Toad Heaven - Morris Gleitzman [2]
Limpy glowed with pleasure. Right up until a sudden violent noise made him spin round.
He froze in stunned disbelief, barely able to comprehend what he was seeing.
He'd never seen anything like it, not once in his whole life.
He heard Goliath and the others croak with amazed fear as they saw it too.
A vehicle, headlights blazing and motor revving, had driven off the highway and was crashing through the undergrowth, coming straight at them.
“Hide!” yelled Limpy.
He grabbed Goliath and dragged him into a bog hole.
The vehicle thundered toward them.
Limpy could feel Goliath's big warts trembling as they crouched in the mud.
I don't believe it, thought Limpy, trembling too. A vehicle driving through the bush. Away from the highway.
It wasn't natural.
“It isn't possible,” croaked Goliath. “It can't be happening.”
But it was.
Limpy gave Goliath's arm a reassuring squeeze, then peered out of the hole to make sure the others were safely hidden. They were. All around him in the moonlight Limpy could see legs and bottoms wriggling into hollow logs and clumps of weed. Out of the darkness came the sounds of other animals panicking.
“Look out!” croaked Goliath.
The vehicle roared past Limpy's face. It was so close Limpy felt his lips pulled out of shape by the slipstream and his mucus seared by diesel fumes.
He was still sneezing long after the vehicle had disappeared into the dark bush and its distant engine could be heard no more.
Limpy could still see it, though. The horrible image of its rear end bumping over rocks and logs was burned into his brain.
It was a four-wheel drive.
Limpy's mucus was dry with fear as well as diesel. He'd heard the rumors about four-wheel drives. How four-wheel drives didn't need roads. How four-wheel drives could go anywhere. But he'd thought they were just scary stories. “Eat your mashed leeches,” he'd heard a mum say to some little cane toads once, “or a four-wheel drive will come and get you.”
Now he knew it was true.
“Three croaks for Uncle Nick!” said Aunty Ellen.
She scraped a handful of flying insects off Uncle Nick and held them up.
“And,” she added, “three even bigger croaks for Limpy and Goliath!”
The uncles and aunts and cousins and neighbors that were crowded around the edge of the swamp in the moonlight gave three hearty croaks. And a couple of burps for good luck.
Limpy tried to look pleased. He tried not to show the others how anxious he was feeling. He tried to stop straining his ears for the sound of the four-wheel drive coming back.
He looked around at his loving relatives and tried to convince himself that they were right. That the driver of the four-wheel drive wasn't a murderous cane toad hunter. That he or she had just fallen asleep and veered off the highway accidentally and had been woken up by the sound of hysterical wombats and was already back on the highway and gone forever.
Think positive, he told himself. This is a celebration. Look happy.
“Limpy got the Uncle Nick idea from watching an echidna,” Goliath was telling the rellies. “You know how anteaters have sticky tongues? So the ants stick to them?”
Limpy realized the rellies were nodding and looking admiringly at him. They were waiting for him to say something.
“Goliath helped me develop the idea,” said Limpy.
He decided for Goliath's sake not to go into detail. Goliath did it instead.
“Before Limpy thought of using Uncle Nick,” said Goliath proudly, “I put sticky sap on my tongue.”
Now the rellies were looking at Goliath admiringly.
“My tongue was even stickier than an anteater's,” continued Goliath. “Actually, it was a bit too sticky. I spent last night up one of the railway-crossing light poles with my tongue stuck to the wood. Took three cousins hanging off each leg to rip me down.”
Goliath poked his tongue out so everyone could see the splinters of wood.
The rellies weren't looking quite so admiring now. Some of them looked a bit ill.
Poor Goliath, thought Limpy.