Belly Up

by Stuart Gibbs

  I checked my watch. It was only five o’clock. Time instantly slowed to a crawl. Seven seemed an eon away. The seconds ticked by slowly as I bided my time, trying to find things to occupy my attention. I tried to focus on the case instead, but to no avail. I went on Life of a Bee twice but found even that couldn’t distract me.

  Eventually, the two hours passed.

  Seven was when FunJungle closed for the night, although some exhibits shut down even earlier for the sake of the animals. All the guests weren’t gone at seven, though; the stores by the front gates had resumed staying open after closing time in order to continue extracting cash from the guests. But there was nothing left to see and the guests were generally trickling toward the exit. World of Reptiles would be empty, which, I figured, was exactly why Summer wanted to wait until seven to meet me there.

  World of Reptiles was probably the most conventional zoo building at FunJungle, since there’s little way to make reptiles exciting. True, they can do some amazing things, but since they’re cold-blooded, they often spend hours—if not days—resting. Usually under a rock.

  Still, FunJungle’s designers had done what they could to make the experience fun, which meant, for the most part, trying to distract the guests with things that weren’t reptiles. The building itself was very cool, designed around a huge central glass dome so that it looked kind of like a gigantic turtle. Under the dome was an enormous tropical rain forest filled with waterfalls, streams, and towering trees (which were fake, but looked real enough) that had an airborne path of rope bridges strung between them. It was a like a giant arboreal jungle gym. There were lots of reptiles on display in the atrium, but the designers had included plenty of nonreptiles as well to provide some activity for guests to observe: parrots, scarlet ibises, small-clawed otters, and two families of capuchin monkeys.

  An even more blatant distraction was the dinosaurs. They weren’t real, obviously. They were robots. I had never been impressed with them. In the first place, they shouldn’t have even been in a reptile house, seeing as dinosaurs weren’t reptiles; science has proven a hundred times over that they were the warm-blooded ancestors of birds. Second, they didn’t do much except act like they were eating and growl on occasion—although there was a velociraptor that sprang out of the bushes and occasionally scared little girls. The tourists loved them, though. World of Reptile’s designers had shrewdly placed them right before the exit, which kept guests moving through the rest of the building in order to see them. To prevent pedestrian traffic jams, the designers didn’t even let people walk through the dinosaurs. Instead, they’d installed moving sidewalks to hustle guests through them quickly.

  The rest of the building had more traditional displays—generally, reptiles in glass cases—although I’d noticed most people tended to ignore them in their haste to get to the rain forest or the dinosaurs. This was a shame, as FunJungle’s reptile collection was really impressive. There were Galapagos tortoises, a forty-foot anaconda, rare alligator relatives like caimans and gavials, snapping turtles, frilled dragons, basilisks, water monitors, and even a Komodo dragon, the world’s biggest lizard. Most remarkable of all, however, was the extensive collection of poisonous snakes.

  FunJungle had more poisonous snakes than any other zoo in the world: cobras, death adders, kraits, asps, coral snakes, cottonmouths, gaboon vipers, fer-de-lances, copperheads, taipans, bandy-bandys, bushmasters, sidewinders, two dozen kinds of rattlesnake, and a huge aquarium filled with sea snakes, which were fascinating to watch. The final snake on display was one the most deadly of all—the black mamba. Mambas aren’t the most poisonous snakes (sea snakes are)—or even the most poisonous on land (that’s the taipan)—but they’re aggressive. Most poisonous snakes prefer to hide from humans, biting only as a last defense. If a mamba feels threatened, it’ll come after you. And they’re fast . Thus, they’ve killed more people than any other kind of snake.

  It wasn’t until I got to the mamba exhibit that I realized it was a strange meeting place for Summer to select. First of all, it was inside World of Reptiles, which was supposed to be locked at night. Luckily, the front door had been propped open with a brick, which I’d assumed meant Summer would already be waiting for me—but when I got to the mamba exhibit, I found myself alone.

  Another strange thing about the meeting spot was that it wasn’t very comfortable. There were plenty of exhibits in World of Reptiles with benches where we could have sat and talked; the central atrium alone had dozens. Meanwhile, the black mamba exhibit sat in the middle of a glorified hallway. Most people raced right past it to get to the dinosaurs. World of Reptile’s designers had spruced it up a bit, filling the hall with planters full of tropical flowers, but still, it was kind of like inviting someone to your mansion and then asking them to meet you in the coat closet.

  I did my best to distract myself while waiting for Summer to show up. I tried to focus on looking for the various poisonous snakes in their exhibits rather than at my watch every fifteen seconds. But I couldn’t help myself. Where was Summer?

  I checked my watch again, thinking it must be seven fifteen already, but found only three minutes had gone by. That wasn’t unreasonable. Summer might have had trouble ditching her shadows again. Or misjudged how far World of Reptiles was from the front gates. Or been distracted by something in the atrium . . .

  Why had she wanted to meet here? I wondered again. Was there something important about the mamba?

  I turned my attention to the exhibit. Even among poisonous snakes, mambas aren’t that interesting. They don’t have the flared hood of a king cobra, the horns of a rhinoceros viper, the beautiful patterns of a coral snake. They’re just black. Thin and black, which makes them very hard to find. I’ve always been good at spotting animals, but the mamba didn’t seem to be anywhere in its case. . . .

  As I leaned against the glass, it shifted slightly.

  That seemed wrong. I took a step back and something crunched under my foot.

  I looked down. The floor was covered with tiny glass shavings. They reminded me of the time in the Congo when Dad had to jury-rig a new windshield for the Land Rover and had cut the glass himself. . . .

  Cut the glass.

  I looked back up at the exhibit.

  At the top, there was a two-inch gap where the glass had been removed. It was above my head, but there were several branches inside the exhibit from which the mamba could have easily accessed the gap and escaped.

  Two heat lamps were on in the exhibit, but it was cool out in the hall. The mamba, being cold-blooded, probably wouldn’t have gone far after getting out.

  The floor was black. The walls were black. The nearby planter was black. Exactly the same color as a mamba.

  Now, I felt my blood go cold.

  I looked around wildly, trying to locate the snake. To my dismay, the hall was kept quite dark in order to focus everyone’s attention toward the exhibits. There were shadows everywhere. All I could see was blackness.

  Something hissed behind me.

  My ears prickled. In all my years in Africa, I’d never run into a poisonous snake, but Mom had given me explicit instructions about what to do if it happened. The trick was to make no sudden movements. Even an aggressive snake like the mamba wouldn’t attack me unless it felt threatened. However, I couldn’t stay frozen like a statue for hours, either. I had to figure out where the snake was. I twisted my head around as slowly as I could, struggling to keep my arms and legs still.

  The hissing suddenly came from my right.

  I leapt, startled, unable to control myself, and slammed into the glass of the mamba exhibit.

  I whirled to my right, expecting the sting of fangs in my ankle at any second, and saw the source of the noise:

  The irrigation system had kicked on for the tropical plants, tiny sprinkler heads hissing as they sprayed water into the soil. I immediately felt foolish, but had no sense of relief. The mamba was still close, and now I’d made a sudden movement. Panic surged through me. I ima
gined the snake closing in from the shadows. I couldn’t stay still any longer.

  There was a groan behind me. The glass from the mamba exhibit had popped loose from its mooring in the wall. It toppled.

  I ran.

  An adrenaline rush is an incredible thing. I was already fifty yards away by the time the glass shattered on the floor, definitely a near-Olympic time for the distance, and I’d had to negotiate corners. I hurtled into the dinosaur exhibit, racing toward the exit, fearing the mamba’s bite at every step, alert to every movement, every noise.

  I rounded a stand of fake trees and something lunged at me.

  I leapt away, screaming, and stumbled over my feet.

  It was the dang velociraptor.

  It didn’t look anything like a mamba, of course, but I was too freaked out to control my reaction. I lost my balance, tumbled over the railing and thudded into the Triassic Period.

  A tyrannosaurus suddenly loomed over me, roaring and gnashing its serrated teeth.

  I wasn’t concerned by it so much as the floor around me. There were fake plants everywhere, creating a thousand hiding places. Beneath all of them stretched dozens of electrical cables for the dinosaurs, each thin and black like a mamba.

  To my right, only two feet away, one of them twitched.

  I wasn’t sure if it was a snake or a movement caused by the dinosaurs or just my mind playing tricks on me. I was well past the ability to keep my cool. I vaulted back over the railing, hit the ground running, and sprinted through the rest of the building.

  I slammed through the exit door and didn’t stop until I was a good hundred yards away from World of Reptiles.

  The sun was setting, so it was still light outside. I could see the ground all around me. There were no black mambas out there.

  I stood on a picnic table anyhow, just to play it safe.

  The entire experience had taken a minute at most. It took me five times as long to get my breath back. And even then, my heart was still pounding in my chest like a jackhammer.

  The truth now dawned on me: I’d been set up.

  It was easy to fake a text message. Anyone could have sent it and signed it from Summer. I had no idea what her actual phone number was. I’d simply seen a message from her and assumed it was actually a message from her.

  That had been foolish, I realized. But I hadn’t been thinking right in my excitement to see her again. And frankly, up to that point, I had no reason to believe anyone would want to cause me trouble anyhow.

  The thought flickered through my mind that maybe Summer had set me up, but I shoved that aside. She wouldn’t do that. She was nice. She wasn’t capable of sending me to meet my . . .

  Death.

  I froze at the thought of it. Had someone really tried to kill me? Or were they just trying to scare me off?

  Either way, they’d sent me on a blind date with a black mamba. No matter what their intention, I could have ended up dead.

  Certainly, one thing was clear: Whoever had killed Henry knew I was looking for them—and they were willing to do anything to keep me from investigating.

  I was still jittery as I hurried home. I’d always found passing through the park at dusk relaxing, but now I was totally unnerved. Someone had made an attempt on my life; just because it had failed didn’t mean they wouldn’t make another. Were they watching me at that moment? I wondered. Did they have something else in store for me?

  The park, as usual, was filled with animal noises, and that night, every one of them made me start in fear. I worried that any approaching employee could be plotting against me. I imagined assassins lurking behind every building. I know it was completely paranoid, but try having someone lead you into a trap with a black mamba and then see how normal you act afterward.

  I ran home as fast as I could, but realized even that wouldn’t necessarily make me safe. If whoever had set me up could get my phone number, they could certainly find out where I lived. As I approached the trailer, I couldn’t help but fear that someone might be waiting to ambush me there.

  To my great relief, Mom was home. As I cut past the hot tub, I could see her through the window, making dinner. Even so, I came up the steps cautiously, making sure no one was lying in wait and forcing her to act normal in order to lure me inside.

  No one was. Mom was her usual, chipper self. She was playing music instead of watching TV, humming along, dicing vegetables for stir-fry. Just being near her made me feel a hundred times safer (although I’d have felt even better if Dad had been there too, rather than halfway around the world in China).

  Unfortunately, I had the opposite effect on Mom. The moment I came through the door, her cheerfulness faded. Mom always had an uncanny ability to sense when something was wrong. Not only with me. She could do it with almost anyone. I think that’s another thing she picked up from watching gorillas for so long. Most of their communication was extremely subtle: a glance, a posture, a curl of the lip. Humans did a lot of the same things; most people just didn’t notice.

  Mom only needed one look at me. “What happened?” she asked.

  So I told her. I knew she’d be upset to hear what I’d been up to, but she’d have been far more upset if I’d lied to her—and believe me, she’d have known if I lied.

  Like the night before, she listened right through without interrupting. She kept cooking, her eyes usually focused on the stove, rather than on me. But this time, I could tell she was more on edge. She was angry when I told how I’d disobeyed her and continued the investigation, particularly the part about sneaking into Henry’s pool. And then she got upset when I told her about the dead jaguar in Doc’s lab . . . but when I got to the part about the mamba, she forgot about everything else and couldn’t stay quiet any more.

  She turned from the stove and I could see the fear in her eyes. “Teddy! Are you saying someone tried to hurt you?”

  “I think so.”

  She knelt in front of me, clasped my arms in her hands and looked me right in the eye. “Listen to me,” she said. “You need to stop this investigation right now. . . .”

  “But that’s exactly what whoever killed Henry wants me to do.”

  “You’re a twelve-year-old boy. You’re in over your head. . . .”

  “You could help me. I mean, I was right that Henry was murdered, wasn’t I? That’s what all this is about. Someone killed him and now they’re trying to cover it up. . . .”

  “Maybe so, but it’s not your job to find out who did this. And it’s not mine, either.”

  “Then whose is it?”

  Mom stared at me for a while without answering. I think she was considering telling me that it wasn’t anyone’s job, that Henry was dead and that was that and we should just leave well enough alone. Not because she didn’t think it was wrong, but because she was so worried about what had happened to me.

  Then she got to her feet and called Martin del Gato.

  An hour later, I was back at World of Reptiles. This time, I wasn’t alone. There was a whole crowd of people on account of me.

  Mom was there. And Martin. So was Buck Grassley, the head of security at FunJungle, and three other security people: Large Marge and two guys I didn’t know. There were also three men from maintenance and all the herpetologists. Everyone seemed annoyed at me for getting them out there at that hour of the night—except the herpetologists, who were far more concerned about their reptiles. They were dismayed by the disappearance of the mamba, but also worried that someone might have done something to one of their other animals.

  The mamba had yet to be recovered, but the herpetologists had made several sweeps of the hall by its exhibit and assured us it wasn’t there. Even so, the lights had been turned on brightly to put everyone at ease.

  The maintenance guys and the security people all clustered about the mamba exhibit, taking measurements, verifying that I’d been telling the truth that someone had cut the glass and let the snake out. Every once in a while, I’d notice Large Marge nod in my direction, prob
ably trying to convince everyone that I was the culprit.

  Mom and Martin were having their own discussion. Mom was annoyed that Martin hadn’t brought in the local police. Martin claimed they wouldn’t come, as FunJungle was outside their jurisdiction. Technically, FunJungle was its own municipality. (It didn’t just have its own security force; it also had its own fire department and power station.)

  “This isn’t merely a security issue,” Mom said, trying to keep her anger in check. “My son’s life is in danger.”

  “So he claims,” Martin replied. “We’ll find out.”

  For a moment, Mom looked ready to throttle Martin. “You think Teddy’s making this up?”

  “He’s been known to cause trouble before.”

  “My son may have played a prank now and then, but he’s not a liar or a vandal,” Mom snapped, but Martin didn’t appear convinced.

  At that point, I was glad Mom hadn’t told Martin everything I’d been up to that day. She’d only told him that I’d suspected Henry had been killed and had shared that with Summer McCracken when I bumped into her at the park, but left out the parts about my sneaking into the autopsy and Henry’s pool. If Martin had known any of that, I’m sure he would have had security arrest me.

  “How’d you even get the idea Henry was murdered?” Martin asked me suspiciously.

  I shrugged. “One day he was healthy. The next he was dead. It seemed wrong.”

  Martin kept staring at me, not buying this.

  “I thought it was just an overactive imagination myself,” Mom said, then nodded toward the broken glass at the mamba exhibit. “But now that this happened, it’s a different story.”

  Martin sighed, not committing either way, as though he still suspected that maybe I’d freed the mamba and pretended I’d been set up to cover my tracks. Before Mom could say anything else, Buck Grassley wandered over.

  Buck was in his fifties. He’d grown up in the same town J.J. McCracken had; I’d heard they’d met in kindergarten and been friends ever since. Until J.J. had hired him to run security, Buck had been the county sheriff, though I don’t think that had been too tough a job. There wasn’t much crime in the area; the police mostly parked behind bushes and ambushed speeding drivers. A born-and-bred good old boy, Buck accented his park uniform with a cowboy hat and a bolo tie, carried a Bowie knife instead of a Taser, and talked so slowly, you’d think he’d been drinking molasses.