Toad Rage - Morris Gleitzman [15]
Finally, with a last desperate effort, Limpy dragged himself around the driver's-side door hinge, across the front wheel arch, and onto the bull bar.
He blinked in the glare from the headlights.
It was better than he'd dared hope.
There were insects everywhere. Grasshoppers, mosquitoes, locusts, beetles, midges, moths, gnats, flying ants, cicadas, all splattered across the front of the truck in a juicy, mouthwatering smorgasbord.
Limpy ate like he'd never eaten before.
He'd have eaten even faster if the air hadn't been battering against him so hard that he had to hang on with at least one hand and his good foot.
Then he discovered that if he turned round to face the onrushing air and just opened his mouth, an endless stream of insects were flung into it.
Weak with relief, he let himself be filled.
It wasn't till afterward he realized that what happened next probably saved him from exploding, or at least getting a serious tummy ache.
At first he thought he was hearing things, but when he listened more carefully, he knew he wasn't.
It was definitely a voice, feebly calling out.
“Limpy. Help.”
A voice he recognized.
Limpy nearly fell off the bull bar in shock.
It couldn't be.
Goliath?
“Limpy,” croaked Goliath's voice. “Down here.”
Limpy clambered frantically across the bull bar, heart thudding louder than the tires, trying to hear if it really was Goliath, straining to catch a glimpse of him.
How could it be after Goliath had been flattened by the same speeding ten-wheeler Limpy was clinging to the front of now?
Squinting in the glare of the headlights, Limpy searched the radiator grille, the indicator housings, even the fog-light brackets.
No Goliath.
I must be hearing things, thought Limpy. I've over-stressed my digestive system and my blood's rushing to my stomach and starving my brain.
“Limpy,” wheezed the voice. “Underneath.”
For a second Limpy thought the voice meant underneath the fog-light bracket, but he quickly realized that couldn't be it. There wasn't even enough room under a fog-light bracket for a fruit fly on a vegetable juice diet.
Limpy realized the voice meant underneath the truck.
He wrapped his arms round the bottom rung of the bull bar and peered down between the front wheels.
And gasped.
There—wedged between the front axle cover and the main chassis of the truck, smeared with oil, covered in dust, and spitting road gravel out through dry lips—was Goliath.
Limpy blinked and swung his head round to use his other eye, just in case he was seeing things.
He wasn't.
“Goliath,” yelled Limpy. “Are you okay?”
“No,” croaked Goliath, “I'm not. I'm a hit-and-run victim.”
Limpy decided not to point out that hit-and-run victims didn't usually threaten trucks with sticks.
“I've been yelling for ages,” complained Goliath, “but you were more interested in hanging off the side of the truck.”
“Sorry,” said Limpy. “Are you hurt?”
Goliath didn't answer.
Limpy didn't like the look of him. The way his arms and legs were just hanging loose and his face was pushed into his own bottom. He could have broken bones and internal injuries.
“Help me out of here,” croaked Goliath. “I'm gunna rip this bloke's doors off and shove his engine up his nose.”
Then again, perhaps not.
Limpy scraped a handful of grasshopper bits off the radiator grille and swung himself under the front of the truck.
The roadway hissed past his head, hungry for his brains.
Limpy ignored it.
Upside down, careful to keep his crook leg off the road, he clambered across to Goliath.
“Hang on,” he said.
“Don't need to,” said Goliath gloomily. “It'll take a crowbar to get me out of here.”
Limpy swung onto the axle cover next to his cousin. For a skinny cane toad there was plenty of room. Now that he was close, Limpy winced. For a cane toad the size of Goliath