Big Game

by Stuart Gibbs

  “Teddy and I will be all right on our own,” Mom said, tousling my hair.

  “Looks like I’m in,” Dad told Doc.

  “Thanks,” Doc replied. “Glad to have you aboard.”

  Dad knelt before me and gave me a tight hug. “No more adventures tonight, okay?”

  “I’ve had enough,” I told him. “I promise.”

  “I’m proud of you,” Dad whispered, then stood and gave Mom a kiss good-bye.

  Mom and I headed out of the rainforest. We passed the saltwater crocodile tank, where Jon Mattingly was using a net on a long pole to gingerly scoop remnants of the gun off the bottom. There wasn’t much left of it except splinters of wood.

  “I should have stopped the gun from falling in,” I said. “I didn’t think about it until it was too late.”

  “Don’t blame yourself for anything that’s happened,” Mom told me. “As angry as I am with J.J. for putting you up to this, if you and Summer hadn’t come up here, we might have a dead rhino right now. Or more. You saved them. You’re a hero.”

  I glanced back toward the group of people planning how to dehorn the rhinos. Even if Mom was right, I didn’t feel good at all. Instead, I felt frustration for not being able to figure out who the hunter was and for not doing more to try to catch her. The rhinos were still in danger, and it was partly my fault. I’d stared right at the hunter, but I still didn’t have the slightest idea who she was.

  I didn’t feel like a hero.

  Instead, I felt like the biggest failure in the world.

  THE ESCAPE

  “Teddy, wake up.”

  I pried my eyes open to find my father sitting on the edge of my bed. My immediate thought was that something terrible had happened. I bolted upright, kicking the sheets off. “What is it? The rhinos?”

  “The rhinos are fine,” Dad said comfortingly. “Doc took great care of them. We wrapped things up about half an hour ago.”

  I glanced at my alarm clock. It was a few minutes after six a.m. Dad was still wearing the same clothes he’d been in the night before. He smelled like rhinos. “What’s wrong, then?”

  “Pancake escaped.”

  I scrambled out of bed and started grabbing clothes out of my bureau. “When?”

  “Sometime last night. We’re not sure. Kyle just called from Monkey Mountain and said he wasn’t there.”

  “But the other orangs are?”

  “Yes. The cage door is locked.”

  I paused in the midst of trying to find a matching pair of socks. “Then how’d Pancake get out?”

  “We don’t know. But the video should have recorded everything. Want to come check it with us?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Okay.” Dad stepped out of the room to give me privacy but spoke through the door. “Your mother thought you should sleep in, but I figured you’d never forgive us if we didn’t give you the chance to come along.”

  “I said you needed your rest,” Mom corrected from the kitchen. “You had a lot of excitement last night.”

  “Well, I’m up now,” I told her, yanking my jeans on. “And there’s no way I’m getting back to sleep.” I grabbed the rest of my clothes and exited my room.

  Mom leaned on her crutches in the kitchen, already in her work clothes, cutting a slice of homemade banana bread for me. “I assumed that’d be the case,” she said.

  I got the rest of my clothes on as quickly as I could, then ate the banana bread as I hurried to FunJungle with my parents. A second trailer had been moved to Lakeside Estates the day before, bringing the grand total up to two. It didn’t look like the fancy community Pete had promised so much as a dumping ground for crummy mobile homes.

  It was cold and blustery outside. It had rained at some point in the night, and the ground was now icy, which made it trickier than usual for Mom on her crutches.

  As we made our way to Monkey Mountain, Dad brought us up to speed on what had happened with the rhinos. J.J. had mobilized his security force, bringing in everyone necessary to work through the night. Some guards had provided protection for all the rhinos while others swept the zoo for any sign of the poacher. They hadn’t found her—but she hadn’t made any more attempts on the rhinos, either.

  Much of the veterinary staff had returned to work for the night as well. Since the operation was relatively simple, everything had been done in the field, rather than going through the trouble of bringing the rhinos into the animal hospital. Each rhino had been led into a house like Rhonda’s, away from the other animals, and then sedated. Doc had removed each horn himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust anyone else to do it, Dad said, so much as that he didn’t want to make anyone on his staff do such a distasteful thing. The sedation was the most dangerous part of the surgery. Doc had used a special saw to cut the horns off, and he’d taken great care to get as much of each horn as possible.

  “So all the rhinos are safe now?” I asked.

  “Assuming the hunter was actually going for their horns and not merely looking to kill them for sport,” Mom said.

  “Right,” I agreed, hoping that wasn’t the case. It was still hard for me to imagine anyone killing a rhino merely to kill it—especially after talking to Violet’s aunt and uncle—but you never knew what humans might sink to.

  “And there’s still Rhonda,” Dad said.

  “What’s wrong with Rhonda?” I asked.

  “Doc thought it was too risky to sedate her during her pregnancy,” Dad replied. “She’s close to due, and he doesn’t want any complications with the baby. So J.J. assigned teams of armed guards to protect her twenty-four hours a day. She’s going to stay locked up and under protection until her baby is born.”

  “How long will that be?” I asked.

  Dad shrugged. “Even Doc can’t tell for sure. He thinks it’s only a few more days, but it could be another week or two.”

  “J.J. really approved that much protection for that long?” Mom asked skeptically. “He didn’t gripe about how expensive it would be?”

  “He says he’s willing to pay whatever it takes to protect his rhinos,” Dad told us.

  “You can’t believe anything that snake says,” Mom grumbled. Her anger at J.J. didn’t seem to have lessened overnight. “The man’s as two-faced as they come.”

  “Maybe so,” Dad admitted, “but I do think his concern for the rhinos is real.”

  Mom gave Dad a hard look, annoyed at him for taking J.J.’s side. “The man can’t be trusted. He moved our entire house simply because he felt like doing it. He promised he wouldn’t build roller coasters here, and now he’s building them. He forced our son to investigate a crime and lied to him about why. . . .”

  “He didn’t lie to me,” I said defensively. “He thought I could help find the hunter.”

  Mom winced, looking upset with herself. Like she’d said something she hadn’t meant to.

  “You don’t think that’s the reason?” I asked.

  “I’m sure it’s part of the reason,” Mom hedged. “But with J.J. McCracken, there’s always an ulterior motive. You have a history of investigating things without permission here. Sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Well, if J.J. makes you part of his team, he can keep a better eye on you. He can make sure you report everything you find directly to him. And he can exert control over what you investigate and what you don’t.”

  I didn’t really want to believe all that. I wanted to think that J.J. had come to me only because he respected my crime-solving abilities. But I realized Mom was probably right. Which immediately made me question everything J.J. had said and done over the past few days. I found myself wondering if he even might be involved in trying to get the rhino horns somehow. After all, he had admitted FunJungle was losing money—and rhino horns were worth a lot. He obviously wasn’t the hunter—he wasn’t a woman, and he was a good few inches shorter than the person I’d encountered at World of Reptiles—but he could have hired someone to get the horns for him.

  We arrived a
t Monkey Mountain. Mom entered her code on the security keypad and led us inside.

  “Are the rhino horns in J.J.’s safe?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Dad told me. “After we finished the dehorning, Athmani took them to J.J.’s office.”

  “You didn’t go with him?” Mom asked.

  “I came home to see you,” Dad replied. “But I know they got there. J.J.’s the only one with the combination, and he stayed here all night so that he could put them in the safe himself. Athmani sent me a photo of them inside as proof.” He dug out his phone and brought up the picture.

  I examined it as we walked through the halls. The safe was surprisingly large, the size of a small closet. There were several shelves, one of which looked like it held stacks of cash. The horns were piled on the bottom shelf. There were eight in all, four from our Asian rhinos, four from the African ones. Cut loose from the rhinos, they didn’t look like anything special, merely lopsided whitish pyramids. “How much do you think they’re worth?” I asked.

  “They’re each a few pounds,” Dad said. “At current prices, that’s around four million dollars’ worth of horns. Maybe even more.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. It was hard to believe anything could be worth so much money. Or worth killing a living thing for.

  And now J.J. McCracken controlled all the access to them. I really hoped that this time he could be trusted.

  Mom led us into the backstage area of the orangutan exhibit. Kyle was waiting for us there.

  The exhibit looked almost exactly the same as it had the day before. The cage door was closed and locked. The orangutans were inside, behaving like it was a completely normal day. But Pancake was gone.

  On our side of the steel bars, six feet above the ground, the metal cover for the air-conditioning vent had been removed. The air-conditioning shaft was visible beyond. It was big enough for a young orangutan to get through.

  “That’s obviously how he’s been getting out of the building,” Kyle said. “Clever guy. Look how careful he was. Instead of ripping it off, he actually unscrewed it so he could put it back on again.”

  The vent cover was lying on the floor. Sure enough, the four screws that had held it in place were all lying beside it.

  “But how’d he get out of the cage in the first place?” I asked.

  “Let’s check the footage,” Dad said. “Teddy, let me boost you up.”

  Dad had mounted his camera up by the ceiling of the room. Now he knelt beneath it and laced his fingers together, making a step with his hands. I put my foot in it, and he stood, hoisting me up to his shoulders. From there, I was able to reach the camera easily.

  “The memory pack is attached to the back of it,” Dad told me. “Unclip it and leave the camera there for now.”

  The camera was still running, having been recording all night. I flipped it off and unclipped the memory pack, which was a black box the size of a deck of cards. “Got it.”

  “Good work.” Dad gently lowered me to the ground.

  We all then went to Mom’s office, where Dad plugged the memory pack into Mom’s computer and accessed the footage he’d shot the night before. It had a time stamp at the bottom, beginning at five p.m. The orangutans were eating dinner, big platters of fruits and vegetables.

  Dad started fast-forwarding.

  The orangutans on the screen began to move at superspeed, polishing off their food and preparing for bed. Orangutans in the wild often make large nests out of leaves and branches. The ones at FunJungle did the same thing with burlap bags. At seven p.m. a keeper came in to check on them, and by seven thirty the apes were all asleep.

  They stayed that way until five a.m.

  “Look!” Mom said.

  Dad slowed the footage down to normal speed.

  While all the other orangutans were still asleep, Pancake was on the move. He emerged from his burlap nest and looked around furtively, like a kid who was planning to raid the cookie jar. Then he shimmied up the bars to the top of the exhibit.

  “Can you zoom closer on him?” Mom asked.

  “Give me a sec.” Dad shifted the mouse around and zoomed in on Pancake. The lights were dim in the room, but not completely dark, simulating a moonlit night in Borneo. We could barely make out what Pancake was doing.

  Close to the ceiling of the exhibit, the orangutan had hidden some objects atop one of the horizontal bars. He carefully picked them up and slid back down.

  “My goodness,” Mom said. “He really is a smart one. The keepers probably only search the floor of the exhibit for things that shouldn’t be in there.”

  “They never look higher?” Dad asked.

  “Would you have thought to look up there?” Mom replied.

  Dad considered that a moment, then admitted, “No. I guess not.”

  “What’s he have there?” Kyle asked.

  “Looks like a stick,” Mom said.

  Sure enough, Pancake had a thin stick, about three feet long. It had most likely come from one of the trees in his exhibit, but he’d obviously taken great care to select it. It was about as straight and thin as a stick could be. Pancake was examining one end of it. There was a small glob stuck there. Pancake prodded it with a finger, then yanked it off, placed it in his mouth, and chewed on it for a bit.

  “What’s that?” I asked. “Gum?”

  “I hope not,” Mom said. “The keepers certainly wouldn’t let him have any. But it’s always possible that some tourist let a piece fall into the exhibit. Or maybe they threw it in, thinking it would be funny if the orangs got it.”

  “Or maybe it’s tree sap,” Dad said.

  “Could be,” Mom agreed.

  Pancake took the stuff he was chewing from his mouth and tested it again. Whatever it was, it certainly appeared to be sticky. Pancake seemed pleased with its adhesiveness and put it back on the end of his stick once more.

  “Look at him,” Mom said, impressed. “He’s making a tool. For the longest time, humans thought we were the only animals intelligent enough to do something like this. It wasn’t until women like Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas began observing great apes in the wild that anyone realized they could be as smart as we are.”

  Pancake held up one more object that had been hidden at the top of the exhibit. It was about the size and shape of a playing card.

  “That looks like a FunJungle ID card,” I said.

  Mom peered closer at the screen. “It certainly does. How on earth did he get one of those?”

  “Oh no,” Kyle said quietly.

  We all turned to him. He seemed startled that he’d even spoken out loud and now grew embarrassed.

  “Is that yours?” Mom demanded.

  “Maybe,” Kyle said, so softly we could barely hear him. “I lost my ID card a few days ago. I figured I’d dropped it somewhere, but I was in with the orangutans right before it disappeared, so maybe Pancake swiped it from me.”

  “I’ll bet that’s the case,” Mom said. “He’s quite the little thief.”

  On the screen, Pancake affixed the ID card to end of the stick with the gum. Then he held it out through the bars of the cage. With his arm fully extended, holding the stick straight, he could get the ID card in front of the electronic pad, six feet away.

  The gate to the exhibit clicked open.

  Pancake quickly snapped the ID card off the end of his stick, as he’d need it to get back into the cage, then took the stick back up to the top of the cage and hid it again. After that, he slipped out of the cage, shut the gate behind him, and tucked the ID card into his mouth.

  “He’s storing the card in his mouth?” I asked, surprised.

  “Orangutans don’t have pockets,” Mom replied. “The best thing they have is their mouths. Look how big his lips are. He could store a couple whole oranges in there.”

  None of the other orangutans had woken as Pancake exited the exhibit. Now Pancake climbed the outside of the cage to get to the air-conditioning vent and went to work on the screws.r />
  Dad zoomed in to watch him there. “Holy cow,” he said. “He’s using his fingernail to unscrew them.”

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” Mom said. “His fingernails are much thicker and tougher than ours are.”

  “That is one smart ape,” Kyle stated.

  “Okay,” Mom said. “We know how he got out. Now we have to find him.” She grabbed her crutches and started for the door.

  The rest of us followed her. Kyle’s coat was slung over the back of his desk chair. As he grabbed it, he knocked something off his desk. It tumbled to the floor with a crack. “Aw, nuts,” he muttered. “I am not having a good day.”

  I came around the desk to see what the object was. It looked like an abstract sculpture about the size of a coffee mug. I couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be, except that it was lime green and had now broken in half, leaving a lot of green dust on the floor.

  Kyle bent to clean it up, but Mom said, “We can deal with that later. Right now, let’s find Pancake.”

  Kyle sadly stuck the two pieces of the green thing in his jacket pocket and followed us out the door.

  “Pancake raided stores selling desserts before,” Mom said as we raced through the halls of Monkey Mountain. “So he’s probably doing it again. I think the candy store and the ice cream shop are still closed for repairs. What’s left?”

  “There are two other ice cream shops,” Dad said. “One out by SafariLand and one by the Polar Pavilion.”

  “There’s another candy store near Carnivore Canyon,” I recalled. “And a bakery, too.”

  “We’ll cover a lot more ground if we split up,” Mom suggested. “I’ll do the Polar Pavilion; Jack, take SafariLand. Kyle and Teddy, head toward Carnivore Canyon. If you find Pancake, do not try to capture him yourself. He’s a wild animal. Call security and then call me.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. We exited Monkey Mountain, and Mom and Dad veered off in different directions.

  Kyle and I stayed together as we headed toward Carnivore Canyon. Although I was supposed to be thinking about Pancake, I couldn’t get the object that had been on Kyle’s desk out of my mind.