by Justin D'Ath
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she whispered.
Colt held up his cut finger. ‘My blood can fix you.’
Superintendent Katt gazed up at him. Her eyes seemed unfocused. She took a deep, shuddering breath, then weakly shook her head
‘I don’t want anything from you!’
‘You should have got it,’ Birdy said.
Colt switched off the holovision. They had just watched his father being presented with a medal by the King of Sweden. The King had thanked him for saving mankind.
‘Dad deserves it. He was the one who found the cure.’
‘Which was you!’ said Birdy.
‘But Dad worked it out,’ Colt said.
‘I still don’t really get it,’ said Birdy.
‘Well, he figured out that mosquitoes were transmitting RF2 from infected rats to people. And that the ghost rats only got that way because they carried a dormant strain of RF2.’
‘What does that even mean?’ asked Birdy.
‘They had RF2 – it just wasn’t showing. But after a while it made all of them sick. That’s why they kept bothering me.’
‘Helping you,’ she corrected him.
He shrugged. ‘But only because they knew somehow that I could help them.’
Birdy looked sad. ‘It was a strange way to help them, giving them Enzyme-C to kill them.’
‘It’s what they wanted.’ Colt gently rubbed the old bite-scar on his thumb. ‘They were suffering. Besides, Enzyme-C only killed rats that were already carrying RF2. Once Dad became the Superintendent of DoRFE, he and his team of scientists worked out how to make Enzyme-C in the laboratory. Then they used rats and mosquitoes to carry it and spread it all around.’
Birdy wrinkled her nose. ‘Bleugh! No matter what anyone says, rats will always be gross to me.’
‘Yeah, but without them . . . who knows? They reversed the new epidemic before it spread overseas.’
‘And killed everyone in the world,’ Birdy added. ‘Maybe they’re not so bad. Anyway, I reckon you should at least get some credit for helping with all that stuff.’
Colt shook his head ‘Dad’s the brilliant scientist – he deserves the Nobel Prize. I’m just a kid with weird blood.’
‘And weird eating habits,’ she said. ‘Put those split peas back in the pantry before Mum catches you.’
Colt was staying with her family while his parents were in Sweden. Birdy’s new house was right next door to his. The two families shared a huge yard. There was a tall fence to keep the animals out. It stopped the zebras, wallabies, giant pandas and fallow deer from entering, but Lucy and her fourteen-month-old calf, Hope, kept breaking in and raiding the vegetable patch. They were out there now, pulling up Mrs Flynn’s broad beans.
‘Hey, stop that!’ cried Birdy, running outside.
Colt shut the pantry door and followed her. ‘Need a hand?’ he called from the deck.
Birdy was pulling on one of Hope’s big, floppy ears, trying to lead her across the lawn towards a flattened sec- tion of fence where they’d broken in. ‘Can you get Lucy?’
‘Lucy, get out of there!’ he called.
The mother elephant just flapped her ears and kept eating.
‘Lucy! I said get out of there!’
She ignored him. He had to go over and coax her out of the yard with a big handful of celery tops from the compost pile.
‘She doesn’t listen to me anymore,’ he told Birdy.
They were standing in the gap watching the two elephants wander off into Captain Noah’s Future World Wildlife Park.
‘Maybe she’s going deaf.’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said sadly. ‘I think it’s me. I think I’m changing.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Birdy.
Colt picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could. It only went about 40 metres. ‘Yesterday when your dad got a flat tyre, I couldn’t even lift his truck,’ he said. ‘And can you see what’s happening to my hair?’
‘It looks the same to me.’
He parted it to show her. Down near the roots, the individual strands were turning dark. ‘I think Dad’s rat flu cure is curing me, too.’
Birdy touched his arm. ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? You’re fifteen now – too old to play superheroes.’
It was going to take a while to get used to. Colt forced himself to smile. ‘Clowngirl, our work is done,’ he said, faking a deep, superhero voice.
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. They watched a pair of regent firebirds building a nest in a nearby tree. Out in the park, a mother antelope called to its calf.
Suddenly Birdy stood on her hands and walked nearly ten metres upside-down, before collapsing in a heap on the grass.
‘Who cares about prizes!’ she yelled up at the sky. ‘Colt and I saved the world!’
You have probably come across some of the special names (collective nouns) we give to groups of animals, for example; a flock of geese, a herd of cows, a litter of puppies. But not all of them are this obvious, and some of them are actually pretty strange . . . Can you match these animals to their group names?
1. A _______________ of hummingbirds.
cloud
pop
charm
group
2. A _______________ of porcupines.
clutch
prickle
burp
herd
3. A _______________ of greyhounds.
leash
gaggle
spring
feather
4. A _______________ of penguins.
colony
waddle
huddle
pod
5. A _______________ of rattlesnakes.
kettle
jumble
tickle
rhumba
6. A _______________ of sardines.
school
can
puddle
family
7. A _______________ of owls.
parliament
nest
arena
celebration
8. A _______________ of wombats.
blob
burrow
wisdom
trap
9. A _______________ of stingrays.
fever
hedge
flap
torpedo
10. A _______________ of mice.
merriment
mischief
mudslide
mettle
1. C
2. B
3. A
4. A
5. D
6. D
7. A
8. C
9. A
10. B
Lost World Circus:
Book 1: The Last Elephant
Book 2: The Singing Ape
Book 3: Secret Superhero
Book 4: Boy Versus Rat Dog
Book 5: Plague Island
All the books in these action-packed series can be read in any order.
Extreme Adventures:
Crocodile Attack
Bushfire Rescue
Shark Bait
Scorpion Sting
Spider Bite
Man Eater
Killer Whale
Anaconda Ambush
Grizzly Trap
Devil Danger
Monkey Mountain
Tiger Trouble
Mission Fox:
Snake Escape
Panda Chase
Dolphin Rescue
Horse Hijack
Puma Rumour
Zebra Rampage
Go Goanna
Koala Round-up
Visit justindath.com for heaps of great stuff about the author!
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2014
Text copyright © Justin D’Ath, 2014
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover and text design by Marina Messiha © Penguin Group (Australia)
Cover image by Sam Hadley
puffin.com.au
ISBN: 978-1-74253-593-7
THE BEGINNING
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