probably by the wall,” I added. “If she dropped a bullet casing, it’d roll down there, right?”

  “Good thinking.” Summer flashed a smile. Her face was only a few inches from mine, and for a few moments, I no longer felt cold at all.

  Then she turned away and started along the upper catwalk.

  The glass portion of the dome was only about fifteen feet tall at the highest point, but it was as big around as a baseball diamond. We circled clockwise around it, keeping the glass to our right. Now, close up, I could see there was a grid of curved steel beams that provided a frame for the glass, as well as a narrow catwalk on the inside of the dome that looped around its base. Every few feet, we passed a sliding panel in the glass to access the inner catwalk from outside.

  “What do you think these panels are for?” I asked Summer.

  “Maintenance, I guess,” she replied. “They have to clean the windows every few days.”

  SafariLand came into view. Since it was unlit, it blended into the dark forest that bordered the park, but I knew FunJungle well enough to know exactly where it was. Summer was right. From where we stood, there was a direct shot straight down over the monorail station to the house where Rhonda lived. I could make out the light in her window. It was about a quarter mile away, a long shot, but probably not too difficult for a crack shot with a good rifle. After all, a rhino was a big target. In fact, any rhino out on the Asian Plains would have been a relatively easy target as well.

  I shifted my attention to the edge of the dome below us. It wasn’t nearly as well lit as where we stood, full of shadows. “It’s not going to be easy to find anything down there,” I said.

  “Then we’d better start looking,” Summer told me. She stepped off the upper catwalk and started edging down the slanted roof toward the wall.

  I was about to follow when something made me stop. I wasn’t sure what, exactly. Maybe a sound so low that it was almost swallowed by the wind, or a vibration in the roof, or just a feeling. But whatever it was, I turned around and looked up, toward the very top of the glass dome.

  Something was up there. For a moment I thought it was actually inside the dome, like one of the bigger birds flapping up against the glass. But then I realized that it was outside, on top of the building, and that it was far too big to be a bird.

  It was the hunter. She was sheathed in dark clothing so she melted into the night, but she was there, lying prone on the top of the dome. She hadn’t noticed us yet, because she was focused on her rifle. She was peering through the scope with her finger around the trigger, aiming toward SafariLand.

  CROCODILES

  I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  I didn’t think about it. There was no time to think. The hunter was about to pull the trigger, and all I knew was I had to do something.

  “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! Co
me 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.