Toad Rage (13 page)

And scary.

And very dangerous.

I don't care, he thought wearily.

So far this month I've failed to save my species, I haven't even been able to protect my own mum and dad and sister, and I'll probably be flattened by a truck myself sooner or later.

I want to do one good thing before I die.

L
impy could hear the girl sobbing on her bed as he and Goliath clambered in through the bathroom window and dropped into the bathtub.

“This is crazy,” muttered Goliath. “This is gunna end with us having wet cheeks too, except it'll be dog slobber.”

Limpy reached up and put his hands on Goliath's shoulders.

He took a deep breath so his voice wouldn't wobble. This was the most important thing he'd ever said to Goliath, and big cousins sometimes didn't take you seriously if your voice was wobbling.

“Goliath,” said Limpy, “I want you to stay here.”

Goliath's mouth flopped open.

“I mean it,” said Limpy firmly.

“No way,” said Goliath. “I'm not letting you go off to be dog meat on your own.”

Limpy took another deep breath. This was exactly what he'd expected Goliath to say.

He looked hard into Goliath's eyes.

“I need you to stay here,” he said. “Dad will have put the word around by now that I'm on a mission to stop humans killing cane toads. The folks at home don't know I've failed. They don't know they still have to watch out for cars and trucks. It's really important that one of us gets back to warn them.”

Limpy paused while Goliath digested this.

“I'm sure I'll be okay,” he went on, “but just in case I'm not, you'll have to go back on your own. Get a cockroach to direct you to the city market, find a truck with mangoes painted on the side, and stow away.”

Goliath swallowed, and Limpy saw that his cousin's warts were quivering with emotion.

“They're all depending on you, Goliath,” he said.

Goliath didn't say anything, and Limpy realized that Goliath was struggling with a voice wobble of his own.

Limpy squeezed Goliath's shoulders, then turned and hopped out of the bathtub.

He didn't say goodbye.

No point upsetting them both.

The girl was lying facedown on the bed, sobbing into her pillow.

Limpy hopped up onto the bedspread and nudged her arm with his shoulder.

She rolled over and opened her eyes.

Limpy hopped round in circles a few times so she'd know it was him and not just any cane toad who happened to be passing.

For a long time she just stared at him, blinking through her tears.

Then her face broke into an amazed grin.

“What are you doing here?”

Limpy could tell she'd recognized him.

Now, he thought, for the tricky bit.

He hopped over and touched her hand with his toenails, careful not to scratch her this time. Then he mimed his own hand hurting, sucking it and blowing on it and waving it around like a truck had just run over it.

He only had to do it for a while before he saw her eyes widen and her mouth fall open and delighted understanding creep across her face.

The Games officials understood immediately. It took them a while to believe her, though. Limpy watched as the girl talked animatedly to
them and pointed to him and to her hand and mimed a small amount of poison flowing through her blood.

At least, he imagined that's what she was doing. It was pretty hard to see from inside the plastic bag the officials had put him in. The plastic bag had previously had some sort of orange smoked fish in it, and the sides were all smeary and hard to see through.

Limpy rubbed till he had a clear patch.

He watched as the officials kept shaking their heads, right up until the girl grabbed a handful of newspapers and waved them threateningly under their noses.

Then, unhappily, they nodded.

The lab was very bright.

Limpy squinted, partly from the lights and partly from fear.

He knew what could happen to animals in labs.

Please, he begged silently as a man in a white coat put him on a white bench. Please let this human know how to get poison out of a cane toad without any cutting or lethal injections.

Trembling, Limpy wondered if he should help the man.

Squirt at him, just a bit.

He decided not to.

The man put on rubber gloves and plastic goggles and squeezed one of Limpy's glands. Pus plopped into a glass bowl.

Limpy felt so weak with relief that he didn't even struggle when the man put him into a glass tank and put a lid on it.

Instead, he watched through the side of the tank as the man did things on the bench with glass tubes and bits of equipment Limpy didn't recognize. Not much lab equipment got chucked out of cars in North Queensland.

The girl and the officials watched too.

Finally, the man in the white coat turned to the girl.

“You're clear,” he said.

Limpy didn't understand at first, not until the girl came grinning over to the tank, took the lid off, and gave him a big kiss.

Later, after Limpy had got over his disappointment about the girl putting the lid back on the tank and leaving without him, he decided it was time to escape. Later still, after he'd climbed up the wall of the tank about a million times and tried to push the lid off about a million times and fallen on his head about a million times, he realized he couldn't.

Then the lab filled up with humans in white coats, all staring up at a telly on the wall.

On the screen, Limpy saw the girl.

She was in the middle of the stadium, soaring over a crossbar that looked even higher than before.

All the humans in the lab started cheering and hugging each other.

Then they left.

Limpy smiled.

He was glad the girl had made them cheer. She must have done well.

Perhaps she'll come back and kiss me again, thought Limpy hopefully. And then take me back to Goliath.

He waited, not hoping too hard in case she didn't.

A long time passed. Even though he didn't want to, Limpy found himself thinking sadly about Charm.

Then he realized with a start that someone was standing behind the tank, watching him.

It wasn't the girl.

Limpy's insides sank as he saw a clipboard and a red face with hard, shiny eyes.

The bloke in the suit reached into the tank and lifted Limpy out and held him up and stared at him with a thin-lipped expression. Limpy felt pretty sure that whatever was going to happen next wouldn't involve a kiss.

L
impy had never been on a winner's podium at a Games before, and he felt a bit overwhelmed.

It was partly the noise.

A stadium full of humans applauding and cheering was the loudest thing Limpy had ever heard, including some pretty big thunderstorms back home.

Another reason was that he was still in shock.

When the bloke with the clipboard had hurried out of the lab with Limpy in a manila envelope, Limpy had been pretty sure they were heading for somewhere unpleasant. A loading dock perhaps. Or a highway so the bloke could run Limpy over with his car.

So when the bloke hurried into the stadium and handed Limpy to the girl just before she stepped onto the podium and received her gold medal, Limpy had been pretty surprised.

The main reason he was a bit overwhelmed, though, was what was happening to him now.

The girl was holding Limpy over her head and the humans in the stadium were cheering even louder.

At him.

Stack me, thought Limpy, I think they like me.

Phew, thought Limpy as the girl carried him into the boardroom, it's all go being a national hero.

The girl had barely had time for a shower and Limpy had barely had time for a drink of water, and now the bloke with the clipboard was rushing them into a meeting.

Limpy didn't know what the meeting was about, but he hoped it would go on long enough for him to catch his breath.

The girl sat at the head of a long table and put Limpy down in front of her.

Limpy looked round.

There were several humans seated at the table and they were all grinning at him.

Limpy swallowed nervously.

He knew he should like it, but it felt weird.

The bloke with the clipboard took a seat at the other end of the table and started talking.

Limpy couldn't understand what he was saying, but he was obviously very enthusiastic about something. It seemed to be Limpy.

Then one of the other humans held up some sheets of drawing paper and Limpy became very enthusiastic as well.

They were sketches of cane toads.

In display bins.

In shops.

Stack me, thought Limpy delightedly.

Fluffy cane toad toys.

It's happened.

We're saved.

Limpy had a wonderful vision of every vehicle in Australia with a fluffy brushed-polyester cane toad hanging from its rearview mirror. A cute, lovable, fluffy cane toad that would remind the driver to be very careful not to run over any cute, lovable, real cane toads.

Not Charm, not Goliath, not any of them.

Limpy felt like doing cartwheels. He felt like kissing everyone round the table.

Instead he looked up gratefully at the girl. She was grinning happily too.

Then her grin faded.

Limpy turned round and saw why.

At the other end of the table, the bloke with the clipboard was holding up a fluffy cane toad toy for the other humans to examine.

Except, Limpy saw as he stared in horror, it wasn't fluffy.

It wasn't even a toy.

It was the dry stuffed skin of a real cane toad.

Limpy felt sick and dizzy.

He struggled with his breathing while the other humans passed the stuffed corpse among themselves, obviously delighted. The only voice raised in protest, Limpy was dimly aware, was the girl's.

He couldn't see her expression.

He couldn't take his eyes off the bloke with the clipboard, who was standing next to a map of Australia on the wall. He picked up the stuffed corpse and pointed to North Queensland with a smile.

The bloke spoke some words and Limpy, sick with horror and despair, knew exactly what they meant.

“Plenty more where this one came from.”