Read Online Floods 7 by Colin Thompson - Free Book Online

and shoot off the cliff into the sea.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Oh yes,’ said the penguin. ‘It’s an old family tradition. All us Tristan da Cunha penguins do it.’
    â€˜Well, do it now and do it very quickly,’ said the Hearse Whisperer. ‘Here, I’ll help you.’
    She kicked the little penguin and it slid down the ice faster than a sliding penguin.
    â€˜Thank y o o o o o o u u u u …’ it shouted as it shot off the cliff top, across over the grass and rocks, past a small fishing boat, right over the heads of seven very impressed seals, and landed in the sea over eighty metres from the shore. Even theHearse Whisperer had to admit, though only to herself, that the penguin’s slide had looked pretty impressive.

    The tiny bird ploughed through the waves, disappeared into the surf and bobbed up waving its little wings at all the other penguins, who gave it a high-five and cheered as only small penguins bobbing about in frantic surf can.
    The Hearse Whisperer’s veins were at bursting point. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have let those vile Floods trick her again? She stared down into the volcano and concentrated. The bottom of the crater was shaped like a heart, which made her even more angry. 24 A tiny crack appeared in the ice. The volcano’s last eruption had been in 1961. That had only been a baby, even though it had meant everyone had had to leave the island for a couple of years.
    â€˜This one will wipe the island off the face of the earth,’ she sneered. ‘Unless. Hold on …’
    Maybe the Floods had been double bluffing. Maybe they had suspected she would think that Tristan da Cunha was a false trail. So maybe they really were on their way there after all, thinking that she would think they weren’t and be a long way away.
    Fuzzy black spots appeared in front of her eyes. Her veins stopped getting ready to burst andstarted throbbing. Just how many she knew, they knew she knew, she knew they knew she knews could there be?
    â€˜Why does life have to be so complicated?’ she cried.
    â€˜Because if it wasn’t, you would be out of work,’ she answered herself. ‘And life would be boring.’
    â€˜Right now,’ she continued, ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of boring.’
    She was now seriously depressed because she knew that having conversations with yourself was only one short step away from sitting in a chair smelling of wee and having conversations with the wall like her old grandmother used to do. Depressed was the normal mood for the Hearse Whisperer. She felt happy and safe that way, but this was way below that kind of depression. And there wasn’t even a wall to hit her head against.
    Let’s face it , she thought, I have become an emo .
    And it was all the Floods’ fault.
    The cold was getting to her. She began to fantasise about leaving planet Earth, about transporting herself up to the international space station and then blasting the whole of planet Earth into oblivion. That would finish the Floods off wherever they were hiding.
    Trouble is , she thought, it would finish off all my friends and family too .
    She thought for a bit longer, then concluded, But I haven’t got any friends and I hate my family, so maybe it’s worth looking into .
    â€˜I’m getting too old for this job,’ she said out loud and then set about destroying every single living thing – fourteen slugs, eighty-three ants and a lost snail – that might have heard her say it.

The door had slowly creaked open a crack, but the Floods still couldn’t see who was inside.
    â€˜Go away,’ said a voice.
    â€˜We were wondering if you could put us up for the night,’ said Mordonna.
    â€˜We’re closed,’ said the voice. ‘For renovations.’
    â€˜And we’ve come for the dog,’ said Mildred. ‘My dog.’
    â€˜I said…’ the voice